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The Washington Note
August 20, 2012 Monday 2:25 PM EST
Syrian Conflict Not Just Battle Against Assad
Reuters/Benoit Tessier
The New Yorker has just published a gripping, must read piece for
those following the horrible convulsions inside Syria titled "The War
Within" by Jon Lee Anderson on the diverse array of bosses,
ideologues, thugs and strategists animating the Syrian opposition
today.
I highly recommend it -- and think that his characterization of the
conflict as now indisputably a civil war is sobering, particularly for
those advocating deep intervention by the US and Europe:
For months, policymakers and pundits have debated whether Syria was in
a state of civil war. Today, it undeniably is, but not in the
schoolbook sense of the phrase, with its connotation of two tidily
opposed sides--Yanks and Rebs squaring off at Antietam. Instead, the
war comprises a bewildering assortment of factions. Most of the
rebels, like seventy-five per cent of Syria's citizens, are Sunni
Arabs, while the Assad regime is dominated by Alawites, members of a
Shiite offshoot that makes up about eleven per cent of the population.
But the country also has Christians of several sects, Kurds,
non-Alawite Shiites, and Turkomans, along with Palestinians,
Armenians, Druze, Bedouin nomads, and even some Gypsies. Each group
has its own political and economic interests and traditional
alliances, some of which overlap and some of which conflict. There are
Kurds who are close to the regime and others who are opposed. Around
the cities of Hama and Homs, the regime's paramilitary thugs are
Alawite; in Aleppo, hired Sunnis often do the dirty work.
Another clip that I wanted to share mentions a Syrian opposition
chief, an Islamist "who calls himself Abu Anas", relying on Google
Earth and lap top video clips of his fighters. Anderson profiles a
number of key opposition personalities, all driven by radically
different impulses but for now united in opposing Bashar al-Assad. Abu
Anas heads the Islamist group that bombed the inner sanctum of Syrian
military intelligence killing al-Assad's closest military chiefs and
brother-in-law and resulting in al-Assad's brother losing his leg:
A young aide brought some photo-copied Google Earth maps of Azaz, and
Abu Anas, pointing out what had been the enemy's key positions,
explained how the rebels had taken the town. "First, we cut off their
water and electricity," he said. "Then we gradually surrounded them
and shot at them and tried to get them to fire back at us until they
ran out of ammunition." The final battle had stretched for twenty-four
hours, he said, and ended only when some of Assad's soldiers began
defecting. On a laptop, he showed a film clip, in which his men fired
furiously at regime soldiers inside the mosque and then surged inside
themselves. "We killed and captured some and some escaped," he said.
"They tried to get out of town, but we ambushed and killed most of
them." Abu Anas had taken some wounded men prisoners, but found that
he didn't have enough medicine even for his own fighters. "We couldn't
look after them, so we let them die," he said.
The stories emerging of house to house killings by Syrian
regime-supporting thugs as well as the summary executions of Syrian
soldiers and captured officials by Syrian opposition forces while
horrible don't quite convey the degree to which the internal tensions
are not only a zero sum game between opposition and regime. Jon Lee
Anderson conveys this well in his essay.
The internal complexity of a future Syria -- made worse by meddling
neighbors and superpowers -- will most likely make this an ongoing
horror story with few answers, and a platform of convenience for proxy
fights between interests tied to Russia, Iran and China and those
supported by the US, Europe, Turkey and Sunni-led governments in the
region.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where
this post first appeared.
August 20, 2012 Monday 2:25 PM EST
Syrian Conflict Not Just Battle Against Assad
Reuters/Benoit Tessier
The New Yorker has just published a gripping, must read piece for
those following the horrible convulsions inside Syria titled "The War
Within" by Jon Lee Anderson on the diverse array of bosses,
ideologues, thugs and strategists animating the Syrian opposition
today.
I highly recommend it -- and think that his characterization of the
conflict as now indisputably a civil war is sobering, particularly for
those advocating deep intervention by the US and Europe:
For months, policymakers and pundits have debated whether Syria was in
a state of civil war. Today, it undeniably is, but not in the
schoolbook sense of the phrase, with its connotation of two tidily
opposed sides--Yanks and Rebs squaring off at Antietam. Instead, the
war comprises a bewildering assortment of factions. Most of the
rebels, like seventy-five per cent of Syria's citizens, are Sunni
Arabs, while the Assad regime is dominated by Alawites, members of a
Shiite offshoot that makes up about eleven per cent of the population.
But the country also has Christians of several sects, Kurds,
non-Alawite Shiites, and Turkomans, along with Palestinians,
Armenians, Druze, Bedouin nomads, and even some Gypsies. Each group
has its own political and economic interests and traditional
alliances, some of which overlap and some of which conflict. There are
Kurds who are close to the regime and others who are opposed. Around
the cities of Hama and Homs, the regime's paramilitary thugs are
Alawite; in Aleppo, hired Sunnis often do the dirty work.
Another clip that I wanted to share mentions a Syrian opposition
chief, an Islamist "who calls himself Abu Anas", relying on Google
Earth and lap top video clips of his fighters. Anderson profiles a
number of key opposition personalities, all driven by radically
different impulses but for now united in opposing Bashar al-Assad. Abu
Anas heads the Islamist group that bombed the inner sanctum of Syrian
military intelligence killing al-Assad's closest military chiefs and
brother-in-law and resulting in al-Assad's brother losing his leg:
A young aide brought some photo-copied Google Earth maps of Azaz, and
Abu Anas, pointing out what had been the enemy's key positions,
explained how the rebels had taken the town. "First, we cut off their
water and electricity," he said. "Then we gradually surrounded them
and shot at them and tried to get them to fire back at us until they
ran out of ammunition." The final battle had stretched for twenty-four
hours, he said, and ended only when some of Assad's soldiers began
defecting. On a laptop, he showed a film clip, in which his men fired
furiously at regime soldiers inside the mosque and then surged inside
themselves. "We killed and captured some and some escaped," he said.
"They tried to get out of town, but we ambushed and killed most of
them." Abu Anas had taken some wounded men prisoners, but found that
he didn't have enough medicine even for his own fighters. "We couldn't
look after them, so we let them die," he said.
The stories emerging of house to house killings by Syrian
regime-supporting thugs as well as the summary executions of Syrian
soldiers and captured officials by Syrian opposition forces while
horrible don't quite convey the degree to which the internal tensions
are not only a zero sum game between opposition and regime. Jon Lee
Anderson conveys this well in his essay.
The internal complexity of a future Syria -- made worse by meddling
neighbors and superpowers -- will most likely make this an ongoing
horror story with few answers, and a platform of convenience for proxy
fights between interests tied to Russia, Iran and China and those
supported by the US, Europe, Turkey and Sunni-led governments in the
region.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where
this post first appeared.