Syria's paradox: Why the war only ever seems to get worse

PUBLISHED9 HOURS AGO

WASHINGTON • There is a basic fact about Syria's civil war that never seems to change: It frustrates any attempt at resolution.

Despite many offensives, peace conferences and foreign interventions, including this week's Turkish incursion into a border town, the only needle that ever seems to move is the one measuring the suffering of Syrians - which only worsens.

Academic research on civil wars, taken together, reveals why. The average such conflict now lasts about a decade, twice as long as Syria's so far. But there are a handful of factors that can make them longer, more violent and harder to stop. Virtually all are present in Syria.

Many stem from foreign interventions that were intended to end the war, but have instead entrenched it in a stalemate in which violence is self-reinforcing and the normal avenues for peace are all closed. The fact that the underlying battle is multi-party rather than two-sided also works against resolution.

When asked what other conflicts through history had similar dynamics, Professor Barbara Walter of the University of San Diego, a leading expert on civil wars, paused, considered a few possibilities, then gave up. There were none. "This is a really, really tough case," she said.

Most civil wars end when one side loses. Either it is defeated militarily, or it exhausts its weapons or loses popular support and has to give up. About a quarter of civil wars end in a peace deal, often because both sides are exhausted.

That might have happened in Syria. The core combatants - the government and the insurgents who began fighting it in 2011 - are quite weak and, on their own, cannot sustain the fight for long.

But they are not on their own. Each side is backed by foreign powers - including the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and now Turkey - whose interventions have suspended the usual laws of nature.

This is why, according to Mr James Fearon, a Stanford professor who studies civil wars, multiple studies have found that "if you have outside intervention on both sides, duration is significantly greater".

Stalemate is also driven by uncertainty. No one is sure what a postwar Syria would look like or how to get there, but everyone can imagine a worse situation. This creates a status quo bias, in which combatants are more worried about preserving what they have than risking it to pursue their broader goals.

The only certain way to break the logjam is for one side to surge beyond what the other can match. Because Syria has sucked in two of the world's leading military powers, Russia and the US, that bar most likely could only be cleared by a full-scale invasion.

Peace deals often succeed or fail on the question of who will control military and security forces. In Syria, this may be a question without an answer. After a war as brutal as Syria's, in which more than 400,000 people have been killed, the combatants reasonably fear they will be massacred if the other secures too much power.

According to a 2015 paper by Prof Walter and Professor Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East expert, "outright military victory in a civil war often comes at the price of horrific (even genocidal) levels of violence against the defeated, including their civilian populations".

This could bring entirely new conflicts to the Middle East, they found: "Victorious groups in a civil war sometimes also try to employ their newfound strength against neighbouring states, resulting in interstate wars."

This is not a drift that anyone wants, but it is the direction in which Syria's many domestic and foreign participants are pulling the country, whose darkest days may still be ahead.

Kurdi su uzeli previše arapske teritorije. Nije realno sve to zadržati. Pogotovo ne bez zračne podrške Amerike. Zamjerili se svima. Kurdi postali ono što je isil nekada bio.

"Life went back to normal when the armed groups left the city," said Shafab Ali, a resident in Hasakah. "Parts of the town have been destroyed because of the clashes, but we love our city and don't want to abandon it," he said.

After the Russian-backed ceasefire, the city is now almost completely under Kurdish control although civilian pro-government police units will be remaining in the city according to the agreement.

With a population of around 200,000, Hasakah is divided among Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians. Parts of the city has been administrated by the pro-government National Defense Force which has now officially left the city.

"Now people are not afraid of going out and continue their lives as normal. It's calm and we hope it continues this way," said Sulaiman Bakir, another resident in Hasakah.

SAD TURSKOJ: Prestanite napadati Kurde, TURSKA: Napadat ćemo koga mi hoćemo
Objavljeno 29.08. - 19:25

Nitko nema pravo reći Turskoj protiv koje terorističke organizacije se može boriti, izjavio je u ponedjeljak turski ministar za europske poslove Omer Celik dok se Ankara suočava s kritikama zbog sukoba s kurdskim snagama u sklopu svoje operacije u sjevernoj Siriji.

“Nitko nam nema pravo reći protiv koje se terorističke organizacije možemo boriti a koju trebamo ignorirati”, rekao je Celik na tiskovnoj konferenciji u Ankari.

Turske snage ušle su dublje u sjevernu Siriju u ponedjeljak nakon čega se Ankara suočila s kritikama SAD-a koji je izrazio zabrinutost da je turska operacija izgubila iz vida svoj glavni cilj, a to je borba protiv Islamske države (IS).

Sjedinjene Države pružaju potporu sirijskoj kurdskoj miliciji YPG u borbi protiv IS-a. Turska, koja je dio koalicije protiv IS-a, smatra YPG terorističkom organizacijom i produženom rukom PKK.

Pentagon je priopćio da su sukobi između Turske i prokurdskih snaga na sjeveru Sirije “neprihvatljivi” i da moraju prestati.

Sukobi na lokacijama na kojima se ne nalazi IS izazivaju duboku zabrinutost, objavio je na Twitteru američki izaslanik koalicije protiv IS-a Brett McGurk nakon brifinga u ministarstvu obrane.

“Želimo pojasniti da su ti sukobi neprihvatljivi i izazivaju našu duboku zabrinutost”, priopćio je Pentagon, a prenosi AFP.

Pentagon također navodi da SAD “nije upleten u te aktivnosti, one nisu koordinirane s američkim snaga i mi ih ne podržavamo”.

“U skladu s tim pozivamo sve naoružane aktere da se povuku i poduzmu odgovarajuće mjere za smirivanje sukoba i otvaranje komunikacijskih kanala.”/Hina/HMS/

Ta glupost je razlog zašto su Kurdi izgubili podršku Rusa. Trebali su biti malo mudriji.

America’s True Role in Syria

AUG 30, 2016

NEW YORK – Syria’s civil war is the most dangerous and destructive crisis on the planet. Since early 2011, hundreds of thousands have died; around ten million Syrians have been displaced; Europe has been convulsed with Islamic State (ISIS) terror and the political fallout of refugees; and the United States and its NATO allies have more than once come perilously close to direct confrontation with Russia.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has greatly compounded the dangers by hiding the US role in Syria from the American people and from world opinion. An end to the Syrian war requires an honest accounting by the US of its ongoing, often secretive role in the Syrian conflict since 2011, including who is funding, arming, training, and abetting the various sides. Such exposure would help bring to an end many countries’ reckless actions.

A widespread – and false – perception is that Obama has kept the US out of the Syrian war. Indeed, the US right wing routinely criticizes him for having drawn a line in the sand for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over chemical weapons, and then backing off when Assad allegedly crossed it (the issue remains murky and disputed, like so much else in Syria). A leading columnist for the Financial Times, repeating the erroneous idea that the US has remained on the sidelines, recently implied that Obama had rejected the advice of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to arm the Syrian rebels fighting Assad.

Yet the curtain gets lifted from time to time. In January, the New York Times finally reported on a secret 2013 Presidential order to the CIA to arm Syrian rebels. As the account explained, Saudi Arabia provides substantial financing of the armaments, while the CIA, under Obama’s orders, provides organizational support and training.

Unfortunately, the story came and went without further elaboration by the US government or follow up by the New York Times. The public was left in the dark: How big are the ongoing CIA-Saudi operations? How much is the US spending on Syria per year? What kinds of arms are the US, Saudis, Turks, Qataris, and others supplying to the Syrian rebels? Which groups are receiving the arms? What is the role of US troops, air cover, and other personnel in the war? The US government isn’t answering these questions, and mainstream media aren’t pursuing them, either.

On more than a dozen occasions, Obama has told the American people that there would be “no US boots on the ground.” Yet every few months, the public is also notified in a brief government statement that US special operations forces are being deployed to Syria. The Pentagon routinely denies that they are in the front lines. But when Russia and the Assad government recently carried out bombing runs and artillery fire against rebel strongholds in northern Syria, the US notified the Kremlin that the attacks were threatening American troops on the ground. The public has been given no explanation about their mission, its costs, or counterparties in Syria.

Through occasional leaks, investigative reports, statements by other governments, and rare statements by US officials, we know that America is engaged in an active, ongoing, CIA-coordinated war both to overthrow Assad and to fight ISIS. America’s allies in the anti-Assad effort include Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and other countries in the region. The US has spent billions of dollars on arms, training, special operations forces, air strikes, and logistical support for the rebel forces, including international mercenaries. American allies have spent billions of dollars more. The precise sums are not reported.

The US public has had no say in these decisions. There has been no authorizing vote or budget approval by the US Congress. The CIA’s role has never been explained or justified. The domestic and international legality of US actions has never been defended to the American people or the world.

To those at the center of the US military-industrial complex, this secrecy is as it should be. Their position is that a vote by Congress 15 years ago authorizing the use of armed force against those culpable for the 9/11 attack gives the president and military carte blanche to fight secret wars in the Middle East and Africa. Why should the US explain publicly what it is doing? That would only jeopardize the operations and strengthen the enemy. The public does not need to know.

I subscribe to a different view: wars should be a last resort and should be constrained by democratic scrutiny. This view holds that America’s secret war in Syria is illegal both under the US Constitution (which gives Congress the sole power to declare war) and under the United Nations Charter, and that America’s two-sided war in Syria is a cynical and reckless gamble. The US-led efforts to topple Assad are not aimed at protecting the Syrian people, as Obama and Clinton have suggested from time to time, but are a US proxy war against Iran and Russia, in which Syria happens to be the battleground.

The stakes of this war are much higher and much more dangerous than America’s proxy warriors imagine. As the US has prosecuted its war against Assad, Russia has stepped up its military support to his government. In the US mainstream media, Russia’s behavior is an affront: how dare the Kremlin block the US from overthrowing the Syrian government? The result is a widening diplomatic clash with Russia, one that could escalate and lead – perhaps inadvertently – to the point of military conflict.

These are issues that should be subject to legal scrutiny and democratic control. I am confident that the American people would respond with a resounding “no” to the ongoing US-led war of regime change in Syria. The American people want security – including the defeat of ISIS – but they also recognize the long and disastrous history of US-led regime-change efforts, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Central America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

This is the main reason why the US security state refuses to tell the truth. The American people would call for peace rather than perpetual war. Obama has a few months left in office to repair his broken legacy. He should start by leveling with the American people.

Znao sam da je taj tip prije nego sam pogledao. On već godinama na Twitter prosipa propagandu džihadista i islamista. I to ne tih drugih skupina, već baš ISIL podržava na hinjski način.

Von Julian Röpcke