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Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, his face bloody and bruised from bomb blast, stares out in bafflement at a world in which somebody had just tried to kill him. Pictures of his little figure in the back of an ambulance in Aleppo have swiftly become the living symbol of the slaughter in Syria and Iraq.
In the past there would have been more demands for spurious responses to the latest atrocity in Syria, with calls for the immediate overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad or no-fly zones – measures that sound positive but are never going to happen. This time round there is greater wariness internationally about such quick-fix solutions, opening the way for more realistic action to reduce the present horrendous level of violence.
I am always edgy about proposing anything that might mitigate the barbarity of the war in Syria and Iraq because explaining what aspects of the situation, however murderous, cannot be changed looks like justifying them. For instance, British policy since 2011 has been that Assad should go, but this was never going to happen because he controlled most of the population centres and was backed by Russia and Iran. To pretend otherwise might sound benign, but was in reality providing the ingredients for war without end.
The conflict is so difficult to end because it is half a dozen crises and confrontations combined into one: Sunni Arabs against ruling Alawite s and the minorities; better-off against poor; secular against Islamists; city against country; Kurd against Arab; Kurd against Turk; Sunni against Shia; Iran against Saudi Arabia; Russia against – but sometimes cooperating with – the US.
The complexity of it all was well described by one commentator as being like three dimensional chess played by nine players and with no rules.
The twin sieges of government-controlled west and rebel-held east Aleppo, with the two antagonists wrapped round each other in a deadly embrace, is an apotheosis of the Syrian conflict. A cruder description might be “a Mexican stand-off” in which neither side can advance or retreat without danger. Russia has proposed a 48-hour ceasefire but, even if it occurs, this will not change the overall situation in which children like Omran Daqneesh are killed, maimed or orphaned.
All sides are terrified of each other and with good reason: Amnesty International last week published a report describing how 17,723 people, or 300 a month, have been tortured or otherwise done to death in Syrian government prisons since 2011. Most of the 4.8 million Syrian refugees come from opposition areas, many of which have been flattened by bombs, shells and bulldozers so they look like pictures of Warsaw in 1945.
Overall, the Sunni Arab communities in Syria and Iraq are facing ruin with all their cities devastated or depopulated, from Fallujah to Aleppo, and with their last great bastion, Mosul, about to come under attack.
Government supporters in west Aleppo also live in terror of a Salafi-jihadi victory by an opposition that no longer bothers to hide its sectarian agenda. The latest attack by the rebels which partially broke the siege of east Aleppo and cut the main supply road to the west was called the “Ibrahim al-Yousef” offensive. Yousef was the name of an officer in the Syrian army in 1979, who was secretly a member of a Sunni insurgent group and orchestrated the killing of 32 Alawites and the wounding of a further 54 in a notorious massacre in the Aleppo Artillery School. Jabhat al-Nusra, whose fighters led the successful offensive, has changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and formally severed its connection to al-Qaeda, but does not bother to conceal its extreme Sunni sectarian agenda.
Every community in Syria feels it is fighting an existential battle that can only end in victory or defeat. In the case of the latter there will be, as the French Algerians used to say, no alternative to “the suitcase or the coffin.” But, bad though the situation is, it is not quite hopeless and, while nobody is in a position to win a decisive victory, the political situation on the ground does develop and change and not always in a negative way.
The biggest change in the past two years is that the US and Russia have entered the war. This makes the conflict more intense and introduces Cold War rivalries, but it has the advantage that the heavy hitters are now publicly engaged in the conflict. They have influence, though they do not quite have control, over their allies and proxies and could, in theory, arrange ceasefires that are more than propaganda.
But one reason the war continues is that many participants still have a lot to gain by fighting on. For Russia, the Syrian battlefield has turned out to be a uniquely advantageous place to re-calibrate to its relationship with the rest of the world. Last week it started using Hamadan airbase in Iran and is cooperating militarily with the belt of countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – in which the Shia are the most powerful political element.
The Sunni axis opposing Assad – most notably Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – have been weakened by the failed military coup in Turkey. Earlier in August, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited St Petersburg for talks with President Putin which may modify, though not transform, Turkey’s support for the rebel forces in Syria.
But Russia’s gain is not necessarily America’s loss and President Obama’s policy in Syria and Iraq has been more successful than its critics give him credit for. It is beating back Isis in both countries, primarily by using air strikes to provide overwhelming fire power to its allies on the ground. It is not just that Isis has lost important cities and towns like Ramadi, Fallujah and Manbij, but it has been unable to launch effective counter-attacks for more than a year (except in the shape of terrorist attacks on civilians in the Middle East and Europe).
In Iraq, the war is getting close to a decisive win by the Shia and Kurds (four fifths of the population) over the Sunni Arabs (one fifth). Could the same thing happen in Syria where Sunni Arabs are 60 per cent of Syrians? Possibly, but the Baathist leadership in Damascus has always been much better at fending off defeat than winning a permanent victory. This was the lesson of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the long struggle for Lebanon in the following years.
Much the same has happened in Syria since 2011 with Assad refusing compromise with any of his numerous enemies. But because the Baathists are better at playing a weak hand than a strong one, they tend to exaggerate their own strength and lack the flexibility to conclusively win the game. They underestimate the fighting ability of Nusra and the extent to which it can draw on disaffected Sunnis in the countryside of northern Syria.
An encouraging sign might be that the 15-year-long Lebanese civil war did eventually end, but Syria is plugged into too many regional conflicts for the fighting to stop any time soon. It will only happen when more winners and losers emerge on Syria’s many battlefields.
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Diversity + Proximity = War
Stupidity + Bigotry = Sailer Fanboy
President Assad who studied in UK – never threatened UK or United States. But since he joined the AXIS OF RESTANCE (Iran, Hizbullah, and Syria), he became a threat to the Crypto-Jewish governments in the US and UK.
There are several groups of foreign fighters in Syria who are engaged in the five-year-old America’s PROXY WAR for Israel.
The war is going so bad for pro-Israel insurgency that even Israel supporters like fanatic Hindu Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is calling for an end to American war in Syria.
https://rehmat1.com/2016/07/17/rep-tulsi-us-must-end-syrian-war/
Syria is a victim of Anglo/Zio imperial aggression. Washington could end the war by simply calling it off. If the Turks and Saudis want to continue their war against Assad without imperial backing they can go it alone against Russia and Iran. Otherwise, everybody could leave Syria to the Syrians. Excepting the Zionists of course who are constitutionally incapable of minding their own business. For them, expansion IS their business.
“The conflict is so difficult to end because it is half a dozen crises and confrontations combined into one: Sunni Arabs against ruling Alawite s and the minorities; better-off against poor; secular against Islamists; city against country; Kurd against Arab; Kurd against Turk; Sunni against Shia; Iran against Saudi Arabia; Russia against – but sometimes cooperating with – the US.”
Diversity is a strength alright. The kind of strength or power that can tear a nation to pieces.
But I think the main blame should go to the US.
When the rebellion happened, Assad could have put it down.
But other nations jumped in.
Now, the only nation that could have said NO to intervention by Turkey and Saudi Arabia was the US. But not only did the US not remain neutral, but it defacto sided with Saudis and Turks(and then messed up Libya) to encourage terror attacks and uprising against Assad.
US gave the go-ahead, and other got the message. As US wasn’t saying NO and was even implicitly saying YES, tons of aid went to rebel fighters.
As a matter of fact, Assad was quite open to compromise with those rebels that did not want to genocide the Alawites. Meaning the Kurds. SAA and YPG/SDF have had a truce that mostly held for nearly the entire civil war. YPG are rebels against the Syrian government, but they A) do not claim to be the new government and B) do not openly proclaim their genocidal ambitions.
You cannot expect that the Alawites “compromise” with people who want to murder them all.
Dude, this whole Civil War thingy took off in earnest when the US started arming the so-called “moderate” rebels in an effort to effect the bidding of the US political elite’s paymasters, the Saudis, so that SA and our other ME friends (lords and masters might be more appropriate) could more easily sell their oil and gas to Europe and thereby cut the legs out from under Russia. Is it really any surprise that Hillary rakes in tens of millions from these guys?
Russia jumped in militarily two years ago to protect what it sees as two vital interests (protect economic trade with Europe and maintain an effective base in the Med to give them a place from which they could protect their access to the Med). The US military entry only serves to protect the national interest in keeping one its main rivals off balance, a dubious interest at best.
Patrick Cockburn is a “responsibility-to-protect” so-called “humanitarian interventionist” who is part of the Western anti-Assad liberal-left. All his writings about Syria are infused with a subtle-or-not-so-subtle anti-Assad, pro-regime change bias, and should be taken with a grain of salt. People like Patrick Cockburn are part of the problem in the world today, because they give liberal-left cover to Anglo-Zio and neocon globo-imperialist regime change ventures (which ALWAYS work against independent secular-nationalistic regimes and for Islamists, ethnic rebels who are Muslim, etc.).
In regards to the poster child, what about the 500,000 children that died due to Bill and Hillary’s sanctions against Iraq? https://www.unz.com/proberts/the-aleppo-poster-child/
The author attempts to paint the picture of a Syrian government war against Sunni Muslims. If so, why are almost all Syrian Army officers and soldiers Sunni muslims?
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-assads-army-has-not-defected-15190
The article also fails to address root causes of the Syrian conflict drought (1,2.3,4) , soil salinity (5) and water diversion by Turkey (6,7), which were exploited by the US and salifist states (8,9) to create a civil war in Syria to depose Assad! Additional factors were/are the failure of the Syria state to invest in modern irrigation methods (5); costs of refugee influx into Syria from the failed US conquest of Iraq (10); and more importantly the rejection of the salifist gas pipeline (11) through Syria fueled the conflict.
(1) Crops fail in Syria http://www.new-ag.info/en/country/profile.php?a=864
(2) Drought Aggravates Extreme Poverty in Syria http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/drought-aggravates-extreme-poverty-in-syria/
(3) Researchers Link Syrian Conflict to a Drought Made Worse by Climate Change http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-syria-conflict-to-drought-caused-by-climate-change.html?_r=1
(4) How Climate Change Primed Syria for War https://climatecrocks.com/2013/09/05/how-climate-change-primed-syria-for-war/
(5) Agricultural Policy and Environment in Syria http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4890e/y4890e0d.htm
(6) TROUBLED WATERS IN RIVERS OF BLOOD
http://www.mideastnews.com/waterlaws.htm
(7) Dams and Politics in Turkey: Utilizing Water, Developing Conflict http://mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/dams-and-politics-turkey-utilizing-water-developing-conflict
(8) How the 2008 Syrian Drought Fit US Geopolitical Plans in Middle East
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20151110/1029880091/syrian-drought-us-obama-geopolitics-middle-east.html
(9) ‘Something is Going On’ – And It’s Worse Than You Thought http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/06/16/something-going- worse-thought/
(10) Iraqi refugees in Syria http://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/FMRpdfs/Iraq/08.pdf
(11) Syria: Ultimate Pipelineistan War http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/08/syria-ultimate-pipelineistan-war/
More on question about the Aleppo boy photo at:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/08/the-wounded-boy-in-orange-seat-another-staged-white-helmets-stunt.html
Note that the author doesn’t link to the beheading of the child by Al Nasra terrorists that predominate in the Aleppo cauldron.
Another cause not mentioned is Syria’s insanely rapid prewar breeding.
Thanks for reminding us of the population demographics factor in Syria and the Middle East in general:
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2001/PopulationTrendsandChallengesintheMiddleEastandNorthAfrica.aspx
Sadly, Syrians who lived in Salifist controlled areas will have nothing to come back to once the SAA and its allies win the war against the Israeli, Canadian, French, United Kingdom and US (ICanFUKUS) backed war to expend the influence of the Salifist Islamic extremists promoted by Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia.
The refugees will eventually have to move to Europe and compete with masses of refugees from Africa do to African population increases:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/31/how-the-worlds-populations-are-changing-in-one-map/
You know I’m right. Doesn’t work in the Levant; won’t work here.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/behind-the-doomed-iraqi-uprisings-1991-15425
US policy in Syria seems like dejavu of Bush I’s policy in Iraq in the Gulf War.
Bush sounded the cry for Iraqis to rise up against Hussein. Shias and Kurds got the impression that US is gonna take down Hussein, so they rose up and attacked Hussein’s forces.
But then… US had second thoughts and just let the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds battle one another until Hussein prevailed by killing 80,000 folks.
Fast Forward to Syria.
US made big noises about how Assad must go. It talked of Red lines and strong actions.
So, Syrian rebels, wanderbust radicals, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia figured Assad is going down!!
So, they intensified their attacks even more expecting US will finish off Assad like Gaddafi(and then they can divide the pie of destroyed Syria among themselves).
But then, US finds some excuse to step back and make all the Arabs and Muslims fight and destroy one another.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.:-) The idea that it’s an American plot to sow strife implies that Uncle Sam knows what he wants. In reality, policymakers are just confused.
On the one hand, Alawite victory will mark a return to the status quo ante – i.e. garden variety Middle Eastern strongman rule, but by the reviled (by Sunni Arabs) Alawite minority . On the other, Sunni Arab victory will create a mirror image of the status quo ante – i.e. garden variety Middle Eastern strongman rule, but by a Sunni Arab strongman, once he dispatches his Sunni Arab rivals.
However, Sunni Arab victory will be accompanied by a massacre of millions of non-Sunnis on the scale of the Armenian genocide. That is why Uncle Sam is hesitant to jump in on the Sunni Arab side by attacking Assad’s forces. The Sunni Arab opposition is mainly composed of Salafists, i.e. al Qaeda’s kissing cousins. The Alawite ruling class just wants to stay in power. Aspiring Sunni Arab rulers want to eliminate the infidel presence in Syria.
A tale of two children
The photojournalist who took the Aleppo photos of the child in the ambulance was Mahmoud Raslan:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/18/world/middleeast/ap-ml-syria.html?_r=1
It also appears that he was one of the terrorists who photographed the ones who beheaded the Palestinian child in the graphic video less widely posted due to its gruesome nature: http://www.thecanary.co/2016/08/19/the-man-behind-the-viral-boy-in-the-ambulance-image-has-brutal-skeletons-in-his-own-closet-images/
It is questionable that the author’s statement is true: “But Russia’s gain is not necessarily America’s loss and President Obama’s policy in Syria and Iraq has been more successful than its critics give him credit for. It is not just that Isis has lost important cities and towns like Ramadi, Fallujah and Manbij, but it has been unable to launch effective counter-attacks for more than a year..”
In the case of Ramadi and Fallujah the cities were retaken by Shia led Iraqi Army with Iranian backed Iraqi Shia forces plus US air cover and Russian provided SU-24s, which is not that much of a case for and Obama “toot your horn”.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/28/ramadi-victory-don-t-screw-it-up.html and,
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/06/iraq-battle-fallujah-shows-iran-160621062907236.html
It is true that Manbij was retaken by US controlled SDF comprised of Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Turkmen, Circassian and Kurds (PYD) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Democratic_Forces), although the remaining ISIS forces were allowed to leave under a flag of truce. The SDF then wisely handed Liberated Manbij to Local Council and withdrew from the city promising to withdraw East of the Euphrates after defeating ISIS (https://southfront.org/sdf-hands-liberated-manbij-to-local-council-withdraws-from-city/)
This SDF unity appears to be in question due to recent event in the city of al-Hasaka where the Syrian Arabs, Assyrians and allied Christian were attacked by the US backed Kurdish Asayish (YPG militia of PYD’s Stazi police) (https://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/kurdistan0707/5.htm). These minorities than asked the Syrian NDF for protection and the NDF responded with attacks against the Kurdish attackers as explained in:
Video Link
The US Special Forces have subsequently been withdrawn from the area under dispute. It is likely that the non-Kurdish SDF forces in al-Hasaka will join the NDF if this conflict increases. Likewise the SDF Arabs that helped take Manbij may turn on their YPG/PYD allies if the Kurds efforts to depopulate Arabs and other non-Kurds in al-Hasaka continues. Already, Arab fighters in Hasagah have left the SDF and join the government militia
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/08/hasakah-are-us-troops-advising-kurds-to-attack-the-syrian-army-.html#more
virgile (post 28 above) points out that “Turkey and Iran prefers to fight ISIS themselves than let the USA prop up the Kurds and create a US controlled region in Syria like the Barzani Mafia KDP plus Jalal Talabani PUK, in Iraq (the bankrupt Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)).”
Thus, the al-Hasaka conflict could ultimately unravel the Manbij victory by “Obama controlled forces”, as the SAA considers the Kurdish security force of the Assayish as the military wing of the PKK (http://aranews.net/2016/08/syrian-army-blames-military-wing-pkk-hasakah-clashes/). The Turkish PM Cavusoglo said that “Turkey does not see any difference between the Kurdish forces of Syria’s PYD, Turkey’s PKK and Iran’s PJAK”. Turkey also appears ready to assist Assad with Kurds that they consider to allied with the PKK (http://www.france24.com/en/20160820-turkey-pm-says-syria-regime-starting-see-kurds-threat)
Further Kurdish discord is occurring in Syria as protests in many cities of Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) over the arrest of Kurdish National Council (KNC, ENKS) officials by security forces of the PYD (YPG Asayish militia) leading to demonstrations against the Kurdish police. This has also led to fierce fighting between two Kurdish factions in Qamishili. The KNC appears to be allied with Barzani KDP (http://aranews.net/2016/03/kurdish-national-council-syria-condemns-federalism-declaration-kurdish-rival/)
See “Syria: Another Pipeline War” by Robert F. Kennedy for more on the CIA’s long history of deposing governments in Syria in support of oil and gas corporations:
http://www.ecowatch.com/syria-another-pipeline-war-1882180532.html
And that’s exactly what Ms. Clinton wrote in her Syria e-mails, no?
More evidence that many Syrians in Eastern Syria may not return for some time is based on weather patterns. Syria will be facing a La Nina driven drought in late 2016 and into 2017 causing loss of crops and livestock.
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6010e.pdf
The ongoing war will dramatically worsen the drought situation, resulting in mass migration from Eastern Syria into government controlled cities or refugees in other countries. This migration will add to the African drought migration leading to social unrest in the EU. Then again, anyone paying attention knows that the EU lost the war between the US and Russia a couple years ago.
To follow the temperature map of the Middle East in real time see: :
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/08/22/1800Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=48.36,14.77,410/loc=40.882,35.497
The US has made the mistake of backing a coup in Turkey:
http://katehon.com/article/natos-fingerprints-turkish-coup
According to the Aksam newspaper Turkey has a list of US intelligence personnel involved in the coup in Turkey
http://katehon.com/article/ten-secret-organizers-pro-american-coup-turkey
The US is also making the mistake of carving a US controlled Kurdistan in Syria and plans to increase its area of control, as was previously done in Iraq where the US pays its puppet Barzani government and the training, equipping and salaries of his Pegmerga fighters
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/21/politics/us-warns-syria-russia-on-attacks/
The Kurds are currently being used by the US and are overplaying their hand in Hasakah city where Asayish and NDF are fighting. Map of area at:
http://syrianperspective.com/2016/08/major-events-that-will-shape-syria-in-the-next-few-weeks.html#Y7LbrBwgJhEvxpgb.99
and,
The US backed Syrian Kurdistan includes areas with significant Turkman populations as shown on this map:
http://katehon.com/article/turkey-and-syrian-turkmens
as well as other groups such as:Assyrians, Armenians, and Circassians.
It is likely that these actions will further shift Turkey against US geopolitical interests in Syria and Iraq if the Kurds choose to consolidate the areas in the following map:
Circulating photos of suffering children is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
The Kurdish Asayish forces have just vowed to drive all government forces out of Hasaka city:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/syria-ypg-launches-assault-hasaka-160822041843880.html
This Asayish action against SAA forces combined with the arrest of Kurdish National Council members can ultimately result in ethnic wars in North East Syria. According to the National Association of Arab Youth, there are 1717 villages in Al-Hasakah province: 1161 Arab villages, 453 Kurdish villages, 98 Assyrian villages and 53 with mixed populations from the aforementioned ethnicities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hasakah_Governorate
This power grab by the Asayiah in Hasaka city would then fracture the SDF forces in Manbij, which would not the great Obama victory the author claims. Ultimately, a SAA vs Kurdish war within a war is possible with Turkey getting into the game. Perhaps this continuing chaos is what Obama and his harpies wants to see anyway!
Assad had been promising reforms and compromise for years and never delivered. The people loved him at first and never wanted him to go until he started murdering them!
Sounds like both the “government” and “rebels” are just war factions.
I find Cockburn’s treatment of the entire Syrian situation pro-US and anti-Assad/Russia, usually served up with some subtlety and great helpings of confusing mish-mash.
One part of the present piece says the whole situation is too complex to understand (Is it not the job of the analyst to bring some clarity to a confusing situation?), and another seems to cheer US policy. There is little (nothing?) on the US backing of ISIS et al, and the role of the US AND Amb. Robert Ford in getting the civil war going.
Then there is the following which seems to attribute gains of the last year to the US. Strange that the gains occurred after Russian involvement began:
“But Russia’s gain is not necessarily America’s loss and President Obama’s policy in Syria and Iraq has been more successful than its critics give him credit for. It is beating back Isis in both countries, primarily by using air strikes to provide overwhelming fire power to its allies on the ground. It is not just that Isis has lost important cities and towns like Ramadi, Fallujah and Manbij, but it has been unable to launch effective counter-attacks for more than a year (except in the shape of terrorist attacks on civilians in the Middle East and Europe).”
All due to Obama!!
Nothing about Russia’s contribution. Russia in Cocburn’s treatment is simply using the situation in a cynical fahion.
I am afraid that Patrick Cockburn is a brand name that can no longer be trusted.
He is absolutely right, you know.
I personally prefer to be living stupid bigot than dead multiculturalists. You may have other preferences but you also don’t have the right to endanger others.
That photo of that little boy is a poorly done fake. Notice how pristine the inside of the ambulance is. The wounds are fake and how many children do you see that put their hand inside of the wound. I call it manipulation. No matter what we write and say the Shadow Government will continue to wreak its murderous foray in the Middle East.
This article appears to promote the Western narrative of a grossly simplified sectarian conflict and ignores the role of Salifist/Salafist gulf states that export radical Islamic terrorism with the assistance of Western governments. For a balanced in depth analysis to counter this propaganda, see the following two articles:
http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/washingtons-sunni-myth-and-the-civil-wars-in-syria-and-iraq/
http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/washingtons-sunni-myth-and-the-middle-east-undone/
Th article originally published in the Independent also attributes the taking of Falluja and Ramadi as great Obama victories which is flat out wrong since:
(1) Obama had little to do with retaking Falluja as the Iraqi army with US air support failed. Instead, it was the Peoples Militia Forces comprised of Shia members of the Badr forces dressed in police uniforms that liberated the city.
(2) The retaking of Ramadi was done by the Iraqi army without the PMF and resulted in the destruction of most of the city.
The author must recognize that it was the US occupation forces that most radicalized Sunni Arabs in Iraq, which further discredits the Bush and Obama Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). Likewise, in Syria it was the US and other Western government (including Israel) that trained and equipped the Islamic terrorists either directly or through Gulf state Salafist groups.
The unspoken threat is the Salafist ideology incubated by gulf state with gleeful support by Israel, Canada, France, United Kingdom, the US (ICaFUKUS) and many other carpetbaggers. This will not change as long as the West is controlled by an elite that gets wealthy from the continued conflict.
Because not all Sunnis are Salafist. Most Sunnis are in fact non-Salafist and do not want to see “religious police” running rampant in their society. Even most quietist Salafists do not agree with the brutal way in which takfiri Salafists relate to non-Salafists. A couple years ago there was a McClatchy article on the tribal Sunnis who have joined the SDF. A sheikh they interviewed expressed extreme hostility to the current regime in Saudi Arabia.
Uncle Sam definitely knows what he wants, the balkanization of the Middle East, aka divide and conquer. The policy dates from before Bernard Lewis’ “arc of crisis” and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “arc of instability.” It was picked up by Oded Yinon as a way to neuter Arab states by busting them up into a bunch of ethnic/sectarian statelets.
I am surprised by Patrick Coburn’s article.
It is NOT internal to Syria and has continued because the principal aggressor desires it.
The key War Aim of Washington is still the overthrow of the Syrian government and installation of an American client one.
The war began when Obama signed the “Finding” to launch what is known as a Covert Operation using paramilitaries. The main problem was the use of Jihadists Washington had recruited as paramilitaries.
The was would rapidly come to an end if Obama gave the order to shut don the operation and stop paying the wages and arming the paramilitaries.
The war DID NOT originate internally.
Altogether this is a most unhelpful article.