The Syrian Civil War

The reality is that this was always a war that had to rely on the rebels winning quick and winning clean before the general public could wake up and smell the coffee and realize just who these rebels really are (i.e., primarily radical right-wing jihadists). Assad wasn’t that brutal a dictator as dictators go, he was a London-educated optometrist for cryin’ out loud before being called back to be the heir-in-waiting when his older brother died, and now that the predominantly-secular Syrian people have had time to see these rebels up close they aren’t liking what they’re seeing.

I must admit that I was surprised to see Hizballah enter the country. They have traditionally been about Lebanon and only Lebanon, and the Alawites aren’t really Shiite no matter how much they try to pretend they are so even Shia unity isn’t an explanation. All I can figure is that they smelled the coffee too and realized that a) Assad was destined to win, and b) that if they wanted to retain their supply chain to Iran, they needed to cozy up to Assad. That said, while Assad would have won without Hizballah, their entry has clearly turned what would have been a slow and bloody process into something that is happening much quicker as the rebels collapse when faced with real fighters as vs. poorly-trained draftees.

In the end this is a situation we should not be involved with, and should never have been involved with. The only reason our right wing is attempting to get us involved is on behalf of the right wing in Israel, who want a radical Islamist regime next door in order to justify continuing to rule under the rubric of “we’ll protect you from the jihadis, unlike those nastyliberals!” I.e., the most cynical of electoral politics in Israel. Bah, a pox on all their houses…

I must admit that I was surprised to see Hizballah enter the country. They have traditionally been about Lebanon and only Lebanon,

Not all that surprising. As you put it they smelt the coffee:

From Nasrallah’s speech of May 25th 2013 in which he proves to the satisfaction of his audience that Hizballah has no choice but to fight in Syria and that opponents consistently fail to grasp what Hizb does and WHY:

“You — I mean they not you — do not understand this resistance, the masses of this resistance, the environment of this resistance, or the culture of this resistance. You have not understood it during the past 30 years and you will never understand it because you always understand things wrongly and calculate things wrongly. Therefore, you get wrong results. Wrong beginnings lead to wrong results.

“Dear brothers and sisters, we are facing a completely new phase that started a few weeks ago; it is the phase of fortifying the resistance and protecting its back, and fortifying Lebanon and protecting its back, and this is everybody’s responsibility. I do not ask anybody to share responsibility with us, but everyone should shoulder his responsibility, and we do not want to rely on anybody. We are the people of this battle as we were in all previous battles. We are its men and we are the makers of its victories, God willing.

“We and you, our honourable people, the people of generosity and giving without limits, the people of patience and endurance, the people of redemption and sympathy, will continue along this road. We will bear this responsibility and all the sacrifices and consequences of this position and this responsibility. I say to you at the end of the celebration of the Resistance and Liberation Day as I said to you on the first days of the July 2006 war: O honourable people, O mujahidin, O heroes, as I have always promised you with victory, I promise you with victory again. May you all be well every year and God’s peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you.”

(my translation no link as I was working from a supplied transcript)

The somewhat left-wing and independent Lebanese newspaper As Safir’s report of May 28 2013 of how Hizballah saw the situation developing is very good. Key graph:

According to the available data made available for the party, the radical groups were going to establish a Syrian “border strip” under its control and with a dimension extending into Ersal and Wadi Khaled after controlling the villages inhabited by the Lebanese there and displacing their inhabitants… Similarly, the party was closely following on the attempts of the armed groups to control the Damascus Airport and the roads leading to it… The party made a connection between all these givens and was thus able to complete the puzzle and to highlight the picture of the offensive plan aimed at gradually pressuring and cornering the Resistance by seizing the land and air outlets representing its vital lung. Thus, the party realized that hesitation can do no good and that it must move from just reacting into acting. It thus took the initiative of acting in Al-Qusayr..

(My translation. Arabic text here: http://www.assafir.com/Article.aspx?EditionId=2471&ChannelId=59517&ArticleId=2205 )

and the Alawites aren’t really Shiite no matter how much they try to pretend they are so even Shia unity isn’t an explanation.

In fact this caused problems for them when Assad père assumed the presidency. The Alawites are so heterodox that many Muslims consider that they’re not Muslim at all. Syria’s constitution states that the president must be a Muslim. So the Ba’ath hastily obtained a series of Fatwahs both from Shi’i and Sunni scholars declaring that Alawites are indeed Muslims.

Assad was destined to win,

Sorry no, it was touch and go for a while, the Ba’ath could have lost. What turned it were two things:

1. The reorganisation of Syrian Government Forces with assistance from Iran.
2. Reinforcement by Hizballah fighters.

their entry has clearly turned what would have been a slow and bloody process into something that is happening much quicker as the rebels collapse when faced with real fighters as vs. poorly-trained draftees.

That’s truer than you know. Based both on what I’ve seen for myself and from what I’ve been told by people whose information I have found to be reliable in the past the fighters sent were third echelon forces. Not even the cream of their reserves third echelon fighters – fighters who had undergone training but not seen combat yet for the most part with a sprinkling of experienced fighters to stiffen them.

Finally nice to ‘see’ you again. For some reason or another I was of the impression you’d ‘retired’ from webby stuff.

mfi

@ Ian,

Oh certainly, the rebels were in with a good chance for quite a while. But they were and remain very fractured that’s not surprising such groups are fissiparous and volatile of their very nature. Their record of atrocities from the start was appalling they’ve done things from the outset that weren’t done in Irak – not even during the darkest days of the war of the death squads. I thought some of the stories about the Syrian rebels were blatant propaganda until I saw the aftermath with my own eyes.

I agree with you too about Assad’s forces they were severely lacking in competence and were very badly organised. One of the very noticeable changes in Syria is that the internal policing forces both Mukhabarat and ‘regular forces’ units and commanders have been sidelined in favour of regular soldiers (among the regular forces the air force security service in particular were notorious for their brutality which is why any air force officer captured by the rebels can expect to be tortured before being killed). The reorganisation took place because the Iranians told the Ba’ath that it was that or lose and that Iran is not in the habit of backing losers. The rebels helped by killing all around them and that included killing defectors. Any of the Syrian troops I’ve had contact with are grimly determined they know that it’s become an ‘us or them situation’ the rebels did that. Brutality, torture, rape, starvation of the populace and targeting the most vulnerable civilians are all not only wrong in and of themselves they also very often have the effect of stiffening your opponents’ resistance rather than weakening it. This is true no matter whether it’s the USA doing it to Irakis or al-Nusrah fighters doing it to Syrians, or Russians doing it to Chechens for that matter.

I agree with you about the Ba’ath Iraki and Syrian alike. Nobody whose ever had any dealings with them could ever categorise them as anything other than very nasty pieces of work indeed. But the alternative is worse. In Syria at present the Ba’ath are the least horrific option.

I disagree a bit about Saddam’s Irak ‘though it’s more a question of degree. In Ba’athist Irak if you came to the unfavourable attention of the Mukhabarat not only were you in danger of being tortured and killed but so was your family and your friends. They were also very very corrupt which meant that if you very lucky and relatively unimportant they could be bribed to let you go. Doing just that was one of the things that humanitarian bodies in Irak would quietly do or would quietly help others to do. People say that life is cheap, in my experience this is exactly backwards torture is cheap, death is even cheaper, it’s life and liberty that’s expensive.

The Syrian Mukhabarat’s approach is different if you came to their attention then you would be imprisoned and probably subjected to torture. But the Syrian Mukhabarat came after you not your entire family plus friends and neighbours. I wouldn’t want to try bribing them either.

I have a Syrian friend who once said that Saddam was as vicious as he wanted to be while Assad was as vicious as he had to be. There’s quite a lot of truth in that. People talk about the Hama massacre which was an appalling crime by any standard but the difference is that once he’d crushed the rebellion Assad left it at that. Saddam didn’t, he kept on killing Kurds using every means available to him and had no intention of stopping. The same was true in the South where some of things his forces did were quite as bad as anything they did at Halabja. There are swathes of Maysan, Dhi Qar, and Muthanna,that have a completely new population.

You’re right about how none of the Syrian rebels would or could cut a deal with the Hizb about supply routes but given who the rebels’ sponsors are and why they’re sponsoring them that’s a given.

Thanks for posting about this it’s an important if distressing topic.

mfi

@ MFI

Thanks for your information; priceless.

For those interested Pat Lang (linked in Ian’s sidebar) has several recent and very good postings on Syria and events in the region generally.

mfi

That’s truer than you know. Based both on what I’ve seen for myself and from what I’ve been told by people whose information I have found to be reliable in the past the fighters sent were third echelon forces. Not even the cream of their reserves third echelon fighters – fighters who had undergone training but not seen combat yet for the most part with a sprinkling of experienced fighters to stiffen them.

Hmm – sounds like Hizballah see the conflict as a training opportunity – a way to bring new blood up to speed in a low-danger war.