Friday, August 17, 2012

Laying the ground work for ground troops in Syria - the excuse , securing chemical weapons .....While Juan Cole notes in his excellent piece the clear divide ( and the map lays out what he's pointing at ) , things are never as clear cut and drawn up as a map when we consider Middl east politics .....


http://www.juancole.com/2012/08/syria-and-the-new-great-divide-in-the-greater-middle-east.html


Posted on 08/17/2012 by Juan
With news of a series of bombings and attacks in Iraq, of kidnappings and reprisals in Lebanon, and an ongoing Civil War in Syria, anyone who looks at the map of the Greater Middle East cannot fail to see a new Great Divide.
The Great Divide has three dimensions.
1. First, it pits the Shanghai Cooperation Council (Russia, China and the Central Asian states, along with Iran as an observer) against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO wants Bashar al-Assad to step down and is attempting to strangle Iran via financial and trade sanctions. Russia and China are supporting the Baath government of al-Assad and are opposed to increased sanctions on Iran.
2. Regionally, the Great Divide ranges on the one side: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and on the other Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Gulf Cooperation Council more generally, along with Libya and Egypt. This regional conflict is not exactly along sectarian lines, but sectarianism is an element in it. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are Sunni-ruled, whereas Iran and Iraq are Shiite-ruled. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are providing RPGs and other weapons to the Syrian rebels. Iran is charged with training and equipping not only the Syrian army but also the Alawite shabiha or ‘Ghost Squads’ that carry out massacres of Sunnis in places like Houla (yes, that was a regime massacre). Syria’s Alawite minority, a branch of Shi’ism, predominates at the upper levels of the Baath Party, but the Baath is secular. Lebanon’s Miqati government depends heavily of the country’s Shiites and on their Christian allies, and leans toward al-Assad.
3. Locally and nternally, within each of the regional powers, a conflict is going on between supporters of al-Assad and those who want to see the Baath fall. Again, there is a sectarian dimension here, though it is not the only thing going on. On the whole Iraq’s Sunni Arabs support the Syrian rebels, as do Lebanese Sunnis. Lebanese Shiites largely support al-Assad.
This local conflict is hot today.
In Lebanonkidnappings and clan reprisals have spiked as the Syria conflict spills over on its small neighbor to the west.
In Iraq: Radical Sunni insurgents deployed bombings and shootings to kill nearly 60 people. The Iraq Sunni-Shiite conflict appears to have been reinvigorated by the events next door in Syria, where some radical Sunni Iraqis have gone to fight the al-Assad regime.
In Bahrain harsh repression by the Sunni monarchy of dissidents, especially those of Shi’ite heritage, continues,
with a twitter micro-blogger getting a 3-year sentence for his critique of the regime.
In Syria itself, the civil war continued on Thursday, and Friday morning. Syrian oppositionists decried the government air strike on Izaz that killed dozens of civilian non-combatants, including children. A UN inquiry concluded that regime elements and death squads were responsible for the Houla massacre in June — not, as regime loyalists whispered– the Free Syrian Army.
Fighting continued between insurgents and the state in the suburbs of Damascus and in Aleppo and other cities and towns around the country.
France24 reporters in the Damascus area describe how the rebels are getting secret help from regime insiders, and how they continue to gather forces for confrontations with loyalist troops:
The Great Divide in the Greater Middle East continues to devour its partisans on both sides and to introduce new forms of instability into the region. That it has three levels makes it intractable. In Libya, where one of the levels, the international, avoided deadlock and international actors could act decisively, they certainly shortened the conflict– a development that is unlikely to occur with regard to Syria, at least for the rest of this calendar year. In Libya, moreover, there were no sectarian divides. Only when al-Assad falls will there be hope for a return to relative peace in the region, and that event could be a ways off.


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NH18Ak02.html

A Saudi overture to Iran
By M K Bhadrakumar

The narrative could not have been simpler - Saudi Arabia has taken its cold war with Iran, which is being fought on the beaches, in the air and in the hills of the Middle East, to the great arena of the Muslim ummah. And Iran has badly lost in the tournament.

However, the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Mecca this week had a subtle subtext, and anyone who knows Muslim politics would sense that on such occasions the subtexts are invariably more significant than the manifest narrative.

The narrative itself is that Syria has been banished from the Sunni world and Iran could do nothing to stop it from happening. It is posted all over the Western media. Washington even expressedsatisfaction that a "strong signal" had been delivered to Damascus. 


Flawed decision
But was Syria indeed the core issue at the OIC summit? It seems more like a case of the Syrian crisis providing the peg on which certain subtexts could be hung for all to see.

No one is mistaken that the majority opinion within the OIC as reflected in the decision to suspend Syria's membership is going to decide that country's future. Arguably, the summit sends a signal to Syria, but then, Damascus has no dearth of signals these days from far and near, and that is not the issue. All said, the OIC as a regional organization is notoriously ineffective. For decades it fulminated against India on the Kashmir issue and even constituted a Contact Group on the subject - with Turkey and Saudi Arabia charioting it - but New Delhi chose to ignore it and no one knows today whether or not it is still around.

A tough regime like the one in Damascus would know that the OIC is toothless and that Saudi Arabia's wish has always been a command for the organization. Ironically, Syria used to counsel New Delhi not to lose sleep over the ISI Contact Group.

The heart of the matter is that the Syrian crisis has now transcended the Saudi-Iranian paradigm and has morphed into a first-rate wrestling match by external powers over regional hegemony - and the most powerful among them are not even Muslim countries. It is not in the interests of the most powerful protagonists - the United States, Europe, Russia, China - to give the impression that their security policy is to support the Sunnis or the Shi'ites in the Middle East.

The Western powers are reluctant to intervene in Syria while the diplomatic track has tapered off; Russia and China are moving on with their mundane life after having thrice drawn the "red line" in the United Nations Security Council; and the US and Turkey have been left in solitude to grapple with the difficult question of how to proceed to end the violence against the backdrop of the failure of diplomacy and the blunt refusal of the Bashar al-Assad regime to give in despite all the body blows given to it - this, in a nutshell, is the current Syrian situation. 
Simply put, the OIC has no role here. In fact, if it had one, that too was lost on Wednesday after the flawed decision at Mecca to draw the bridges leading to Damascus - whereas, with a little more imagination, the OIC could have aspired to position itself to play the role of a facilitator-cum-mediator at an opportune moment in future.

So why did Saudi Arabia think up this untimely initiative to convene an extraordinary summit of the OIC? The central objective of the Saudi initiative was to present a united front against sectarianism in the Muslim world. Tehran understood this early enough, which explains its considered decision to participate in the summit in Mecca despite the near-certainty that the conclave would end up censuring the Syrian regime in one form or another.

In turn, Iran also rose to the occasion by giving a measured response at the level of the foreign minister to the OIC's decision to suspend Syria's membership.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in Mecca: "Syria should have been invited to the summit to defend itself and also so that the participants could have listened to its official views." He explained that Tehran objected to the OIC decision because "this is against the very charter of the organization". Salehi added: "In our opinion, cooperation is more logical [than suspension and] ... we should seek a mechanism to exit the Syrian crisis by way of the opposition and the government engaging in talks to create favorable conditions" to end the crisis.

Redrawing the rules of the game 
Second, the developments in Syria are steadily bringing religious sectarianism into the open in a way that does not suit any of the major regional protagonists - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar or Turkey - since almost all of them are as much vulnerable to the fallouts from any deepening of the sectarian fault line as Syria could be today. Shi'ites constitute almost 20% of the Saudi population, more than 35% in Kuwait and almost 70% in Bahrain. Alawites are a restive minority with long-standing grievances of persecution, accounting for 20% of Turkey's population (on top of the alienated Kurds, who form another 20%). Indeed, Iran too has a substantial Sunni minority. 


Third, no matter what happens on the ground, Sunnis are going to play a much more influential role in Syria's political life than before, which again means that none of the regional protagonists stands to benefit from pushing the envelope and escalating religious tensions. Also, the fallouts of religious tensions are certain to be very serious. The signs are visible already that the Shi'ite-dominated eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia are on the boil. This constitutes a formidable challenge to the royal family both in geographic and economic terms.

On Wednesday, even as the OIC began its deliberations in Jeddah, ominous signs appeared in Lebanon, with the Shi'ite Meqdad clan kidnapping more than 20 Syrians in retaliation for the abduction of one of their kinsmen by the so-called Free Syrian Army. The Meqdad clan has threatened that "the snowball will grow" and that Saudi, Qatari and Turkish nationals will be targeted.

Saudi Arabia promptly issued an advisory to its nationals to leave Lebanon immediately. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have taken similar steps. There are reports of dozens of Syrians being kidnapped in Beirut on Wednesday and of gunmen taking to the streets in the Shi'ite suburb of Tiro in the southern part of the city.
That is to say, while the OIC summit initiative may not have any direct impact on the near-term trajectory of developments in Syria itself, it has taken into account the existential challenge posed by religious tensions and has adopted a long-term approach aimed at containing the several available potentially inflammable political hot spots in the region from assuming sectarian overtones. 
In sum, the OIC summit's rebuke to Syria adds up to little consequential beyond the symbolic. The summit could not be expected to heal the Saudi-Iranian rift, which stems from a clash of national interests. But what the OIC summit aimed at it may well be achieving, namely to redraw the rules of the game in Syria and to "secularize" the political differences and conflicts.

How far the OIC's message will travel among the diehard militants time only will tell, but King Abdullah certainly made an important conciliatory gesture to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad by seating him at his side to welcome the leaders attending the summit.

As Reuters reported: "Ahmadinejad, wearing the dark suit and shirt without tie favored by Iranian leaders, sat at the left hand of the king in his traditional Arab robes. The two were shown talking and sometimes laughing together."

This is where the "subtext" makes its presence felt as the real narrative. By any reckoning, the gesture to Ahmadinejad was an overture by the Saudi king to the Iranian nation that no matter what happens in Syria (or over Syria) in the coming period, "we are both Muslims".

Curiously, a summit that was billed as a potentially big showdown between Saudi Arabia and Iran ended by adopting King Abdullah's proposal on the setting up of a center in Riyadh for dialogue among different Muslim sects. It is tempting to think that the OIC may have understood finally its tryst with destiny. 



and.....

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NH18Ak01.html

One step forward in Mecca, one back
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Two steps forward, one step back. This is how this week's Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Mecca could be characterized in terms of Iran-Saudi relations.

Although the summit widened the gap between Iran and Saudi Arabia on the issue of Syria, which was suspended from the OIC despite loud protests by Iran (and Algeria), it was instrumental in bringing Tehran and Riyadh closer together, thanks in part to the positive chemistry between King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who were seated next to each other and discussed various issues at length.

Upon returning home, a spirited Ahmadinejad emphasized at a press conference the trip's importance in terms of improvingrelations with Saudi Arabia, custodian of the house of Islam and a pillar of regional geopolitics; he remained critical of the fact that whereas the summit had been promoted as a show of unity, it was "limited to other issues", above all Syria. 


Still, a consensus is emerging in the Iranian parliament (Majlis) that it is important for Iran to participate in such diplomatic arenas to disseminate its own point of view on various issues. Iran may have lost the battle over Syria's expulsion but, ironically, it may have scored on the broader issue of an apt Syria policy, by hammering on the importance of focusing on Israel and "ending discord among ourselves", to paraphrase Ahmadinejad's OIC speech.

According to Nowzar Shafiee, a member of the Majlis' foreign policy and national security committee, in spite of the setback on Syria, the OIC summit was still a plus for Iran since it allowed Iran to reach out to the Muslim world. In addition to the Saudi leader, Ahmadinejad held bilateral talks with a number of other Muslim leaders and his fiery speech in defense of Palestinians was music to the ear of many ordinary Muslims around the world.

What is more, Ahmadinejad's participation ensured the presence of high-level Arab leaders at the upcoming summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran at the end of the month, including from Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan. An important question revolves around Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad, who has been invited although his presence may prove divisive and counter-productive to Iran's interests.

On the other hand, the NAM summit may pick up the issue of Syria and initiate a high-level mediation group to complement the United Nations's current efforts. Assad's presence and his pledge to cooperate with the UN and to agree to a cease-fire and political dialogue could also be in the cards and gain some support among the NAM global community. 
Meanwhile, the United States and Israel are working overtime to poison the environment leading up to the NAM meeting, which is emerging as a clear snub to their strategy to Isolate Tehran.

While the US media have been replete with negative and even derogatory references to NAM - a Washington Post editorial on March 14 mocked it as a "bacchanal of nonsense" - Israel is desperately trying to raise the alarm level regarding an imminent attack on Iran, hoping that this will dissuade some NAM leaders from attending the Tehran summit.

This familiar noise from Israel, heard persistently over the years, is channeled through "leaks" from the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, among other venues, and is unlikely to have the slightest effect on Iran's march to become a focus of global diplomacy two weeks from now; already more than 43 world leaders have committed to participate at the NAM summit and this number is sure to grow in the coming days.

Riyadh has now satisfied its regional ego with the impressive OIC summit and is therefore less worried about Iran's upper hand in regard to the NAM summit. This underlines the OIC's leveling effect. With the Shiite-Sunni rift also addressed by Riyadh's initiative of a dialogue center, the overall impression is that Tehran and Riyadh have decided to improve their relations and manage their traditional rivalry in a more structured fashion so that it does not get out of hand.

However, this is precisely what may happen depending on the fast-developing crisis in Syria and the inevitable result of the OIC's Syria decision as a diplomatic setback for Iran (see Saudis use summit to isolate Syria, Iran, Asia Times Online, August 15, 2012). Will the Saudis take advantage of the Syria's expulsion from OIC and try to escalate their pressure on Assad to resign? Or will they join hands with Tehran in search of a political solution short of "regime change" in Syria? The answer to these questions will be clarified in the near future. The Saudis are at a fork in the road, and their mini-overtures toward Iran may well be interpreted in Tehran as shrewd tactical summitry to achieve their objectives and to highlight their political sway over the Sunni-dominant Muslim World. 


Still, some Tehran political analysts are convinced that Riyadh's complex internal and external context dictates a more cautious approach vis-a-vis Syria, particularly since the Syrian army has been gaining an upper hand in the bloody conflict in Aleppo. After all, even nations in the Middle East base their policies on political realism and not wish lists. 


and....


http://www.debka.com/article/22285/Syria%E2%80%99s-neighbors-braced-for-chemical-threat-Assad-warns-Turkey-on-Stingers


Syria’s neighbors braced for chemical threat. Assad warns Turkey on Stingers

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 17, 2012, 10:14 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tags:  Bashar Assad   chemical weapons   US   Israel   Jordan   Turkey 
Syrian CBW ordnance
Syrian CBW ordnance

The US and its allies are discussing a worst-case scenario that could require up to 60,000 ground troops to go into Syria to secure chemical and biological weapons sites following the fall of the Assad government, an unnamed American source said Thursday night, Aug.16.
This scenario postulates the disintegration of his security forces, he said, leaving chemical and biological weapons sites vulnerable to pillaging. It assumes the sites could not be destroyed by aerial bombings in view of health and environmental hazards.
“There is no imminent plan to deploy ground forces,” the source insisted. This is just a worst-case scenario.
DEBKAfile’s military sources find in this disclosure a bid to psychologically prepare the world for the prospect of chemical warfare, as the dialogue between Bashar Assad and his neighbors gains in violence.
The American special forces deployed on the Jordanian-Syrian border and in bases in Israel and Turkey clearly perceive a chemical-biological weapon threat. Military and medical preparations are being quietly put in place. Reconnaissance teams from potentially targeted countries have infiltrated Syria. They are on the lookout for any chemical missiles being moved into firing positions, although it is taken into account that Assad may be shifting decoys and that not all the real launchings can be stopped.
The Syrian ruler may also decide to transfer chemical explosives to Hizballah in Lebanon. Israel is on record as warning it would prevent this.
Medical preparations are also in place. The US and France are flying special military hospital facilities trained in the treatment of chemical weapon injuries to Turkey and Jordan.
Israeli hospitals are on war alert and have begun opening fortified emergency wards and making them ready for patients.

Tuesday, Aug. 14, IDF Home Front Command units embarked on a series of chemical attack drills in the towns of the northern district down to Afula, which is 52 kilometers east of Haifa and 110 kilometers north of Tel Aviv.
The soldiers taking part those drills wore new anti-contamination suits.
In Tel Aviv, city hall announced underground parking spaces would be available in an emergency as bomb shelters for up to 850,000 people.
Wednesday, August 15, Bashar Assad’s violence again broke new ground:
Syrian air force bombers struck Azaz not far from the Turkish border – for the first time with the aim of razing a complete Syrian town. More than 80 people were killed and 150 wounded. He was telling the Free Syrian Army rebels who had been using Azaz as their command post and logistical hub for the Aleppo battle that the gloves were off and the same punishment would be meted out to any urban areas hosting them.
The Syrian ruler also warned Ankara through back channels that if any more Turkish FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles were supplied to the FSA, he would arm the 2,500 Turkish rebel PKK Kurdish fighters allowed to deploy on the Syrian-Turkish border with Russian SA-8 anti-air missiles for use against Turkey.
Ankara shot back: That will be war.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report that Assad is resolved more than ever to stand fast after the shot in the arm he received last week from Tehran.
Iran’s National Security Adviser Saeed Jalili visited Damascus Aug. 6-7 to ascertain that Syria would strike Israel and US military targets in the region with all its might if they attacked Iran.
Assad was ready to offer this pledge, but demanded in return that Tehran guarantee to exercise all its military capabilities to save him from any military or covert attempts to end his rule - whenever it was requested.
Jalili promised him that guarantee. He also held a similar conversation with HIzballah’s Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

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