Nir Rosen's reports from Syria

Today, the final installment of Nir Rosen's interview series with al-Jazeera was published.  Rosen, a Lebanon based journalist and the author of two books: "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The triumph of the martyrs in Iraq" and "Aftermath: following the bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World," spent the last two months in Syria, the second extended trip he has made to the embattled state in the past year.
His interviews can be found here:
Part 1: Armed Opposition
Part 2: The Protest Movement
Part 3: Syrian Sectarianism
Part 4: Daily Life in Syria
Part 5: Rosen's predictions
And here is his website, full of his previous reporting from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East

Some excerpts from each section follow below:

On the Armed Opposition

• The FSA is a name endorsed and signed on to by diverse armed opposition actors throughout the country, who each operate in a similar manner and towards a similar goal, but each with local leadership. Local armed groups have only limited communication with those in neighbouring towns or provinces - and, moreover, they were operating long before the summer.
• While fighters are often portrayed in the media as defectors from the Syrian military, the majority are civilians who have taken up arms. The opposition believes it will have more legitimacy if fighters are dubbed "defectors", and described collectively as the Free Syrian Army.
• In my encounters with armed opposition groups throughout Syria, I was reminded of Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in south Lebanon, Iraqi Sunni and Shia insurgents and resistance groups as well as the Taliban in Afghan villages - not in the religious sense, but in how they were an organic part of the community. 
•  The armed phenomenon began in rural areas, known in Arabic as the reef, and in the working class urban shaabiareas. Men there were more likely to own guns and were known as qabaday - "tough" men more likely to have the courage (and potential for violence) that one needs to respond violently to security forces. 
• From an early stage of the uprising, suspected informants for the regime have been intimidated, expelled and often killed.
• The armed groups generally operate secretly and in small groups, conducting ambushes on targets of opportunity using light arms and, increasingly, improvised explosive devices. For the past few months, insurgents have been using improvised explosive devices such as those found in Iraq, Afghanistan or southern Lebanon. Unlike in Iraq, however, the explosives used in these IEDs are fertiliser-based. These have been used in Idlib, Hama and Homs. In addition, rocket-propelled grenades - such as LAW anti-tank shells - have also more recently been used as shoulder-fired anti-armour missiles. The fighters have access to some sniper rifles as well.
• The Syrian insurgency is not well-armed or well-funded. Fighters purchase their weapons locally on the black market, from arms dealers and smugglers who are profiting from the violence in Syria. I have been with insurgents purchasing weapons and seen how they arrange to do so via smugglers from Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey.
• Many fund their arms purchases by turning to their savings or selling what valuables they have, or the products of their shops or farms. Others borrow money from friends. Much of the financing comes from Syrian businessmen inside or outside the country. Some Syrian opposition activists and politicians in exile are sending money to people inside. In addition, diaspora Syrians tied to Islamist movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, or to conservative clerics in the Gulf, also send money to certain groups.
• The debate over whether or not it is peaceful is not based on empirical research but on propaganda from both sides. The pro-regime media wants to portray the revolutionaries as nothing more than armed criminals and terrorist gangs. In response, opposition supporters have, until recently, denied all violence - fetishising the notion of a peaceful revolution - which has hurt not only their credibility, but the credibility of foreign media which often uncritically report their accounts.
• Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation of the cause of the deaths. Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters, but the cause of their death is hidden and they are described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces, as if they were all merely protesting or sitting in their homes. Of course, those deaths still happen regularly as well.  And, every day, members of the Syrian army, security agencies and the vague paramilitary and militia phenomenon known as shabiha ["thugs"] are also killed by anti-regime fighters.
• A the fighters I met - in the provinces of Homs, Idlib, Hama, Deraa and the Damascus suburbs - were Sunni Muslims, and most were pious.
• They fight for a multitude of reasons: for their friends, for their neighbourhoods, for their villages, for their province, for revenge, for self-defence, for dignity, for their brethren in other parts of the country who are also fighting. They do not read religious literature or listen to sermons. Their views on Islam are consistent with the general attitudes of Syrian Sunni society, which is conservative and religious.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar openly arming the Syrian opposition

Where the NATO players are still hiding in the shadows, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have come out in the open in their arming of those fighting against the Assad government.  Foreign Policy magazine reports that the Saudi monarchy has been "sending weapons on an ad hoc basis to the Syrian opposition by way of Sunni tribal allies in Iraq and Lebanon.  But in light of recent developments, more weapons are certainly on their way."  At last week "Friends of Syria" conference (or more correctly "enemies of Assad") the Saudi foreign minister was upset that no declaration was made to help arm the opposition, and now it appears the Sauds have moved to the front on the interventionist pack.
       In this venture, Riyadh is possibly being joined by their GCC buddy Qatar, where Prime Minister al-Thani recently said "We should do whatever necessary to help the Syrian opposition, including giving them weapons to defend themselves."

Foggy Bottom Hawks, Pentagon Doves

Are the American armed services trying to keep us out of another World War, and more importantly, are they failing? Recently, it has been State Department and White House officials, and not military leaders, who have been beating the war drums on Iran and Syria. The Pentagon higher-ups, in fact, have become the diplomats arguing for restraint. One remarkable example is the appearance by General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Fareed Zakaria's Sunday morning CNN show on Feb. 19th. The program began with a long introduction by Zakaria, a former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, who compared Israel's current perception of Iran as an irrational rouge state bent on military domination to American demonization of the USSR in the early years of the Cold War, a view Zakaria paints as incorrect because of the power of deterrence. Then he drops a political bomb, at least for CNN's Sunday morning standards, "And, remember, Israel has 250 nuclear bombs, many on submarines, to ensure that Tehran realizes it would be mutually assured destruction. And while the Iranian regime is often called crazy, it has done much less to merit that term than did a regime such as Mao's China."

       With this political stage set, one where Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran is led by a government that does not want to kill its own citizens, out trotted Dempsey, America's highest ranking military official.  What did the Pentagon's man have to say? Well for one, Iran is a "rational actor" that has "not decided that  they will embark on the effort to weaponize their nuclear capability."  And that "it's not prudent" for Israel to attack Iran.  On the Syrian front, Dempsey emphasized that the Syrian opposition shouldn't be armed because at this point, "I would challenge anyone to clearly identify for me the opposition movement in Syria." He continued on to describe the prospect of intervening in Syria as "very difficult," not least due to the Syrian Army, which he called "very capable." "They have a very sophisticated, integrated air defense system, for example. They have chemical and biological weapons. Now, they haven't demonstrated any interest or any intent to use those, but it is a very different military problem," said Dempsey, not sounding like a General who was eager to lead any march on Damascus.

       In fact, Dempsey was repeating some of the same messages that top military intelligence leaders had just delivered to Congress.  On Feb. 16th Generals James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, and Ronald Burgess, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.  Burgess stated that Iran was "unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict or launch a preemptive attack," and that Syria similar to American ally Yemen, stuck "in a stalemate" between a "cohesive but embattled regime," and a "fractured opposition" that has "yet to either coalesce into forces capable of overthrowing the regime or convince the majority of the population they are a viable alternative."  He also described Syria's military as a "viable, cohesive, and effective force," that is "acquiring sophisticated weapons systems such as advanced surface-to-air and coastal defense missiles," as well as possessing "a stockpile of CW weapons that can be delivered by aircraft or ballistic missiles."  General Clapper, in his testimony, added on that the U.S. intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda in Iraq had "infiltrated the opposition groups" in Syria.  Again, two more top officers who don't sound like they want any part of a Western intervention in Iran or Syria.

      Last November, John H. John, a retired Army general and National Defense University professor, wrote an op-ed of similar theme in The New York Times, calling out the Republican primary candidates, and the war hawks in general, for being over-belligerent on Iran without asking any of needed questions, and without listening to the opionon of the Armed Forces:

The problem with these arguments is that they flatly ignore or reject outright the best advice of America’s national security leadership. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, former congressman Admiral Joe Sestak and former CENTCOM Commander General Anthony Zinni are only a few of the many who have warned us to think carefully about the repercussions of attacking Iran. Two months ago, Sestak put it bluntly: “A military strike, whether it’s by land or air, against Iran would make the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion look like a cakewalk with regard to the impact on the United States’ national security.”

Now, compare this to the any batch of recent statements coming out of the State Department. Concerning the advancement of Iran's civilian nuclear enrichment program, Clinton recently said that it "demonstrates the Iranian regime's blatant disregard for its responsibilities and that the country's growing isolation is self-inflicted (1/11/12)." Concerning the U.S. pullout from Iraq, which was essentially forced by Shia leader and Iranian confidant Moqtada al-Sadr's popularity, Clinton tried to prop up any lingering American claims on Iraq, stating "no one should miscalculate our commitment to Iraq, most particularly Iran (10/23/11)." Are these statements towards a "rational actor" with an IAEA inspected nuclear program, one who is "unlikely to provoke a conflict" in the view of the DIA?  Or are these statements, that as General John put it, "flatly ignore or reject outright the best advice" of the National security leadership?
  

         This phenomenon could have a number of different implications.  For one, the U.S. military has not risked its reputation on even a middle-level military power since perhaps the Korean War.  The Vietnam War was fought against guerillas, albeit one armed from abroad, while the first American invasion of Iraq followed an eight year war between Iraq and Iran that sapped much of Baghdad's military strength.  The bombings in Kosovo in the 1990's were precipitated by the breakup first of the Warsaw Pact and then Yugoslavia, negating any type of state resistance, the post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan was again against a guerilla force, and by 2003 Iraq was a shell of its former military self, unable to rebuild after the first Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions and no-fly zones.  WMD were famously nowhere to be found.

     The Pentagon's MO is to fight limited wars against far inferior military targets.  The notion of taking on Syria, or shudder to think, Iran, must have the military leadership quaking in their boots.  Both are well armed, backed by foreign powers like Russia (who's only Mediterranean Naval port sits in Syria), and have an army closely allied to the leader.  

      Another interesting problem is to think of this in relation the drive to war against against Iraq in 2002-2003.  Then, many of the conspirators were in the Pentagon, notably at the top civilian leadership positions, while it was the State Department that was thought to have nominal opposition, or to have been bureaucratically left out of the loop.  During that time, few Pentagon officials, whether in uniform or not, tried to throw any obstacles in the way of the war path.  It was not until the later Bush years that the military began to put roadblocks between Cheney and his fantasies of world wide regime change.
     Now, with the Pentagon's global reach pulled taut by a flailing stalemate of a war in Afghanistan, a retreat from Iraq, and a repositioning of forces in Asia, they are loathe to plan and wage another war against a strong military power with stronger allies.  But it seems the blue sky thinking has just moved across town to Foggy Bottom.

Real News interview with Bassam Haddad

Paul Jay, the lead editor of the Real News Network, keeps up his excellent coverage of the Syria situation.  His most recent interview is with Bassam Haddad, the director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University.  The 18 minute interview covers the nuances of the different international and regional positions in regard to Syria, as well as the problematic question facing the American left of how to oppose dictatorial regimes while also opposing militarization and violence.  Concerning the latter, Hassad breaks down the problem as such:

If you are trying to emphasize the role of external players, then you are basically being unfair to the question of the repression of the legitimate protest and the killing of people in that regard. And if you try to emphasize only the importance of fighting the dictatorship no matter who is doing the fighting, no matter what happens down the line in terms of NATO intervention, you're also not paying enough attention to the number of people that are likely to be affected, which would be much larger than what we are seeing today. Unfortunately, this cold analysis is actually reprehensible, but this is the reality today. And then whatever position one takes will be infringing upon some rights, some value that many of us actually hold dear.  

Full transcript here

Josh Landis breaks down the Syrian opposition in 3 minutes

  Today, Reuters Decoder program features Oklahoma University Professor and Syria expert Joshua Landis speaking about the Syrian opposition.  He says that the "Free Syrian Army" is not a centralized body, and instead there are many different militia made up of "young men from the countryside."  He predicts that the eventual leadership of the opposition will form out of the fighters on the ground who are challenging the Army, as opposed to exile spokesmen.

Andrew Bacevich: Scoring the Global War on Terror

Earlier this week, Andrew Bacevich, a retired army colonel and professor at Boston University, wrote a very good piece for TomDispatch entitled "Scoring the Global War on Terror: from liberation to assassination in three quick rounds."  Here, Bacevich attempts to separate American foreign policy post 9/11--that is the Global War on Terror, and as the author calls it "the war formerly known as the global war on terrorism" or "WFKATGWOT"--into three distinct phases.
      The first phase, which Bacevich calls "Liberation," was dominated by the ideology and presence of Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary from 2001-2006.  During this phase, "a high tech American version of blitzkrieg" was the modus operandi, with Rumsfeld insisting that "U.S. forces were smarter and more agile than any adversary," and "to employ them in ways which took advantage of those qualities was to guarantee victory."  This view, called "shock and awe" by the media, led President Bush to hope he could "liberate (and of course dominate) the Islamic world through a series of short, quick thrusts."  Rumsfeld's ideology, however, was flawed, and after initial success in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the military found themselves mired in dual occupations and their assorted problems, because in neither case "were they able to finish off their opponent or even, in reality, sort out just who their opponent might be."
        The second phase, which Bacevich calls "Pacification," was dominated by Army General David Patreus and his counter insurgency, or COIN, doctrine.  COIN, "rather than trying to defeat the enemy," sought "the emergence of a viable and stable nation state."  After being applied to Iraq, in Bush's 2006 "surge," the Patreus method was trumpeted far and wide by the media, and inspired an ideology that global counter insurgency, or "GCOIN," should be the basis of U.S. National Security. Now, "rather than  employing "shock and awe" to liberate the Islamic World, U.S. forces would apply counterinsurgency doctrine to pacify it."
         When President Obama came in to office and turned to Afghanistan, the COIN ideology was in full force, and Patreus, now head of CENTCOM, advocated for a full counter-insurgency effort in Southwest Asia.  Despite hesitation on Obama's part, the troop levels in Afghanistan were significantly ramped up in 2009, most significantly at the end of the year, when the White House signed on to his own mini surge of 30,000 troops.  In Bob Woodward's book "Obama's Wars," this decision was portrayed as one made after a period of great frustration with Patreus and ilk from the President, who felt that he was being forced into a nation building mission that he didn't want.  But in the end, Obama signed off on the December 2009 troop increase, treating the Pentagon as just another political constituency that he had to appease.
         Since that time, however, any prospect of a successful "COIN" strategy in Afghanistan has fallen by the way side, victim of corruption in the Afghan power structure, regional turmoil in regards to Pakistan and Iran, and an over reliance on heavy-handed violence by the NATO forces.  
        The failure of the COIN doctrine in Afghanistan gives way to Bacevich's third, and current, phase, "Assassination."  He writes that this phase has been personified by Michael Vickers, the Pentagon's Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.  Quiet and absent from the media lens, Vickers is a former CIA operative, and with Robert Gates' retirement, the Pentagon's last remaining holdover from the Bush administration.  Bacevich writes:

Even during the Bush era, Vickers never subscribed to expectations that the United States could liberate or pacify the Islamic world.  His preferred approach to the WFKATGWOT has been simplicity itself. “I just want to kill those guys,” he says -- “those guys” referring to members of al-Qaeda. Kill the people who want to kill Americans and don’t stop until they are all dead: this defines the Vickers strategy, which over the course of the Obama presidency has supplanted COIN as the latest variant of U.S. strategy.

At this point, it is worth quoting Bacevich at length on the state of current U.S. policy under Obama:

Round three of the WFKATGWOT is all about bending, breaking, and reinventing rules in ways thought to be advantageous to the United States.  Much as COIN supplanted “shock and awe,” a broad-gauged program of targeted assassination has now displaced COIN as the prevailing expression of the American way of war. 

The United States is finished with the business of sending large land armies to invade and occupy countries on the Eurasian mainland.  Robert Gates, when still Secretary of Defense, made the definitive statement on that subject.  The United States is now in the business of using missile-armed drones and special operations forces to eliminate anyone (not excluding U.S. citizens) the president of the United States decides has become an intolerable annoyance.  Under President Obama, such attacks have proliferated. 

This is America’s new MO.  Paraphrasing a warning issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Washington Post dispatch succinctly summarized what it implied: “The United States reserved the right to attack anyone who it determined posed a direct threat to U.S. national security, anywhere in the world.”  

There are many important strands to draw out of Bacevich's writing.  One is the comparison to John F. Kennedy, who, like Obama, signed off on troop increases for a war he was hesitant about, and who, like Obama, was enamored by Green Beret's and targeted killings.  Another is the total disregard for diplomacy as a solution to geopolitical conflicts under Obama.  When the Secretary of State is boasting of an "attack anybody, anytime" mentality, you know diplomatic tracks are not being heavily pushed.  
      

From Covert to Overt War

Yesterday, following a Washington meeting with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, President Obama ratcheted up the pressure on the Assad government yet again, declaring "it is absolutely imperative for the international community to rally, and send a clear message to President Assad that it is time for a transition, it is time for that regime to move on," and that "it's important that we not be bystanders during these extraordinary event." 

        The backdrop of Obama's statement was the "Friends of Syria" meeting that took place in Tunis,  attended by Secretary of State Clinton.  The meeting, which was attended by 60 countries as well as the exile-dominated Syrian National Council, was ostensibly organized to facilitate a "humanitarian" response, however the topic of increasing the violence in Syria by arming an opposition force was on the forefront of discussions.  While the U.S. has not yet openly endorsed the idea, they are making sure to leave the option on the table.  Speaking in London enroute to the conference, Clinton spoke of the "increasing capability" of the armed resistance in Syria. "They will, from somewhere, somehow, find the means to defend themselves, as well as begin offensive measures," she added.  At the conference, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia openly called for arms to be provided to the Syrian rebels, and at the conference's conclusion, a statement was released calling for "a political solution" in Syria, leaving the option of a military intervention on the table.  According to the New York Times, this wording was favored by the U.S. over less the bellicose phrasing of "a peaceful, nonmilitary solution," that was endorsed by some countries. 

           It appears that the Obama administrations is signaling that an overt military intervention in Syria is on the Pentagon's drawing boards.  However, the question then becomes is this just another rhetorical blast in the game of diplomatic chicken being played between the NATO powers and Syria, or are the Obamanistas seriously considering starting another Middle East war nine months before a general election.  If the prior is true, my guess is Obama is praying for a military coup within Syria, that some faction of the Syrian security regime will decide that Assad is expendable for the sake of preserving the power structure and avoiding a lengthy battle with western-backed fighters.  This would take Obama off the hook for declaring that Assad must go and justify the covert war on Syria that has been waged over the past 10 months.

            However if the latter is true, and war plans are being sent to the Oval Office, then Obama has a whole other set of questions facing him.  How long to keep up intelligence and weapon support to the rebels without air cover?  Armed resistance of some form has been ongoing since late last spring, and it does not seem close to breaking the Syrian army, which is large and supplied by Russia and Iran.  And if airpower doesn't work right away, when do the Marines get called in?  

            Obama also faces the political question of whether the American people, and specifically the Democratic electorate he is hoping will give him another term later this year, are willing to spend blood and treasure on yet another military adventure in the Middle East.  They probably are not, especially when he has already led a very hawkish first term.  And then there is the entire sphere of legality, both domestically in regards to the War Powers Act as well as internationally in regards to the UN.  While it is one thing to wage a covert war, an overt one has far more dilemmas to consider.

           The date looming over the entire discussion is May 18th, when Chicago will host both the annual G8 summit as well as a NATO meeting.  Certainly Obama does not want to bring a failing Syria policy to the table at these meetings, which are being held in his political base of Chicago.  However, he probably also has no desire to add extra spark to the protests that are sure to take place by starting another NATO war.  Once again, Obama has backed himself into a corner in his foreign policy, and does not seem to have a way out.