Assad is de grootste facilitator van het Kalifaat

[Islamitisch Verzet]

Inside Assad’s Playbook: Time and Terror

Assad heeft zijn gewenste counterrevolutie gekregen, die hem de das (strop rond de nek) zal omdoen.

Bassam Barabandi served as a diplomat for several decades in the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

Early in my career as a Syrian diplomat, I learned to respect the strategic planning of the Assads. One clear memory is from 2007, during a visit from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. I remember sitting behind a two-way mirror in a room adjacent to the banquet hall at the Four Seasons Damascus. Deputy Vice President Mohammad Nasif and I huddled in the tiny room as we watched a reception featuring Syrian Ministers and their Iraqi counterparts. We took notes, monitored their interactions, and sent waiters and messengers to disrupt conversations and alter the room dynamics. As Nasif and I noted every piece of small talk, every passing gesture, I realized that no detail is too small for the Assad regime to overlook. There is always a plan, opportunities are never missed, and there are no accidents: the rise of ISIS is no exception to this rule.

ISIS’s role in Syria fits into a plan that has worked for Assad on several occasions. When a crisis emerges, Assad pushes his opponents to spend as much time as possible in developing a response. While implementing such diplomatic stalls, he floods the crisis with distractions designed to divert attention away from Syrian government misdeeds. His favorite diversion is terrorism, because it establishes him as a necessary force to contain it. In the meantime, world events wash away international focus on the initial crisis.

Assad used this approach to protect himself after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. My colleagues took steps to appear cooperative while stalling investigations. When the tribunal requested documents, the government sent mountains of information. When tribunal staff planned a visit, the government sent countless clarifications on minute details, shifting plans last minute and obstructing the process. Meanwhile, Assad used his terrorist proxy in Hezbollah to foment sectarian tensions in Lebanon. He also continued to facilitate the flow of extremist Sunni fighters into Iraq. These steps shifted international attention to the stability of neighbors, and positioned Assad’s government as a problematic, yet stabilizing force in the region. Accountability for the Hariri plot faded from view.

Assad renewed a version of this approach after non-violent protestors took to the streets demanding freedom and reform in 2011. His closest advisors studied the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen to craft an approach that would protect the regime. This small group of political elites concluded that any meaningful concessions to non-violent protestors could precipitate the collapse of the regime. The advisors decided that it would enact no reforms that could weaken Assad’s hold on power. Assad learned from the Libyan case that a hasty resort to large massacres, or the threat thereof, could draw intervention from NATO forces. A slower increase in violence against opponents, however, would likely go unchecked. Assad needed to take steps that would pass time and prove himself as indispensable, both to the international community and to Syrians who fear retaliation from the Sunni majority.

To achieve these aims, Assad first changed the narrative of the newborn Syrian revolution to one of sectarianism, not reform. He then fostered an extremist presence in Syria alongside the activists. Further, he facilitated the influx of foreign extremist fighters to threaten stability in the region. Finally, any efforts to kill time on the clock, such as the chemical weapons deal, its slow implementation, and the Geneva process, were enthusiastically exploited. The resulting international paralysis allowed Assad to present himself as an ally in the global war on terror, granting him license to crush civilians with impunity. The Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) emerged as one of those facts created to ensure Assad’s survival as he and his Iranian backers seek to frame this conflict as a regional sectarian issue, with a classical choice between military powers and Sunni extremists.

Early in the uprising, I was stationed in Washington. The Assad regime’s public messaging sought to construct the narrative that the Syrian revolutionaries had aspirations to disenfranchise and eliminate non-Sunni minorities. Even as we received external reports that the government killed nearly 250 people in Daraa, Deputy Foreign Minister Fisal Mikdad called to assure the Ambassador and me that there had been no killing, only a sectarian misunderstanding that the government had resolved. Once the unrest shifted to an armed conflict, Assad’s choice of allies promoted sectarianism. Hezbollah and the Iranian Republican Guard, primarily Shiite forces, assisted in further highlighting Assad’s sectarian narrative. Today, the conflict has morphed into a sectarian regional proxy war. This is precisely how Assad envisioned it, and creates a dynamic that the internationals can dismiss as too complex or dissonant to Western interests.

The Assad plan also included allowing extremist Sunni groups to grow and travel freely in order to complicate any Western support for his opponents. The Assad regime and Iran have meticulously nurtured the rise of al-Qaeda, and then ISIS, in Syria. In his March 2011 speech addressing the protests, Assad claimed that an international terrorist conspiracy sought to topple his government. During this time, Assad released battle-hardened extremists from the infamous Sednaya prison; extremists with no association to the uprisings. These fighters would go on to lead militant groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra.

In conjunction with the terrorist-release policy, Assad was sure to imprison diverse, non-violent, and pro-reform activists by the thousands, many of whom are still in government prisons. These efforts, coupled with relentless barrel bombing, torture, and chemical weapons campaigns, were designed to silence, kill, or displace civilians so that the influence of extremists would fill their absence. Assad was careful to never take any steps to attack ISIS as they grew in power and strength.

The announcement of ISIS’s caliphate is most helpful in draining time and distracting the world from Assad’s destruction of Syrian society. Now that ISIS has fully matured, the Assad regime and Iran offer themselves as partners to the United States. For the first time, Assad is striking ISIS in Raqqa and locations inside Iraq, in a perverse harvest of the terrorist seeds he planted to quash the civilian-led reform movement. Assad will continue to make himself appear helpful by offering intermittent air strikes, details of fighters released from prison, and intelligence.

The rise of ISIS in Iraq and events in Gaza and Ukraine have placed Assad’s war safely outside the headlines. Once again, the world is convinced it has higher priorities and may again conclude that Assad is a problematic, yet stabilizing dictator in a troubled region. Safe from public scrutiny, he can go back to his hidden room, manipulating various players. US coordination with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, or the Assad government in the fight against ISIS will play directly into the Assad plan. It will prove to Assad that his manipulation of time and terror has once again worked.

[Donar]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Islamitisch Verzet

Inside Assad’s Playbook: Time and Terror

Assad heeft zijn gewenste counterrevolutie gekregen, die hem de das (strop rond de nek) zal omdoen.

zeg jij

[Nietzsche]

Hahah, ts is een grapjas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YjrUbceZ6U

[Snerror]

Assad

[Nietzsche]

Assad is een held, een strijder tegen de terroristen.

[Wautd]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Nietzsche

Assad is een held, een strijder tegen de terroristen.

Ahum, Assad is zelf een ook terrorist door eerst (en nog steeds) zijn eigen burgerbevolking te terroriseren.

[Lukkas]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Wautd

Ahum, Assad is zelf een ook terrorist door eerst (en nog steeds) zijn eigen burgerbevolking te terroriseren.

Assad is de minst slechte terrorist, dus altijd beter.

[Nietzsche]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Wautd

Ahum, Assad is zelf een ook terrorist door eerst (en nog steeds) zijn eigen burgerbevolking te terroriseren.

Dat doet Assad niet en heeft hij ook nooit gedaan.

[Nr.10]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Nietzsche

Assad is een held, een strijder tegen de terroristen.

² Een evidente waarheid.

[Islamitisch Verzet]

The heavy losses inflicted by ISIS on the Syria'n army creates a split between the regime and its supporters

A series of recent setbacks for the Syrian regime on the battlefield – most spectacularly at the hands of ISIS – have sparked outrage in the ranks of loyalists.

Some of the most ardent supporters of the regime have been aghast at the news that hundreds of regime soldiers and paramilitaries were killed in battles with ISIS in three different provinces over the last 10 days: the Shaar gas field in rural Homs, the Division 17 military base outside the city of Raqqa, and the Regiment 121 post in rural Hassakeh.

“It’s the first time that they have been cursing the president by name, and holding him responsible,” the activist, who requested anonymity, said. “They’ve never been in such a state before.”

Dawla Islamiyya gaat het regime helemaal kraken, dat staat buiten kijf. Loyalististen zien dat zijn counter revolutie het regime de das gaan omdoen en ze bespuwen Assad voor zijn gefaalde strategie.

“The Assad regime has given ISIS a pass for many months, in part because Assad has hoped that ISIS’ growth would spook the West,” “But this cynical strategy seems to be backfiring today. ISIS is slashing and burning its way through a number of regime strongholds, and Syrians fear that their government has underestimated ISIS,”

[Doge]

Z'n strategie heeft gewerkt, het zorgt ook voor zware gevechten tussen de verschillende rebellengroepen. Hij had alleen niet gedacht dat Irak zo vlug onderuit zou gaan, het is met materiaal dat ze daar veroverd hebben dat ze nu in Syrië succes mee behalen. Voorlopig gaat het inderdaad wat moeilijk.

Hij moet nu gewoon standhouden tot de VS eindelijk ISIS naar de hel bombardeert of tot Iran de rest van Irak annexeert en Koerdistan echt onafhankelijk wordt, Rusland kan dan ook nog wat betekenen maar die zitten wat krap bij kas tegenwoordig.

[Islamitisch Verzet]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Doge

Hij moet nu gewoon standhouden tot de VS eindelijk ISIS naar de hel bombardeert.

Die kleinmacht is te zwak.

tot Iran de rest van Irak annexeert

Dafuq?

[Islamitisch Verzet]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Wautd

Ahum, Assad is zelf een ook terrorist door eerst (en nog steeds) zijn eigen burgerbevolking te terroriseren.

The Syrian defector known as “Caesar,” who documented and then fled with evidence of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s torture and murder of more than 11,000 civilians in custody, has begun a visit to Washington, D.C., aimed at verifying and working to expose the atrocities and war crimes of the Syrian regime.

Rapp, who has already seen many of the photos, said last month that the systematic nature of Assad’s “machinery of death” was the worst he had seen since the Nazi regime perpetrated an attempted genocide of Jews and other non-Aryans during the Holocaust.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...trocities.html

[Doge]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Islamitisch Verzet

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...trocities.html

Zolang we ze niet kunnen identificeren kunnen het evengoed slachtoffers zijn uit gevangenissen van SA of van de tienduizenden vermoordde Koerden in Turkije. We hebben al teveel van die valse beschuldigingen gehad om van 1 overloper zomaar alles te geloven.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-lies-iraq-war

[zonbron]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Nietzsche

Assad is een held, een strijder tegen de terroristen.

2!

[Islamitisch Verzet]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door zonbron

"President" van een "land" waar die voor meer dan 50% geen controle over heeft.

[Bolleke Wol]

De Koerden zijn eens te meer de enige hoop op een minimum aan vrede, veiligheid en welvaart in de regio...

De ware helden in dit verhaal: de YPG-zelfverdedigingseenheden van Rojava, West-Koerdistan: seculier, democratisch en... feministisch.

[Nietzsche]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Bolleke Wol

De Koerden zijn eens te meer de enige hoop op een minimum aan vrede, veiligheid en welvaart in de regio...

De ware helden in dit verhaal: de YPG-zelfverdedigingseenheden van Rojava, West-Koerdistan: seculier, democratisch en... feministisch.

2

Assad is de strijder tegen het terrorisme, maar de Koerden zijn superieur tegenover hem.

[Yarisken]

Assad blijft aan de macht. De koerden krijgen autonomie en de moselimes worden gecrushed en afgemaakt.

[Bolleke Wol]

Het merendeel van de Koerden zijn trouwens ook moslims.