Augustus
…
In the light of Trump banning Syrian refugees from America, here is an interesting article here about why most Syrians prefer Assad over the fundamentalist jihadi rebels. That's not to say they actually like Assad because most Syrians were supporters of overthrowing him, but they just hate the fundamentalists even more.
It also gives support to the idea that it is misleading and harmful to think of Islam as being a single religion. At the very least it should be considered 3 loosely defined belief systems: Salafi fundamentalism, Secular Sunnism and Shiism.
And it demonstrates how poor the coverage of the Syrian conflict is in the Western media.
Hard Truth: Aleppo Rebels weren’t defeated by Main Force but b/c they alienated Syrians
...It is true that Russia has subjected the Sunni Arab rebels, many of them just Muslim Brotherhood, to intense aerial bombardment. But it has especially gone after al-Qaeda (the Nusra Front, now styling itself the Levantine Conquest Front).
Under the conditions of 2011, the other rebels would have rushed to the aid of a besieged anti-al-Assad group.
That did not happen during the past 3 years, for a simple reason. Most people in Syria don’t trust the Muslim Brotherhood and they really, really dislike the Salafi Jihadis.
The ten percent of Syrians who are Kurds are largely post-Communist leftist feminists. They aren’t going to rush to the aid of fundamentalist Sunnis led by a group with al-Qaeda ties.
And the fact is that the fundamentalist rebels have repeatedly denounced and threatened the leftist Kurds. (It is these fundamentalists that Western politicians often call “moderates.”)
The supposedly moderate Freemen of Syria put al-Qaeda in charge of the Druze villages of Idlib in 2015. Druze are an offshoot of Ismaili Shiism and are deeply hated by al-Qaeda. They were forcibly converted to Sunni Islam and nevertheless some of them were killed or their property confiscated by the Nusra Front.
So as the Syrian opposition ratcheted farther and farther to the Sunni religious right, and as the most effective fighters came to be drawn from that sector, they lost the good will and support of most Syrians.
The secular-minded Sunni Arab majority didn’t want to be ruled by people imitating the Saudi Wahhabis. The Christians didn’t want that. The Druze didn’t want it. The Kurds didn’t want it. The Alawites certainly didn’t want it.
So you get 70% of the people in the country who, having been given the unpalatable choice between the Baath regime of al-Assad and being ruled by Salafi Jihadis, reluctantly chose al-Assad.
That is why the Aleppo pocket fell. There had been 250,000 Sunni Arabs of a more religious mindset and from a working class background living there under rebel control since 2012. But next door in West Aleppo, which our television stations won’t talk about, were 800,000 to a million people who much preferred to be under the rule of the regime. This numerous and relatively well off population took occasional mortar fire from the slums of East Aleppo. They weren’t in the least interested in saving the rebels from the Russians or the Iraqi Shiite militias or from the regime itself...
Syria is much more diverse a country than it might seem from cold social statistics. Hard line Salafis never had any chance of attracting enough support to take over the whole country, and even just very conservative Sunnis did not, either. The strategic thinkers in Ankara and Riyadh completely misread the situation.
That is why the East Aleppo pocket is falling to the regime. Not because aerial bombardment or brute force work magic in and of themselves. But because the Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood were unable to cumulate resources from other groups and attract broad support.
Hard Truth: Aleppo Rebels weren't defeated by Main Force but b/c they alienated Syrians
Thoughts?
It also gives support to the idea that it is misleading and harmful to think of Islam as being a single religion. At the very least it should be considered 3 loosely defined belief systems: Salafi fundamentalism, Secular Sunnism and Shiism.
And it demonstrates how poor the coverage of the Syrian conflict is in the Western media.
Hard Truth: Aleppo Rebels weren’t defeated by Main Force but b/c they alienated Syrians
...It is true that Russia has subjected the Sunni Arab rebels, many of them just Muslim Brotherhood, to intense aerial bombardment. But it has especially gone after al-Qaeda (the Nusra Front, now styling itself the Levantine Conquest Front).
Under the conditions of 2011, the other rebels would have rushed to the aid of a besieged anti-al-Assad group.
That did not happen during the past 3 years, for a simple reason. Most people in Syria don’t trust the Muslim Brotherhood and they really, really dislike the Salafi Jihadis.
The ten percent of Syrians who are Kurds are largely post-Communist leftist feminists. They aren’t going to rush to the aid of fundamentalist Sunnis led by a group with al-Qaeda ties.
And the fact is that the fundamentalist rebels have repeatedly denounced and threatened the leftist Kurds. (It is these fundamentalists that Western politicians often call “moderates.”)
The supposedly moderate Freemen of Syria put al-Qaeda in charge of the Druze villages of Idlib in 2015. Druze are an offshoot of Ismaili Shiism and are deeply hated by al-Qaeda. They were forcibly converted to Sunni Islam and nevertheless some of them were killed or their property confiscated by the Nusra Front.
So as the Syrian opposition ratcheted farther and farther to the Sunni religious right, and as the most effective fighters came to be drawn from that sector, they lost the good will and support of most Syrians.
The secular-minded Sunni Arab majority didn’t want to be ruled by people imitating the Saudi Wahhabis. The Christians didn’t want that. The Druze didn’t want it. The Kurds didn’t want it. The Alawites certainly didn’t want it.
So you get 70% of the people in the country who, having been given the unpalatable choice between the Baath regime of al-Assad and being ruled by Salafi Jihadis, reluctantly chose al-Assad.
That is why the Aleppo pocket fell. There had been 250,000 Sunni Arabs of a more religious mindset and from a working class background living there under rebel control since 2012. But next door in West Aleppo, which our television stations won’t talk about, were 800,000 to a million people who much preferred to be under the rule of the regime. This numerous and relatively well off population took occasional mortar fire from the slums of East Aleppo. They weren’t in the least interested in saving the rebels from the Russians or the Iraqi Shiite militias or from the regime itself...
Syria is much more diverse a country than it might seem from cold social statistics. Hard line Salafis never had any chance of attracting enough support to take over the whole country, and even just very conservative Sunnis did not, either. The strategic thinkers in Ankara and Riyadh completely misread the situation.
That is why the East Aleppo pocket is falling to the regime. Not because aerial bombardment or brute force work magic in and of themselves. But because the Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood were unable to cumulate resources from other groups and attract broad support.
Hard Truth: Aleppo Rebels weren't defeated by Main Force but b/c they alienated Syrians
Thoughts?
