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Simplified Demographics
It can be speculated on how to resolve the above cognitive dissonance, starting with above Figure. This is a map of Syria from 1976, overlaid with simplified demo-graphics. At the time, the total population of Syria was around 6.3 million (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Demographics_of_Syria).
The vast region in white bordering Iraq and Jordan was and still is sparsely populated. The southwest including Dam- ascus and the Ghouta province and the northwest (Latakia, Idlib and Hama) are the most fertile, with Latakia having a Mediterranean coastline. The Golan Heights at the southwest are partially occupied by Israel since the war of 1967. The majority (60 %) of Syria’s population follow the Sunni sect of Islam. The power centers of the ruling Baath Party draw support from the Alawites who are part of the Shia branch of Islam. They constituted 13% while the Sunni Kurds were 10%, Greek-Orthodox Christians were 8%, Armenian-Christians, Arab-Druze, Arab-Ismaeli each 2%, and Turkmen, Circassian and Assyrian making up the remainder. Some 60% of the total population lived in the Aleppo province and along the Euphrates River Valley, stretching from Idlib and Aleppo in the northwest to Deir-ez-Zor at the eastern Iraq border. The navigable river is a corridor of commerce and invasions since ancient times.
Sunni-Shia Faultline
The history of the Sunni-Shia divide is summarized in (https://www.cfr.org/article/sunni-shia-divide). Today 85% of Muslims (all ardent followers of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed) are Sunni, and 15% are from the remaining sects including the Shia (Alawite, Ahmadiya, to name two). Shias have concentrations in the Middle East and North Africa in certain pockets.
Syria’s neighbors are Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Israel. When President Erdogan came to power in Turkey, he rode on a platform to introduce fundamentalist Islamic reforms. He reversed decades of Field Marshal Kemal Attaturk’s western- seeking secularism that even imposed tough (for Believers) dress codes. Relations with Israel initially became less civil.
Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia are predominantly Sunni. Iraq has a majority Shia population which was ruled by Sad- dam Hussein’s minority Sunni military officers until his over- throw. Today a Shia-majority government rules Iraq. In Syria, despite having the 60% Sunni population, the ruling Baath Party is led by an Alawite Shia, and, most unusually for any Muslim-majority nation and particularly an Arab nation, has always had Christians and other Unbelievers (in Islam) in government positions. Thus the Shia rulers of Syria found little favor from either Turkey or Saudi Arabia. An uneasy peace reigned in the region, enforced by regimes that kept dissent out of public view, with occasional uprisings put down with massive force. The practices and freedoms were notably similar whether in ’Authoritarian’ Syria or ’US-Allied and Civilized’ Turkey and the Gulf Emirates such as Bahrain and Qatar – and a lot worse in US-Frontline Ally Saudi Arabia. This stability changed as the Arab Spring provided the openings for regime change.
The Anti-Shia Alliance
As recently as the early 2000s, Israelis would tell anyone that they regarded Saudi Arabia as the primary source of existential threats to the Jewish nation. It appears that during the 2010s, Israel’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Turkey have improved dramatically. Simultaneously, they have organized themselves against the Shia populations led by Iran. Today Israel views the Shia militant groups Hezbollah (in Iran and Syria) and Hamas (in Lebanon) as their greatest threats, backed by the narrative that Iran is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons which Israel already has in plenty. Saudi Arabia also shares these fears (informed sources claim that they already have nuclear weapons which they funded Pakistan to acquire from China), while Turkey sees Iran as perhaps an obstacle to the rebirth of the Ottoman Caliphate.
Since the demise of Saddam Hussein and the rise of the Shia in Iraq through democratic elections and other power blocs, Syria’s, Iran’s and Iraq’s Shia populations have found much in common. One is that they are on the target list of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and more recently the ISIS and by extension the Allies of those nations, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, NATO and the USA. With Israel and its supporters in the USA urging all to follow their example and launch military attacks on the Shia.
AK47 automatic assault rifles, RDX and C4 explosives for car bombs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and anti-tank guided missiles are freely available throughout the region, happily supplied by eager purveyors. This reality is ignored by those who argue loudly for installing peaceful democratic rule by majority approval with respect for the rights of all – while supporting their own pet terrorist gangs in the interests of ‘saving’ natural resources for their own wealth.
By 2011, Syria had 21.1 million native Syrians, plus 1.3 million refugees from the wars in Iraq, 0.5 million Palestinian refugees and some 5200 Somalian refugees. By 2015, over 10 million Syrians were in regions occupied by the ISIS, and two million lived in Rojava, the region ruled by Kurdish forces. Another 6 million had left the country, and an undetermined, very large number, estimated by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at 7 million were internally dis- placed refugees.
The Color Revolution and Regime Change Wars In the Middle East
“Regime Change Wars” are not new in the history of the United States. The Mossadegh “regime” in Iran, which was elected by popular vote, was overthrown by street riots, strongly suspected to be fomented by foreign interests including the USA (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2011.580603?scroll=top&needAccess=true and https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/all-the-shahs-men.pdf).
The Salvador Allende government in Chile was considered to be “leftist” and was overthrown, likewise, by interests supported by US funding (https://www.jstor.org/stable/165728 and https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/aa893fdf-f06b-4166-8eb0-86861b2d57c1/content). An attempt was made back in 1961 to overthrow the government led by Fidel Castro in Cuba (the ill-fated Bay of Pigs event) (https://www.rienner.com/title/Politics_of_Illusion_The_Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_Reexamined and https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-latin-american-studies/article/abs/ships-in-the-night-the-cia-the-white-house-and-the-bay-of-pigs/97907DF7A0522B57B89DA275118827CA).
Cut to the 21st century.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were the culmination of quite a widespread number of terrorist projects over the preceding decade (https://www.bharat-rakshak.com/MONITOR/ISSUE5-2/narayanan.html). The reaction in the USA was perhaps a realization that a “Clash of Civilizations” as projected by Prof. Huntington , had become inevitable (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-62397-6_6).
It appears that entities in and out of the US and Allied governments developed plans to exploit long-held regional feuds, jealousies and suspicion to fragment the Arab and larger Islamic world, as a response against the rise of militant Islam. As the “smart” mobile phone and Internet access penetrated the Arab world, the technical capabilities to mount mass uprisings became available. Meanwhile the idea of Color Revolutions had been tested in the nations of the Former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations - the term referring to the use of a particular distinctive color such as orange, painted over large areas or worn by many, to convey the notion of common cause, uniform outrage and vast numbers. The mushrooming growth of media communications technology in the 21st century had no small effect on the growth of Color Revolutions mass, highly coordinated, highly agile uprisings, apparently by unarmed youth.
In turn, agitations grew and turned violent in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283593632_The_color_revolution_virus_and_authoritarian_antidotes_Political_protest_and_regime_counterattacks_in_post-communist_spaces ; https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262017770/the-color-revolution/ ; https://muse.jhu.edu/article/270334 and https://www.globalresearch.ca/google-s-revolution-factory-alliance-of-youth-movements-color-revolution-2-0/23283 )
Today, Tunisia appears to have survived without much damage, Egypt went through several upheavals but has re- turned to military rule after both President (General) Mubarak and his successor, Mr. Morsi, died in prison. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya was captured and beaten to death after a NATO-led ’intervention’ - Libya today is still fragmented, and a prime market for weapons and mercenaries, even out- doing Syria. Note: At latest look in January 2020, Russian- supported and Turkish-supported, western-encouraged militias appear to be consolidating on opposite sides with the European and UN leadership expressing concern about the fate of Libyan oil.
In the United Arab Emirates, feeble attempts to start agitations were promptly and decisively suppressed. Yemen is in the final stages (we hope) of a ’civil’ war that has brought famine and genocide, but also brought dozens of billions of dollars in weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, perhaps to make up for losses in the field.
Color Revolutions To ISIS Black Flags
Herring and Christian advanced some points for consideration. The first was that the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was never a desire for self-rule or pluralistic democracy as understood, but a desire for Islamic rule. “Each country that fell to that faux-organic sweep of protest shared a trait in common: aside from being brutal dictatorships, they were also secular governments.” Put differently, the ’popular outcome’ as visible from the noise of the mobs, would have been an absolutely repressive Islamic dictatorship. (https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/08/the_return_of_the_arab_spring.html)
They went on to reason that the rise of the ISIS would not have gone unnoticed by government intelligence agencies and that the ISIS was far from being a ragtag bunch of malcontents: it is an immensely well-organized, well-planned, well trained and well-funded, brutal multinational army. That cannot be created without very powerful interests driving it, and this could not have been missed by intelligence agencies.
They then reason that President Obama’s administration could have at least allowed the growth of ISIS, in the confidence that this force could be swept into Sunni majority Syria, to achieve the regime overthrow for which the President could not obtain congressional or UN approval. Whether there was any thought given to how the resulting theocratic mob rule could be controlled enough to gain access to the wealth of Syria or whether there was an even grander plan to dominate the Middle East, are unknown.
In Syria, the Color Revolution spiraled out of the government’s ability to control, with stunning rapidity by March 2011. Given that the government’s ethnic support base ac- counts for much less than 20% of the population, they did not have the luxury of trying to out-number the street demonstrators with counter demonstrations. The demonstrators attacked government buildings and officials from the early days, and quickly got senior army officers to mutiny and defect. Government efforts to contain the protests by arresting leaders, only served as fodder for the international media campaign pointing to ‘brutal repression of dissent’, in a spiral of increasing violence.
Unlike Tunisia where the self-immolation of a starving street vendor protesting intolerable corruption was the trigger that ‘went viral’, it is clear that the Syrian rebellion was from the start based on deep conspiracy that brought senior military officers into the open. The defectors formed the core of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus- from the start a heavily armed and trained group focused on overthrowing the government by force. As seen below, the FSA quickly - or perhaps with uncanny foresight and planning, brought foreign military and financial aid. Unsurprisingly, it brought rather desperate and urgent response from loyalist forces. In the cities of Homs and Aleppo government forces were besieged, and lost control. The government termed the so-called protests a Terrorist Invasion - again a very prescient observation in view of what happened shortly thereafter.
The campaign against Syria was organized with admirable marketing skill. By June 2011, the UN’s top humanitarian relief official, Undersecretary Valerie Amos, had expressed grave concern, at the reported death of 1200 people, and the exit of some 10,000 refugees from Syria into Turkey. In August 2017, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, declared [30] that “the use of excessive and lethal force” by the security forces is “taking a heavy toll on civilian lives, including children...We have had credible allegations of children being killed or wounded in security operations against civilians in Syria”.
This followed a Syrian military operation against so-called ’protestors’ in the port city of Latakia - no doubt there were hostilities involving heavy weapons in populated urban areas, a.k.a. street fighting. The UN ’temporarily’ withdrew non-essential personnel from Syria. It is worth noting here that Latakia is home to a long- held Russian Naval Base, one of the few points from where Russia could project power in the Mediterranean. She continued:
“There are also allegations that children have been tortured by the security forces. State parties have a duty to protect children in any police or military operations and I call on the Syrian authorities to fulfill their obligations.” (https://news.un.org/en/%20en/story/2011/06/378262-syria-un-%20relief-official-voices-concern-over-%20violence-against-civilians)
Another UN report, from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, declared that the Syrian government crackdown might amount to ’crimes against humanity’ and might call for an investigation by the International Criminal Court. Of course this appears to be laudable concern for innocents, but was remarkably missing from the UN’s repertoire shortly thereafter as the ISIS massacred, raped and enslaved Yazidis and other minorities in Iraq, and set out to do the same to the minorities in Syria. Perhaps the UN suffered ’atrocity fatigue’, the kindest explanation that we can imagine. (https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/08/384432)
Jet fighters and helicopter gunships were shot down, artillery was used in urban areas and outside, and there were reports of captives being tortured and executed on both sides. These reports were of course played up in the western media as evidence of the so-called ’brutality’ of the Assad regime and Assad himself. Calm reference to history might show that Assad’s government reacted much less strongly than others, for instance the United States Government, have done when faced with a secessionist “dissent”, which soon turned into foreign-funded, foreign-armed Civil War. The UN, as usual and in the best habits that led to the failure of the League of Nations, appears to have made no effort to ascertain, not to mention hinder, the arms-vending forces behind the violent protests and ascribe responsibility for the children and other innocents being caught up in the resulting war.
The only alternative open to Assad, as far as we can see, was probably to follow the fate of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. And leave his nation to the fate that Libya is still experiencing.
In next part, we will deal with entry of ISIS to the scene and how that fundamentally changed the situation on the ground for all the relevant parties. Again, we are seeing this play out in Bangladesh where Islamists are not slowly replacing the so called revolutionaries.
