all f’ed up
Money.
Somewhere....probably around 2008 era...the Saudis and the US sat down and had this idea of toppling a number of governments in the Middle East for some positive measure. It was a paper-dream....but President-to-be Obama and his staff bought off on this.
If you sit down and look at the attempted civil war episodes....it really didn’t take much effort.
One should note...it failed totally in Egypt, and by that point....everyone was getting smarter.
I think the ISIS folks were all labeled ‘good’ and part of the episode to overthrow Assad. That gimmick worked for months, then the war stalled, and ISIS flipped to run their own war, under their own terms.
I don’t think either the Saudis or the US have any control over this mess now, and a lot of exterior players (Europeans, Egyptians, Turks, etc)....have all figured out the scheme and have a sour taste in their mouth over what the US/Saudi plan was about. Even the US and Saudi relations are so bad....that the Saudis are actually talking to Israel and Russia...over the US.
“Assad and the control of Syria is Sunni”
Actually, he’s Alawite, which is more aligned with shia, but the majority of the country is Sunni. “The control” as you put it, has been thru the Iranian regime with aid from Russia.
“What government is the rebellion trying to establish? Why is USA and Western nations so Hell-bent on seeing Assad overthrown?”
Gosh, tall order here. There are numerous views of the same reality so it’s even more difficult to explain.
I think Saudi Arabia started the revolution in an attempt to overthrow Assad, whom they hated for sectarian reasons. Assad is an Alawite, which has historically been tolerant of other religions. The reason they want to overthrow Assad is they want a pipeline to the Mediterranean because once Iran goes nuclear there’s nothing to stop Iran from halting oil shipments from Saudi Arabia either in their entirety or holding them hostage for money. But Obama’s support of the Arab Spring helped turn the Saudi financed revolution into an ISSIS disaster. Now, even if Assad is overthrown it would likely be impossible to build and maintain the necessary pipeline. Saudi Arabia struck back by pumping oil in an effort to hurt Russia and Iran, which it did. But, as in all conflicts, the best laid plans are in disarray. Now Obama is spending millions and either intentionally or accidently aiding the Iranian hegemony of the entire region.
The reason the western nations what to see Assad overthrown? It makes as much sense as overthrowing Kaddafi. Which is to say, none. I think sometimes academics become wedded to some idiot notion and then can’t back off of it for fear of appearing to be the very idiots they actually are.
Another player is Hezbollah, based in Lebanon. But they are backing out of offensive operations as they’re taking casualties that are not helping their core mission, which is to destroy Israel. I think the men running Hezbollah sense, correctly, that if they keep this up they’ll be killed and replaced. (Arab politicians in the Middle East don’t retire unless they die.)
The Russians are there because they need a Mediterranean base. (Hey, Russia, it would be WAY cheaper to rent a base in Greece. I assure you money talks and NATO isn’t a factor one way or another.) Russia sees this as an opportunity to extend their influence with land bases. Had Obama stayed in Iraq with a status of forces agreement probably none of this would be happening.
That’s my thumbnail sketch. But it is from just one perspective and, believe me, there are as many perspectives here as there are people.
The Religion of Pieces.
Read their "holy" book and you understand that *all* this is the will of "allah" (pork chops be unto him).
It's no more complicated than that.
It’s all about a pipeline the Gulf States want to build to Europe, which the Russians do not want for obvious reasons.
Assad stands in the way of the pipeline.
It really is that simple.
Once Libya fell, Obama had the CIA ship arms from Libya to Syria to arm the "rebels" so they could start working to oust Assad. The "rebels" Obama armed became ISIS, and wound up going after Iraq and parts of Syria, and so far have failed to get Assad.
Obama has been forced to pretend to be fighting against ISIS when in reality Obama and ISIS are on the same side, hence we have made no progress in stopping them. The world is fed up with ISIS, so the Russians are stepping in.
It is a Sunni-Shia World War.
Sunni:
ISIS
Saudi Arabia
Turkey
Government of Yemen
Northwest Iraq Tribes
Afghanistan
Etc.
Shia:
Iran
Assad
Hezbollah
Southern Iraq Tribes
Rebels in Yemen
Etc.
And the Kurds/Christians whom everyone hates are by themselves
“From what I understand: - Assad and the control of Syria is Sunni.”
Ha, even that part is not simple. The Assad family is Sunni, but they are actually allied with (or puppets of) the Shiite Iranians. Iran (and through them, Syria) are clients/puppets of Russia, since way back in the Soviet era. So that is why Russia is stepping in. Syria is the middle link in the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah chain of Russian influence in the middle east. If Syria falls, the Russians will not be able to smuggle arms to Hezbollah very easily, and they would probably lose that link as well.
I lived in the Middle east as a consultant, most recently in Amman, Jordan and the Kurdish region in Iraq. The revolution against the Assad regime occurred as a offshoot of the Arab Spring. I was in the region when all this began. It is a complex question to answer, however this site “may” hit close to the mark for accuracy for purposes of explaining. http://middleeast.about.com/od/syria/tp/Syrian-Civil-War-Explained.htm US policy has been that Assad should go. However, the results will be and in some ways are a Libya effect. Should he go, conflicting parties will continue to leave the country in the mess it is in. Assad and his father were and are pretty brutal dictators, however until this, Assad managed to stand on the heads of those wanting to jump up and revolt. He was actually pretty fair with the Christians who comprise about 8% and many of them support the Assad regime. I have a Christian, ethnic Armenian, Iraqi friend who lived in Aleppo for some time and found it pretty decent until things started to go bad. My own harsh and brutal pragmatism was we should have 1. stayed in Iraq to suppress the ISIS that eventually grew from Syrian successes and should have stayed out of assisting in Assads overthrow. Now we have a hell of a mess which will need to be cleaned up in the administrations in the US and will require and should have already had more spec ops doing some surgical work in it. It is a partial Obama policy mess, although not completely. Time will tell what the total Russian involvement will lead to, however a lot of things will happen in the next 90 days I think to indicate where things may head..stay tuned
BBBT
Really complex question. It appears to me that the Russians and the Iranians are supporting Assad. The U.S. and Saudis are supporting the rebels. The Turks are just using this to go after the Kurds.
The rebels, however, have a bad habit of defecting to ISIS after we’ve equipped them and trained them. The recent article about spending millions to train what is now only 5 fighters, shows the foolhardiness of Obama.
Also, it appears Obama doesn’t want to antagonize his new Iranian allies and that’s why our warplanes are going back to their bases with bombs on the rails rather than strike Assad regime targets. He also doesn’t want to antagonize the Saudis so he doesn’t want to strike too many rebel targets either.
The Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians and Israelis are making peaceful overtures to the Russians in the wake of the power vacuum Obama has left in the ME in his wake. The Saudis are doing so probably in the hopes that the Russians will be a counterbalance to Iran (whom they hate), to keep them on a leash.
In hindsight, it was a mistake to take out Saddam. He was serving as an effective counterbalance to the mullahs in Iran and he hated them. He was also the perfect leader for our interests for any Muslim country: A “Muslim” who doesn’t take his faith seriously, but is rather all about his own power.
That’s also why the whole “Arab Spring” was such a profoundly naive? idea. Replacing autocrats and dictators who didn’t take Islam seriously, with popularly elected serious Muslims, would inevitably result in Muslim Brotherhood or worse coming to power. It’s sad but Bush and the neocons were wrong about Muslims when he thought they were longing for freedom. They need a dictator in charge of their nations who is not serious about Islam, or they’ll become as jihadi as Iran. That’s sad but it’s realpolitik.
Assad is Alawite, a branch of Shia Islam.
Lol, that’s funny