Syrian official: Damascus planting landmines

Yahoo/AP ^

[nuconvert]

BEIRUT (AP) — A Syrian official and witnesses say Damascus is planting landmines along parts of the border with Lebanon.

[BenLurkin]

We need to plant landmines on the border with Mexico.

[familyop]

The IDF will be able to clear lanes through those at a run. Islamists are retards.

[The_Reader_David]

1. The landmines are along the Lebanese border, not in the Golan, so I doubt the IDF will be clearing them.

2. The Assad family, unpleasant as they are to U.S. interests (except when they coincide with their own in suppressing radical Sunni movements like Al Qaeda) and Israeli interests, are not Islamists. Their Syrian Ba'ath Party draws its support from essentially all of the non-Sunni segments of Syrian society including Alawites (the odd, probably-once-crypto-Christian, brand of Shia Islam to which the Assads subscribe), orthodox Shi'ites, and Christians (Orthodox, Melkite, and Monophysite -- both Jacobites and Armenians -- and Nestorian).

3. I'm afraid in this case the devil one knows is to be preferred to the one clamoring to take its place: the opposition to the Assads is Islamist, of the Sunni variety. The chants in some of the early protests before the crackdown ran "Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave!". Yes, if they take over, Syria will cease to be pro-Iranian, but paradoxically would become even more anti-American and more actively anti-Israeli, as it would be alined with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.