Posted on 10/11/2013 4:38:37 AM PDT by IbJensen
(A Sunni Muslim imam from the Liwa al-Tawhid rebel group talks to his comrades in Aleppo in September.)
In “The Next Breeding Ground for Global Jihad,” former CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht writes for the Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2013, thatby “doing nothing” about Syria’s civil war and thereby worsening Syria’s descent into chaos, President Obama and Congress “may have already done their part to create the most deadly Islamic movement since the Taliban merged with al Qaeda in the 1990s.”
Gerecht explains:
Social order in the Muslim world depends, as it so often does elsewhere, on older men keeping younger men in check. In Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban’s medieval mores—a zealously crude form of village Pashtun ethics—gained the high ground because older men and their moderating social structures had been obliterated over three decades by Afghan communists, Soviets and civil war.
Urban culture—the core of Islamic civilization—was wiped out. The elites of the country’s primary ethnic groups, who had been based in the bustling, literate, Persian-speaking culture of Kabul, went into exile or became brutal warriors. Heartless men bred by battle embraced Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born Sunni militant. Bin Laden’s vision of jihad against the United States easily melded into the Taliban’s localized jihad against Ahmad Shah Masoud, the Sunni Tajik commander who formed the Northern Alliance and kept the Taliban from conquering all of Afghanistan.
To be sure, Syrian Sunni culture is vastly more cosmopolitan and urbanized than Afghan Sunni culture. Syria is where Arab Bedouins first became polished men of arts and letters and transformed Byzantine architecture into a Muslim motif that defined Islamic elegance for centuries. But the shocking satellite photos of a constantly bombarded Aleppo, the center of Sunni Syria since the 10th century, ought to warn us how quickly society can be transformed—no matter how sophisticated.
Though Arab Syrian nationalism is more solid now than when it was born 90 years ago, it isn’t nearly as deep as Syrians’ Muslim identity. And in times of tumult in the Middle East, Islam—and the ancient divide between Sunnis and Shiites—comes to the fore. Shatter Syria into fragments, and radical Islamists who appeal to a higher calling, just as they did in Afghanistan, are guaranteed to attract young men who yearn for a mission beyond their destroyed towns and villages. There may be as many as 1,000 Sunni rebel groups scattered across Syria, stocked with such fighters.
The Taliban played on tribal sentiments while always appealing to a post-tribal, Muslim conception of state. The Islamist fighters in Syria appear to be following the Taliban’s playbook. Loyalty among these men isn’t ultimately based on family, tribe, town or even country, but on the supremely fraternal act of holy war.
We don’t know what the recuperative power is for Sunni Syrian society. We do know that whatever the power is now, it will be much reduced in six months. If Assad’s manpower reserves can hold out for another year and a half or two years, Syrian Sunni society could be beyond help.
In such a Hobbesian world, radical Sunni groups that promise “stability”—of security, home and private property—could win over a popular base that would be very difficult to dislodge. This was how the Taliban were initially welcomed into Pashtun towns that were shellshocked by war.
Gerecht next claims that “the three seriously radical, armed outfits in Syria—Jabhat al-Nusra, the Ahrar al-Sham, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—likely have no more than 15,000 fighters among them, according to a study of the Syrian opposition by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That’s less than 15% of the opposition’s forces—too small a number to consolidate power and rule a post-Assad Syria.”
But that 15% figure is disputed by CODA’s Jim Habermehl’s recent post “Get Your Programs Here, Can’t Tell Your Bad Guys Without Your Program.” A report by the defense consultancy IHS Jane’s claims the figure is more like 50%: nearly half the rebels fighting to topple the Iranian-backed Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad are either diehard al-Qaida jihadists or hardline Islamists primarily focused on setting up a strict Islamic state.
Gerecht has a decided agenda: he wants the United States to get more involved in Syria by aiding the so-called “moderate rebels.”Gerecht writes:
It’s not too late for the U.S. to influence the war in favor of the rebels who are not bent on establishing an Islamist state.
Right now, Washington seems paralyzed by fear of U.S. weaponry getting into jihadist hands, which is why it has held off on doing more than having the CIA train rebels in Jordan. To make a real difference, the CIA will have to get involved inside Syria, but it won’t take a lot of men to monitor supply lines and figure out who is using U.S. weaponry.
If the U.S. is able to save Syrian Sunni society from the cancer that Assad has created, Western air power will be required to neutralize the regime’s huge advantage in artillery and chemical weapons, which Assad will surely keep in reserve, despite any pledges he makes to the United Nations. The weapons provided through CIA covert action will unlikely be sufficient to knock out the regime’s huge inventory of Soviet and Russian heavy weaponry.
But if the U.S. continues to do nothing other than entertain the chemical-weapons disarmament theater orchestrated by Russia, the West will surely rue America’s passivity. Hard-core holy warriors won’t leave Americans alone because the U.S. has declined to fight. That’s the painful lesson of the 1990s. Contrary to what the president has suggested, the U.S. doesn’t get to declare the battle against Islamic radicalism over.
In urging the Obama administration to get more involved, Gerecht conveniently leaves out this vital piece of information –
The Obama administration is ALREADY involved via training and supply arms to allegedly “moderate” militants in Syria. In fact, a recent report says the CIA is EXPANDING its “covert” effort that was secretly authorized by Obama last year, to train those “moderates” by sending additional paramilitary teams to secret bases in Jordan in recent weeks in an effort to double the number of militants getting CIA training and weapons before being sent back to Syria.
Even more alarming is a Washington Post report that quotes Former deputy CIA director Michael J. Morell saying in a recent CBS interview that increasing numbers of the moderate members of the opposition have joined forces with the extremist Islamist factions. That leads to the obvious question of whether and how many of the “moderates” being trained and
He is deliberately destructive.
The devil has convinced the world that he does not exist.
This is not so.
Obama has convinced much of the world that he is incompetent.
This also is not so.
why are they wearing those black vests with all the pockets? utilitarian, or is it some kind of muslim fashion statement?
There is only one thing these people understand and we haven’t go the balls to use it properly.
The “rebels” are going up against Valarie Jarrett’s Iran. Her puppet, Obama, has never encouraged any “spring” in Iran. It makes me wonder what the real goal is.
This is old news. Al-CIA-duh has been working for Uncle Scam for thirty years. It’s two most important missions have been to destabilize nations-states that are on the NWO Globalist’s hit list and to scare gullible Americans into giving up their freedom and their money in return for phony security. They are the hired muscle in a Mafia racket.
Obama created a tangled web of deceit, causing massive chaos and confusion both domestically and internationally.
Congress for the most part allows his creation to grow in height, depth and width.
Impeach obama now, dismantle his administration, and render Rino’s extinct, it is almost to late.
First thing came to my mind when looking at that picture was the guy was singing
Don’t Bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me
Created? No. That gives the regime too much unearned credit. But enabled? Yes!
The Shiite Syrian government currently understands that they cannot stably rule Syria, as long as there is a single Sunni left alive within their borders.
Obozo gama will point the way!
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