07-11-2019, 10:29 PM
*** 12-Jul-19 World View -- Syria war may be fizzling, as al-Assad 'hits a wall' in Idlib
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Syria war may be fizzling, with Idlib conflict frozen
****
For the past three years, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has
publicly vowed that he would regain control of all of Syria, even if
it meant exterminating all of millions of civilians in his Sunni Arab
opposition.
Al-Assad used a similar period in one region after another -- Aleppo,
Ghouta, Daraa, etc. He begins by bombing peaceful protesters,
particularly women and children. As soon as someone become violent in
revenge, he declares the whole community or ethnic group to be
"terrorists," and uses that as an excuse for full-scale genocide and
ethnic cleansing. The genocide is performed with missiles, barrel
bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas, all particularly targeting women
and children, as well as schools, markets, and hospitals. In each
region, under pressure from Russia and the United Nations, allowed
hundreds of thousands of people to flee to the northwest province of
Idlib.
Al-Assad has vowed since May 2018 that he would attack Idlib in
exactly the same way, in order take control of it. This has led to
widespread fears of a major humanitarian catastrophe, since "there's
no Idlib for Idlib," meaning that there's no place for the people to
flee to. Thanks to the influx of refugees from other regions, Idlib
now has over three million people, mostly women and children, and
al-Assad claims that all of them are "terrorists." Approximately
70,000 are believed to be members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an
anti-Assad rebel group formerly associated with al-Qaeda.
If al-Assad assaulted Idlib in the same way as the other regions,
perhaps millions of people would try to cross the border into Turkey.
Turkey will bear the brunt of this disaster. Turkey is already
hosting 3.5 million refugees, and is doing everything possible to
prevent any more refugees from Syria from entering Turkey. If a new
mass of refugees does enter Turkey, then some of the Idlib refugees
will undoubtedly continue on into Europe, resulting in a new European
migrant crisis.
****
**** Al-Assad 'hits a wall'
****
I and many other people expected al-Assad's assault on Idlib to have
begun long before now. But there was almost know military action at
all in the last year, until April 26, when it began bombing
residential areas, schools, hospitals, markets and other places where
women and children are likely to be found. It seemed that the full
force of al-Assad's assault on Idlib had begun.
However, al-Assad's assault on Idlib appears to have "hit a wall."
More than two months of Russian-backed operations in and around Idlib
province have yielded little or nothing. Al-Assad's assault has been
met with a counterpunch from anti-Assad rebels who have been
well-armed with guided anti-tank missiles supplied by Turkey.
****
**** The instability of Idlib province
****
The fact that al-Assad has accomplished little in Idlib in the last
year, and has hit a roadblock since resuming operations on April 26,
is making observers wonder if the war may be reaching a diplomatic
solution, with no clear victory by either al-Assad or the anti-Assad
rebels. There are a number of political reasons supporting that
conclusion.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin has been under domestic pressure
because of the cost of Russia's support for Syria in the war. That's
not surprising, since Russia already has what it wants from the Syria
war. Russia was completely shut out of the Mideast in the 1990s after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, for the first time in decades,
Russia has two military bases in the Mideast -- the Tartus naval base,
and the Hmeimim airbase, both of them in Syria, in return for
supporting al-Assad. Russia is now firmly in control of those two
bases, and now that it has the bases it wants, and also wants to spend
less money, it can pull back from the war in Syria.
In the past, Russia, Iran, and Iran's puppet Hezbollah were all
fighting alongside al-Assad's forces against his Sunni Arab
opposition. Turkey had no choice but to watch what was happening from
afar.
But now, Russia wants to be main power in the Mideast. Furthermore,
Russia does not want any more Mideast wars, since they would
inevitably require Russia to intervene. So Russia wants to support
Turkey in preventing a massive new refugee crisis in Idlib. Russia
would also like to keep Iran and Hezbollah under control, so that they
don't threaten a war with Israel.
However, there are also major political factors working against a
political solution. The HTS anti-Assad rebels have been attacking
Syrian forces. Theoretically, based on an agreement between Turkey
and Russia, Turkey is supposed to prevent these kinds of attacks
between HTS and al-Assad forces, by means of a buffer zone separating
them, but this has not been entirely successful.
****
**** Does the Syria war have a political solution?
****
When the war in Syria began in 2011, I wrote that it would fizzle
because Syria is in a generational Awakening era. That's what should
have happened. The war almost fizzled after four years in 2015 when
al-Assad's army, ridden with desertions, was facing defeat from his
Arab Sunni opposition. But that was point at which he was saved by
Russia, which brought the full force of its armed forces in support of
al-Assad.
Now another four years have passed, and once again it appears that war
is about to fizzle. Maybe this time there will finally be some sort
of political settlement. It's certainly true that after eight years,
pretty much everyone is sick and tired of fighting the war.
Syria's current "civil war" is also an Awakening era war because it
comes just one generation after the real civil war that occurred in
Syria.
Syria's last generational crisis war was a religious/ethnic civil war
between the Shia Alawites versus the Sunnis. That war climaxed in
February 1982 with the destruction of the town of Hama. There had
been a massive uprising of the 400,000 mostly Sunni citizens of Hama
against Syria's Shia/Alawite president Hafez al-Assad, the current
president's father. He turned the town to rubble and killed or
displaced hundreds of thousands. Hama stands as a defining moment in
the Middle East. It was so shocking that it largely ended the war.
That worked because at that time, Syria was in a generational crisis
era, and the destruction of Hama was the climax of the war. The
reason for Bashar al-Assad's delusions is that he thought that the
destruction of Aleppo in 2016 would end the war in the same way that
his father's destruction of Hama ended the war. But this is a
generational Awakening era, and that kind of outcome doesn't work.
The reason that it doesn't work is that there are many survivors who
were shocked by the destruction of Hama in 1982, but are no longer
shocked by similar actions since they've seen it all before. So the
destruction of Aleppo did not end the war, as Bashar al-Assad
delusionally hoped, and now the war is back in full force.
So that's why the war should have fizzled, since both the
Shia/Alawites and the Arab Sunnis have vivid memories of the 1982 war
and don't want it to repeat. So why didn't war fizzle quickly?
As I've written many times in the past, Bashar al-Assad is the worst
genocidal monster so far this century. He is apparently in some kind
kind of psychotic competition with his late father, and wants to prove
that he can slaughter just as many people, just as effectively.
(As an aside, North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un is also in a
similar psychotic competition with his own late father, Kim Jong-il,
as I've mentioned in the past.)
The Syrian war began in 2011 when al-Assad ordered his army and air
force to attack peacefully protesting civilians, including women and
children. Things really turned around in August 2011, when al-Assad
launched a massive military assault on a large, peaceful Palestinian
refugee camp in Latakia, filled with tens of thousands of women and
children Palestinians. He dropped barrel bombs laden with metal,
chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons onto innocent
Sunni women and children, he's targeted bombs on schools and
hospitals, and he's used Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. He
considers all Sunni Muslims to be cockroaches to be exterminated.
This attack on Arab Sunnis attracked tens of thousands of young
jihadists to Syria to fight al-Assad. By 2014, these jihadists had
formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
There were numerous anti-Assad rebel groups, including the Free Syrian
Army (FSA), Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat
al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) later renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS,
and then renamed again to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). There were also
Kurdish forces including PYD = Kurdish Democratic Union Party, YPG =
Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, armed wing of the PYD, and YPJ =
Women’s Protection Units. And of course there were also Turkish
forces, American forces, Hezbollah and Iran's Islamic Revolution
Guards Corps (IRGC).
The point is that the Syrian civil war is not really a civil war.
Rather it's a mash of over a dozen different forces vying for control
of different parts of Syria.
In the past eight years since Syria's war began, I've written analyses
of Awakening era wars in many other countries, where the preceding
crisis war was an ethnic or tribal civil war. All the leaders in such
cases exhibit some level of violence against their former tribal or
ethnic enemies. These include Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Paul Biya in
Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, the
military junta in Thailand, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert Mugabe
in Zimbabwe, Salva Kiir in South Sudan, Joseph Kabila in Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), and Hun Sen in Cambodia.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what we can expect
with respect to Idlab and the war in Syria is as follows: The Syria
war will not reach a climax (such as the climax in 1982). Intead, the
war will fizzle, or there will be some kind of poltical settlement.
Throughout history, what has always happened in such situations is
there are always alternating periods of peace and low-level violence
or war. Each period of violence will be worse than the previous one,
land will be settled by some kind of peace agreement, which will be
quickly broken by one or both sides. Finally, after several decades,
there is a massive new generational crisis war, and the cycle repeats.
At the very least, we can breath a sigh of relief that al-Assad
has "hit a wall" in Idlib, so that there won't be a new humanitarian
catastrophe.
****
**** Sources:
****
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Aleppo, Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, Idlib, Hama, Latakia,
Russia, Iran, Latakia, Aleppo,
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS, Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front,
Kurds, Rajova, People’s Protection Units, YPG,
Free Syrian Army, FSA
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Syria war may be fizzling, with Idlib conflict frozen
- Al-Assad 'hits a wall'
- The instability of Idlib province
- Does the Syria war have a political solution?
- Sources:
****
**** Syria war may be fizzling, with Idlib conflict frozen
****
For the past three years, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has
publicly vowed that he would regain control of all of Syria, even if
it meant exterminating all of millions of civilians in his Sunni Arab
opposition.
Al-Assad used a similar period in one region after another -- Aleppo,
Ghouta, Daraa, etc. He begins by bombing peaceful protesters,
particularly women and children. As soon as someone become violent in
revenge, he declares the whole community or ethnic group to be
"terrorists," and uses that as an excuse for full-scale genocide and
ethnic cleansing. The genocide is performed with missiles, barrel
bombs, chlorine gas and Sarin gas, all particularly targeting women
and children, as well as schools, markets, and hospitals. In each
region, under pressure from Russia and the United Nations, allowed
hundreds of thousands of people to flee to the northwest province of
Idlib.
Al-Assad has vowed since May 2018 that he would attack Idlib in
exactly the same way, in order take control of it. This has led to
widespread fears of a major humanitarian catastrophe, since "there's
no Idlib for Idlib," meaning that there's no place for the people to
flee to. Thanks to the influx of refugees from other regions, Idlib
now has over three million people, mostly women and children, and
al-Assad claims that all of them are "terrorists." Approximately
70,000 are believed to be members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an
anti-Assad rebel group formerly associated with al-Qaeda.
If al-Assad assaulted Idlib in the same way as the other regions,
perhaps millions of people would try to cross the border into Turkey.
Turkey will bear the brunt of this disaster. Turkey is already
hosting 3.5 million refugees, and is doing everything possible to
prevent any more refugees from Syria from entering Turkey. If a new
mass of refugees does enter Turkey, then some of the Idlib refugees
will undoubtedly continue on into Europe, resulting in a new European
migrant crisis.
****
**** Al-Assad 'hits a wall'
****
I and many other people expected al-Assad's assault on Idlib to have
begun long before now. But there was almost know military action at
all in the last year, until April 26, when it began bombing
residential areas, schools, hospitals, markets and other places where
women and children are likely to be found. It seemed that the full
force of al-Assad's assault on Idlib had begun.
However, al-Assad's assault on Idlib appears to have "hit a wall."
More than two months of Russian-backed operations in and around Idlib
province have yielded little or nothing. Al-Assad's assault has been
met with a counterpunch from anti-Assad rebels who have been
well-armed with guided anti-tank missiles supplied by Turkey.
****
**** The instability of Idlib province
****
The fact that al-Assad has accomplished little in Idlib in the last
year, and has hit a roadblock since resuming operations on April 26,
is making observers wonder if the war may be reaching a diplomatic
solution, with no clear victory by either al-Assad or the anti-Assad
rebels. There are a number of political reasons supporting that
conclusion.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin has been under domestic pressure
because of the cost of Russia's support for Syria in the war. That's
not surprising, since Russia already has what it wants from the Syria
war. Russia was completely shut out of the Mideast in the 1990s after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, for the first time in decades,
Russia has two military bases in the Mideast -- the Tartus naval base,
and the Hmeimim airbase, both of them in Syria, in return for
supporting al-Assad. Russia is now firmly in control of those two
bases, and now that it has the bases it wants, and also wants to spend
less money, it can pull back from the war in Syria.
In the past, Russia, Iran, and Iran's puppet Hezbollah were all
fighting alongside al-Assad's forces against his Sunni Arab
opposition. Turkey had no choice but to watch what was happening from
afar.
But now, Russia wants to be main power in the Mideast. Furthermore,
Russia does not want any more Mideast wars, since they would
inevitably require Russia to intervene. So Russia wants to support
Turkey in preventing a massive new refugee crisis in Idlib. Russia
would also like to keep Iran and Hezbollah under control, so that they
don't threaten a war with Israel.
However, there are also major political factors working against a
political solution. The HTS anti-Assad rebels have been attacking
Syrian forces. Theoretically, based on an agreement between Turkey
and Russia, Turkey is supposed to prevent these kinds of attacks
between HTS and al-Assad forces, by means of a buffer zone separating
them, but this has not been entirely successful.
****
**** Does the Syria war have a political solution?
****
When the war in Syria began in 2011, I wrote that it would fizzle
because Syria is in a generational Awakening era. That's what should
have happened. The war almost fizzled after four years in 2015 when
al-Assad's army, ridden with desertions, was facing defeat from his
Arab Sunni opposition. But that was point at which he was saved by
Russia, which brought the full force of its armed forces in support of
al-Assad.
Now another four years have passed, and once again it appears that war
is about to fizzle. Maybe this time there will finally be some sort
of political settlement. It's certainly true that after eight years,
pretty much everyone is sick and tired of fighting the war.
Syria's current "civil war" is also an Awakening era war because it
comes just one generation after the real civil war that occurred in
Syria.
Syria's last generational crisis war was a religious/ethnic civil war
between the Shia Alawites versus the Sunnis. That war climaxed in
February 1982 with the destruction of the town of Hama. There had
been a massive uprising of the 400,000 mostly Sunni citizens of Hama
against Syria's Shia/Alawite president Hafez al-Assad, the current
president's father. He turned the town to rubble and killed or
displaced hundreds of thousands. Hama stands as a defining moment in
the Middle East. It was so shocking that it largely ended the war.
That worked because at that time, Syria was in a generational crisis
era, and the destruction of Hama was the climax of the war. The
reason for Bashar al-Assad's delusions is that he thought that the
destruction of Aleppo in 2016 would end the war in the same way that
his father's destruction of Hama ended the war. But this is a
generational Awakening era, and that kind of outcome doesn't work.
The reason that it doesn't work is that there are many survivors who
were shocked by the destruction of Hama in 1982, but are no longer
shocked by similar actions since they've seen it all before. So the
destruction of Aleppo did not end the war, as Bashar al-Assad
delusionally hoped, and now the war is back in full force.
So that's why the war should have fizzled, since both the
Shia/Alawites and the Arab Sunnis have vivid memories of the 1982 war
and don't want it to repeat. So why didn't war fizzle quickly?
As I've written many times in the past, Bashar al-Assad is the worst
genocidal monster so far this century. He is apparently in some kind
kind of psychotic competition with his late father, and wants to prove
that he can slaughter just as many people, just as effectively.
(As an aside, North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un is also in a
similar psychotic competition with his own late father, Kim Jong-il,
as I've mentioned in the past.)
The Syrian war began in 2011 when al-Assad ordered his army and air
force to attack peacefully protesting civilians, including women and
children. Things really turned around in August 2011, when al-Assad
launched a massive military assault on a large, peaceful Palestinian
refugee camp in Latakia, filled with tens of thousands of women and
children Palestinians. He dropped barrel bombs laden with metal,
chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons onto innocent
Sunni women and children, he's targeted bombs on schools and
hospitals, and he's used Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. He
considers all Sunni Muslims to be cockroaches to be exterminated.
This attack on Arab Sunnis attracked tens of thousands of young
jihadists to Syria to fight al-Assad. By 2014, these jihadists had
formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
There were numerous anti-Assad rebel groups, including the Free Syrian
Army (FSA), Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat
al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) later renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS,
and then renamed again to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). There were also
Kurdish forces including PYD = Kurdish Democratic Union Party, YPG =
Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, armed wing of the PYD, and YPJ =
Women’s Protection Units. And of course there were also Turkish
forces, American forces, Hezbollah and Iran's Islamic Revolution
Guards Corps (IRGC).
The point is that the Syrian civil war is not really a civil war.
Rather it's a mash of over a dozen different forces vying for control
of different parts of Syria.
In the past eight years since Syria's war began, I've written analyses
of Awakening era wars in many other countries, where the preceding
crisis war was an ethnic or tribal civil war. All the leaders in such
cases exhibit some level of violence against their former tribal or
ethnic enemies. These include Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Paul Biya in
Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, the
military junta in Thailand, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert Mugabe
in Zimbabwe, Salva Kiir in South Sudan, Joseph Kabila in Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), and Hun Sen in Cambodia.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what we can expect
with respect to Idlab and the war in Syria is as follows: The Syria
war will not reach a climax (such as the climax in 1982). Intead, the
war will fizzle, or there will be some kind of poltical settlement.
Throughout history, what has always happened in such situations is
there are always alternating periods of peace and low-level violence
or war. Each period of violence will be worse than the previous one,
land will be settled by some kind of peace agreement, which will be
quickly broken by one or both sides. Finally, after several decades,
there is a massive new generational crisis war, and the cycle repeats.
At the very least, we can breath a sigh of relief that al-Assad
has "hit a wall" in Idlib, so that there won't be a new humanitarian
catastrophe.
****
**** Sources:
****
- Assad hits a wall in Syrian war as front lines harden (Reuters, 10-Jul-2019)
- Erdogan’s Excellent Adventure in Idlib (National Interest, 9-Jul-2019)
- Reports: Personnel Changes In Top Syrian Security Echelons – Under Russian Pressure (Memri, 11-Jul-2019)
- Assad regime kills 9 in strikes on hospital, school in Idlib de-escalation zone (Daily Sabah, Turkey, 10-Jul-2019)
- Large Turkish commando convoy deploys to Idlib border amid reports of new Syrian Army offensive (Al-Masdar News, Damascus, 9-Jul-2019)
- Turkey / Assad regime bombing campaign fails to dislodge Syria opposition fighters (TRT World, Turkey, 8-Jul-2019)
- Putin warns that militants are flowing into Libya from Syria's Idlib (Reuters, 4-Jul-2019)
- Battle for Idlib: Scores of fighters reported killed in fight for hilltop village (Middle East Eye, 11-Jul-2019)
- Syrian and Russian warplanes target health facilities across rebel-held Idlib (Middle East Eye, 10-Jul-2019)
- Idlib / How the Syrian war resulted in Erdogan’s Istanbul defeat (Middle East Eye, 10-Jul-2019)
- Germany says no to US request for ground troops in Syria (Middle East Eye, 8-Jul-2019)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Aleppo, Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, Idlib, Hama, Latakia,
Russia, Iran, Latakia, Aleppo,
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS, Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front,
Kurds, Rajova, People’s Protection Units, YPG,
Free Syrian Army, FSA
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
