Lessons from Conflict in Syria, November 2019
By: Esaijas Ranstakka
Tags: Syria

The whole conflict could have been avoided. All hinged on attitude of Assad and his regime. He could have appeared to appease the protesters and continued without violence. Instead the Alawite regime made decisions, which dragged the country to incredible gutter of violence.

On thing is for certain. Syria was in the the past in the periphery of world politics. Now Syria is in the news every day.

Another thing is also certain. Russia has decided to back Damascus. Rebels were at one point three miles from Assad’ presidential palace. Without Russia’s help his regime would have been toppled.

The unfortunate fact is, that the islamist extremists empowered Assad regime. They were the useful idiots of Assad, and they did not notice, that their actions bolstered the regime in Damascus.

At one point in March 2012, Assad was about to fall. There was numerous defections, even his own prime minister Riayd Hijab defected. Also his army was starting to disintegrate at that point. However, at that low point he claimed important propaganda victory claiming he is protecting the country from extremists like Al Qaida. Before arrival of extremists the war was liberation war against oppressive Assad regime, but extremists turned it into sectarian Jihad war. It is important to recognize, that the extremists quickly marginalized the few moderates in the opposition fighters. The so called moderates in Syria were useless from the start and finally U.S. aknowledged this and gave its support to the only non-extremist faction, the Kurds in Syria.

It is also crucial to recognize, that Turkey, Qatar and Saudis supported various extremist factions. This conslusion is based on evidence and facts.

Qataris were supporting Ahrar al-Sham. Saudis were supporting Jamal Maarouf forces, Hasm grouping, Unit 13 and Unit 49. The Turks supported Noureddine Zengi and others inluding the Uighurs and Turkistan Islamic Party. Numerous claims in publicity has been made of Gulf support to ISIS and Al Qaida, but no credible evidence has been presented however.

People in D.C. had cold feet on Syria, because of the dilemma on Iraq and wish to withdraw from Iraq. That colored the thinking in D.C. to be reticent about Syria. At that time D.C. was negotiating with Tehran, and Obama did not want to upset the Mullahs in order to get his deal, which turned out to be complete failure in preventing Persians to obtain nuclear capabilities.

Anyhow there seems to have been good window to operate between November 2011 and June 2012 for the U.S. The claim is that two American submarines launching 72 Tomahawks towards Assad’s apparatus would have resulted in Assad’s Syrian Arab Army ditching him immediately. The claim is that there would have been a coup at that point and Assad’s secular Baathist vice-president Farouk al-Sharaa would have become president at that point and Syrian civil war would ended there and then.

It is an interesting claim indeed. The West was so fast against Gadaffi, but with Syria it was different. Bush (W) is war criminal but Obama’s policies were also poison to the snake pit, which is Middle-East.