Syria: Aleppo gun battles on one street tell us little about the broader picture

August 1st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By
Michael Burleigh

PUBLISHED:

08:25 EST, 31 July 2012

|

UPDATED:

09:01 EST, 31 July 2012

Arms: At present Syria’s President Bashir al-Assad is bringing in heavy weapons to bear on a variety of rebel strongholds in Damascus

BBC news reports vividly conveyed the random violence that has erupted in the last month on the streets of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and the industrial and commercial hub of the country. But gun battles on a single street tell us very little about the broader picture, regardless of the bravery of the reporter dodging sniper rounds.

At present Syria’s President Bashir al-Assad is bringing heavy weapons (artillery and some five thousand tanks) and helicopter gunships and fighter jets to bear on a variety of rebel strongholds in Damascus (the capital), Homs and Aleppo.

Assad’s forces can also count on regular resupply from both Iran and Russia, which has warned against any western interdiction of its arms shipments to the port of Tartous. Assad’s opponents lack this sort of arsenal. They have a few captured tanks, anti-aircraft cannon and machine guns mounted on trucks, RPGs and IEDs to use against a large and highly trained government army.

Since most Syrians do not support either Assad or his rebel opponents – a fact entirely ignored in British but not US media coverage – it is unsurprising that some 200,000 people have already fled Aleppo.

Meanwhile, there are more worrying developments than what is happening on Aleppo’s streets. Let’s start with what concerns us in Britain, which we can do something about. One development almost passed unnoticed, but it is really our business.

Last week a British cameraman and a Dutch journalist inadvertently strayed into a jihadist training camp in northern Syria. They were captured and threatened with death before a rebel force got them out.

Many of their jihadist captors spoke fluent English with Birmingham or South London accents. So the British government has done nothing to stop the outrageous export of British Islamist fighters to foreign conflicts. Will they be arrested on their return? I doubt it.

Protests: Most Syrians do not support either Assad or his rebel opponents

Secondly, the Greek government has
quadrupled the number of border guards it has stationed on the
Greek-Turkish border. This is the softest entry point for illegal
immigrants into the EU. The Greeks are worried about a flood of Syrians
entering their already hard pressed country. Once into Greece, of
course, they can go anywhere in the EU, including here.

And then there is the internationalisation of the conflict. This is not just because Turkey is increasingly allowing Syrian rebels to arm, recruit and train Syrian rebels in refugee camps across the border. The next step will be Turkey sponsoring rebel enclaves in northern Syria, quite possibly under the umbrella of a no fly zone. This will be supported by Saudi Arabia, with a lot of money, and resisted by Iran, with terrorism.

Neighbouring Lebanon is also host to a number of Syrian rebel and refugee camps, which have been raided by Syrian forces. For years, Syria has also maintained a security presence inside Lebanon, which it regards as a glorified western province. Lebanon is split between supporters of Assad – notably Hizbollah’s chief Hasan Nasrallah – and Sunnis who support the rebels.

You can see this in the response to Syria’s crossborder incursions. While the Lebanese President Michel Suleiman ordered his Foreign Minister to write in protest to Damascus, the Foreign Minister, Adnan Mansour – a member of a pro-Assad Shiite party called Amal – sent an anodyne communication that fell short of protest.

Meanwhile, in the wider world, Iran has warned that any Turkish (plus Saudi and Qatari) interference in Syria will be treated as an act of war. The Russian government may grudgingly be prepared to allow Assad to fall, but it is not going to allow what it (and China) regard as further proof of western interference in what it regards as an ally.

An interesting article by a Russian TV director in today’s FT explains why Russian TV ignores the humanitarian crisis in Syria, in favour of what it (and many of the Russian public) regard as a proxy war with the West.

Single state: Most Syrians would probably like to maintain a single Syrian nation state but the country is rapidly seeing a civil war with sectarian features develop

Most Syrians would probably like to maintain a single Syrian nation state, and the balance between the various confessional/ethnic groups that make up that country. Unfortunately this is rapidly becoming a civil war with sectarian features. If pushed to the wall, the minority Alawites (a heretical Shiite sect who run Syria) may fall back to a NE enclave.

They may have no alternative since what amount to sectarian death squads are already carrying out tit-for-tat killings, in which your religion is grounds to die.

Two million Syrian Kurds may also decide that their future lies with the Autonomous Regional Government of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, which may heighten tensions within Iraq as a whole, where Al-Qaeda has become very active in slaughtering people again in mass bomb attacks. The Syrian rebels (many of them Sunni Islamists) will not want any Al Qaeda presence inside Syria lest it undermine western support.

The potential for events in Syria to escalate into a much larger series of wars is very great. Lets hope there is lots of talking by world leaders as they chat around London’s swimming pools and athletics tracks in the next fortnight.