RSS Feed
May 26th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
The militias are Alawite, the minority Muslim sect that holds power in Syria;
the opposition in this mixed-sect area is Sunni; and there is a frenzy with
a reason to these attacks, of which there have been half a dozen on varying
scales in recent weeks.
The gangs involved in them believe it is victory, or nothing. The regime’s
consistent message is that the revolutionaries wish to impose a Sunni
dominance that will leave no place for the Alawites. From outside, this is
easy to deconstruct; inside Syria, the discourse runs wide and deep.
Earlier this month in Damascus I listened to cosmopolitan people I liked and
trusted tell me that agents of Gulf countries had laced the food of
demonstrators with drugs, driving them out of their minds. It had not
occurred to them that the television reports which told them this were lies,
drawn from the Arab Spring boilerplate, and they seemed shocked when I
mentioned that Col Gaddafi’s henchmen had told me exactly the same of his
Libyan opponents a year ago.
If well-educated professionals can be so naive, how much easier must it be to
manipulate the mindset of those drawn into the lower reaches of the
paramilitary groups which, defectors have told me, are used specifically to
allow the trained brigades to remain ignorant of what is done in their name.
There is a disconnect, as many point out, between Damascus and the provinces,
but in fact the disconnect in Syria is the same as that in many Arab Spring
countries. This is the rift between an increasingly sophisticated centre of
society, and a remnant who have been left behind, many in the more thuggish
branches of the security forces, who perhaps rightly feel that in any new
order there will be even less of a place for them.
The Alawites, the sect to which the Assads belong, were historically the
underdogs of Syrian society – which is why the French used them to fill
their colonial army, a small bit of explanatory history. They have been told
before to fight for their future by any means necessary, and are now being
told to again.
It is a cunning tactic, because it is self-fulfilling – by doing so, they
excite a rabid response, and the violence becomes cyclical.
The regime works on the assumption that the messier this becomes, the lower
the chances of intervention to stop it.
It believes it can work round the UN observers and that the western powers,
bedevilled by elections and financial crises, don’t want to get involved,
and just need an excuse to hold off.
But other regimes have taken that gamble. Their leaders are now in the Hague.
Internal pressures on the regime grow, its neighbours are either terrified,
outraged or discredited, and the Americans are now said to be helping the
Qataris deliver arms to the rebels.
Is it possible that Houla will prove a throw of the dice too far for the
Assads?
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
