Syrian Revolution Expanding Into a Regional Conflict

and let's see, Russia is going to send arms to Syria. Obummer is contemplating no-fly zone.
This is going to get real interesting.

I think getting some fuel, Ag, Au, and Pb is in order.

 

Oh man...you forgot the CuZn....never forget the CuZn!

 

What the hex am I going to do with Cubic Zirconias?

I'd rather have pennies in my pockets.

 

Bait! That's what that is....

 

Ah, good idea. Not sure I'd want what I could catch with them. It might cause me to use some of the valuable preps.

maybe just choot it.

 

i wonder if them crystals could be grown into bullet shapes...could bring new life the the expression "diamonds are a girl's best friend".

 

Death toll rises in southern Lebanon clashes between army and Sunni militia

By Loveday Morris, Published: June 24

EXCERPTS:
SIDON, Lebanon — The death toll in clashes in Lebanon’s southern city of Sidon continued to climb Monday, marking the bloodiest 48 hours for the country’s army since the conflict in Syria began creeping over the border and evoking memories of Lebanon’s own 15-year civil war.

Fifteen soldiers have been killed in the fighting between the military and Sunni militia supporting Sidon’s firebrand cleric Sheik Ahmed al-Assir, according to a senior security official.
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While Lebanon has sporadically erupted in sectarian clashes over the past two years, the fighting in Sidon provides a significant test for the country’s security forces, with the potential to pull the Lebanese army into the sectarian fray as the regional Sunni-Shiite tensions grow in the fallout from Syria’s war.

In the latest bout of fighting, the army, seen as an important stabilizing force in a country that is suffering from a political vacuum, risks being seen as taking sides amid reports that militants from the Shiite movement Hezbollah are coordinating with the military, analysts said. In the northern city of Tripoli, members of a Sunni militia backing Assir have attacked an army position, and masked gunmen patrolling the streets have forced shops to close.
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The location of the violence is particularly evocative — it was in Sidon in 1975 that the first sparks of the civil war were ignited with the assassination of Maarouf Saad, a prominent politician, at a demonstration. His son, Osama Saad, who has taken over his father’s mantle as leader of the Popular Nasserite Party, said events in Sidon over the past two days have brought back memories of that time.

“Today I am reminded of the atmosphere of the civil war . . . the shelling and the snipers,” he said in an interview with journalists. “For a long time we’ve warned that we might reach this point. All the Lebanese people remember the agony and struggle of the Lebanese civil war, and they are afraid.”

However, he expressed optimism that the country can bounce back, with “lessons learned” by Lebanese politicians about the high cost of all-out war.

The exchange of heavy weaponry fire had abated by Monday afternoon. But with sniper fire continuing, the streets of this sleepy coastal town, just over 25 miles south of the capital, were deserted as many residents fled or holed up inside.
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As the fighting lulled Monday, residents fled the city, fearful that there was more violence to follow.
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In southern Lebanon, death toll rises in clashes between army and Sunni militia - The Washington Post

 

Saudi minister pledges aid for Syrian rebels facing ‘genocide’

By Karen DeYoung, Published: June 25

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said Tuesday that his country will help Syrian rebels “the most effective way we can” in response to what he called “genocide” perpetrated by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Saudi Arabia is not a country that interferes in internal affairs of countries,” Saud said in a news conference with visiting Secretary of State John F. Kerry. “But an invaded country,” he said in a reference to Hezbollah and Iranian militia fighters joining Assad’s forces, “where genocide is being perpetrated, is not a normal situation. And I can say with clarity that we will help the Syrian people defend themselves.”
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According to the United Nations, nearly 93,000 Syrians have been killed and about 5 million Syrians have fled their homes internally or to neighboring countries during the more than two-year-old conflict.

The situation “has been made far more difficult and complicated by Assad’s invitation to Iran and to Hezbollah . . . to cross international lines,” Kerry said. “With respect to the technicalities of one particular type of aid versus another, or logistics . . . that we are trying to coordinate,” he said, “we’re trying to understand as well as possible what each nation is doing today, what they’re prepared to do.”
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Although none of the rebels’ benefactors has publicly announced specific forms of aid, Saudi Arabia, along with Qatar, has indicated that it is prepared to send an increased flow of heavy weaponry, including hand-held surface-to-air missiles. The United States, in addition to sending light weapons and ammunition, plans to increase its training of rebel commanders and fighters, along with stepped-up logistics and intelligence assistance.
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ISIS May Open a Third Front in Lebanon

Excerpts:
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Irish bombers used to have a grim mantra they would throw in the face of British authorities when one of their attacks didn’t go according to plan. “You have to be lucky all the time; we only have to be lucky once.” At the weekend the jihadist planners of a weekend bombing in Lebanon may have been muttering darkly to themselves something similar as they seek to open up fully a third front in their war in the Levant.

Lebanon escaped a big hit on Sunday night because a suicide bomber had a mechanical problem with his car and instead of arriving at his intended target in the Shia-dominated southern suburbs triggered his device prematurely near a Lebanese army checkpoint at one of the area’s main entrances. A Lebanese soldier was killed and more than 20 civilians were injured. Most of them were at café watching World Cup soccer when the explosion erupted.

It could have been much worse. Lebanese security forces say the bomber’s target was a bigger one right in the heart of the southern suburbs, the Beirut homeland of Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shia movement.

The signs are that in the coming weeks al Qaeda offshoot the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) will be following through in Lebanon in a bid to sow not only more mayhem and confusion in the Levant but in an effort to put pressure on the Lebanese militant Shia movement Hezbollah to start withdrawing some forces from neighboring Syria, where they have been a key factor in helping President Bashar al-Assad turn the tide of battle against rebels seeking to oust him.

“Spillover” is the description most reporters use for the episodic violence in Lebanon – from cross-border rocket jousting between Hezbollah and Syrian rebels to more than a dozen car bombings that have rocked Lebanon in the past two years. But the three countries are not separate saucepans – they are one boiling cauldron.
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So, for ISIS and Sunni militants there is now every reason to increase the pressure in Lebanon on Iran-backed Hezbollah. And the signs are that they are.

A bombing spate in Lebanon last year started to tail off in the winter. Lebanese security officials put that down to their increased vigilance and better policing. But it may have had more to do with the strategic priorities of ISIS and the official al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra as well as a successful offensive by Hezbollah and Syrian government forces in the mountainous Al-Qalamoun—a rugged region that runs from the rural outskirts of the Syrian capital to the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah officials and Lebanese security sources say the cars in some of the bomb attacks were rigged with explosives in the Al-Qalamoun town of Yabrud and driven into Lebanon through the Lebanese border town of Arsal. That route was interdicted with the retaking of Yabrud by the Syrian army this winter – to the relief of Hezbollah, which was suffering acute political embarrassment as a result of a string of suicide blasts in its own backyard of Beirut’s southern suburbs.

ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for the bombings.

But now there is an uptick in jihadist activity and the Lebanese are alarmed. The speaker of the country’s dysfunctional parliament, Nabih Berri, sees a connection with the Iraq crisis. “The security situation is dangerous in light of what is happening in Iraq,” he said Tuesday.
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Lebanese security agencies have been quick to try to nip what could well be a new bombing spate in the bud. Last week, they raided hotels in Beirut’s Hamra, a predominantly student and artistic district also favored by tourists, and arrested 17 people, releasing all but three later. A Frenchman who was detained told his interrogators he had been recruited by ISIS. And Wednesday, Lebanese authorities arrested in the northern city of Tripoli six members of what they termed a “criminal cell,” including a university professor and two students.

But as fast as the authorities work to avoid becoming a third front, long-suffering Lebanon ultimately is too small, too close to the action, and too friable to hold out for long.

ISIS May Open a Third Front in Lebanon - The Daily Beast

 

Israeli air strikes hit Syrian military targets

Excerpts:
The Israeli military has carried out air strikes on targets inside Syria, including a military headquarters, in response to a cross-border attack that left an Israeli teenager dead.

In all, Israel said it struck nine military targets inside Syria, and "direct hits were confirmed."

The targets were located near the site of Sunday's violence in the Golan Heights and included a regional military command centre and unspecified "launching positions." There was no immediate response from Syria.
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"Yesterday's attack was an unprovoked act of aggression against Israel, and a direct continuation to recent attacks that occurred in the area," said Lt Col Peter Lerner, a military spokesman.

He said the military "will not tolerate any attempt to breach Israel's sovereignty and will act in order to safeguard the civilians of the state of Israel".
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Israel is also believed to have carried out several airstrikes on arms shipments it believed to be headed from Syria to Hezbollah militants in neighbouring Lebanon.

It was not immediately clear whether Syrian troops or one of the many rebel groups battling the government carried out Sunday's deadly attack in the Golan. Lerner said it was clear that the attack was intentional.

Israel has repeatedly said it holds the Syrian government responsible for any attacks emanating from its territory, regardless of who actually carries them out.
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Israeli air strikes hit Syrian military targets | World news | The Guardian

 

They had better. If Lebanon blows up into a civil war again, and it could easily do so, spillover into Israel, to some degree, will be inevitable.

All of what is happening now is exactly why Israel and the western world had been quite happy, since 1967, to allow the Assad family to rule Syria as if it were their personal property. Even though the Assads and their cronies were cruel despots, at least the country remained stable. Due to its geographic placement, Syria has always been a regional linchpin. No sane person, who understood anything about Middle Eastern affairs, wanted to see Syria come unhinged. Syria borders Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon; and the ethnic and religious population groupings within Syria cross all of those borders. Trouble in Syria would inevitably mean trouble for its neighbors, and the rest of the Middle East. And now we are seeing it unfold.

 

The goings on in the Middle East over the past few decades reminds me very much of the Christian wars surrounding the Reformation and the Counter Reformation. Perhaps in 600 years time, Islam will have simmered down into a luke-warm kind of religion that Christianity and Judaism have largely become.

I suspect that the ghost of T.E. Lawrence is probably looking down in bemusement on the developments in the Middle East over the past few decades, shaking his head at the promises made to the Arabs during WWI, and then peremptorily reneged upon by France and Britain during the last gasps of European colonialism at the end of WWI. Arbitrarily setting national borders, using a compass and ruler, was bound to end in tears, particularly when religious, tribal and ethnic demographics bear no resemblance the territories so formed.

I do so hope that the Chinese heathens don't make that kind of mistake!

 

Israel Could Get Dragged Into ISIS’s War, Obama Admin Warns
EXCERPTS:
If ISIS threatens the survival of Jordan, the Obama administration believes, it would ask for help from two of the least popular countries in the Middle East: America and Israel.

The terror group that’s taken over major portions of Iraq and Syria won’t be content with roiling those two countries, senior Obama administration officials told Senators in a classified briefing this week. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) also has its eyes on Jordan; in fact, its jihadists are already Tweeting out photos and messages claiming a key southern town in Jordan already belongs to them.

An ISIS attack on Jordan could make an already complex conflict nightmarishly tangled, the officials added in their briefing. If the Jordanians are seriously threatened by ISIS, they would almost certainly try to enlist Israel and the United States into the war now engulfing the Middle East.
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If ISIS were to draw Israel into the regional conflict it would make the region’s strange politics even stranger. In Iraq and Syria, Israel’s arch nemesis, Iran, is fighting ISIS. Israel, on the other hand, has used its air force from time to time to bomb Hezbollah positions in Syria and Lebanon, the Lebanese militia aligned with Iran. If Israel were to fight against ISIS in Jordan, it would become a de facto ally of Iran, a regime dedicated to its destruction.

But Jordan is also an important ally for Israel. It is one of two countries (along with Egypt) to have a peace treaty with the Jewish state. Jordanian security forces help patrol the east bank of the Jordan River that borders Israel and both countries share intelligence about terrorist groups in the region.
.....

Thomas Sanderson, the co-director for transnational threats at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Israel and the United States view the survival of the Jordanian monarchy as a paramount national security objective.

“I think Israel and the United States would identify a substantial threat to Jordan as a threat to themselves and would offer all appropriate assets to the Jordanians,” he said.
.....

A spokeswoman for the Jordanian embassy in Washington, Dana Daoud, said the country’s military and security forces were fully capable of meeting the ISIS threat. “We are in full control of our borders and our Jordanian Armed Forces are being very vigilant,” she said. “We have taken all the precautionary measures. So far, we have not detected any abnormal movement. however, if anything threatens our security or gets near our borders it will face the full strength of our Jordanian Armed Forces.” Earlier this week, Jordan closed a major border crossing with Iraq.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and is a co-chair of the Congressional Friends of Jordan Caucus, said in an interview that the threat from ISIS could draw the United States into the conflict. But he also said he had more confidence in Jordan’s military than he did in Iraq’s.
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In the last year, the U.S. military has also positioned batteries of Patriot missiles and a fleet of F-16s inside Jordan along with a contingency of U.S. soldiers known as Centcom-Forward Jordan. That group is led Brig. General Dennis McKean, one of whose missions is to help plan for Jordan’s defense in the midst of the chaos that has enflamed the region.
......

Even before the ISIS offensive in Iraq, supporters of the group had tweeted maps showing the city of Ma’an in southern Jordan, as part of a regional Caliphate. Last week, a photo from Ma’an showed ISIS supporters holding a banner declaring the city "the Fallujah of Jordan," comparing it to the city in western Iraq that fell to ISIS in January.
.....

Israel Could Get Dragged Into ISIS’s War, Obama Admin Warns - The Daily Beast

 

The politics in the Middle East at present bring to mind one word.....Byzantine. The blueprint for today's Muslim religious factionalism can be found in yester-year's Christian religious factionalism, when Latin Christians settled scores with Orthodox Christians by sacking Constantinople on the way to fight the Moslem infidels in "The Holy Land".

Sometimes war drives unlikely allies together against a common enemy....who would have thought that capitalist America would be fighting on the same side as communist Russia against a former Russian ally...fascist Germany during WWII?

 

It will be interesting to see what happens if China gets dragged into it. Those guys are in it to win it and will not worry about " saving a mosque" when they start dropping bombs. Our heart isn't in this fight and they know it. They waited us out in Iraq when o released his timeline and are doing the same thing in Afghanistan.

 

On the topic of Syria:

"President Obama says that the Islamic State (IS) formally called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) doesn’t speak for “any religion.” Well that is strange since they say they do. See, in a Progressives world view, they dictate reality. For example they say “…we are not at war with the terrorist in Iraq anymore.” In reality, the other guy gets to vote. The terrorists in Iraq are still at war with us. You can choose to fight or not. Thus when IS says it speaks for Islam, then that carries a certain weight. So does the fact, that time after time there are Muslims who attack us. Here you see Muslim children cheering on Hamas rockets hoping they hit … the USA. They don’t speak for Islam either right? Remember that when another insane gunman goes berserk and the Progressive smear all gun owners."



"Here are some more facts. Many of the leaders of IS were released by President Obama. President Obama initially wanted to help these animals by bombing Syria who they are fighting against. Obama refused to arm Christians and other minority militias in Syria so they could protect themselves. BTW, Obama refuses to arm the Ukraine also. Obama refused to leave a force behind in Iraq to keep a watch on things. Unless you can say everything I just said is false, then President Obama and this administration has some responsibility for the rise of the Islamic State (IS). Of course the normal liberal response is “…I have no responsibility for anything, I am a victim here.” Well I guess that actually does work for a lot of people in a lot of situations. Why on God’s green earth elect a guy as your leader who is not responsible?"

Read the rest of Alex Barron's excellent article and Podcast at:
Fair Use Source of graphic and text quotes above: Islamic State beheads Christian baby girl. See the face of evil #isis #stopislam | Charles Carroll Society

 

An excellent, if a bit long, explanation of the causes of the factionalism prevalent in the Middle East today; as well as a forecast of what that factionalism may mean for US policy efforts in that region.


Iraq and Syria Follow Lebanon's Precedent
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - 03:10
By George Friedman

Lebanon was created out of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This agreement between Britain and France reshaped the collapsed Ottoman Empire south of Turkey into the states we know today -- Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and to some extent the Arabian Peninsula as well. For nearly 100 years, Sykes-Picot defined the region. A strong case can be made that the nation-states Sykes-Picot created are now defunct, and that what is occurring in Syria and Iraq represents the emergence of post-British/French maps that will replace those the United States has been trying to maintain since the collapse of Franco-British power.

The Invention of Middle East Nation-States
Sykes-Picot, named for French diplomat Francois Georges-Picot and his British counterpart, Sir Mark Sykes, did two things. First, it created a British-dominated Iraq. Second, it divided the Ottoman province of Syria on a line from the Mediterranean Sea east through Mount Hermon. Everything north of this line was French. Everything south of this line was British. The French, who had been involved in the Levant since the 19th century, had allies among the region's Christians. They carved out part of Syria and created a country for them. Lacking a better name, they called it Lebanon, after the nearby mountain of the same name.

The British named the area to the west of the Jordan River after the Ottoman administrative district of Filistina, which turned into Palestine on the English tongue. However, the British had a problem. During World War I, while the British were fighting the Ottoman Turks, they had allied with a number of Arabian tribes seeking to expel the Turks. Two major tribes, hostile to each other, were the major British allies. The British had promised postwar power to both. It gave the victorious Sauds the right to rule Arabia -- hence Saudi Arabia. The other tribe, the Hashemites, had already been given the newly invented Iraqi monarchy and, outside of Arabia, a narrow strip of arable ground to the east of the Jordan River. For lack of a better name, it was called Trans-Jordan, or the other side of the Jordan. In due course the "trans" was dropped and it became Jordan.

And thus, along with Syria, five entities were created between the Mediterranean and Tigris, and between Turkey and the new nation of Saudi Arabia. This five became six after the United Nations voted to create Israel in 1947. The Sykes-Picot agreement suited European models and gave the Europeans a framework for managing the region that conformed to European administrative principles. The most important interest, the oil in Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, was protected from the upheaval in their periphery as Turkey and Persia were undergoing upheaval. This gave the Europeans what they wanted.

What it did not do was create a framework that made a great deal of sense of the Arabs living in this region. The European model of individual rights expressed to the nation-states did not fit their cultural model. For the Arabs, the family -- not the individual -- was the fundamental unit of society. Families belonged to clans and clans to tribes, not nations. The Europeans used the concept of the nation-state to express divisions between "us" and "them." To the Arabs, this was an alien framework, which to this day still competes with religious and tribal identities.

The states the Europeans created were arbitrary, the inhabitants did not give their primary loyalty to them, and the tensions within states always went over the border to neighboring states. The British and French imposed ruling structures before the war, and then a wave of coups overthrew them after World War II. Syria and Iraq became pro-Soviet states while Israel, Jordan and the Arabians became pro-American, and monarchies and dictatorships ruled over most of the Arab countries. These authoritarian regimes held the countries together.

Reality Overcomes Cartography
It was Lebanon that came apart first. Lebanon was a pure invention carved out of Syria. As long as the Christians for whom Paris created Lebanon remained the dominant group, it worked, although the Christians themselves were divided into warring clans. But after World War II, the demographics changed, and the Shiite population increased. Compounding this was the movement of Palestinians into Lebanon in 1948. Lebanon thus became a container for competing clans. Although the clans were of different religions, this did not define the situation. Multiple clans in many of these religious groupings fought each other and allied with other religions.

Moreover, Lebanon's issues were not confined to Lebanon. The line dividing Lebanon from Syria was an arbitrary boundary drawn by the French. Syria and Lebanon were not one country, but the newly created Lebanon was not one country, either. In 1976 Syria -- or more precisely, the Alawite dictatorship in Damascus -- invaded Lebanon. Its intent was to destroy the Palestinians, and their main ally was a Christian clan. The Syrian invasion set off a civil war that was already flaring up and that lasted until 1990.

Lebanon was divided into various areas controlled by various clans. The clans evolved. The dominant Shiite clan was built around Nabi Berri. Later, Iran sponsored another faction, Hezbollah. Each religious faction had multiple clans, and within the clans there were multiple competitors for power. From the outside it appeared to be strictly a religious war, but that was an incomplete view. It was a competition among clans for money, security, revenge and power. And religion played a role, but alliances crossed religious lines frequently.

The state became far less powerful than the clans. Beirut, the capital, became a battleground for the clans. The Israelis invaded in order to crush the Palestinian Liberation Organization, with Syria's blessing, and at one point the United States intervened, partly to block the Israelis. When Hezbollah blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing hundreds of Marines, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, realizing the amount of power it would take to even try to stabilize Lebanon, withdrew all troops. He determined that the fate of Lebanon was not a fundamental U.S. interest, even if there was a Cold War underway.

The complexity of Lebanon goes far beyond this description, and the external meddling from Israel, Syria, Iran and the United States is even more complicated. The point is that the clans became the reality of Lebanon, and the Lebanese government became irrelevant. An agreement was reached between the factions and their patrons in 1989 that ended the internal fighting -- for the most part -- and strengthened the state. But in the end, the state existed at the forbearance of the clans. The map may show a nation, but it is really a country of microscopic clans engaged in a microscopic geopolitical struggle for security and power. Lebanon remains a country in which the warlords have become national politicians, but there is little doubt that their power comes from being warlords and that, under pressure, the clans will reassert themselves.

Syria's Geographic Challenge
Repeats in Syria and Iraq
A similar process has taken place in Syria. The arbitrary nation-state has become a region of competing clans. The Alawite clan, led by Bashar al Assad (who has played the roles of warlord and president), had ruled the country. An uprising supported by various countries threw the Alawites into retreat. The insurgents were also divided along multiple lines. Now, Syria resembles Lebanon. There is one large clan, but it cannot destroy the smaller ones, and the smaller ones cannot destroy the large clan. There is a permanent stalemate, and even if the Alawites are destroyed, their enemies are so divided that it is difficult to see how Syria can go back to being a country, except as a historical curiosity. Countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States might support various clans, but in the end, the clans survive.

Something very similar happened in Iraq. As the Americans departed, the government that was created was dominated by Shia, who were fragmented. To a great degree, the government excluded the Sunnis, who saw themselves in danger of marginalization. The Sunnis consisted of various tribes and clans (some containing Shiites) and politico-religious movements like the Islamic State. They rose up in alliance and have now left Baghdad floundering, the Iraqi army seeking balance and the Kurds scrambling to secure their territory.

It is a three-way war, but in some ways it is a three-way war with more than 20 clans involved in temporary alliances. No one group is strong enough to destroy the others on the broader level. Sunni, Shiite and Kurd have their own territories. On the level of the tribes and clans, some could be destroyed, but the most likely outcome is what happened in Lebanon: the permanent power of the sub-national groups, with perhaps some agreement later on that creates a state in which power stays with the smaller groups, because that is where loyalty lies.

The boundary between Lebanon and Syria was always uncertain. The border between Syria and Iraq is now equally uncertain. But then these borders were never native to the region. The Europeans imposed them for European reasons. Therefore, the idea of maintaining a united Iraq misses the point. There was never a united Iraq -- only the illusion of one created by invented kings and self-appointed dictators. The war does not have to continue, but as in Lebanon, it will take the exhaustion of the clans and factions to negotiate an end.

The idea that Shia, Sunnis and Kurds can live together is not a fantasy. The fantasy is that the United States has the power or interest to re-create a Franco-British invention crafted out of the debris of the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, even if it had an interest, it is doubtful that the United States has the power to pacify Iraq and Syria. It could not impose calm in Lebanon. The triumph of the Islamic State would represent a serious problem for the United States, but no more than it would for the Shia, Kurds and other Sunnis. As in Lebanon, the multiplicity of factions creates a countervailing force that cripples those who reach too far.

There are two issues here. The first is how far the disintegration of nation-states will go in the Arab world. It seems to be underway in Libya, but it has not yet taken root elsewhere. It may be a political formation in the Sykes-Picot areas. Watching the Saudi peninsula will be most interesting. But the second issue is what regional powers will do about this process. Turkey, Iran, Israel and the Saudis cannot be comfortable with either this degree of fragmentation or the spread of more exotic groups. The rise of a Kurdish clan in Iraq would send tremors to the Turks and Iranians.

The historical precedent, of course, would be the rise of a new Ottoman attitude in Turkey that would inspire the Turks to move south and impose an acceptable order on the region. It is hard to see how Turkey would have the power to do this, plus if it created unity among the Arabs it would likely be because the memories of Turkish occupation still sting the Arab mind.

All of this aside, the point is that it is time to stop thinking about stabilizing Syria and Iraq and start thinking of a new dynamic outside of the artificial states that no longer function. To do this, we need to go back to Lebanon, the first state that disintegrated and the first place where clans took control of their own destiny because they had to. We are seeing the Lebanese model spread eastward. It will be interesting to see where else its spreads.


Iraq and Syria Follow Lebanon's Precedent | Stratfor