US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Tuesday that there were no further indications of the Syrian regime priming itself to deploy chemical weapons. (My own suspicion is that Israeli intelligence planted that story in the first place, because it wants the US to militarily secure the chemical weapons lest they are transferred to Hizbullah. The Obama administration dealt with Netanyahu by saying deployment of chemical weapons would be a red line for the regime, and then declaring that the warning worked.)
Obama’s recognition comes as the momentum is turning slowly against the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his Baath Party. Alarabiya reports on how the Free Syria Army has reorganized itself, assigning each sector of the country to a rebel general. The video at the link above is well worth watching.
The revolutionaries claimed on Tuesday to have taken the last Baath military base in Aleppo and Idlib Province, denying the regime a site from which to subject them to artillery barrages. They also have captured anti-aircraft batteries from regime bases, reducing the danger to them of aerial bombardment.
Nadir Rida reports in the pan-Arab London daily, al-Sharq al-Awsat [The Middle East, for December 11, 2012, as translated by the USG Open Source Center:
“The Syrian opposition announced yesterday it seized the 111 th Battalion in Al-Shaykh Sulayman area in Aleppo countryside which was the regime’s last strategic stronghold in Aleppo and asserted “its liberation after a siege lasting three months.” …
Rami Abd-al-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, asserted that “Al-Nusrah regiments or those associated with them seized control of Al-Shaykh Sulayman military base after weeks of violent battles.” Colonel Arif al-Hamud, chairman of the “Shuhada Suriya Grouping” operations, said control of the regiment “was done through the joint effort of all the rebel regiments, including the Islamists.” He pointed out in a contact with Al-Sharq al-Awsat that “all the revolutionaries’ factions in Aleppo countryside took part in besieging the base for three months and in liberating it.”..
The army’s 111 th Battalion is located 12 km northwest of Aleppo, occupies an area of 2 km, and is the last important stronghold for the regular forces in an area of contact with Aleppo and Idlib Governorates which are almost totally under the opposition forces’ control.
Al-Hamud stressed that “the regular military units in Aleppo and Idlib countryside are falling one after the other” and added that “with the fall of the 111 th Battalion the danger of the air bombing of the rebel villages surrounding the area ends since the regular military units in northern Syria were turned into artillery barracks, which are useless for combat, and came under one attack after the other by the rebel forces.”… He revealed that the FSA’s spoils from the battalion “varied between 57 mm guns, 23 mm antiaircraft guns, automatic rifles, and 14.5 and 12.7 ammunitions which are more important for us.”…
As the above piece makes clear, it is worrying that some of the recent military successes have been won by the Jabhat al-Nusra or Victory Front, hard line fundamentalists who may have an al-Qaeda-like ideology. This group is very minor in the revolution a a whole, representing a small percentage of the actual fighters, but the US has designated it a terrorist organization i hopes of isolating it from the rest of the opposition. (So far, as the SA article makes clear, there is close coordination between the group and the moderate Free Syrian Army.)
Also on Tuesday, at least 10 Alawite Shiites were killed and more wounded by a bombing in Aqrab, an Alawite village north of Hama that neighbors Houla. Houla is a largely Sunni town that was attacked last spring by Shabiha or regime death squads. The bombing of a shabiha safe house in Aqrab appears to have been in reprisal for the earlier Houla attack. If this account is accurate, it is another step toward sectarian reprisals of a worrying sort. Some 30% of Syrians belong to religious minorities, many of them supportive of the regime or at least afraid of Jabhat al-Nusra.
The forces seeking to overthrow the Baath government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad have made further advances both in the north in Aleppo and its surroundings, and in the suburbs of the capital of Damascus. But the civilian population in the war-torn country’s urban areas are facing food and electricity shortages:
On Damascus, the USG Open Source Center translates this report from Al-Sharq al-Awsat for Monday, Dec. 10:
“The humanitarian and security situation in the capital Damascus has continued to deteriorate as the shelling of the southern and eastern neighborhoods intensified yesterday and most of the city’s entrances were closed while the violent shelling of Daraya and Mu’addamiyat towns in Rif Dimashq continued.
“Residents of the capital said the regime forces closed the Dar’a-Damascus (south) highway yesterday morning and also several other minor entry points and the highway was reopened at noon but then closed again, particularly at Nahr Ayshah, Al-Hajar al-Aswad, Al-Asali, and Al-Yarmuk Camp where violent clashes took place. An eyewitness told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that “vehicles piled up all along the highway from Damascus to the Sahnaya junction and bodies were seen on both sides of the minor roads that were also closed”, adding that “the south Damascus area is a battlefield…, bodies, destruction, and constant shelling…
“…the bread crisis in Damascus is worsening. People mass in their hundreds in front of bakeries to get a bundle of bread sold at 15 Syrian liras while it is sold in the nascent black market in the bakeries vicinity at 100 liras (the dollar exchange is between 88 and 92 liras). Ahmad al-Dimashqi says: “The minimum waiting time in a bread queue is between two and three hours. Some people go to the bakery after the dawn prayers and remain until morning just to get a bundle of bread.” The bread crisis that is worsening daily happens with the house liquid gas crisis where the price of a cylinder in some areas has reached 2,000 liras when its official price is 500 liras. This is in addition to the kerosene crisis that is missing even in the black market, particularly in the hot areas…
“At the subsistence level, the electricity cut off rates have increased in Damascus and some areas in the Rif, like Jarmanah, Al-Ghawtah al-Sharqiyah, Sahnaya, Qudsiya, Qudsiya neighborhood, Dummar, and Dummar project where the outage ranges between eight and 12 hours. In the hot areas like Daraya and Mu’addamiyat, it remains cut off for successive days while in the capital’s neighborhoods between six and eight hours. In Barzah, Al-Qabun, Al-Abbasiyin, and the southern neighborhoods, the outage reaches 12 hours. In the capital center and northern neighborhoods of Al-Salihiyah, Al-Muhajirin, Al-Maliki, and Abu-Rummanah, the cut off is reduced and ranges between three and four hours and is not cut off at all from some neighborhoods. The residents were therefore surprised the night before yesterday when power was cut off from all the capital’s northern neighborhoods at 0300 hours and continued for two hours amidst silence and suspicious movements by the security forces in these areas, according to activist Ahmad al-Dimashqi.
Meanwhile, there are also bread lines and a collapsing economy in Aleppo, most of which is now held by the revolutionaries. Euronews reports:
the revolutionaries have driven Syrian government troops out of much of the north of the country around Aleppo. Aljazeera English reports:
ITN reports on advances by Aleppo’s revolutionaries and their attack on an Air Force intelligence compound: “A new video appears to show Free Syrian Army fighters preparing for a battle against government forces in Aleppo. Report by Mark Morris.”
The Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad spent the final day of a supposed 4-day cease-fire on Monday intensively bombing its own cities, with fighter jets flying dozens of sorties against rebel positions. Some bombs were so powerful that they kicked up mini mushroom clouds. Neighborhoods of the capital, Damascus, were bombed, as were rebellious cities such as Maaret al-Nu`man, parts of which were said by activists to have been flattened. Revolutionaries are trying to use Maaret al-Nu`man as a base from which to take the regime’s nearby military base.
The argument of dissidents that the bombing campaign is a sign of weakness is persuasive. Bombing from a height is inaccurate and likely to kill innocent non-combatants, and so will likely turn even more people against the regime. But we can surmise from it that the regime’s infantry and armor are unable to restore control over much of the country.
The inability of the Syrian government to crush an 18-month-old revolutionary movement is putting increasing pressure on its neighbors. Not only have hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria poured into Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, but political forces in each of those countries are having to choose sides and to reevaluate their choices over time.
The bombing in Beirut’s Ashrafieh neighborhood that killed security chief Wissam al-Hassan last week has widely been blamed inside Lebanon on the Shiite Hizbullah party-militia, which backs the current government of Najib al-Miqati. Angry Lebanese Sunnis of the March 14 movement led by Saad al-Hariri, who oppose the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and sympathize with their Sunni co-religionists in the Syrian opposition, have vowed to bring down the Miqati government. Miqati said Sunday that although he had thought about resigning, he has decided not to stand down.
Still, it remains to be seen if the Lebanese government can avoid falling, given the firestorm set off by the Syria conflict. The problem for Miqati and Hizbullah is that among their key coalition partners is Walid Jumblatt, the mercurial Druze leader, who is said to be turning against the Baath government of Syria. (Jumblatt has flip-flopped on Baathist Syria several times; it is alleged that Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, had Walid’s father, Kamal Jumblatt, assassinated in 1977.) The Washington Post is even hinting that Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrullah is himself wavering on whether to continue to support Syria so strongly, given the possibility that it could mean the loss of the Miqati government and the political marginalization of Hizbullah inside Lebanon. I actually doubt that Hizbullah is wavering, given its strong alliance with Iran, which is backing al-Assad.
Likewise, the Syria conflict is spilling over onto Iraq, where the NYT alleges some Shiite fighters are going to Damascus to defend the shrine of Sayyida Zainab, holy to their branch of Islam, from possible destruction by hard line Salafis that have already targeted that neighborhood. During the Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled to Syria, and Shiite Iraqis congregated around the shrine. They have largely been ethnically cleansed by hard line Sunnis, seen as foreigners supporting the al-Assad regime, and there are concerns that Wahhabi-influenced Salafis might raze the shrine. (Saudi Wahhabis, like early militant Protestants in 16th-century Europe, are iconoclasts who despise the cult of saints, shrines and relics, insisting that only God is holy, and no intercession is possible with Him by third parties. Shiite Muslims, in contrast, are all about saints related to the Prophet Muhammad, and their tombs and shrines, and do believe they will intercede for believers.)
On Saturday, Sunni guerrillas unleashed a series of bombings and attacks on Shiite pilgrims and Shiite neighborhoods in Iraq. Although this tactic of attempting to foment Sunni-Shiite violence is by now 9 years old, it may be continuing in force in part because of the new struggle over the future of Syria. Syria’s Baath government is secular, socialist and nationalist, but the upper echelons of the Baath government and army are dominated by members of the Alawite minority, a form of folk Shiism. About 10-14 percent of Syrians are Alawite. The al-Assad government also has a geopolitical alliance with Shiite Iran and, increasingly, the Shiite government of Iraq.
The idea of a 4-day cease-fire in Syria’s ongoing revolution/ civil war during the Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice, commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God) was always a difficult proposition. Cease-fires work when two sides are exhausted and can’t see how easily to make further gains through fighting. That situation does not obtain in Syria– the ceaseless back-and-forth of guerrilla strikes and regime reprisal has been going on for over a year, and the revolutionaries appear to have gradually chipped away at the Baath government’s control of much of the country. When one side has the momentum, it simply makes no sense to have a cease-fire.
The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government fears that some of the Syrians seeking to escape to Iraq might be Sunni radicals, and they blame Syria for having given logistical and other help to al-Qaeda types who wanted to go to Iraq (the former Syrian ambassador to Iraq has also made these allegations). They appear to fear that the refugees may become assets for Sunni radicals.
Despite thes security concerns of those two countries and the burden of the refugees (also carried by Jordan), it is illegal in international law for them to keep those 10,000 people trapped that way.
Turkey has already taken in over 100,000 Syrian refugees. But it has closed its border with Syria in the east because it is afraid that Kurdish separatist guerrillas, basing themselves in the Kurdish strip inside Syria, will take advantage of the chaos to engage in terrorism in eastern Anatolia.
Mitt Romney’s speech at VMI on foreign policy has been widely condemned as vague and lacking in substance, sort of like the man who gave it. But the speech is also full of suggestions and criticisms of the Obama administration that are simply not realistic. The speech is Romney’s “Mission Impossible,” only without the cool theme music and also without a prayer of being actually achievable short of launching a series of 5 wars. I’ve decided that my initial assumption that a businessman of Romney’s experience must know something about the world was dead wrong. Apparently it is possible to sit in cushy big offices in companies like Bain, and to remain completely ignorant of foreign affairs. Romney’s speeches are all just a replaying for us of the prejudices of CEOs when they play golf together and complain vaguely about the Chinese, Russians, Arabs, and so forth. Or, maybe Romney has gotten so many campaign contributions from arms manufacturers that he can’t help see foreign affairs through the lens of new wars he wants to fight.
1. The First War: Return to Iraq
Romney wants to send US troops back into Iraq and complained again about Obama’s “abrupt” withdrawal from that country. I don’t know how many ways there are of saying this, but it was from the beginning absolutely impossible for US troops to remain in Iraq legally. Romney apparently let Dan Senor, Bremer’s Neocon spokesman who came out to lie to us every day in Baghdad, write the following paragraph:
: “In Iraq, the costly gains made by our troops are being eroded by rising violence, a resurgent Al-Qaeda, the weakening of democracy in Baghdad, and the rising influence of Iran. And yet, America’s ability to influence events for the better in Iraq has been undermined by the abrupt withdrawal of our entire troop presence. The President tried—and failed—to secure a responsible and gradual drawdown that would have better secured our gains.”
Romney’s premise, that the US military in Iraq had some sort of ‘achievement’ that is in danger of being lost now that it is out of the country is ridiculous. The United States launched an illegal war of aggression on Iraq that virtually destroyed the country and kicked off a power vacuum that eventuated in a civil war that still continues at a low level. In 2006 when there were over 150,000 US troops in Iraq, in some months the death toll from political violence was 2500. That doesn’t even count all the armed Iraqis the US military was killing. The United States military never controlled Iraq and could never prevent bombings and attacks. When the US troops stopped patrolling major cities, the death toll promptly fell, because guerrillas were no longer setting improvised explosive devices to hit US convoys– operations that often wounded Iraqi by-standers as well.
In August, 2012, the death toll from political violence in Iraq was 164, half what it had been in July, after a crackdown by Iraqi army and police. So Romney is just wrong that there is some sort of secular trend in Iraq toward the kind of violence that had racked the country half a decade ago, and it is wrong to think that the US military was anyway primarily responsible for the end of the mass killings. What appears to have happened is that in 2006-2007, Iraqis living in mixed neighborhoods having both Sunnis and Shiites ethnically cleansed one another. Once the neighborhoods were mostly only one sect, the killing subsided (you’d have to get in your car and drive a while to find someone of a different persuasion to kill). That wasn’t a US achievement, it was a US failure!
It was the then leader of the Republican Party, George W. Bush, who negotiated the December 31, 2011, deadline for withdrawing US troops from Iraq with the Iraqi parliament. Obama simply implemented the agreement Bush signed. The reason the accord had to be worked out with the Iraqi parliament was that Bush wanted to be sure that US officers and troops could not be prosecuted for military actions they undertook in Iraq. The only way to forestall such prosecutions was a bilateral agreement authorizing US troops to fight in Iraq, and signed by the Iraqi government. Simply negotiating it with the prime minister would not have made it legally solid enough to protect the troops. Their presence had to be authorized by the Iraqi legislature. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was barely able to get the agreement passed, and only succeeded because it seemed to a lot of members of parliament their best bet for ushering US troops out of the country.
For that agreement to be renegotiated so that US combat units remained in Iraq would have required another vote of parliament. The Iraqi parliament is dominated by Shiites, along with Sunnis and a minority of Kurds. The Kurds were the only group that might have voted to keep US troops in the country, and they just don’t have that many seats. The Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party of al-Maliki, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and the Sadrists or followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, dominate parliament, along with Sunni nationalists. None of them wanted US troops in their country in the first place. They would never, ever have voted for a continued US troop presence in Iraq, and there would have been no way for Romney to make them do so if he had been president. His snide implication that Obama had a shot at this endeavor, and took it and missed, is just inside the beltway wishful thinking.
Guys! The Iraqis don’t like you. They didn’t want you in their country. They didn’t give you candy or put garlands around your neck. They killed over 4,000 of your troops, hundreds more of your contractors, and only failed to kill more because they were poorly armed compared to you.
After 8 years of ‘shaping’ Iraq, you got a Shiite government allied with Iran and Syria, the leader of which is now in Moscow seeking a $5 billion arms deal from Mr. Putin, so as to become more independent of the US. That was your best shot at empire, with hundreds of thousands of troops cycling through and a trillion dollars to play with, and it didn’t work. Because in today’s world it doesn’t work. Political-military empire is over. People are mobilized.
The only way for the US to dominate Iraq any more would be to re-invade the country, which would be Romney’s first war.
2. War number 2: Syria
Romney apparently wants to get deeply involved in the civil war in Syria. It is not clear why, except that he wants to differentiate himself from Obama. On Libya, he had grudgingly accepted the no-fly zone but called anything beyond that ‘mission creep’ and ‘mission muddle,’ and he thought too many resources were going into overthrowing Gaddafi. But apparently he isn’t afraid of mission creep were he to put his hand into the Syrian beehive. He said,
“The President has failed to lead in Syria, where more than 30,000 men, women, and children have been massacred by the Assad regime over the past 20 months. Violent extremists are flowing into the fight. Our ally Turkey has been attacked. And the conflict threatens stability in the region.”
He goes on to say later in the speech,
“we are missing an historic opportunity to win new friends who share our values in the Middle East—friends who are fighting for their own futures against the very same violent extremists, and evil tyrants, and angry mobs who seek to harm us. Unfortunately, so many of these people who could be our friends feel that our President is indifferent to their quest for freedom and dignity. As one Syrian woman put it, “We will not forget that you forgot about us.” It is time to change course in the Middle East . . . “
“In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets.”
So, it seems clear that Romney wants to “lead” in Syria, i.e., get involved in the war there.
But the reason that not only Obama but the entirety of Europe has declined to get involved in Syria is that there is no UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. In its absence, any army that used force except in self defense would be open to being hauled before judges in the Hague or judges in some country where the judiciary claims universal jurisdiction.
If the US went into Syria unilaterally, the same thing would happen to Romney as happened to Bush– the US would bear all the costs and would gradually become isolated and alone in the enterprise. As for fearing that people won’t forget that the US did not come to their aid, you could equally fear all the people who will be upset that the US intervened militarily, or you could fear ingratitude even if we did intervene (there are lots of examples of both).
3. The Third War is with Iran
Romney couldn’t stop Iran’s nuclear enrichment program if he were president, any more than Obama can. That step would require an invasion and occupation of the country. Simply bombing the facilities would only briefly set them back.
Romney said,
“I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran, and will tighten the sanctions we currently have. I will restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region—and work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination.
For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions—not just words—that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated. I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security—the world must never see any daylight between our two nations. I will deepen our critical cooperation with our partners in the Gulf. “
)
But close cooperation with Israel against Iran would ensure that none of our Arab allies would be willing to associate themselves with such a campaign. There is a reason that George H. W. Bush kept PM Yitzhak Shamir out of the Gulf War.
And, Romney can’t tighten sanctions on Iran any further without going all the way to an actual naval blockade of Iranian commerce. The US already has a financial blockade against Iran. Blockades, like ultimatums, cause wars. Countries threatened with strangulation frequently strike out. Even more stringent sanctions and blockades risk pushing Iran into reacting violently for self-preservation.
4. The fourth war is in Afghanistan. Although Romney said he would wind down the war there by 2014, just as Obama has pledged, he intended to ‘remain strong’ and to ‘consult our military,’ i.e. he implicitly is reopening the question of the US withdrawal from that country. He said,
“President Obama would have you believe that anyone who disagrees with his decisions in Afghanistan is arguing for endless war. But the route to more war – and to potential attacks here at home – is a politically timed retreat that abandons the Afghan people to the same extremists who ravaged their country and used it to launch the attacks of 9/11.
I will evaluate conditions on the ground and weigh the best advice of our military commanders. And I will affirm that my duty is not to my political prospects, but to the security of the nation. ”
There is no reason for Romney to bring up his political prospects being damaged unless he is considering reneging on Obama’s pledge to get out of Afghanistan. Likewise, that is implied by his reference to ‘evaluating conditions on the ground’ and taking ‘the best advice of our military commanders.’
On Afghanistan, Romney is pulling an anti-Nixon. He appears to have a secret plan not to end the war in Afghanistan.
5. The small wars: Intervention in Yemen, Somalia, perhaps even Libya in a ‘war on terror.’
The US has hit Yemen and Somalia with drone strikes and is occasionally kind of at war in those countries, though it is a desultory, occasional, and limited sort of conflict.
Romney says that drones are not enough. What would you use in such conflicts besides drones? Infantry? The implication of being ‘more forceful’ and dismissing drone strikes is that you would support the insertion of troops into those conflicts.
Romney’s various wars would, if pursued, bankrupt the country and cause more backlash and terrorism against the United States. Romney thinks that US prestige flows from strength, defined as military might.
But in fact what people in the Middle East admire about the US is its values, such as democracy and the rule of law. They hate our military hubris and still have not forgiven us for what we did to Iraq.
The only positive thing about Romney’s speech was his commitment to getting a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Unfortunately, we know from his leaked fundraiser recording of last May that he intends to ‘kick the can down the road’ on the Israel-Palestine issues, and that he does not trust the Palestinians with a state. So that positive language is just lies.
Four or five wars and lots of other conflicts are not a foreign policy vision, they are a nightmare.
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