there are also credible reports, believe it or not, that the coalition which liberated Jisr ash-shughour is supported passionately by the inhabitants of Idlib province, and by the refugees from Idlib province in Turkey. This because the Assadist forces previously occupying the town have been committing massacres there since the 1980s, and more recently a near-genocide. al-Q plays a minor role in the coalition, and al-Q as understood in the West - as an anti-western terror org - plays no role at all. so long as people seek to understand syria through western concerns, or in terms of which states are supporting who, rather than first and foremost through the experience and motivations of Syrians, they'll end up understanding nothing much.
well said, Don. So many supposed leftists fail to see how western control of the region has declined. (this geostrategic change is one reason for the upheavals). their belief that everything in the arab world is controlled by the devilishly clever White Man absurdly underestimates the agency of arab people. casting them as pawns in western hands is in fact a form of racism, and it destroys any possibility of analysis. the syrian regime rapes, murders and tortures to death on a mass scale, but the syrians wouldn't have done anything about it if american-israeli agents hadn't incited them... ridiculous. it's important to analyse the policies of the us, britain, france, saudi, iran, qatar, turkey with regard to the revolutions, but stupid to imagine that the syrian dynamic isnt primarily syrian, the libyan libyan, and so on
there are also credible reports, believe it or not, that the coalition which liberated Jisr ash-shughour is supported passionately by the inhabitants of Idlib province, and by the refugees from Idlib province in Turkey. This because the Assadist forces previously occupying the town have been committing massacres there since the 1980s, and more recently a near-genocide. al-Q plays a minor role in the coalition, and al-Q as understood in the West - as an anti-western terror org - plays no role at all. so long as people seek to understand syria through western concerns, or in terms of which states are supporting who, rather than first and foremost through the experience and motivations of Syrians, they'll end up understanding nothing much.
well said, Don. So many supposed leftists fail to see how western control of the region has declined. (this geostrategic change is one reason for the upheavals). their belief that everything in the arab world is controlled by the devilishly clever White Man absurdly underestimates the agency of arab people. casting them as pawns in western hands is in fact a form of racism, and it destroys any possibility of analysis. the syrian regime rapes, murders and tortures to death on a mass scale, but the syrians wouldn't have done anything about it if american-israeli agents hadn't incited them... ridiculous. it's important to analyse the policies of the us, britain, france, saudi, iran, qatar, turkey with regard to the revolutions, but stupid to imagine that the syrian dynamic isnt primarily syrian, the libyan libyan, and so on