{"id":17346,"date":"2013-01-09T00:14:20","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T05:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/?p=17346"},"modified":"2013-01-09T08:27:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T13:27:53","slug":"news-round-up-january-9-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/news-round-up-january-9-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"News Round Up (January 9 2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Foreign Policy<\/a><\/p>\n

Syria mixed chemicals<\/a> at two storage sites at the end of November 2012 and filled dozens of bombs, likely with sarin nerve gas, and loaded them onto vehicles near air bases according to anonymous U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials. A public warning by President Obama, and private messages from Russia, Iraq, Turkey, and possibly Jordan coerced Syria to stop the chemical and bomb preparation. However, officials say the weapons are still in storage near Syrian air bases, and could be deployed in between two and six hours for use by President Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, on Tuesday the United Nations’ World Food Program<\/a> (WFP) said it is unable to provide assistance to 1 million Syrians who are going hungry due to the 22-month-long conflict. According to spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs, the agency aims to help 1.5 million of the 2.5 million Syrians in need. It is not able to reach all the people requiring help because of continued fighting and the lack of access to the port of Tartus, where it had to remove its staff. The program also had to pull its staff from offices in Homs, Aleppo, and Qamisly. Additionally, the U.N. refugee agency said the number of refugees<\/a> fleeing the fighting increased by nearly 100,000 in the past month. On Tuesday, a riot reportedly broke out in the Zaatari Syrian refugee camp<\/a> in Jordan. Refugees attacked aid workers after the first winter storm in the camp caused torrential rains and winds that swept away tents. Nearly 50,000 people are housed in the Zaatari camp and they are becoming increasingly frustrated with conditions that one person called “worse than living in Syria.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Insight: Aleppo misery eats at Syrian rebel support<\/a>
\nBy Yara Bayoumy | Reuters<\/p>\n

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) – At a crowded market stall in Syria, a middle-aged couple, well dressed, shuffle over to press a folded note, furtively, into the hand of a foreign reporter.<\/p>\n

It is the kind of silent cry for help against a reign of fear that has been familiar to journalists visiting Syria over the past two years. Only this is not the Damascus of President Bashar al-Assad but rebel-held Aleppo; the note laments misrule under the revolution and hopes Assad can defeat its “terrorism”.<\/p>\n

“We used to live in peace and security until this malicious revolution reached us and the Free Syrian Army started taking bread by force,” the unidentified couple wrote. “We ask God to help the regime fight the Free Syrian Army and terrorism – we are with the sovereignty of President Bashar al-Assad forever.”<\/p>\n

While they might not be all they seemed – agents of Assad’s beleaguered security apparatus want to blacken the rebels’ name – their sentiments are far from rare in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city and once vibrant hub of trade and industry, whose diverse urban communities now face hardship and chaos at the hands of motley bands of fighters recruited from surrounding rural areas.<\/p>\n

As government forces fight on in parts of Aleppo, in large areas that have been under rebel control for six months or more complaints are getting louder about indiscipline among the fighters, looting and a general lack of security and necessities like running water, bread and electricity in districts that have been pounded by tanks and hit by Assad’s air force….<\/p>\n

“There has been a lot of corruption in the Free Syrian Army’s battalions – stealing, oppressing the people – because there are parasites that have entered the Free Syrian Army,” said Abu Ahmed, an engineer who heads a 35-man unit of the Tawheed Brigade, reckoned to be the largest in Aleppo province.<\/p>\n

Abu Ahmed, who comes from a small town on the Turkish border and like many in Syria would be identified only by the familiar form of his name, estimated that most people in Aleppo, a city of over two million, were lukewarm at best to a 21-month-old uprising that is dominated by the Sunni Muslim rural poor.<\/p>\n

“They don’t have a revolutionary mindset,” he said, putting support for Assad at 70 percent among an urban population that includes many ethnic Kurds, Christians and members of Assad’s Alawite minority. But he also acknowledged that looting and other abuses had cost the incoming rebels much initial goodwill.<\/p>\n

“The Free Syrian Army has lost its popular support,” said Abu Ahmed, who said the Tawheed Brigade was now diversifying from fighting to talking on civic roles, including efforts to restore electricity supplies and deal with bread shortages. His own wife was setting up a school after months without classes.<\/p>\n

Hunger and insecurity are key themes wherever Aleppines gather this winter. Outside a busy bakery in one rebel-held neighborhood men complained of having to stand in line for hours in the hope of bread, and of feeling the need to arm themselves for their own protection on the streets of the city.<\/p>\n

Schools are being stripped of desks and chairs for firewood….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Grim Prospects for the Middle East in 2013<\/a>
\nby Patrick Seale
\nAgence Global
\n01 Jan 2013<\/p>\n

The coming year is unlikely to be a happy one for the tormented Middle East. Although some dictators have fallen and many Arabs are now demanding their rights, there is no escaping the fact that the balance sheet of the past two years remains profoundly negative. In no country of the Arab Spring is there as yet any convincing sign of peace and reconciliation, of good governance, of a better standard of living for ordinary people, of an enhanced sense of citizenship, let alone of genuine democracy.<\/p>\n

Some countries have suffered more than others. In Syria, the cries and tears of the martyred population — the tens of thousands killed, the hundreds of thousands wounded, maimed, starving and displaced — weigh heavily on the conscience of the world. Yet there is no end to the agony. To quote UN envoy Lakhdar al-Brahimi, Syria is in danger of descending into hell, if it is not there already.<\/p>\n

Individual Arab countries are not the only casualties. The Arab political order has been dealt massive blows, and remains in great disarray. What does this mean? It means that the ability of Arab states to work effectively together has been greatly reduced. They find it difficult to affirm their independence from predatory foreign powers or defend Arab causes in the international arena. The Arab voice today carries little weight.<\/p>\n

Some Arab countries have acquired great wealth, but it is no exaggeration to say that the Arabs as a whole — seen as a block of like-minded people sharing a language, a history and a system of beliefs — are not in much better shape than they were more than sixty years ago when Arab Palestine was lost to the Zionists in 1947-48, and when the Arab world was comprehensively defeated by Israel in 1967.<\/p>\n

Why do I hold these pessimistic views? Look at the evidence….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Syrian Stalemate<\/a>
\nJanuary 7, 2013 – the National Interest
\nby Robert G. Rabil<\/span><\/a> [2]<\/p>\n

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<\/var>In December, Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov noted that “the Syrian government is losing control of an ever widening portion of the country.” From the moment he spoke, the tempo of statements predicting the imminent collapse of the Syrian regime in some European capitals and around Washington’s Beltway reached a giddying peak. This is wishful thinking: it is premature to assume that the days of the regime are numbered and folly to assume that the fight for Syria will end with the fall of the regime.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The Obama administration has lost its opportunity to shape the future of a post-Assad Syria. Therefore, it should formulate a policy along the lines of what Dimitri K. Simes and Paul J. Saunders have perceptively recommended<\/span><\/a> [3]: seek a negotiated settlement with the help of Russia to end the fighting.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The Alawi-dominated Assad regime has lost both legitimacy and control over large swaths of Syrian territories. Conversely, the Syrian opposition has made strides in putting the regime on the defensive, while at the same time growing more powerful and bold. Nevertheless, this military shift in favor of the opposition does not spell the imminent collapse of the regime.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The Syrian war has become bigger than the battle for Syria. The conflict has taken on interrelated sectarian, religious and regional dimensions that Syrians themselves cannot resolve on their own. Syria today faces a stark choice between resolving the conflict on terms acceptable to Russian and regional powers or plunging deeper into sectarian bloodshed\u2014irrespective of whether or not President Assad is in power….The Endgame<\/strong>Syrian national coexistence has not been the only victim of this rabid sectarianization and Islamization of the conflict. Washington’s current and future influence in Syria has been no less affected. The more the conflict has Islamized, the more influence Washington has lost with Syrian opposition groups. The reaction from Syrian opposition groups to Washington’s designation of the Islamist opposition organization Jabhat al-Nusra as a “foreign terrorist organization” demonstrated Washington’s weakened influence. Not only did the Muslim Brotherhood and the recently U.S.-recognized Syrian National Coalition oppose and condemn Washington’s decision, but most notably, non-Islamist members of the opposition joined the chorus criticizing Washington. Shortly thereafter, on December 22, 2012, eleven Islamist battalions declared the creation of the Syrian Islamic Front, with the objective of overthrowing the Assad regime….Moreover, the regime, despite its efforts to keep fighting in most provinces and especially in the country’s major urban cities, is apparently redrawing the borders of its Alawi stronghold to include the areas in the provinces of Idlib, Hama, and Homs (in which sizable Shi’a, Ismaili and Christian minorities reside). Already, a significant number of minorities from different parts of the country have moved to these areas, including Latakia and Tartous. The regime has worked hard to make these areas safe havens….<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Iran’s economic stake in Syria<\/a> – FP<\/p>\n

Jabhat al-Nusra: Jabhat al-Nusra li-ahl al-Sham min Mujahedi al-Sham fi Sahat al-Jihad.<\/a>
\nA Strategic Briefing by the Quillam Foundation
\nUseful information.<\/p>\n

With regard to a post-Assad strategy, JN are aware that a new phase of the conflict will begin as soon as the Assad regime falls. Their strategy for this period seems to have two parts:<\/p>\n