Dying In Syria

"I am not a puppet.  I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country.  I am Syrian, was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria".
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

Responding to the news of the meeting between British Prime Minister David Cameron and Saudi Arabia's King King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud where Mr. Cameron expanded on the dire need to bring the violence on both sides of a bloody civil war in Syria to an end by persuading President al-Assad by any means possible to go into exile, the Syrian president takes issue on the presumption that he can be viewed as anyone's puppet, much less that of the West.

And he promises a bleak and gloomy outlook for any manner of intervention beyond the mewlings of a British prime minister.  Should any entity or collection of same attempt to physically intervene in the ongoing assaults of the regime against the rebels and the citizenry identified as supporting the rebels' objective, the result would be "more than the world can afford."

He has assessed the political and military and religious situation that prevails in the Middle East.  He considers his country to be the fulcrum of all that revolves around the Middle East's uneasy tribal, cultural and religious relationships.  Interfere with Syria, and the destabilization that would result would be of a magnitude of bloodshed never before imagined.

The clear lines of sectarian and tribal alliances have long been established, going back to antiquity, and refurbished time and again through brutal clashes that have resulted in the slaughter of Sunni by Shia and Shia by Sunni.  Bashar al-Assad is not the least bit loathe to uncork yet another cataclysmic upheaval should interference by outside agencies result in his regime's downfall.

He knows he has the Islamic Republic of Iran, and their joint militia proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza prepared to launch restorative attacks on their collective enemies, with the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, a hesitant Jordan and a conflicted Egypt balancing the alternate adversarial opponents.  And Turkey, the wild card, like Lebanon and Iraq, but more irascible.

Sanctimonious Turkey which has turned out to be the most belligerently vocal neighbour of Syria, hectoring and threatening the Alawite regime, while succouring the rebels and the floods of Syrian civilians fleeing civil war and regime bombardments.  Turkey, still maintaining its friendly ties with Iran, despite these clear divisions. 

So much so that it has been undermining the sanctions imposed upon Iran by the West.  As a member in good standing of NATO, Turkey has been extraordinarily busy ferrying gold bullion to Iran to save it from absolute penury through the success of the sanctions, absent Turkey's underhanded sieving of the sanctions' net success.

While on the one hand, Turkey enraged by Syria's obduracy in defying world opinion to continue bombarding its citizens, has requested of NATO that Patriot missile batteries be stationed along the southern border with Syria, as a deterrent to further cross-border assaults.  And on the other hand, Turkey supports Iran financially, enabling it to continue assisting Syria's Bashar al-Assad.

"We are the last stronghold of secularism and stability in the region and co-existence.  Let's say, it will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific and you know the implication on the rest of the world", Bashar al-Assad raged.  Point being that behind the rebels and fighting alongside them, are al-Qaeda-linked jihadis, Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist groups and various mujahadeen all in support of spreading fanatic Islamism.

And those groups, with their agendas of absolute Islamism and a deeply embedded Sharia law, will not content themselves with transforming the Middle East alone; they reach out to North Africa where their jihadi cohorts have made great gains, and their tentacles do not stop there.  With the consolidation of their bases there, they agitate to wage violent jihad abroad.

And they are determined that nothing will stop them.  The relentless onslaught of the sacred armies of Islam in the 7th Century and onward to transform the world through the imposition of universal Islam is the goal; to create a great Caliphate in memory of the Prophet and in honour of Allah.  And it is this vibrant threat that al-Assad refers to in large part.

He clarifies that he does not really believe the West to be that foolish as to risk unleashing that kind of unutterably unpredictable storm of conflict.  "...but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next."  The price of such an "invasion if it happened is going to be more than the whole world can afford", he promises.

He will be challenged.