Strategy and Politics and Religion

What a witch's brew of unappetizing ingredients the conflict in Syria and Iraq have become. There may be no serpents' tongues, no black cats, no skulls and dead men's eyes in that sinister bubbling cauldron but there is no lack of distasteful ingredients and queer couplings of regimes who so detest one another that they have descended nonetheless to counselling between themselves in hopes of avoiding a greater disaster from exploding in the Middle East.

It's a classic in the balancing of which is the greater evil, coming to the defence of one tyrant who feels completely at ease poisoning his own civilians, blasting them with deadly chemicals and equally deadly barrel bombs that make cluster bombs look like toys in a secular conflict, and another who feels entitled in disenfranchising over a third of its citizens who don't practise the Islamic sect he's made the overseer and beneficiary of Western intervention in unseating another fanatic.

The Middle East is separated by Islamic sects, one the majority the other the minority but each detesting the other in equal measure, and in each instance declaring the other contemptible heretics a condition more than adequately solved by violent jihad. What is occurring now in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere is a proxy war between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, each manoeuvring for advantage of conquest challenging the other for primacy.

The incendiary addition of fanatical Sunni Islamists viewing the Saudi Arabian regime as insufficiently Islamist represents the Frankenstein it itself created with its Wahhabist Madrassas it established with its vast oil money throughout the Middle East, Southeast Asia and North Africa, not to mention Europe and North America. That monster rejects living in peace with Western democracy, let alone Islamic 'moderacy'; it has ignited traditional jihad in the creation of its terrorist persona.

While the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda and its affiliates jostle for power and supremacy in an ultimate caliphate where fanatical Sharia and rabid interpretation of Islamist precepts are to be the order of the day, every day, everywhere its tentacles spread, the world looks on in the horror of anticipation that the regions furthest from the source of fundamental Islamist jihad will become absorbed by it through fending off attacks by its countless shaheeds.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, both exceedingly well armed by another arch-nemesis brace, Russia and the United States, along with France and others not wishing to be left out of lucrative arms deals, are reluctant to confront one another directly, to test their conquering capacities; they much prefer proxy wars whose outcome will perhaps in the final analysis test which of them will be left standing in full control of all they survey.

In the process they have drawn the world, as it were, into their regional splenetic conflict based in the interpretation of each of what represents the true succession of Islam, that religion of universal peace and brotherhood. A peculiar type of brotherhood which detests to the death those others who embrace sects of Islam disdained by the majority. Russia and the United States have been sucked into their fear of Islamist terrorism impinging once again on their sovereign soil; each have suffered from those depredations. It is, however, yet another avenue for their own proxy war.

Russia has committed equipment including warplanes to Syria and eyeing Iraq, the United States is sending advisers and helicopters whose pilots will hope to evade the airspace of the Russian planes. Iran is sending its al Quds Republican Guard units whose efforts will complement those of Shiite militias. Jordan is busy training Iraqi troops, but wants no additional involvement. The Syrian air force bombs supply lines to IS. Some militias of the anti-Assad Syrian rebels are fighting IS, originally anti-Assad rebels.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar continue to fund Syrian Sunnis opposing IS Islamists, and Saudi Arabia has placed its troops on border alert, as the Islamic State militias march on like indomitable army ants that no force on Earth can stop. That results in the unholy alliance of Iran, Russia, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States working together for the common purpose of stopping the Sunni religious regime of IS from prevailing. In so doing they are all working, despite angst, to prop up a Shiite regime.

Compelling the conflict between the allies/adversaries is the question of antagonism between the United States and Russia over Syria and Ukraine, and that between Iran and the United States over Israel. How will this all affect Iran's nuclear program beyond putting that hugely critical issue out of mind and immune to solution in a greater atmosphere of crisis over the implosion of the Middle East? How does all of this impact on the interaction or lack of between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia?

The Kurds are now cooperating with Turkey, despite Turkey's fears over the strengthening sovereignty claims of Iraqi Kurds and how that might complicate Turkey's relationship with its own Kurds. How does the United States square the dilemma it finds itself in, with its compromised position directly attributable to the Obama administration's unwillingness to be further embroiled within the damning conflicts of the Middle East in its relations with Israel, and through the current crisis unfolding, upholding the regime of President Bashar al-Assad?


Iraqi president Nuri al-Malaki remains intransigent and hostile to the recommendation that he either share administration of the country with the Sunni and Kurd minorities, or step down to enable someone to replace him who may be amenable to attempting to halt the deteriorating situation of conflict between Sunni and Shia; his resolute intention to remain president presents a thorn in the saddle of anyone hoping to ride out the situation.

Is this entire mess a fair judgement on President Obama's foreign policy judgement?


In claiming in his Cairo speech that he had an especial insight and sympathy with Islam, how may he now explain the outcome of the Arab spring that his very speech may have stimulated? Does he now remain so certain of his interpretive and peace-cajoling skills that he can divine who can be trusted from who must be avoided? Whom to side with and arm, and whom to give a wide berth or alternately aid in removing?

Just asking, understand. And if you do understand, please share it with the rest of us.