Syria's Gaunt Geographic Corpse

"The world's silence today -- as hundreds of civilians are slaughtered; hospitals destroyed in precision strikes; elderly men shot dead and burned on the street; and hundreds of thousands of people are forced to flee, some on foot -- risks gifting HTS [al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] with a narrative win on the revolutionary street."
Charles Lister, director, Countering Terrorism and Extremism, Middle East Institute

All quiet in Western media and Western attention on the Syrian front. There was a time, when the Syrian regime began its meticulous all-out assault on its Syrian Sunni rebel population that the world was transfixed with incredulity at the stories published daily in mainstream media of a government that set out to 'punish' a rebellion that began as a quiet protest against second-class citizenship of Sunnis under an Alawite-Shiite regime.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad spoke contemptuously of those groups he forced into rebellion as 'terrorists', they were scum, beneath his notice other than to quell the revolt against his dictatorship. It took little time before Assad, welcome up to then in Western capitals, was to be recognized as a brutal mass butcher, one who directed  his military to bomb areas of Aleppo and even Damascus with Sunni Syrian neighbourhoods.

Syrians check the damage of destroyed houses after an air strike destroyed at least ten houses in the town of Azaz on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012. (AP / Khalil Hamra)

Even children, if they were naive enough to indulge in public defiance, were not immune to arrest, torture and death. Syrian Sunni-majority towns were treated to chemical attacks where children were rushed to hospitals and medical clinics to save their lives. Soon enough hospitals and medical clinics and their personnel themselves came under attack. People waiting in bread lines were shot down by military attack helicopters.

Shaam News Network / Reuters  After a bloody, week-long siege in the Syrian capital, residents who stayed behind are facing hours-long lines for gasoline and bread, stinking piles of garbage in the streets and scenes of destruction unimaginable in a city that had long been spared the worst ravages of the country’s uprising

Infamously, the Syrian regime was warned by the Obama White House that the use of chemical weapons would not be tolerated; their use would be interpreted as a war crime should they cross that 'red line'. As the civil war reaches past its tenth year of bloody conflict it was six years ago that the figure of 400,000 deaths attributed to the regime's response to the rebellion was estimated. The mass movement of Syrians attempting to evade death saw millions of Syrians displaced within Syria and millions more becoming refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Reuters    Patients were hosed down with water to remove any chemicals on their skin

Then came the barrel bombs, shattering neighbourhoods of apartment buildings, businesses, schools, hospitals into concrete smithereens, destroying life, creating hundreds of thousands of homeless trudging away from what had once been their cities and towns, their homes, their farms, their villages. Everything noted, discussed, published and decried. The United Nations deplored all of the destruction, the loss of lives, the demolishing of heritage sites, the ongoing slaughter.

The Islamic Republic of Iran dispatched its al Quds force of the Republican Guard Corps to help direct strategy. Iran's proxy terrorist militia marched out of Lebanon and into Syria to fight alongside the Syrian military, aligned now against the entry of foreign jihadists whose Sunni forces saw an opportunity in a vicious sectarian war to help unseat a Shiite tyrant; not out of humanitarian concern but through the lens of historical tribal, sectarian hatreds.

And then, the opportunity arose for Russia to establish a deep-sea port and an air base, which led to Russian President Vladimir Putin offering air support to the regime, to turn what had become a stalemate into a rout, turning the tide of opportunity in Assad's favour as they worked in tandem, Russian air might bombing rebel-held areas, softening up the militias for battlefield incursions of the Syrian army.

Turkish and Russian patrol seen near the town of Darbasiyeh, November 2019

What remains in the ghost geography of Syria is the Idlib governorate held by Syrian resistance. There 200 Russian bombs demolished towns deserted by their residents. Hundreds of thousands of new refugees have streamed out onto highways trudging en masse in a northerly direction toward the closed Turkish border. A half million people driven from homes in Idlib in the six months between April to December. Another half million joining them in the last week alone, some from the Aleppo governorate.

To assemble in growing, putrid, ill-equipped refugee camps lacking facilities during a cold and miserable Syrian winter. Months ago UN human rights office spokesman Rupert Colville spoke of 61 hospitals and clinics bombed by the Russian air force and Assad's barrel bombers in Idlib. Another 53 health facilities in Idlib shuttered according to the World Health Organization. "Idlib has been transformed into something like a large concentration camp" president of MedGlobal stated. Under a ceasefire arrangement.

Syrian government ground forces advanced towards Douma   AP

Syria had a pre-war population of 23 million, half driven from their homes, by last April. Millions more as refugees, hoping to be welcomed in Europe or North America. Flooding Europe to claim refugee haven. Another million are living under tarpaulins in tent encampments. The UN no longer collects and analyzes the death toll. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights placed the death count two years ago at 560,000. The Syrian Network for Human Rights counted another 98,000 people "disappeared" by the regime.

This is an example of how followers, the faithful of the 'religion of peace' view one another, react to each other, exact a toll of historical enmity one against the other in horrendous slaughter and displacement. Perhaps the world has grown indifferent to the enmities that Islam engenders within itself. That a non-Arab Middle East, nuclear-aspiring Shiite nation seeking the ultimate power it once held  historically roils the fragile stability of majority Sunni Arab states.

And another non-Arab Muslim state seeks to return to Ottoman-era domination in league with the Muslim Brotherhood. The death count in Syria meanwhile is so large, the refugee situation so acute, the destruction so complete, the hatred so deeply entrenched, it is beyond the comprehension of most sane and literate people who feel they can no longer absorb any more details of an internecine war without end.

Russian military police stand near an armored personnel carrier in Syria's Hasakeh province on Oct. 24, 2019. DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Syria, Russia, Impervious to Condemnation

"There is little sign of daily life here. We could see no cars driving or people on the streets, no shopkeepers opening their stores. It's a wasteland."
"From looking at the satellite images, you can see it's a scorched earth policy. In contrast to Sarajevo, the damage is incomparable. Even in the worst-hit areas of Sarajevo some buildings still stood."
"[Here] All the trees and vegetation are gone and the buildings are no longer there but there are no craters [leading to suspected use of thermobaric weapons]. It's possible they [Syrian and Russian military] were trying to clear that area to serve as a buffer."
Stuart Ray, McKenzie Intelligence Services

"Eastern Ghouta is straight out of the Aleppo playbook. I'm afraid we'll have no option but to sit and watch it all play out again. What we saw in Aleppo could pale in comparison to what's to come in Eastern Ghouta."
"Russia is the only one who can stop this now. But they seem impervious to international condemnation and shame."
Unnamed Western diplomat

Smoke billows from buildings following Syrian government bombardment of Hamouria in the eastern Ghouta region. Photograph: Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images

"One week after the UN security council voted in favour of resolution 2401, calling for a one-month cessation of hostilities across the war-ravaged country, not only has this not happened, in some cases the violence has escalated, particularly for the close to 400,000 men, women and children of [eastern] Ghouta."
"Instead of a much-needed reprieve, we continue to see more fighting, more death, and more disturbing reports of hunger and hospitals being bombed. This collective punishment of civilians is simply unacceptable."
UN regional humanitarian coordinator, Panos Moumtzis

"In our street, over 500 metres there are only three basements. They have to house all the families there. We feel the prison shrinking. We were first besieged in an enormous prison called eastern Ghouta, now we are trapped in shelters similar to tombs."
"We are living real terror twenty-four hours a day."
Neemat Mohsen, head, local women’s office, Saqba

In the divided city of Damascus the government-controlled west is where residents go to work, children attend school, and dinner parties are being held in an atmosphere of normalcy. In the east a mere several hundred metres' distance, people must live in crowded basements as shelter from the incessant bombing, breathe in the stale air, have no running water, much less electricity, and search for scraps of food when they dare venture out of the foetid, cramped cellars.


Eastern Ghouta, where 400,000 people live in desperation under siege, needing food, potable water, medicines, the siege they suffer under represents one of the longest in modern history, qualifying as the most brutal, because a conscienceless brute who hurls chemical weapons and barrel bombs at vulnerable populations targets them, and in so doing has at its service the military weight and air strike power of one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

It has been five years since the Syrian regime began its starvation siege of 100 square kilometres of land which neither the regime's war planes nor Russia's have yet broken the spirit of the rebels and Syrian Sunnis completely, though they live in constant dread in this horror of a landscape. Satellite images show grey smudges where buildings once stood and the craters that interrupt roads and where streets no longer exist, as black and grey smoke rises heavily from the latest air strikes.

United Nations figures show that 91 percent of Jobar has been destroyed. And though government territory on the opposite side is hit regularly by mortars from Ghouta's rebel areas, the damage is negligible in comparison to the devastation wrought by the regime's deadly barrel bombs ravaging the territory, making of it an utter hellish wasteland. According to UN figures 3,853 destroyed, 5,141 severely damaged and 3,547 moderately damaged buildings have been identified in the densely populated western areas of the enclave.

Schools and hospitals appear to be particularly favoured targets by Syrian and Russian warplanes to bomb. Since the latest escalation went into effect two weeks earlier, fourteen medical facilities have been so severely damaged they have been taken out of service entirely. Over ten medical staff and volunteers have been killed in the process and 20 injured, according to the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations. Doctors now treat and operate in underground rooms hoping to secure safety from the air strikes.

According to Stuart Ray, a former British military intelligence officer, it seems likely from interpreting his company's satellite imagery that the Syrian government made use of explosives that use oxygen from surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion in the area west of Douma, weapons known as thermobaric for their telltale signs of a lack of craters while buildings are destroyed along with all the natural landmarks.

The attacks on rebel-held Homs, Aleppo and Raqqa leaving them uninhabitable in the scorched-earth policy of the regime, looks to be in repeat mode in eastern Ghouta. Fears abound that Assad's "starve or surrender" siege tactic, less costly for his troops, but abundantly successful in harvesting human lives and destroying vital infrastructure will be ultimately visited on Ghouta, its towns and villages where, isolated from the outside world people eat only what they can themselves grow or smuggle in.

Under the Russian-declared 'truce' the Syrian government opened a "humanitarian" corridor to enable residents who wish to leave, the opportunity. An elderly Pakistani couple represented the only takers to pass through. Logically, residents fear that what happened in Aleppo, where civilians who exited the city were tortured, arrested or displaced, will happen here, as well. The 'option' to leave represents for them, no option at all.

Syrians flee their homes with their belongings in the town of Beit Sawa in Syria's besieged eastern Ghouta region on March 4, following reported air strikes. . | Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images

Islam, Devouring Its Own

"Shirk literally means association. It is the act of associating God with other entities."
"What they [Islamic State] take the Sufis to task principally for is the intercession, the use of other media, to access God."
Jacob Olidort, Islam scholar

"They [Salafists; Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists] believe Sufi shrines are the most egregious expressions of that shirk."
"They think the society is moving in the wrong direction and Sufis are aiding and abetting the authorities on this corrupt path. In ways, their reasons are very much political. They say, 'If Sufis support this, we will be against them,' more or less."
"The opponents of Sufism see the shrines and these living saints as idols. Their existence and their worship violates the main principle of Islam, which is the uniqueness of God and the uniqueness of the object of worship."
Alexander Knysh, Sufism scholar, professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

"Our main focus ... is to wage war against the manifestations of shirk and bid'ah [heresy], including Sufism."
"Shirk has become very widespread [in Egypt]."
"[Sufis in Egypt are forewarned, they are mushrikin [polytheists], [their] blood is filthy and permissible to shed."
Islamic State emir of Islamic State religious police, Rumiyah magazine

The Rawda mosque, roughly 40 kilometers west of el-Arish in Egypt's Sinai, after a gun and bombing terror attack, on November 24, 2017. (AFP/Stringer)

Strange that the experts focus on Islamic terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and their war on the "disease" of Sufism, the mystical wing of Islam which threatens no one. The veneration of martyrs within Sufism as a manifestation of the divine in Islam is viewed as apostasy, a heretical, vile mockery of Islam by the virulently fundamentalist terrorists who flog Islam as the sole legitimate expression of the Almighty's presence as a spiritual being whose monotheistic divinity all humankind is expected to submit to.

And shedding the lives of the heretics is on prominent display. As when in February the shrine in southern Pakistan was targeted by an ISIL jihadist with a projectile-packed explosive vest that killed over 80 people when the detonator was hit. The worshipers were praying at the shrine of the Sufi philosopher Lal Shabaz Qalandar, a revered saint; a frequent practise when the faithful visit such tombs, targeted in Libya, in Mali and elsewhere by Islamic State where mass executions of Sufi faithful take place.

On November 24, over 300 Sufi worshippers at a mosque in the Sinai Peninsula were attacked by a dozen ISIL terrorists in a well coordinated event that injured a hundred others of the faithful. Each time an attack of that nature takes place, it creates a stir of confusion from outside the Muslim community and dismay within. How and why could it be explained that Muslims slaughter other Muslims? When one only has to look at what official Pakistan does in persecuting Sufis and Amadiyah Muslims, along with Christians.

Islamic State in Syria and Iraq target Yazidis for very special treatment, killing the men and boys en mass, and enslaving women and children as  sex slaves. Both the Salafi school of Islam (Islamic State proponents) and the Wahhabists (al-Qaeda group) view Muslims outside their recognized mainstream of majority Sunni Islam as irregular, unacceptable. Shiite Muslims, the other mainstream of Islam is a minority branch deplored by the majority Sunnis, while Shia Muslims consider Sunnis 'illegal', leaving them implacable enemies.

The puzzled outside world looking in with horror at the ongoing slaughter of Muslim upon Muslim, viewing the plight of Islam's refugees fleeing in terror from al-Qaeda- and ISIL-linked groups such as the Taliban, al-Shabaab and Boko Haram in their rampages across the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, find it difficult to distinguish why it might be that the Muslim world is in such violent ferment.

On the other hand, while the answers are right there in the Koran and the Hadiths, it has become too indelicate for scholars of Islam and politicians in the West to point out the reality that Islam will not recognize the legitimacy of the presence of other religions; their very existence calls out for jihad. Jihad which calls the faithful to their duty to promote and advance Islam in a universal campaign to ensure that Sharia becomes widespread and Islam reigns supreme.

A general view shows people gathering outside the Mar Girgis Coptic Church in the Nile Delta City of Tanta, north of Cairo, after a bomb blast struck worshippers gathering to celebrate Palm Sunday on April 9, 2017. (AFP Photo/Khaled Desouki)

Syria, Bashar al-Assad's Dynastic Imperium

"That [the scenario of the U.S. launching a military drive against Assad] requires massive escalation, restarting the war from scratch to roll back Assad's gains and creating an opposition that is both able to govern and acceptable to the international community."
"Looking at the conflict right now and how the opposition's allies are all backing away -- it's just not going to happen."
"To be sure there will be flare-ups of violence and bombings and unrest. But he [Assad] holds he centre, he holds most of the population, he's got the economy and the institutions and the UN seat."
"...He has all the stuff he needs to continue to rule."
Aron Lund, fellow, The Century Foundation, New York

"The participants agreed that the goal of the political settlement is to establish a state based on the principle of citizenship, which enables the Syrians to draft their constitution without interference and to choose their leaders through free, fair and transparent elections in which the Syrians participate inside and outside Syria under the supervision of the United Nations,"
"[The] participants agreed to form a single negotiating delegation in its structure, unified in its positions and reference, with the aim of negotiating with the representatives of the regime ..."
Syrian opposition groups, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The Syrian opposition has struggled to unify its ranks against Assad [File: Reuters]

Syria, whose president, Bashar al-Assad is responsible for 600,000 Syrian deaths among sectarian Syrian Sunnis, of half of the entire population numbering in the millions displaced (according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 4.8 million are in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, while 6.6 million remain internally displaced within Syria and at least a million have claimed refugee asylum in Europe), yet Syria has its champion in the UN Security Council.

A nation whose governing regime has been found to have used chemical weapons to destroy the lives of its citizens, whose president ordered the use of barrel bombs and starvation sieges to weaken and destroy its political opponents, and where tens of thousands of men, women and children were arrested, tortured and killed, and is held in obloquy, for the slaughter of its own, suddenly becomes celebrated because it plays the grand gesture of signing on to the Paris Climate Accord. Its status in the United Nations, despite its horrible human rights record, remains respected.

Syria’s surprise decision to sign the Paris climate agreement comes against the background of a brutal civil war. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

It is recognized as a terrorist-sponsoring country by the United States, just as the Islamic Republic of Iran is held to be, yet the resolve of the West insisting that Assad must surrender the presidency of Syria in light of the fact that he has destroyed much of the infrastructure of its largest cities in his campaign to destroy his opponents, and his brutally lethal treatment of Syria's Sunni majority has now been set aside thanks to Russian intervention. A year ago it was certain that the regime was losing the civil conflict against the Sunni-led opposition groups.

This, despite the presence of Lebanon-based Hezbollah militias fighting alongside the Syrian military, along with Iran's al-Quds groups of the Republican Guard Corps. And then along came Russia because Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity to regain Russian influence in the Middle East, not among its traditional sources like Egypt, and bypassing the Sunni majority, but by supporting Syria in its civil conflict through sending in Russian troops and establishing a seaport and airforce facility from which Russian bombers have been aiding Assad by punishing dissent with lethal bombing raids.

The tide was effectively turned. The gains made by the Sunni Syrian militias against Assad's Shia Alawite minority rule totally reversed. Had the United States under the Obama administration agreed to adequately train and arm the Sunni rebels and credibly lead them to an organized mission to defeat Assad, many deaths would have been spared, and fewer desperate Syrians made homeless. Russia now has the upper hand, aligning itself with Iran, Hezbollah, Shia militias and Turkey in support of the Syrian regime.

Where previously the Syrian military focused its efforts on battling the Syrian rebels and ignoring the great portions of its territory overrun and captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the situation now is that the rebel groups have been so battered they no longer pose the threat they once did, thanks largely to Russian intervention through its air strikes, enabling attention to turn to fighting ISIL The U.S., training rebel forces through the C.I.A. simply did not trust them enough to enable them sufficiently.

It has been the Kurdish-led forces whom the U.S. and other NATO-aligned nations have been helping to train and to equip that have done the heavy lifting in vanquishing ISIL, driving them from their 'caliphate' geography, and draining them of their massive footholds in Syria and Iraq. The International Criminal Court, which named Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir as a war criminal for his deadly assaults in Darfur, should logically be holding Assad to account for his mass slaughters of Syrians and destruction of Sunni neighbourhoods in Syrian cities.

The intention of the West to press the issue of Bashar al-Assad's stepping down from ruling Syria in the dynastic tradition of his brutal father has gone by the wayside. Even Russian efforts to placate that aspiration through allusions to a future election is in reality a sham, since Assad will see no need whatever for a Western-style, democratic election until he has succeeded in destroying possibly most of the presence of Sunni Syrians, leaving the minority Alawites in the majority to vote overwhelmingly for their hero.

 

It's The Arab Culture

"It's not about us -- we have no power to stop this war. Even if the international community ... provides millions of dollars, Yemen will not recover unless the war stops."
"It's so painful to see hopeless families. I've met some who are all infected with cholera or other diseases. Can you imagine a father, whose eight children who are infected and he is so poor?"
"People are very pessimistic. I think we will be neglected slowly by the international community and the world."
Sadeq Al-Ameen, aid worker, Sanaa, Yemen

"We're looking for this simple, over-arching narrative and this idea of a proxy war is something people can understand -- group X backs these guys and group Y backs these guys."
"The reality is you've got a multiplicity of different groups, each with different agendas working and fighting on the ground against one another." 
"They've gone from literally 25 guys in the mountains 13 years ago to thousands if not tens of thousands of men operating on the ground in control of all these resources. They're being told, you're on the back foot and it's time to give up, which to my mind if you look at their history, their trajectory, it just doesn't compute."
"Lots of different groups control lots of different parts of the country and that control allows them to tax trade. We end up in this situation where it becomes self-fuelling, where guys who have taken up arms, maybe for ideological reasons, maybe for local politics, now have money and power they didn't have before the war ... They're not being talked to, so what incentive do they have to give up their arms and newfound resources and power?
"The lesson the Saudis have learned is that they can get away with a great deal when it comes to Yemen. They can really do things that if another country were doing it in another context there would be international outcry, there would be action at the Security Council level, but in this case that's just not happening because of the value western and other states place on their relationship with Saudi Arabia."
Peter Salisbury, Chatham House paper author

"I do think Syria has exhausted resources, personal and governmental. I'm not surprised given the extent of the war there."
"But I also think if Yemen preceded Syria, nothing would change. Yemen is jut not a country that western nations and peoples think of -- hardly on their radar."
Kamal Al-Solaylee, Yemen born, Toronto author, professor

A child in Yemen     CBS News

The war in Yemen is indeed a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, one an Arab state the other Aryan, both Muslim-majority countries, the former Sunni, the latter Shiite. Saudi Arabia views itself as a leading power in the Middle East, not least because it is the custodian of the two most sacred sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina. The challenge by Iran which imagines itself once again reflecting influence and power from the historical era of the Persian Empire threatens the eminence of the Saudi majority in the Middle East -- and world wide which consider Shia Islam illegitimate.

Since 1979 and the transformation of Persian Iran into the Islamic Republic it is now, modernity and moderation have taken a back seat to the fundamentalist Ayatollahs' mission to assume the mantle of the Middle East power and influence, to bring Shia Islam to the fore and to achieve that goal it has gone out of its way to form, train and arm Shiite militias, to support what are undeniably terrorist groups, to launch terrorist attacks against perceived enemies both in the Middle East and abroad while enlarging its sphere of influence.

Iran's mission to arm its military with medium- and long-range ballistic missiles, its steady work toward manufacturing nuclear bombs and its overt hostility toward the majority Arab Sunni community hugely alarms that community, no less than it does the only other non-Arab state in the Middle East, Israel. The threats emanating from Iran toward Israel, to wipe it from the map of the Middle East are overt, while the threats against the Sunni states are covert and implied, but no less real.

The Yemeni Houthi rebels practise a brand of Shia Islam linking them to Iran, which has encouraged the Houthis to overwhelm the Western- and Saudi-approved Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who took the helm of Yemen after the Arab spring 2011 protests rid the country of Ali Abdullah Saleh, an autocratic ruler not beloved by his people, similar to what had occurred in Tunisia. But the Houthis aligned themselves with Saleh, attacking the capital and wresting it from the Hadi government.

The rise of the Houthis as a rebel group with a fierce fighting reputation is similar in type to that of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant; while one is Shiite, the other Sunni, each was a persecuted minority in their countries ruled by a sectarian majority. Saudi Arabia gathered a coalition of Sunni states to launch a war against the Houthis to return their candidate to power though it is mostly Saudis bombing Yemen to achieve that end. And more refugees are added to the world total, an amazing number of which are of Arab origin.

Yemeni refugees in a Djbouti refugee camp    CBS News

And if the observation has been made that the Saudis can get away with bombing a poor country like Yemen, helping to cause a downspiral of food scarcity, medical impoverishment and an out-of-control cholera epidemic where disease and starvation stalk the country, this immunity from blame and lack of censure from the United Nations sees a complementary version in the Palestine Liberation Organization which incites Palestinians to violence against Israeli Jews, and consistently refuses to work toward a settlement with Israel leading to peace.

As long as it is sectarian Islam in conflict with itself the 57-member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation will do nothing, say nothing, fail to apply pressure on either Iran or Saudi Arabia to cease and desist and allow Yemen to save itself from even greater destabilization if such a thing is even remotely possible. This is the Arab and Muslim world, after all. It is not only the Houthis who are in conflict against their sectarian rivals in Yemen, for al-Qaeda and Islamic State have also positioned themselves there, all jostling to achieve their own goals.

Few Dull Moments in the Middle East

"A sizable percentage of our budget, we discovered, was being stolen. And this cannot stand. Where you have corruption, you cannot have justice, you cannot have investment, you cannot have efficient and transparent government."
Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir

"The potential scale of corrupt practices which have been uncovered is very large. Based on our investigations over the past three years, we estimate that at least $100bn has been misused through systematic corruption and embezzlement over several decades."
"The evidence for this wrongdoing is very strong."
"There has been a great deal of speculation around the world regarding the identities of the individuals concerned and the details of the charges against them. In order to ensure that the individuals continue to enjoy the full legal rights afforded to them under Saudi law, we will not be revealing any more personal details at this time."
Saudi Attorney General Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb 

Those caught up in the anti-corruption drive are reportedly being held at Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton   Reuters

Saudi Arabia appears to have been shaken from its traditional sense of complacency. Its vast oil reserves no longer command the riches in returns that they were long accustomed to, with the devaluation of oil on energy markets and the rise of the United States' fossil fuel reserves thanks to fracking and drilling in previously-protected environments, along with the bad odour that oil has been regarded with, thanks to the actions of environmental groups; governmental, international and through NGO activities aided by public celebrity figures dedicated to the fight against global warming.

The Obama administration, late in its second stint, shifted its alliances, leaving Sunni Muslim states and primarily Saudi Arabia bewildered and forgotten as negotiations went forward with the Islamic Republic of Iran on its disputed nuclear file, and the U.S. appeared through its action/inaction to somehow favour Shiite Muslim countries and groups. Despite being in the Muslim majority, Sunnis now feel exposed and vulnerable to the power machinations of Iran, with its covert activities and manipulation of its proxy terrorist groups in destabilizing the Middle East.

From the Houthi rebels in Yemen against whom Saudi Arabia formed a coalition to bomb the poverty-stricken nation roiled in civil war, to Iraq and Syria, the former majority Shiite, the latter minority Shiite, both managing to violently suppress the equal rights of their Sunni Muslims in a part of the world that generally doesn't recognize human rights, let alone equal rights, and with Lebanon, Qatar and Turkey playing a middle role with Russian intervention, Saudi Arabia sees Iran gaining the upper hand in influence and confidence that it will succeed in the conquest it seeks.

Lebanon is now being focused on as a potential next hot-spot, a country where the disparate sectarian parts of its entirety once lived in an atmosphere of suspicious amity toward one another while the country prospered but fell into hard times of reawakened awareness of traditional hatreds when the PLO established its camps there and the terrorist group Hezbollah had its awakening thanks to Iran, as the Party of God and uncivil war erupted. Occupied by Syria, Iran, Israel, with UN peacekeeping groups from France and the U.S. the country became a shambles, a spectre of its former self.

Wherever Iran has intervened, violent destabilization has resulted. Under Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, changes and interventions have arisen. The bombing of the Yemen Houthis accomplishing nothing but misery for Yemenis was his idea, the sequestering of Qatar for its acquiescence to Iran, and now the arrest of several hundred Saudis representing Saudi royalty, officials, billionaire businessmen and others in a purported corruption sweep is roiling the entire Middle East.

Saudi Arabia's King Salman has established a new anti-corruption body.  AP: Vincent Thian

Iran is most certainly behind all the turmoil unfolding in the Middle East. The only non-Arab Muslim country in the geography has its malevolent trade marks over all that occurs there as it manoeuvres to become the region's leading political and religious leader. According to Saudi observer Thomas Lippmann the surprise arrests under the guise of anti-corruption action is in reality the Crown Prince's bid to ensure that his rivals for the throne on the death of his father King Salman cannot trump his candidacy.

Suddenly discovering that corruption is widespread as a ruling measure of business and personal achievement of wealth belies the reality that what is viewed as corruption and rampant nepotism as members of the royal family vie for plum posts to further enrich themselves is merely how business is done in Saudi Arabia, along with the expectations of entitlements. While state coffers receive their due, so too do the Saudi players that represent the ruling class, both royal and business tycoons.

It's quite obvious that Iran overplayed its hand when Yemen's Houthis launched a ballistic missile toward Riyadh, where it was shot down by the Saudis as it flew over the international airport near the capital. But this was representative of Iran's malicious jubilation at the vision of Saudi unravelling, a shot across the bow of a rival, that has cost Iran nothing, and Yemen everything as its land, sea and airports have been closed, even though the Saudis are growling at Iran's "act of war".

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman receives French President Emmanuel Macron in Riyadh. the capital Riyadh. Picture: AFP/Saudi Royal PalaceSource:AFP

   

The Religion of Peace

"One doctor we spoke to told us that infants as  young as one week old, children and mothers were emerging wounded and covered in dust and soil, some were malnourished."
Hamida Ramadhani, UNICEF deputy representative, Iraq

Amina, thought to be about three, was pulled from the rubble in Mosul after being trapped for days. The little girl is believed to be the daughter of ISIL fighters from Chechnya who died in battle.© Carol Guzy via ZUMA Wire

"Damn them. They killed our families, why should they get to live?"
"Mosul will never be the same again. There's nothing to be optimistic about."
Walid Khalid, 28, Mosul, Iraq

"We had been two days without water. One fighter said you can have water but in exchange I will kill one of your children."
"Another fighter stood by a running hose and said: 'This water is for the brothers only'."
Vehyeh Zekeria, liberated Mosul, Iraq

"The best way is to build a camp outside the city and they [Islamic State families] can all live there together. Their ideology is like a caner and we don't want it infecting us."
"People welcomed Daesh (ISIL) because they suffered so much before when the army was here."
"Right now, because of what they saw under Daesh, the people of Mosul are very happy to see the army again. But if the army goes back to hurting people that could change."
Samir Ahmed Sofi, Sunni Iraqi, liberated Mosul

Sunni Iraqis, after the downfall of Sunni Baathist dictator Saddam Hussein found themselves under the majority Shiite Iraqi government that took power in the same situation that the Shiite were in, beleaguered and discriminated against by the minority Sunni Iraqi government. The dissolution of the Sunni control of Baghdad and the dismissal of all Sunni members of Saddam's military created the initial resurgence of deadly reaction between the sects as each, despite the presence of international troops led by the U.S., began slaughtering one another.

In the failure of the government set up by the U.S. administration to reflect the interests of Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, when the majority Shiites wrenched authority to itself  reflecting its majority status, a viral undercurrent of lethal discontent roiled Iraqi Sunnis leading to a gradual emergence of militias aligning themselves with foreign terrorist groups, then morphing as a new jihadi movement under the banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

In Syria, as in Iraq, ISIL militias ruthlessly embarked on a bloody campaign and swiftly gained a reputation as militarily unbeatable and cruelly murderous, gaining territory as they swept the geography of both countries, claiming for themselves a huge swath of both that they called their Islamic Caliphate. Finally, the Kurdish Peshmerga, defending Kurdistan from ISIL even as the Iraqi military abandoned the second largest city in Iraq to ISIL, led the country to vanquish the jihadis in battle.

The sun sets behind destroyed buildings in the west side of Mosul, Iraq. The nine-month fight to defeat ISIL in Mosul ended in a crescendo of bombardment that damaged or destroyed a third of its historic Old City in just three weeks. AP Photo/Felipe Dana/File

The greater Sunni population in Mosul had at first welcomed the presence of Sunni-led ISIL, but soon realized how devoid of humanity their new overseers were. Now those remaining in Mosul view what remains of their once-proud city, and recount their misery living under the Islamist fist of the Islamic State. While Mosul was being slowly liberated, a central core in the Old City continued to be held by ISIL jihadis many of them foreign fighters dedicated to the Daesh mission.

With them, their families, wives and children, since Mosul became an ISIL centre, its headquarters in Iraq just as Rakka was in Syria. The United States has been giving air cover to the Iraqi military as it entered Mosul along with Iranian Shia militias, as viciously brutal in their hatred as the Islamic State. The Kurds, whose fighting spirit and resilience has been responsible for ISIL defeats, were ordered to remain outside Mosul, so the full glory of the recapture of the city would remain with the Iraqi military which had turned tail at the entry of ISIL, leaving their U.S.-sourced arms and vehicles as gifts to ISIL.

In the bombing of Mosul's Old City to dislodge the Islamic State fighters, buildings are destroyed with their inhabitants within. Rescue missions have been discovering in the ruins of those buildings dozens of children, from infants and newborns upward -- the children of ISIL fighters dedicating themselves to martyrdom in suicide attacks or killed by Iraqi forces and Shiite militias in an orgy of vengeance.

A little girl of three, rescued after several days trapped in the remains of a shattered building, asked where her parents were, responded that they were "shaheeds". Another young boy was eating raw meat from the ground in a state of starvation. Needless to say, the only 'raw meat from the ground' that would be present would represent the remains of people killed by the bombing littering the ruins.

UNICEF has announced an increased number of unaccompanied children at their medical facilities, some of them babies found alone in the debris of the ruined streets, brought in by rescuers. The business of retributive killings and the desire to exact revenge through collective punishment targeting those residents of the city thought to have supported the Islamic State presence, is most certainly underway.

Those who suffered under ISIL rule share their stories of family members killed, of destroyed homes and deprivation. Burnishing their motivation to strike out against whatever is left of the Islamic State authority that made such a misery of their lives.

The Source That Cannot Be Named

"If the refugees stay, Sunnis will be the majority. Christians, but also the Druze and the Shia, will emigrate because the Sunnis have an extremist mindset and will eventually take over."
"Of course I support Assad. The Syrian people wanted freedom. Now they've destroyed their country."
"And we [Lebanese] used to be jealous of them."
Diab Madwar, Lebanese from Christian village Ammiq, Beqaa Valley

"Why are most of them women and children? It's because they have relatives fighting as terrorists inside Syria. That's why they don't flee internally. There are safe spaces inside Syria, but most are affiliated with terrorist organizations."
"There is definitely some torturing going on. This is war and you can't control everything. And most people being arrested are terrorists. We're not going to put them in five-star hotels."
"The Syrian army and Hezbollah are doing a huge favour to humanity because they are fighting terrorism on behalf of the world."
Maher Dana, Hezbollah-affiliated journalist

"Because of the raid we feel unwelcome here, especially because most of our neighbours are Christians and we are Muslims."
"I didn't feel hostility before [a Lebanese Police raid ousting them from 'illegal' apartments], but now I feel like the Lebanese are looking at us differently."
"We stay at home [new two-room apartment] and don't go out. If we need groceries, we go out at night."
Anas, Syrian refugee, mother of six children, Beirut

An image shared on social media of men rounded up by the Lebanese army after refugee camp raids last month (screengrab)  Shocking pictures show extent of injuries to four men who died in custody after being picked up in raids on camps near Arsal   Middle East Eye

Lebanon went through its own brutal sectarian war. When the PLO set up operations in Lebanon after the Black September conflict with Jordan forced them to evacuate and find alternative haven where they could resume their cross-border attacks in Israel, the IDF entered Lebanon to restrain and force the PLO out of Lebanon. Lebanon was invaded by Syria, which looted it of its assets. The Iranian Republican Guards al Quds militia formed a Lebanese Shia 'resistance' group, training and arming them to mount massive explosive assaults through suicide missions against the French and American UN peace missions.

Since those mass blood-lettings Hezbollah has become part of Lebanon's government by force and intimidation through its political wing, while its military wing, a proxy Iranian militia, remains a separate force from the Lebanese military, dispatched by the Islamic Republic of Iran to commit terrorist atrocities abroad and more latterly, fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite military against rebel Syrian Sunnis in a long and bloody civil war.

The collapse of Syria encouraged the entry of foreign terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, leading to the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant by a breakaway al-Qaeda-linked group, has seen the country fragmented, millions of its citizens internally displaced and millions more displaced as refugees by the malevolent violence of the Syrian regime seeking to crush the Sunni revolt. The regime has been responsible for infinitely more deaths among Syrians than the psychopathic Islamic State has been.

Europe has been flooded with Syrian refugees, overwhelmingly young males, along with migrants from North Africa seeking the opportunity to improve their lives materially. Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan have absorbed millions of Syrian refugees themselves. Everywhere in the world of Islam in the Middle East and North Africa, ancient, deep-seated sectarian hatred and venomous violence merges with the added impact of tyrants punishing their populations while enriching themselves.

The legacy of tribal, clan, sectarian and political violence that roils these Muslim nations has spilled over into the rest of the world, where militant Islam has spawned a limitless number of dedicated jihadis inspired and eager to obey the hadiths that call upon the faithful to kill the infidel. So while preying on those practising their own sects' version of Islam, both Shiites and Sunnis dedicate themselves to overturning the democratic world order throughout the international community. 

Lebanon represents as illustrative a dysfunctional Islamist society as any, with its bubbling brew of viral animosities and lurking violence among its Druze, Christian, Shiite and Sunni populations all vying with one another for power and prestige, ruling through fear and intimidation. And while Hezbollah and its sponsor Iran, are busy with the aid of Russia in supporting Syria's bloody tyrant, their focus on destroying the State of Israel is diminished for the time being.

Syrian refugees live in very poor conditions (in Lebanon). This camp is located close to the Israeli border, so it is visited often by Lebanese security officials.  Photo: Constance Decorde

The Indecent Haste of Profitability

Credit: ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH/EPA

"[The agreement is] a big deal [for Iran and] will open the door for more companies to sign contracts [with the country]."
"[It] also gains the Iranians some diplomatic cover from both France and China in the event of attempts to impose further sanctions."
"The initial commitment of [US]$1-billion is relatively limited, giving it the flexibility to invest more if the situation is favourable."
Robin Mills, head, Qamar Energy, Dubai (Bloomberg News, July 2017)

"...The rewards of Iran’s nuclear concessions are actually widely evident—in the volume of new trade and investment that is already underway; in the scope and velocity of diplomatic and commercial reengagement with Iran; in the swifter than anticipated revival of oil exports. Heads of state from Italy and India, from South Korea to South Africa are beating a path to Tehran, accompanied by contingents of eager investors. Meanwhile, Iranian officials including the chief of the same Central Bank that was formerly barred by sanctions headline conferences aimed at wooing European business partners. The great Iranian gold rush is on."
Susan Maloney, Brookings Institute, May 2016 

"The flurry of investor excitement and the sheer size of Iran’s economy had some analysts comparing it to the reopening of Eastern bloc markets after the fall of communism. In a measure of the billions of dollars that are at stake, Tehran announced that it planned to buy 114 Airbus jets, while the head of the state-owned National Iranian Oil Co. said Sunday that the country planned to boost production by 1 million barrels a day, about a 33 percent increase in output."
"European leaders, seeking a rare piece of economic good news amid sagging markets, encouraged their nations’ businesses to take advantage of the opportunity. American companies are still barred by a range of U.S. sanctions that remain in place despite the lifting of those that were related to the nuclear program. For now, few U.S. companies are openly exploring business with Iran, even as European energy giants, carmakers and banks angle for a piece of the reopened market."
Michael Birnbaum, The Washington Post, January 2016 

Credit: RAHEB HOMAVANDI/Reuters

"Iran sold its first cargoes of natural gas condensate and crude oil to British in October last year. National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said the state-backed oil giant sold a cargo of one million barrels of natural gas condensate to BP as well as a second cargo to an unnamed British company."
"Iran has been seeking new customers for its crude oil and condensate production as it works to boost its output and export levels. The oil state is hoping to further increase its daily output to approximately 6 million barrels a day within the next 5 years, but this is highly dependent on whether Iran will be successful in attracting investment from oil majors."
The Telegraph

So much for the morality of investing in and trading with a country whose raw and naked ambition is the political, social, religious conquest of the Middle East is unstoppable. In its quest it leaves no stone unturned nor opportunity to ply its Persian Shiite theocracy into a position of unrestrained power over the limpid reactions of the Arab Sunni majority in the region. Boasting of its intentions to release Hezbollah, its proxy militia, toward another war with Israel as soon as its Republican Guard Corps al Quds branch, Hezbollah and Shia militias complete their conflict engagements in Syria and Yemen, the Arab states are restively nervous.

Nervous of the Islamic Republic of Iran's determination to acquire and stockpile nuclear arms as made abundantly clear through its recent past where its nuclear scientists have initiated furtive preliminary nuclear explosives and its stride toward nuclear enrichment and the building of secret, underground plants alongside its growing technologically advanced ballistic missiles program emphasized its intent. Time and experience has shown that Israel's nuclear arsenal is in place for purely defensive purposes; there will be no such assurances with the Iranian Republic's acquisitions.

As North Korea continues to surprise and confound with its dual ICBM/nuclear advances, so too will Iran recommence its nuclear aspirations. Which it has temporarily shelved, while continuing to operate stealthily. Its attention for the time being focused on building its trade and investment with European corporations anxious for a profit cut from the vast oil and gas reserves located in Iran, the carrot that the Iranians use to their advantage toward profit-oriented companies and nations eager to overlook its Islamofascist terrorism links, much less its commitment to consolidating the Shiite crescent to challenge Sunni Arab majority status and power.

To Total SA went the crown for representing the first investment in Iran by an international energy company since the easing of sanctions last yer. The resulting 20-year agreement with National Iranian Oil Co. and China National Petroleum Corp for the development of phase II of the South Pars offshore gas field is considered the "first of many" such projects for these exuberant partners. With that kind of investment and the long-range profitability how likely is it that France would exert its moral authority should it be required to once again constrain Iran's ambitions?

Little wonder that Qatar, which shares the world's biggest gas deposit with Iran has chosen to champion the Republic against the pressure exerted by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to isolate both countries for their complicity in opening ever wider the sectarian chasm between Shiites and Sunnis. Iran's vital importance to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad in destroying the futures of the majority Syrian Sunnis in his Alawite-led conquest of his own people, slaughtering civilians and creating millions of refugees let alone its incitement of the Houthis in Yemen in another Shiite civil war, describe in part the barbaric butchery Iran upholds.

The Spurious Syrian Ceasefire

"There is no electricity here, no medicines and very little food."
"The barrel bombs are raining on us. The ceasefire has changed nothing."
"It made people furious [Syrian regime diverting water from Wadi Barada to Damascus]. That's why we were among the earliest to join the revolution."
"As boys, we would swim in those beautiful waters [Wadi Barada's Ain al-Fijeh spring]. and now they're the prize in a war."
Anonymous, resident of Wadi Barada, under regime siege

"There is almost no canned food left, because we rushed to buy it when the bombing started."
"People are surviving on tiny stocks at home and keeping warm by bundling together or huddling around the fires we build."
Abu Mohamed al-Baradawi, area activist

"People were very frustrated to see so much land go to the government."
"These were luxury developments on other people's land."
Mohamed Raba'a, Syrian journalist-in-exile, Sweden

Screengrab from a video showing Syrian regime assault on Wadi Barada

It was largely neglect by the central government of Syria that alienated the Syrian Sunni population of the thirteen towns in Wadi Barada, situated northwest of Damascus. Damascenes had long been accustomed to viewing Wadi Barada as a popular vacation spot. A place to relax, and where good fishing opportunities presented. But the towns in the Wadi Barada valley were among the first of those who spurned government control, soon after the uprising against Bashar al-Assad's government was initiated.

People living in the area were bitter about government neglect, about rampant corruption, and most certainly about the government's propensity to confiscate private property for its own use. New land measures introduced for the purpose, were used by the regime as authority to confiscate hundreds of acres for state use. And the use to which those confiscated lands were put did not sit well with the former owners, left with nothing but memories of their holdings.

The land, taken from their rightful owners were re-purposed by government to recreational venues for the well-connected and the wealthy, in the form of a horse club, a luxury hotel and other such enterprises. The luxury hotel remains on Facebook, with the publicity advertising it as "a perfect place to unwind".

But it is the Wadi Barada Ain al-Fijeh spring, supplying roughly 70 percent of the fresh water running through the area toward Damascus, that represents the worst irritant. The Syrian army and its allies are attempting to wrest control of the spring from the residents. There was an agreement between the regime and the rebels that water services should be left undisrupted.

And then Assad's forces and Lebanese Hezbollah laid siege to the valley a year ago, and the situation changed. Water had been increasingly diverted to the capital before the onset of the civil war, and that diversion, while the government was ignoring the needs of the people of Wadi Barada, infuriated the residents. And now pro-government forces are righting the rebels to regain control of that important water source.

Even while a truce brokered by Russia and Turkey, with the intention of leading to peace talks has been announced for certain parts of Syria, the residents of Wadi Barada have not been included in the nation-wide ceasefire. Instead, according to residents, bombs have continued to descend daily, alongside the government siege that has led to empty market shelves and residents having to rely on wood fires to create warmth through the cold of winter.

Screen grab: Wadi Barada under siege

The ten towns still under rebel control have been under intense bombardment as government helicopters drop rockets and barrel bombs on the area. Hezbollah militants have been clashing with rebel militias on the ground. The ceasefire truce has been misunderstood by Turkey whose foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu complained to Bashar Assad and his backers of "violations" committed by the regime.

But the brokered ceasefire was never meant, from the government's perspective, to lead to a truce with rebels still holding areas coveted by the government. The Syrian military has been clear speaking for the regime, that the truce would not apply to rebel groups with ties to terrorist organizations such as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, present in small numbers around Wadi Barada, and presenting as a good cover for the regime to intensify its siege on the area.

And while the Syrian government speaks of "terrorists", its own actions are equal to those of any terrorist group, far surpassing the death toll that the terrorist groups have amassed. As for the designation of terrorist groups, none surely surpass in terrorism-related jihad and sectarian viciousness, that of Hezbollah, the Iranian-sponsored Islamist fanatics.

Liberating Mosul, Reconciling Sunni Iraqis

"They arrested me while sleeping a friends' house on the east side."
"They suspected me when I showed them my ID that says I live on the other side."
Mohammed Ayad, Mosul, Iraq

"I feel like a third-class citizen, like an Indian who will now have to live in a reservation."
"It is like they jailed us here."
Mosul resident, displaced persons camp

" I really cannot blame them for being apprehensive about the return of government rule."
"It is their right to feel that way. Before Daesh, there was too much corruption and the security forces did nothing to help people."
Military commander, Mosul, speaking anonymously

Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces gather villagers for preliminary investigation before taking them to displaced people camps in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from Mosul, Iraq

Everyone speaks on the record, requesting their names be kept off the record, fearing some level of repercussion has been invited when they speak of what they observe, how they feel, and what they face in reality. Mohammad Ayad, 19, revealed his name, having already suffered a beating at the hands of Iraqi troops, insistent that he was hiding the 'fact' that he belongs to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

This is the fate of Sunni Iraqis, to be held in suspicion by their government, by its military. But it is the Iranian-linked Shiite militias who exercise the noxious spirit of sectarian hatred whose actions spur Sunnis to shudder in apprehension. The mostly Sunni residents of Mosul appear not to have fully appreciated living under ISIL rule, and now that the city is being liberated and they take the opportunity to flee the remaining conflict they are held in suspicion.

But this is not new, by any means, it is an old complaint, that Shiite-dominated security forces view Mosul residents with suspicion, targeting them indiscriminately. At a camp of displaced people south of Mosul complaints are rife of Federal Police refusing them entry to their homes in areas taken from ISIL, that are now supposed to be safe. In areas other than Mosul taken from ISIL, complaints of violent abuse are rife.

As long as ISIL continues to bomb and shoot inside the recaptured areas they have been routed from the military suspects that among the population sleeper cells sympathetic to ISIL operate. "All a Daesh member has to do is take off his clothes and shave his beard and he becomes a regular citizen. That is why we cannot drop our guard", explained the military commander in Mosul.

Men, women and children fleeing Mosul must wait for hours beside a main road outside Mosul for security officials to post their names on a database searching for potential ISIL links before they are permitted to go on to shelter from bitter cold, rain and wind. Once cleared, most are loaded onto army trucks and taken to holding camps.

Since the offensive against ISIL in Mosul began, an estimated 120,000 people have fled, leaving the cash-strapped government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to provide medical care, food, water and heating fuel to residents remaining within Mosul, along with those who have fled. Many people are left without any of the distributed food and water due to chaotic distribution conditions.

Iraqi special forces east of Mosul probed a network of underground tunnels and uncovered a bomb-making facility in a village recently retaken from the Islamic State group as their allies battled the militants in a push toward the city from the south.