Middle East and North Africa 20 - The End of the Beginning in Syria? SPECIAL BONUS RUSSIAN JET CRISIS EDITION

[nicolas cage]

Turkey probably hoping Isis can ramp up its production of oil considering how much it buys from Russia.

From a member of the opposition in the Turkish parliament. You can't really deny it at this point. 

Ediboglu said: “$800 million worth of oil that ISIS obtained from regions it occupied this year [the Rumeilan oil fields in northern Syria — and most recently Mosul] is being sold in Turkey. 

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/business/2014/06/turkey-syria-isis-selling-smuggled-oil.html#ixzz3sRunHklk 

[Arakan]

In general: the Syrian Civil War is the biggest clusterfuck when it comes to involved parties since...well since ever. Never saw a conflict everyone against everyone like that ever before. 

[Mr Fixit]

In general: the Syrian Civil War is the biggest clusterfuck when it comes to involved parties since...well since ever. Never saw a conflict everyone against everyone like that ever before. 

True. This one is really somethin' special. An unmitigated disaster of colossal proportions.

[Free Northman Reborn]

A number or articles suggesting that Erdogan felt humiliated by Putin bombing Turkmen rebels just across the border in Syria, despite Erdogan telling him not to. So Erdogan might well have shot down the jet in Syrian airspace as a warning to Russia to stop bombing the Syrian Turkmen.

Apparently this fits Erdogan's style, where he has turned on former allies when he felt insulted by them, including Assad himself and Israel.

The Russian response: I expect that since Russia can't directly attack Turkey, that we will see a friggin carpetbombing of the Turkmen now, to hit Erdogan where it hurts.

 

[All-for-Joffrey]

Is it true that Assad was standing in the way of a Saudi gas pipeline to Europe that would break European dependence on Russian gas?

If so the Western support for the Syrian uprising makes a lot more sense, as does Russia's support for Assad.

I think it's an exaggeration to say the pipeline would have completely broken off European dependence on Russian oil/natural gas, but yes, I believe this was a factor.

[Mr Fixit]

I don't know. Russia can't afford to fight too many battles at once, what with the general Syrian quagmire and Ukraine/West crisis. The last thing Russia needs is to totally alienate Turkey. And the last thing Turkey needs is to totally alienate Russia since Erdogan is also finding himself with fewer friends by the day due to his reckless domestic and regional policies. I may be naive, but I actually think this thing won't escalate all that much.

[Free Northman Reborn]

 

I think it's an exaggeration to say the pipeline would have completely broken off European dependence on Russian oil/natural gas, but yes, I believe this was a factor.

And lo and behold, suddenly a Western backed uprising against Assad appears.

Why no similar sentiments from the West about the Saudi regime?

[Free Northman Reborn]

I don't know. Russia can't afford to fight too many battles at once, what with the general Syrian quagmire and Ukraine/West crisis. The last thing Russia needs is to totally alienate Turkey. And the last thing Turkey needs is to totally alienate Russia since Erdogan is also finding himself with fewer friends by the day due to his reckless domestic and regional policies. I may be naive, but I actually think this thing won't escalate all that much.

Putin seems livid. But he is a much  colder operator than Erdogan. So he will be playing a longer game. He may actually milk this to his advantage. But some stepped up bombing in Latakia among the Turkmen Syrian rebels seems a certainty.

[Mr Fixit]

And lo and behold, suddenly a Western backed uprising against Assad appears.

Why no similar sentiments from the West about the Saudi regime?

Or anyone else really. Only regimes not on friendly terms with the West for some fortuitous reason face spontaneous civil disobedience that inevitably escalates into open war that leaves the country a smoldering ruin.

[Mr Fixit]

Putin seems livid. But he is a much  colder operator than Erdogan. So he will be playing a longer game. He may actually milk this to his advantage. But some stepped up bombing in Latakia among the Turkmen Syrian rebels seems a certainty.

That is likely, yes. Had those pilots not died...

[All-for-Joffrey]

Okay, your posts have become seriously nitpicky. Let me quote what you yourself have said:

• Saudi Arabia (and to an extent Turkey and the other Gulf states) were arming hard line religious groups, but those groups were not affiliated with ISIS/al- Nusra (...) A lot of these groups have since joined up with either ISIS and al-Nusra
• US and NATO had actively been fighting with Saudi Arabia and telling them to stop arming the hard line Salafist groups while that was going on. (Of course, as usual, they never imposed any actual consequences on the Saudis for doing so.)
• I'm not absolving the Saudis of guilt here -- they have made the situation worse by arming the Salafist groups I mentioned earlier (many of whom, again, eventually joined ISIS)
• We've known there were individual donors from the Gulf states that have been funding al-Qaeda/ISIS for years and the governments there didn't do as much to stop them as they should have

What does this tell you? How does it run contrary to my positions? I admit that I probably used ISIS in too broad a context to encompass various terrorist-leaning religious-fundamentalist groups, not all of them having specific links to ISIS per se. But the point stands and your very words seem to support it. Saudis and Turks have directly or indirectly (as I said previously) armed, trained, and funded the worst sort of Islamic fundamentalists in Syria and Iraq and by doing so directly helped and enabled the rise of terrorism and hardline Islamic ideology both domestically in Syria/Iraq and internationally.

I honestly don't think it's nitpicky. Your posts indicated that these countries were directly arming ISIS/al-Nusra and lumped then in with the US, indicating that the US was doing the same thing (while conveniently ignoring the fact that the US has repeatedly been telling them to stop arming hard line Salafist groups). Call this "nitpicky" but it's a very important distinction. Given the current electoral climate in the US, it's important to be precise, otherwise you have whack-a-doos who have no business running for president claiming that ISIS is a creation of the Obama administration or some such nonsense. Also, I didn't mean to pick on you individually but I've seen your comments echoed by several other posters making dubious claims and framed the same way.

Really guys, really :))?

i don't know how the Media works in the US but in Germany it has been clear for over a year that Turkey at least indirectly supports IS and directly fights the biggest enemies of IS (PKK, YPG).

Yes we all know this. Again, my objection was framing this as Turkey (or *insert* country here) actively arming ISIS and facilitating its growth.

 

 

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

Hypothetically, if Russia was to attack Turkey itself, what would be the appetite among Nato countries to actually go to war with Russia, at a time when the entire European effort is focused on bringing the world CLOSER together in the fight against ISIS?

It would be a disaster for Europe.

[Arakan]

Let's not forget about Al Qaida...I mean Nusra. Those fanatics are directly supported by Qatar, KSA and Turkey. 

Easy to forget...

by the way: the region where the Russian plane went down is in Nusra hands...the Turkmen rebel groups are allied with AQ/Nusra. 

Yes, step by step all this shit will come to light. 

[All-for-Joffrey]

And lo and behold, suddenly a Western backed uprising against Assad appears.

Uh....the US did not begin arming and intervening in the war until 2013. At the time, the al-Nusra front was becoming more and more prevalent within the opposition and then you had ISIS emerging and the other hard line groups the Gulf states were funding. Had the US wanted to overthrow Assad simply for a Saudi oil pipeline, I'm pretty sure the Obama administration would have started arming the opposition much earlier. I know energy issues and Cold War-era geopolitical miscalculations usually drive US policy in the region , but I honestly don't think that's the case here.

[Mr Fixit]

I get that clarity is important, though I'd say that online forums aren't really places to expound on the details as it would take ages. Granted, it can lead to unfortunate simplifications of reality.

That said, and speaking of the US/NATO role, it's also true that they had their own training/arming/financing programme that largely failed as well (as the administration admitted recently). Many of those resources, human and otherwise, also ended up with bona fide terrorists. 

You know what Captain Picard told Worf and Chancellor Gowron when they asked him for Federation's support in the Klingon Civil War? We don't involve ourselves in other people's civil wars. 

Smart man, Jean-Luc. 

[Shryke]

According to German Media the Russian plane was in turkish airspace for 2-3 km (10-15 seconds). 

It is obvious that the islamist Erdogan just waited for such an opportunity. 

The length doesn't make any real difference if the Turkish reports are to be believed (still uncertain on that obviously). Airspace is a thing for a reason.

They were supposedly warned repeatedly and Russia has been doing this shit for over 2 months now and been warned about it before. If Turkey's side is true then Russia knew what they were getting in to and knew what the consequences are.

 

[Horza]

An illuminating article in The Guardian for those who wonder about Turkey's connections to ISIS.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/24/vladimir-putin-turkey-isis-terrorists-warplane-analysis

Quite right. Turkey opened up its border to foreign fighters of all descriptions, and turned a blind eye to the networks they built. Having the PKK as enemy number one means a relaxed attitude to ISIS, but the irony is that this a strategy based on the idea that Kurdish success threatens Turkish sovereignty that only works by creating an ISIS shadow state in Southern Turkey.

This is a problem that Assad ran into when he opened the Syria-Iraq border to foreign fighters in 2003. They too started to form undercover networks and work to build something their handlers couldn't control: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story

Playing enemy of my enemy with jihadists groups always seems to wind up Faustian, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone.

[Shryke]

And lo and behold, suddenly a Western backed uprising against Assad appears.

Why no similar sentiments from the West about the Saudi regime?

Or anyone else really. Only regimes not on friendly terms with the West for some fortuitous reason face spontaneous civil disobedience that inevitably escalates into open war that leaves the country a smoldering ruin.

I .... did you guys miss the whole Arab Spring thing? Big news in the Middle-East, really important, one of the key things leading to basically almost every instability going on in the region right now?

 

The reason there's a Syrian Civil War and not, say, an Egyptian one (although there's still fighting going on in the Sinai) or a Bahrainian one is cause Assad couldn't win.

[Arakan]

You have to see the irony...

Turkey actively supports Al Nusra in Syria. 

Al Nusra = Al Qaida. Fact

Turkey = NATO

NATO supports Al Qaida???

oh dear...how can Americans be happy that a close ally supports AQ? it's like the US supporting AQ (via the NATO link)...

[Arakan]

Ah yes those brave Turkmen freedom Fighters (quite probable allied with Al Qaida) executed one of the pilots...

I don't understand American foreign policy...when is a dictator a good dictator?

Why is dictatorship in Egypt ok but not in Syria? @Shryke: can you please answer me that question?