In Cairo, Street Fights Move to Hospital Wards

Reading Ben Hubbard's account of the aftermath of street battles last night in Cairo, it appears that Egypt is in for a long, grinding, violent conflict:

Dr. Abu Aisha said the hardest part was the continuation of street fights in the sprawling hospital’s wards. 

“There were dead and wounded from both sides, and they wanted to finish each other off, so they beat each other inside the hospital,” he said. “There is no agreement and everyone is sticking to their views and we can’t come up with a plan to move the country forward.”

In the surgery ward, Muhammad Ibrahim, 20, recalled seeing someone shot dead next to him and then watching his twin brother, Ahmed, collapse after being shot twice in the abdomen in a clash with pro-Morsi marchers. 

“We want there to be stability — not people getting shot every day,” Mr. Ibrahim said. “We’ll let anyone rule as long as there is stability.” 

He said both he and his brother had voted for Mr. Morsi, hoping that he would use Islam to improve life for Egyptians, but they had given up on him when life got worse for the general population. He reserved judgment on Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, leader of the armed forces, who described the military’s intervention into politics as a step toward healing the country. 

“We’ll see if he does anything good or if he’ll say he’s with the people and do nothing, like the others who came before,” Mr. Ibrahim said.

The quick installation of  ElBaradei as Prime Minister is proof that the SCAF is interested in currying favor with Obama. Franklin Lamb has a piece on the Counterpunch web site this weekend which tells of ElBaradei's good relations with the Obama administration and his energetic lobbying for Morsi's ouster; it also mentions that ElBaradei has pledged fealty to Israel. The Moon of Alabama blog thinks that ElBaradei is basically decent -- I tend to agree -- but that Egypt's problems are too numerous and too large, and that he will burn out in no more than two years. I think if ElBaradei is still around in two years then the SCAF will have successfully pulled off its coup. I think at this point that's looking overly optimistic.

We'll see what happens with the Muslim Brotherhood's sit-in in front of the Republican Guard officers' club in Nasr City. Morsi, it is believed, is being held there. If the military cracks down, then soon talk of peaceful resistance will give way to jihad, and the suicide bombers can't be far behind.

Spain Busts Up Al Qaeda Network, Highlighting Western Schizophrenia

The BBC is reporting this morning that Spain has raided an Al Qaeda recruiting network responsible for sending fighters to Syria. The network is based in the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta and the Moroccan city of Fnideq.

This highlights the schizophrenia of the West regarding Syria. On the one hand there is an extensive anti-terrorism infrastructure built up over the last decade-plus to combat Al Qaeda and its affiliates, while on the other we are actively working to enhance terrorist networks in a catastrophic quest to collapse the sovereign nation of Syria. In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry is in Qatar today to huddle with the Gulf Arab monarchies at the forefront of the effort to export jihad to Syria. (An interesting story on the Syrian Arab News Agency from yesterday alleges, based on documentary evidence, that Saudi Arabia is offering a general amnesty for criminals to fight in Syria.)

Last weekend on the Counterpunch web site, Franklin Lamb published a story taking the temperature on Capitol Hill. He interviewed his Congressional-staffer contacts and the opinion was that a no-fly zone was an inevitability, and with a no-fly zone comes all-out war. So the prevailing wisdom was that shortly, possibly a matter of months, the United States would be in a full-scale military conflict with Syria.

Fox is reporting this morning that a bipartisan group of senators led by Kentucky's Rand Paul is trying to block Obama from sending military aid to the rebels.

Rick Gladstone has a story in the New York Times this morning about the Philippines threatening to withdraw its peacekeepers from the Golan Heights unless they are supplied with heavy weapons, antitank and antiaircraft guns, by the United Nations. The Times over the last several days has reduced its coverage of the Syrian civil war.

Patrick Cockburn has a story in The Independent from a couple days back that is worth checking out. He says that Damascus is more peaceful today than it was six months ago. "Assad's forces have a tight grip on 13 out of 14 provincial capitals and increasingly hold the main roads between them." The population is tired of war and have no sympathy for the rebels who shoot children and eat the hearts of fallen soldiers. Cockburn says the government's strategy seems to be a slow encirclement of the rebels. It seems to be working.

I think it's already obvious to anyone paying attention that the West is engaging in an obscenity by supporting the fatwas of Wahhabi clerics. Soon, when the only rebel military strategy left will be suicide attacks, this obscenity will be even more glaring.

Sowing Sectarian Chaos in Syrian + Lebanese Option Gathering

A web site I'm sure to visit every weekend is Counterpunch. The perspective is Left and the reporting is nearly always a refreshing departure from what I consume in the Gray Lady every day. This weekend there are three excellent stories on the Syrian civil war: Gilad Atzmon's "Israel is Losing in the Syrian War," Franklin Lamb's "US Zionist Lobby Reels From Resistance al-Qusayr Victory," and Shamus Cooke's "Syria's Fake Sectarian War." All are worth reading.

Cooke casts doubt on the standard Western view that Syria is rapidly succumbing to sectarian chaos that is also spreading to Lebanon:

Will Sunni Muslims in Syria — who are the majority — suddenly begin attacking their Shia countrymen and the Syrian government? Unlikely. A compilation of data from humanitarian workers in and around Syria compiled by NATO suggests that: 

“…70 percent of Syrians support the Assad regime. Another 20 percent were deemed neutral and the remaining 10 percent expressed support for the rebels.” 

The pro-Assad 70 percent is mostly Sunni. This data flies in the face of the constant barrage of western media distortion about what’s happening in Syria. Previous polling compiled last year by Qatar had similar results, and was likewise ignored by the western media. 

The above article quoted a source familiar with the data: 

“The Sunnis have no love for Assad, but the great majority of the community is withdrawing from the revolt… what is left is the foreign fighters who are sponsored by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They are seen by the Sunnis as far worse than Assad.” 

Syrian Sunnis are likely disgusted by the behavior of the foreign extremists, which include a laundry list of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, as well as the terrorist bombing of a Sunni Mosque that killed the top Sunni Cleric in Syria — along with 41 worshipers and 84 others injured. The Sunni Cleric was killed because he was pro-Assad. 

The recent calls for Jihad by the Saudi and Qatari Sunni leaders are likely in response to the Syrian government scoring major victories against the rebels. The rebels are now badly losing the war, in large part because they’ve completely lost their base of community support.

Cooke's argument is supported by Alia Malek's opinion piece, "The Syria the World Forgot," that appears in today's New York Times Sunday Review:

While sectarianism has become the vehicle of the Syrian conflict, it was never its impulse. But distinguishing what caused the uprising from what sustains it is crucial, so that proposed interventions and resolutions aren’t as woefully ineffective as they have been thus far. 

The conflict began with grievances about corruption. Beginning in the 1980s, economic policies reflecting the interests of the government and economic elites forced most Syrians to depend on state largess and subsidies. After 2005, subsidies were slashed, leaving most Syrians in dire straits. Severe drought made matters worse, displacing hundreds of thousands of families and creating an army of angry and politically disaffected Syrians in the countryside and small towns who incited the popular uprising in 2011, together with small numbers of longtime activists in the cities. 

Although individual Alawites close to the Assads’ inner circle have been the biggest beneficiaries of corrupt policies, most of Syria’s economic elites are actually urban Sunnis. And many Alawites not tied to the regime are poor. 

But such details have been ignored. For those seeking to maintain or gain influence in the Middle East, the most proven and expedient method is to invoke and provoke sectarianism and the existential fears that come with it. It’s a reliable way to win willing recruits and a constituency — and set the place on fire. 

And it’s always been easier than developing an actual political philosophy. Likewise, sectarian chaos has proved more exploitable for outside countries looking to gain a foothold in the political, economic and social affairs of other states. 

This is not to deny that sectarianism exists, but blurring the distinction between what caused the conflict and the ugliness it has spawned limits our capacity to imagine viable solutions.

CNN is reporting that Hezbollah shot and killed a member of the Lebanese Option Party during a protest in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut. Information though not overwhelming is available on the Web about the Lebanese Option Gathering. It is a Shiite political organization led by Ahmad al-Asaad the second, scion of a large feudal family from southern Lebanon. His father, Kamel Asaad, was a speaker of the Lebanese parliament. The Lebanese Option Gathering is anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian. They seem to be a confection of the March 14 Alliance, a pro-Saudi and pro-Western grouping, though not officially part of it. It doesn't smell right.