28-Apr-13 World View -- Qatar and Saudi Arabia funneling mon

[John]

28-Apr-13 World View -- Qatar and Saudi Arabia funneling money and weapons to Syria jihadists


Future of Korea's Kaesong industrial park in doubt after South pulls out workers

** 28-Apr-13 World View -- Qatar and Saudi Arabia funneling money and weapons to Syria jihadists
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... tm#e130428



Contents:
Syria calls chemical weapons claims a 'barefaced lie'
UK's David Cameron says that 'the lessons of Iraq have been learned'
Qatar and Saudi Arabia funneling money and weapons to Syria jihadists
Future of Korea's Kaesong industrial park in doubt after South pulls out workers


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Russia, Iran,
David Cameron, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Al-Nusra Brigade, Nouri al-Maliki,
North Korea, Kaesong Industrial Park, South Korea

[Reality Check]

I have no way of knowing what would have happened if the West had intervened in Syria two years ago, when the al-Assad regime started its extermination slaughter of innocent protesters. Any such attempt at intervention was blocked by the Russians, who claimed that military intervention would make things much worse in Syria. That Russian claim has by now been pretty much proven completely wrong, as it's hard for anyone to argue that any action would have been a worse disaster for Syria than the current state of non-action. But at least the Russians still have their naval base at Tartus, so they can be proud of themselves, no matter how many innocent women and children are maimed, tortured, or exterminated. The Russians certainly know how to set priorities.

Syria is likely a very bad test case for Generational Dynamics. Like Iraq, Syria was not really a country before World War I. Syria was artificially created by France in the same way Iraq was artificially created by Great Britain.

The military and ruling class in Syria was selected, by France, from a minority group in Syria, in the same way the military and ruling class in Iraq was selected from minority groups in Iraq, by the British. The Alawites in Syria and the Sunni Arabs and Kurds in Iraq.

Unlike Iraq , where the majority Shia population holds a huge part of the best land, in Syria the best land has been held by the minority Alawites, Kurds, Christians and Shia for hundreds of years.

[John]

> Syria is likely a very bad test case for Generational
> Dynamics. Like Iraq, Syria was not really a country before World
> War I. Syria was artificially created by France in the same way
> Iraq was artificially created by Great Britain.

The Syria conflict is a typical Awakening era war. There is little
energy on either side. There's little hand-to-hand or face-to-face
combat. Besides a few gunfights, most of the war is fought by
shooting missiles or exploding bombs by remote control. If it were a
crisis war, you'd see a lot more of what happened, for example, in
Cambodia's killing fields or in 1994 Rwanda -- or in 1982 Syria.

On the other hand, it's turning into a proxy war between Crisis era
countries -- Russia supporting al-Assad, Saudi Arabia and Qatar
supporting the jihadists, and Europe half-heartedly supporting the
other opposition. Without Russia's support in particular, this war
would have petered out a year ago. But it's increasingly clear that
Russia is determined to push it to victory, and the Arab countries are
going to oppose that.

[Reality Check]

I do not disagree with your Analysis of Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Qatar.

The point you did not address was the one regarding the limitations of using a tool designed for predicating the actions of nation states on a geographically area that is recognized by the international community as a political sovereign state, but lacks most of the other characteristics of a nation state.

The Alawites ( many ethnic Assyrians ), Kurds and Christians ( many of them also ethnic Assyrians ) are the descendants of the survivors of conquered nation states. These minorities speak Arabic, Turkish and French to some degree ( all languages of occupiers ) but also the historic languages of the conquered nation states their ancestors belonged to, to some degree.

Even the dialects of Arabic spoken in Syria are fragmented geographically and are indications of the different Arab cultures found in Syria.

Syria lacks a common culture, common religion, common ethnicity and even a common dialect of Arabic that unites the people as one nation state.

Like the French before them, the Russians and Iranians are using minority fears of genocide and fears of the minority populations being ethnically cleansed from their historic lands, by the descendants of Sunni Muslim Arab invaders who enjoy a small majority status by most population counts, to achieve the goals of Russia's leaders and Iran's leaders.

Russia is providing weapons and a veto in the U.N. security council, but Iran is providing thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of trained Shia Muslim combatants, mostly non-Arabs, as volunteers to fight the Sunni Muslim Arabs in Syria.

We are in agreement on most aspects of this, the difference is that I believe analyzing Syria in the same way you would analyze a long time, full spectrum nation state results in failed predictions.

This war is just as likely to end in mass genocide and widespread ethnic cleansing of the Minority communities as it is to end in the brutal suppression of the majority insurrection by the Sunni Muslim Arab majority. If it does end in genocide it will be the Sunni Arab Nation state that conducts that genocide, even though various factions within that Sunni Muslim nation ( such as those separate factions supported by Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, and the government of Qatar ) may be competing with each other to see who can cleanse, occupy and control, those areas of Syria previously populated by the Minorities being exterminated or driven off their ancestors lands and turned into refugees.

[John]

> The point you did not address was the one regarding the
> limitations of using a tool designed for predicating the actions
> of nation states on a geographically area that is recognized by
> the international community as a political sovereign state, but
> lacks most of the other characteristics of a nation state.

It's always quite possible for different parts of a single nation to
be on different timelines. For example, I frequently talk about the
crisis war on the Indian subcontinent that followed Partition in 1947,
creating the states of India and Pakistan. However, that's a
simplification. In fact, eastern India, particularly the state of
Bengal, was on a different timeline, and the 1947 war was an
Awakening/Unraveling war for them, splitting Bengal into West Bengal,
which is part of India, and East Bengal, which became East Pakistan.
Their crisis war occurred in 1971, when East Pakistan became
Bangladesh. But I really don't want to go into all that detail each
time that I write about India, so I simplify it by talking about
India's crisis war.

Another complicated example is Russia, whose last crisis war was the
civil war that followed the Russian revolution. WW II was an
Awakening era war for Russia, but then you have to look at the massive
relocation of the Chechens to central Asia, which caused a First
Turning Reset. And I've never really looking into Siberia and eastern
Russia, but I'm pretty sure there are some differences there too.

So you're right that different ethnic groups in Syria have to be
analyzed separately, and it's possible that each of them has a
different timeline.

But as it turns out, most of the time and for most countries the
timelines do match geographical boundaries. The reason is that the
groups that fight together in a crisis war usually end up defining a
new nation. So the geographical boundaries are formed for the same
reason that different ethnic groups fight together.

I know you've written about the Kurds in the past, but as far as I
know, they're on the same timeline as Syria, Iraq and Turkey. I'm not
aware of any major timeline differences.

I'm not aware that Iran and Hizbollah are providing anything like tens
of thousands of fighters to Syria. As far as I know, it's in the
hundreds.

This is an Awakening era war for Syria, and for all the ethnic groups
in Syria (as far as I know), but in the end I don't expect that to
make any difference, because this war is going to explode into a major
regional war, which, as you point out, is quite likely to end in mass
genocide.