Damascus
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The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states\u2014Bahrain, Kuwait<\/a>, Oman<\/a>, Qatar<\/a>, Saudi Arabia<\/a>, and the United Arab Emirates<\/a>\u2014along with certain Arab League countries, plus Turkey and Israel, have this past week reportedly committed themselves to raising nearly $6 billion to \u201cbeef up\u201d the just-hatched Islamic Front (IF) in Syria. These \u201cbest friends of America\u201d want the Obama administration to sign onto a scheme to oust the Syrian government by funding, arming, training, facilitating and generally choreographing the movement of fighters of this new front, a front formed out of an alliance of seven putatively \u201cmoderate\u201d rebel factions.<\/p>\n Representatives of Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan reportedly told staff members on Capitol Hill that committing several billions to defeat the Assad regime by supporting the IF makes fiscal sense and will cost much less than the six trillion dollar figure tallied by the recent study by Brown University as part of its Costs of War project.<\/p>\n According to the 2013 update of the definitive Brown study, which examined costs of the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the total amount for all three topped six trillion dollars.This never before released figure includes costs of direct and indirect Congressional appropriations, lost equipment, US military and foreign contractors fraud, and the cost of caring for wounded American servicemen and their families.<\/p>\n Among the Islamist militia joining the new GCC-backed coalition are Aleppo\u2019s biggest fighting force, Liwa al-Tawhid (Tawhid Brigade), the Salafist group Ahrar al-Sham,\u00a0Suqour al-Sham,\u00a0al-Haq Brigades,\u00a0Ansar al-Sham and the Islamic Army, which is centered around Damascus. The Kurdish Islamic Front also reportedly joined the alliance.<\/p>\n IF\u2019s declared aim is to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s government, whatever the human and material cost it may require, and replace it with an \u201cIslamic state.\u201d Abu Firas, the new coalition\u2019s spokesman, declared that \u201cwe now have the complete merger of the major military factions fighting in Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n Formally announced on 11\/22\/13, the IF includes groups from three prior umbrella organizations: the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF), the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front (SILF), and the Kurdish Islamic Front (KIF). From the SIF, Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya (HASI), Kataib Ansar al-Sham, and Liwa al-Haqq all joined, as did the KIF as a whole, and former SILF brigades Suqur al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawhid, and Jaish al-Islam. None of these groups have been designated foreign terrorist organizations by the US, and therefore, as an Israeli official argued in a meeting with AIPAC and Congress this week, nothing stands in the way of US funding and support for them. The Israeli official in question is the country\u2019s new national security advisor, Yossie Cohen, who assures key congressional leaders that the tens of thousands of rebels making up the IF will all support \u201cone policy and one military command.\u201d Cohen also pledges that the new group is not as \u201cinsane\u201d as other Muslim militia\u2014Daash or al-Nusra or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, for instance\u2014that comprise the IF\u2019s chief rivals. Cohen and AIPAC are further telling Congress members and congressional staffers that the emergence of the IF is one of the war\u2019s most important developments, and he vows that the new organization in effect brings seven organizations into a combined force that will fight under one command, a force estimated by the CIA to number at around 75,000 fighters. Reportedly the objective will link the fight in the north with that in the south in a manner that will stretch loyalist forces, and the Saudi-Israel team is also asking the Obama Administration to more than double the monthly \u201cgraduation class\u201d of CIA-trained rebels in Turkey, Syria and Jordan\u2014from its current level of 200 per month, up to 500 a month.<\/p>\n What the GCC\/Arab League\/Israeli team is asking of its western allies (meaning of course mainly the US) is to immediately fund the IF to the tune of $ 5.5 billion. This, Israeli security officials argue, is pocket change compared to the $6 trillion spent in US terrorist wars of the past decade. Plus it will have the presumed \u201cbenefit\u201d of toppling the Assad regime and truncating Iran\u2019s growing influence. The plan has reportedly been dismissed by some in the Obama administration as \u201crisible and pathetic.\u201d Nonetheless, Tel Aviv, the US Congressional Zionist lobby, and to a lesser extent Ankara, are pressing ahead under the assumption that linking with the IF now makes sense and that they can take their chances will al-Qaeda later. Ironically these are some of the same voices from AIPAC\u2019s Congressional Team who four years ago were claiming that al-Qaeda was \u201con the ropes and will soon collapse.\u201d Yet they are optimistic that if Assad goes, \u201cwe can deal with the terrorists and it won\u2019t cost six trillion dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n One House member who strongly agrees with AIPAC is Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA), who recently declared that \u201cin my heart I am a Tea Party guy.\u201d A member of the House Armed Services Committee, Hunter believes the US should use nuclear weapons against Tehran. In a Fox TV interview this week he declared his opposition to any talks with Iran, insisting that US policy should include a \u201cmassive aerial bombardment campaign\u201d utilizing \u201ctactical nuclear devices\u201d to set Iran \u201cback a decade or two or three.\u201d<\/p>\n According to sources in Aleppo and Damascus, the IF’s top leadership positions have been parceled out among five of the seven groups. This at least is as of 12\/5\/13. Four days after the IF was announced, the organization released an official charter. In terms of its basic architecture, the document is similar to that put out by the SIF in January, but the new version is filled with more generalities than other militia proclamations, and seems designed to accommodate differing ideas among member groups. The charter calls for an Islamic state and the implementation of sharia law, though it does not define exactly what this means. The IF is firmly against secularism, human legislation (i.e., it believes that laws come from God, not people), civil government, and a Kurdish breakaway state. The charter states that the group will secure minority rights in post-Assad Syria based on sharia, which could mean the dhimma (“protected peoples”) system, or de facto second-class citizenship for Christians and other minorities. According to Saudi officials in Lebanon, the IF seeks to unify other rebel groups so long as they agree to acknowledge the sovereignty of God. Given this \u2018moderate\u2019 wording, the expectation of some is that that the southern-based Ittihad al-Islami li-Ajnad al-Sham will join the IF.<\/p>\n According to the Netanyahu government, the IF\u2019s leading foreign cheerleader, this new coalition gives substance to that which states who have been wanting regime change in Syria have been calling for. One analyst on the Syrian conflict, Aron Lund, believes a grouping of mainstream and hardline Islamists, excluding any al-Qaeda factions, is significant. \u201cIt\u2019s something that could be very important if it holds up,” he explained. \u201cThe Islamic Front’s formation was a response to both regime advances and the \u2018aggressive posture\u2019 of jihadists against other rebels, plus a good deal of foreign involvement, not least of which is Saudi and GCC pushing to unify the rebels.\u201d<\/p>\n Contrary to reports out of Occupied Palestine that the Netanyahu regime is not worried about or much interested in the crisis in Syria, a measure of delight seems to be felt in Tel Aviv that Muslims and Arabs are once more killing each other, along with smugness over Hezbollah\u2019s loss of key mujahedeen as it faces, along with Iran, its own \u201cVietnam experience.\u201d Yet all this notwithstanding, near panic is reported to have been felt in Israeli government circles over Hezbollah\u2019s achievements in Syria. Truth told, Tel Aviv knows that despite manpower losses by Hezbollah, the dominant Lebanese political party is bringing about major enhancements of its forces. It also knows that there is no substitute for urban battlefield experience with regard to effecting such force regeneration, and Israeli officials have also stated their belief that the Resistance is organizing non-Hezbollah brigades that share one goal in common despite disparate beliefs. That sacred goal is liberating Al Quds by any and all means.<\/p>\n A US Congressional source summarized the Obama administration\u2019s take on this week\u2019s assassination of a key Hezbollah commander as part of a major new Netanyahu government project to weaken Hezbollah. Hassan Houlo Lakkis\u2019 assassination on the night of December 3-4 is deemed in Washington to be particularly significant since Lakkis was in charge of strategic files related to Israel and the Palestinians and also oversaw a number of key operations. The Resistance commander was deeply involved in the development of drones for Hezbollah, as well as smuggling weapons to Gaza via Egypt. He also had good relationships with the Palestinian factions in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. Lakkis was known by Washington to be a highly important cadre and a second rank Hezbollah official.<\/p>\n According to one analyst \u201cIsrael appeared as if it was telling Hezbollah, come and fight me. Israel is upset over the Western-Iranian agreement. It is also upset over the new position that the West has concerning Hezbollah whereby the West is now viewing the party as a force that opposes the Takfiris. Thus, Israel\u2019s objective behind the assassination is to lure the party into a confrontation thus allowing Tel Aviv to tell the West: Hezbollah is still a terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n According to sources on the US Foreign Relations Committee, the White House is being heavily pressured by the US Zionist lobby and the Netanyahu government to take \u201cremedial measures\u201d for the \u201ccatastrophic historic mistake\u201d it made in defusing the Iranian nuclear issue and refusing to bomb Damascus. The measures being pushed for, of course, are funding and support for the IF, though doubts persist in Washington as to how \u201cremedial\u201d they will in fact be. The $5.5 billion \u201cinvestment\u201d is to be paid in large part by GCC\/Arab League countries, with US and Zionist contributions. Cash from the latter two sources will come directly and indirectly out of the pockets of American taxpayers\u2014with Israel paying nothing.<\/p>\n Some Washington officials and analysts are wondering if US participation would help unify notoriously hostile rebel ranks and curtail the growing power of al-Qaeda in Syria, or whether it is simply another zany Bander bin Sultan-concocted project, the latest of many\u2014in this case to create a hierarchical revolutionary army with the aim of fighting the Syrian regime essentially alongside<\/i> al-Qaeda? Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel expressed his personal suspicions this week that \u201cthe Israel-Saudi team is trying to drag the US back into a potentially deepening morass,\u201d alluding to what apparently is an effort to head off any plans the Obama administration may have of living with the Assad government until such time as Geneva II happens, that is if<\/i> it happens, according to one congressional staffer.<\/p>\n Many among the American public also have doubts because they have been told that their government was \u2018winding down\u2019 its Middle East wars in favor of rebuilding America\u2019s infrastructure, roads, health care and education systems, all of which, especially the latter, appear to be suffering dramatically. According to the most recent international survey, released this week, the average Chinese student, aged fifteen in Shanghai, is two full years ahead of America\u2019s best students surveyed in Massachusetts. Recent top scores among secondary school youngsters, particularly in math, reading and science<\/a>, were considerably lower than those achieved by students in Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Japan. The US is far down the list and declining, and the survey suggests that the gap is widening.<\/p>\n It\u2019s too early to say whether this latest Saudi-Israel-Arab League collaboration will fail as others have recently, but given the continuing Obama administration efforts at taking back US Middle East policy from Tel Aviv, plus the perceptible movement away from support for the Netanyahu government along with growing angst among American taxpayers over funding the occupation of Palestine, it just might collapse. Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Damascus University Faculty of Law.\u00a0 He volunteers with the SSSP (<\/i>sssp-lb.com<\/i><\/a>) and is reachable c\/o <\/i>fplamb@gmail.com<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states\u2014Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates\u2014along with certain Arab League countries, plus Turkey and Israel, have this past week reportedly committed themselves to raising nearly $6 billion to \u201cbeef up\u201d the just-hatched Islamic Front (IF) in Syria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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