The war of all against all

Socialism Or Your Money Back does not want to be mistaken for some Pro-Assad apologists but often we are presented in the media with carefully crafted narratives that disguise much of the truth. This article has certain observations that the BBC and CNN seem reluctant to express and it is worth quoting extensively from.

"...Who burned the souks a few weeks earlier? “That was the Free Syrian Army,” my friend said. “We are caught between two bad powers. As you know, I don’t like the dictatorship. But these people are showing themselves as worse.”...Another friend said of the rebels who had come to dominate large swathes of his city: “They entered Aleppo. Aleppo didn’t enter the conflict.”..." Where Aleppines once feared the state’s many mukhabarat, intelligence agencies, they have become wary of additional retribution from the Jaish al-Hurr, the Free Army, and its associated militias. Where Aleppines once feared the state’s many mukhabarat, intelligence agencies, they have become wary of additional retribution from the Jaish al-Hurr, the Free Army, and its associated militias. Another friend said, “The opposition thought Aleppo would welcome them. It didn’t...

...In one of the poorest [neighbourhoods], Bani Zayd, where many people sift through the city’s garbage to make a living, the area’s elders delivered a letter to the Free Army: "We cheered the Free Army. But what is happening today is a crime against the inhabitants of our neighborhood. For there are no offices for government security or the shabihah. However, the groups that have taken position in the neighborhood cannot defend it…. We, the elders of Bani Zayd neighborhood, are responsible for making this statement and demand that battalions of the Free Army which have entered the neighborhood leave it and join battles on hot fronts…. This would ensure the return of calm to the neighborhood and would end the random shelling [by regime forces] of a poor neighborhood housing thousands of displaced people."

Bani Zayd’s residents were natural supporters of the revolution, but their commitment did not extend to tactics that left them vulnerable to retaliation by the regime. The Free Army’s inability to defend most of the areas it occupied has turned other potential supporters against it. What is the point, they ask, of inviting the regime to bombard an area that cannot be held?...  In both political and military terms, Syria’s commercial capital is vital to both sides. Yet both the regime and its armed opponents are alienating the people they are ostensibly trying to cultivate, as they jointly demolish Aleppo’s economy, the historic monuments that give the city its unique charm and identity, the lives and safety of its citizens, and the social cohesion that had, until now, made it a model of intersectarian harmony. Another friend confided, “The revolution died in Aleppo. They thought they would win the battle of Aleppo. They thought the people of Aleppo would support them.”....

...the rebels launched an all-out assault on the industries that kept Aleppo alive, burning and looting pharmaceutical plants, textile mills, and other factories. This hurts the industrialists, many of whom are waiting out the war in Lebanon, but more so their employees. While the urban unemployed had good reason to support a revolution that might improve their chances in life, the thousands who had jobs at the beginning of the revolution and lost them when the Free Army burned their workplaces are understandably resentful. There are stories of workers taking up arms to protect their factories and risking their lives to save their employers from kidnappers...

...A young Syrian businessman whose family has long been at odds with the regime blames the armed opposition for trying to bring down the regime by force: “You cannot just break a regime like this, it is built to last. The regime is built for this.” The regime, which in its early days immunized itself against coups d’état with the arrest of suspected dissidents in the army and constant surveillance, made itself rebellion-proof in 1979 as a result of an uprising in Aleppo...The Muslim Brothers who escaped evolved a two-pronged plan for insurgency and a coup against Assad by their sympathizers in the army.

...The government’s brutal suppression of the rebels, especially the aerial bombardment of densely populated urban areas, has pushed some regime supporters into the arms of the opposition. One young woman, who told me in April that she loved Bashar al-Assad, said that she wept when she saw his air force bombing Aleppo. A physician, whose anti-regime views were familiar to me, said, “The majority of the Syrian people don’t want Bashar al-Assad because of what happened in the last ten years. We want change, but not like this.” This is a topsy-turvy war in which loyalties and animosities can no longer be predicted.....One’s choice of armies depends on experience. Those who have been tortured by government security forces look to the Free Army for deliverance, while anyone whose son or father has been kidnapped by the Free Army demands government protection... The Christians were for the most part in favor of the regime or neutral...  the Syrian Orthodox metropolitan of Aleppo, Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, at Easter, he said “Am I worried? Yes. Am I afraid? No.” Aleppo was quiet, though conflicts in the rest of Syria were clear harbingers of the earthquake about to hit. At the time, Mar Gregorios was convinced that the regime and the opposition could resolve their differences: “If we solve our internal problem and sit down and talk, we can have a constructive dialogue. We can gradually rebuild our society.” As bishop of a small community of about 200,000 in Syria, he accepted that the regime had protected Christians while avoiding a commitment to either side. Now, however, his worry has turned to fear...a profoundly shaken man with little hope for his country’s future. “The issue now,” he said, “is how to convince the president to step down.” This was the first time I had heard a Christian bishop call for Bashar al-Assad to end the war by leaving office.



....Syria’s war is anything its fighters want it to be. It is a class war of the suburban proletariat against a state army financed by the bourgeoisie. It is a sectarian war in which the Sunni Arab majority is fighting to displace an Alawi ruling class. It is a holy war of Sunni Muslims against all manifestations of Shiism, especially the Alawite variety. The social understandings on which Aleppo prided itself are unraveling. Muslim fundamentalists have targeted Christian churches and Shiite mosques. Arabs have fought Kurds. Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis have crossed the border to fight each other in Syria.... A civil engineer who has served years in prison for criticizing the regime said, “Syrians are destroying each other. Education, how to live together, it’s all being destroyed. You can see it in the official workplaces. The attitudes are different. People who were not religious, even Communists, are becoming more religious.” An uprising that began in March 2011 with the modest hope of reforming the country has degenerated into a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes.[the war of all against all].... 

...The increasingly well-armed opposition recently declared in Qatar that it was uniting in a Western-sponsored coalition, a self-declared unity that is fragile at best. Soon after, a number of Islamist factions said they rejected the coalition and wanted to establish an Islamic state. On November 20, the head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) also rejected the coalition. With the regime remaining obdurate, all sides seem primed for a long and destructive war..."