International Indifference
Well, yes, that is true to a degree, stopping short of total indifference from the international community. For the international community is not at all indifferent. It is appalled, and it feels helpless to do much about yet another Arab and Muslim leadership applying tribal solutions to a tribal defiance. It is, after all, traditional."The massacres in Syria that gain strength from the international community's indifference are continuing to increase."The regime in Syria has now become a terrorist state."Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
It has been seen in practise in Iraq, in Iran, in Libya, in Afghanistan, Gaza and Lebanon, and to a lesser degree Qatar, Egypt, and in fact anywhere Arabs and Muslims come in contact with one another and/or with other ethnic or religious groups. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this seems to be the manner in which tribal and sectarian disagreements are settled, for better or for worse.
Worse, usually, in the degree of hatred evinced and the descent into slaughter and bloodlust.
Formerly Prime Minister Erdogan was a great friend of Syrian Prime Minister Bashar al-Assad, and both were supportively admiring of the Islamic Republic of Iran. While we do hear Mr. Erdogan deploring the brutality of Syria against its people, we have yet to hear Mr. Erdogan expressing any kind of frustration with the Republic of Iran, and that is a mystery in itself, since Iran is supporting and weapons-supplying Syria.
Why turn to the international community? After all, what is occurring in Syria is a Middle East affair. Condemnation of Syria's actions against its own have been fulsomely declared by all other Middle East states with few exceptions. Iraq, with its closer ties now to Iran, is mute, and Jordan, concerned over the weight of Syrian refugees it must care for, and fearful of enraging Syria says little but the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey are aghast and angry.
They have large standing armies. Turkey itself, has had a military run-in with Syria when its military shot down a Turkish warplane citing territorial infraction when there was none. Turkey has a half-million men under arms, it has staged a border threat yet it awaits international support before it will commit to doing anything more than threatening Syria and caring for the influx of refugees over its border.
Turkey has high regard for Hamas in Gaza, and delighted in adding to a flotilla to defy the State of Israel's blockade against arming Hamas whose charter demands the destruction of the Jewish state. But it fulminates haplessly as a neighbour exerts its military authority to oppress and slaughter the "terrorists" who threaten the regime. And, in fact, there are indeed terrorists in that motley mix that defies al-Assad.
Within Syria now are not only the Muslim Brotherhood backing the rebels, but a Libyan brigade named the Liwa' al-Ummah Brigade, Libyan volunteers openly affiliated with al-Qaeda, doing their bit to help rout the Assad regime. With the downfall of the Alawite regime where will those heavily armed mujahadeen then turn in their sanctified determination to liberate the world for divine Islamism?
And this: why the international community who have no real desire to become embroiled in yet another bloodthirsty Arab war. Why not the Arab League, which had no trouble whatever convincing one another that their collective armies would have no problem demolishing one single small interloping country among them, but which cannot rouse themselves to deliver fellow Arabs - majority Sunnis at that - from death and destruction?
Labels: Political Realities, Societal Failures, Syria, Terrorism, Traditions, Turkey, Values
posted by Pieface @ Friday, September 07, 2012
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