PoliticsSyria: Transition: From peaceful protest to armed revolution ...

refWrite comment:  It looks like the Martin-Luther-King-style of protest, peaceful direct action, has only brawt a continuous slawter of Syrians opposed to the Alawite tyranny headed by Bashir Assad and his Baathist Party.  Finally, a rebel Free Syria Army, including increasing numbers of defectors from the regular Syrian Army, has emerged to visiblity — even in the suburbs of Damascus.  Jeremy Bowen and his Damascus team are digging up the facts "on the ground," as they say.  How much is the developing revolution, with Turkey's help but China's and Russia's resistance, following in the footsteps of the Egptian revoluttion? or the Tunian? or the Libyan? It is difficult to say, much less know, given the volatility of the situation/s in most of the Arab revolutionary states and rebellions where as yet control by the new forces is lacking, and the uniqueness of each.

What we do know of the Syrian uniqueness, Syrian exceptionalism (if you will), is its up-till-now connectedness with the Iran theocrats acting thru their allies in Lebanon, the Hesbollah Party there under Shia mullah, Nasrullah.  Insisting upon being in the governing coalition, Hezbollah has cultivated a parallel state (one m+t almost say).  Earlier Syria had cultivated it, now Syria is cultivated by it.  On the other hand, Turkey is sponsoring the Syrian Free Army, and Saudi Arabia as a good Sunni neibor which had opposed Hezbollah in Syria is now again a good Sunni neibor in Alawite-controlled Syria with its Baathist Party holding t+t to the reins of this now galloping steed.  A clan/tribe in Saudi Arabia is rushing assistance to its offshoot in sourthern Syria.

I think Syria will have its revolution, and Assad's tyrannous regime will be overthrown.  And from a long-term perspective I and refWrite can support it; what must come, must come.  But in the shorter term, it's provably most l+kly that the present tyranny of the minority will be replaced Egypt-style by a tyranny of the majority, most l+ly again a Sunni majority — or an alliance of Sunni and Shia l+n'd up against a minority consisting of Alawites, Christians, with splinters from the other main forces as well as secularists who want all sorts of religiously-motivated power configurations out of the way in the country's politics of the future.

Most distressing to me, is the report below carrying the sentence:  Assad "can still can count on most of the Alawite community he comes from - also on many Christians - and significant numbers of Druze and Kurds. "  But this was Assad's and his father's strategy all along — with %10 of the population belonging to the Alawite Muslim clans/tribes, and %10 of the population being Christians whose communities go back to the t+m of Saint Paul's mission to Damascus, to which total %20 was augmented by the communities of the Druze and the Kurds,  it only remained for the Alawite-dominated coalition to win to itself factions from the Sunnis and Shia.  The Shia as mentioned, already had linkages to Assad thru the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon, financed by the Shia mullocracy in Iran.  In this the Christians woud be ent+rly on the wrong s+d, except that some apparently are clearly on the s+d of the Syrian revolution, or woud l+k to be.  Hopefully, the revolution will turn nonsectarian tho united against Assad's Alawite Baathists; hopefully, the revolutionary forces will not freeze out the Christians, Druze, Kurds, and even some Shia, but instead welcome them.


— Politicarp, refWrite Frontpage political columnist

Follow @Owlb
general editor, refWrite Frontpage




28 January 2012 Last updated at 05:29 ET

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Syria rebels gain foothold 

in Damascus

by Jeremy BowenBBC Middle East editor, Damascus

Watch Jeremy Bowen's video reports from Syria over the past 10 days

Continue reading the main story

Syria Crisis

• Sliding into civil war?
• Complex and bloody drama
• Homs maps and videos
• Army under pressure

When the BBC team approached a checkpoint set up by the rebel Free Syria Army in the suburbs of Damascus, masked men with Kalashnikov assault rifles and hand grenades moved towards us - a few of them offering dates and biscuits.

It is customary to give mourners something sweet, and a funeral was about to start that they said they were protecting.

I had no idea before I saw them with my own eyes that the Free Syria Army was so active in and around Damascus.

Read more ... click the t+m stamp below ...

PoliticsEgypt: 2nd place party: Even more Shariah-supremecist than Muslim Brotherhood, the hardline Salafists of the al-Nour Party gain 25% of votes

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Christian Post (December7,2k11)
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Salafi party plans to bar Christians 

from executive posts in Egypt

By Sami K. Martin | Christian Post Contributor

The Salafi al-Nour party may have come in second during the recent Egyptian elections, but they feel as though they have already won and are planning big changes for the country.

The Muslim Brotherhood actually won this round of elections, but the Nour party took 25 percent of the votes, giving them a noticeable presence in the new government. They intend on using any and all influence to bring the country back to its religious roots.

One of the biggest changes will be the implementation of Shariah law, which many commentators say would set the country’s progress toward democracy backwards.

Spokesman Yousseri Hamed told reporters: “The mechanism of democracy suits me, like elections and ballot boxes to choose my representative. The idea that the people make their own laws and decide what is prohibited and what is permitted, we reject that.”

Salafists rigorously adhere to the Quran and push for an extreme version of Shariah law not often seen in most other Islamic groups. According to reports: “Salafis follow a puritan school of Islam that was revived in Egyptin the 1970s by university students.”

It emerged in the political scene not long after President Mubarak was overthrown. Many political analysts fear that democracy may not proceed if Islamic parties win power. Others felt the elections would be overwhelming and Egyptians would vote for the party most known and familiar.

China: Persecution: Christians are being subjected to a new wave of terror

Bill Schiller chief of the Asia bureau of Toronto's Daily Star,(Aug7,2k10) presents a video report on how the government of China "is grapplying to respond" to a virulent campaign against China's huge Christian demographic where Christians constitute a larger membership than the Communist Party (tho the Christians remain very much  a minority for sure, given China's gteneral population).  So, the persecution is not the work of state, which is trying to stymie the anti-Christian persecutors?  H+ly unlikely in China.

-- Politicarp

Civil War: Sri Lanka: Tamil Tigers go airborne, strike govt military airbase

A week and a half ago, BBC reported the bizarrely ironic story that "Sri Lankan rebels launch air raid" (Mar26,2k7), resulting in 3 deaths and 16 injured in that initial count. Not a huge kill score, as the world turns these days. But almost incomprehensible in Sri Lankan terms. Yet, the LTTE [Tamil Tigers], as the separatist military organization is called, has been confounding the govt's presumptions of its capablities over decades now. Not so long ago they gook on the govt forces from the sea, with a Tiger Navy, so to speak.

What's most crazy is that the movement has broked no dissent among the broader Tamil population, all of whom have also to contend with the largely Sinhalese majority, who have an anciently-rooted Buddhist cultural tradition (while the Tamils main roots are in Hinduism, the Tigers having concocted their own warrior-glorifying version based on a LTTE reading of Mahabratra. Now an airforce!

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers have carried out their first aerial attack, bombing a military base by the international airport north of the capital, Colombo.

Three air force personnel were killed, officials say, and 16 people injured when the bombs hit a parking area for planes and helicopter gunships.

The international airport - which was not damaged - was closed briefly.

Tiger rebels attacked the airport and base in 2001, killing 18 and wiping out half of the national airline fleet.

The Katunayake airbase and the civilian airport share the same runway.

The Tigers said that goverment planes retaliated on Monday, carrying out four raids in the north of the island. They said civilian areas were hit, but there were no casualties.

'More to come'

A statement from the Tamil Tigers, carried by the pro-rebel Tamilnet website, claimed responsibility for the attack on the military base, which is 30km (20 miles) north of Colombo.

The government said one plane was used. The rebels said two aircraft took part and that both planes returned to rebel-held territory safely.

"It is a measure to protect Tamil civilians from the genocidal aerial bombardments by Sri Lankan armed forces. More attacks of the same nature will follow," said the rebels' military spokesman, Rasiah Ilanthirayan.

Air force officials said no planes were hit, damage to the military facility was "minor" and that a search operation was under way.

The BBC's Roland Buerk in Colombo says the confirmation that the rebels now have an air capability confirms government suspicions that they had been smuggling in aircraft parts to be assembled in areas of the island they control.

South Asia > Sri Lanka

One international airline, Cathay Pacific, announced that it was suspending flights to Colombo.

The authorities have set up an investigation into how the Tigers could have flown planes for more than 200 kms (125 miles) undetected.

The Tigers have released photos of planes and personnel they said took part in the raid.

"No terrorist group in this part of the world has any air capability," government minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle told journalists in Colombo.

"This is a clear threat to the security of the whole region."

Panic

The raid on the air force base took place at about 0045 on Monday (1915 GMT Sunday).

The wounded air force personnel were treated at Negombo military hospital

Flights in and out of the civilian airport were cancelled and roads cordoned off but no civilians were wounded and the runway was not damaged.

Neil Butler, a British passenger at the airport, was inside the terminal building when the attack happened.

"I heard a large thud and we all went to the window. There was a long silence and then several more explosions followed by machine gun fire," he told the BBC News website.

"The staff ran for the exit followed by the passengers. When I arrived downstairs in the check-in area a large crowd was running in a panic from the entrance where there had been more machine gun fire."

He said: "I saw what looked like kind of fireworks in the sky, like a series of red flashes. But I didn't see any aircraft going over."

Independent homeland

The air force base, which adjoins the country's only international passenger airport, houses some of the aircraft used in recent air strikes against Tiger rebel bases in the north.

Air force officials said damage to the military facility was "minor"

Despite a ceasefire still being in place on paper, Sri Lanka has been sliding back towards civil war, with more than 4,000 people killed in the past 15 months, our correspondent says.

The rebels have been fighting the armed forces of the predominantly Sinhalese government for much of the past 20 years.

They want to establish an independent homeland for the minority Tamils in the north and east of the country, to be called Tamil Eelam.

About 65,000 people have been killed and one million displaced by the fighting.

The geopolitics of the territories that the Tigers want to hold, having seized them off and on over the years, are simply not viable as an independent state, in my opinion. In the north, including the peninsula where the main concentration of Tamils occurs in the city of Jaffna, could conceivably have an existence distinct from the Sinhala-dominated main body of the rest of the country, hubbing out from the great city of Colombo. But the viability of Jaffna would depend upon support of ethnoreligiusly-related Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India, thos support from India for a Jaffna state offshore the subcontinent's southernmost tip, on the Lankan island, would become a perfect point of contest among the squabbling factions of Hindus, Christians, and Marxists that (de)compose Tamil Nadu society itself, ideologically.

In Sri Lanka, the ethnoreligious communities are the Tamil Hindus, the Sinhala Buddhists, and the Arab Muslims (the smallest of these three, who often seem the sanest). The Christian minority crosses all these communities, as something of a melting pot exists, making the Christian existence more viable, but there is also a backlash against the aggressive missionizing and church planting of some Christian groups. Additionally, educated people from all backgrounds often move to some personal version of secular Humanism (aside from rabidly ideological Marxist Hinduism, as prevails in the LTTE).

But more than faith and ideological factors are present on the island. One such is signified by the number of intermarriages that take mixed couples to the cosmopolitan capital city of Colombo.

I've known people (some directly, others by reputation) who have hoped for peace for the bullied and battered Tamil population, only to be disappointed by one side or the other, over and over again. I doubt there will be lasting peace on the island in the next twenty years.