This isn't true - they have all backed different factions in the conflict against the Syrian government, against ISIS and today against one another in Idlib.
Assuming they defeated the Syria government this conflict was always going to split down the differing interests between the Saudis and Qataris
The succinct way (as always, this stuff is a lot more complicated than surface reporting) Qatar are the largest foreign opposition backers in Syria and supported in order the Army of Conquest and today Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)
The Saudi's are likely the second largest foreign backers in Syria and started out supporting FSA and other groups but today have their own umbrella group called Ahrar al-Sham.
HTS and Ahrar al-Sham have been in conflict for some time now and in all out war for some months now in Idlib (would always eventually happen - they're just squabbling over a lot less today)
The USA, Russia and Turkey all have their own groups that they support but the alliances have almost always fallen along axis of Turkey-Qatar on one side and Saudi-Jordan-UAE-USA on the other
What the OP article has left out is the conflict in Libya which makes this split a lot clearer. Qatar backed the Islamist group that took over a lot of Libya. In the new civil war (the one that no one cares about) the Saudi's and former Gadaffi loyalists have formed an anti-Islamist alternate government.
The UAE and Egypt have sent fighter jets to bomb the Qatari-backed side in this conflict[0][1]
It was a big deal in the Arab world (and I can't believe it isn't mentioned in the NYTimes piece) when militants raised a Qatari flag over Ghadaffi's palace - that was a "holy shit that could be us next" moment for many of these Arab nations and hardened their opposition to Qatar[2]
Also only vaguely mentioned in the article is that Qatar and Kuwait are a huge source of the financing for ISIS. The governments there may not have an official position of supporting ISIS - but they sure as hell aren't doing much to stop the flow of money from Kuwaiti and Qatari citizens to ISIS[3]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/26/united-arab-em...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/26/qatar-troops-l...
[2] http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/raising-of-qatar-s-flag-...
[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/kuwait/...
Nicely done.
(I wonder if my complete lack of clue about what is plausible in this context is a common theme amongst conspiracy theory believers?)
In truth, I think the ME is a relatively uncoordinated place. All these different motivations and intesrests exist. Thhe pipeline idea is real-ish, the Qatari support for "extremist Islamists" is too, though Saudis support Islamists too when it lines up. So, it's hard to entirety dismiss or disprove any of these overarching motivation theories. The US and Russia have always proxy-fought in the region, but they never really knew what they wanted there.
My thought is that there is no coherent actor, just a mishmash of interests, ideologies and unpredictable chaos.
As anyone who has tried to get anything done on multiple continents knows, any complicated goal (e.g., build a multinational pipeline through remote and wildly insecure areas) will tend to lose out to the interests of locals. A necessary but insufficient condition for success of such goals is to spend enough to make locals' interests coincide with one's own. The difficulties faced by this hypothetical pipeline lead one to doubt its construction would profit in the long run.
The advantage of the USA military-industrial complex is that they actually DGAF what happens as a result of all of our profligate and evil war spending. The spending itself is the goal, and they're just as happy to siphon off a stream of resources supporting ISIS in Syria as off some other stream supporting Kurds in northern Iraq. That's why our international policy (and the media narrative carefully curated to provide cover for it) is so schizophrenic. We believe in democracy!/Down with Morsi!/We DGAF!/War! That is a big conspiracy, but nobody wants to talk about that.
Your missing something obvious with this conspiracy theory. Look at a map. Iraq borders both SA and Turkey. It would be cheaper to build through Iraq than destabilize an entire country.
Believe it or not, every time something goes wrong in the world, the US is not behind it. These conspiracy theories help no one.
So some of these stated items may be sub-plots, the truth is Iran - Saudi rivalry plays a major part in ME politics. Syria was a proxy battleground so was Yemen.
Except that at the time, Iraq was itself a highly unstable conflict zone. Building a pipeline in those conditions was not viable, and probably still isn't.
Iraq is further along in that process.. than starting anew with Syria.
I fail to see how turning Syria into an unstable conflict zone would help.
That's precisely the point. Nobody set out to cause long-lasting, destructive conflict in Iraq as well.
Furthermore, in Iraq there was a multinational coallition allocating hefty amounts of resourses to ensure a clean politically advantgeous outcome, while the war in Syria would be, according to that conspiracy theory, at best a covert operation leading to a drawn out conflict.
A lot of what is written there doesn't pass the basic smell test of anybody even vaguely familiar with the conflict
[0] https://www.minnpost.com/media/2015/11/mystery-mintpress-new...
[1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/the-inside-story-of-one-w...
Just to clarify if it is Gaza+West Bank, or the usual Arab definition that includes all of Israel, or all of the old Palestine mandate that included also present-day Jordan?
Depending on what is "Palestine", it s surrounded by 5 to 7 countries: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi-Arabia and Egypt.
Being french this argument annoys me particularly because if you remember France was against this intervention because we thought the WMD menace was bullshit. Turns out that we were right. Then a few years ago France was saying "Assad is using chemical weapons against civilians, we must do something!" and the whole internet started parroting the russian talking points "But remember Iraq!!! It's all a bunch of lies!!!".
Not to say that french intelligence is infallible or can't be manipulated but using the garbage fire that was the "Gulf War Episode 2: The Empire Strikes Back" to immediately dismiss any kind of foreign intervention is rather disingenuous. Yet an other terrible long term consequence of the Bush administration years I suppose.
A public reticence to create further disasters, if indeed it existed, would be among the best possible long-term consequences of that foolish administration.
Believe it or not, every time something goes wrong in the world, the US is not behind it.
Ok, so you're just working on other people's democracies for their benefit. Gotcha.
Your rebuttal appears to be very close to the viewpoint that Russian propaganda is trying to promote
My sources are not media and propaganda though. I read & also travel a lot. Before the war my cousin and I were importing carpet from Syria. During the war I traveled along Turkey - Syria border twice, also to the south side, Jordan.
And since the beginning of this war, I think about it almost every day, feel deeply sad about how a beautiful country got ruined by some dickheads for no reason...
Propaganda is rarely reliable, from any side.
However, your conflation of the consensus view of the free world’s press with “propaganda” of the type explicitly pumped out by state-controlled Russian outlets is disingenuous to the extreme.
This is a common logical fallacy used by propagandists.
That's the problem with all these fallacies lists: things are a fallacy, except when they are not. So most often, they are just used as rhetoric weapons in verbal jousts.
No, fallacies are always fallacy, but a fallacy is an error in logic that does not imply that the conclusion is wrong [0], only that the argument offered fails to establish the truth of the conclusion it seeks to justify.
[0] An argument for the negation of a conclusion based solely on a fallacy in an argument offered for that conclusion is the definition of the fallacy fallacy.
I suspect not often.
Genuine question, why should we trust you more than the article? How do we know you aren’t trying to fool us?
but where do i begin. oil - yes europe want to reduce reliance on russian gas but there are a LOT of countries between qatar and europe.
Arab spring - did NOT start in syria. in syria the flames were fanned by all interested countries in the hopes that a bunch of autocratic dictators would be overthrown with no effort required. didn't work, total balls up, in every case the cure was worse than the problem.
Turkey - got involved for 3 reasons: 1) the shit-show was on their borders. 2) the more the kurds got involved the more turkey saw a need to reduce their power. 3) turkey now sees it self as a regional super-power and wants a show of force.
Russia - they inserted themselves into the mess and claim Syria under there sphere of influence. their troops get a bit of practice, they get an ally and a port in the Mediterranean.
Iran and Saudi - they have been having a proxy war in yemen and the US has re-affirmed it's support of the saudi (they would be crazy not to). they made a BIG flashy show about stopping terrorism. very next thing that happens they all turn on qatar.
'Russia won the war in both Ukraine and Syria, at same time' what is your sentence meant to imply? these weren't wars they were minor deployments of resources that wouldn't tax any reasonably large country.
stop spreading propaganda.
There have been 470,000 casualties in Syria. For comparison, that’s more than the US suffered in WW2, and that loss was felt. It’s a colossal humanatarian disaster and very much a war.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/syria
russia didn't need to do to much due to all the efforts of the 4+ sides fighting each other.
The Turks (IMHO) are unseasoned forces are fighting battle that is against international laws, and is for a country run by a dictator. Both points that are huge factors against their success.
It will probably come down to air power, I wonder what the Kurds have in the way of surface to air missiles?
And while the Turkish have far more firepower and air power than Kurds, the terrain is extremely favourable for a defending force, particularly when it is as motivated and well-trained as the Kurdish fighters. A Turkish attack can become a debacle, or at militarily "best", a massacre of civilian population resulting in further alienating Turkey from civilization.
Don't misunderstand that I think this is a) a good idea, or b) ultimately going to work out the way Turkey wants it to work out.
I don't think the kurds will choose to live and die by Afrin.
Is it even "likely" that you can shoot down a jet with an manually operated anti aircraft gun? Sure it's "possible"
Does Turkey have guided bombs? And will they be re-supplied so that Turkish air force could use them at will?
<disclaimer: though I live in the middle east, and in a good day can see Syria - am brainwashed by evil media>
Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all, from now on.
> The goal was to create a new pipeline from Qatar to Europe so Europe don’t have to buy gas from Russia
> Russia won the war in both Ukraine and Syria, at same time
> Qatar and Turkey are now enemies on the Russian side. The western alliance tried hard to take down their presidents by organizing coups but it failed.
To anticipate your next point: is there propaganda in the West? Yes, absolutely. Is it the same level BS as Putin's propaganda? No way - in the West there are just so many more independent sources of information, that finding out most BS is easy enough if you try. In Russia, things are very tightly controlled by Putin and his system.
When I was living in UK for a while, I was amazed by how some really smart people have 100% level of trust to national media, so that they can't even perceive another point of view. All arguments were based on the fact that their media is historically old and never lies because it can't risk its reputation. And all Russian media is propaganda and controlled by Putin. It was 2014 and I can't say how much I was asked what I think about Putin. Honestly I didn't know what to answer because I don't like to talk about politics.
But since that time I know that if you look around the world you will notice the same BS but in different boxing. And people are equally vulnerable to buy it.
The difference is that here in the West there are lots of agendas being pushed, but there are also lots of competing ones, lots of different points of view, and much more freedom to express them. The end result is - or at least was, the situation isn't improving lately - that the government can't get away with lies as big as the ones Putin pushes (eg: "we have no soldiers in Ukraine" "we're never going to annex Crimea" etc. etc.)
Just because there is more choice in "independent" news outlets, it doesn't mean there is more independent opinions being voiced.
Let's also not forget just how many people get their news from untrusted sources posted on social media and other similar communication mediums.
So I think it's a stretch to say things are significantly better in the west. If anything, people are just as badly misled here but with the added misconception that the free market and freedom of press means their news is automatically also free of political bias (or sometimes they do know but simply don't care because they had that bias to begin with)
I mean seriously:
>The actual goal was of course had nothing to do with democracy and Arab spring was total bullshit.
>Western news brainwashed the whole world with ISIS and YPG
>The western alliance tried hard to take down their presidents by organizing coups but it failed.
And the most amusing part of your comment:
>people just buy this stuff easily in the propaganda bubble they live in
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!
This whole comment is one big huge [citation needed] tag.
The syrian crisis was a sunni -shia powerblock escalation. The problem i have is that we - the west side with the wrong faction here. Assad had many minorities somehow getting along, no sunni country has that. Iran is quite inventive - even if the relgious fanatics try to come down on that. Western money flows through saudi arabia an finances wahabit missionarys everywhere.
Are we really assisting the good guys here?
For example- what is the definition of a good guy? Is a good guy something stable, reliable, someone behaving reproducable?
Is a good guy somebody who gives you a short term reward, and costs you dearly in the long run? Or can a good guy be someone who costs you short term, but becomes a long term positiv force. What if somebody is hostile, but stabilizes out of self-interest a otherwise negative are in the world.
Its all very complicated, and the dynamics playing into it, can be horrifying for anyone idealistic.
Well that's completely wrong. The idea that ISIS and YPG would ever fight together is so stupid it's hilarious. Maybe read less RT.
YPG has always been independent, they're Kurds, you idiot. ISIS has always been its own group, but started turning on everyone else at the end of 2014. The FSA is a mix of radical to less radical Arabs that sometimes fought with AQ (decent amount of times) and maybe a long time ago with ISIS (rather rare). Can't blame them considering what they're up against. I see russian propaganda has been very effective in making you think FSA==ISIS, not surprising they would do that considering how consistently they never bomb ISIS and always target groups like the FSA instead.
Personal attacks and uncivil swipes will get you banned on Hacker News. You've done this several times before. If you want to keep commenting here, please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.
Also: your comment history seems unusually political when it comes to Russia.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-a...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-mi...
Stratfor, something like a private intelligence organization - well beyond a think tank, also has written a vast amount on Syria to the point that I think just googling for 'strator syria' would be more productive than me listing a slew of articles. In general I find news that's from first party analysts tends to be vastly more informative than the filtered drivel that you end up getting from most US news sites.
As an aside, I am not suggesting that that the above directly support OP's hypothesis. What it does support is the fact that what's stated in most US mainstream outlets is a childlike misrepresentation of the war over there framing it as the 'good guys' (which is naturally us) are trying to take out a pure evil 'bad guy.' I'm not sure if that's propaganda or just something that gets clicks. In either case, it's false. The interactions are complex, motivations rarely benevolent, and the whole thing an entire mess in general.
Ultimately the reason I stopped reading about Syria is because I think it's futile to try to 'truly' understand what's happening. We'll only be able to begin to actually dig into the truth 50 or so years from now when the documentation around the war is declassified.
Generalizing reporting in "most US mainstream outlets" as "childlike misrepresentation" is the kind of fake news doubt-sowing that is killing our (America's) relationship with facts.
There has been some excellent reporting on the relatively complex Syrian Civil War from stalwarts such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. Even upstart Buzzfeed News has done some great stuff that was carefully sourced and thoroughly investigated - regardless of how bad it made the US look.
My perspective is that of someone who has been professionally and personally following the Syrian Civil War since 2012.
[1] - https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi...
At the same time, hailing them as beacons of integrity and truth is unreasonable. They increasingly routinely print news that later turns out to be entirely fake with corrections and updates often tucked away from site of their readers - though we also certainly contribute to that in that a million people may share a sensationalized story that turns out to be fake, but only a handful will share the correction stating it was all false. In a world where many receive their news through social media and implicitly virally, one thing I would certainly agree with you is that America is having an increasingly challenged "relationship with facts."
Another issue is that the US is obviously not monolithic. Speaking poorly of the US in one way or another will be either widely hailed or widely condemned depending on the person speaking and whom they're speaking of and to. This sort of split in society has become particularly true in the media today. All organizations you listed, for instance, are intermingled to the point of incestuousness and you will rarely find disagreement between them, in no small part due to this. See, for instance, things like JournoList [1] turned CabaList in which participating journalists at times conspired to kill stories that reflected poorly on their own personal biases, and at other times they even discussed ways they could conspire to try to kill off media outlets that did not conform to their biases. Perhaps it's fit to conclude there that the creator of JournoList was none other than Ezra Klein, the founder and now editor in chief of Vox.
I get my news from the sources you mentioned along with many others. I was taking issue with your disposal of babies with bathwater. If you are discounting information coming from flawed institutions with actual policies and procedures in favor of dubiously sourced "investigative" reporting by people like Hersh, we are in deep doo-doo.
FWIW, I am about as close to being on the ground as just about anyone outside of the actual participants in the war.
However, we're not in "deep doo-doo" just because you happen to think these organizations have value. When we would be in "deep doo-doo" is if we became monolithic in thought. It's great that you think Seymour Hersh has no credibility. It's great that I think your preferred sources have no credibility. It ensures we remain a critical audience which helps work as a safeguard against falsehoods. As your preferred sources are regularly outted, it is in large part thanks to people like me. And should Seymour indeed be shown to be generating fake news, it will be largely be thanks to people like you.
The only thing that's really changed in society is this fear of conflict. Disagreement, or the belief that 'others' are being misled by fake information, is hardly a novel thing. It's the self righteousness and fear of disagreement, arguably driven by social media echo chambers, that is the novel thing -- and that is the thing that, if anything, might leave us in "deep doo-doo."
[0] https://www.globalresearch.caAnd Erdogan staged his own failed coup. By all rights even before the coup attempt Turkey should be ejected from NATO. A conspiracy is not required to oppose an autocrat in violation of his country's constitution, and has made it a good deal less secure by showing to its enemies how easy it is make it react contrary to its own law, its international agreements, and the will of its own citizens. But I don't really know why you bring up Turkey, as this article doesn't mention it.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Europe, US and Turkey was the big alliance which tried to take down Syria. Please check the records western news channels in 2013, it was full of joyful propaganda about Free Syrian Army fighting for democracy in Syria. The actual goal was of course had nothing to do with democracy and Arab spring was total bullshit. The goal was to create a new pipeline from Qatar to Europe so Europe don’t have to buy gas from Russia. Syria, between Turkey and Jordan was the only barrier for this project. If they removed Assad, Russia would be screwed. This is why Russia got in the field and started fighting back to protect Assad.
In 2014, Qatar and Turkey splitted from this alliance because they realized that Russia will not let Syria down. That was also the time FSA split into bunch of groups; Wahabist ISIS and socialist YPG. Noone ever questioned how a group backed by Saudi money would fight another backed by American money. Western news brainwashed the whole world with ISIS and YPG, people don’t even remember what did happen before; Russia won the war in both Ukraine and Syria, at same time.
This is the deal; the war is lost, and the alliance is defeated & splitted. Qatar and Turkey are now enemies on the Russian side. The western alliance tried hard to take down their presidents by organizing coups but it failed. Qatar will survive just as Iran, Syria and Russia.
The article is just another Western propaganda painting a middle eastern enemy as “little lone wolf”, and people just buy this stuff easily in the propaganda bubble they live in.