Not sure this is a very sound reasoning, but having Assad "whacked" would be enjoyable anyway, just for the sheer satisfaction factor.
Will Iran make the U.S. whack Assad?
Michael Young
Earlier this week, Syrian President Bashar Assad traveled to Tehran to meet with Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and "supreme guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The visit was a foul blast from the pastâan echo from the 1980s, when then-President Hafiz Assad built up close ties with Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran in order to irritate Iraq and protect Syria from Israel and the United States.
Bashar declared in Tehran that cooperation between Syria, Iran and Iraq would "be a barrier in the way of occupiers in the region." He failed to mention, however, that the Iraqis have no sympathy for his regime, which has persistently looked the other way as foreign suicide bombers transit through Syria to murder, mostly, Iraqi civilians; nor did he say that the Americans and the Iraqi authorities last week held up some 700 Syrian trucks on the Syrian-Iraqi border as retaliation for Syria's behavior.
While Assad's Iranian trip was designed to warn the Bush administration off, it was actually a desperation move. The Syrians offer Iran many headaches, but otherwise little it doesn't already have. While both countries are happy to watch the U.S. stumble in Iraq, the ultimate Iranian goal is to put in place a Shiite-controlled government sympathetic to Iran; Syria is by action or omission collaborating with Sunni jihadists who are seeking to destroy that project. Iran is keen to leverage its nuclear program in part to arrive at favorable economic arrangements with Europe; Syria has steadily alienated the Europeans, particularly France, because of its behavior in Lebanon. Iran is today little interested in a dialogue with Washington; Syria's entire strategy, in Iraq and elsewhere, centers around showing the Americans that it is indispensable to them, so that a dialogue can be resumed.
Assad's maneuvers, however, raise a more fundamental question, one heightened by rising American frustration in Iraq: Is a clash between Syria and the United States becoming increasingly inevitable, so that the Iraqi conflict may spread to Syriaâmore specifically to the Syrian side of the border area with Iraq?
The conventional wisdom is that the Americans have enough to chew on in Iraq. That makes sense, and according to reports in the Arab world, it is precisely what the Syrian regime is counting on: By allowing jihadists into Iraq, it sporadically tightens the screws to show the U.S. the benefits of collaboration.
American intentions toward Syria are unclear. In meetings with senior U.S. officials last April, I got a distinct sense that there was no precise policy towards the Syrian regime, other than to make life as difficult as possible for Assad in the hope that his leadership would crumble. The perception in Washington at the time was that the president was so weak, particularly after his army's forced withdrawal from Lebanon, that he was not long for this world. Nothing suggests that this minimalist approach has changed.
If so, the administration is too sanguine. The Baathists are undeniably decomposing, but despotic regimes can sink slowly. There are no serious alternatives to Assad's rule from outside the small circle of leadership, with the president and his entourage holding a tight monopoly over the use of violence. While Syrians generally dislike their useless regime, they fear Iraq-like chaos after its demise.
Public statements by American officials have been increasingly pointed. A week ago, during a speech wherein he asserted that Syria was "undoubtedly financing" the Iraqi insurgency, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned:
The United States and the world obviously [have] to create a better clarity in the minds of leaders of Syria that what they are doing is harmful ultimately to themselves... Iraq is going to be in that neighborhood for a very long time. It's a bigger country and a richer country and will be a more powerful country... the Syrians are not behaving in a wise manner at the present time."
John Bolton, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, mentioned Syria the same day, urging all nations "to meet their obligations to stop the flow of terrorist financing and weapons, and particularly...Iran and Syria."
The statements were hardly harbingers of impending war, but they were fighting words. And, for once, Assad has no European patience to draw on. For example, in the lead story of Al-Hayat on July 30, an unidentified senior French official warned that continued Syrian misbehavior in Lebanon might lead to international sanctions, and remarked:
In the event Syria doesn't realize that positive behavior is in its interest, that means it doesn't realize the significance of agreement between George Bush and Jacques Chirac on Lebanon, and their determination to be firmer with Syria if it doesn't pay attention.
The real question, however, is whether the situation in which the U.S. finds itself in Iraq will soon leave it with few options. Already, there is great American concern with the Euphrates River corridor, along which foreign fighters enter from Syria. Following the death of 22 Marines last week, U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out a military offensive in the area. The Syrians have also reported that their border guards are frequently fired upon by American and Iraqi troops. This may be bogus, but the Bush administration is happy to keep the heat up on a regime that could do much more to control access to Iraq.
In this context, it may be reasonable to presume that American efforts in the border area will escalate if there is no improvement in interdicting the access of foreign fighters. But on their own, the border infiltrations are probably not a critical trigger. The tipping point may be what the Iranians do.
It is Iran, more than Syria, that poses a long-term threat to American designs in Iraq. It is the Iranians who are patiently setting up a political order that will be an alternative to what the Americans favorâand they're doing so with many of the very people the Bush administration considers its allies. The Syrians are adding to the carnage, but are otherwise incapable of creating a durable Iraqi system that they can manipulate. And because the U.S. hasn't the means, or the wherewithal, to engage Iran today militarily, whether in the border area or elsewhere, it might prefer, paradoxically, to strike against Syria.
Bizarre, you say? Perhaps, but relocating a conflict to a more convenient venue can be tempting when a country is eager for military success; particularly, too, when it is contemplating some sort of drawdown of forces. In order to regain a hold over Iraq, and in the process break the increasingly powerful Iranian hand there, the Bush administration might seek first to settle its accounts with Syria on the Western border. Syria is feeble; Iran is not. Syria has no solid allies; Iran is still regarded as a country with which business can be concluded. And ending suicide attacks is something palpable, while curbing Iranian influence demands subtlety that is far less marketable.
Such logic is not any stranger than, let's say, the Nixon administration's behavior in Cambodia in 1969. The U.S. bombed North Vietnamese sanctuaries there to prevent the entry of troops and weapons into South Vietnam, ultimately visiting disaster on a neutral country. This took place after Richard Nixon had won the 1968 election on a platform of negotiated withdrawal from Vietnam, and was seen as an extension of that effort.
A conflict with Syria is unlikely to be quite as dramatic. However, in the absence of a clear-cut administration policy on Syria; given Syrian recklessness in playing sorcerer's apprentice with the jihadists; given the growing Iranian threat to American plans in Iraq, compounded by the ongoing nuclear dispute; and given growing American annoyance with how Iraq is developing, a spectacular reshuffling of the deck might emerge as a favorite option of the administration. If that happens, Syria is the likeliest target, even if the American fist would mainly be directed towards Iraq's east.
Reason contributing editor Michael Young is opinion editor at the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
Shariah endangers women's rights, from Iraq to Canada.
In every society where family affairs are regulated according to instructions derived from the Shariah or Islamic law, women are disadvantaged. The injustices these women are exposed to in the name of Islam vary from extreme cruelty (forced marriages; imprisonment or death after rape) to grossly unfair treatment in matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance.
Muslim women across the world are caught in a terrible predicament. They aspire to live by their faith as best they can, but their faith robs them of their rights. Some women have found a way out of this dilemma in the principle of separation of organized religion and state affairs. They fight an uphill battle to achieve and hold on to their basic rights. Two cases demonstrate just how difficult that struggle can be, in the context of new as well as established democracies.
The first is the draft constitution of Iraq, now due next week. Iraqi women like Naghem Khadim, demonstrating on the streets of Najaf, are fighting to prevent an article from being put in the constitution that would establish that the legislature may make no laws that contradict Shariah edicts. The second case is the province of Ontario, in Canada. There, Muslim women led by Homa Arjomand, an activist of Iranian origin, are fighting--using the Canadian Charter of Rights--to keep Shariah from being applied as family law through a so-called Arbitration Act passed as law in Ontario in 1992.
It seems strange to associate the context of Canada with that of Iraq, but a closer look at the arguments used to reassure the demonstrating women in both countries reveals the similar ordeals that Muslim women in both countries must go through to secure their rights. It shows how their legitimate and serious worries are trivialized, and how vulnerable and alone they are. It shows how the Free World led by the U.S. went to war in Iraq, allegedly to bring liberty to Iraqis, and is compromising the basic rights of women in order to meet a random date. It shows how the theory of multiculturalism in Western liberal democracies is working against women in ethnic and religious minorities with misogynist practices. It shows the tenacity of many imams, mullahs and self-made Muslim radicals to subjugate women in the name of God. Most of all, it shows how many of those who consider themselves liberal or left-wing see their energy levels rise when it comes to Bush-bashing, but lose their voice when women's rights are threatened by religious obscurantism.
Hamam Hamoudi, the head of Iraq's constitution committee, refuses to discuss the article that worries the Muslim women. He also refused to put in the draft constitution that men and women have equal rights, creating a bizarre situation whereby the women had more rights under Saddam Hussein's regime than in post-Saddam Iraq. Mr. Hamoudi insists that women will have full economic and political rights, but the overwhelming evidence shows that when Shariah--which gives a husband complete control over his wife--is in place, women have little chance to exercise any political rights. Does Mr. Hamoudi realize that it took the removal of Saddam and the establishment of a multiparty democracy for men to vote, while if his draft constitution is ratified, women will need the permission of their husbands to step out of the house in order to mark their ballot? I thought that President Bush and all the allies who supported the Iraq war aspired to bring democracy and liberty to all Iraqis. Aren't Iraqi girls and women human enough to share in that dream?
Under Shariah, a girl becomes eligible for marriage from the moment she starts to menstruate. In countries where Islamic law is practiced, child-brides are common. Do the drafters of the constitution grasp what this will mean for the school curriculum of girls or the risks of miscarriages, maternal fatalities and infant deaths? These and other hazards that affect subjugated women are common phenomena in the 22 Arab-Islamic countries investigated in the Arab Human Development Report. An early marriage also means many children in an area of the world that is already overpopulated and poor.
The draft Iraqi bill of rights favors men in other respects, such as the right to marry up to four wives, and the right to an easy divorce, without the interference of a court, simply by repeating "I divorce you" in the presence of two male witnesses. A wife divorced in such a fashion will receive an allowance for a period of three months to one year, and after that period nothing. On the other hand, if a wife wants a divorce, she must go to court and prove that her husband does not meet her material needs, that he is infertile and that he is impotent. Once a divorce is finalized, if there are children, the custody of the children will automatically go to the father (for boys at age 7 and for girls from the start of menstruation). Inheritance based on the Shariah means that wives will get only a small portion of the property of their husbands and a sister will get half what her brother gets.
Canadian women are told that the Arbitration Act of 1992 was passed in order to provide citizens with the opportunity to resolve minor conflicts through mediation and thereby save valuable court time. They are reassured that Muslim women in Canada have nothing to fear because parties must enter into arbitration out of their free choice, and that there are enough limits to safeguard the rights of women. The Muslim women's arguments that "free choice" is relative when you are psychologically, financially and socially dependent on your family, clan or religious group seem to fall on deaf ears. The populations of battered Muslim women in "tolerant" Canada's women's shelters seem to be ignored. In Canada, battered Muslim women say that their husbands told them that it is a God-given right to hit them. If the current Iraqi constitution goes through, Iraqi wife-abusers will be able to add "It is my constitutional right to beat you."
An Iraqi constitution is necessary, and the need for urgency is apparent, but urgency is a bad argument for passing a bill that strips half the nation of its rights. In Ontario, minorities come first and individual women within minorities last, living as second-class citizens and suffering in silence.
Ms. Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament for the Liberal Party, was born in Somalia. She took refuge in the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage, and has had armed bodyguards after receiving death threats from Muslim extremists. She writes at http://www.ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl/.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
