Syria slowly sinking Titanic - Avi Lipkin

Syria: Slowly Sinking Titanic by Avi Lipkin

Gary mentioned this article in a recent commentary. Click the link below to watch!https://youtu.be/CjpVMyl4yGY

Syria: Slowly Sinking Titanic by Avi Lipkin

With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI, the British and

French colonial agenda called for the carving up of the former

Turkish Empire and the creation of a number of Arab states

that would be either under British or French colonial control.

The French would get Syria with Lebanon torn away to create

the new Christian state of Lebanon, while the British

got Iraq, and the Palestine Mandate which was later carved up

into Trans-Jordan and given over to the Hashemites while the 

remaining third became the British Mandate of Palestine.

Whereas Trans-Jordan and the Arab population of Palestine

were virtually exclusively Sunni Moslems, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon

had diverse ethnic populations which were in various ways in 

conflict with each other.

Scant attention was paid to drawing logical borders, and instead,

a ruler was used on the map of the Middle East to create countries

such as Syria and Iraq which no longer exist today as they did 

before the onset of the so-called "Arab Spring" in February of 2011.

Both the French and British colonial powers used the principle of

divide and conquer proferring power to the minority Alawites in

Syria as well as the Arab Sunnis in Iraq.  The Alawites represented

a mere 10% of the population in Syria while the Arab Sunnis in

Iraq represented a mere 20% of the entire population of Iraq.

In the West and Israel, governments are created based on a majority

coalition or consensus. But in the Middle East, the British and French

decided to create pacts with minority groups that would remain totally

dependent and reliant on the colonial powers and totally ruthless with

the other ethnic groups. Power sharing and democracy were never

an option. 

The Christians were granted a state in Lebanon, but by 1945, it

was common knowledge that the Christians were now a minority, 

and the Shiites and Sunnis fought over who would be preeminent.

Today the Christians are about 28% in Lebanon and the Shiites

about 40%.

The Ba'ath parties of Syria and Iraq followed the same Socialist/

Fascist type ideology but detested each other because in Syria, 

the Ba'ath Party was dominated by the Shiite/Alawites while in 

Iraq, it was dominated by the Sunnis.

No consideration was ever given to the "other" groups not in the

coalition with these minority totalitarian leaderships and so remained

restive and were suppressed with complete brutality.

The whole system began to unravel with the US overthrow of Saddam

Hussein in 2003 in Iraq.  For George W. Bush, democracy meant the 

will of the majority.  Well, the Shiites, a 60% majority overall in Iraq 

slaughtered for decades by Saddam were now the majority and so 

power was transferred to them in 2003 with the overthrow of Saddam.  

The first thing they did was to disarm Saddam Hussein's Baath Party 

membership and slaughter them, simply taking revenge for the hundreds 

of thousands of Shiites slaughtered  by Saddam and the Baath.

Today, ISIS, represents, among other things, a reorganized Sunni 

political, religious and military system to "protect" the Sunnis from the

Shiites but has also indulged in slaughtering those Sunnis who are

not fanatic Moslems. Today many Sunnis are rising up against ISIS

as well.

In Syria, the Sunnis, who are about 80% are divided as follows: about

30% support Bashar al-Assad's Shiite Alawite regime together with the 

Alawites who are about 10% as well as the Christians and Druze who 

are about 10%.  While the Sunni rebels are about 50% so 50-50 is

a prescription for a never-ending war.  

But the war will end in the favor of the Sunnis simply because the Sunnis 

have more volunteers coming from all over the world to join ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, Khorasan, as well as the Syrian Free Army which is secular.  

Simply put, the soldiers of Bashar al-Assad are being decimated and

cannot be replaced.  Hezbollah of Lebanon which has been helping Bashar

al-Assad is also bleeding profusely and so are the Iranian and Iraqi

Shiite volunteers coming to Syria to help Bashar.  

A good parallel is the defeat of the Nazis in Europe and Japanese in WWII.

Simply put, the US outproduced the Axis powers while the Red Army had

ten times as many soldiers as the Wehrmacht.  It was only a question of

time.

The old maps of Syria and Iraq no longer exist.  Now we are seeing cantons developing representing the Kurdish, Alawite, Shiite and Sunni populated areas with each group protecting its territory. 

Conclusion for Israel: Israel owes the British and French nothing regarding

the artificial borders of Sykes-Pikot Treaty of 1919. The borders of the 1947

UN Partition Plan no longer exist.  The June 5th, 1967 borders of Israel no

longer exist and are not sacrosanct. In light of the present Middle East 

realities, there is no justification for any further Israeli withdrawals. 

Israel's Fourth Term Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is completely right when he says that the conditions are not right to establish a Palestinian

State because all the borders in the Middle East today are fluid, with old

states disappearing and new cantons being created.

Turkey and Iran may also break up along sectarian lines and so we must

watch this as well.