"Many in Homs, Syria, feel as if the civil war has ended" LA Times

"... a group of Christian women headed into the Old City to view the remains of their family home. The Christian minority is generally effusive about the “liberation” of an area central to their ancient identity.  “The Army has swept away all of the bad people from our city,” said Hannan Ragap, 45, a mother of two who sported spike heels and jeans as she walked toward the Old City. In the adjacent Zahra district, people were savoring a victory against what many view as an existential threat from a radical Islamist force. The neighborhood is home to many Alawites, the Muslim sect whose members include President Assad. “They wanted to force us out, but we refused to leave,” said Alabdallah, the engineer who is in charge of the neighborhood “martyr’s” cemetery, with more than 2,000 graves, and is helping take down the sniper barriers, some as high as 30 feet."

--------------------------

The LA Times seems to have noticed that there are people in Syria who support the government.  Alawites, Christians, Shia and a lot of Sunni adhere to the existing government as opposed to the Saudi financed jihadi extremists who have now been defeated in the Old City of Homs.  N.B that the piece of the larger city of Homs that is called the "Old City" is a fairly small part of the larger whole. In spite of this the jihadi cheerleaders whom we seem to think of as honest journalists have persistently photographed the destruction in the Old City as though it was all of Homs.  

Now we see peace in the city of Homs and the beginning of reconstruction.  If what happened in Beirut after their civil war is an indication, rebuilding will proceed quite rapidly.  There is a lot of Syrian money overseas in Europe as well as in Lebanese banks and it will return.   Palestine is an example of expatriated capital that quickly is repatriated whenever there is hope of renewal.  The Ramallah skyline speaks volumes in spite of Israel's best efforts to inhibit growth.

And then, there is the article cited below from "The National," a UAE publication.  In this piece the author insists that Assad will not only win the coming presidential election but theat he would win in any honest election.

It seems to be that the Saudis, and the Likudnik crowd in the US have badly misjudged the strengths if their extremist friends.  The Obama Administration?  Oh, well...   pl  

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-homs-bashar-assad-20140512-story.html

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/syrias-dirty-secret-is-that-assad-could-win-in-a-fair-election

Comments

[Norbert M Salamon]

And Saudi Arabia has invited the Iranian FM at the FM's convenience, LOL

[kao_hsien_chih]

Well, to paraphrase Bertold Brecht, if the people are not for democracy, they should be gotten rid of.

[confusedponderer]

Interesting article in The National, which is remarkable in what it only hints at:

"Saudi’s Prince Bandar did not fail Syria: the West lost its nerve
..
There is truth in the suggestion that Saudi’s policy, and that of Qatar and Turkey, was opportunistic and uncoordinated. But it was in the beginning a genuine attempt to help the rebels and save Syria from destruction.

Again and again critics of any interventionist strategy have criticised the form of the strategy, without offering anything better, anything that would not consign Syrians to be slaughtered and their country ravaged while the representatives of the Assad regime talk in circles in the hotels of Geneva.

It is reasonable to criticise the policy that Prince Bandar spearheaded as wrong or right for a different era or another war. But to imagine that he, or Saudi Arabia, alone are responsible for the sectarian nature of the conflict today is to forget that theirs was meant to be only part of a strategy."

... which, quite obviously, from the onset had as a pillar a US/allied bombing campaign as was the case in Libya.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/saudis-prince-bandar-did-not-fail-syria-the-west-lost-its-nerve

[William Fitzgerald]

CP,

Your post begs the question, how does helping the rebels save Syria from destruction? The said rebels are on the path of destroying Syria in order to change it into something that most Syrians don't want, as far as I can tell.

WPFIII

[confusedponderer]

The proponents of helping the rebels will certainly say that helping the rebels does save Syria from destruction. But I'm probably with you thinking that they are wrong.

[confusedponderer]

Off topic because it concerns the neighbouring country, Israel - but I couldn't believe my eyes when I read it in the Jerusalem Post:

"US denies reported 'anti-Israel tirade' by top Mideast peace envoy"

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/US-denies-reported-anti-Israel-tirade-by-top-Mideast-peace-envoy-352543

"According to the report, which appeared Friday in The Washington Free Beacon, Indyk was heard unleashing a “nasty” tirade against Israel at a Washington bar during a night out with staff members.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that Indyk made the remarks at the bar of a Ritz Carlton hotel shortly after delivering an address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy."

His tone was nasty? And better still, Indyk - anti-Israel? Another self-hating Jew? Perhaps even anti-semitic?

They are speaking of Martin Indyk, also called 'Israel's lawyer', a self described Zionist, who iirc calls the Israelis 'his people', the founder of JINSA, the 'think tank' that is supposed to give AIPACS overt partisanship the veneer of academic respectability. Indyk, who apparently has worked for Likud prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, and could for all practical purposes be Israeli, hadn't he been granted an express US citizenship ten days before he started working for Clinton. Indyk's security clearance was once revoked (and must now have been reinstated) while he was ambassador to Israel, because he raised CI concerns.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=82560

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/how-fair-is-martin-indyk-who-says-he-was-motivated-by-my-connection-to-israel.html

http://www.wrmea.org/wrmea-archives/217-washington-report-archives-2000-2005/december-2000/3480-us-ambassador-to-israel-martin-indyks-lost-and-found-security-clearance.html

In short: Indyk is a pro-Israeli partisan if there ever was one. I couldn't think up an unlikelier candidate for an 'anti Israeli tirade'.

So, apparently Indyk said nasty things like: The Israelis didn't want a peace deal with the Pals, deliberately wrecked the talks by announcing another few hundred settlements, and now blame the US for being angry about it and the Palestinans for still not having surrendered and walked out to Jordan.

Because it can't have been anything that Bibi did. That's why, obviously, it was that bad, nasty man Indyk unjustifiably blaming Israel even though everybody should finally have understood that Israel is angelic and everybody else is demonic, and that that's all there is to know about the Middle East.

This story indicates two things to me:
(a) the disconnect of Israeli self perception and reality,
(b) the increasing ridiculousness of their Hasbara,
(c) what jackasses Bibi and his crew must have been to piss that guy off, and
(d) that even being Israel's partisan lawyer isn't enough to satisfy Bibi.

[confusedponderer]

Correction, Indyk, founded WINEP, not JINSA.

[Laguerre]

"There is truth in the suggestion that Saudi’s policy, and that of Qatar and Turkey, was opportunistic and uncoordinated."

No, not at all. It is a long-term policy, parallel to American interests. Saudis and Gulfis have been supporting al-Qa'ida in Mesopotamia since early in the American occupation of Iraq, partly to defend the Sunni community and partly to get at the Shi'a. The policy in Syria is an outgrowth; the support was happening long before the start in Syria.

I omit the definite article from "Saudis and Gulfis" deliberately, because in principle the support is probably coming from the private funds of Saudis and Gulfis, rather than the state. Though you can ask the question whether the private wealth of Saudi or Gulfi princes is really different from that of the state. It is the ancient tradition that wealthy private individuals fund the defence of Islam, and I should think they at least started from there. The event that sticks in my mind is that in the 9th century, the mother of the the Caliph al-Mutawakkil funded a house of jihadis in Tarsus (today in Turkey), as a charitable act, in order to fight the Byzantines. But personal funding by the elite was common in medieval times.

It may be that under Bandar bin Sultan things evolved to become state policy and funding, and it is that which has now failed.

It is hard to know, as the real sources of funding will never be revealed. The visceral hatred of Saudi and Gulfi princes for the Shi'a is very clear. How can you expect otherwise, when in Bahrain and Saudi, the Shi'a are sitting on the oil-fields, the source of wealth?

[turcopolier]

Laguerre

"It is a long-term policy, parallel to American interests." Rubbish. It IS a long term policy but it is not in any way parallel to American interests even if the idiot neocons like it. Your self satisfied French academic ignorance of the United States is showing. pl