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Bible Quotation For Today/The Parable of the Sower
Luke 08/01-15: "Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources. When a great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: ‘A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.’ As he said this, he called out, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that "looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand." ‘Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance."

Bible Quotation For Today/ Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you
First Letter to the Corinthians 03/01-11: "I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labour of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ."

Question: "Do human beings truly have a free will?"
GotQuestions.org/August 15/15
Answer: If “free will” means that God gives humans the opportunity to make choices that genuinely affect their destiny, then yes, human beings do have a free will. The world’s current sinful state is directly linked to choices made by Adam and Eve. God created mankind in His own image, and that included the ability to choose.
However, free will does not mean that mankind can do anything he pleases. Our choices are limited to what is in keeping with our nature. For example, a man may choose to walk across a bridge or not to walk across it; what he may not choose is to fly over the bridge—his nature prevents him from flying. In a similar way, a man cannot choose to make himself righteous—his (sin) nature prevents him from canceling his guilt (Romans 3:23). So, free will is limited by nature.
This limitation does not mitigate our accountability. The Bible is clear that we not only have the ability to choose, we also have the responsibility to choose wisely. In the Old Testament, God chose a nation (Israel), but individuals within that nation still bore an obligation to choose obedience to God. And individuals outside of Israel were able to choose to believe and follow God as well (e.g., Ruth and Rahab).
In the New Testament, sinners are commanded over and over to “repent” and “believe” (Matthew 3:2; 4:17; Acts 3:19; 1 John 3:23). Every call to repent is a call to choose. The command to believe assumes that the hearer can choose to obey the command.
Jesus identified the problem of some unbelievers when He told them, “You refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:40). Clearly, they could have come if they wanted to; their problem was they chose not to. “A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7), and those who are outside of salvation are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20-21).
But how can man, limited by a sin nature, ever choose what is good? It is only through the grace and power of God that free will truly becomes “free” in the sense of being able to choose salvation (John 15:16). It is the Holy Spirit who works in and through a person’s will to regenerate that person (John 1:12-13) and give him/her a new nature “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). Salvation is God’s work. At the same time, our motives, desires, and actions are voluntary, and we are rightly held responsible for them.

LCCC Latest analysis, editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 15-16/15
For Syria, August is the cruelest month/Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/August 15/15
Is Abadi’s revolution a storm in a teacup/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/August 15/15
Let’s not forget the fate of the Yazidi rape survivors/Yara al-Wazir/Al Arabiya/August 15/15
Syrian Alawis Getting Ready for the Day After Assad/Samir Altaqi/Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 15/15
Islamophobia: Fact or Fiction/Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/August 15, 2015
Assad and ISIL Can Make the Political Solution in Syria Obsolete/Samir Altaqi/Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 15/15
Iraq and the Question of the Nation State in the Middle East/Samir Altaqi/Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 15/15
Rival Peace Plans Won't Save Syria/Jonathan Spyer/The Jerusalem Post/August 15/15
Israel’s first ever arms deal with an Arab country – drones for Jordan to fight ISIS/DEBKAfile/August 15/15

LCCC Bulletin titles for the Lebanese Related News published on August 15-16/15
Cease-fire with Hizbullah Over as Shelling Resumes in Syrian Towns
General Security Arrests Fugitive Cleric al-Asir before Fleeing to Nigeria
Report: No Political Connotations for Qahwaji-Roukoz Lunch
Relatives Fail to Meet Arsal Captives
Report: Military Officers Term Extension Knot Could be Resolved

LCCC Bulletin Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 15-16/15
At Least 40 Migrants 'Suffocated' in Hold of Boat off Italy
Yemen Loyalists Take Back Another Province from Rebels
Defense Appeals Death Sentence for Egypt's Morsi
Egypt Rejects HRW Call for U.N. Probe into Protest Deaths
A Palestinian Shot after Stabbing Israeli Soldier
Shelling hits Syrian towns as ceasefire breaks down

Cease-fire with Hizbullah Over as Shelling Resumes in Syrian Towns
Associated Press/Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 15/15/A Syrian rebel group said Saturday that a rare cease-fire negotiated with Hizbullah fighters in a Syrian town and two villages was over as shelling resumed. The 72-hour cease-fire in the northern rebel-held town of Zabadani, near the border with Lebanon, as well as in Foua and Kafraya, two Shiite villages in Idlib province, was reached earlier this week and was to last until Sunday. But Ahrar al-Sham, the main rebel group involved in the negotiations, announced the negotiations have collapsed. The talks were focused on securing safe passage for Ahrar al-Sham and civilians out of Zabadani in exchange for allowing humanitarian aid to the besieged villages. Activists said the cease-fire was brokered with the help of Turkish and Iranian mediation. Following the collapse of the negotiations, shelling resumed, state media and a monitor said. Syrian state television said a child and her father had been killed and 12 others wounded in "terrorist shelling" on Foua and Kafraya. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor, said rebels had fired about 20 missiles at the two villages and also reported shelling on Zabadani. In Foua, a resident who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the bombardment. "Today we've been hearing the sound of explosions since dawn," the resident said. "The truce failed and the attacks have resumed."

General Security Arrests Fugitive Cleric al-Asir before Fleeing to Nigeria
Naharnet/August 15/15/Lebanese authorities on Saturday arrested a fugitive Islamic cleric wanted for his role in deadly clashes with the army as he tried to flee the country. Ahmed al-Asir was apprehended at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport while trying to travel to Nigeria via Cairo with a fake Palestinian passport, General Security announced. But his Nigerian visa was not fake, it said in a statement. A source said he had changed his appearance by doing a number of plastic surgeries. Voice of Lebanon Radio (100.5) said that the fugitive was arrested after boarding the plane. Two other individuals were accompanying him and were carrying forged passports under the names Rami Abdul Rahman Taleb and Khaled Sidani. The vehicle that transported al-Asir to the airport was a white Mercedes and its driver was arrested, the state-run National News Agency said. Al-Asir, a firebrand anti-Hizbullah cleric, has been on the run since June 2013 after his armed supporters clashed with the Lebanese army in the southern port city of Sidon. The fighting killed 18 Lebanese soldiers and deepened sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims who support opposing sides in neighboring Syria's civil war. The army seized his headquarters after 48 hours of clashes, but Asir was able to escape with several of his followers. He continued to issue audio statements while on the run, and various rumors circulated as to where in Lebanon he was hiding. In 2014, a military judge recommended prosecutors seek death sentences for Asir and 53 others, including singer-turned-fundamentalist Fadel Shaker. He and his associates were accused of "having formed armed groups that attacked an institution of the state, the army, killed officers and soldiers, took explosive materials and light and heavy weapons and used them against the army." Asir was a virtual political unknown until the outbreak of Syria's civil war. He began making headlines after the conflict erupted by criticizing Lebanon's Hizbullah movement and its ally Syrian President Bashar Assad. Although he was born to a Shiite Muslim mother, his discourse was highly sectarian and he often accused Lebanon's army of failing to protect Sunnis and being beholden to Hizbullah. He encouraged his supporters to join Syria's mainly Sunni rebels and to rise up against Hizbullah. Asir also hit headlines with media stunts, including by taking a group of his followers to the trendy winter ski resort of Faraya in early 2013. The clashes between his supporters and the army erupted on June 24, 2013, after they opened fire on a military checkpoint. The fighting, which centered on the Abra district in the eastern outskirts of Sidon, spread quickly, wounding dozens of civilians and paralyzing much of the coastal city. When the fighting was over, a variety of weapons including rocket launchers were found in Asir's headquarters complex, which included a mosque, several office buildings and apartment blocks. The families of the soldiers killed in the Abra clashes issued a statement on Saturday calling for the arrest of Shaker and "anyone who has assaulted the military and security institutions."Their appeal came as al-Asir's supporters blocked a main road in Sidon to protest his arrest. But security forces later reopened it.

Report: No Political Connotations for Qahwaji-Roukoz Lunch
Naharnet/August 15/15/ The lunch that brought together Army Chief General Jean Qahwaji and the Commando Regiment chief Brig. Gen. Chamel Roukoz was not a private event and did not have any political connotations, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Saturday. “The lunch between Qahwaji and Roukoz was a public event that took place in the presence of a number of army officers. It was not a solo lunch nor did it have any political connotations,” prominent sources told the daily on condition of anonymity. “It is normal for the Army Commander to meet with the officers,” they added. A lunch meeting on Thursday that was scheduled 48 hours in advance, according to reports, brought Qahwaji and Roukoz together. However the two men did not discuss the thorny file of military and security appointments, the reports added. Defense Minister Samir Moqbel has recently extended the terms of the army commander, chief of staff and the head of the Higher Defense Council despite the Free Patriotic Movement's objections rejecting the term extension of high-ranking military and security officials. Aoun, the FPM's chief, has been lobbying for political consensus on the appointment of his son-in-law Roukoz, as army chief. “The army is a disciplined institution that respects hierarchy of command. It does not get into political riddles despite all criticisms,” the sources added. They also denied the rumors “claiming that a dispute lingers between the Maronite officers inside the military institution.”“The army is one body and its aims are to distance Lebanon from regional conflicts, to confront terrorism and to preserve stability.”The meeting comes a day after FPM supporters held street protests against what Aoun terms as the violation of the rights of Christians as well as Moqbel's decision to extend the tenures of the top three military officers.

Relatives Fail to Meet Arsal Captives
Naharnet/August 15/15/The relatives of four servicemen taken captive by Islamist groups from the northeastern border town of Arsal in 2014 failed on Saturday to meet their loved ones. “The four families of the kidnapped soldiers were not able to enter the outskirts of Arsal to visit their sons,” the state-run National News Agency said. The relatives first met with the town's mayor, Ali al-Hujeiri, early Saturday and were set to head to the outskirts to meet their loved ones.But it was not clear what stopped them short of making the visit.
Three vehicles had transported the 12-member families to Arsal. A number of soldiers and policemen were abducted by al-Nusra Front and Islamic State group gunmen in the wake of clashes in Arsal in August last year A few of them have since been released, four were executed, and the rest remain held. The captors are demanding the release of Islamists held in Lebanon as a condition for their release.

Report: Military Officers Term Extension Knot Could be Resolved
Naharnet/August 15/15/The speeches of Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah followed by the speech of his ally Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun “could herald a momentum towards a solution to the paralysis governing the country,” well informed sources told the daily As Safir on Saturday. “The speech of Hizbullah leader that was followed by Aoun's TV appearance on al-Manar can form an impetus towards a solution rather than a new problem,” said the sources on condition of anonymity. Nasrallah made a televised appearance on Friday marking the ninth anniversary of the July 2006 war with Israel. Aoun also made a televised appearance on the Hizbullah affiliate TV al-Manar. “An evidence that there is a way out was traded shortly but on a very narrow scale pushing for the upgrade of 12 officers from the rank of Brigadier General to the rank of Major General (including Brig. Gen. Chamel Roukoz), in addition to the term extension of Gen. Jean Qahwaji for one additional year. However both decisions require the approval of the cabinet first and then the parliament,” the sources told the daily. In his speech, Nasrallah called on the Christian leaders to "reevaluate their stances and consider reactivating the parliament to address the issues of the Lebanese and pave the way for reaching solutions to the other crises.”The FPM has been hampering the cabinet's work and has accused Prime Minister Tammam Salam of infringing on the rights of the Christian president in his absence. The movement's ministers want to amend the cabinet's working mechanism to have a say on its agenda. They also reject the extension of the terms of security and military officials, calling for the appointment of new ones. Defense Minister Samir Moqbel extended the terms of the army commander, the chief of staff and the head of the Higher Defense Council. The decision drew the ire of Aoun who wants his son-in-law Brig. Gen. Chamel Roukoz, who is the Commando Regiment chief, to become army commander. The sources also told As Safir that “Most members of the March 8 alliance as well as MP Walid Jumblat are ready to approve the proposal on condition that al-Mustaqbal movement submits an approval before end of this week." A March 14 official however said that such a step would open the doors and reactivate the parliament although more than 20 officers deserve to be upgraded before Roukoz. A source close to al-Mustaqbal said that the proposal to raise the retirement age for the military for three years “has fallen completely for two reasons, because it threatens the hierarchy of the military and because of the large financial expenses it entails.”

At Least 40 Migrants 'Suffocated' in Hold of Boat off Italy
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 15/15/More than 40 migrants have died in the Mediterranean Saturday, the Italian navy said, after apparently suffocating below deck on the boat taking them to Europe. "Operation underway... many migrants saved. At least 40 dead," the navy said on Twitter, while the Corriere della Sera newspaper said those who died were found in the hold of the vessel. The boat, which was intercepted south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, was carrying around 300 people, the paper said.
An Italian navy helicopter spotted the boat, which was "overcrowded and starting to sink", about 21 miles off the Libyan coast, said a reporter with Italy RaiNews television at the rescue operation headquarters. An Italian navy vessel was sent to its aid at 7 am local time (0500 GMT) and when its sailors boarded the vessel the grim discovery was made. Survivors of the hazardous crossing from Libya often tell of how traffickers lock migrants in the hold -- most black Africans -- who pay less for the voyage. Packed inside the confined space they not only risk drowning if the rickety boats capsize, but many also die after being overcome with diesel fumes. The EU said Friday that Europe was facing the worst refugee crisis since World War II. More than 101,700 migrants have arrived in Italy by boat since the start of the year, with at least 2,040 others dying on the crossing, according to the latest figures compiled by the International Organization for Migration.

Yemen Loyalists Take Back Another Province from Rebels
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 15/15/Forces loyal to Yemen's exiled government retook a fifth southern province Saturday, extending recent gains against Iran-backed Shiite rebels who still control the capital. The forces backing exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi have been aided by troops and materiel from Yemen's wealthy Gulf neighbors, as Saudi-led coalition warplanes pound rebel positions. The rebels handed over Shabwa to government forces and withdrew after being promised a safe route out of the province, a military official told Agence France Presse. Other sources confirmed the pull-out. "The province was handed over" to the Southern Movement, a secessionist group whose militants have been fighting in loyalist ranks, said Salem al-Awlaqi, a political activist in Shabwa. Officials said the pro-rebel governor of Shabwa, which has substantial oil reserves, had fled as loyalists prepared to enter the province. They also accused the rebels of booby-trapping government buildings before fleeing, as they had done in other provinces.
As the rebels began entering neighboring Baida province, Saudi-led coalition warplanes hit their convoys, destroying 13 military vehicles and leaving dead and wounded, military officials said. The sources could not immediately provide a casualty toll, and the rebels rarely acknowledge their losses. Loyalist forces in the south launched an offensive last month against the rebels, forcing them out of main southern city Aden. They subsequently retook Daleh, Lahj and Abyan provinces. The advance is heading toward third city Taez, southwest of Sanaa, which analysts regard as the gateway to the capital, overrun by the rebels in September. After seizing Sanaa unopposed, the Huthis advanced on Aden in March, prompting intervention from the coalition aimed at restoring Hadi to power. Renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh have joined the Huthis.
Taez targeted for liberation
On the other side, the southern secessionists teamed up with pro-government troops as well as local Sunni tribes to form what they have dubbed Popular Resistance Committees. Analysts say the sweeping victories in the south are a result of the rebels pulling their forces back to Taez, where residents reported ongoing clashes. On Friday, loyalist retook several facilities from rebels in Taez, including police and civil defense headquarters, the government's Sabanew.net website reported. In a telephone call, Hadi reassured the 35th Brigade commander in the city Thursday that "Taez is on its way to being liberated and support will soon reach it." Military sources say the coalition has provided Hadi's supporters with modern heavy equipment in recent weeks, including tanks and personnel carriers, and Yemeni soldiers trained in Saudi Arabia. The conflict has cost nearly 4,300 lives since March, half of them civilians, according to U.N. figures, while 80 percent of Yemen's 21 million people need aid and protection. Aid workers in the south told AFP aid groups from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and beyond began distributing much-needed food and other supplies to residents in Aden and nearby areas. The five provinces so far retaken by pro-government troops, along with Mahra and Hadramawt, which the rebels never entered, comprise the formerly independent South Yemen. It was its own state from the end of British colonial rule in 1967 to its union with the north in 1990. A secession attempt four years later sparked a brief civil war that ended with northern forces occupying the region.

Defense Appeals Death Sentence for Egypt's Morsi
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 15/15/The defense for ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi filed an appeal against a death sentence and prison term for the Islamist former leader, a lawyer said on Saturday. Morsi, who was toppled by the army in 2013, was sentenced to death in June for allegedly participating in prison breaks and violence against police, and to life in prison for espionage. Morsi had been in prison at the start of the 2011 uprising against veteran leader Hosni Mubarak, and escaped along with thousands of others after protesters attacked police stations across the country. "We submitted an appeal to the Court of Cassation to all prisoners sentenced, including Morsi," his lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsud told Agence France Presse. Hundreds of Islamists have been sentenced to death in a crackdown following Morsi's overthrow. Most have won retrials. Seven so far have been executed, including six defendants sentenced to death by a military court for allegedly participating in militant attacks.

Egypt Rejects HRW Call for U.N. Probe into Protest Deaths
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 15/15/Egypt hit back Saturday at a call by Human Rights Watch for an international investigation into the killing of hundreds of protesters in Cairo by security forces two years ago. The foreign ministry criticised the New York-based watchdog's report on the deaths of supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square as "politicised and lacking objectivity". Egypt's government has defended the dispersal as necessary to tackle armed "terrorists", and it brushed aside HRW's appeal for the U.N. Human Rights Council to set up an international commission of inquiry. "The call for an international investigation into the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in is even more ludicrous because it is issued by an organisation that has never expressed any interest in the soldiers, police and civilian victims of terrorism in Egypt," a foreign ministry statement said. "The organisation insists on ignoring the terrorist nature of the movement that it defends," it added, referring to Morsi's blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.
At least 600 people were killed during the operation in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square on August 14, 2013, according to official figures. HRW says at least 800 died. No policemen have faced trial over the deaths. About 10 police were killed during the dispersal, after coming under fire from gunmen in the sprawling camp. Rights groups have accused police of using disproportionate force, killing many unarmed protesters in what HRW said "probably amounted to crimes against humanity". Morsi, the country's first democratically elected leader, was overthrown and detained by the military after mass protests against his year in office. He has since been sentenced to death. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief, has pledged to eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood.

A Palestinian Shot after Stabbing Israeli Soldier
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 15/15/Israeli troops shot and wounded a Palestinian man who had stabbed a soldier on Saturday near a checkpoint on a highway in the occupied West Bank, the army said. The military said both the soldier and suspected assailant, who was arrested, were lightly wounded. The incident took place near the "Bel" crossing on route 443, close to Ofer military prison, according to the military.Highway 443, southwest of Ramallah, is a major artery between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which cuts through the West Bank for several kilometres. On Sunday, a Palestinian from the nearby village of Khirbet al-Misbah was shot dead after stabbing and lightly wounding an Israeli at a petrol station on the highway.

Shelling hits Syrian towns as ceasefire breaks down
By AFP | Beirut/Saturday, 15 August 2015/Shelling resumed on Saturday in two government-held villages in northwest Syria and a rebel town near Damascus, state media and a monitor said, as a ceasefire for the areas collapsed. The violence came despite talks about extending the truce that began on Wednesday morning and aimed at reaching a final deal to stop fighting in the three areas. Syrian state television said a child and her father had been killed and 12 others wounded in "terrorist shelling" on the regime-held villages of Fuaa and Kafraya in Idlib province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor, said rebels had fired about 20 missiles at the two villages and also reported shelling on the rebel-held town of Zabadani. In Fuaa, a resident who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the bombardment. "Today we've been hearing the sound of explosions since dawn," the resident said. "The truce failed and the attacks have resumed."The truce agreement between rebel groups and pro-regime factions, including Lebanon's Shiite militia Hezbollah, came into effect in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Before its expiry on Saturday morning, intensive negotiations had been under way for an extension of the ceasefire and a full deal. The talks centred on the withdrawal of rebels from Zabadani and the evacuation of civilians from Fuaa and Kefraya, which are the last two government-held villages in Idlib province. But the negotiations reportedly stumbled over an opposition insistence that thousands of prisoners be released from government jails, according to Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman. He said negotiations on the deal were continuing despite the ceasefire faltering. "The talks are ongoing, but there are breaches in the ceasefire," he said, citing sources close to the talks. "It's not clear if the breaches are attempts by the parties to improve the conditions of the deal or come from those who want to thwart the negotiations," he said.

For Syria, August is the cruelest month
Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/Saturday, 15 August 2015/For Syrians, August may be the cruelest month. Two years ago at night, President Assad’s grim reapers in the form of rockets laden with chemical warheads visited Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus and claimed the lives of 1400 civilians, mostly women, children and babies. Once again the Syrians experienced the tragic meaning of ‘the smallest coffins are the heaviest.’The world was horrified and looked for the sole superpower to exact retribution but that was not meant to be. The President of the United States of America after unsheathing his sword for the battle, took a walk with his White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and returned with the sword sheathed, fearing maybe that a strong military slap at Assad’s lisping mouth will not pole well with his political base. Four Augusts ago, President Obama (along with European leaders) explicitly called for Assad to resign, after months of bloody crackdown on civilian protesters. ‘For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside’ Obama said in a written statement. In the following years, Syrian skies have been constantly raining barrel bombs, ravaging bodies and souls, and cutting deep scars in Syria’s landscape and collective psyche.
Inherently irresolute
Last August, President Obama, shamed by the rampaging hordes of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) who swept into Northwestern Iraq from bases in Syria and occupied Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, ordered an air campaign against ISIS, later named ‘Operation Inherent Resolve’. One year later, clearly the operation is inherently irresolute. It is easy to start revolutions and civil wars. It is infinitely more difficult to end and then transcend them. The 17-country coalition armed with 400 strike aircrafts and 1600 pilots launched thousands of strike sorties, killing 12,500 members or supporters of ISIS, in Syria and Iraq, but failed to dismantle or neutralize the assassins of ISIS who were intoxicated with the notion that they have forced the ‘invading crusaders’ led by the U.S. into what looks like an embarrassing stalemate. The Obama administration was initially vague about the length of the campaign to ‘degrade then defeat’ ISIS, but it did later on settled upon 3 years. Recently however, General Ray Odierno, the outgoing Army chief of staff was blunter when he said ‘in my mind, ISIS is a ten to twenty year problem, it is not a two years problem.’
Conflicting priorities and strategies
The recent flurry of diplomatic contacts and initiatives involving the major outside players in Syria; the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and a weakened Syrian regime shaken by battlefield setbacks in the North, South and Damascus environs, are driven by concerns to prevent a ‘catastrophic success’ by ISIS or other Islamist extremists, or a sudden collapse of the regime in Damascus leading to mass bloodletting and total chaos. Yet these concerns do not hide the fact that the regional and international parties have contradictory priorities and conflicting strategies to end the war. America’s priority is to fight ISIS, although there is growing realization in Washington that saving what is left of Syria requires getting rid of Assad, the very magnet that attracted the extremists. For Turkey, the immediate priority is to check the growing power of Syria’s Kurds who have declared the de facto autonomous region of Rojava adjacent to Turkey’s borders. Russia’s priority is to organize a regional and international coalition against ISIS and other powerful Islamist groups like al-Nusra Front while keeping Assad during an agreed upon transitional period. For Saudi Arabia, the priority is to get rid of the Assad regime as soon as possible, while helping those opposition groups willing to take on ISIS. For Iran, the outside player with the most influence in Syria, and potentially the biggest loser if the Assad regime collapses quickly, the priority is to cling to Assad as much as possible, while retaining the option of ‘trading’ him in the future in a deal that would safeguard some of Iran’s influence in a post Assad Syria, and secure its access to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
American ambiguities
In a rapidly changing world and conflicting threat assessments, various American institutions and agencies have spoken about contradictory threats to the homeland. The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford ( like his predecessor General Martin Dempsey) sees Russia as the number one ‘existential threat’ to America, followed by North Korea, China and ISIS. This view contradicts President Obama’s assessment that the ‘greatest threats come from the Middle East and North Africa, where radical groups exploit grievances for their own gain’. Even those officials who see non-state actors as the biggest threat, don’t agree which group, al-Qaeda or ISIS is the most lethal. Last month the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey declared publicly that ISIS is a bigger threat to America than al-Qaeda.
Diplomacy and disintegration
The recent nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 known as The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) gave impetus to heightened diplomatic activities involving the U.S. Iran and Russia. Secretary of State John Kerry said that ‘Iran specifically said to us if we can get this agreement, we are prepared to talk with you about the other regional issues.’
The flurry of diplomatic activities, suggests hints that the outside players are more willing to compromise than before. A senior U.S. official said that the Russians told Secretary Kerry that they have grown ‘tired’ of Assad, but that he should remain in power with diminished authorities during a transition period that could last up to two years, with the prior understanding that at the end Assad and his closest military and civilian collaborators would leave Syria. The official implied that the U.S. is willing to modify its previous opposition to Assad being part of the transitional structure for a relatively lengthy period. Russia and the U.S. are in agreement that any peace initiative should aim at changing ‘the leadership’ but not changing the regime, including the military and what is left of the bureaucracy, to prevent total chaos.
The U.S. is hoping that Moscow could lean on Iran to show more flexibility, hoping that Iran would realize that the recent military setbacks suffered by Assad forces have rendered him more dependent on Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah for his survival. In fact Iran’s recent role in brokering three local cease-fires between Hezbollah and Syrian rebels shows that Syria has fallen to the status of an Iranian protectorate. It is true that Iran and Hezbollah have saved the Syrian regime from falling in the last two years at a considerable financial cost to Tehran and a mounting human cost to Hezbollah. But it is also true that Iran is reluctant to send troops to maintain Assad in power indefinitely, and that there are limits to what Hezbollah could further do in Syria. All of these activities and machinations are taking place while the world is watching Syria slowly disintegrating, unwilling or unable to alleviate the worst humanitarian crisis in the new century.
Whither Syria?
Over the last four years many a peace plan and many an international envoy failed to stop the slow death of Syria let alone resolve its myriad conflicts and polarizations. There is a growing concerns among Syria watchers in the United States, that unless President Obama decides to move boldly in the next six months, independently and in collaboration with allies to first confront head on the humanitarian crisis, through the establishment of a safe zone, to be protected by American air muscle, the price the Syrian people will pay will be truly staggering. In few months, the so-called ‘political season’, that is the presidential elections will engulf the country and its leaders including the President. If the current window is closed, it means that the U.S. will not do anything meaningful in the first year of the new President, since it will take him/her a year at least to set up a functioning administration.
No one knows how the current diplomacy will proceed, or whether the contending powers could agree on a realistic road map to a solution. It is a false choice to invoke the binary of either ISIS or Assad. Both have engaged in killing civilians on mass, albeit with different tactics and tools. In their dungeons hundreds and thousands of innocents disappeared. The devil’s rejects of ISIS have established a ‘Theology of rape’ with its sickening rituals, fake religiosity, and slave markets as chronicled here by the amazingly talented Rukmini Callimachi.
Many a young Yazidi girl will be scarred for life. In recent years, August has become the cruelest month for Syrians, although Syrians have been bleeding in all seasons. But August is a reminder that Assad and his regime are still lingering on, killing and tormenting, notwithstanding what the American President says or does.
It is easy to start revolutions and civil wars. It is infinitely more difficult to end and then transcend them. Even the best imagination is inadequate to imagine a Syria whole and united any time soon, or ever. One shudders to think of how many Syrians will perish before the madness is stopped? How many more people will be uprooted? How many Christians will be exiled? Didn’t the world realize that Egypt and Iraq have yet to recover from the loss of their Christians, Jews, Greeks, Armenians and other minorities that made a rich tapestry of languages, sounds, tastes and colors in Baghdad, Basra, Cairo and Alexandria? How many Sunnis and Shiites will be demonized before they are killed? How many graceful churches and Mosques will be trampled upon by the new hordes of darkness? Can anything replace Damascus, Aleppo and Palmyra?

Is Abadi’s revolution a storm in a teacup?
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/Saturday, 15 August 2015
Those who went to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi when he first took office, were surprised by checkpoint guards asking them which prime minister they were going to meet? Nouri al-Maliki was refusing to leave and his influence was still prevailing!
September marks Abadi’s anniversary as prime minister, although one year of his premiership passed as if he was never in power. Finally, Abadi has now announced that he refuses to stay in the box he was put in, deciding to change the structure of governance that limited his duties to being just another government employee “who can’t do anything.”
He has announced the dismissal of his MPs and other state leaders, except for the president and the parliament speaker. He has removed several governmental administrations and thousands of bodyguards assigned to officials and MPs. He has pledged not to allow the appointment of ministers, advisers and director-generals based on partisanship and religion. He promised to form a professional committee that will be in charge of selecting candidates according to standards of efficiency and integrity.
In theory, it seems that Abadi has led a coup from inside the palace against the regime he inherited from his predecessor Nouri al-Maliki, but it may just all be a storm in a teacup.
What urged Abadi to take this decision was the outrage of the Iraqis who did not scream for help when it came to ISIS or Shiite militias this time, but from the heatwave hitting Iraq as most cities suffered from electricity blackouts due to weak government services.
Abadi’s real problem
The Iraqi people have been drained by high-level corruption and the government’s mismanagement of the country. It seems that Abadi has seized this opportunity to pounce against the cause of his powerlessness and decided to revolt alongside the insurgents. We can only hope that he dismisses those who are taking advantage of government services, and starts to fulfill the promises he vowed to achieve.
The Iraqi people have been drained by high-level corruption and the government’s mismanagement of the country.This explains his decision to abolish his MPs’ positions and remove their guards, which has nothing to do with, say, solving the country’s electricity problem. The prime minister is in distress since the first day he took the oath of premiership during a dramatic operation where his predecessor Maliki was ousted almost by force. Iraqis have resorted to all world powers, including Iran and the United States, to overthrow him.
Abadi’s problem, which is also a general problem for governance in Iraq, has been people like Maliki and parties heads who decided to share governance with him. Both internal and external forces discovered early on that Abadi is a prime minister with diminished prerogatives. This is due to the fact that Maliki had destroyed state institutions by encouraging corruption in order to provide his men with absolute powers. He was dictator to the extent that he corrupted the judiciary and security apparatuses until he ruined the dream of a better Iraq with solid state institutions. The crimes committed by his government are appalling; he trumped up charges against his opponents, took advantage of security services and looted public money in horrendous ways. Moreover, he completely ignored the constitution and shunned the parliament by not asking for its consent or informing it of the government’s expenses until the end of his term when he sent off six years of budgets all at once in an unprecedented move in the history of governance.
Then, Abadi came to power, becoming in charge of a worn-out regime, looted funds, dreadful sectarianism and leaders whose prerogatives know no bounds. He couldn’t even fix the country’s electricity problems.
He has spent half of his term unable to accomplish anything. This is why people took to the streets crying because they are living in an Iraq suffering from a lack of good governance since the 1970s.
Abadi may not succeed despite his courage to announce this positive coup, which relied on the support of a religious authority once the complaints of citizens became loud and dangerous enough to threaten the entire regime. He can only succeed once he proves that Maliki and his men have been excluded from security apparatuses, the army, the judiciary, the central bank and other state institutions, and when he and his own men start to respect the law. Otherwise, he will not be able to achieve anything in the remainder of his term.

Let’s not forget the fate of the Yazidi rape survivors
Yara al-Wazir/Al Arabiya/Saturday, 15 August 2015
Just over a year ago, ISIS began their carefully calculated capture of the Yazidi people. Yazidi polytheism was the core reason that ISIS targeted them in August of 2014. After surrounding them on top of Mount Sinjar, they killed the men and captured the women. In the October issue of ISIS’s Dabiq journal, they admitted that it was planned and that their research found that the enslavement of Yazidi women was “justified.” This is consistent with research by Human Rights Watch., which agrees that the sex trade of minorities has been systematic and organized. The fate of the Yazidi women hasn’t been the main topic of conversation, but a question remains: Could Muslim, Christian, and Jewish women be next?
We’re all in this together
The systematic enslavement and rape of Yazidi women is inhumane, and one of the most brutal acts that ISIS has committed in the region. Amnesty International’s report describes the escape of a small fraction of women as an “escape from hell.”Although ISIS has systematically targeted Yazidi women in their organized slave labor camps, this is just the beginning. The future of their skewed interpretations of Islam cannot be predicted. The brutality of ISIS increases exponentially as time passes. Thus, we must all realize that we’re all in this together. The brutality of ISIS increases exponentially as time passes – although it started off with showing mercy for foreign hostages and letting them go in exchange for ransoms, it has shown no mercy to anyone in recent months. Despite initially justifying the enslavement of Yazidi women by the fact that they are not the ‘people of the book’ (Christians or Jewish – of an Abrahamic religion), a recently leaked document disputes that. The document, which details the trading price of women based on their age, refers to slaves as either "Christian or Yazidi."It’s clear that no one is safe, and this is exactly why the world needs to act against the enslavement of women by ISIS, and give the survivors the attention and care that they need. The United Nations has been putting in a lot of effort to shelter refugees from the brutality of ISIS. However, rape survivors need a special kind of attention.Yazidis are bound to feel alienated, simply by the virtue of their beliefs. Rape survivors require medical attention, both on physical and emotional levels. Counselling is a necessity in order to integrate these women and children back into shared communities. Most importantly, these survivors need to feel safe and significant. While discussing refugees, we must also talk about the rape survivors.

Syrian Alawis Getting Ready for the Day After Assad
Samir Altaqi/Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 15/15
The story started on Aug 6, 8 pm, when bad luck put two cars on the entrance of Al Azhary Roundabout in the Assad loyal coastal city of Latakia. One car was driven by Colonel Hassan Al Shaikh, a military engineer in Syria’s air force and a member of a prominent Alawi family in the city. The second was driven by Sulliman Al Assad, the son of Bashar Al Assad cousin Helal. Helal was killed in a fight with the opposition in March 2014 while leading Assad civilian paramilitary gangs called Shabiha and known for abhorrent atrocities against civilians.Sulliman started crossing the roundabout, but Al Shaikh crossed first. Sulliman sped up and stopped the car of Al Sheikh, stepped out carrying his machine gun, and shot Al Shaikh, who had his wife and children with him in the car. Al Shaikh died instantly.
But that was only the beginning of the story. The brother of Al Shaikh called all the Bsanada villagers, where his family is based, to gather at the center of the city to protest killing his brother. The protest started slow but soon gathered momentum. It turned into a two day public protest against Assad. The protest reflected many unseen facts that characterize the current moment of Alawi-Assad relations. The brother of the dead officer wrote on his Facebook page “Until when this family (Al Assad’s) will continue feeding on our blood and flesh. Until when our homeland will be torn by these wild dogs”. It was clear that the brother was not reflecting merely the anger of a family that just lost a loved one. The sentiments among the Alawi community in general is that of deep doubt that Bashar is taking them into a dire impasse. The protesters called for the immediate execution of Sulliman, while security forces stood aside. Another fact is not as direct. Sulliman, who was later arrested by Assad to calm the protests, is one of the local bosses of the Shabiha gangs. Al Sheikh is a military officer. The conflict between the two Assad loyalist camps is known in Syria. The Shabiha tell the Alawis day and night that it is the Assad family that empowered their community and that criticizing the president is a sign of ingratitude. The army tells the population that it, and not the Shabiha, is the ultimate defense line of the community. Could these features of the Alawi community be generalized to wherever there are Alawis all over Syria. It all depends on the particular community, its geographic location and the specific circumstances that shaped the communal sectarian identity in the given case. For example, in Homs, where there is a considerable Alawi community, the Shabiha have total control over the parts of the city where Alawis live. The reason is that Shabiha groups were formed earlier to protest the Alawi areas of the same mainly Sunni city. The closeness of potential lines of conflict gave the Shabiha a strong base of support among the Alawis there who see a threat few yards away. Due to the reduced sense of threat and established norms of behavior in the coastal urban centers, the Shabiha do not have the same wide base they have in some other places. However, many important questions emerge from the Latakia protests. Is it used by certain circles in top of the Syrian military to distance themselves from the Shabiha and their war crimes? If this is true, could it be an echo of the increasing chatter that Assad’s future is being negotiated and may soon come to an end? Is it an indication that all war crimes will be hanged on the necks of Assad and his Shabiha in order to preserve the army as an institution? Are some high ranking Alawi officers experimenting with their ability to create a popular base of support among the Alawis? Could it be an attempt to increase the contrast between the “national” army and the sectarian paramilitary? (The brother of Sulliman has strong personal contacts with many senior Alawi officers). These questions may reflect a subjective wishful thinking. But they might be true as well. The choice of either proposition will be provided by the events which will happen in the coming few months among the Syrian Alawis.

Islamophobia: Fact or Fiction?
Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/August 15, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6327/islamophobia-fact-fiction
Edward Said leaves us with the impression that all prejudice is only on the part of the West.
To the traditionally minded, news of such things as man-made laws based on objective evidence, free speech, equal justice under law, democracy, elections, freedom for women, freedom of religion and respect for the "other," and so on, may have come as a sort of horror. Despots recoiled from the very thought of democracy. Religious leaders fumed at secular education, the freedom to question and say what one liked, even about religion.
"It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated; to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet." — Hasan al-Banna', Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, 1928.
The vast amount of what is called "Islamophobia," however, is not that at all. Fair criticism is not phobic, responses to Islamic terrorism are reasonable reactions to violence.
Based on news reports of Muslims murdering other Muslims and killing Christians, there is, ironically, probably more Islamophobia among Muslims for each other than there is from Westerners toward Muslims. There is also probably more "Infidelophobia" by Muslims toward non-Muslims than by non-Muslims toward Muslims.
Again this year, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation held a conference calling for a universal blasphemy law -- legislation it has repeatedly tried to pass for over a decade, with the help of U.S, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The aim is not to protect other religions (about which Muslims blaspheme without cessation), but to block any criticism of Islam.
Sometimes it seems as if Islam ceases to be treated as just another religion and becomes a religion intolerant of all others and unduly protective of its own rights and privileges. In democratic states, Islam is evidently already the only religion that may not be criticized, even though criticism of religion has for centuries been a cornerstone of free speech and transparency that are essential elements in democracy. These freedoms really matter, yet not one Muslim country can claim to implement or protect them, especially freedom of religion.
On July 9th, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, within the Council of Europe, published its annual report for 2014. The report identifies a dramatic increase in antisemitism, Islamophobia, online hate speech and xenophobic political discourse as main trends in 2014. It also indicates that "Islamophobia is reported in many countries, counteracting integration efforts for inclusive European societies. According to the report the rise of extremism and in violent Islamist movements has been manipulated by populist politicians to portray Muslims in general as unable or unwilling to integrate and therefore as a security threat."
This is, of course, troubling, and it is right for the Commission to treat it as a growing problem. But just how widespread is the issue, and to what extent is it readily identifiable?
Some claims of Islamophobia have their roots in the perception of increasing Muslim violence within Europe; some are based on existing racist attitudes, and some are derived from Muslim perceptions of victimhood and charged sensitivities. The latter is the main reason why defining Islamophobia is not as simple as describing anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant prejudice, or anti-black racism.
To understand this more clearly, it is necessary to slip back briefly to the past.
In 1978, Palestinian-American professor Edward Said (1935-2003) published a book, Orientalism, which changed the way many people thought about the Middle East and Islam. Said's book, deeply flawed, nevertheless became a bestseller translated into thirty-six languages. Those of us who were the first to read it – teachers and students in Islamic and Middle East Studies – were taken in by its façade of intellectual impartiality and the sense we all had that it opened our eyes to our own work in an original way. It was, to use Thomas Kuhn's celebrated phrase, a paradigm shift that changed our understanding of our researches and the meaning they had, for we were precisely the 'orientalists' Said so tartly scolded. Some of moved away in later years, but many are still mesmerized by that smooth prose and challenging flair.
It wasn't long before Said's appeal moved into other disciplines and to other regions far from the Middle East. Orientalism even laid the foundations for a new item on the academic curriculum: "Post-colonial Studies." The subject, now taught in universities in many countries, has produced a vast literature, has its own academic journals and numerous associations and institutes. Said, like Franz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Derek Gregory and others, remains a core figure, and Orientalism a central text.
According to Said, Westerners, by virtue of not being Muslims, have always falsified and distorted their writings about Islam and Muslims. Said claimed to see deeply-ingrained prejudice in the works of French, British, Russian and other Orientalist scholars and writers. To him, Orientalism was (and is) a tool of the colonial powers, assisting their mission supposedly to administer and subdue the peoples of the East. Since former colonies have achieved independence, he contends that the former imperialists still exert pressure on the ex-colonies in order to control them. Israel is regarded by most Marxists, socialists, and even many liberals as an entity created to colonize the Arab Middle East and is often condemned, even by people who are supposedly educated and should know better, in abrasive terms as a malign extension of the West.
Perhaps the best-known sentence in Said's book is: "[S]ince the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric." As Bernard Lewis has been heard to remark, "If that were true, the only reports of marine biology would have to be by fish." But for Said and his followers, the world is divided between Western guilt and Eastern victimhood.
What is missing from Said's work is any attempt to deal with the long history of Islamic empires,[1] the conquest of, and permanent rule over, non-Muslim states and peoples, and the often distorted ways in which Muslim writers have sought to interpret and explain Christian, Jewish, Hindu and other worlds. Said leaves us with the impression that all prejudice is only on the part of the West.
Said continues to have admirers, most in academic departments of English or multicultural studies, but as time passes, more and more scholars are calling his views into question. Writers such as Bernard Lewis, Ibn Warraq, Efraim Karsh, and Robert Irwin have exposed a string of faults in Said's narrative, from factual errors to staggering bias.[2]
Despite his bias, distortion of facts, and openly documented deceptions, many of Said's followers, who are unwilling or unable to do their own work, see him as an intellectual to students and teachers who adhere to an anti-establishment, anti-Western, and socialist world view.
For many, his book, Orientalism played a role in delegitimizing the West and furthering causes such as multiculturalism or anti-Zionism. In the meantime, however, not surprisingly, the book's influence spread, into the Islamic world and the smaller world of Muslim communities in the West. Better-educated Muslims read and digested Said's message, in a manner rather different from Western readers, many or most of whom were atheists and agnostics. For Muslim readers, Said's message that the West was hostile to Islam became the first strong antidote to their sense of failure. Muslims saw themselves as backward but now believed they were the victims of a Western conspiracy to deny them the fruits of their great civilization. To disparage the West became, for many, a religious imperative.
For religious Muslims, it was becoming increasingly important to deal with the stresses caused by their economic, political, and military subordination to a flourishing West, coupled with their own lack of progress in the non-Muslim world and at home. The repeated defeat of multinational Arab armies by the "despicable" Jews of Israel stood, and for millions of Muslims still stands, as a symbol of their need to reassert themselves on the world stage -- as Iran is trying to do today.
For many Muslim immigrants, adjusting to their new environment is difficult, possibly even more than for other newcomers to the West, from Africa, say, or India. Their religious leaders often tell them that Muslims are superior to all unbelievers.[3] Their history tells them a story of almost uninterrupted conquest, when bands of early Muslims came out of the deserts of Arabia to fight and destroy the two great empires of the day, the Byzantines and the Iranian Sasanids. The same history tells Muslims how Islam spread to the ends of the known world and how for centuries Islamic civilization was superior to all others.
But with the re-emergence of Europe and the gradual subjection of the Muslim world to "infidel" powers, much of that sense of superiority evaporated. From the late nineteenth century, Muslim reformers repeatedly called for a revival of Muslim thought and practice. Renewal (tajdid) was, for more secularist rulers such as the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), to be achieved by a process of secularization. But for religious thinkers such as Rashid Rida, it meant a revival of the faith as a reaction to the achievements and power of the West, and a reassertion of Islamic superiority.
It may not have been European military might alone that dismayed Muslims. It may also have been the West's universities, science, parliaments, laws, police, press, advocacy for liberty and free speech, attire, culture, and all the psychological and material benefits that have accrued to us.[4]
This cultural collision might well have been difficult for some Muslims to take in. After all, had God not promised them victory, not just for a time, but until the entire world was conquered for the faith? And had God not fulfilled his promise? Conquest had followed conquest, empire had succeeded empire, and on the back of these advances, a great civilization had come into being, with all its variants across the globe. For centuries, Muslims, many uninformed about what the changes in Europe, had, as Lewis argues, indulged a sense of political and religious supremacy. And for centuries they appeared justified in this belief.
But things changed, and not for the better. In 1798, Napoleon conquered Egypt, with ease. Even though his forces remained only a short time, that conquest was the first chink in the armor of Islam. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the British and French occupied and colonized much of the Middle East and Africa. Having been the undisputed masters of their realm for so long, and having ruled so effortlessly over the Jews and Christians who lived among them as second-class citizens, Muslims had grown complacent.
If it was irksome to become subordinate to non-believers, worse was to follow. The West did not just possess superior military might; it soon became clear that Westerners were far from the infidels of popular imagination.
Several countries – Turkey and Iran, notably, which never became fully colonized – started to send students and diplomats to European countries, chiefly Britain and France. In Europe these travellers were introduced to ways that may have made the West seem superior: parliaments, constitutions, man-made laws based on objective evidence, universities with academic freedom, free speech, equal justice under law, democracy, elections, high-quality schools, a general lack of corruption in public affairs and commerce, growing freedoms for women, freedom of religion and respect for the "other," and so on.
To the traditionally minded, news of such things may have come as a sort of horror. Despots recoiled from the very thought of democracy. Religious leaders fumed at secular education, rights for women, the freedom to question and to say what one liked, even about religion.
But younger, modernizing minds were released from the shackles of the past. From the late nineteenth century, pressure for secular reform began to appear, and for a time it seemed as if important events lay on the horizon. The Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire and the reformist anti-clerical movement in Iran seemed to usher in better times and freer lives.
But despite this apparent Muslim Spring and the appetite for reform it inspired, the doors to change quickly slammed down again throughout most of the Islamic world. In Iran, the secularizing but brutal Pahlavi dynasty provoked the Iranian Revolution of 1979, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Out of that, as the Islamists sought to quell dissent and impose their own theocratic rule, emerged Iran's current totalitarian and theocratic regime.
Muslims have constructed a variety of responses to these events. A common one, from the late nineteenth-century, was to stress the innate and absolute rightness of Islam in the conduct of all human affairs. During the 1920s, this Salafi thinking from Saudi Arabia took on a new life through the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Its motto is: "Allah is our objective; the Qur'an is our Constitution; the Prophet s our leader; jihad is our way; dying for the sake of Allah is our wish." Its political slogan – seen until recently on banners in the poorer parts of Cairo – is: "Islam is the solution" (for every problem). The movement's founder, Hasan al-Banna', is widely quoted as saying, "It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated; to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet."[5]
This response leads directly to the holy war currently being waged against the West (including Israel) by radical Muslims, through organizations such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas, and, even more brutally, the Islamic State (Da'ish).
A second response, devoid of the tactic of violence, was to seek to reform Islam itself from within. These reformers, (such as Muhammad 'Abduh or Rashid Reza), were Salafis who aimed, not at the modernization of Islam, but in the other direction: at its return to the values, mores and practices of seventh-century Arabia -- the time when Muslims lived with, and were guided by, Muhammad and the first three generations of his followers. Their aim is bold: to purify Muslims of the accretions their religion has taken on down through the centuries.
There is an old Islamic juristic principle: innovation (bid'a) is heresy, and leads to hellfire. Valiant as this response may seem to be, it has clearly been unable to stem the tide of rapidly expanding modernity. What it did achieve, even while affording them access to the latest technology, was to drag Muslims backwards.
While science and technology have left a powerful mark on Muslim societies (best summed up in Iran's nuclear program), they are often deployed within a context of old-fashioned religious beliefs that are not innovative in any way. Thus, for example, before and during the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1978-79), cassette tapes were used to powerful effect by the revolutionaries. And today, even the most backward-thinking Islamist groups all advance their cause for a return to basics through the internet and the use of social media.
A third tactic has been to place the blame on the West for each and every misfortune that assails the Islamic world. This applies, not just to military interventions such as Iraq or Afghanistan, but to economic failure; a fall in oil prices; the "immorality" of young people; the conversion of Muslims to Christianity, atheism, or anything that is not Islam; women's rights; the creation and perpetuation of Israel; young people questioning their parents and other free speech; the failure of Muslim immigrants to Europe to flourish, and whatever else takes one's fancy.
The psychological truth behind all this is plain to see: It is a form of Freudian projection: taking the qualities about oneself that one does not like and projecting them onto others. This defense against an affront to our good opinion of ourselves can also be one of many forms of denial, whereby someone with problems denies he has any and instead happily pins the blame for whatever goes wrong in his life on others.
For many Muslims – as for all of us – responses such as these play a particularly important role in making sense of what seems a hostile world. If Muslims thought that Islam itself had failed, that God's promise of eventual triumph across the earth had been left unfulfilled (or worse, that it was hollow in the first place), then the psychological ramifications could be shattering.
For conservative Muslims, the greatest catastrophe would be if, as a result of Westernization, millions in the Islamic world would lose their faith. Societies, held together by mutual belief would fall apart. Better by far to blame outsiders. And, even better, to find that the outsiders responsible for all our woes have all the time been the Jews and Christians whom Scripture instructs Muslims to despise for plots against the true faith.
Out of this tortuous medley comes what some call "Islamophobia." It is evidently not enough to cite Westerners as the agents of Islamic decline. They must, according to that view have a motive, and this Western motive is supposedly uncovered in an active hatred of Islam. It is a hatred, the claim seems to go, born of a jealousy already there at the time of the Prophet, when the Jews, they allege, "conspired" against him. This hatred was supposedly there again in the Crusades, when the Christian Church sought to dislodge Islam from its commanding heights around the Levant and beyond; and also during the colonial and post-colonial periods, not just abroad but also at home, within the borders of Islam itself, as in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, India, Mali and elsewhere in Africa, and in Indonesia, Malaya, the Philppines, and Central Asia.
Although the term "Islamophobia" may go back as far as 1916 in French, and seems to have been introduced to English by Edward Said himself in 1985, its use has grown rapidly in the UK and the United States. Today, it is employed in vague and sloppy ways, often conflated with claims of a victimhood similar to racism.
The vast amount of what is called "Islamophobia," however, is not that at all. Fair criticism is not phobic; responses to Islamic terrorism are reasonable reactions to violence just as we react against all other forms of terrorism. If you read Muslim or pro-Muslim accounts of Islamophobia, they find fault with just about everything that implies a negative view of something Islamic, whether texts, history, or customary practices. Curiously, the same people who complain about Islamophobia seem never to complain about Muslim anti-Semitism or hatred for homosexuals or other violations of human rights.
In that sense, many have constructed a hate crime that only exists sporadically, within small groups like the UK's fading English Defense League or in comment pages remarks by individuals, few of whom seem well- educated or polite. The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), for instance, has a website called Islamophobia.org, but the offenses do not seem nearly as ubiquitous or as hateful as Muslims claim, and often seem to have occurred as a reaction to some kind of "Infidelophobia."
Based on news reports of Muslims murdering other Muslims and killing Christians, there is, ironically, probably more Islamophobia among Muslims toward each other than there is from Westerners toward Muslims. There is also probably more "Infidelophobia" by Muslims toward non-Muslims than by non-Muslims toward Muslims.
What true Islamophobia exists does so only on the margins of Western society. It reveals itself in the racist protests of the English Defence League; in the Reverend Terry Jones calling his book Islam is of the Devil and his threats to burn the Qur'an; and in comments on some anti-Islamic websites.
Fair criticism is not phobic; responses to Islamic terrorism are reasonable reactions to violence just as we react against all other forms of terrorism. What true Islamophobia exists does so only on the margins of Western society. It reveals itself in the Reverend Terry Jones calling his book Islam is of the Devil and his threats to burn the Qur'an.
For all that, some haters make themselves quite visible; even so, they represent only a small number of the public, most of whom do not even know they exist. Most people are simply critical of what they see daily about Islam: violent acts across the globe, threats against freedom and democracy, hatred preached in mosques and Islamic centers – all justified as matters ordained by the Islamic faith.
Others are disturbed by the negative impact of Muslim immigration on Western societies. In America, the destruction of the twin towers and the attacks on the Pentagon on 9/11 were calculated to bring to the surface growing fears about the harm that growing Muslim radicalism could cause.
The accusation of Islamophobia has come to be a knee-jerk reaction to any, even wrongly-perceived, criticism of Islam. For centuries, Muslims have guarded their customs and their religion from criticism, and this has led to severe problems: a lack of safe arenas in both the Muslim world and within Muslim communities in the West, where Muslims may analyse and debate religious issues without fear of severe retribution for stepping across lines, such as declarations that intellect and logic are unIslamic; the prohibition of free speech, the use of murder to silence anyone who steps too far out of line, dissidents or apostates for instance. No healthy society can survive with such restrictions.
The West has thrived on its citizens' freedom to challenge received ideas, to speak openly in debate, and to criticize without fear of reprisal. Accusations of Islamophobia are bandied about by Muslim organizations in Europe and North America, such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) or the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Some of their concerns are genuine. Physical attacks on Muslims just because they are Muslims are totally unacceptable in any civilized society.
On the other hand, it often appears as if any questioning of Islam or Muslims, however minor, is inflated and rebutted by a charge of Islamophobia. Sometimes such questions are interpreted as criticism, and lead to the suppression of free debate and an exchange of ideas. It then seems as if Islam is no longer treated as just another religion and becomes a religion intolerant of all others and unduly protective of, and assertive of, its own rights and privileges.
Islamophobia also sometimes seems conflated with blasphemy. Almost any statement or act deemed disrespectful of Islam, when uttered or committed by a non-Muslim, may be counted by some as a form of hatred for Islam itself, and regarded as subject to punishment or, as we have seen recently, murder and attempted murder. In February, American-Bangladeshi secularist Avijit Roy was hacked to death in Dhaka, as were Washiqur Rahman in March, Anantaa Bijoy Das in May, and Niloy Neel on August 6. In France, the editors of a magazine , Charlie Hebdo, and the organizers of a Draw Muhammad exhibition in Garland Texas. Incidents such as those occurred apart from the unprovoked murder of Jews outside a religious school in Toulouse France, and in a kosher French grocery store.
In the West, blasphemy is no longer considered a crime worth rebuke, let alone capital punishment, even if many Christians or Jews deplore it as a mortal sin. Freedom of speech has become so vital to the functioning of a healthy, open society that even gross disrespect as shown in Andres Serrano's controversial photograph, "Piss Christ", though often protested, may be placed on public display without legal opposition.
For some Muslims, however, there appears to be a heightened sensitivity over anything that seems scandalous to the religious eye. On November 25 2007, for example, Sudanese mobs called for an English teacher, Gillian Gibbons, at a British school in Khartoum to be put to death because the young children in her classroom had decided to name their teddy-bear the popular name, Muhammad. She was reported for blasphemy and charged under the Sudanese Criminal Act with "insulting religion." On 30 November approximately 10,000 protesters took to the streets in Khartoum some of them waving swords and machetes, demanding Gibbons's execution after imams denounced her during Friday prayers. During the march, chants of "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance – execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad" were heard. In this extreme case, Muslims around the world, including the Muslim Council of Britain, protested. Ms. Gibbons was granted a presidential pardon and returned to Britain. Had she not been a British teacher, her fate might not have had the same fortunate outcome. None of those who called for her death was brought to book for any breach of human rights.
More serious cases have included the Satanic Verses affair; the Danish cartoons controversy; the 2004 murder of the Dutch film-maker, Theo van Gogh, the 2007 controversy over a sketch by Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks; or the attempted murders of the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, or Lars Vilks; and the recent court cases against the Dutch MP, Geert Wilders. But there have been dozens of other cases, many of which have ended in imprisonment, flogging, and, on several occasions, murder. It makes little difference if the "blasphemer" is a non-Muslim or a Muslim, a journalist or an academic. Any perceived show of disrespect for Islam, the Prophet, the Qur'an or Muslim customs and beliefs contravenes a long-established principle that Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule must always act in a spirit of humility towards Muslims and Islam. Invoking blasphemy against non-Muslims who live beyond the realm of Islam, in countries not under Islamic rule, is supposed to be outside the original scope of Islamic law. Nevertheless these also now seem to be areas open to charges of Islamophobia.
Again this year, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation held a conference calling for a universal blasphemy law -- legislation it has repeatedly tried to pass for over a decade, with the help of U.S, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The aim is not to protect other religions (about which Muslims blaspheme without cessation), but to block any criticism of Islam.
More troubling is that several European countries have been suborned by Muslim protests to bring their own citizens to court on charges of insulting Islam for their books, films, or speeches. In Austria, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has stood trial for her remarks about Islam; Geert Wilders and Gregorius Nekschot have been tried in the Netherlands, and Wilders is now being charged by Austria; in 2002 Michel Houellebecq was charged in Paris for having called Islam stupid; in 2010, Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Commission condemned Michael Smith for having criticized the burka, and forced him to go for "mediation" with one Omar Hassan, the Muslim who had complained about him. More recently, Lars Hedegaard, head of the Danish Free Press Society, was put on trial on similar charges. Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant in Canada were taken to task for their remarks about Islam.
Islamophobia is now a crime determined as much by Western courts and tribunals as by Muslims. As this trend grows in democratic states, Islam is, apparently, the only religion that may not be criticized, even though criticism of religion has for three centuries been a cornerstone of free speech and transparency that are essential elements in democracy and the rule of reason through open-minded, deductive processes.
Many of these accusations of blasphemy may seem trivial to the Western observer. A teddy bear, some cartoons, an article about the role of women in Islam that led to a 20-year sentence for Afghan journalist Parwiz Kambakhsh (the sentence was originally death) or the inadvertent touching by a Christian teacher of a bag that may have held a copy of the Qur'an. This last is a particularly gruesome story in which something totally trivial unleashed mob violence and resulted in the violent death of a young Christian woman, Christianah Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin, at the government school where she taught in Gombe, Nigeria.
In Pakistan, last November, a young Christian couple, Shama Bibi and Sajjad Masih were burned alive in a brick kiln for the alleged desecration of a Qur'an. This year, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and ten years' imprisonment for "insulting Islam." Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman arrested in 2009 on a spurious charge of blasphemy remains in prison in poor health, beaten by the guards charged with protecting her under a sentence of death.
For many Muslims, however, these are not trivial occurrences at all. In a case in Malaysia in 2009, a ruling was made that non-Muslims might not use the word "Allah" to refer to God. The decree was upheld in a 2015 ruling by the country's Supreme Court. The argument against the use of Allah was not frivolous. The government's religious advisor, Abdullah Muhammad Zin, argued that as Christians, for example, believed in the Trinity; that Jesus was the Son of God; that God had died on the cross, and so on, it would represent a huge blasphemy to the one, indivisible and true Muslim God. There were arguments – and many Muslims made them at the time – that the ban was somewhat ridiculous: Arab Christians use "Allah" as a matter of course, as in "insha'allah," [if God wills; hopefully]. It is clear, however, that that the motive for such a ruling was not frivolous in the way it certainly seems to Westerners, but a striking indication of the Islamic obsession with exerting power over non-believers even in what appear to Westerners to be minor things.
It is in cases such as this that a genuine rift can be seen between the West and Islam. The situation has been significantly blurred by political correctness from Western multiculturalists and those Muslims who adopt their tactics to argue that all cultures are equal and that any non-Muslim criticism of Islam is Islamophobic.
Such blurring misses the point. One of the most precious things for Westerners is freedom, hence our emphasis on human rights -- which can only be guaranteed in free, open societies -- and where the exercise of rights depends entirely on the preservation of freedom. Thus, free speech; freedom to criticize; freedom of the press; religious rights (above all, the rights to apostasize, convert or choose no religion); separation of church and state; political freedom, and freedom from arbitrary application of the law. These freedoms really matter, yet not one Muslim country can claim to implement or protect them, especially freedom of religion.
For Muslims, liberty of conscience and action, even within the constraints of the law, is anathema. A Muslim is, quite literally, one who submits, just as "Islam" means, literally, "submission." Whether this means submission to God or to the Islamic state or to the clerics who define what is, and what is not, Islamic, the result is individual submission, voluntary or coerced, to the laws of the shari'a, the body of ordinances that constitute the totality of what a Muslim must believe and how he or she should act. Freedom does not enter into it. A man is not at liberty to pray or not as he sees fit: the law says he must pray five times a day, and he must be punished if he does not. Enforcement of this law reached its most explicit form when a Somali cleric decreed that anyone who did not pray five times a day must be beheaded. That is far from typical, but it does show how easily a simple matter of dereliction may be transformed into a major criminal offence.
Here is where the enforcement of shari'a law, taking offence at blasphemy, and fear of Islamophobia come together. For a Muslim to utter something blasphemous, or to do something that infringes the dignity of the faith, leads directly to criminality or, in many jurisdictions, to apostasy. And the penalty for apostasy is, for the most part, death.
The reason for this seems to be that Islam is rooted in a dichotomy.[6] In the Qur'an, the world is depicted in stark black-and-white terms. There are the People of the Right Hand and the People of the Left hand. The former, who are Muslims, are the People of Paradise; the others, non-Muslims, are the People of Hellfire. There is belief and unbelief; there is no grey area between. There is Islam and there is all that is not Islam; all things are measured by this reckoning.
In the classical Islamic formulation, the entire world is divided between Dar al-Islam, (the Realm of Submission) and Dar al-Harb, (the Realm of War.) Thus, these twin realms co-exist in a state of potential or actual war, not just ideologically but also militarily.
From this perspective, the modern Western world presents an unwanted challenge to the realm of Islam.
At present, the West cannot be conquered, although many extremists, such as the fighters who serve with ISIS, believe that conquest is exactly what will happen in the end. Such a victory would embody the triumph of belief over unbelief, as it did in past centuries, when Muslims ruled most of the known world -- but at a horrendous cost for mankind.
Worse still, Muslims living in the West are thought by conservative Muslims to be at risk of apostasy, seduced as they might be by the allurements, physical and intellectual, of non-Islam. Behind the face of apostasy, Islamists proclaim, lies the grinning skull of Satanic lures of debauchery set for the unwary. Freedom to change one's religion, a core feature of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, fills the traditionalist Muslim heart with horror; it portends the possibility that the realm of Islam may end up as nothing more than another province in the empire of non-Islam.
The absence of Islam does not necessarily threaten most religions: a healthy secular society, for instance – of which Israel is one of the best examples – tolerates and supports highly religious people, lightens the tax burden on churches, synagogues and temples, protects holy places, supports religious schools, and so forth.
But Islam in its full sense cannot exist outside the political and legal realms because it is not merely a religion but a system of government and law. For Islamists, their religion must govern, control, and legislate. If Muslims abdicate those responsibilities, they might as well be considered apostates.
Doubtless Islamophobia exists, just as anti-Semitism and anti-Christianity exist -- and it should be resisted. But it is neither as widespread nor as penetrating as it is so often proclaimed to be.
In a piece just published by Sydney University research student Hussain Nadim, this crisis of identity is central:
The idea that the "problem lies not with Islam, nor even with some of the Muslims but with the environment Muslims are currently in" has no legs, since Sikhs and numerous other migrant communities are in equal if not lower socio-economic and political conditions than Muslims all over the world but without the radicalization and terrorism prevalent in their communities.
This tendency amongst the Muslim community leaders to remain in denial about the problem with religion is what is driving the identity crisis leading to radicalization among Muslim youth. Why is it so hard to accept that there is, in fact, a problem with Islam, as Egypt's President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said, at least in the way many are using the faith to hurt others?
Its real meaning is not so much active hostility on the part of Westerners as a need for many Muslims to assert their identity in the face of a world made up of unbelief, and the concomitant resistance to coercive expressions of it.
**Denis MacEoin taught Islamic Studies at Newcastle University and has written many books, articles and encyclopedia entries on Islamic topics.
[1] See Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, London, 2009
[2] See, for example, Bernard Lewis, 'The Question of Orientalism', The New York Review of Books, 24 June 1982, available through: Ibn Warraq, Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's 'Orientalism', USA, 2007] Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies, London, 2007] Efraim Karsh, 'Did Edward Said Really Speak Truth to Power?', Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2008, pp. 13-21. See also Daniel Martin Varisco, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid, Washington, 2008; Alexander Lyon Macfie (ed.) Orientalism: A Reader, Edinburgh, 2000
[3] See, for example, the statement by Fautmeh Ardati of Hizbut Tahrir, when she speaks of 'the superiority of Islamic values over Western values'. Cited in Savage Infidel, 20 September 2010. See also Shaykh Salih al-Munajjid, Superiority of Islam over Infidelity.
[4] For a comprehensive study of this situation, see Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, London, 2002. It is also important to study the writings of three Egyptian exponents of Islamic revival, Rashid Rida (1865-1935), Hasan al-Banna' (1906-1949), the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the Brotherhood's leading ideologue. Nor should we neglect the theories of Indo-Pakistani Islamist Abu A'la Mawdudi (1903-1979).
[5] Cited Lawrence Wright, "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," Vintage Books (New York), 2007, page 29.
[6] This characteristic of Islam was originally revealed in great detail in a magisterial study by M. M. Bravmann, The Spiritual Background of Early Islam.

Assad and ISIL Can Make the Political Solution in Syria Obsolete
Samir Altaqi/Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 15/15
The current picture in Syria looks as follows: An effort to alter the balance of power on the ground is coupled with a parallel effort to unclog the pipes of contacts in an attempt to reach a multi-party consensus on a political deal. However, when we bring this general picture, with its two parallel lines, to earth and try to fit it on what is really happening in Syria we discover immediately that the dress does not fit.
There are many sources of complications. The immediate, and most important, are two: Assad and ISIL. Let us see the way they both try separately to derail the two parallel lines we just mentioned.
When the Russians blamed the Saudis for blocking any political solution, Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad ben Salman assured President Putin that Saudi Arabia is ready to go the extra mile to find a political solution. Putin asked “even meeting with Syrian officials?. The answer was “Yes, provided that your country will be present in the meeting”.
It was arranged after the meeting that Syria’s Chief of intelligence Ali Mamlouk and a Russian delegation headed by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov would go separately to Saudi Arabia and have a trilateral meeting. The meeting took place at the end of July. The Saudi side of the story tells us that Mamlouk asked the Saudis to stop aiding the opposition. The Saudis said they will do that only if Iran and Hezbollah stop aiding the regime.
Damascus refused the Saudi proposition and the meeting was declared a total failure. But what was striking is that Assad leaked the news of the meeting in two steps. The first was to ask permission for Memlouk’s private plane to land in Kuwait on its way to Jeddah, which is taken as an alert to the GCC that Riyadh is negotiating with Damascus without prior coordination with its closest allies. The second was passing a report in a pro-Syria Lebanese newspaper which included what the Saudis consider a distortion of what happened in their meeting with Mamlouk. The Syrian side of the story is that Riyadh understands that the problem of terrorism is a two edged sword and that it ready to negotiate with Assad.
One of the valid explanation to why Assad decided to leak the news of the meeting is that he understands that the diplomatic track may ultimately cost him his chair. He believes that Syria is heading to be either divided into two, the Western Alawi enclave in one side and the rest of Syria in the other. Or that a gradual change in the balance of power coupled with diplomatic efforts can force him to cede power and allow the birth of a new Syria, unified in a way or another where he and his gang have no place.
This second scenario is the one that Assad resisted all along. If he and his Iranian allies cannot keep the chair of the President of all of Syria, their Plan B is to go west and establish a pro-Iranian mini state. However, Assad fears one thing: It is that Iran would sell him off if negotiations gave it some of the strategic objectives it badly wants, mainly a corridor to Hezbollah.
This fear in the minds of senior Syrian officials is actually a minor one. The feared scenario is not likely. Yet, it is there. At one point or another, and under pressure from the Syrian people, the opposition and the international community, the relevant parties may accept a deal at the expense of Syria’s ruling Mafia.
Indeed, the Iranians have a different take. They do not look at Assad from any personal angle. They look at Syria from the perspective of protecting Hezbollah. They understand that Assad, as the President of all of Syria, is a dead man walking. But they still inflate his role as a scarecrow to maximize the weight of their bargaining chip if it boils down to negotiating or to organize the withdrawal to the west in case Syria becomes two Syrias.
The Iranian left their ultimate options opened. If a united Syria based on a Taif-like deal emerges, and if this deal guarantees their interests, be it. If not, then a western enclave headed by Assad.
As it is now, the most likely option is ultimately partitioning Syria. In hedging his bets, Assad prefers to see a long term fight between ISIL and non-ISIL forces in the rest of Syria. That will give him some time to breath in his western enclave and may even lead to international intervention. At that point in time he would have a chance to pull a deal that is better than remaining in his western pocket, waiting for the Sunnis to attack him and his forces and unify their country again.
The Russian attempt to unclog channels has reached an impasse when the Saudis refused Moscow’s plan of collective cooperation, even with Assad, to confront terrorism.
Simply put, Assad has a clear tactical benefit in ISIL expanding its presence at this critical moment. It will delay any attacks on the west, it will complicate any diplomatic solution that is done at the expense of his head and it will turn the non-Assad Syria into hell.
Neither Iran nor Assad have reached a strategic decision to accept anything close to what the opposition wants, which is a unified Syria under the control of one government. Therefore, they both will fight to improve terms on the ground in case of negotiations or to secure the strategic areas vital to the future Syrian enclave and Hezbollah.
ISIL does not welcome the diplomatic talks neither, But in the case of the organization, and as it understands that things are moving towards a change in the balance of power, it decided to work on the ground to block any potential deal.
It is clear therefore that Assad calculus is the first “curve” that makes the dress unfit to the body, or that makes implementing the two parallel lines mentioned above inapplicable on the ground.
ISIL is the second undesired “curve”. In an important strategic development ISIL was able to connect its area of control in East Qalamoun with Syria’s eastern desert. Currently the organization is preparing to cut the Damascus-Homs highway and potentially rush to Damascus from north to capture it before the “Western Front” gets it. ISIL’s capture of Al Qariyatain, south of Homs is so important to the extent that it is seen as a game changer.
One of the important significance of this step is that it targets the “Strategic Triangle” where the Syrian Army stores most of its strategic weapons. Rockets, chemical warheads, relatively advance munition and many sophisticated military equipment is stored in this triangle. The triangle defined by the power station which is roughly 20 miles south of Homs, the village of Hassaia and the village of Qara. This is where the legendry Division 18 is stationed. In other words, this triangle, now targeted by ISIL, is the center of Syria’s strategic forces.
ISIL also is advancing in the north of Aleppo as well. It just surprised the opposition with a swift attack that ended with controlling the strategic village of Om Hosh. It is targeting the Syrian army Infantry College. And it is focused on Assad forces air base in Kwaires. If it is to capture these strategic points, it will be able to cut Aleppo from the north, a step that will certainly disrupt opposition plans to take Aleppo and leave Turkey with one of two options: either to fight ISIL even beyond Ankara’s buffer zone or talk again to the terrorist organization.
ISIL is also trying to reactivate its southern front through its allies in Lewa Al Yarmouk. Yet, the opposition forces are achieving progress towards Daraa which can fall any time. The reason of reactivating its southern operation is that ISIL wants to stall the opposition advance towards Damascus. ISIL’s view is that any flag other than its black one is an enemy flag and it should not be raised, particularly on Damascus due to its political significance.
The structural contradiction in Assad-Iran objectives is that if they welcome ISIL advances from the point of view of protecting the west by pushing everybody to fight everybody else, this will abort any Taif deal. In other words, the tactical steps taken now do not necessarily facilitate the objective. Unless if the objective is only implementing Plan B, that is the withdrawal to the west.
Assad-Iran gambit is indeed very risky. One scenario shows that clearly. If ISIL becomes a dominant force in all of Syria (except the west), who will be able to stop it from creeping to the west? This gambit may lead to international intervention where UN forces protect the western enclave.
There is an assumption in Washington and other Western capitals that the situation can be managed if Assad withdraws to the west and the opposition takes the rest. This assumption is illogical. It simply reduces the role of ISIL to less than what could be realistic. It also neglects the dynamics within the Syrian opposition based on the false proposition that this opposition can be fully controlled through regional capitals. This idea errs insofar as it assumes that this control is a constant.
What is clear from this complex picture is that Assad and ISIL are the two obstacles facing the implementation of any concept related to political solutions. Furthermore, a deeper reflection upon the components of the Syrian crisis in their motion, and not frozen in any present moment as is commonly done, reveals that the political solution will be much more difficult in the future than it is at the current configuration.
The one thing that is astounding in this picture is how the Syrian opposition is standing passively when everybody else is busy amputating their own country. The Turks got their buffer zone, the Jordanians and Israelis have already theirs. Assad and the Iranians will go west. And Hezbollah is fighting to secure the area adjacent to his portion of Lebanon. The rest of Syria will be left to the Syrian opposition to kill each other and for the Syrian people to continue bleeding. The opposition hears the voices of quarters very far from the killing fields, yet they do not seems to hear the calls of their homeland, neither the noise of knives partitioning their country.

Iraq and the Question of the Nation State in the Middle East
Samir Altaqi/Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 15/15
How to defeat ISIL. Really?
The source of populace energy trapped in Baghdad and the South of Iraq is the system of governance in the country. Strangely, this is the same source, albeit in a totally different perspective, for the energy seen in Central Iraq that helps ISIL. In Baghdad and the South, the system is seen as incapable of preserving the unity of Iraq and of efficient governance. In the Center, the system is seen as sectarian.
While both diagnosis testify to the shortfalls of the system in Baghdad, they are different in content. An efficient government, in terms of bureaucratic performance, does not automatically mean a non-sectarian one. Technically, there could be a sectarian government that is efficient as such. Therefore, the term good governance should not be defined on “technical” bases. It should always be understood in social, political and economic terms in addition to the efficiency of its internal mechanisms. Even inclusiveness does not make governance good. The issue, particularly in Iraq, goes far beyond these limits, contrary to the common political lexicon used when people talk Iraq.
This is said on commenting on the US Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) recent efforts to develop a better understanding of how the Middle East could be in 5-15 years, parts of it were covered recently in published papers.
The first fact that should be discussed is related directly to the fight against ISIL. The hard core of ISIL cannot be placed in the group of “interest-driven”, neither in the group of “grievance-driven”. It is ideological, religiously and historically based. True that it cannot be separated in any absolute manner from the two previous groups, interest driven and grievances driven, yet it transcends them to an extent that makes the distance between this ideology and the grievances or interests of the hosting environment quite remarkable.
While this represents a difficulty to ISIL to adapt, it also contributes to the misunderstanding of the term “defeating ISIL militarily”. Military action against ISIL is indeed necessary. Yet, it should not stand alone. What should stand beside it is not a political solution that is merely based on “clean” and good governance or a politically inclusive one. For what still remains to be done either in Syria or Iraq is the political solution that assist the historical process of nation-state building.
The second fact that should be debated is that the integration of multiple “spaces” into one country is a function of not only good governance, but also market integration and interdependency. In the South, and within its common sectarian-geographic boundaries, we see Basra, for example, drifting away from Baghdad in a slow but clear motion. So even if Iraq is divided, there is a chance that the division will be further subdivided even under “good governance”.
After the Second World War, General Charles De Gaulle was faced with a strong separatist movement in Bretagne in the north-west of France. After all the region is racially Celtic, it had its own language that is not French and it was economically backward. The central government put a comprehensive plan to integrate the region into France. The plan was correctly based on economic interdependency as much as it was based on cultural assimilation. The separatists in Bretagne are now nowhere to be found except in scarce graffiti on the walls in rare occasions.
The nation-state in the Middle East or anywhere else is not merely a political issue. Neither could it be reduced to fit the Clausewitz’s trinity of “Government-Army-People”. For Clausewitz presupposed the existence of a nation state at one point or another of its evolution. In Iraq and Syria and some other regional countries we do not have the luxury of such a supposition.
In the case of Iraq, which could be the future case of Syria, “reforms” should gain a little wider definition. They should include planning for the integration of the three spaces economically in spite of all sectarian and national difference. In Europe, we have seen this process starting spontaneously before the formation of the embryo of the modern political state. In the case of Iraq or Syria, we had the political state seated on social reality that cannot be defined by any stretch of imagination as nation states. These states were created to solve the Colonial powers’ dispute about areas of influence, not as indigenous product of social evolution.
Yet, it is a dangerous notion to “rethink” Sykes-Picot borders in the present stage of the region’s history. It is even more dangerous to leave the current spontaneous forces draw the map as they wish, for the division process will continue to produce sub-divisions. The point of start should be preserving the current borders and trying to explore ways to assist its content to evolve.
In Europe, we had the modern political state as a culmination of a prior process of nation forming. In the Middle East we had this kind of “modern” state imposed by colonial power before this process reaches any reasonable degree of evolution. What should be done now is what General De Gaulle did in the 50’s with the Bretons.
The concept of national integration should be looked at not as a replacement of anti-ISIL military action, but as the valid way to inject a specific component to the term “good governance”. In other words, reforming the central government in Baghdad and even going as far as succeeding in the political process of including the Sunnis in a representative governmental functions are not sufficient to construct the elements necessary to build a nation state.
The political “solution” in Iraq is misunderstood.
The integration of the culture and market and interdependency of the productive activities of regional populations is the one missing element without which preserving the unity of Iraq will remain an almost empty term. A corruption free, if that is possible, and fairly representative government is as necessary as defeating ISIL militarily. Yet, they, together, are not sufficient to stabilize Iraq and keep it one.
We are witnesses to the laborious process of nation-state forming in both Iraq and Syria. This process takes many deceptive and twisted paths even in the minds of those Iraqis and Syrians involved actively in it. There is no guarantee whatsoever that this process will indeed reach what it drives at. The process may stumble in illusions, past images and deceptive ideologies, and the two countries may end divided.
As the process in the region is going opposite to the way it took in Europe, the political governments should be aware of where their problems are, as much as the great French General was. You can preserve the unity of a country by sheer oppression like Saddam or the USSR did. Yet, time will reveal that you did not really create a unified country. This is not to say that Iraq and Syria are not nation states. This to say that they are in an early point of evolution towards that end.
This process was delayed for many reasons, historical (colonialism), political (post-independence military dictatorship) and economic (oil, planned economies and corruption). But this process is the true name of the crisis of the political state in the Middle East. They are states that are supposed to be ruling nations which actually do not really exist, or still at one point or another of formation.
The real root of instability lies in this diagnosis. And the challenge is to constitute a clear position towards the current historical phase in the Middle East provided it is clearly analyzed and reconstructed in the mind. Therefore, the “political” solution in Iraq is not merely building a “clean” and inclusive government. It is unifying the nation.
Putting some Sunnis beside some Shias and Kurds “quantitatively” together in one sac and calling it a government does not make a country or a State. As long as the social and market base is not expanded and integrated, Iraq will continue suffering instability for decades to come. The manifestation of this instability will vary in form, yet it will be always pointing to this delayed process of forming a nation state.
In fact, defeating ISIL or any other similar organization is conditioned by proper definition of where the problem is. The proof that Iraq during Saddam was a “false” nation state is that some loyal “nationalist” Saddamists are now the leaders of the supranational organization.
In the present situation in Iraq, the political energy to build a nation which emerged in a spontaneous form in the recent street protests has not been absent from the minds of a considerable portion of Iraq’s middle class. This energy has a limited chance to gather momentum and push forward. The Iranians for example, as a wannabe hegemonic power, condemned the protests as anti-Islamic. Iran’s army JCS Gen Hassan Fayrouz Abadi said that there “Hidden un-Islamic” players standing behind the protesters who were chanting “Not Sunni, Not Shia. But Secular”. Iraq as a nation is not in the agenda of Tehran.
The protesters do not reflect the general sentiments of the population in general. But no protests do in any case. The politicians who are not corrupt and who supported the protesters were reflecting more accurately this sentiment of “enough with corruption”, the trigger motto that represent the minimum denominator of the awakening of the civil society in Iraq.
Defeating ISIL, in a multi layered assessment of the task, requires reformed, efficient and representative governance. But that alone does not say what this governance has to do. If it was to take pictures of new Sunni political reps hugging their Shia colleagues and to tell the Sunni smilingly that they have a portion of the political power, that will soon melt down due to the absence of a real nation state on the ground. You cannot cheat history.
Iraq should be helped to see the long due list of “Do” that was not done by history or previous governments, dictatorial or sectarian. Rail roads, networks of connecting roads, assisting small and medium business to start, better cultural understanding, etc, are waiting. But they should be seen in their political, security and social value before anything else.
We should not content ourselves with the poor judgements like: If we reach a semi-clean, inclusive government in Baghdad, that will be it. It is not “it”. What is “it” is what such government will do. The US is not required to dwell again in ridiculous doctrines like “nation building” in the Middle East or anywhere else. Nations are built by their peoples. If it is built for them it will not be a nation to start with. While they do the job of building their nations, the job does them as well.
The triumph of the concept of collectively building a nation state by an inclusive and properly functioning Iraqi government is in itself the ultimate defeat of ISIL, and any similar group, both culturally and operationally.

Rival Peace Plans Won't Save Syria
Jonathan Spyer/The Jerusalem Post/August 15, 2015
Originally published under the title, "Syria's New Diplomacy."
The Syria peace plan put forth by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif mandates a ceasefire in place and formation of a transitional government.
As the civil war over the ruins of Syria grinds on into its fifth year, the fighting seems nowhere near an end. Indeed, there is no longer a single war taking place in the country. Rather, as Syria physically divides into separate entities, so the conflict, too, further subdivides, spawning new conflicts.
There are today no less than five different conflicts taking place within the borders of the country: the contests between the Sunni Arab rebels and the Assad regime/Hezbollah/Iran (the original war which brought about the others); the Kurdish YPG's fight against Islamic State; intermittent clashes between the Sunni Arab rebels and Islamic State; Islamic State's own war against the Assad regime; and now also the renewed war between Turkey and the PKK, which is being played out partly on Syrian soil.
The presence of these five interlocking conflicts notwithstanding, efforts to make diplomatic progress toward some form of settlement, or at least freezing of the conflict, are under way.
There are today no less than five different conflicts taking place within the borders of Syria.
Recent days have seen details emerge of two rival "peace plans" for Syria. One of these is sponsored by the Iranians, the main supporters of the Assad regime, the other is the handiwork of Saudi Arabia, which wants the removal of the regime and supports elements among the Sunni Arab rebellion against it.
Neither plan stands much chance of implementation. But the content of the plans and their very existence demonstrate that the Syrian situation is not static. They also indicate the extent to which the aims of the backers of the combatant sides are currently irreconcilable.
The Iranian proposal, according to a report in the Araby al-Jadeed newspaper on Monday, constitutes a plan for the freezing of the conflict in place and the subsequent de facto partition of Syria. According to the newspaper, the plan is being promoted by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif during his current round of meetings with regional officials.
The plan proposes that each side would hold on to its current areas of control, except for the city of Aleppo, which would come under international supervision.
The regime and the rebels would then cooperate with the international coalition in the fight against Islamic State. Negotiations between the sides would continue, with the intention of forming a "national government, writing a new constitution and holding nationally monitored elections."
The Assad regime now controls just over 20 percent of Syrian territory.
The regime, according to the plan, would keep control of "Damascus, the Syrian-Lebanese border, Qalamoun, western Ghouta, Zabadani, Homs and the area to its west all the way to the Syrian coast, and Tartus Port."
This is in essence the area controlled by the regime today. Yet the apparent willingness of the regime's backers to "settle" for this area rather than to continue to hold out for the eventual reconquest of the entire country (Syrian President Bashar Assad's aim throughout the war) reflects the declining military fortunes of the Assad regime.
The regime now controls only just over 20 percent of the area of Syria. In the north, it is reeling from the hammer blows inflicted by the Jaysh al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) rebel coalition. This coalition includes some of the strongest Islamist rebel forces in Syria. Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaida, is a component part of it, as is Ahrar al-Sham, the most powerful of the "homegrown" Salafi groups on the Syrian battlefield.
It is supported by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi provision of US Tow antitank missiles, transported across the border from Turkey, is playing a telling role in the fighting, reducing the regime's advantage in heavy weaponry.
As of now, Jaysh al-Fatah is attempting to destroy the final regime positions on the Al-Ghab plain. Loss of these positions raises the frightening prospect for the regime of the front line moving into the populated parts of Latakia Province, the heartland of its support.
Already, the Alawi villages in Latakia are within range of the rebels' missiles. Entry into Latakia would effectively end Assad's hopes of preserving intact a safe area of the country for the members of his sect and other supporters of the regime.
Should the pivotal Joureen base in Ghab fall to the rebels, the regime would then face the possibility of its supply lines to the city of Hama further south being cut off.
The regime is therefore fighting desperately to hold its positions on the flat, barren Sahel al-Ghab. Hezbollah fighters are there, fighting alongside Shi'ite "volunteers" from as far afield as Afghanistan.
The motley collection of regime defenders in Ghab reflects the key difficulty that Assad has faced since the commencement of the war. The narrow base of support of his regime has meant that he has faced severe challenges in mustering sufficient manpower to defend the areas under his control.
A counterproposal put forward by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir demands Assad's immediate departure from power.
The solution until now has been to reduce these areas. At a certain point, of course, the shrinking size of the regime's domain raises the question of its continued viability. This point may now be approaching.
The Saudis, however, have made clear that the current Iranian proposals are unacceptable. The sticking point, as Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir outlined in a statement this week, is that Riyadh wants Assad's immediate departure from power rather than a continued role for him in any transitional phase.
"There is no place for Assad in the future of Syria," Jubeir said, speaking in Moscow after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. "Assad is part of the problem, not part of the solution."
Saudi counterproposals, as reported in the Al-Hayat newspaper this week, envisage the immediate cessation of Iranian and other outside support for the regime and the departure of Hezbollah fighters from Syria, followed by new, UN-supervised presidential and parliamentary elections, after the stepping down of Assad.
The differences are familiar and not yet close to being bridged. The diplomacy, as ever, mirrors the military situation on the ground. Assad's fortunes have declined. This is leading to reduced ambitions and consequently increased flexibility on the part of his backers. But there are no signs yet that his allies are about to desert him, nor that their reduced demands are anywhere close to being acceptable to the forces behind the rebels. So the fight goes on.
More importantly, it should be remembered that the war between Assad and the Sunni rebels is now only one of the several conflict systems that have torn Syria apart. So even if Assad's declining fortunes were to lead to his departing the scene, the war for Syria's succession, and the suffering of its inhabitants, would almost certainly not be at an end.
**Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).

Israel’s first ever arms deal with an Arab country – drones for Jordan to fight ISIS
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 15, 2015
In its first arms sale to an Arab country, revealed here by debkafile’s military sources, Israel has sold Jordan 12 advanced unmanned aerial vehicles of the Heron TP and Skylark types. They are urgently needed by the Jordanian Royal Air Force to beef up the counter-terrorism campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in which the Hashemite Kingdom is locked across its borders in Iraq and Syria.
The Heron TP drone is an assault vehicle. Its speed is 370 kph at an altitude of 7,400 km and it can stay aloft for 70 hours at a height of 14 km. The Heron is needed for air strikes against Islamist targets deep inside Iraq or Syria and also as an effective weapon for halting enemy forces advancing on Jordan’s borders through the deep crevasses of the eastern Syrian Deir E-Zour region or from Iraq’s Anbar Province to the east
Skylark, which weighs 7 kg, will gather intelligence for Jordan’s special forces in both arenas. Its cameras beam down a full picture in real time of an active battle field.
debkafile’s military sources report that Jordanian commandos have thrust 200 km deep into Iraq. They have reached the important town of Ar Rutbah, which commands the No. 1 freeway connecting the Iraqi and Jordanian capitals Baghdad to Amman, and prevented ISIS from cutting it off.
Israeli and Jordanian officials decline to reveal details about the financial scope of the sale, how the new Israeli drones will enter service in Jordan and whether Israel has set up an operations center in the Royal Air Force for deploying them. Operating the Herons and Skylarks requires personnel especially trained in their use.
Many secret operations against ISIS are run by the joint US-Jordanian-Israeli war room at US Central Command Forward – Jordan north of Amman. Officers at this center may also be managing the UAVs’ operation.
Another aspect of Israeli-Jordanian military cooperation was revealed last week when the American Foxtrot Alpha website reported a group of five Royal Jordanian Air Force F-16s flying alongside Israeli Air Force KC-707 fuel tankers heading west towards Lajes Field, a mid-Atlantic transit point for military aircraft.
The fleets were heading for Nellis Air Force base in Nevada to take part in the Red Flag air-to-air training exercise from Aug. 17 to 28. The Israeli Air Force’s appearance in the exercise comes when relations between Washington and Jerusalem are apparently at a low point.
Although Israel and Jordan are security partners, Israeli tanker aircraft escorting Jordanian F-16s across the world alongside IAF F-15s, is a special event that indicates a new level of military cooperation operation between the two nations. This disclosure shows that the partnership between the Israeli and Jordanian air forces is deep and extensive enough for the two air arms to work together in a long-range training exercise.
This development comes shortly after the news, revealed on July 23 by Pentagon sources, that Israel had donated AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters to Jordan to withstand ISIS threats.,
This week also saw the first anniversary of the US-led coalition campaign launched against ISIS in Iraq and Syria just a year ago. The US aerial operation against the Islamist terrorists has been too diluted to be much use in curbing their advance, especially when American bombers often return to base with two-thirds of their ordnance unused. The only two armies actually fighting ISIS on the ground – where it really counts - are the Jordanian armed forces and the northern Iraqi Kurdish republic’s Peshmerga, joined by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.
Amman has kept its campaign against ISIS in neighboring countries under very tight wraps, including its aerial dimension. debkafile’s disclosure now of the sale of Israeli drones to Jordan opens a small window on the scale of this effort.

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