About Rice and "The Bloody Frontier... How to see the Middle East better"
Afrasianet - In the American position, it is possible to simply read the trends that can govern the American position, as how can we understand this position, which was classified as Jabhat al-Nusra or Jabhat Tahrir al-Sham as it was called to market it as a movement consistent with the requirements of the West and with a clear opportunism as a terrorist organization to turn the American orientation and after the removal of the former regime into a movement that can be dealt with as the next authority that lifts the status of terrorism, just as happened in Afghanistan?
The Syrian regime's first problem was the economic sanctions imposed on it, the most important of which was the infamous Caesar Act, which targeted individuals and companies that provide funding or assistance to the Syrian regime.
The fall of the Baath Party in Syria may not have been surprising to many followers, whether in the size of the popular resentment against it or in its timing, but it is necessary to admit that the speed and simplicity of this fall is indeed surprising, which needs to be studied, and although the Arab positions of the Syrian leadership were already respected and refused to be drawn into all calls for normalization with the Zionist entity or abandoning its resistance position, but its performance in the internal affairs of Syria needed greater stability. And force in the face of the incursion of compradors within both the party and Syrian society, which contributed greatly to the overthrow of the regime.
It was the beginning of the direct imbalance that afflicted the regime in Syria during the first decade of this century, which witnessed the attempt of some Syrian political elites to push for the adoption of market policies, borrowing from international institutions, and allowing the flow of Turkish goods and investments, and in 2000 Turkish exports to Syria amounted to $ 1.84 billion, while Syrian exports to Turkey amounted to $ 629 million, and the volume of trade exchange was targeted to reach $ 5 billion.
The free trade agreement between the two countries, which was activated in 2007, represented the culmination of the size of the Turkish penetration into Syria, as many Syrians saw it as unfair to them, as Syrian goods incurred customs duties of 28% when entering Turkey under the heading of supporting poor families, while Turkish goods passed into Syria without customs duties, and despite their injustice, they were supported by the Syrian comprador.
On the other hand, these new policies led to many economic problems within Syrian society that had an impact, especially as they contributed to booby-trapping inside Syria and exploding many differences even among the partisan political elite, which witnessed a number of defections, such as the defection of Abdel Halim Khaddam,
the late first vice president Hafez al-Assad, and Brigadier General Manaf Mustafa Tlass, who sought to support the Sunni merchant class, taking advantage of his relationship with Bashar al-Assad before announcing his defection from the Baath Party in July 2012. He is accompanied by 23 Syrian officers and fled to Turkey, where some accounts of his connection to the first protests in 2011 are troubled.
In any case, the West was able to penetrate Syria and even the leading elements of the Syrian army by the Turks, which allowed the Syrian crisis to flare up in 2011, and here the question may arise: What is Turkey's interest in igniting the situation in Syria despite the economic benefit it had from the Baath Party regime?
In fact, it is related to the conflict between the two natural gas pipeline projects that pass through Syria to deliver gas to Europe, the first line that passes from Iran through Iraq to Syria and then Europe, and it is clear that this project was with the consent of the Russians, and accordingly Syria will obtain its gas needs and will turn into a center for exporting Iranian gas instead of Turkey, and a memorandum of understanding was signed between the three countries in 2011, and the line was expected to be ready to operate in 2016. On the other hand, Qatar proposed to extend a gas pipeline from its territory to Syria through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to end in Turkey and from there to Europe.
The Qatari-Turkish project would have greatly reduced European dependence on Russian gas, and Turkey would have turned into a natural gas distribution center to Europe, where the gas pipelines coming from Iran (the Tabriz-Ankara pipeline), Azerbaijan (the southern gas corridor) and finally the Qatari pipeline would meet.
However, the Syrian government refused to accept the Qatari-Turkish gas pipeline project, and approved the Iranian-Syrian line project, which would strengthen the position of Iran, Iraq and Syria in exchange for weakening Turkey's position in the east.
We can therefore understand the reasons that led to the participation of the countries concerned with the Qatari-Turkish gas pipeline in the war that was ignited against Syria with the aim of removing President Bashar al-Assad from power, in addition to the United States of America and European countries, and despite Assad's success in holding out and regaining control over most of the Syrian regions with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the following situations showed a greater imbalance within the Syrian reality in general.
The first problem of the Syrian regime was the economic sanctions imposed on it, the most important of which was the infamous Caesar Act, which targeted individuals and companies that provide financing or assistance to the Syrian regime, as well as a number of Syrian industries, and was the reason for the disruption of the Arab gas pipeline project, which would have transported Egyptian gas to Jordan, Syria and then Lebanon. This law was issued under the pretext of protecting Syrian civilians, but it is clear that the real purpose of its issuance is to overthrow the Syrian regime in the hands of the Gulf states. which sought to overthrow him.
Under the pressure of sanctions and some wings of the regime itself, IMF policies were adopted by reducing the social role of the state, so mergers and liquidations of a number of public sector companies were carried out, and government support declined through the use of notorious titles such as rationalizing subsidies and directing them to those who deserve them.
Despite the Syrian regime's response to external pressure, especially the Gulf, to reduce its relationship with Iran and not participate in the Al-Aqsa flood, it is clear that the developments of the war forced both the Americans and the Zionist entity to give the green light to the Turks to make this latest move, which brought down an ancient regime in Syria without the slightest resistance from the Syrian army.
Now remains the need to answer the most important question: What comes after the fall of the Baath in Syria?
Regardless of the easy way in which the regime fell, and its background, which is currently difficult to ascertain, it is clear that Syria will witness a huge conflict between the various projects in the coming period, and although most of these projects are launched and in the interest of American projects in the Arab region, there are details related to each project separately that could lead to the predominance of conflict between the players seeking to exploit the Syrian situation for their benefit, and such a conflict may have the worst result is the division of Syria. Indeed, to sectarian and possibly ethnic states as well.
In 2016, Turkish President Erdogan demanded the need to amend the Lausanne Agreement signed in 1923 under which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk forcibly ceded Aleppo and Mosul, describing this concession as a betrayal of the Turkish people, after which a newspaper close to his party published a map of Turkey that includes Mosul, Aleppo and Kirkuk, in a clear reference to Turkish ambitions regarding these areas.
Here we can enumerate the size of the advantages that will accrue to the Turks from achieving this project, whether by annexing these Arab lands to their state or if they are transformed into subordinate states, perhaps the most important of which is taking advantage of the oil fields in Mosul and Kirkuk, and eliminating any idea of establishing a Kurdish statelet in Syria, not to mention besieging Kurdish autonomy in Iraq.
The practical steps to implement this Turkish project began since the Turks' attempts to economically invade Syria during the first decade of this century, then the destructive war to overthrow the Syrian regime, through the Azeri victory over Armenia, which turned Erdogan into the leader of the Turkish nation, and the pressure cards he possessed through the use of the Turkmen minority in Syria, who were at the forefront of the anti-Baath regime and enthusiastic about its overthrow.
It is unclear whether the Russian and even Chinese leaders are aware of the danger of this development at home in both Russia and China, where the Russian Federation includes Turkish-speaking minorities such as the Tatar, Pashkurd, Yakut and Tuvalar peoples. In addition to its growing influence in Central Asia extending to the western province of Sinkiang, using both Turkish and Sunni religious qualities.
Although the Turkish project comes within the framework of American projects in general to fragment political units in the Arab East, it may contradict in some details the perceptions of the Americans, the Zionist entity and even Western Europe regarding the Kurds, whether in Syria or even Iraq, as Western parties seek to stabilize the status of an autonomous Kurdish statelet in Syria.
There is also a Saudi project that seeks to lead the Sunni majority in Syria and its extensions in Lebanon to confront the resistance led by Hezbollah and regain control of the Lebanese reality, and it will work to ensure that the ruling regime in Damascus is loyal to it, and such a project may certainly clash with Turkish ambitions in Aleppo and Mosul.
The Zionist project has also already begun to be implemented by trying to support the Druze, as the Zionist media indicate, and seeking to establish a Druze entity in Suwayda, which will have a negative impact in Lebanon, which means that it wants to expand its territory by establishing a subordinate entity that includes a sectarian minority that feels marginalized in the Islamic milieu.
The idea of dividing Syria and other Arab countries is not just pessimistic expectations or visions, but rather projects announced since the eighties of the last century, as previously referred to by former Zionist intelligence officer Odd Yinon in 1982 in an article in the magazine Kfonim entitled "A Strategy for Israel in the Eighties", which was followed by the emergence of the orientalist Bernard Lewis' project in 1992, which resembled Yinnon's vision with some modifications.
But the partition project emerged clearly in 2006 after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used the term "new Middle East" during her visit to Tel Aviv, and at a close time the American military expert Ralph Peters wrote an article entitled "The Bloody Border... How to see the Middle East better" in the US Military Magazine, which included his vision of dividing the region along ethnic and sectarian lines.
In 2013, journalist Robin Wright proposed in an article in the New York Times her proposal to divide five Arab countries: Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Libya into 14 countries. Interestingly, these projects did not exclude Saudi Arabia from the partition projects.
The basic relations between Iran and Syria were based in one of their most important aspects based on the hostility of both regimes to the Zionist entity, and therefore both politicians of the United States, the Zionist entity and even Europe consider Iran to be the biggest loser in the fall of the Syrian Baath regime.
On the other hand, Iranian politicians show remarkable calm and confidence that the developments of events in Syria will benefit the resistance to the Zionist entity and the American presence in Syria in the end, and perhaps their experience in Afghanistan resonated in this regard, as they were able to tame the Taliban movement and turn it, which is ideological hostile to the Shiites in general, into an ally that was able to completely expel the Americans and build strong relations with China and Russia in addition to Iran.
In any case, historical experiences prove that the resort of the Americans and the Zionists to scatter papers in any political entity does not always lead to the results expected by the Americans, as the civil war in Lebanon never led to the elimination of the Palestinian cause as desired by America and the Zionist entity, but ended to establish a major resistance such as Hezbollah in southern Lebanon that was able to defeat the Zionist entity and the army of the puppet in 2000, and the matter was repeated in 2006 and in the last war where the Zionist entity failed to survive. One kilometer inside Lebanon.