It’s been brewing for a long time, and it has come at a steep price in lives and limbs, but the Assad thugs, aka government of Syria, may be on the verge of losing the international PR game and what might be properly called a civil feakin war at this point:
(NPR) — With heavy machine gun fire in the background as he spoke from the Baba Amr section of Homs, Syrian citizen journalist and blogger Omar Shakir told Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne earlier today that “we are asking for [an] SOS” and help from the International Red Cross to stop what he said has been the deadly shelling of his city by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
In the past, especially held in the embrace of Cold War, middle eastern regimes could shell and starve their own cities with impunity. But that was then and this is now. There’s been a massive, grassroots uprising fueled in part by social media and the internet in general, which has toppled several nearby regimes of all sizes and shapes.
In ethnocentric western terms, it’s sad to say, but few care much about Syria’s fate (They do care about the effect change there could have on any nearby oil producing nations or allies like Israel and Turkey). In the case of Iran, most of us wouldn’t mind seeing a more moderate and representative government. But because of the Ghawar oil fields, and Americans’ depdendence on them, many in the US could suffer 1970s style pain at the gas pump if there was any significant change in Saudi Arabia at all.
I used to visit Syria regularly years ago, back before sanctions kicked in that made doing business there nearly impossible. It was a nice place full of friendly people, despite its poverty. And it was relatively free, unless one was doing something political that the government didn’t like (and most people didn’t). You could travel freely, sit down anywhere for a nice meal and a few drinks, without any hassle whatsoever.
Some rather dubious news sources have said that most of the violence in Syria has come from “foreign mercenaries”, implying that the CIA has yet more blood on its hands.
The motivation (destabilizing Iran’s closest regional ally) and means ($$$) give this accusation some plausibility, but so far the evidence seems conspicuously absent. Does anybody here have any info on such claims?