The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

I wonder what the difference between Asian tigers and Middle East shitholes is.  Asian tigers started off their ascent as unabashed dictatorships as well, but somewhere along the way at least some of them became real democracies without much bloodshed.

Asian cultures generally don't feel the need to elevate grievance and hostility to a religious obligation.

[Razgovory]

I wonder what the difference between Asian tigers and Middle East shitholes is.  Asian tigers started off their ascent as unabashed dictatorships as well, but somewhere along the way at least some of them became real democracies without much bloodshed.

Asian cultures generally don't feel the need to elevate grievance and hostility to a religious obligation.

You have kin in that sort of neighborhood, so I ask you, do they have tribes and clans like in the Middle East?

One factor may be oil.  It is my understanding that easily acquired valuable natural resources can severely retard economic development.  A retarded economic development can hamper political development. 

Dubai has become something of an exception where far sighted political leadership has created a entrepot type economy.  I would like to mention that many East Asian countries have failed to build decent economies or only have done so recently.  The wealthy Asian tigers is recent phenomenon.  For a long time S Korea was dictatorship with a weak economy.  China was of course a basket case economically for a long time and still has a corrupt dictatorship.

[Admiral Yi]

You have kin in that sort of neighborhood, so I ask you, do they have tribes and clans like in the Middle East?

Nothing like the ME, insofar as their are no clan leaders that dispense judgements and hand out patronage.

Fun fact: there are more than one clan for most family names in Korea (I think there are 7 Kims for example), but only one Moon clan.  So I'm related to God. 

For a long time S Korea was dictatorship with a weak economy.

S Korea has enjoyed a phenomenal growth rate (starting at a very low base of course) from the very beginning of independence, including under the military dictatorships.

[jimmy olsen]

Washington Post says Assad's forces have lost a thousand men in the last two weeks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrian-casualties-surge-as-jihadists-consolidate/2014/07/28/cc8b305c-1679-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html

BEIRUT — More than 2,000 Syrians — almost half of them pro-government forces — have been killed in just under two weeks of fighting in Syria, marking one of the worst death tolls in the country's three-year civil war, opposition activists said Monday.

The reports reflect a recent surge in deadly attacks by the al-Qaeda-breakaway Islamic State group targeting President Bashar al-Assad's forces, signaling shifting priorities as Sunni militants seek to consolidate their hold on territory and resources in northern Syria.

Forces loyal to Assad had gained momentum in the fighting with rebels seeking to topple him from power, with infighting between the Islamic extremists and more moderate anti-Assad groups also hurting the rebel cause.

But a string of recent setbacks for Assad's forces at the hands of the Islamic State threatens to overturn government successes, pitting the army against a formidable force that now controls large chunks of territory in the country's north and in neighboring Iraq.

"Now that they've mopped up rebel resistance to them in the east, the Islamic State can turn to the regime," said Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on militant factions in Syria and Iraq. "The assault against the regime was inevitable."

The recent attacks came after Assad was reelected last month to a third, seven-year term in a vote that was confined to government-controlled areas and dismissed by the opposition and its Western allies. In his inauguration speech July 16, he declared victory and praised his supporters for "defeating the dirty war."

Since then, Islamic State fighters have attacked army positions in three provinces in northern and central Syria. In the past week alone, the militants captured a government-controlled gas field and two major army bases.

More than 300 soldiers, guards and workers at the Shaer gas field were reported killed in a three-day militant offensive. The army recaptured Shaer over the weekend.

Militants last week also overran the sprawling Division 17 military base in northern Raqqah province, killing at least 85 soldiers. Amateur videos posted online by activists showed more than a dozen beheaded bodies in a busy square said to be in Raqqah. Some of the heads were placed on a nearby fence, where at least two headless bodies were crucified.

On Sunday, the militants seized the army's Regiment 121 at Maylabieh in the northern province of Hasakah after a three-day battle.

Beyond Syria, the Islamic State fighters have seized large swaths of land in northern and western Iraq and have declared a self-styled caliphate across territory straddling the Iraq-Syria border.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 2,000 people have been killed since Assad's inauguration, nearly half of them soldiers and government-allied militiamen.

It did not provide a breakdown for the rest of the casualties, which would include civilians and opposition fighters.

The Syrian government has not reported on the heavy losses.

[CountDeMoney]

I still think ISIS sounds like some sort of evil comic-book cartoon baddies, run by Cobraheem-al-Commander.

[Valmy]

I just do not get modern warfare.  This is a battle for Syria's survival and Syria is a nation of over 20 million.  This is a fight to the last man here.  I mean Yugoslavia in 1940 had significantly less than that and they lost nearly 2 million killed fighting the Nazi occupation.  Now 1,000 is a rate of loss the Syrians cannot sustain?

[jimmy olsen]

I just do not get modern warfare.  This is a battle for Syria's survival and Syria is a nation of over 20 million.  This is a fight to the last man here.  I mean Yugoslavia in 1940 had significantly less than that and they lost nearly 2 million killed fighting the Nazi occupation.  Now 1,000 is a rate of loss the Syrians cannot sustain?

How many are loyal to the regime? 5 million?

Also, it has less to do with the raw numbers than the ability of Assad to equip and train his men. He might not have the money and material to do so at that rate.

[Razgovory]

You have kin in that sort of neighborhood, so I ask you, do they have tribes and clans like in the Middle East?

Nothing like the ME, insofar as their are no clan leaders that dispense judgements and hand out patronage.

Fun fact: there are more than one clan for most family names in Korea (I think there are 7 Kims for example), but only one Moon clan.  So I'm related to God. 

For a long time S Korea was dictatorship with a weak economy.

S Korea has enjoyed a phenomenal growth rate (starting at a very low base of course) from the very beginning of independence, including under the military dictatorships.

I thought that economy of S. K was only little better then N.K till it rocketed up at the end of the 1960's.

[jimmy olsen]

Considering the intensity of the fighting that's a really bad ratio for the government.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/syrian-state-media-reports-car-bomb-kills-24731329

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said about 1,240 soldiers and other Assad loyalists have been killed in the past 10 days in northern Syria.

They are among more than 1,800 people killed in the same period — a record number of deaths since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, according to Rami Abdurrahman, the Observatory's director.

[PJL]

Well at least the Syrian army seem to actually fighting the rebels rather than running away.

Russian trained armed forces 1 - US trained armed forces 0.

[Razgovory]

I just do not get modern warfare.  This is a battle for Syria's survival and Syria is a nation of over 20 million.  This is a fight to the last man here.  I mean Yugoslavia in 1940 had significantly less than that and they lost nearly 2 million killed fighting the Nazi occupation.  Now 1,000 is a rate of loss the Syrians cannot sustain?

Well the Croats were running death camps, that probably boosts the number quite a bit.

[jimmy olsen]

Fucked up
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/29/336228277/photos-from-syria-may-show-killing-on-an-industrial-scale

For Two Years, He Smuggled Photos Of Torture Victims Out Of Syria

by Tom Bowman
July 29, 2014 4:55 AM ET

4 min 28 sec

Warning: This report contains descriptions and an image that could disturb some readers.

The savage and protracted conflict in Syria has left more than 170,000 dead. Now, there are allegations of torture and killing of political prisoners opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Those allegations appear to be supported by evidence: tens of thousands of photographs.

The man who says he took the pictures worked as a military police photographer for the Assad regime and defected last year.

The photos show victims bearing the marks of beatings and torture: eyes gouged out, burn marks or deep wounds. Each corpse is accompanied by a white card with numbers written on it — in death, no names, only numbers. In some pictures there are more than a dozen bodies, naked in the dirt. Some of the dead are children, under the age of 18, starved to death.

The man who took many of these pictures wears a baseball cap and large tinted glasses during a press event at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. He goes by the name Caesar to protect his identity. He also didn't want his voice to be recorded. Caesar recalls a time when his job was normal.

"I used to take pictures of regular accidents: somebody drowned, there's a burning building, something like that," Caesar says through his interpreter, an advocate for the Syrian opposition. "That was my regular routine."

He says there were occasional photos of dead prisoners. That number quickly grew to dozens, and then hundreds, as opposition to Assad intensified.

"I've never seen anything like this in my life. There are pictures of children, there are pictures of the elderly, and there's a picture of a woman," Caesar says. "And at times I would actually see pictures of my own neighbors and some people from my own village."

He says he wanted to keep records so families would know what happened. But he never contacted anyone.

"I was terrified. I couldn't reach out to any of them," he says.

Eventually, Caesar says his conscience couldn't bear the work. He contacted a member of the opposition, saying he wanted to defect. He was urged to stay, and collect evidence.

This is one of the some 55,000 images the former Syrian military police photographer known as Caesar smuggled out of the country between 2011 and 2013. The regime used numbers — written on white cards and sometimes directly on the skin — to identify the dead, which branch of the Syrian government had held them, and when they died.
Courtesy of Syrian Emergency Task Force

Caesar says he began smuggling out thumb drives of the pictures he took with a team of photographers between the fall of 2011 and the summer of 2013: some 55,000 photographs of nearly 11,000 people, all photographed at a military facility in Damascus.

The Syrian regime says the pictures are fake. But . And now the FBI is examining the pictures, too.

Stephen Rapp is the State Department's lead official on war crimes. He told NPR in May that .

"This represents killing on an industrial scale, but not just killing — the most gruesome sorts of acts. It's like the Nazis keeping track of the people that they've killed in the Holocaust," Rapp said. "We're talking here about a volume of material that's almost impossible to imagine that it could be created out of whole cloth."

Rapp said these pictures — should they be authenticated by the U.S. — could be used as a basis for war crimes charges against members of the Syrian regime.

"It may not happen immediately, but that expectation is there," he said.

The man who interpreted for Caesar is Mouaz Moustafa. He is a member of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nonprofit group seeking support for the moderate Syrian opposition. He hopes the pictures and Caesar's visit to Washington will focus attention on what's going on inside Syria.

"There needs to be pressure from all the free world and the international community. In modern history we see quite a few 'never again' moments," Moustafa says. "And here not only do we see a never again moment, but we see a never again moment that continues to this day while we all sit here."

So far the Obama administration has slowly been increasing military support for the Syrian opposition. But they're still seeking congressional action to do more.

Meanwhile, Caesar is scheduled to hold private meetings this week with lawmakers and State Department officials, as well as the FBI, who want to learn more about the photos.

[LaCroix]

i think assad's regime is better than the alternative at this point

[jimmy olsen]

I prefer the Kurds

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-conflict-syrian-and-turkish-kurds-unite-to-battle-isis-threat--we-shoot-them-like-sheep-but-next-day-double-the-number-return-9634009.html

[jimmy olsen]

Rebels advancing on the Hama military airport (I assume they're FSA since ISIS isn't mentioned)

http://www.outlookindia.com/news/article/Syria-Rebels-Advance-on-Key-Airport-in-Hama/852159