Historical Primer on the Syrian Catastrophe

One of the things to keep in mind about the Middle East is that this is a place which was always ruled imperially. What became nations in the 20th century were various administrative regions of the Romans, Persians, Byzantines, or Ottomans. To offer some context on the current situation in Syria, I’m going to try to provide some oversimplified background in this article.

The Arabs had their day after a civilizational collapse of both the Persian and Byzantine Empires which had been fighting each other to standstills for quite some time. That’s when the Arabs overran the Middle East, Persia, North Africa, and later the Iberian Peninsula, although some of this was also Berbers from the mountains.

Still, they’re tribal people with very bitter sectarian differences, mainly along the Sunni/Shia Islamic divide. The Arabs were booted from the commanding role they had in this religion by the Ottoman (Islamized Greek) Sultan who appointed himself Caliph of Islam and the Shah of Persia who viewed himself as the leader of all Shia Muslims. So, while they’d initially managed to overrun quite a swath, many eventually found themselves the residents of some imperial region of an empire that wasn’t Arab.

“Iran” was chosen as the name for the modern state in historical Persia since this means “land of the Aryans,” considered to be more inclusive of other ethnicities besides only Persians. To this day, the Sunni Arab monarchies are incredibly suspicious of Persians trying to reestablish their Shia empire, especially those such as Saudi Arabia which have large Shia minorities.

In Saudi Arabia, which would be the equivalent of calling the UK “Windsor Britain” or Spain “Bourbon Iberia,” the Shia dwell in the major oil producing region. The House of Saud is paranoid that it’ll be overthrown by the Iranians using disgruntled Shia and other ambitious tribes. This is crucial for understanding why they’d agree to what happened in Iran’s client state, Syria, despite the disastrous consequences for other Arabs. The House of Saud fears this vulnerability more than it cares about every single Palestinian life.

While the Persians or the Europeans (both have a common Aryan origin) have reconstituted their power in various forms for millennia, the Arabs never really have. The Ottomans are basically viewed by all as a curse. The Turks (Mongol/European blend) didn’t really exist as an ethnicity until relatively recently in the human timeline, although the Ottomans were quite distinct from the other Turkic groups stretching all the way across Central Asia to Xinjiang in China.

The Middle East is all the more complicated because there are Christians along with other various sects and ethnic groups such as the Kurds. Moreover, some outside powers have long histories in the region, such as the French who were recognized as protectors of Christians in places like Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, along with the Russians who were able to extract a similar status from the Ottomans after inflicting a major defeat. The Ottomans and Persians would also do this to each other with their respective branches of Islam.

These various imperial regions eventually found themselves under the sway of Britain and France. The British had managed to weaponize the Arabs against the Ottomans in World War One by lying to them that this would be the path to an independent Arab destiny.

In return for bringing the United States into World War One on behalf of the UK, the Rothschilds were promised Palestine as a place for a new Jewish homeland after Germany’s ally the Ottoman Empire was dissolved following their defeat. Palestine had been under Ottoman rule for centuries.

If you talk to Arabs, many will admit that they can’t get their act together as a collective. The modern attempt to overcome this challenge was the secular, pan-Arab Ba’ath movement. While they never united the Arab world, this style of government proved to be a major impediment to the modern state of Israel when it was forced on the Arabs because fractious entities were able to present coherent military opposition.

The Arab states that emerged out of the Ottoman Empire were set up despite the tribal nature of the Arabs and the fact that different ethnicities were also a part of these countries along with the Sunni vs Shia issues. Under imperial rule, no consensus needed to be reached between these various groups as they were ruled by a higher party. For example, under Ottoman rule in Iraq the Kurds, Shia, and Sunni were administered separately.

When the nation of Iraq was contrived, a monarchy was instituted which ended up being executed and replaced eventually by Saddam Hussein. A Ba’ath strongman like this was the only way such a powder keg could function without getting lit, which is why we saw similar characters in Muammar Qaddafi (not to be conflated with the Ba’ath party itself), and Hafez Al-Assad. The Soviet Union backed them, but the Russian Federation wasn’t in any shape to save Saddam or Qaddafi, although with Qaddafi this was a turning point in Putin’s public rhetoric.

Hafez passed away in 2000, but his eldest had perished in an accident leaving a younger son to succeed him, an unlikely optometrist name Bashar. When the regime change operation got around to Bashar and was on the verge of success, Putin staged a dramatic intervention to turn the tide of the conflict along with Iran which delivered massive support in terms of ground combat and other logistics.

The reason these countries with secular strongmen were regime-changed is that they were a sharp contrast to Jordan, which is an utter puppet state completely reliant on American aid and Egypt, which would also collapse without enormous American bribes to cooperate with Israel.

Moreover, the sectarian fracture points within both Syria and Iraq meant that once the strongman who led them was removed, both former entities would be too riven with various conflicts which could be stoked and funded by ZOG to ever produce coherent opposition to Israel’s genocides and expansion again. So, even though the Russians and Iranians were able to team up to thwart the first attempt, ZOG never abandoned the strangulation of Syria and proceeded to prepare the next attempt on the Syrian territory it occupied in violation of international law.

Erdogan of Turkey also has neo-Ottoman ideas despite the low average IQ of Turks in Anatolia. The Ottoman days of Islamized Europeans aren’t coming back. Still, he’s afflicted with paranoia over the Kurds and wants a buffer zone in the former Syria, which led him to help prep the coup. This was essentially stabbing Iran and Russia in the back.

Many of us watched the culmination of these efforts with dismay on Sunday. I’ll try to do a post-mortem in my next article and discuss the potential ramifications because they’re rather alarming and seemed to be timed right as Trump is taking office.