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> Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Europe, US and Turkey was the big alliance which tried to take down Syria. This isn't true - they have all backed different factions in

by nikcub 9y ago

> Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Europe, US and Turkey was the big alliance which tried to take down Syria. This isn't true - they have all backed different factions in the conflict against the Syrian government, against ISIS and today against one another in Idlib. Assuming they defeated the Syria government this conflict was always going to split down the differing interests between the Saudis and Qataris The succinct way (as always, this stuff is a lot more complicated than surface reporting) Qatar are the largest foreign opposition backers in Syria and supported in order the Army of Conquest and today Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) The Saudi's are likely the second largest foreign backers in Syria and started out supporting FSA and other groups but today have their own umbrella group called Ahrar al-Sham. HTS and Ahrar al-Sham have been in conflict for some time now and in all out war for some months now in Idlib (would always eventually happen - they're just squabbling over a lot less today) The USA, Russia and Turkey all have their own groups that they support but the alliances have almost always fallen along axis of Turkey-Qatar on one side and Saudi-Jordan-UAE-USA on the other What the OP article has left out is the conflict in Libya which makes this split a lot clearer. Qatar backed the Islamist group that took over a lot of Libya. In the new civil war (the one that no one cares about) the Saudi's and former Gadaffi loyalists have formed an anti-Islamist alternate government. The UAE and Egypt have sent fighter jets to bomb the Qatari-backed side in this conflict[0][1] It was a big deal in the Arab world (and I can't believe it isn't mentioned in the NYTimes piece) when militants raised a Qatari flag over Ghadaffi's palace - that was a "holy shit that could be us next" moment for many of these Arab nations and hardened their opposition to Qatar[2] Also only vaguely mentioned in the article is that Qatar and Kuwait are a huge source of the financing for ISIS. The governments there may not have an official position of supporting ISIS - but they sure as hell aren't doing much to stop the flow of money from Kuwaiti and Qatari citizens to ISIS[3] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/26/united-arab-emirates-bombing-raids-libyan-militias https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/26/united-arab-em... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/26/qatar-troops-libya-rebels-support https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/26/qatar-troops-l... [2] http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/raising-of-qatar-s-flag-in-libya-was-an-eerie-moment-1.2042345 http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/raising-of-qatar-s-flag-... [3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/kuwait/11077537/How-our-allies-in-Kuwait-and-Qatar-funded-Islamic-State.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/kuwait/...

hitekker 9y ago
A well thought-out and researched response to a breathless conspiracy theory. Nicely done.
- ben_w 9y ago
  From here, I can’t tell which is the conspiracy theory and which (if any) is the truth. (I wonder if my complete lack of clue about what is plausible in this context is a common theme amongst conspiracy theory believers?)
  - ptaipale 9y ago
    When someone writes about "a big alliance", which however is not evidenced by any public formal contracts of alliance, that is a fairly good indicator that a theory could be considered conspiratorial.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      In this thread, both the conspiracist and the "conventional wisdom" rebuttalist seem to be talking about big alliances? As anyone who has tried to get anything done on multiple continents knows, any complicated goal (e.g., build a multinational pipeline through remote and wildly insecure areas) will tend to lose out to the interests of locals. A necessary but insufficient condition for success of such goals is to spend enough to make locals' interests coincide with one's own. The difficulties faced by this hypothetical pipeline lead one to doubt its construction would profit in the long run. The advantage of the USA military-industrial complex is that they actually DGAF what happens as a result of all of our profligate and evil war spending. The spending itself is the goal, and they're just as happy to siphon off a stream of resources supporting ISIS in Syria as off some other stream supporting Kurds in northern Iraq. That's why our international policy (and the media narrative carefully curated to provide cover for it) is so schizophrenic. We believe in democracy!/Down with Morsi!/We DGAF!/War! That is a big conspiracy, but nobody wants to talk about that.
  - dalbasal 9y ago

by nikcub 9y ago

hitekker 9y ago

A well thought-out and researched response to a breathless conspiracy theory. Nicely done.

ben_w 9y ago
From here, I can’t tell which is the conspiracy theory and which (if any) is the truth. (I wonder if my complete lack of clue about what is plausible in this context is a common theme amongst conspiracy theory believers?)
- ptaipale 9y ago
  When someone writes about "a big alliance", which however is not evidenced by any public formal contracts of alliance, that is a fairly good indicator that a theory could be considered conspiratorial.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    In this thread, both the conspiracist and the "conventional wisdom" rebuttalist seem to be talking about big alliances? As anyone who has tried to get anything done on multiple continents knows, any complicated goal (e.g., build a multinational pipeline through remote and wildly insecure areas) will tend to lose out to the interests of locals. A necessary but insufficient condition for success of such goals is to spend enough to make locals' interests coincide with one's own. The difficulties faced by this hypothetical pipeline lead one to doubt its construction would profit in the long run. The advantage of the USA military-industrial complex is that they actually DGAF what happens as a result of all of our profligate and evil war spending. The spending itself is the goal, and they're just as happy to siphon off a stream of resources supporting ISIS in Syria as off some other stream supporting Kurds in northern Iraq. That's why our international policy (and the media narrative carefully curated to provide cover for it) is so schizophrenic. We believe in democracy!/Down with Morsi!/We DGAF!/War! That is a big conspiracy, but nobody wants to talk about that.
- dalbasal 9y ago