Syria Update Have spent most of the day with Syrians who have crossed into Turkey. Many stories of war. Every Syrian I speak with -- Sunni, Shia, Alawite, Kurdish, various sorts of Christians -- all keep hammering two commonalities: 1) Whatever you think you know about the war, you are probably wrong. 2) Al Qaeda are complete savages. They will take ANYTHING over al Qaeda, and after that, most of the choices are bad, but not as bad as AQ. For instance, Christians who support Assad often do not like him, but he is the best of the bad for them. Other Christians do not support Assad. Not even all Alawite support Assad. Christians get along with most of the Muslims, but of course nobody gets along with AQ, who has been murdering EVERYONE. Al Nusra (definite enemy of the USA) is seen as better than AQ, but along AQ lines. Many Syrians have told me they do not like Nusra, but they will take Nusra over AQ any day. FSA (Free Syrian Army) is a mixed bag. A Christian told me today that FSA badly damaged a church in Allepo, which a news organization refused to publish photos because they do not want to damage FSA because they are fighting AQ and the Regime. He said other groups of FSA heard about the church damage, and became angry that other FSA people damaged a church, and so the angry FSA kicked out the FSA guys who did the church damage. Of the various sorts of Christians (such as Syriac, Assyrian, Arab, Armenian), there is no monolith. Syriacs and Armenians have mutual animosity, for instance. It only gets more complicated, so dont think I can suddenly clear it all up. Allepo has been divided into East and West. The eastern side is controlled by FSA and ISIS (AQ), who are fighting each other. The western side is controlled by the Assad regime. And so all three groups are fighting each other, not to mention Nusra. In Allepo there is little food, and almost no electricity. The fighting now is worse than ever. AQ will kill anyone taking photos. AQ is wearing suicide belts in public, and many of the AQ recruits are teenaged boys. That might sound familiar to Iraq combat vets...in fact, much of what I am hearing would be very familiar to Iraq war vets who served during 2005 or later, but not so much to Afghanistan vets. For instance, AQ comes in and is gushingly friendly -- as they so often were in Iraq -- and soon begin the demands for lower prices, then free goods, and finally they become a battalion of serial killers, taking anything they want, including people. Some Syrians wish we would have intervened, though most seem to believe that now is too late. The house burned down. One man today -- he just got to Turkey a couple days ago from Allepo -- said he hopes we destroy the Assad military, even if that means collateral damage; after all, the damage being done by Assad is far greater than any collateral we would cause, according to him.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 16:41:54 +0000
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