How has Syrian conflict lasted 6 years?

Minoosh

Penultimate Amazing
Minoosh
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It's too early to make a lot of sense out of the gruesome chemical attack in Syria that killed a number of children. Assad denies Syrian forces are responsible. What I see (sorry to sound so cynical) does not have the staged look of other child casualties. Anyone can put up pictures of bloody children and get sympathy, but these kids were not bleeding. They probably suffocated. Footage of people being hosed down also indicates the presence of poison.

Apologies if someone else has started a thread, but here is a "news hook" that allows me to ask a question that has been bothering me. The conflict in Syria has been going on for 6 years? With Syrian forces, Russians and Hezbollah all "helping"? How is there anyone left alive in Syria, how is Assad a "strong man" if he can't quell an uprising in 6 freakin' years?

I don't know if this is "politics," and there may already be a thread elsewhere. If so *mods if so please move this*.
 
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The "news hook" happens like in similar situations right when a major international event starts, in this case the "Future of Syria" EU conference with Turkey refusing to take part. Some more local remarkable timing as well, like the annual Hama offensive of the Idlib "rebels" led by Al Qaeda totally backfiring over the weekend.

We are working on the particular event over at A Closer Look On Syria (warning, contains unpleasant imagery).

For bigger picture (also unpleasant), read my countless (ok, 850) posts over there.
 
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I am a bit skeptical of who is the origin of the attack or even if it is a chemical attack. The reason for that is simple, if it was a sustained campaign to demoralize and use chemical, 3 attacks in 3 years, is really not much beyond drawing the attention of the international community. There is nothing Assad can gain, pretty much it is a lose situation. And he could get a similar effect without repercussion by sending normal bombs or missiles, and just pretend they missed a target or call the civilian dead collateral damage. So there is really nothing to gain by using *sparse* (3 in 3 years) chemical weapons attacks deliberately. It does not even seem each time a strategic target, barely a hundred civilians, not even a rebel outpost or anything targeted.

IMO far more likely are mistake : chemical munition mistaken for normal one from greener troops, or the other side killing their own to draw publicity and outrage.
 
Simple. Neither side could gain a military advantage over the other. Stalemate resulted.
IMHO the use of gas was an attempt to break the stalemate, but the international outcry was great, and IMHO Russia told Assad to cut it out,it was embarrassing them.
 
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Aepervius said:
I am a bit skeptical of who is the origin of the attack or even if it is a chemical attack.
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I have no idea what to make of this.

But my original question stands. Six years to put down a rebellion? You think it might have been chemical, but accidental? If randomly killing off a hundred or so people benefits Assad I'm surprised this conflict wasn't over long ago.
 
Minoosh said:
I have no idea what to make of this.

But my original question stands. Six years to put down a rebellion? You think it might have been chemical, but accidental? If randomly killing off a hundred or so people benefits Assad I'm surprised this conflict wasn't over long ago.
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Both side are doing alleged attacks. Even looking at the page EC linked, that's not many and the alleged use are various from Sarin (mostly alleged use by Russian forces), Mustard gas and Chlorine. Yet look at the pityful number, even in number of victims, for something which is far more likely to encourage the international community to intervene than a simple conflict.

Really with the low usage this sees, and there is really not much strategical usage from the reported page even if they were really ALL attacks (and again they are alleged from both side). And look at the number of attacks with "no death - gas mask used" or "no death some report of suffocation".

That is why I question this is really a systematic campaign by Assad (or the russian or the rebels). This sound almost random in nature, and far more important : not effective, comapred to the 400.000 casualties so far, a cursory scanning does not make come at 0.25% of total casualties. ETA: compare with Halabja, or WW1 attacks. Either the people using them are utterly incompetent, or you can strike the "alleged" out and replace with "mistaken" or "fake".
 
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Somebody once said on TV that the conflict in Syria was caused by a dispute as to whether a gas and oil pipeline should go from Qatar through Syria, or a pipeline from Iran through Syria. That seems a lame excuse for a terrible war to me, and it interferes with international trade.

There is hard documentary evidence that the chemicals involved in that 2013 chemical attack atrocity in Syria were made in Turkey, including information coming from Porton Down, and not from the Syrian army. There is evidence that these Al Qaeda groups and Al Qaeda affiliates have been manufacturing chemical weapons. It's plausible, as the Russians and Syrians say, that this recent chemical disaster was caused by a bomb that hit a chemical weapons depot of Isis, or Al Nusra. Take nothing on appearances, take everything on the evidence.

BBC officials are biased, and they support Sunni Islamic extremists, and they think there should be a political transition to God knows what, where there is no place for Assad. I don't like the way Idi Amin was given asylum in Saudi Arabia, or that we are supposed to attack Iran in order to secure Israel.
 
Henri McPhee said:
Somebody once said on TV that the conflict in Syria was caused by a dispute as to whether a gas and oil pipeline should go from Qatar through Syria, or a pipeline from Iran through Syria.
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It's one more example in the long line of blatant and increasingly pathetic attempts to blame everything on the evil WestTM. The problem is that some gullible people buy this stuff.

There is hard documentary evidence that the chemicals involved in that 2013 chemical attack atrocity in Syria were made in Turkey, including information coming from Porton Down, and not from the Syrian army. There is evidence that these Al Qaeda groups and Al Qaeda affiliates have been manufacturing chemical weapons. It's plausible, as the Russians and Syrians say, that this recent chemical disaster was caused by a bomb that hit a chemical weapons depot of Isis, or Al Nusra. Take nothing on appearances, take everything on the evidence.
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This is all speculation. There is hard evidence however that Russia initially denied any of its aircraft were anywhere near Idlib when the attack took place. One day later they're proudly claiming they struck a Sarin manufacturing facility. Either their command and control is at least eighty years behind the times or they're engaged in desperate damage control.

Furthermore, if the rebels did have a stockpile of Sarin big enough to create a disaster of this scale when stockpiles get struck and release is much more contained than with mortars or artillery shells, it begs the question how come they didn't use it against the Syrian army and their allies in a much more destructive way by now.

To put it in a meme: transparent lie is transparent.

McHrozni
 
There sure are a lot of Warhawks wanting to pin the blame on Assad and urge the US to get further mired in this conflict. Hopefully, the US doesn't become further involved in another lost cause.
 
Minoosh said:
It's too early to make a lot of sense out of the gruesome chemical attack in Syria that killed a number of children. Assad denies Syrian forces are responsible. What I see (sorry to sound so cynical) does not have the staged look of other child casualties. Anyone can put up pictures of bloody children and get sympathy, but these kids were not bleeding. They probably suffocated. Footage of people being hosed down also indicates the presence of poison.

Apologies if someone else has started a thread, but here is a "news hook" that allows me to ask a question that has been bothering me. The conflict in Syria has been going on for 6 years? With Syrian forces, Russians and Hezbollah all "helping"? How is there anyone left alive in Syria, how is Assad a "strong man" if he can't quell an uprising in 6 freakin' years?

I don't know if this is "politics," and there may already be a thread elsewhere. If so *mods if so please move this*.
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The US has been at war in Afghanistan for 15 years and that shows no signs of stopping.
 
ponderingturtle said:
The US has been at war in Afghanistan for 15 years and that shows no signs of stopping.
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I guess my point of comparison is Egypt where the dictator fled, who was replaced by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was replaced by the military, and Mubarak served 6 years in prison, this whole sequence of events being roughly correlated with the entire Syrian disaster.

Perhaps leading the U.S. to believe Assad might leave on his own?

Or die of natural causes as it seems Mubarak is about to?

I read about Assad's airstrike allegation - pretty awful in its own right as hitting a chemical weapons facility with a bomb sounds extremely risky.

Is there no way out?

Usually I am not too affected by war scenes - for one thing, very few U.S. editors will print anything that might make their readers/viewers the least bit upset. I don't know when we got so squeamish. IMO it's good for Americans to see images from war zones. It's easy for Americans to beat the drum for war; we have not had one here for 150 years and are relatively isolated geographically.
 
dudalb said:
Simple. Neither side could gain a military advantage over the other. Stalemate resulted.
IMHO the use of gas was an attempt to break the stalemate, but the international outcry was great, and IMHO Russia told Assad to cut it out,it was embarrassing them.
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And Now Syria uses Gas again. I don't know what the hell is going on, since several sources have said Russia "Suggested" that Assad stop the use of gas
 
McHrozni said:
It's one more example in the long line of blatant and increasingly pathetic attempts to blame everything on the evil WestTM. The problem is that some gullible people buy this stuff.




McHrozni
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Funny, I heard the same theory that a pipeline was the REAL reason the US went into Afghanistan....
 
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