Inkwell Institute

Middle East Desk

Syria?  Oh yeah that scandal from 2 years ago.  Sadly it has slipped from the headlines basically because there is more political gain out of Benghazi.  There is no more GOP sprinting to the cameras to get in a dig at the president’s manhood….all we have now is just an endless conflict that few care about….at least for now.

Since I do love international relations I spend a lot of time reading and analyzing situations that most avoid……I do it so my readers don’t have to and they can still remain informed……You Are welcome!

Now back to Syria…….there have been a few stories that have good news attached to it….like that about 90% of the chemical weapons are being destroyed as I type.  On the other hand….the government has won some decisive victories all over the country…..leading the US to decide to give missiles to the rebels to try and equalize the sides of the conflict.

Personally, I think it is a horrible idea……when all this is history, how many of those weapons could be used against the US and her interests?  You know kind of like what happened in Afghanistan once we pulled out after the soviets went home.

And then there is the rebels that are affiliated with AQ…………..what about those guys?

Really crappy news has been reported….well not so much here in the good old US of A………….

Rebel-on-rebel fighting in Syria’s oil-rich Deir Ezzor Province continues to escalate, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) seems to be getting the better of its rivals overwhelmingly, and making more territorial gains.

Fighting in the province kicked off early this month, with an attack on rival rebel faction Jabhat al-Nusra in Bukamal. That city was particularly important for AQI, because it includes an Iraq border crossing.

AQI’s expanding Deir Ezzor corridor gives them a virtually contiguous territory from Abu Ghraib, just 20 miles from the Baghdad, to the northern Syria province of Aleppo.

AQI seems to be fighting less and less with the Syrian military itself and focusing on the other rebels, who are both closer targets and usually holding more strategic prizes. As the war drags on, it seems AQI is carving out a de facto country of its own in the area.

Well the good news that is in the Eastern part of the country……a minor setback, right?

What’s happening elsewhere?  how about in the South?

Officials with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), one of the US-subsidized moderate rebel factions, warns that al-Qaeda faction Jabhat al-Nusra is gaining major ground in the area around the southern city of Deraa.

The Nusra Front has been directly challenging the FSA in Deraa, along the Jordanian border, capturing an FSA commander who has since confessed to deliberately throwing a battle over a nearby town to the Assad government to prevent Nusra keeping it.

The FSA, of course, sees an easy solution in having the US give them even more money and better weapons to fight Nusra, though since they continue to lose ground to pretty much every other rebel faction the gravy train may be drying up.

The dominant rebel faction early in the civil war, the FSA has since been supplanted by myriad Islamist factions, and Western nations looking to get in on the war have been courting groups like the Islamic Front as more likely proxies in recent days, reflecting their view that Islamist groups that are at the very least not formally al-Qaeda backed are the closest they can get to “usable” allies.

OOPS!  Things are disintegration quicker than we are told…….what to do?  What to do?

Now that is a difficult one to answer…..but I can tell you this……ignoring the problem will NOT make it go away…..we destroyed the AQ sanctuary in Afghanistan……a bad loss for the extremist…..but it looks like they are finding a new one……and as usual we will react after the fact…….we are opening a large can of worms.

Since American politics has become pathetic and silly I will focus on news….not the moronic theatrics of the pundits.