A disagreement with @Brown_Moses

NOTE:  After point #6, this post cites a fake twitter account.  I'm leaving it as it is as a warning to others to be careful of sources.  Unfortunately the claim about progress in Daraa at the time of writing must stand.

@Brown_Moses (Eliot Higgins), a genuine expert on arms identification in Syria, speaks of the 'Aleppoisation of Southern Syria'.   By this he means that 

Since the beginning of this year opposition groups in the south of Syria have begun to make significant advances...  Previously poorly equipped, the arrival of weapons purchased from Croatia by Saudi Arabia... has appeared to play a major part in these advances, with many of these major gains accompanied by videos of these weapons in use. http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-opposition-in-daraa-deploys.html

I don't know this to be false, but I do believe it's unfounded.   This matters.    Brown Moses' claims, despite their careful formulation and measured tone, suggest that the West & its allies are now stepping up to the plate and delivering serious military aid to the Syrian opposition:  journalists frequently take his observations to indicate a 'flood' of arms is reaching the rebels.   And the aid is said to make a big difference:  Brown Moses goes beyond identifying and tracking arms to an assessment of the military situation in the South.

The assessment is optimistic.  Croatian arms are said to have played a 'major part' in 'significant' advances, conjuring up prospects of a well-equipped push to greater and greater victories in the South and, one would have to expect, a powerful thrust towards Damascus.  This is the sort of picture that encourages commentators to worry more about the aftermath of the uprising - arms proliferation, creeping Islamist extremism - than about what's needed to counter Assad's murderous assaults right now.

What then of the basis for these attitudes, the notion that Croatian arms have opened the door to increasingly impressive victories?   I can't help thinking of George Bush's comical, infamous 'Mission accomplished".   Although there have indeed been some important successes in the South, especially in Daraa, Brown Moses' account rests on slender evidence.   Here's why:

1.   According to some Syrians,  the régime withdrew important forces, sometimes characterised as 'élite', around the time of the opposition victories.  This alone could almost explain the events.

2.   Brown Moses' account involves Croatian weapons as a sort of catalyst:  he thinks, not that they were sufficient on their own, but that they enabled the opposition to effect at least one important arms capture in the region.   But there is no direct evidence that Croatian arms were decisive in that role.   There are videos of Croatian arms in use, but none in which they clearly made the difference.   This compares with, for example, some video evidence from other areas which show captured armor playing a crucial part in the taking of important bases.

3.   The qualitative significance of the Croatian weapons is unclear.  Unlike some journalists, Brown Moses himself does not claim they are particularly 'advanced'.   But they're not.   There are no modern anti-tank weapons and the anti-aircraft MANPADS are of very limited use against anything but low-flying helicopters.   This doesn't itself preclude them being game-changers, but it diminishes the chances that they are.

4.   There is great uncertainty about the quantity of weapons that actually reached opposition hands.  Croatian weapons do appear frequently in videos, but not together in large numbers.   However they do appear in large numbers in a régime video - captured or intercepted.   So we know that not all the weapons got through, and we don't know how many were even sent across the Jordanian border.

5.   Equally important, we don't know how much ammunition was delivered with the weapons, or how quickly it has been expended.   Since we also haven't heard of any resupply, it's quite possible that the Croatian weapons have become less, not more useful as the fighting proceeds.  Brown Moses notes the recent arrival of some rocket launchers, but this of course tells us nothing about the replenishment of ammunition stocks.  There have been no reports of new ammunition shipments, and for some of the Croatian equipment, there might not be a lot of sources for resupply.  Since the Croatian government was apparently so alarmed by revelations of the shipments that it pulled its peacekeepers from the Golan, it's unlikely the channel remains open.

6.   Perhaps most telling, the progress that these weapons are supposed to have enabled, has not gone quite as expected.   In early April, there were predictions* (again, Brown Moses did not make them) that Daraa (the city, not the province) would soon fall and the road to Damascus would open.  Brown Moses' account does require, I think, a clear pattern of increasing successes.   But progress has slowed dramatically and the régime still has plenty of clout in the area.   One activist, @leeh786, paints an excruciatingly painful scene:

I'm sorry for my disappearance. Every day here just gets worse. The shelling and counter-assault by the regime on Daraa is intensifying.  Hence the reason why progress in Daraa has been slow lately... Along the border with Jordan 10 rotting corpses were found with their hands tied. 5 children, 1 old man, 1 middle-aged man and 3 females. Went past a village completely destroyed. Literally nothing left but rubble. A family refused to leave. Welcome to my once-beautiful Syria.  [22 April 2013]

The military aspect of this horror compares unfavourably with Aleppo, where the opposition seems to maintain an agonizingly slow but nevertheless distinct momentum.   So it is not clear that the effect Brown Moses attributes to Croatian arms actually exists.

Brown Moses, I repeat, could still be right, and I certainly don't question his motives.  It's also quite possible that, for a variety of reasons, the régime will eventually be defeated in the South.  But I do question the wisdom of too much enthusiasm about the Croatian arms and their effect.   We still hear, across Syria, opposition distress about arms supplies, and  especially of ammunition.   Given the uncertainties surrounding these supplies, even in the South, nothing should encourage overconfidence about the opposition's material strength.   Any suggestion that Croatian arms have put the opposition 'on a roll' could have truly disastrous consequences.

Al Qaeda, Jabhat al Nusra, and Syria's future

Someone in Iraq said something and someone in Syria said something else.  The Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda announced that Jabhat al Nusra (JAN) had 'merged' with then, and a Jabhat al Nusra spokesman made an ambiguous but vaguely positive response.  These announcements caused a great stir.  That's not just because of the Al Qaeda name, but also because Jabhat al Nusra has gone beyond words in its avowed intention to establish a radical Islamic state in Syria.

I can't evaluate Jabhat al Nusra's real intentions or the extent to which they've advanced them, much less what they would do after the fall of Assad.  I don't know what would be prudent vigilance against dangerous extremists, and what would be counterproductive over-reaction.  However I am sure about one thing:  JAN cannot take over a post-Assad Syria.  I know this from uncontroversial facts.

These are not facts about the uncertain situation inside Syria.  There, on the one hand, JAN is outnumbered there by the FSA and it's agreed that many JAN adherents joined to fight Assad, not to establish a Sunni extremist state.  (Some Sunni Islamist groups have emphatically rejected the merger announcement.)  On the other hand, no one can say whether JAN's forces would be willing to fight their current allies.  But I hope JAN would ask whether it could win such a fight.

However you assess the capacities of the FSA, it's clear that the international situation tells entirely against the prospects of a JAN victory.  That's because very thing which has blocked international aid against Assad, would favor international aid against JAN.   This holds whether you look at Syria's neighbors or at the non-regional powers.

The non-regional powers

These countries have either supported Assad or been deterred from opposing him due to obstruction in the UN and fears of arms proliferation.  The obstruction vanishes if JAN becomes the enemy.  China and Russia are deeply concerned about Islamic extremism - indeed this is one reason they support Assad - and would be delighted to see JAN crushed.  None of the me-too leftist states like Venezuela or Cuba or Vietnam would feel any differently.

The West, of course, is violently opposed to anything like JAN.  So are Shia Iran and its enemies, the Gulf States:  those who love to trace Al Qaeda back to Saudi Arabia need to remember that the Saudi régime has always been a prime Al Qaeda target.

The neighbors

What then of Syria's neighbors?  Israel needn't even be discussed.  In Lebanon, given Sunni support for the FSA, every faction including the most powerful, Hizbollah, is opposed to anything like JAN.  In Turkey, all the forces that make intervention currently problematic - the non-Muslim minorities, the Kurds, the military, the secularist opposition parties - are hostile to Islamist extremism.  Jordan's entire existence has been one long love affair with the West.  The government of Iraq is the prime enemy of JAN's Iraqi allies.

The consequences

Given the absolute unanimity and unity of nation-state opposition to JAN, it's not hard to see what would happen in the event of a conflict between JAN and the FSA.

Consider supply routes first.  JAN would have exactly one source of supply, its underground in Iraq.  However the FSA would have direct or indirect air support and in that sense complete mastery of the air.  This mastery would involve much more advanced air forces than Assad's; JAN's anti-aircraft resources would be utterly inadequate.  In these circumstances, there is no chance at all the JAN could retain control of border posts on the Iraq frontier.  This means that its sole source of supply would be cross-border smuggling, closely monitored by Western satellites and drones.  The seizures of régime arms that now provide much of the rebellion's material would have ended.  In these circumstances, adequate resupply would be impossible.

What support might the FSA expect?  Direct intervention on the ground would be possible though probably unwelcome.  But as far as equipment goes, pretty much anything useful would be available.  The one type of weapon the West does not want to provide, MANPADS (portable anti-aircraft missile systems) would offer no advantage in a fight with JAN, so the big source of arms proliferation fears becomes a non-issue.

In a confrontation with JAN, the FSA would benefit from advantages unimaginable today:  unlimited supplies of anything it liked and strong support on all of Syria's frontiers.  It would be fighting an adversary currently about one-third its size, cut off from advanced weapons and utterly lacking in reliable supply routes.  It would benefit from air superiority established by itself or, more likely, its allies.  All Syria's religious minorities would at least have to see the FSA as the lesser evil.

The idea that JAN, in these circumstances, had any chance of sustaining itself in Syria, let alone conquering the country, is a non-starter.  Its situation would be much worse than today's.  Internationally, it would face not only NATO or the West or some powerful neighbors but, effectively, the whole world.  It would not be attacking a hated dictatorship, but former allies that had overthrown a dictatorship.  It would be fighting, not in a region few nations care about like Somalia or Mali, but in a country to which the 'great powers' assign great importance.  Its well-informed enemies already have abundant resources and logistics in place - this is not Afghanistan.  It is awful to think of civil war following the fall of Assad, but hopefully these realities will prevent just such a conflict.

This is not speculative punditry but an inventory of the obvious.  It makes no arrogant assumptions about the hearts and minds of Syrians; it claims no insight into the corridors of power.  It builds on two things - the existence of the FSA and the long-standing, public, well-established policies of nation-states.  This seems a solid basis for optimism about the power of Al Qaeda in Syria.

A proxy war? The weapons of the Syrian revolution

Recently there have been claims that certain weapons, mostly from Croatia, are 'game-changers' for the Syrian resistance. I don't know what weapons fit that description, not only because I'm no military expert but also because it's unclear that the game has changed. For quite some time, hard-fought rebel advances have been punctuated by important successes and usually lesser reversals. Certain weapons beyond the ever-present assault rifles seem to have played a significant role in rebel victories. What do these weapons tell us about whether the Syrian revolution is fueled by US/Saudi/Qatari aid? Are they the equipment of a proxy war or a of a largely self-supplied revolution?

Here, not necessarily in order of importance, are the weapons:

• Tanks and an armored personnel carrier, the BMP-1. In many attacks on army bases and some strongly held urban positions, these vehicles seem to accomplish what small arms can't. Sometimes the break down barriers and shelter fighters. Much more often, they are deployed as mobile artillery pieces, destroying or degrading régime strongpoints.

• Self-propelled guns such as the Gvozdika. These are heavy artillery mounted on a tracked armored vehicle. They appear much less often than tanks, but with increasing frequency, and their fire is devastating - though limited numbers diminish that effect. There is also the Shilka, a tracked anti-aircraft gun system, sometimes used in urban settings.

• Heavy artillery, in 122mm and 130mm calibres. These field pieces are very useful but again limited in numbers, and harder to deploy than armored vehicles.

•  Recoilless rifles, including the ancient B10 and the more recent SPG-9. These are useful against tanks and lightly protected positions. They were in very widespread use long before the Croatian M60 model was spotted.

• Truck-mounted guns, 'technicals'. Light trucks carry everything from heavy machine guns and recoilless rifles to light anti-aircraft guns or BMP-1 cannons. Used everywhere to support infantry assaults and ambushes.

• Mortars, up to 160mm. These are widely used by both sides. They are inaccurate without spotters but can be fired in relative safety and reach behind fortified or strongly defended perimeters.

• Unguided rocket systems including the Type 63 multiple launcher and various S-5 launchers, as well as many home-made systems. These play somewhat the same role as mortars.

• Rocket-propelled grenade systems such as the ubiquitous RPG-9 and sometimes the more powerful RPG-29. There are also anti-tank rocket systems such as the Fagot and the Kornet, more advanced than the recently spotted M79 Osa from Croatia.

• IEDs, improvised explosive devices. These play a major role in ambushes and are crucial for disrupting régime supply lines.

MANPADS, portable anti-aircraft rocket systems, have attracted a lot of attention, but it's not clear whether they have conferred much of a strategic or tactical advantage.

If this list is a reasonable survey of the weapons that make a difference for the rebels, it also makes a point. In several categories - tanks and armored personnel carriers, self-propelled guns and heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and artillery - every single weapon was captured from the régime army. (IEDs, of course, are home-made.) In the other categories, even those which include weapons supplied by foreign powers, the preponderance of weapons were also captured. Most of the captures occurred before any analyst alleges that foreign-supplied weapons played an important role. The possible exceptions are anti-tank rocket systems, but a large proportion of these were obtained from non-state suppliers and smuggled in by the rebels themselves - this certainly holds for the most advanced models. As for MANPADS, no state is even contemplating providing them.

Those bound and determined to see the Syrian revolution as a proxy war can mutter all they like about game-changing arms deliveries and secret funding. Foreign military aid in one form or another (including from Syrian expatriates) no doubt has had an noticeable impact which might well increase. But the weapons evidence does not conjure up a proxy battle whose outcome is determined from outside. It tells of a revolution made and sustained by the Syrians themselves. Why then are so many so reluctant to acknowledge this?

The Big Arms Story: Is Syria flooded with advanced weapons?

Recently there has been much stir in the media about arms deliveries from Croatia to the Syrian rebels, apparently sponsored by the US and Saudi Arabia.  What follows attempts to put these deliveries into perspective.  It seems that their significance has been magnified beyond what the evidence will support.  Part of this is probably the normal excitement surrounding a discovery.  Part of it may be something worse, an attempt to scare Western powers from supplying the Syrian resistance.  Neither the quality nor the quantity of weapons delivered justifies any such reaction.

Quality

Some reports speak of 'advanced weapons' or make such a big deal of the story that they might as well be saying that.  Well the weapons are not particularly 'advanced'.  To the extent that they're reasonably current, it's not clear that matters much.

The two weapons systems most often cited are the M79 Osa anti-tank rocket system and the M60 recoilless rifle.  No one has claimed that the Osa is advanced.  Some say it can't penetrate the armor of modern tanks.  Perhaps some rounds developed for the system can do this, but none of the reports has claimed that such rounds were spotted or even that they exist.  As for the M60, it is about on a par with many other recoilless rifles, which don't seem to have 'advanced' very much since the 1950s.  (Here the caveat about modern rounds also applies.)  As for proliferation, in Syria and many other places there is no shortage of other models such as the SPG-9, often sighted in the hands of pirates and terrorists.

The other weapon most often mentioned is the RPG-22, another anti-tank rocket system.  This again is hardly spectacular, nor as advanced as other anti-tank systems frequently encountered such as the Kornet.

All these systems work pretty well in Syria because Syrian armor is on the whole not that advanced.  This means there is little incentive even to obtain the latest and greatest anti-tank systems - they wouldn't be worth the money.  That's another reason to tone down the proliferation hysteria.

What's remarkable here is that none of the reports indicate the arms shipments included any weapons that might indeed be 'game-changers', nor any that preoccupy the West.  These weapons fall into two categories, heavy artillery and advanced MANPADS, in sufficient quantity of course.  The MANPADS are what the West most fears getting into 'the wrong hands', and there's no chance that the CIA or the Saudis would underwrite their delivery.  So there isn't even a prospect that US/Saudi shipments from Croatia or anywhere else would include such material.

Quantity

Given that the quality of the weapons obtained is no 'game-changer',  intelligent fear-mongering will have to depend on the quantity of arms reaching rebel hands.  Much is made of the scale of the deliveries.  Rather less is made of the fact that they were discovered through Syrian government videos in which - according to one of the trackers -  "large quantities" of captured arms are displayed.

Here there seems to be a certain unwillingness to add 2 + 2.  If 'large quantities' were captured in one seizure - there may have been others - doesn't that raise some question of how much reached or was retained by the rebels?  Yet not one report has asked this.  In addition not one report has ventured any estimate at what proportion of the rebels' requirements - either at current or at 'game-changing' levels - the deliveries would represent.  Probably that's because no one has the slightest idea.  The conflict is widespread, utterly decentralized, and diversified; it's hard to see how one would even go about arriving at such an estimate.  What's pretty clear is that the rebels are having trouble both advancing and holding ground, and no explanation seems much more plausible than inadequate ammunition supplies.

In other words, there really is no reason to suppose that the arms-deliveries from Croatia amount to either a 'flood' or a 'game-changer'.  Indeed given uncertainties about quantity, it's hard to assess their significance for the conflict.  It's easier to judge their implications for proliferation - little to none.  In fact the West's panic about arms getting into the hands of terrorists is a little odd given that the three major terrorist attacks in the West (not to mention almost all minor ones) involved no weapons at all.  Think of 9-11, the London July 7th bombings, and the Madrid attacks

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Propriety

Should the arms have been delivered?  Should they have been tracked?  Here are a few things to consider.

Legality:  Contrary to numerous suggestions, the deliveries violated no embargo or law.  Readers interested in the details will find that the dark talk about  it being 'illegal' deliver to 'non-state parties' is flat-out nonsense.

Given the legality of the shipments, reference to them as 'arms trafficking', which strongly suggests illegality, is a smear.  These are the same people who refer to the rebels 'looting' rather than simply capturing Syrian army supplies.  It's hard to imagine them applying the same term to the arms captures of nice white armies.

Worsening:  Very Serious People sometimes declare, with an air of regretful but great sagacity, that supplying arms to the rebels will simply 'prolong' the fighting.  How so?  The fighting can be prolonged only in three ways:  stalemate, rebel victory, or régime victory.  Supplying arms can hardly do anything but increase the likelihood of rebel victory.  Why would that prolong the fighting?  Tipping the balance in favor of a party that keeps gaining ground hardly suggests a more drawn-out struggle.  On the contrary it seems that not supplying the rebels is far more likely to prolong the war.  Since the rebels are now quite strong and fighting for their lives, not supplying arms could well mean a prolonged stalemate or a prolonged régime victory.

Moreover a régime victory is far more likely to prolong the slaughter, because it would certainly be followed by years of murderous, sadistic repression.  As for the rebels, they haven't shown much inclination to massacres.  Even if that changed, the likelihood of slaughter following a rebel victory is much less.  A rebel victory would end the paralysis at the UN, NATO and EU.  It would also leave Syria's defences in disarray.  In the changed circumstances, several powers would be ready and willing to intervene.  So no matter what the future, it's far likelier that not supplying arms will make things worse than that supplying them will do so.

Journalistic ethics:  The exaggeration about arms supplies to the rebels fits nicely with the pretense that tracking arms shipments is a matter of journalistic ethics.  It has been said that, with so much good stuff 'flooding' in and more to come, tracking won't do any harm.  There is no evidence to support this defense and, if we're going to be ethical, maybe it would be a good idea to err on the side of caution when it comes to depriving Syrians of the means to self-defense.

There is also reference to impartiality and the right to know.  Would these journalists appeal to the same ideals and expose, say, British agents in Afghanistan, or American intelligence sources in Yemen?  Again it is hard to resist the sense that wartime censorship is the province of white people.  When Arabs appeal to it, it's apparently yet another sign they just don't get human rights.

Partiality:  Perhaps these journalists, confusing journalistic impartiality with political impartiality,  think they ought to remain neutral and even-handed, oblivious to whether this harms resistance to Assad.  But as their attitudes to censorship show, they don't actually believe that politics shouldn't influence what you do or don't report.  Their show of journalistic impartiality really shows something else:  that they don't care whether or how much their reporting helps Assad.  This suggests that they are not competent to make moral judgements at all.  No matter what they fear if Assad falls, it's just fear.  If he stays, catastrophic slaughter is certain.  This certainty, for anyone who claims to have a conscience, should outweigh the mere possibilities used to weaken support for the rebels.

Illegal? Arms-trafficking and the Syrian resistance

One justification offered for exposing arms shipments to the Syrian resistance is that this 'arms trafficking' is illegal.  This makes for such a bad argument that it raises serious questions about the good faith of those who propagate it.   Among those is Russian foreign minister Lavrov, and in his case the question of good faith doesn't even arise, but what of the others? What of the enthusiastic arms trackers and anti-proliferation obsessives?

The very idea that 'illegal' is sufficient reason for doing or not doing anything is, frankly, infantile.   Laws can be good or bad, justified or unjustified.  Helping slaves escape in the US, circa 1850, was illegal.  Mixed marriages were illegal in  apartheid South Africa.

But suppose the arms trackers really mean you shouldn't break a good law - which begs the question of whether a law barring arms to the FSA would count as good.  No matter.  Even when a law is justified or good, it may also be justified to break it.   It is illegal to steal.  Suppose someone will die within minutes unless I steal an antidote from a pharmacy - the pharmacy will not, for one reason or another, let me have it.   My lawbreaking is justifiable, maybe even obligatory.

But there's another little detail:  arming the FSA is not illegal.

What could make it so?  We hear dark talk about arming 'non-state parties'.  There is no law of any sort against this.  There is a proposed treaty that may or may not be ratified in July and which might ban such activity.  But a possible treaty is not an actual treaty and is not law.  Moreover an expert in international law has informed me that there is a great deal of uncertainty about who or what should count as a 'non-state party'.   Is the Palestinian Authority a non-state party, so that the US arms its police 'illegally'?  The FSA and SNC are recognized by some countries as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people.   Is that enough to make the opposition a non-non-state party?  No one can say.

So blatant nonsense and plain falsehoods are deployed to crusade against 'arms trafficking', that is, legally providing arms so that Syrians can defend themselves against horrific attacks.   This is not what you would have expected if the issue has been arming something like the French Resistance.  But it's what passes for respectable moralizing when it comes to 'Arabs'.

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Note:  Some arms came from Croatia, perhaps between November 2012 and February 2013 .  There is a EU arms embargo on arms to Syria.   Though it will become a member of the EU in July 2013, Croatia is not a member now, and the embargo binds only EU members.  What's more, the embargo expires at the end of May, and can be renewed only by unanimous consent.  So not even these deliveries run counter to any restrictions on arms trafficking.

Summary justice in Syria

World leaders from Iran and Russia to the US and UK seem deeply shocked at summary executions in Syria.  Numerous journalists, NGOs and bloggers tag along.  The outrage may have teeth to it - 'may have' because, though it puts people off arming the rebels, it's not clear that these tender hearts would have favored arming the rebels under any circumstances.

The charges of summary executions are correct.

No doubt the opposition in Syria kill some innocent people, and some people who may be guilty but not obviously so.   These are big problems, and no doubt the opposition's efforts to deal with them, even if sincere, are and will remain inadequate.   There is also little doubt that Western countries, even in wartime, have not practiced summary justice on a comparable scale.  Finally it is no longer as easy to claim that the rebels simply don't have the resources to keep prisoners until their guilt or innocence can be determined in a court of law.

It would be great if these were good enough reasons to suppose that there is some better alternative to summary justice.   But this is far from obvious.  The concerns about summary executions in Syria do not indicate a crisis of justice in Syria.   They indicate an unwillingness to recognize an extreme crisis in the nation-state systems of justice held up as a far superior alternative.  Courts of law, it seems, are not very good at determining guilt or innocence.   This holds for both the courts of nation-states and the international courts of justice.

Nation-state courts

Only one nation-state court system, the American, has been subjected to anything vaguely like scientific study.   Its workings have been scrutinized by The Innocence Project, which reviews previous convictions in (mostly) capital cases and relies heavily on DNA testing.   The result has been proof positive that, in numerous death-penalty trials, the wrong person was convicted.   Limited resources have confined the investigation to a few thousand cases, but these provide some basis for estimating the incidence of wrongful conviction among the rest.   The Project's investigators state that

We will never know for sure, but the few studies that have been done estimate that between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent (for context, if just 1% of all prisoners are innocent, that would mean that more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison).

So the low estimate is 46.000; the high estimate 100,000. Large numbers, but not large percentages - are things really so bad?   Well, the estimate doesn't really tell us how many innocents are in prison.   It gets its percentages by comparing the number of exonerations to the number of cases reviewed.  But there most be more wrongful convictions than exonerations.  'Exoneration' involves proof of innocence.  The reviews often couldn't deliver proof:  they were impeded by lack of evidence, the passage of time, and uncooperative authorities. So no one would claim that the process succeeded in proving the innocence of every wrongly convicted person.  So the estimates are for the minimum percentage of innocents wrongfully convicted, those whose innocence could be proven.  So we don't know how much worse things really are.

There is a still greater problem:  when considering nation-state justice as an alternative to summary justice, you want to know not only if the innocent are convicted, but also if  both the innocent and the guilty get a fair hearing.  So you need to know not only of wrongful convictions in the nation-state system, but also of those convicted without a fair trials.   Well in the US, 95% of those convicted  of serious crimes receive no trial at all, because they have made a plea bargain.   Presumably very few of those can be counted as equivalent to fairly convicted.  No wonder lawyers are writing books with chapter titles like "The Myth of the Rule of Law in Capital Cases".   (And probably judicial procedures in non-capital cases are less, not more, fastidious.)  And if the rule of law is a myth in these cases, in this all-dressed-up judicial system, it's no longer obvious why that system is preferable to 'summary executions'.

Summary executions aren't just any sort of extra-judicial killings.  There are extra-judicial killings we can be sure are atrocities, when 2 year old or 80 year old civilians turn up with their bodies battered and mutilated.   Of course is it the régime that does this, not the FSA, not even The Islamists.  But these are not the cases that Western commentators are moralizing about. Their concern is with executions following quick and unofficial trials.  CBS, for example, 'confronted' a 'Jihadist' leader with a video which shows men being executed

They die quickly, by firing squad.

CBS journalists Clarissa Ward  and Scott Pelley call this 'revenge killing'.   On what grounds?   They show no sign of knowing anything about the trial, about the accusations,  about their truth or falsity, nor about what testimony led to convictions.   In most cases, human rights and media types who preach to opposition fighters haven't the slightest idea whether the trial was fair or whether the men are guilty.   All they know is that these events transpired without the false front of fairness and justice behind which lie the judicial travesties that send men to death in the United States.   Death and worse, but Americans do enjoy a good  joke on late-night TV about men who suffer years of oral and anal rape in prison, quite possibly at the hands of mentally disturbed sadists.  This a kind of coup de grace to the integrity of the justice system:  its flawed processes fill prisons where gross and grotesque violations of the rule of law are not only tolerated, but viewed by the citizenry with amusement.  So much for the pretensions of nation-state justice.

International courts

But, someone might say, don't compare extrajudicial killings to nation-state systems.   Compare them to the work of the International Criminal Court.  This court is sometimes taken very seriously.

The ICC may gather some of its prestige from an earlier creation,  the International Court of Justice.   It's gained respect from issuing advisory opinions on international disputes, something like a nation-state's civil courts.   Its verdicts are binding only if the parties antecedently agree to make them so.

The ICC, on the other hand, is something of a joke except to those who invoke it to amplify their piety.   It pretty well makes up rules of evidence and procedure as it goes along.   Its founding statue is not recognized by two Security Council members, the US and China- but in many cases a prosecution can occur only on Security Council approval!  More important, in the ten years of its existence, it has issued warrants for only 21 people, holds five in custody, and has actually convicted a grand total of one, with an appeal pending.   Hence the humor in the notion that the ICC offers some sort of recourse for victims of oppression.

Realities

The inadequacies of nation-state and international justice begin to make the case for summary justice.  The realities of political crime and punishment complete it.   The indisputable fact is that war criminals almost always escape punishment, and often go on to enjoy very good lives.  Even in a tightly controlled environment such as occupied Germany only a tiny fraction of Nazi criminals were convicted.   In Cambodia, hardly anyone will meet any form of punishment.  In Guatemala, the vile Rios Mott, 86, is only now on trial for crimes which ended 17 years ago.   And it's these leaders who are most likely to be prosecuted, not the lower-ranking monsters who do most of the actual killing, torture and mutilation.   This is hardly surprising given that 'due process' demands investigations which, by the time they occur, are too distant from evidence and reliable testimony to be fruitful.   Of course in Syria, to all these reasons for skepticism must be added faith that a reliable criminal justice system will in some unfathomable future arise - and if reliable, a system that far exceeds those currently operating in countries like the US today.

In short, Syrians have a choice between 'summary justice' and none.  That's what they'd likely get if they were foolish enough to heed the fifth-rate moralizing of Western commentators and human rights organizations.  These commentators, if they deserved their prestige, would take to heart the real possibility that summary justice in Syria is probably no more unjust than what is delivered (and not delivered) by national and international courts.
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Note:  this updates an earlier piece on the same subject.

Egypt's army, or The Army's Egypt?

The not-very-discrete dominance of the army may be obvious to all Egyptians, but it's a delicate topic.  What follows makes a case for trying to end this domination.

Who has governed Egypt since 1952?

Nasser was an army man, but there is no doubt he governed, and not the army.   I don't know whether that can be said of Sadat or even Mubarak, but at some point in the post-Nasser era, the army emerged as a political power in its own right.   This power rests in part on popular support, and this in part derives from the army's past glories.   But to invoke these past glories is to replace current realities with an abstraction - not the army of today, but The Army.

The Institution, The Army, is esteemed for its role in the 1952 revolution - because some of its officers played that role.  But these officers are dead.  The Institution, The Army, fought admirably in the wars of 1956-1972 - because its soldiers did.    None of these soldiers, excepting some of the officer corps, are now in service.  The Army today, as an institution and a bunch of individuals, has no real connection to the glories of forty years ago.   These individuals haven't even had an opportunity to prove themselves.

There are indeed some senior officers whose careers began in the old days, but this doesn't make them heroes.    General Al-Sisi, Minister of Defence and Chairman of SCAF, has no combat experience whatever.  General Tantawi, his predecessor, had what is normally called a distinguished military career, but not, as far as I can tell, a heroic one.   He is misleadingly said to have started out as 'an infantryman' in 1956; in fact he began as a commissioned officer in the infantry.   Though he 'fought', i.e., commanded, in several wars, there don't appear to be any tales of great bravery or skill about him.   He may be deserving of respect, but not hero-worship.   Much the same must hold for virtually the entire active officer corps which has never been in any danger.   There may be a few heroes in the army, but there must be many more in the general population, veterans of Egypt's wars.

Perhaps, though, the army is venerated because it has a task fit for heroes, defending the territorial integrity of Egypt.   Here one must ask - against whom?   Egypt has only one serious potential enemy, Israel, and the army has neither the interest nor the capacity to defend against that enemy.   Because the army is wedded to the US, it can never hope to have anything remotely like military parity with Israel.   Since the army and government are well aware of this, they will never break the peace treaty, at least not in circumstances that lead to war.   So Egypt is very secure, in less than honorable circumstances, for reasons having nothing to do with military prowess.  This doesn't sit well with the army's apparently great concern for its 'honor'.

Given the current army's involvement in so many instances of cruelty and injustice, it's hard to see reasons to admire and respect it.

What then of the army's role as a political institution, and its relations with civilian politicians?

Ursula Lindsey notes that if Islamists can stretch the concept of democracy, so can the partisans of military rule.   But she would agree that appropriating a word hardly confers legitimacy.  She might also agree that not all sham democracies are created equal.   I have argued elsewhere that an Islamist 'democracy' in Egypt would be far more changeable - if not open to change - than military rule.   But today, I think, that's not the choice in prospect.  The choice seems to be between military rule in Islamist or in secularist dress.

Many have expressed outrage at Morsi's concessions to the military.  These include what one commentator, The Arabist, calls "unprecedented autonomy (in term of the history of Egypt's constitutional safeguards for the armed forces) in the constitution they backed."   But if these concessions are  new, it's because this was Egypt's first non-military presidency, and the army was confronted with the novel possibility of a government that might defy the military's will.   As for 'granted' and 'autonomy', these may not be the right words.

Morsi's 'grant' looks more like a surrender.   It involved what no leader would abandon except out of pure necessity - power over himself and any civilian successor.   It is simply inconceivable that someone would 'grant' this had he any viable alternative:   it was the price of Tantawi's retirement, and, given the circumstances, the price of Morsi remaining 'in power'.  He isn't really in power because his concessions destroyed whatever power he may have had.  The military has a stranglehold on the government because the post of defense minister must be an officer.

We have seen this before, in pre-World-War-II Japan.   There,

The Army and the Navy also had decisive say on the formation (and survival) of any civilian government. Since the law required that the posts of Army Minister and Navy Minister be filled by active duty officers nominated by their respective services, and since the law also required that a prime minister resign if he could not fill all of his cabinet posts, both the Army and the Navy had final say on the formation of a cabinet, and could bring down the cabinet at any time by withdrawing their minister and refusing to nominate a successor.

Though Egypt's government may not be formally obliged to fall if the defense cabinet post isn't filled, it could hardly survive with no minister in such an important post, especially since this would amount to the military's vote of non-confidence.  The requirement of a defence minister from the army effectively gives the army veto power over any civilian government.  Yet the opposition acts as if this informal dictatorship doesn't given the military enough supremacy.    It endorses the claim that "If Egypt is on the brink of default, if law and order is absent, [the military] has a national duty to intervene."

Egyptians are very rightly insulted when it's said that they're 'learning about democracy', but outside observers could be forgiven for recoiling at horror at something quite different, the opposition's idea of what is appropriate for the army in a serious nation.   For one thing, the idea that default should provoke military rule can only come from someone in the clutches of a colonial mentality, as if the army would now intervene like the British did in 1882!   For another, yes indeed, it is the duty of armies to intervene in certain crises of law and order.   But in nations not already under behind-the-scenes military rule, it's not the army that decides when it is time to intervene.  It's the civilian government.

That anyone could even suggest that the army should be the one to decide when it takes over the country is shocking but not unexpected in a nation where military leaders feel free to make statements for which they would instantly be cashiered elsewhere.   In so many ways, Western nations are contemptible in their management of domestic affairs, but this is one thing most of them have right.   A general has only to offer political opinions in public to end his career.   That generals should presume to call a conference on national reconciliation would be considered inconceivable insolence; that any civilian party would heed the call, pathetic.  Should a reader think I exaggerate, (s)he can consult the remarks for which US general Mcchrystal was forced into retirement - and this by one of America's most timid presidents.

You might reply that Egypt is different.  Indeed it is:  for instance, it differs in the extent to which its military imprisons and tortures its own citizens.   No doubt there are crises in Egypt, but nothing suggests that Egypt's military has either the expertise or the good will to be granted discretion over Egyptian domestic affairs.   Yet this is what it has been granted and this is what much of the opposition wants to extend.

It is a recipe for stagnation as well as subjection.  The army is a society and economy unto itself.   It's doing just fine; its future is bright.  Egypt's problems are not its problems.  Under army rule, Egypt will remain what Hamied Ansari called, in 1986, the stalled society.

Egyptians often speak of what embarrasses them about their country....

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An afterthought:

Perhaps Morsi and the Brotherhood gave the Army paper supremacy in the hope that they'd be able to tear up the paper later on.  Maybe they think or thought that there is no hope of confronting the army now, but the concessions buy time during which a strong civilian government can emerge, partly through some accommodation with the National Salvation Front.  This strategy, though a long shot, would make sense to me.  However I've no evidence for it.