A cannibal in Syria

This ought not to be an important subject - one crazed guy in a horrifying video and a disturbing interview.  Some insist that it takes attention away from far worse atrocities. That hasn't had much effect.  It takes more than morality and politics to explain the divergent reactions..

The vocabulary of the reports is suggestive.  In Foreign Policy, Peter Bouckaert asked Is This the Most Disgusting Atrocity Filmed in the Syrian Civil War?   There was another source of disgust, some jokes about the incident.  All these reactions testify to the special character of the atrocity.  Cannibalism is an act fundamentally unlike the torture and massacre that outrage morality.

The prohibition of cannibalism is not so much a fundamental moral principle as a deep, deep taboo.  The victim wasn't killed to be eaten; he'd died in battle.  Eating parts of already dead bodies harms no one - unlike killing torture, exploitation and virtually all 'normal' moral concerns.   We -  I include myself - very much want to think of cannibalism as terribly wrong, but the commentary is accurate:  really, it's terribly disgusting.  It gets special attention for that reason.  It deserves that attention, because it arouses fears that our efforts to civilize ourselves have failed.  It's supposed to be something animals might do, but not humans.   This certainly seems important whether or not anyone is harmed.

When people make jokes about cannibalism, it's not that they don't take it seriously; it's that they don't quite manage to see it as a moral outrage.  (Moral rules are broken all the time; taboos, very rarely.)   The video was literally a horror movie.   People laugh at horror movies for the same reason:  because they're thoroughly unsettling and humour is a kind of nervous reaction, a way to bring the horror down to size.  No one says:  "how can you laugh?  these acts are terribly wrong."

Everyone is right about the cannibalism video.  It's disgusting.  It needs to be taken seriously;  we just don't quite know how.  From a moral standpoint there are indeed  far more serious crimes.  Violating a taboo is very serious, but in a different way.

There is no settling this, but perhaps the spectators can understand one another.

Arms proliferation in Syria: a great excuse?

Assad's most useful supporters - that is, those who deplore him and advocate doing nothing about him - have set up a nice dilemma.

On the one hand, they give all sorts of reasons why a ground invasion and/or 'air war' will drag the West into that old familiar territory, 'a quagmire'.  (Like Libya?)  Their arguments depart from a studied unwillingness to acknowledge that no one is asking for or contemplating such measures.  What the hell, it's still a good reason for doing nothing.

On the other hand, if someone insists that invasion is not an option, the focus shifts to arming the Syrian opposition.  This move would be exceedingly cheap and easy, and couldn't possibly create a quagmire.  So the big deal here is arms proliferation.

Arms proliferation seems to be the West's real concern in any case.  The idea is that terrorists will acquire advanced portable anti-tank and portable anti-aircraft missile systems (MANPADS).  This, it's said, is bad.  Here are things to bear in mind before embracing that conclusion too passionately.

First, supposing there are real terrorists in Syria, they will acquire these arms in any case.  Advanced anti-tank weapons such as the Russian Kornet and advanced MANPADS such as the SA-16 and SA-24 have already been seen there.   A refusal to supply such weapons to the opposition will simply mean redoubled efforts to get them elsewhere.  And that may be the tip of a very large iceberg, because the Syrian government possesses good supplies of all these weapons.   Assuming, as most do, that the régime will sooner or alter fall, lots of them will come up for grabs.   Nothing in past experience supports any expectation they'll all be hurried away by nice Western agents.  So non-intervention hardly promises non-proliferation.

Second, the proliferation feared by the West will probably be much more extensive if Assad stays in power.   That's because Hizbollah will continue to be supplied and to supply others.  So even if we discount proliferation within Syria itself as a result of régime rearming, failing to support the Syrian revolution will lead to more of it.

Third, arms proliferation has no direct relationship to the terror attacks that presumably most concern the West - those occurring within Western countries.  Every major terrorist attack in the West, starting with Oklahoma City, used no weapons at all - 9-11, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings.  The same of course holds for the most recent attack, on the Boston Marathon.  Even outside the West, for example in Somalia, bombs predominate.   That's presumably because it's a lot easier to smuggle in a bomb than, say, an anti-tank weapon.  This is not to say that there have never been terrorist attacks with weapons or that more are impossible.  It's to say that stopping arms proliferation certainly won't foil terrorist plans.  Anyone no longer able to use weapons has well-tried alternatives.

Fourth, arms proliferation from Syria is unlikely even to have much indirect relationship to terrorism.  The calls to remember Afghanistan have to do with allowing Al Qaeda to establish an enclave there - it's not as if they actually used US arms to mount major terror attacks.  There is no chance at all that the much-feared Islamist extremists can establish a terrorist enclave in Syria, which after Assad will be completely surrounded by extremely well-armed powers extremely hostile to their agenda.  All the great powers as well as much of the Syrian population will be opposed as well. Syria will be about as useful a terrorist redoubt as, say,  Luxembourg.

Finally, what world do the anti-proliferation obsessives inhabit?  Thirty-three nations now have just one type of advanced MANPADS, the Igla series.  Among them are Belarus, Eritrea, Iran, Macedonia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, and Slovakia.  According to an Australian government source, "there are now somewhere between 500,000 and 750,000 [MANPADS] in worldwide inventories. They have been developed or produced under licence by more than a dozen countries." The producers now include Pakistan and Iran.  The idea that arming the Syrian resistance will substantially affect the proliferation picture is ludicrous.   Surely there is some better excuse for letting Assad slaughter with impunity.


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Note:

A New York Times article claims there have been extensive arms shipments to the rebels via Jordan and Turkey.   It's not clear what's in these shipments nor what actually reaches the rebels, who frequently run out of ammunition.   In any case this does not bear on the proliferation issue.  The fact is that the rebels have virtually no advanced weapons, so clearly they're not getting them.

Why support the Syrian revolution?

Many reasons are given for supporting either the Syrian revolution or the units of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).  But while there is sympathy for the Syrian people, hardly ever do those reasons speak to or from Syrian needs.  Instead the appeal is to the quite narrow interests of others, always in negative terms:  not supporting the FSA will encourage Islamic extremism, invite a regional conflagration, squander opportunities to 'have a say in Syria's future'(!), counter-productively encourage uncontrolled arms proliferation, leave a legacy of anti-Western sentiment in Syria.  Syrians are essentially seen either as a menace, or as weaklings likely incapable of countering some menace in their midst.

Of course the idea here is that solid reasons can only rest on hard-headed realism, not sloppy sentiment.  But there may be at least two other reasons rooted in a less myopic assessment of the situation.  They invoke principles and large historical opportunities - which does not distinguish them from the sort of 'higher' motives that in fact drive a good deal of political activity.  They do have implications for the whole world, but they originate not only in the interests but also in the achievements of the Syrian people and their revolution  One reason is 'negative', the other, positive.

The negative reason has to do with what Syrians suffer.

It's taken me a while to realize that most people probably don't really know the full extent of Assad's cruelties, or how they compare to the cruelty we know has been inflicted in so many times and places.  It's not the sort of material that makes the front pages.  An appendix to this post gives some details.  For several reasons,  none solely sufficient but in combination decisive, the horrors of Syria have unique significance.

First there is the sheer barbarism.  Many régimes which have inflicted tortures perhaps as ghastly as Assad's - Chile's Pinochet and the Iran under the Shah come to mind - do not quite match his barbarism for one simple reason:  Assad's tortures are not confined to adults, much less to those who have ever posed any threat, but also to children not into their teens.  The torture of injured people in their hospital beds, and of medical staff, is also very unusual.  Sometimes victims are tortured in order to reveal information, or at least to admit to something, whether or not they did it.  Often they are simply tortured to death, simply to have them die in agony.

Second there is the scale of it.  Those tortured run into the tens, perhaps the hundreds of thousands.  Multiple deaths under torture are reported almost daily.  Perhaps as many suffered in Cambodia, or Rwanda, or the Congo; no figures are available.

In practicing such spare-no-one savagery on so vast a scale, Assad has had very few rivals - perhaps Saddam Hussein.  But in Syria there's another dimension to the nightmare - and it's no less significant for being less brutally tangible.  Never before have such atrocities been not only so visible, but so close to what might be called the mainstream world.

The torturers 'get' Twitter and Facebook.  They often record their torture sessions, down to death and mutilation, on their cell phones.  When the perpetrators are captured, these videos get onto Youtube.  In a world civilization that practically defines itself through its exposure on digital media, this sort of shamelessly public sadism gains a prominence unique in modern history.

Because Syria's atrocities are so open to the world - so much a part of that world - the failure to support the Syrian resistance is no mere strategic error.  Though history almost seems a succession of moral failures, this one is special.

Other evils, the mainstream world could ignore or minimize or pretend to ignore.  Not this one.  Nor can some ideology or reason of state be invoked as even a partial explanation or excuse.  Syria is not important enough to be strategically or economically key.  Assad is no longer a useful ally to anyone, and his régime represents neither a cause nor the pursuit of any ideal.  Indeed no cause can be invoked to support him.  If the type and scale of these cruelties are not worth opposing with determination and ferocity, what is?  What sort of justice or benevolence - for anyone - can be worth  pursuing if this evil is not worth confronting?

The  world's cowardice and passivity in the face of these crimes brings the mainstream political order into irredeemable disrepute.  No one can assess the consequences of this failure, but it's hard to imagine anything much less than a definitive loss of stature for every mainstream principle and every institution dedicated to uphold them, from the UN to the International Court of Justice to NATO and the whole panoply of apparently useless human rights organizations.  Here is an outcome whose dangers go far beyond such bogeymen as extreme Islamists, sectarian warfare, stray weapons or regional destabilization.  The danger, though occasioned by Syria's agonies, is of  the mainstream world's own making.  It will probably exceed by far whatever Syrians could possibly do to others.

In short, the refusal to support the Syrian revolution exposes the uselessness of every political entity -  every nation, every court, every assembly, every movement, every human-rights outfit - supposedly out to civilize the world.  If that sounds extreme, ask yourself by what date you'd expect these worthy institutions to protect us from savage repression.  You might also ask how long it will take to forget so prolonged and public a failure.

But there is also a 'positive' reason rooted in what the Syrian revolution represents.

If it prevails, the Syrian uprising will be the first truly popular revolt to succeed since 1789 - the first since the dawn of the industrial age.  Unlike the Russian or Chinese or Vietnamese or Cuban revolutions, it is not the design or possession of some élite vanguard.  Unlike the 19th century revolutions of Italy or Latin America, it did not coalesce around the leadership of, quite literally, a man on horseback.  It did not arise under the aegis of a military hero like Turkey's Kemal Ataturk. Unlike the Tunisian revolt, it did not succeed because the régime collapsed.  Unlike the Libyan revolution, it did not rely on outside participation.  Unlike the Egyptian revolution, it did not leave much of the old order in place, so that nothing happens without at least the passive approval of the armed forces.

When people go on about the disunity of the opposition, they haven't considered this difference.  Usually you speak of disunity in reference to something once united - a movement, a party, a state.  And normally, that's what you find when there is a revolution.  But no one tut-tutted that the French Revolution 'lacked unity'.  Like the Syrian revolution, that was a spontaneous uprising whose very disunity testified to the depth and breath of its roots.

This is no mere historical oddity.  It is proof of something quite unexpected:  that a people, starting with nothing, can prevail against a tyrannous modern state with as large and sophisticated a repressive apparatus and any tyrant could desire.  The key component of this proof is the courage of the Syrian people.  That too exceeds anything previously encountered:  never before have civilians refused to be cowed by such widespread cruelty, such firepower, and such slaughter.

The Syrian revolution brings new hope to the world, and therefore demands wholehearted, unqualified support.  Unqualified support does not mean heedless support.  It does not preclude resolve to address the very real dangers such a revolution poses.  Of course supporters also must be ready to work against sectarian infighting and other forms of extremist violence, both in Syria itself and beyond.  But these dangers must be countered in any case.  These frightening possibilities should blind no one to the compelling obligation, not to sit on the sidelines, but to help that revolution succeed.

Appendix

What follows makes for very unpleasant reading.    Since it omits any results of artillery or aerial bombardment, it's only a very partial indication of what's inflicted on the Syrian people.  In part, its compilation is made necessary by the attitudes of the very humanitarian agencies from which some of the material is derived.

These agencies seem to adopted the dogma that we must never weigh one human rights violation against another - there is no better or worse.  Every nation gets its report and its scolding; every nation and every political group is culpable.   This stance suggests that if, for example, Syrian revolutionaries sometimes violate human rights, which they undoubtedly do, they are as unworthy of support as the régime they oppose.  To think otherwise then looks immoral, a sinister case of  'the end justifies the means'.  The severity of the violations doesn't seem to count.  After all, even 'persecution' on religious or cultural group, if 'consistent', is counted a 'crime against humanity' by the International Court of Justice, and that's without any reference to what form the 'persecution' might take.

This confuses morality with unreflective delicacy.  It makes no sense in principle:  is there really nothing to choose, for example, between the taking of one innocent life and the slaughter of several billion?  It makes no sense in practice  either.  We sacrifice innocent lives all the time, not just out of necessity but also for convenience.  We know, for instance, that innocent lives would be spared if we cut speed limits by, say, 90%, for non-essential vehicles.  But we don't even consider sparing them.  We're no more fastidious in our political judgements on the past.  Since we know that wars inevitably take innocent lives, was it wrong to resist Nazism, or to fight the perpetrators of the Nanking massacre?

Here are the testimonies.  I have not included anything alleged against the Syrian rebels, but you can consult Human Rights Watch if you like, and judge for yourself whether there is no better or worse in this conflict.

·         "A while ago, one of my students was detained. They hung him from his hands for 7 days and tortured him brutally until he reached the point of insanity. He was being tortured in a room where blood and urine stained the floors; and dead, decayed, worm infested bodies littered the ground. They forced him to sleep atop the bodies. He fear drove him to insanity, but they were not done with him. They slaughtered him with knives in front of the other prisoners."  (Translated speech of Shaikh Moaz Khatib, President of The National Coalition Of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, delivered during the Arab League Summit in Doha Qatar on March 26, 2013-03-24.)

·         They had started out as 20 people in that room, but some had died. They had not been fed for the entire duration of their detention. In the room where I was held, an injured man on the bed next to me was beaten at least once a day. His leg wasn’t treated. I could see the worms and small insects crawling in and out of the wound with my own eyes. In the same hospital, they would use a drill to gouge out eyes. They also used an iron welder to burn the flesh off your body as you are awake. In some cases also, they would use brute force to pull your hair out. At the hospital, they also used the method of hanging you upside down. They kept people hanging like that for days. Sometimes they changed the method of torture according to your “crime”.  For photographers and videographers, they broke their arms, their wrists, and individual fingers. They also gore their eyes out.”  (Avaaz reveals scale and horror of Assad’s torture chambers)

·         "His captors drilled into his brain while he was still living, burned his body with a welding torch, poked out his eyes and mutilated his genitals, according to his brother. They tried to strangle him with a rope so hard his fingers that were trying to stop the choking were almost severed."  ( Physician tells of brother’s torture in Syria.)

·         A compilation of torture techniques.

·         One released detainee said that he shared a cell with a young man who had been forced to have a glass bottle with a broken top inserted into his anus. One said that his cellmate had been raped with a metal skewer. Others spoke of a detainee with whom they had shared a cell who, while hanging in the shabeh position, had a cord attached to a large bag of water tied around his penis.  ('I wanted to die:  Syria's torture survivors speak out.)

·         "One of them, Jihad Saleh, had his hands bound to his feet behind his back and was left lying on his stomach without food. He starved to death in the corridor outside my cell." (Military airport transformed into torture cells in Syria: activists.

·         One 15-year-old told the charity he had cigarettes put out on him when he was imprisoned in what used to be his school.

Another described being given electric shocks and sharing a cell with decomposing bodies, while a third teenager, Wael, said he had seen a six-year-old die after being tortured and starved.

The 16 year-old told the report's authors: "I watched him die. He only survived for three days and then he simply died."

"He was terrified all the time. They treated his body as though he was a dog." (BBC News - Syria child trauma 'appalling' - Save the Children)

•  "We were 70 to 75 people in a group cell that was 3 by 3 meters. We slept with our knees to our chests. Some people had broken hands, legs, their heads were swollen. There were 15- and 16-year-old kids in the cell with us, six or seven of them with their fingernails pulled, their faces beaten. They treat the kids even worse than the adults. There is torture, but there is also rape for the boys. We would see them when the guards brought them back to the cell, it's indescribable, you can't talk about it. One boy came into the cell bleeding from behind. He couldn't walk."  (Syria: Stop Torture of Children | Human Rights Watch)

·        In his first media interview since he fled his position as head of the intensive care unit in an Aleppo military hospital, the doctor gave a chilling eyewitness account of secret wards where he said patients were tortured or sent to their death.

"Important arrested patients, those that had more information to reveal, had to be healed. Those that were useless to them were sent to a secret ward that we nicknamed "the dark room" where they were tortured, eliminated or left to die."

The doctor, who for security reasons can only be identified as Ahmed, worked in military hospitals in Aleppo, Deraa and the suburbs of Damascus each of which had these wards.

The patients were kept in "dire" conditions with their hands and feet handcuffed to the beds and their eyes blindfolded in windowless wards, often in a basement.

Deprived of antibiotics and painkillers, and often left to lie in their own faeces, many of the patients sported gaping infected wounds."  (Syrian prisoners left to die in military hospital 'dark rooms')

·         "The discovery of the charred and mutilated bodies of three young medical workers a week after their arrest in Aleppo city is yet further evidence of the Syrian government forces' appalling disregard for the sanctity of the role of medical workers,  Amnesty International said.

All three men were students at Aleppo University – Basel Aslan and Mus'ab Barad were fourth-year medical students and Hazem Batikh was a second-year English literature student and a first-aid medic.

They were part of a team of doctors, nurses and first-aiders who have been providing life-saving medical treatment in makeshift "field hospitals" set up to treat demonstrators shot by security forces and who could not therefore go to state-run hospitals for fear of being arrested, tortured or even killed.

They had been detained by Air Force Intelligence since their arrest in the city on 17 June.

...

The three students' burned bodies were found in the early hours of 24 June in a burned-out car in the Neirab area of Aleppo's north-eastern outskirts.

Medical personnel who saw the bodies at the morgue told Amnesty International that Basel Aslan had a gunshot wound to the head and his hands were tied behind his back.

One leg and one arm were broken, several teeth missing and the flesh was missing from his lower legs, leaving the bone exposed. Some of his fingernails had been removed." (AIUK : Syria: Detained medics tortured and killed amid Aleppo crackdown)

·         "The woman was arrested at a checkpoint in Homs late last year.

As part of the torture, she alleges, rats and mice were used by interrogators to violate women. She described an assault on another prisoner which she says she witnessed.

"He inserted a rat in her vagina. She was screaming. Afterwards we saw blood on the floor. He told her: 'Is this good enough for you?' They were mocking her. It was obvious she was in agony. We could see her. After that she no longer moved.""  (BBC News - Syria ex-detainees allege ordeals of rape and sex abuse.)

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.