Kolya on 17/11/2015 at 21:43
This is a bit disconnected with the Sunni/Shia discussion which I find interesting.
But I've been thinking a lot of the concert at the Bataclan. One of my favourite bands played there that night. A bunch of rock fans were having a good time, people like me. And they were mowed down. For what?
It's really hard to get this out of my head. An ISIS claim of responsibility said they were having a "perverse ceremony". Why would a French rock fan have to care what these people deem perverse?
And what did they even hope to achieve? Are they really so naive to hope that western democracies will fall because they kill some 130 people? The population of Paris alone is 2.244 million!
I've been turning this over and over in my head but it's useless. It's just a vulgar display of power and desperate at that since most of the attackers died anyway. An attempt to frighten, terror without logic. I guess it makes some idiots dicks real hard that they can scare us. Well yeah, you can scare us. But you can never ever win this.
And then suddenly I feel grateful that there were cops, a SWAT team, people who would (
http://media.20minutes.fr/2015/bouclier.JPG) go in there and end this. It's weird because I'm usually more of the ACAB faction. :erg:
Azaran on 17/11/2015 at 22:52
I heard this commentator say IS's goal is to divide and conquer, by pitting the west against Muslims, to cause chaos as a means of facilitating an eventual takeover. And they can do it. As an example, Wahhabism is ravaging southeast Asia, turning formerly peaceful Muslim communities into radicals, and making life a living hell for the remainder, and non Muslims.
heywood on 17/11/2015 at 23:55
Sunni and Shia dominate the region, but in lands around ISIL territory, don't forget the Kurds, Sufis, Assyrian Christians, Yazidis, Shabaks, a bunch of other minor ethnic minorities and of course the Ba'athists. Something like 30 or 40 languages are spoken in Iraq. It's a tough place to govern.
Ironically, the UAE is about half Wahhabi and it's also the most liberal and stable of the Arabian states. Qatar has a similar percentage of Wahhabi. Of course, both countries are insanely wealthy and foreigners do all their labor, so there's not much incentive to go killing foreigners.
Pyrian on 18/11/2015 at 00:25
Ba'athism is a secular ideology with adherents among Sunnis and Shiites.
One wonders how much of that Wahhabi wealth makes its way, one way or another, to the notoriously well funded Islamic State.
It seems like many of the world's prominent battlefields - particularly the persistent ones - are essentially proxy wars. Though I'm a little unclear on how well that describes central Africa.
Thor on 18/11/2015 at 08:35
Quote Posted by nicked
Why? Because words like shi'ite are hard, and "All muslims are terrifying suicide bombers" is the quickest way to sell newspapers.
Good point, btw, and probably completely correct too. :erg:
demagogue on 18/11/2015 at 11:26
I mentioned above that policy people are calling this the Middle East's 30 Years War, which if you recall the history is what led Catholics and Protestants to finally partition themselves in Europe and the HRE (Germany) shattered into a million pieces, but only after a really long, drawn out, bitter slugfest for a whole generation.
They're saying the leading viable end game is de facto partition of Syria and Iraq into Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurd zones, like Iraqi Kurdistan is already, so Assad remains president but de facto control over just his Alawite enclave, and maybe agrees to a term limit and run out his term. 'De facto' as in the states aren't actually formally broken up, but they're functionally partitioned in the sense each zone administers itself, not actually such an uncommon thing for the region.
As for ISIS, I read the only end game there is the general Sunni population has to be ready to oust them for them to ever get rooted out. And for that to happen, again, the Shi'a led govt's of Syria and Iraq have to be ready to give them autonomy and stop alienating them. Right now, e.g., Sunnis in Iraq have no incentive to join the national (i.e., Shi'ite) army or think of terms of a collective 'our Iraq' that we're defending, and the Shi'a govt is still repressive to them.
icemann on 18/11/2015 at 13:39
And Russia will never agree to that. And without them onside it wont work long term.
Pyrian on 18/11/2015 at 14:24
I know Assad and Russia are allies, but it's hard to see how the status quo benefits Russia, either?
Turkey doesn't like the implications of an adjacent Kurdistan that their Kurdish separatists would feel they should be part of.
icemann on 18/11/2015 at 16:35
Not saying it does. Just that they'd never agree to a carve up of the country.
