(Part 2) Top products from r/syriancivilwar

"Banned from youtube"

Because that is censorship and people that favor censorship tend to exploit people with terrible tendencies and whom have terrible views to escalate information control. I don't think many people like Assad, but SANA is still a valuable resource for study because it shows a propaganda narrative/channel.

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"certified Jihadi extremist channel"

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Which means what? Who gave them this certification? Sounds like this is more of a personal thing. Do I support sunni extremists? Of course not. But I am not going to pretend that Regime linked groups or Hezbollah is any different. Both of them operate Youtube channels. I'd assume you would be upset if they are shut down. Hezbollah in particular, has been very good at not only getting information out, but also being able to create narratives that appeal to some Western audiences. Of course, they lost a lot of their shine when they went into Syria but still. I remember reading stuff from the "Electronic Resistance" years and years ago, maybe even when Bush was in office.

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https://twitter.com/resistanceer?lang=en

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OGN is actually pretty interesting and useful for people that are actually interested in MENA studies, which is why this sub was created. It wasn't created to be filled with trolls posting blanket generalizations because they look at the Syrian conflict like a sports match. The interviews that OGN provides gives people a glimpse into the mindset of the individuals that are over in Syria. Its also why books like "The Exile" are so good and informative. Just because you or I do not like what the person says or did does not mean it should be censored.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XBQ7ZL8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

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This particular individual has been in Syria since 2013, he has a long history and is a pretty interesting character, despite having some pretty nasty views (which again, is par for the course of all groups in Syria).

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I am honestly surprised at the discussion in the comments, I thought it was going to be basically shitposts. It seems that there are at least a few here that actually want to have a discussion.

For anyone interested in learning more about Saudi Arabia, I highly recommend this book, written by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with in-depth knowledge of the country.

As a frequent traveller to Saudi Arabia and the wider Persian Gulf region, I can attest to the book's observations. As Winston, from Orwell's 1984, once said: the best books are those that tell you what you know already.

If you want to learn about how Iran got to where it is today / events that shaped it's views I think Modern Iran by Nikki Keddie. You don't get that "YOU MUST HATE IRAN THEY ARE EVIL" junk in it. You just get how Iran sort of came to be in the modern era.

The Coup is a great Book to expand on exactly how Iran/U.S. relations got messed up. Long story short the CIA overthrew their democratically elected leader, and ever since then they have been pissed, but this goes into detail about it and does a great job explaining everything.

If you want to watch some documentaries. I HIGHLY recommend you watch "Bitter Lake" that explains Saudi's rise to power/Afghanistan and how things got messed up.

Another interesting documentary is the The Man who Changed the World about Khomeni

Those are pretty good starting points to understand Iran.

I disagree with your assessment of the Brotherhood. During my time in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine I spent a lot of time with Ikhwanists - including some of their clerics at Azhar who now rot in jail or worse. The Brotherhood is a huge and diverse organization with many parts genuinely advocating civic democracy. You will disagree, but I think the Sisi coup was a horrific mistake that will come haunt people. So far there is simply nothing to substantiate the notion that Erdogan is anti-democratic. The exiles and old urban CHP elite likes to cry foul at every little thing, but truth is that there is hardly any part of Turkish society that isn't more free and prosperous today than it was before Erdogan came to power. There's a reason a good part of the HDP swing moved to AKP. I have been to South East Turkey (including Cizre, Silopi, Diarbakyr) both in the 90s and very recently. Erdogan will fall when the old Kemalists come up with a genuinely modern party that has a broader base than 70s etatism (and import substition industrialisation) and national chauvinism of the CHP.

I'm not going to spend much time with the conspiratorial nonsense in the link you posted. The Brotherhood suffers a lot of diseases, but it's not this sinister cabal of hateful people. The Ikhwan is - like most movements founded at the time - an attempt at Islamic modernism that has spawned a wide variety of institutions, ideas and practices. They are neither hidden or malicious. The whole "Islamofascism" idea (I also respect Hitchens and consort) betrays a dangerous ignorance of the origins of both fascism and Islamism.
Just to be clear, I despise Hamas (and support the Israeli military in its position) and its associates, but let's be serious here.

If any party in the modern Middle East is explicitly modeled on German fascism it is the Baath and their now allies in the SSNP. Arab nationalism derives almost all its ideas from German right Hegelians (the first time I studied Schelling and Herder was indeed at an Arab university), and all its institutions from national socialism and later the Soviet Union. Early Islamic modernists are similar in this effect in so far as they emulate the nationalists. This is a process many third-world countries went through in their struggle against imperialism, adopting the fascistic notions of self-determination through strength as a form of national emancipatory ideology. Similar trends can be found in India for example, where much of the early independent elite was objectively pro-Hitler.

Back to Syria, Faylaq ash-Sham and many of the former "Shield" formations that merged into various FSA and IF groups are much closer to the Brotherhood than Ahrar which has significant Salafist streams within it.

In the end this all boils down to whether or not certain people may be included in an eventual political process and, in turn, who needs to be suppressed. My position is that in order to stabilize the situation you need to include all parties who do not immediately pose a threat to the international order and who have significance on the ground. That includes at least part of Ahrar. The process is already working with AAS shifting positions on negotiations leading more hard-line elements to split off.

A great book on the Bortherhood in Syria today is Raphael Lefevre's "Ashes of Hama". And the standard work on the origins of modern political ideology in the Middle East is Albert Hourani's "Arab Thought in the Liberal Age, 1789-1939" to be followed by Fouad Ajami's "Arab Predicament".

You are perfectly right. According to Saudi Arabia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-vows-to-back-egypts-rulers.html

You are perfectly wrong. According to :

• Human Rights Watch
  
• Amnesty International
  
• Al Jazeera
  
• The Times of Israel
  
• Haaretz
  
• Der Spiegel
  
• Le Monde
  
• Former Egyptian Officiers and Egyptian Government Officials
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Coups-Revolutions-Mobilization-Egyptian-Military/dp/0190071451
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2013_Rabaa_massacre

Unfortunately it's a bit thin on the ground. The best I can find (that is, with any credible information) is:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Syria-Recent-History-John-McHugo/0863561608/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1482915568&sr=8-2&keywords=syria

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Struggle-Syria-Patrick-Seale-x/dp/1850430284/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482915812&sr=1-1&keywords=seale+the+struggle+for+syria

https://www.amazon.com/Greater-Syria-Ambition-Daniel-Pipes/dp/0195060229 (this guy is well known for his pro-Zionist bias, but this is still one of the most detailed books I have ever found on this period of Syrian history)

And this isn't a history book, as such. But it seems to have one of the most comprehensive accounts of modern Syrian history I have managed to find:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110629175419/http://countrystudies.us/syria/


side note

This is sourced on a couple of wikipedia pages about the 1949 coup. I don't know how helpful it might be in providing a picture of that particular time.

As is this on a few pages about the early presidents.

Anthony Nutting's book on Nasser paints a nice little picture of the state of Syrian politics before the UAR was established. But I wouldn't recommend buying that book just to read about Syria, as you will be quite disappointed. It constitutes about 0.5% of the whole book.


I'd like to leave the floor open for someone to offer their own suggestions here, too.

If you are interested in how it actually happened read the book "Triple Agent"

http://www.amazon.com/The-Triple-Agent-al-Qaeda-Infiltrated/dp/0307742318

Also, info about one of the CIA victims here:

http://www.colby.edu/colby.mag/issues/61/article/1365/who-was-elizabeth-hanson/


> In fact sources quoted in the book told Warrick that Hanson was one of the CIA’s most talented “terrorist hunters,” attracting the attention and praise of her supervisors and CIA directors Leon Panetta and Michael Hayden.

But no they did not just allow an "extremist to walk into the base". I can assure you that the operatives involved were not idiots. In fact, Operatives like Ms. Hanson were actually tracking down terrorists and killing them.

The suicide bomber was at the time trusted and had a history with Jordanian Secret Service. This was Jordan's screw up for the most part. Anyways, like I said this hits a little close to home so sorry if I come off a little emotional.

>There was lots of pressure exerted on European societies by Eurasian Steppe peoples, and a lot of modern day Europe reflects this.

Are you talking about the Mongols/Huns and somehow blaming them as Europeans and saying they are why there are modern nation states?

> Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is actually kinda good at explaining this.

It is also not considered particularly good history these days and not about the nation state.

> But the population transfers that occurred in late antiquity and early medieval are pretty relevant here.

I am asking you about specific genocide/population transfers to create some specific states. Certainly you can give me some examples. Telling me about large scale population transfer (if it existed, read Heather's Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe). Tell me about how they developed these ethnic nation states through genocide and population transfers. Give me some actual examples.

If you want an actual answer to this question, it is not enough to examine Assad's (and the regime's) conduct since the beginning of the uprising in 2011. You can only get the full picture if you understand the composition and the statecraft of the regime since Assad pere wrested power from his intra-regime opponents in 1970. Some books worth reading are Hinnebusch's excellent primer on the rise of the Ba'ath Party (and later, the Assad clan) to power (Syria: Revolution From Above), Hanna Batatu's classic examination of [Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics]
(https://www.amazon.com/Syrias-Peasantry-Descendants-Notables-Politics/dp/0691002541), Lisa Wedeen on the cultural and ideological methods the regime uses to maintain power (Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria), and Patrick Seale's highly readable book on Hafez al-Assad and his Struggle for the Middle East. A more recent work dealing with the economic underpinnings of the regime (Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience) is also worth your time.

In short, take a good look at the nature of the regime and its policies over the last four decades and decide for yourself whether it is incapable of committing the war crimes it is accused of. You could also go through the many detailed reports human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch have put together alleging regime crimes, most recently their report on the Khan Sheikhoun nerve gas attack and the regime's ongoing use of chemical weapons.

Iran never betrays their allies unlike the US. They always support their allies no matter what, look at their support for Hezbollah - even while they were fighting a dificult battle with IDF, Hamas - despite being heavily outgunned by israel and Iran not achieving much by supporting them, Syria - even when it looked like Damascus would fall and the Syrian government will never win. Iran has always been consistent and in more cases than not turn out to be successful because of their perseverance. Check out former CIA operative Robert Baer's book about Iran; The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower

>a basic rundown

https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Syria-International-Rivalry-Middle/dp/030021717X

Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic world, 1500-1800 Kahled El-Rouayheb.

Faith Campaign was not pro-Salafism, really. During the same time as the Campaign, Saddam denounced Wahhabism and killed/imprisoned Salafis who went too far in stirring up Sunni-Shiite hatred. Some good readings on this:

A Pedigree of Terror: The Myth of the Ba’athist Influence in the Islamic State Movement. It demonstrates that a lot of the alleged connections between Saddamist officers and Daesh are overblown or simply false. It also details the background of Daesh's top leaders; many of them (including Baghdadi himself) openly denounced and condemned Baathism and Saddam

Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam, and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq. A full book on the topic, and goes beyond the public face of the Faith Campaign to the inner workings of Saddam's government

This book is out of date, but it explains the origins and what happened during the first few years of the war. A handy primer.
https://kindle.amazon.com/work/syrias-uprising-fracturing-levant-adelphi/B00E1XA74Q/0415717388/posts

Hanging is an extremely efficient way to kill people. This book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hangmans-Tale-Memoirs-Public-Executioner/dp/0330316338 about the last public executioner in Britain describes haw they would rush the person to be executed into the hanging chamber and have him dead within a minute or two. They prided themselves on not giving the prisoner time to think about it.

Replied here from below with the same comment because the link chain is hidden.

Here I'll do you the favour of giving you the textbook from Canada/US here

Also you could actually check out the sources that are in wikipedia claiming he was kurdish.

Oh look I took just one. Eddé, Anne-Marie "Saladin" trans. Jean Marie Todd Harvard University Press, 2011, p. 17, ISBN 978-0-674-055559-0, "Syria, all the territory of present day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel". A biography published by Harvard on Salahdin, also saying he's Kurdish. But it must be all propaganda and lies, because the Turkish education system said everyone else is lying and he's actually Turkish.

Hey check out this history channel documentory about him oh look he's stated to be Kurdish, from a Kurdish family.

Seriously. What evidence do you have. He named some cities with Turkish names? He also named cities Arabic names, Kurdish names, Druze names. He controlled a Islamic empire with every culture/ethnicity in the middle east.

I really can't forgive how BS your argument is. Bring facts or stay home son.

A friend loaned me Out of the Mountains. I totally agree with you that the military isn't the most effective way to fight an urban war, but realistically states have limited options. Either way, it is a grim, though suggested, read.

No of course it doesn't, there's no concrete proof so any mention of it on the wikipedia page will be edited out. It was however written about in this book, as flawed as it is:

https://www.amazon.com/Gideons-Spies-Secret-History-Mossad/dp/0312252846

That's kind of the point of Mossad, even if everyone knows they are behind something it can seldom be proven. But when Syrian or Iranian state scientists die abroad suspiciously, I'm willing to bet on Mossad being involved.

> I think the biggest difference between Russia and western countries is Russia isn't restrained by the rule of law. They don't need proof to arrest somebody and they don't need a trial to execute somebody. If they suspect somebody is a terrorist, there is nothing to stop them from making that suspect just disappear.

It's a combination of this and control over information. There are almost no independent media outlets in Russia and they can and do tightly control the access of foreign journalists. Having total control over the information environment allows them to act with far fewer restrictions than their Western counterparts.

Please don't treat this as if the west was not capable of the same crimes. It's quite the opposite and a lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre

There, brave US serviceman killed 24 civilians. All murderers of the Haditha massacre walked. None were convicted. If the US is any good at anything, it is at covering up war crimes. And if you could stomach that, have a look at the next one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings

And if you want to find people justifying this rape and killing of a 14y old girl by talking about how stressful these poor soldiers were, just have a look at the comments of this book on amazon, :

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Hearts-Platoons-Descent-Triangle/dp/0307450767