Iraqi soldier killed in clash with Syrian rebels

[Alamuti Lotus]

Source: al-Akhbar/AFP

Clashes between Iraqi border police and gunmen who crossed from Syria into western Iraq killed a policeman and wounded five on Saturday, an officer said.

The gunmen travelling in five four-wheel-drive vehicles crossed into Iraq's Anbar province about six miles (10 kilometers) from the Al-Waleed border crossing with Syria, Major Shihab Taha of the border police said.

Clashes broke out between the gunmen and the border police inside Iraq, killing one policeman and wounding five, Taha said, putting the number of gunmen killed at two.

The toll could not be confirmed, however, with the gunmen taking the bodies with them when they returned to Syria.

Iraq has sought to publicly avoid taking sides in the civil war between the Syrian government and rebels seeking his overthrow it, but the conflict has spilled over the border on several occasions.

Read more: http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/iraqi-soldier-killed-clash-syrian-rebels

[Kurska]

1. And the spillover continue

Sunni and Shia have been killing each for over a thousand odd years, it was imperial arrogance of the first degree to think we could have changed that.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. This Sunni-Shia conflict appears to know no national boundaries.

The Syrian civil war is becoming the Syrian-Iraqi civil war, with sectarian conflict in Iraq on the rise.

[progree]

3. Yup, its a DEFACTO regional Sunni vs. Shiite war

Last edited Mon Jul 15, 2013, 06:28 PM - Edit history (6)

I was distressed to read how many countries and how many factions inside and outside of Syria were taking sides in the Syrian civil war, and realizing that all the Sunni countries and factions were siding with the rebels, and all the Shiite countries and factions were siding with the regime (Bashar al-Assad is an Alawite which is a Shiite sect. Syria has a Sunni majority).

Iran, Iraq (despite what the article says), Hezbollah, Shiites in Syria supporting the regime. All mostly Shiite.

Saudi Arabia, several Gulf states, Turkey, Iraq's Al-Qaeda affiliate, Sunnis in Syria and Lebanon supporting the rebels. All mostly Sunni.

I suppose this is all coincidence and actually the rebels are all backed by freedom-loving democracy-loving wonderful wonderful people and the other side are a bunch of Dick Cheneys who love dictatorship and oppression. Like the Arab Spring or something.

At first that's how I saw it - wonderful wonderful people throwing off an evil dictatorship. Just like the Sunni v. Shiite civil war in Iraq in 2005-7 or thereabouts wasn't really about Sunnis and Shiites, but rather freedom fighters vs. brutal dictatorship. NOT.

By the way, the mathematical probability that this alignment of factions and countries in the Syrian civil war is just coincidence is less than 1 in 1,000.

I was also impressed by a PBS documentary where they had camera crews embedded in different units of both sides of the Syrian war. A lot of it was the rationalizations by the ordinary fighters for why there were fighting. It was very little about the economy or democracy and freedom of expression and equality for women and all that other goo goo stuff, but almost entirely about those Shia dogs or those Sunni dogs.

Another thing from the documentary was that virtually all the minority sects in Syria back the regime -- not out of love of Assad or his style of government, but out of fear of being dominated by the country's Sunni majority and fearing an imposition of Islamic law by the Sunnis.

[Ash_F]

4. I hate to interrupt the worldly SunnivShi'a meme

But that is a pretty lazy way to describe this conflict

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khaled-diab/syrias-sunni-v-shia-myth_b_3508176.html

[harmonicon]

5. Thanks. Someone had to say it.

It no longer surprises me but still sort of amazes me that people think so little of others that they can group them into a huge generalization based on something they don't even know anything about. What the fuck though, right? I mean, you can just say two words and stop worrying, because you've clearly got this all sorted out.

[happyslug]

6. In many ways this is the traditional three way fight in the region

Historically the Middle East has been a fight between three major powers (Persia, Egypt and Asia Minor) AND local fights between local groups supported by one or more of those three powers. Until the Crusades, it was rare to have any outside power in the Middle East. Every so often one would attack Asia Minor, forcing Asia Minor to withdraw and upsetting the balance of power, but within a couple of hundred years Asia Minor would re enter, sometimes under a new tribal name (Thus the Hittites gave way to the Assyrians, who gave way to the Greeks, then the Romans, then the Greeks and then the Turks).

When Egypt was Christian, it spit with the Greeks Christians and remained a Separate Christian Church till the Crusades when the Mumaluks decided everyone in Egypt should be Moslem and started the prejudice against Christians in Egypt that exist to this day (The previous Shiite rulers of Egypt accepted the Christian Majority and lived with it, but it produced a very weak support for the Fatima Dynasty and lead to its replacement by a Sunni Kurdish Dynasty that in turn was replaced by the Mumaluks).

Turkish history since the Crusades is equally complex, the Turks were hired Mercenaries of the last of the Caliphs, but became a power themselves and settled in right is now Turkey (having come from what is know Turkestan). While the last of the Survivors of the Byzantine Empire fought the Turks, they also inter married with the Turks and as the Seljik Turks were replaced by the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Empire became more and more a Turkish AND Greek Empire as oppose to a pure Turkish empire (The legend of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman Turks shows this, he fought his Seljuk Turkish enemies and allied himself with a Greek Christian Nobleman who became the first of his advisers, many Turkish Noble Families stayed Christian till the 1600s when Islamic Fundamentalism swept threw Turkey and lead to "Reforms" that undid what Osman had set up and lead to a break up between the Greeks and The Turks that lead to Greek Independence in 1830 and today's Greek-Turkish hatred. The Greek-Turk hatred is more like a divorce where both sides blame the other then between two independent people).

Thus what happens in the Middle East has a Turkish component, but that also means Greek input for Turkey has to worry about both (in fact the main foreign Support for the Kurds for decades was the Greek Government). Thus while Greece is not presently in the calculation of anyone in the Middle East, it has been in the past and will be in the future.

In many ways, the Christians in the Middle East has tended to look to Turkey/Greece for support, except those that are tied in with Egypt, who tend to look to Egypt for support. The Shiite tend to seek support from Iran (as did the Jews in the Middle East prior to about 1850, when they shifted to France and Europe). Since the Crusades the Christians in the Lebanon has also looked to France for support, France giving them support even long after the end of the Crusades, i.e. into the 1600s and 1700s in addition to Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1795 (At the end of the Byzantine Empire, Venice had become a major supporter of the Empire, even through it had paid for the Fourth Crusade in 1204 that for all practical purposes had killed the Empire, Genoa supported the Turks, France supported the Empire at its fall in 1453, but Spain and England supported the Turks. Spain would turn against the Turks in the subsequent 100 years, while England would stay a loyal ally. so much for religion and alliances).

The Greek-Turkish relationship between 1204 (the Fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusades) and the 1830 War of Greek Independence had a huge affect on the Middle East. As long as both people saw each other as strong allies against the rest of the world, the Turkish Empire was strong and able to defeat anyone it wanted to defeat, including Turkey and Iran. On the other hand, once that internal alliance was destroyed in the 1600s, the Ottoman Empire became the Sick man of Europe

Just pointing out that this is more a fight between tribes then anything to do with religion, it is a continuance of tribal in fighting that goes back to ancient times.

[Igel]

7. It is, of course.

It would be more accurate to say that

the challengers and supporters are typically conservative Sunni and Shi'ites; after all, many Sunnis of a liberal or moderate strain support Assad in Syria

the challengers and supporters may break by sect, but ultimately they want power--although among conservative Sunnis and Shi'ites the distinction of often moot. However, among the better educated and more liberal "protesters" often they just want power.


The generalization is still true that Shi'ites support Assad and Sunnis the rebels, and factoring in not just sect but the strain of though in each sect helps make this clear and remove some of the fuzz from the thinking. At the same time, though, it's also important to not fall for a kind of etymological fallacy, as Diab does. It doesn't matter who founded the Ba'athist party or that the "Alawite regime" has a large Sunni membership. What matters for many is that there's a Alawite in power--look at the MB's rhetoric if you don't believe me. It doesn't matter if the power is "pure" Alawite or overtly Shi'ite because, as we see in a lot of situations in the US, who is in power and what they do matters less their value as a symbol or standard bearer. Often the actual facts don't matter but what was reported as fact but later refuted, but never actually changed in the minds of the people involved.