******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
On 10/19/15 12:30 AM, Mark Richey via Marxism wrote:
Allowing transit is a far different thing than BRINGING the
jihadists to Syria, and Assad's alowing transit was secndary to the
US sponsorship of jihadist networks deriving from the US campaign in
Afghanistan. Together with Saudi sponsorship. Assad just played
along.
The point of the article is to show that Assad's opposition to jihadis
is bullshit. When his cops facilitated their entry into Syria when it
served his ends, that should have put the kibosh on the idea that he is
fighting al-Qaeda, etc. The only thing he is fighting are poor Sunnis
who flocked to the city when rural misery forced an internal migration
not much different than the one that makes Mexicans come to the USA. If
you had the slightest familiarity with Syrian society. Like all members
of the Baathist amen corner, you could care less about such matters.
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer262/syrian-regimes-business-backbone
After Bashar al-Asad succeeded his father in 2000, the architects of
Syria’s economic policy sought to reverse the downturn by liberalizing
the economy further, for instance by reducing state subsidies. Private
banks were permitted for the first time in nearly 40 years and a stock
market was on the drawing board. After 2005, the state-business bonds
were strengthened by the announcement of the Social Market Economy, a
mixture of state and market approaches that ultimately privileged the
market, but a market without robust institutions or accountability.
Again, the regime had consolidated its alliance with big business at the
expense of smaller businesses as well as the Syrian majority who
depended on the state for services, subsidies and welfare. It had
perpetuated cronyism, but dressed it in new garb. Families associated
with the regime in one way or another came to dominate the private
sector, in addition to exercising considerable control over public
economic assets. These clans include the Asads and Makhloufs, but also
the Shalish, al-Hassan, Najib, Hamsho, Hambouba, Shawkat and al-As‘ad
families, to name a few. The reconstituted business community, which now
included regime officials, close supporters and a thick sliver of the
traditional bourgeoisie, effected a deeper (and, for the regime, more
dangerous) polarization of Syrian society along lines of income and region.
Successive years of scant rainfall and drought after 2003 produced
massive rural in-migration to the cities -- more than 1 million people
had moved by 2009 -- widening the social and regional gaps still
further. Major cities, such as Damascus and Aleppo, absorbed that
migration more easily than smaller ones, which were increasingly starved
of infrastructural investment. Provincial cities like Dir‘a, Idlib, Homs
and Hama, along with their hinterlands, are now the main battlegrounds
of the rebellion. Those living in rural areas have seen their
livelihoods gutted by reduction of subsidies, disinvestment and the
effects of urbanization, as well as decades of corrupt authoritarian
rule. The Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings motivated them to express
their discontent openly and together.
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
