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[Mictlantecuhtli]

No one in the middle east in power likes anyone with a hand in destabilization.

[10ebbor10]

saudi arabia and qatar with turkey's permission. i'll assume you're fairly well informed on the power struggle between the sauds and iran in the middle east, so let's just say it's logical it turned into a proxy war

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are western allies, and Turkey can be considered part of the Western camp.

[misko27]

Simply put, Syria is not a problem you can solve by firing missiles at it anymore.

Fool, Anything can be solved with sufficient missiles. You are just not imagining how many we might need to use, or what kind.

I think we need to step in somehow, because obviously this is only got to get worse, and the West is threatened with the position of having stood by and done nothing, which obviously hurts us in the long run. How however, and how to gain political will for it, is unclear.

Problem is it's not simply rebels against bad dictator anymore. It's more and more of a Sunni against everything else. If the west step in, we do need a strategy to prevent large-scale revenge massacre and ethnic cleansing once the rebels wins.

There was a paper I found on lawfare that argued that the only way forward would be to create, organize and arm an army from whatever secular militia is still around. That army would not only have the command structure to take the fight to Assad and use the tactical advantage American air support could give, but serve as a secular core to rebuild a state after that. Because yes, we're facing a potential second Iraq afterward in term of nation-building.[size=78%]. [/size]

This is a attractive option I must say,although I doubt how successful the West would be in creating a friendly militia given the bad rep we get from having stood by so long.

[burningpet]

According to Syrian state television, Syrian Army soldiers stumbled upon chemical weapons when clearing out a rebel hideout in Damascus suburb of Jobar.

Yeah, i don't think we can trust either side when it comes to the truth. the thought of rebels deploying chemical gas to frame assad is not some conspiratory far fetched nonsense, its a real possibility. but, then again, the thought of assad launching chemical war heads is also highly plausible, and last, the idea that there was never any use of chemical warheads in the scale suggested a few days ago and its all a fraud, is also extremely likely.

About funding, i have heard of this possible suggestion, which i tend to favour, but wont be surprised if its nonsense, which will then bring back the other basic, well known explanation of the reason of funding which is religious.

the area is rich in natural gas, more so, qatar is super rich in natural gas. qatar needs to transfer said gas to europe (http://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/qatar-seeks-gas-pipeline-to-turkey) which has an increasing demand for it (http://www.worldenergy.org/documents/congresspapers/P000963.pdf). the only way to do so in large scale and efficiently is via syria on a landline and via egypt through its ports. russia is the leading suppliers of natural gas to the world. russia would like to keep it this way. the only thing that keeps qatar from having a direct land line to europe is assad, which is in alliance with iran and russia who both rather not see qatar gain advantage over them in that area. (they could detour through iraq, which is highly unstable and may result in what we saw in egypt where their gas pipes were the first thing to explode as the rebellion started).

Hence why qatar is the provider of funds, weapons and man power in the form of mercenaries to the syrian "rebels".

[10ebbor10]

Whatever happens, it will piss off at least 75% of the involved parties, and probably all of them. The parties that we don't aid hate us because of that, the civilians hate us because we let bad things happen/ did bad things ourselves, and the parties that we do help will hate us/ be disillusioned because we won't be able to solve the problems.

Yup, it's all about the energy. Also evidenced by the fact that Syria's oil embargo was lifted, and oil is being bought from the rebels. (Encouraging the rebels to battle against each other for control of the oil fields).

[Pnx]

So essentially oil and natural gas are to the middle east, what conflict minerals are to various parts of Africa?

[10ebbor10]

So essentially oil and natural gas are to the middle east, what conflict minerals are to various parts of Africa?

Always have been. Though a bit worse here than in Africa.

[Pnx]

So essentially oil and natural gas are to the middle east, what conflict minerals are to various parts of Africa?

Always have been. Though a bit worse here than in Africa.

Well I guess I'd always known oil in the middle east was a big political thing, but I'd never really looked at these civil wars in the context of a mineral conflict.

In which case I'm starting to feel like this civil war may boil on for years, maybe even decades. There's just a lot of people interested in keeping the war going, from people who want to buy oil for cheap from a conflict zone, to the Russians who want to keep natural gas restricted, to the arms traders who love a good high demand market.

[10ebbor10]

Actually, if look deep enough, you can see the black taint of oil in almost every civil war, revolution or conflict in the middle East.

[misko27]

Actually, if look deep enough, you can see the black taint of oil in almost every civil war, revolution or conflict in the middle East.

Spoiler: Statistics on Oil (click to show/hide)

There are 30 countries in the middle east. The Oil-dry ones are

• Afghanistan
  
• Bahrain
  
• Cyprus
• Comoros
• Djibouti
• Eritrea
• Israel
  
• Jordan
  
• Lebanon
  
• Mauritania
• Morocco
• Somalia
  
  The oiled ones are
  
• Saudi Arabia
  
• Iran
  
• Iraq
  
• Kuwait
  
• United Arab Emirates
• Libya
  
• Kazakhstan   
  
• Qatar
• Algeria
• Azerbaijan
• Oman   
• Sudan (Mostly the new South)
  
• Egypt   
  
• Yemen
  
• Syria
  
• Turkmenistan
• Uzbekistan
• Tunisia
  
• Pakistan

I've bolded a few that have had large conflicts (that is to say, ones that jump out at me and/or have international attention), although by no means all of them. Now, to specify and exclude further, Afghanistan has a minor link to Oil through Bush and a pipeline. Some of the oiled countries are only fueling fights.

It's not fair to say all conflicts (after all, Isreal has zip. None. Not a drop. Nor their mortal enemies Hezbollah in Lebanon. Poor Somalia is oil free.), although, there is a very, very obvious bias here to Oil. Note, there is also the question of causation.

[LordSlowpoke]

Didn't Israel have almost silly amounts of natural gas...? I remember reading it was worth half a billion ISK at the rates they want to extract. No idea how much that's really worth though.

[Dutchling]

You have quite the liberal definition of the middle east. I've never seen Cyprus or African countries (other than sometimes Egypt and the Maghreb) as part of it.

[Eagle_eye]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East

It's not a common grouping, but it's definitely been used before.

[Owlbread]

Afghanistan doesn't have to have oil for the Afghan war to be about oil. We're currently protecting a pipeline running from Turkmenistan (where all the oil is) through Afghanistan and into countries that will allow the West to take some of it.

[MonkeyHead]

Here is a fasicnating point of view on democracy, national identity and Islam from the BBC...