Et puis des fois Joshua Landis a d’excellentes fulgurances comme celles-ci :
▻https://twitter.com/joshua_landis/status/695244317112213504
Magnet theory of jihadism is goofy. I cannot understand it.
Syria Comment » Archives “Regime-Change without State Collapse is Impossible in Syria,” Landis Interviewed by RT’s Sophie&Co
/regime-change-without-state-collapse-is
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En fait, comme à chaque fois, je me demande s’il l’a dit avant. En cherchant « magnet » (qui est le terme consacré) sur son blog Syria Comment, la seule occurence pertinente que j’ai trouvée, c’est l’interview de novembre 2015 :
►http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/regime-change-without-state-collapse-is-impossible-in-syria-landis-intJL: This is true, but many top US generals, like the Syrian opposition, continue to insist that Assad is the magnet drawing ISIS into Syria and thus must be destroyed first. This argument makes little sense. After all, when did Al-Qaeda pour into Iraq? Only after Saddam was deposed and the Americans ruled the country. I don’t think any of the US generals who now claim that Assad must be destroyed in order to defeat ISIS would also argue that America had to be destroyed in Iraq in order to rid it of al-Qaida.
À moins qu’il ait dénoncé cette théorie en d’autres termes ailleurs (je n’en ai pas souvenir), je ne comprends pas pourquoi il a fallu attendre fin 2015 pour énoncer que la « théorie de l’aimant » est « idiote », alors que c’est l’un des axes principaux de la narrative occidentale.
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Josh Landis should be credited for putting his... -
by Reinoud Leenders
▻https://www.facebook.com/reinoud.leenders/posts/924899757598688
en réponse à ►http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/regime-change-without-state-collapse-is-impossible-in-syria-landis-int (voir ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/426341#message427231)Josh Landis should be credited for putting his finger on a host of important issues and dilemmas. But he’s wrong on several counts:
“The West falsely believes that it can separate the regime from the state. It argues that it can pursue regime-change while simultaneously preserving the state and its institutions. Washington believes it can avoid the chaos it sewed in Iraq. I don’t believe it can.”
But surely equating the Syrian state to a narrow and ruthless regime hasn’t generated ’statehood’ either by even a minimalistic definition of that term: It has failed to enforce a monopoly on violence (and that’s putting it politely), it outsourced violence to an array of shady and unaccountable militias and foreign mercenaries, it doesn’t control (any of?) its borders, its fails to provide security to even its staunchest supporters, and it helped to chase out one-fifth of the country’s 2011 population (and still counting). And that’s leaving aside the responsibilities that supposedly come with state sovereignty; none of which are upheld by this regime ostensibly embracing the Syrian state.
“Westerners believe that because their own state institutions are run by professional civil servants, Middle Eastern states are too. But they aren’t. Political appointees make up the entire edifice.”
That’s an incredibly dangerous (Chalabi-ist?) thing to say as it could be read as giving a green light for anyone opposing the Syrian regime to eradicate any single public servant along the “entire edifice” when given the chance. But more importantly, it is inaccurate as many rebel forces and opposition activists who worked with dedicated public servants to get garbage collected, to operate bakeries and facilitate food distribution in opposition-controlled areas will be able to confirm. Also, if all civil servants are supposedly part and parcel of the regime, why then did the regime itself try so hard to marginalise them, selling out state assets to well-placed crony businessmen, and starve them from resources to effectuate their perceived significance to the regime? Most state employees are there for their salary only; they don’t inherently owe allegiance to the regime but for the fact that the latter keeps paying their wages.
“... many top US generals, like the Syrian opposition, continue to insist that Assad is the magnet drawing ISIS into Syria and thus must be destroyed first. This argument makes little sense. After all, when did Al-Qaeda pour into Iraq? Only after Saddam was deposed and the Americans ruled the country.”
The analogy doesn’t fly. Al-Qaeda in Iraq fought US forces; ISIS hardly fights Syrian regime forces. The Syrian regime (and now with the Russians) make an effort to keep ISIS in place while fighting all the other insurgents. Furthermore, the Syrian regime from the start of the uprising has been begging the opposition to turn to ’takfiri’ extremism for it to remain the only game in town; whatever one may think of the Americans in Iraq but at least they weren’t hoping for a fully armed ’takfiri’ adversary. When a regime needs ISIS to retain a modicum of acceptability or to present itself as a less disastrous alternative, it follows that it sustains ISIS and it shows how far it has itself moved up to the wrong end of that scale of disastrousness.
“Those that argue that the US squandered its opportunity to train, arm and finance moderates to destroy both Assad and Jihadist militias delude themselves.”
Up to the Summer of 2012 there was a window of opportunity for arming and supporting ’moderates’ and, arguably, after having squandered that opportunity the Jihadist militias had free reign.
“The price of regime-change is chaos.”
That’s a prediction; fair enough. But we know for a fact today that the price of regime maintenance is ... chaos. Arguably, without it the regime wouldn’t have survived up to this day.
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Joshua Landis aux USA, Fabrice Blanche en France, et bien d’autres beaucoup moins pertinents à mes yeux... Une constante : le conflit syrien a définitivement enterré le mythe du « social scientist » remplacé par une sorte d’expert, conseiller, où le militant, quelle que soit la cause, remplace l’homme de science. Dans le contexte très particulier des études sur le monde arabe, c’est un étonnant retour de la figure de l’orientaliste, au sens donné par Edward Saïd à ce terme. Mais personne ne souhaite trop s’étendre sur cet aspect de la question.
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Intéressante interview vidéo de Joshua Landis par Sophie Chevarnadzé sur RT (en anglais) qui pointe les nombreuses contradictions de la politique américaine en Syrie :
US in stupor, doesn’t know what to do or even what it wants in Syria - MidEast studies academic
▻https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/321020-syrian-peace-talk-conflict-
Le transcript de l’interview sur le site de Landis :
►http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/regime-change-without-state-collapse-is-impossible-in-syria-landis-int
Extraits :SS: Assad has agreed to take part in early elections – can Syria in its current state hold the vote? Can there be a vote before Islamic State is beaten?
JL: First, Syria is in such terrible physical state and so many people have been forced from their homes or left the country that it would be almost impossible to have fair elections. Secondly, and more importantly perhaps, it is hard for anyone to believe that the outcome would be different from the elections held in the past 45 years? All ended up with a 99% vote for the President. There’s such distrust between all sides. Nobody puts much faith in the idea of elections. Most people understand that lurking beneath the question of elections is another question: “Can the Assad regime stay or not?” Now that Russia has intervened on the side of Assad, it’s quite clear the Assad regime is staying and will stay. How the West is going to accommodate itself to this fact is not yet clear.
SS: The Western-backed FSA commander Ahmad Sa’oud told AP: “What we care about is Assad leaving, not turning this from a war against the regime to a war against terrorism”. So, they don’t really care about the fight against Islamic State as well…
JL: You’re right. Most actors in Syria have other priorities besides destroying the Islamic State. Almost all rebel groups insist on destroying Assad before the Islamic State. They refuse to be drawn into what they call a “sahwa.” They do not want to become “agents of America” and so forth. The vast majority want nothing to do with the fight against ISIS before they have defeated Assad. Many members of the Coalition that are fighting ISIS also have other priorities. That is a big problem for both for the Russians and for the U.S. Indeed, the US has other priorities as well. We saw in Palmyra, Deir ez-Zor and elsewhere, the US would not attack ISIS if it believed Assad and his military would benefit. It preferred to have ISIS take Palmyra than to be seen to be helping Assad.
[...]
SS: Does the U.S. have enough influence over the opposition they’re backing to make them agree to a political process in Syria?
JL: No. That’s the short answer.
SS: So people who represent the opposition in peace talks, are they controlling forces on the ground?
JL: No, they’re not. The strongest militias in Syria are the more extreme and more Salafist militias. The Islamists have a real ideology to sell; they are the militias who have national reach and representation in all provinces of Syria. The US backs the weakest militias in Syria. They are the non-ideological militias and are extremely local. For the most part, they are composed of clan and tribal leaders. They may hold sway over a village or two; they may command a thousand men, perhaps two thousand, but not more than that. The Islamic militants, such as Al-Qaeda, Ahrar ash-Sham, ISIS and the Islamic Army, have purchase over a broad segment of Syrian society that stretches from north to south. The US refuses to deal with Islamist militias. It insists on dealing only with the weaker ones, which operate with some independence, but in many cases have to defer to the tougher and stronger Islamist militias that hold sway in most parts of Syria.
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