What is the best book to understanding Assad, Syria, and ISIS? Or has it not been written yet?

Disregard the retarded posters in this thread, you're gonna want some background on Islamic terrorism, I suggest the looming tower for that. On Syria in particular I'd say it's slightly too early to tell desu

>It is easy to understand why Syrians decided to take up arms in self-defense in the face of such a brutal, sustained military assault on their communities. The arming of the uprising and its transformation into an insurgency created an entirely different political, strategic, and moral situation. The militarization of the insurgency played into Asad’s hands politically, solidifying his support at home among those communities terrified by the rebels and guaranteeing external support for his military posture. The arming of the insurgency dramatically increased the level of violence in all directions, shattering state and society with untold human consequences. The turn to insurgency and the flood of external support for these armed groups inevitably opened the door to jihadists, warlordism, and a devastating strategic stalemate. There should be an accounting for those who advocated an insurgency strategy in Syria knowing perfectly well that it could not hope to succeed. Their claim to the moral high ground is one of the great mythologies of the last four years. They knowingly pushed for a strategy guaranteed to produce enormous human suffering and with little chance of success, in the hopes of forcing the United States into a war that Obama was determined to avoid.
>Obama was right to avoid this intervention. Perhaps his greatest sin in the eyes of the Washington consensus was to have learned the lessons of Iraq. He understood deeply that American military power could not solve the region’s conflicts and that limited intervention would only pave the way to ever-escalating demands for more. Obama saw through the sophistry of the interventionists and impatiently dismissed their ill-conceived suggestions. He refused to buy the carefully marketed illusions of an organized moderate opposition or easily enforced no-fly zones or safe areas. He understood the iron logic of the slippery slope from limited intervention to full-scale quagmire, and would pay the political costs to avoid that fateful path.

>Syria is a historic catastrophe, but it was not one of America’s making. If anything, the Obama administration did too much and not too little. By staking out a position that Asad must go, Obama created expectations which shaped political and military behavior on all sides. By failing to restrain allies from arming the opposition early in the crisis, Washington watched seemingly helplessly as the disaster it had predicted unfolded inexorably. By then joining the campaign of arming rebels, it helped to entrench the strategic stalemate without gaining significant leverage over the opposition or defeating the regime. By threatening war in August 2013 and then stepping back at the last minute, it achieved the worst of all worlds. By making public promises for political cover, it raised expectations which were inevitably frustrated at great cost to American credibility and prestige. In almost all instances, the US and the region would have been better served by a more, not less, restrained American policy towards Syria.

Too superficial, and toadies up to the Obama administration too easily. The 'criticism' only betrays his bias, and thus his blinkers.

OP: it's too early for narrative histories. You're honestly better off just hanging in /sg/.

Dr. Joshua Landis is probably a good start for an academic perspective. I don't think he's written any monographs as of yet, but he's published a number of articles in peer reviewed journals over the last 10 years or so. His blog gives great analysis and his talks are a fantastic introduction:
mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/syrian-uprising-2011-why-asad-regime-likely-survive-2013
youtube.com/watch?v=ROBF-F4H0GA
joshualandis.com/blog/

This is kind-of sort-of true. Israel and Saudi Arabia don't really get along. They mainly tolerate each other's existence and have a common enemy in Iran. However, they both acknowledge that active cooperation between the two states is unseemly in the Arab world. So during the first Gulf War, for example, Israel refused to participate in strikes against Hussein, despite missiles launched from Iraq landing in Tel Aviv and massive domestic outcry against Hussein, even among the moderate Palestinians in Israel de jure. Israel is another issue entirely separate from the double-layered proxy war, and is a major stumbling block for US interests in the Middle East, in which they are unable to either fully support or openly condemn the actions of Netanyahu's regime.
However, your understanding of the fact that the situation in the Middle East is a proxy war is certainly correct.
The conflict has two origins: the Sunni-Shia split and the Cold War. Iran, northern Yemen, Bahrain, southern Iraq up to Baghdad, and much of western Syria are primarily Shia, while the rest of the Middle East, less Oman, is Sunni. Now given the fact that Sunnis and Shias have different names and live in roughly the same place, it's no surprise that they don't like each other.
Meanwhile, globally, the last 70 years of global political theatre have been dominated by conflict between Russia (USSR) and NATO. Russia, historically, has always suffered severe economic and military setbacks due to its geographical location. Russia only maintains a few ports: Archangelsk is frozen almost year-round, St. Petersberg can't get access to the Atlantic without Danish compliance, the Black Sea Fleet can't gain access to the Mediterranean without Turkish compliance, and the fleet stationed in Vladivostok can't get access to the Pacific without Japanese compliance. Now, because of a very long history, Russia is not very good friends with Denmark, who are part of NATO and don't like the human rights abuses, poor democratic values, and proto-fascism of Putin's regime. Russia is not very good friends with Japan either, with whom they are technically still at war. And they aren't friends with Turkey, who are also part of NATO and, due to a few wars and political differences, don't trust the Russians very much.

Russia's foreign policy concerning these countries has been to gain strategic leverage over them. The United States' foreign policy concerning this has been to stonewall Russia at every turn (via the Truman Doctrine). Russia can't really get much leverage over Denmark: they're to good of friends with all their neighbours: the Norwegians love them, the Germans love them, the Dutch love them, the Brits love them, the Estonians, Finns, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Poles all think the Danes are pretty swell. Even the Swedes like the Danes better than Russia. And Japan has a very good friend in America, and a very good frenemy in South Korea. Russia, in terms of their access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is entirely reliant on the benevolence of NATO or NATO allies.
However, the Middle East is not as much of a happy-go-lucky free hugs and healthcare party as Europe. It presented a much greater opportunity for imperialism than Europe or Asia.
Now, in Iran, in the early 1950s, when Mohammed Mosaddegh was elected and pledged to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, the company that is now British Petroleum appealed to the British Government who appealed to the Truman administration who had the CIA execute operation AJAX (in UK: Operation Boot) to overthrow the Prime Minister, increase the powers of the Shah, and end democracy in Iran. Naturally, the Iranians didn't like this, and in 1979, the Green Revolution saw first a student overthrow of the Shah and later the Ayatollah Khomeni (not Khameni, the current Ayatollah) come to power.
Up until this point, the only inroads that Soviet foreign policy had made into the region was to awkwardly fund anti-Zionist activities among the Arab States. But NATO managed to out-spend and out-maneuvre the Soviets, so not much progress was made. With the Ayatollah in power, the Russians finally had a foothold, in addition to a supply of oil and minerals from Iran. The Americans and Saudis, wary of this, turned to Saddam Hussein, the Ba'athist leader of Iraq.
Okay! Now, the Ba'athists are socialist (in the Bernie Sanders sense, not in the USSR sense), Arab pan-nationalists who advocate for a non-democratic regime uniting all the Arab peoples under one flag. They are also committed secularists, founded by a Sunni, an Alawite, and a Christian. Bashar al-Assad is an Alawite (think Mormons of Islam) and a Ba'athist; Hussein was a Sunni and a Ba'athist. Ba'athists are anti-Zionist as well, and have a strong sense of secularism.

Because Ba'athists tend to be expansionist (as pan-nationalists are wont to be), Saddam Hussein presented an excellent ally of convenience for American and Saudi interests in Iran. The Saudis wanted (and to this day want) Iran out of the picture for several reasons. There is the Sunni-Shia split thing, and both the Twelver-Shia Ayatollah and the Wahabbi-Salahfist Sunni House of Saud hail from the most fundamentalist, conservative, extremist branches of their respective religions. So whereas Shias and Sunnis don't get along in general, the Ayatollah and the king wouldn't spit on each other if they were both on fire. Another reason is economic. Control of oil resources in the Persian Gulf is the keystone of both countries' economies. So drilling rights tend to be a hot-button issue. And then there's the issue of surrounding countries. Places like Bahrain and Iraq are majority Shia, even though they are ruled by Sunni kings and dictators. Places like Yemen and Kuwait have significant Shia pluralities, even though they're ruled by Sunni leaders. Likewise, almost the entire Syrian government is controlled by Alawites, who only make up 10% of the population. Shia, Christian, Druze, Gnostic, and Jewish (!) minorities also have some (insignificant, but still present) representation in less-important factions of the al-Assad regime, but the 70% of the population who call themselves Sunni are almost entirely ignored. Naturally, the areas around Damascus and Homs, and the coastal regions where the Alawites live have received the majority of economic development over the last 40 years, while the Eastern part of the country, places like Aleppo and Raqqa, have been ignored, with oil-money being funneled toward the government, the military, and the cities home to the religious minorities.
So during the 80s, Iran was kept preoccupied in an incredibly bloody and brutal war against Hussein, and the CIA provided weapons (including chemical weapons) to Hussein in the hopes that he'd take enough steam out of the Iranians. (FUN FACT: after Operation Iraqi Freedom, US Intelligence actually did find WMDs (not nukes, but WMDs nonetheless), but refused to report their findings, as the weapons had been sold *by the CIA* and still had American markings on them.) The USSR, meanwhile, sensing a juicy proxy war on their hands, started sending cash and weapons to Iran. 2-3 million people were killed.
Let's take a break from the global politics to talk about the very earliest stages of Daesh (which is what I'll be calling ISIS or IS or ISIL for now, because they don't like to be called Daesh). Daesh has its origin story, like all great Islamic fundamentalist villains, among the Mujahideen, fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

The Soviets initially opened up relations with Afghanistan in an effort to reduce American influence in the regions, especially in Iran and Pakistan. They propped up a government and began educating citizens, including women. The Afghans thought this was fine until two flashpoints set them off: 1. girls came home telling their parents that they had been told they were equal to men and that there was no God, and 2. tribal leaders were stripped of their land and "dancing boys" (read: sex-slaves). With religious outrage and the loss of support from the tribal leaders, the Soviet situation in Afghanistan was untenable. The CIA took advantage, and Sunni leaders declared a Jihad. Between the American funding provided directly to the Mujahideen and the Soviet arms scavenged, captured, or stolen, more extreme groups, such as Al-Qaeda were well-armed and well-experienced after the war.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the failure of Hussein to defeat the Iranians, the Americans began to cool down on their foreign policy positions in the Middle East, falling back to merely maintaining the legitimacy of Israel and occasionally intervening to keep the flow of oil. The Truman doctrine no longer seemed to apply (as there was no communism to spread). Saddam Hussein, being a Ba'athist -- and remember that Ba'athists, being pan-nationalists, are expansionist -- invaded and briefly conquered Kuwait. They then set their eyes on Saudi Arabia. Now, Hussein wasn't a savoury fellow, but neither was the Saudi King or the Kuwaiti King for that matter. But there was oil to be had. Actors were brought in to testify before the US Congress about war crimes committed by the evil Republican Guard (which never happened), and great big tough American President George H.W. Bush cried and cried for the U.N. Security Council. Now, normally, the U.N. doesn't actually *do* anything. That's it's whole point. But there are only five members with veto privilege: the US, the UK, Russia, China, and France. China didn't really care, Russia was no longer communist. So Saudi Arabia and Kuwait got their friends to all come and have a big party in the desert. The Gulf War marked the end of amicable relations between the Ba'athists and the West, and the start of a period of joint American and Saudi hegemony in the region.

Meanwhile, Russia's economy was really, really crappy. The Russians were struggling to get by on their economy of potatos and liquid potatos, and while the AK platform was a hotter sell than ever, most sales were not legitimate. So, in 1999, Yeltsin was thrown out and Putin was voted in. Putin at first tried to court President Bush as a potential ally, offering to help in Afghanistan every year until 2007, but Bush wasn't really interested, and was thoroughly unimpressed with Putin's theatrics (Bush's nickname for the Russian dictator was "Pooty Poot" and he reportedly tells a great yarn about Putin comparing the size of their dogs with phallic insecurity). Additionally, NATO kept expanding, and Putin's attempts to control the energy supply of the European Union (especially Germany) faced stiff competition from American, Canadian, Saudi, and later Iraqi oil exports. And so, in times of trouble, Putin fell back on the millenia-old Russian strategy: get access to warm seas.
In 2003, Bush listed three countries as the "Axis of Evil": Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Now, these countries weren't an axis of anything. They were both terrible dictatorial regimes, but North Korea didn't particularly care about Iran or Iraq, and Iran and Iraq hated each other. NK's inclusion in the triad was a given, but Iran and Iraq were oddities. Yes, both were anti-Israel, and both had a rocky relationship with the US, but that was true of many other countries: Libya, Morocco, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, even Argentina. Rather, there were two big motivating factors for their identification: their plentiful oil reserves and their opposition to Saudi Arabia.
When the Bush administration committed themselves to a fervently anti-Iranian stance, (a policy continued under Obama and Trump), the Russians committed themselves to a lasting relationship with Iran. What this meant, was that, post-2003, the little cold war in the Middle East between Iran and Saudi Arabia became one theatre of a larger cold war between Russia and the US.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the first proxy-war in that conflict. Remember the demographic data? That stuff wasn't worthless! Iraq is approximately 65% Shia, with only tiny minorities of Christians, Jews, Gnostics, and Yazidis. Of the remaining ~30% Sunnis, only 2/3s of those are Arab: the rest are Kurdish. The Shias under Saddam were not particularly happy with their Sunni ruler, but the Husseinist Ba'athists were committed secularists. They didn't have too much to worry about under Hussein, at least any more than the Sunni Arabs in the north-west of the country around Tikrit and Mosul, and far less than the Kurds in the far north, who wanted their independence. After the "liberation", all of these groups, the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds, were all incredibly anxious. Democracy meant that the Shia would likely gain control, which might mean bad things for the Sunni Arabs. Meanwhile, the Kurds were uncertain of whether they could possibly gain independence without any political support (not that they had any), and the Shia were worried that the Iraqi democracy might be subverted by the American occupiers in order to keep power in the hands of the Sunni.
One of the most important steps in foreign imperialism is to gain the support of an ethnic or religious minority who have local knowledge and who can rule for you. The Americans were not stupid in this respect. The first president of Iraq, not elected, but rather appointed by the Americans, was a Sunni Arab. This understandably made the Shi'ites nervous. What made them even more nervous was a guy named Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, we'll call him al-Zarqawi.
Al-Zarqawi was a protegé of Osama bin Ladin, and was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. However, he had a problem: specifically: not enough people. He had lots of funding, lots of guns, lots of explosives. But his sheer lack of manpower was a major detriment to his cause. Among the insurgents in Iraq in 2005, only 1% belonged to Al Qaeda. So he had a plan. Rather than killing American soldiers, who were heavily armed, well-trained, and who shot back, he'd target Shia civilians. The Shia were already nervous, and by causing mass casualties among the Shia population, he hoped to provoke attacks against the *Sunni* population. The results in his favour were twofold: 1. it meant that Iraqi Sunni Arabs were radicalized and more willing to join Al-Qaeda in Iraq to kill Shia and coalition forces, and 2. it meant that the resulting chaos and civil unrest would lead to an unworkable situation for the occupying Americans, who would expend a great deal of manpower and resources in restoring order and compliance. Zarqawi was killed in the summer of 2006, and his successor, al-Masri, was only in charge for a few months, but his plan worked swimmingly. This strategy was a major motivator of the 2006 surge of U.S. forces in Iraq; the resulting sectarian violence lead to major calls for an independent Sunni state.

ISIS for retards

Meanwhile, the Americans had grown wise. They knew that the results of the 2005 election couldn't lead to either the Sunni Arabs or the Shia in power. Either would be looked on as a justification for violence. Since 2005, both presidents of Iraq, both Talabani and Masum, have been moderate Kurds: showing neither favouritism toward Sunni or Shia, and willing only to grant limited autonomy to their own people. Neither of these figures could have possibly won the vote in a fair election. Instead, the National Assembly is heavily controlled to avoid these sorts of splits. These compromises, as we'll see, were not enough.
During the Battle of Fallujah, a Salahfist Quranic student named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (yes, that Baghdadi), was captured by U.S. forces and detained. While he was detained, he met with members of the Islamic State of Iraq (the spiritual successor the Al-Qaeda in Iraq), and, either during his initial detention, or some-time later, he was introduced to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (no relation). Bakr al-Baghdadi quickly rose through the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq, and when Omar was killed in 2010, he was placed in charge.
The Syrian Civil War began in the context of the Arab Spring. Organized over social media, in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, Arabs began protesting against mainly dictatorial governments. In Tunisia and Egypt, this resulted in regime change after the sympathetic militaries launched coups d’état against the government in favour of the protestors. In Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, protests were shut down brutally by the government, leaders were arrested and tortured, and crowds were dispersed through use of deadly force. In Syria and Yemen, which have major religious minorities, civil war broke out. In these two countries, the Arab Spring was largely motivated by religious turmoil, with the Sunni Syrian Arabs rising up against an Alawite minority rule in Syria and the Houthi Shi’ites rising up against Sunni Arab rule in Yemen.
The uprising in Syria was relatively peaceful at first, and protests in Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus saw no more violence than in Egypt or Bahrain (which is to say, a great deal, but nothing that would suggest war). But as the regime of Bashar al-Assad cracked down more and more on the protestors, the violence became more explicit, with suicide bombings against police and military, government forces firing on unarmed protestors, unprovoked attacks on religious minorities, and chemical weapons being dropped on protestors (who exactly released the Sarin gas is a matter of heated debate, but it’s generally agreed that it was either Assad or the FSA. Assad certainly had chemical weapons at the start of the conflict, although some government loyalists and Russian sources allege that the FSA acquired chemical weapons either by capturing Syrian stockpiles or by purchasing them from the CIA or other NATO intelligence bureaus.

As the Syrian Civil war broke out, two defined factions emerged initially: the pro-Assad regime and the FSA (Free Syrian Army). The FSA was not and has never been a single organization, but rather a loosely-grouped coalition of smaller forces, some backed by Western liberal democracies, some backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, some supported by local warlords who’ve emerged from the chaos, and some supported by Islamist groups.
As the violence in Syria spread, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State of Iraq (remember him?) saw an opportunity. He sent his leftenant Abu Muhammad al-Julani into Syria to recruit members and factions of the FSA into the ISI in order to build an army with which to establish an independent Islamist, Salahfist state stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. This group was called Shabhat al-Nusra, and after establishing a significant foothold in Syria, they were to invade Iraq.

Al-Julani succeeded in his mission to build up al-Nusra, but when al-Baghdadi arrived in Raqqa to take over control of al-Nusra and to subsume the group into what would quickly become Daesh. However, al-Julani had grown accustomed to the power and control, and refused to surrender control of al-Nusra, pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda under al-Zawarhi. Most members of al-Nusra joined Daesh, however, and the invasion of Iraq followed subsequently.
Here’s a quick rundown of the various players in the war, who their friends are, who their enemies are, and what they want:

Thank god for minimizing nests of posts

Daesh (ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State; formerly Islamic State in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq)
What they want: Establish a Salahfist Islamist theocratic state in Iraq and the Levant, remove all religious minorities from the area, and wipe out the Kurds.
Who their friends are: Boko Haram (in Nigeria) have formally pledged allegiance to Daesh.
Who their enemies are: PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party), YPG (People’s Protections Units; Kurds, in Rojava), YPJ (Women’s Protection Units; Kurds, in Rojava), Peshmerga (Kurds, in Iraqi Kurdistan), Sinjar Alliance (Yazidis), Iran, Iraq, pro-Assad regime, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Israel, NATO-led coalition, Russia, Turkey (nominally), Saudi Arabia (nominally), Qatar (nominally), various factions of the FSA.

Kurds (PKK, YPG, YPJ, Peshmerga, other groups):
What they want: The establishment of a permanent, independent, and autonomous Kurdish Republic spanning south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, north-eastern Iraq, and north-western Iran.
Who their friends are: The Kurds, in the early months of the rapid expansion of Daesh, sheltered Yazidi and Christian refugees. They receive some armaments from Italy and Germany, but NATO-affiliated countries are incredibly wary of supporting them.
Who their enemies are: Daesh, Turkey, Iran (nominally), Al-Nusra, a small number of factions in the FSA, pro-Assad regime (nominally, though conflict between the two is extremely rare, even along front-lines).

Iran:
What they want: The maintenance of the Assad regime in Syria; the protection and continued hegemony of Shia and Alawite populations in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; Shia rule in Lebanon.
Who their friends are: Russia, pro-Assad regime, Hezbollah.
Who their enemies are: Saudi Arabia, NATO, Daesh, the Kurds (no open conflict).

Iraq:
What they want: The end of Daesh’s occupation; the eventual assimilation of the Kurdish minority.
Who their friends are: NATO-led coalition (nominally), Iraqi Kurdistan (Peshmerga, nominally).
Who their enemies are: Daesh.

KSA and Friends (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait):
What they want: Sunni hegemony in the Middle East.
Who their friends are: NATO-led coalition, factions of the FSA.
Who their enemies are: Iran, Hezbollah, Daesh (nominally), Al-Nusra (nominally), pro-Assad Regime.

NATO-led coalition (USA, UK, France, Canada, and the rest of the gang):
What they want: A pro-western, anti-Iranian state in Damascus, collapse of the Islamic State and the Assad Regime.
Who their friends are: Saudi Arabia, the FSA (nominally), Iraq, Turkey.
Who their enemies are: Certain factions of the FSA, al-Nusra, Assad Regime, Hezbollah, Daesh, Russia, Iran.

Turkey:
What they want: The suppression of the Kurdish minority in the south-east of Turkey
Who their friends are: Saudi Arabia, NATO, Iraq, certain factions of the FSA, Daesh (through economic ties in 2015).
Who their enemies are: Russia (kind-of), the Kurds, Daesh (nominally), Hezbollah, pro-Assad regime (nominally).

Russia:
What they want: Strategic leverage over Turkey to gain access to the Mediterranean through the Bosporus and Dardanelles; regional allies in the Middle East.
Who their friends are: Iran, Assad Regime, Hezbollah (kind-of).
Who their enemies are: the FSA, al-Nusra, Daesh, NATO-led coalition.

Hezbollah:
What they want: Shia rule in Lebanon.
Who their friends are: Iran, Assad Regime, Russia (kind-of).
Who their enemies are: Al-Nusra, Israel, NATO-led coalition, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon.

Al-Nusra:
What they want: Establish a Salahfist Islamist theocratic state in Iraq and the Levant, remove all religious minorities from the area, and wipe out the Kurds; destruction of Daesh.
Who their friends are: They have an on-again-off-again relationship with al-Qaeda.
Who their enemies are: PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party), YPG (People’s Protections Units; Kurds, in Rojava), YPJ (Women’s Protection Units; Kurds, in Rojava), Peshmerga (Kurds, in Iraqi Kurdistan), Sinjar Alliance (Yazidis), Iran, pro-Assad regime, Hezbollah, Israel, NATO-led coalition, Russia, Turkey (nominally), Saudi Arabia (nominally), Qatar (nominally), the FSA.

The FSA*:
What they want: the overthrow of the Assad Regime, for various reasons.
Who their friends are: certain elements of the FSA are support by: NATO-led coalition, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda.
Who their enemies are: Assad Regime, Russia, Daesh, al-Nusra, Hezbollah, the Kurds (some factions), other elements of the FSA.
*keep in mind that the FSA is hundreds of separate groups with no centralized command.

Assad Regime:
What they want: the continued existence and hegemony of Bashar al-Assad over Syria; the continued existence and hegemony of the Alawite and Shia minorities in Syria; the eventual creation of a pan-Arabian secular totalitarian state encompassing the entire Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, and all of North Africa, in line with Ba’athist ideology.
Who their friends are: Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis (in Yemen).
Who their enemies are: The FSA, Daesh, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Kurds (nominally), Lebanon (sort-of), the NATO-led coalition.

This explanation is incredibly reductive. I’ve left out so much and covered a lot of topics far too quickly. But you shouldn’t be getting your foreign policy advice from Veeky Forums anyway, so you deserve it if you look like an idiot at a dinner-party with a professor of Middle Eastern Studies and the Ambassador from Russia.
I also recognize that this post is more Veeky Forums than Veeky Forums so here’s a nifty New Yorker article on Jihadist poetry to make up for it:
newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/08/battle-lines-jihad-creswell-and-haykel

Thanks for all these posts. Very informative and goes into detail with some specifics, particularly the history surrounding the conflict(s).

Thank you, this was a very helpful overview.

History of the CIA.

just watch hypernormalization

>But you shouldn’t be getting your foreign policy advice from Veeky Forums anyway

Where should I get it from?

Your intelligence briefs, Mr. President.

>Turkey:
>Who their enemies are: Russia (kind-of),

Is this even true anymore? Seems like Erdogan is alienating himself from the US and EU and becoming more friendly towards Putin. Not openly yet, but there has been a slow pivot over the past year in terms of these countries' attitudes towards each other.

Some things:
Kurds are definitely receiving support from NATO. Their main tactic is to fight as a light infantry force (they are very brave but I am a fanboy) and use US bombers as a shock cavalry which results in the most casualties during their engagements. According to international YPG volunteers there are a number of American special forces and CIA handlers in Rojava. The Kurds then use tablets to call in airstrikes against Daesh.

Russians and Americans have also established "tripwire bases" in Rojava. These are bases that may have some soldiers but more likely are just regular Kurds wearing Russian and American army uniforms, the purpose of this is to discourage Turkish aggression towards Syrian Kurds. Turkey wants the FSA to claim more of the border to prevent the strengthening of the PKK and have sent soldiers into Syria to do this (this was the purpose of Euphrates Shield, which largely failed, and now Euphrates Sword).

The Peshmerga are not equivalent to the YPG/J or PKK. There are Syrian Peshmerga but they were removed from that country and are now in Iraq. There has been conflict between the YPG and Peshmerga stemming from their differing ideologies. The Peshmerga lead by Barzani are a neoliberal faction working with oil companies and NATO while the Rojavans are a neo-marxist movement that has married radical feminist and anarchist philosophy with Marxist ideology.

The FSA has also been described as a desk in Turkey to legitimize weapons and, according to Seymour Hersh and Turkish opposition leaders, allow for the transport of chemical weapons precursors into the hands of Syrian rebels.

A Turkish jet shot down a Russian fighter and the Turkish pilot was regarded as a hero. Russian tourism is important to the Turkish economy but Erdogan's neo-Ottoman ideology puts him at odds with Russia.

Patrick Cockburn mostly covers Iraq but he has had some great articles on ISIS and the recent campaigns. I haven't read his books but Rise of the Islamic State is something on my list.

His brother Andrew Cockburn has also had some good insights on the campaign in Yemen. Basically the USA is aiding in war crimes committed by the Saudi government and their coalition which has not gotten much attention in the MSM.

I'm glad you have issues with Jews, but books are more reliable than a anonymous person on the internet. You don't have to have your views criticized while authors are always analyzed over their facts.

fuck you

t. Shlomo Shekelstein

Really nice introductory explanation. I have some stuff to add

- Alawi islam is a branch of Shia islam. The definition of Shia islam handled in academia is: "Those Muslims who believe that Ali and his family were the only legitimate successors to Muhammad, and that all other successors were usurpers" Alawi islam is a synthesis of shia islam, gnosticism and local folk religions.
- Kurds receive considerable support from NATO and the Pentagon. There are 100s of American advisors in north-Syria. Also the YPG is really different from the Iraqi peshmerga.
- The current two FSA strongholds are in the Idlib province and in the South near Dara'a. Especially in Idlib province the rebel groups are led by Al-Qaida under a new name (Ahrar al-Sham and Tahrir al-Sham)
- Hezbollah is a major player in Syria and if not for them Assad probably would have lost in the early stages of the war. They are a paramilitary force founded by Iran right after the Iranian revolution of 1979.
- Hezbollah wants Shia domination of Libanon, true, but also protects rights of the minority Manorite Christians, Druze and some weird syncretic sects existing in Lebanon

Thanks for the clarifications. I wasn't totally clued into "tripwire bases" or a lot of the internal politicking going on in Kurdistan. It's unsurprisingly difficult to gather objective facts on Syria right now, so it's good to hear from somebody who's invested a lot of time into research.

Turkey is signatory to NAT, and critical to NATO's strategic situation, so there's no way that the US is going to give them the boot. So for the time being, Trump and Trudeau and May and Hollande just have to tolerate Erdogan's tomfoolery. They can be sure he won't slip under Putin's flaps, but Turkey is a major contributor to the migrant crisis in Europe, they're destroying their own democracy, ethnic minorities (read: Kurds) are in a precarious situation, and there are serious questions to answer about Daesh oil exports and funding from 2013 through 2015. But because their geography means that an escalation from proxy war to regional conflict between Russia and NATO would end either in World War III or an embarrassing defeat for Putin, NATO can't really say anything.

That picture is misleading, coalition has bombed ISIS far more than Russia in Syria (especially if also counting Iraq)

Tfw I read this book in the airport and was scared to lift the cover for anyone to see. I'm Middle Eastern looking btw

>Thanks for the clarifications. I wasn't totally clued into "tripwire bases" or a lot of the internal politicking going on in Kurdistan. It's unsurprisingly difficult to gather objective facts on Syria right now, so it's good to hear from somebody who's invested a lot of time into research.
This site: cooperativeeconomy.info/about/
is a good collection of articles detailing the internal situation of Kurdistan rather than military. Most of the articles are translated from Russian, Italian, and Spanish newspapers and a few actually disparage the Kurds as being too idealistic and naive. You can also find a free copy of Democratic Confederalism online which is a pamphlet written by the imprisoned leader of the PKK outlining the ideology of Kurdish revolutionaries.

Note on Alawi: because the Alawites are strongly divergent from mainstream Islam, adding additional texts and holy figures, a lot of Muslims don't consider them Muslims, as they seem too heretical from the orthodox point of view. They're still Muslim by definition the definition of the word, just as Mormons are Christian by the definition of Christianity, though you'd be hard-pressed to convince a Methodist or Catholic of the fact, which is why I drew the comparison (though only for purposes of analogy, the denominations are not directly correlated in any significant way).
>Especially in Idlib province the rebel groups are led by Al-Qaida under a new name (Ahrar al-Sham and Tahrir al-Sham)
Tahrir al-Sham is al-Nusra plus a couple of smaller groups, which I've neglected to mention as most analysts continue to call it by its old name and the name-changes get tiring. The relationship between Sham/Nusra and al-Qaeda under Zawahiri is complicated, but it's not as though the groups are particularly different ideologically.
I would also hesitate to characterize the FSA as "led" by any stretch of the imagination. Al-Nusra is certainly the largest single faction within the FSA (if it's right to call them a part of the same group, as there's a lot of infighting), and they do manage to coordinate to a degree. Still I'd hesitate to say "led" as that would mislead people into thinking that al-Julani leads the FSA in the same sense that Assad leads his forces and Baghdadi leads Daesh.
And you mean Maronite Christians, yes?

Fascinating. I'll bookmark the site for later reading on leftist geopolitics and Syria.

>So during the 80s, Iran was kept preoccupied in an incredibly bloody and brutal war against Hussein, and the CIA provided weapons (including chemical weapons) to Hussein in the hopes that he'd take enough steam out of the Iranians. (FUN FACT: after Operation Iraqi Freedom, US Intelligence actually did find WMDs (not nukes, but WMDs nonetheless), but refused to report their findings, as the weapons had been sold *by the CIA* and still had American markings on them.)

And what's your source for this?

The alawites are actually gnostics pretending to be muslims.
The gnostics and pagan cultures of the middle east have survived in the shadows.
The upper level of the alawites have secret texts only they are allowed to read.

>According to Bar Hebraeus, many Alawites were killed when the Crusaders initially entered Syria in 1097; however, they tolerated them when they concluded they were not a truly Islamic sect

the non Islamic religions of the middle east are very confusing and mysterious because lots of them pretend to be muslims in order to not be killed, and are usually based around Gnosticism, paganry , Christianity, Zoroaster, yazidi, and have a closed off clergy with hidden documents only they can read

articles.latimes.com/1992-02-23/news/mn-5070_1_persian-gulf/5

The USA supplied loans and equipment through the department of agriculture for "crop spraying". It was well known that Iraq was using chemical weapons but it was decided by the Reagan and Bush administrations that it was acceptable as long as Iran was defeated.

>reading books to understand the Syrian Civil War
>not getting all your information from Bana Alabed's Twitter feed and Lindsay Lohan