Saturday, December 10, 2016

فوضى إيران الخلاقة

ميشيل كيلو
فوضى إيران الخلاقة

Link

هل جاء دور الفوضي الخلاقة في إيران، بعد أن اجتاحت المشرق، وشرعت تتمدّد إلى بقية بلدان المنطقة؟
ستطرح هذا السؤال علينا من الآن فصاعداً سياسات الرئيس الأميركي الجديد، دونالد ترامب، وفريقه، والتي يبدو أنها ستعطي الأولوية في أنشطتها لعلاقات إيران مع العالم عامة، وأميركا خصوصاً. يؤكد ذلك اختيار الأشخاص الذين عرفوا جميعهم باعتراضهم على الاتفاق النووي بين دول "الخمسة زائد واحد" وإيران، ودعوتهم إلى تحجيم دورها الإقليمي، بجميع الوسائل السياسية والعسكرية، مع ما يتطلبه ذلك من فتح ملفات نظامها الداخلية وعلاقاته مع شعبه، ومن جعلها موضوعاً لسياسات واشنطن الدولية التي ستنتقل من الملاينة الراهنة إلى المواجهة، في حال طبق ترامب وعوده الانتخابية، بإلغاء الاتفاق النووي، وإخراج النظام الإيراني من المجال العربي.
ما هي مداخل واشنطن إلى معركتها المقبلة مع ملالي طهران؟ هناك، باختصار شديد مدخلان رئيسان إلى استئناف الصراع معها، بطرقٍ يبدو أنها ستكون مختلفة كل الاختلاف عن كل ما تبنته إدارة أميركا الأوبامية حيالهم، حسب تصريحات مسؤولي واشنطن الجدد: من وزير الدفاع إلى رئيس وكالة الأمن القومي إلى جميع مستشاري ترامب المقرّبين.
المدخل الأول: الخليج، حيث يوجد قسم كبير من الأسطول الخامس الأميركي، في قاعدته البحرينية، وتسهيلاته الكويتية والعمانية. ومن يتابع تصريحات العسكرتاريا الإيرانية، يجد أنها تحسب حساباً جدياً للخليج، باعتباره مكان الاحتكاك الرئيس بين البحريتين الإيرانية والأميركية، خصوصاً بعد أن أعلن أحد مستشاري ترامب أنه سيأمر بحريته بما أسماه "قذف زوارق إيران وسفنها إلى خارج مياهه". ثمّة هنا كثافة كبيرة جداً في القطع البحرية، بمختلف مسمياتها، من الزوارق السريعة إلى حاملات الطائرات. وهناك محاولات استفزاز متكرّرة، قامت بها البحرية الإيرانية للأميركيين، من دون أن تلقى غير ردود كلامية وتحذيرية، لكن الوضع سيتغير في فترةٍ يرجّح ألا تكون بعيدة، في ظل الإدارة الأميركية الجديدة.
المدخل الثاني: الوجود الإيراني في الوطن العربي، سواء عبر تنظيماتٍ محليةٍ درّبتها إيران

"أولويات واشنطن تقوم على كبح التوسع الإيراني في العالم العربي"

وسلحتها ومولتها، لتكون وحداتٍ محلية من جيشها: في لبنان والبحرين والكويت واليمن والعراق وسورية، أم بواسطة وجود جيشها وحرسها الثوري المباشر في لبنان وسورية والعراق واليمن، حيث يعمل مستشارون من الحرس الثوري، وتقاتل وحدات مختارة من الجيش والباسيج، يقارب عددها عدد جيوش هذه البلدان أو يفوقه. بما أن الوجود الإيراني المرابط هنا مليء بالثغرات، فإنه سيغري ترامب بمواجهته، خصوصاً أن قتال أميركا ضده لا يتطلب استخدام جيشها الخاص، بل يمكن أن يتم بواسطة قواتٍ وطنية محلية، يقاتل بعضها إيران اليوم، وتتشوق جميعها لإخراج مرتزقتها من بلدانها، بمجرد أن يتوفر لها غطاء دولي فاعل، وأدوات قتال ملائمة.
بالنسبة لأولويات واشنطن، من المرجح أن تقوم خطتها على كبح التوسّع الإيراني في العالم العربي، من خلال محاصرته والتضييق عليه، تمهيدا لإنزال مجموعة من الهزائم به، تجبره على الانكفاء التدريجي إلى داخل إيران، حيث ستضغط على الملالي، بمختلف الوسائل الاقتصادية والسياسية والعسكرية، ويعمل لإحداث ردود فعل داخلية متصاعدة ضدهم، عبر وضع خطط لاستنزاف قدراتهم المالية والبشرية، يؤثر تفعيلها على مكانة أجهزة السلطة العسكرية والقمعية ووظائفها، ويراكم نقمة متعاظمة ضد النظام، في حال اقترن الضغط الخارجي مع توسيع العقوبات عليه، وتصعيد الاستفزازات ضد البحرية الإيرانية داخل مياه الخليج، واعتراض زوارقها وسفنها في بحر العرب والبحر الأحمر، لإبعادها عن باب المندب واليمن، ومنعها من نقل السلاح إلى حزب الله والحوثيين.
هل سيفتح ترامب ملف إيران في ظل وجود قوات أميركية محدودة الأعداد في العراق؟ هذه نقطة سيكون من الصعب عليه تجاهلها، فهل سيعمد إلى سحب قواته من العراق، أم إنه سيأمر بزيادة عديدها وتسليحها، ليجعل منها قوة قادرة على ردع إيران، بالتلازم مع تكثيف الوجود البحري الأميركي في مداخل الخليج وممرات البحار المفضية إليه، وعقد اتفاقيات دفاعية مع الدول المطلة عليه، وخصوصاً منها بلدان الخليج ومصر؟
ثمة تصريحات ودلائل عديدة تفيد بأن "عظمة أميركا" التي تعهد ترامب باستعادتها ستنضوي

"هل سيفتح ترامب ملف إيران في ظل وجود قوات أميركية محدودة الأعداد في العراق؟"

في نهجٍ من أولوياته مواجهة إيران، المكشوفة اليوم كما لم تكن خلال الرئاسات الأميركية السابقة، وتوحي نظرية المؤامرة بأن العمل لإخراجها من المجال العربي سيفيد كثيراً من سياسات العهد الأوبامي الذي سهل دخولها إلى المشرق العربي واليمن، واستدرجها إلى خارج غطائها الداخلي الذي يحمي اليوم نظامها، تمهيداً لمجابهتها وتسديد ضربات جدية إليها في حقبة مقبلة، بينما تكون مكشوفةً، وفي حالٍ من الضعف تتيح لواشنطن تشتيت قواها وضربها.
بعد العرب، يأتي دور إيران. وبعد أن قالت نظمنا إن الفوضى الخلاقة لن تصل إلى بلدانها، غرق المشرق فيها إلى أذنيه، ودفعت النظام الأسدي الذي كان يزعم أنه حصين ضد الفوضى، إلى تدمير سورية بيتاً بيتاً، وقتل شعبها فرداً فرداً، لكي تبقيه في كرسيه. وقد شارك ملالي إيران، أعداء الغرب المزيفون، في الوليمة الدموية القاتلة، للثأر من العرب، مرة بحجة أنهم قتلوا الحسين (عليه السلام)، وأخرى بذريعة أنهم هزموا كسرى. واليوم، وبعد أن أنجز الملالي قسماً رئيساً من مهمتهم، يبدو أن دورهم قد جاء، وأن الفوضى التي سميت خلاقة التي لعبوا دوراً خطيراً في إنجاحها عندنا، ستصل إليهم، لكن وقائعها ستكون أضعاف الوقائع السورية والعراقية، بسبب ما يعتمل في المجتمع الإيراني من نقمةٍ على فاسدين وكذبة، يغطّون رؤوسهم بعمائم النفاق، ويحكمون مواطنيهم بالنار والحديد، وكذلك بسبب ما ارتكبوه في العالم الإسلامي عامة، والعربي خصوصاً من مجازر دموية لم يسبق أن شهدا مثيلاً لها، حتى في ظل الفرنجة، والمغول، والتتار.

Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House

The Washington Post

Link

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

The Post's Ellen Nakashima goes over the events, and discusses the two hacker groups responsible. (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

The Obama administration has been debating for months how to respond to the alleged Russian intrusions, with White House officials concerned about escalating tensions with Moscow and being accused of trying to boost Clinton’s campaign.

[U.S. government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections]

In September, during a secret briefing for congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voiced doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to officials present.

The Trump transition team dismissed the findings in a short statement issued Friday evening. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again,’ ” the statement read.

Trump has consistently dismissed the intelligence community’s findings about Russian hacking.

“I don’t believe they interfered” in the election, he told Time magazine this week. The hacking, he said, “could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

The CIA shared its latest assessment with key senators in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill last week, in which agency officials cited a growing body of intelligence from multiple sources. Agency briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says he wants to investigate whether Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. election, amongst claims that Donald Trump's rhetoric on Russia and Vladimir Putin is too soft. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.

For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were “one step” removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said in a television interview that the “Russian government is not the source.”

The White House and CIA officials declined to comment.

On Friday, the White House said President Obama had ordered a “full review” of Russian hacking during the election campaign, as pressure from Congress has grown for greater public understanding of exactly what Moscow did to influence the electoral process.

“We may have crossed into a new threshold, and it is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what has happened and to impart some lessons learned,” Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Obama wants the report before he leaves office Jan. 20, Monaco said. The review will be led by James Clapper, the outgoing director of national intelligence, officials said.

During her remarks, Monaco didn’t address the latest CIA assessment, which hasn’t been previously disclosed.

Seven Democratic senators last week asked Obama to declassify details about the intrusions and why officials believe that the Kremlin was behind the operation. Officials said Friday that the senators specifically were asking the White House to release portions of the CIA’s presentation.

This week, top Democratic lawmakers in the House also sent a letter to Obama, asking for briefings on Russian interference in the election.

U.S. intelligence agencies have been cautious for months in characterizing Russia’s motivations, reflecting the United States’ long-standing struggle to collect reliable intelligence on President Vladimir Putin and those closest to him.

In previous assessments, the CIA and other intelligence agencies told the White House and congressional leaders that they believed Moscow’s aim was to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system. The assessments stopped short of saying the goal was to help elect Trump.

On Oct. 7, the intelligence community officially accused Moscow of seeking to interfere in the election through the hacking of “political organizations.” Though the statement never specified which party, it was clear that officials were referring to cyber-intrusions into the computers of the DNC and other Democratic groups and individuals.

Some key Republican lawmakers have continued to question the quality of evidence supporting Russian involvement.

“I’ll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there’s clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence — even now,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team. “There’s a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that’s it.”

[U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt elections]

Though Russia has long conducted cyberspying on U.S. agencies, companies and organizations, this presidential campaign marks the first time Moscow has attempted through cyber-means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election, the officials said.

The reluctance of the Obama White House to respond to the alleged Russian intrusions before Election Day upset Democrats on the Hill as well as members of the Clinton campaign.

Within the administration, top officials from different agencies sparred over whether and how to respond. White House officials were concerned that covert retaliatory measures might risk an escalation in which Russia, with sophisticated cyber-capabilities, might have less to lose than the United States, with its vast and vulnerable digital infrastructure.

The White House’s reluctance to take that risk left Washington weighing more-limited measures, including the “naming and shaming” approach of publicly blaming Moscow.

By mid-September, White House officials had decided it was time to take that step, but they worried that doing so unilaterally and without bipartisan congressional backing just weeks before the election would make Obama vulnerable to charges that he was using intelligence for political purposes.

Instead, officials devised a plan to seek bipartisan support from top lawmakers and set up a secret meeting with the Gang of 12 — a group that includes House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers’ committees on intelligence and homeland security.

Obama dispatched Monaco, FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to make the pitch for a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against Russian interference in the election, according to a senior administration official.

Specifically, the White House wanted congressional leaders to sign off on a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions.

Though U.S. intelligence agencies were skeptical that hackers would be able to manipulate the election results in a systematic way, the White House feared that Russia would attempt to do so, sowing doubt about the fundamental mechanisms of democracy and potentially forcing a more dangerous confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

[Putin denies that Russia hacked the DNC but says it was for the public good]

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment. After the election, Trump chose McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as his nominee for transportation secretary.

Some Clinton supporters saw the White House’s reluctance to act without bipartisan support as further evidence of an excessive caution in facing adversaries.

“The lack of an administration response on the Russian hacking cannot be attributed to Congress,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who was at the September meeting. “The administration has all the tools it needs to respond. They have the ability to impose sanctions. They have the ability to take clandestine means. The administration has decided not to utilize them in a way that would deter the Russians, and I think that’s a problem.”

The prospect of the US as a 'banana republic'

Or how the 'banana republic' came back to bite those who invented it.

Link

by

Hamid Dabashi

"Trump's banana republic", declares the title of a passionate opinion piece on the pages of The Boston Globe after a televised presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. "This is banana republic territory," the writer declares after criticising Trump for attacking the sacrosanct law enforcement officials and casting doubts on their reliability.

The metaphor become perhaps the most potent political allegory of this election season. America would be Trump's banana republic, was the title of another opinion piece by Fareed Zakaria for The Washington Post. "The picture presented to the world," he wrote as he criticised the "vigilante rage" of the Republican convention, "has been of America as a banana republic."

The European press soon chimed in: "Sounding more like the potentate of some palm-dotted tropical island than a presidential candidate," declared Nick Bryant of the BBC, "Trump twice declined to say during the final televised debate whether he would accept the results of the 2016 election."

"Trump's Banana Republic Justice" was the title of yet another piece in October in Newsweek, when criticising Trump's attacks on Clinton: "This is the stuff of banana republics, not mature democracies."

The Los Angeles Times echoed the sentiment: "He [Trump] was talking like he would become some dictator of a Banana Republic and throw her and his political enemies in jail."

The sentence was even attributed to Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon: "That is the comment of a dictator that you expect to hear in a banana republic - the idea of jailing your political opponents."

Donald Trump's first 100 days

Why a 'banana republic'?

Why is it, if someone from "the third world", a "banana republic", or a "palm-dotted tropical island" might be permitted to ask, that when the purveyors of the mighty and magnificent "Western civilisation" want to characterise something nasty and loathsome in their own midst they immediately opt for a metaphor, a pejorative term such as "banana republic" that they have invented for somewhere else?

Latin American countries have been systematically colonised and abused, first by Europe and now by the United States, robbing them of their resources and installing a tyrant over the people lest they revolt against the abuse. And yet the very same abusers get to use a sarcastic term to describe the result!

In this column I have already asked this question when Muslims are used as a metaphor of fanaticism and stupidity by the left-liberal pundits in the US and Europe. But now I want to ask the same question about the larger non-European world they call "the third world" or "banana republics".

OPINION: Don't ditch diversity because progressives failed

"Donald Trump is not invested in democracy," declares a famous liberal pundit, Keith Olbermann, passionately, "Donald Trump is not invested in our constitution, Donald Trump is not invested in America, Donald Trump is not invested in preventing people from being killed on the streets after an election, like this were a third world police state" [at 3:38 of this video].

Why is it that when a comedian such as Sacha Baron Cohen wants to make a movie about dictatorship, The Dictator, he opts to feature a dictator looking like an Arab potentate? Have there not been enough dictators in Europe: Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Nicolae Ceausescu, Slobodan Milosevic?

What and where is banana republic?

The seismic psychological change evident in the US in the aftermath of this election is in part because US liberals are stripped naked of their holier-than-thou arrogance of their delusional exceptionalism, that they are too smart for "third-world tyranny" to come their way.

Arguments were made, theories were woven about how we Muslims, Arabs, Africans, Latin Americans lacked something in our DNA, deep in the marrow of our bones, in our culture that we did not merit and deserve democracy, and yet suddenly smack in the middle of American democracy a neo-fascist white supremacist has emerged so that former CIA officers now worry about the US constitution under a Trump presidency.

The alarming congregation of racist, white supremacist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, militaristic billionaire forces inside the White House is bound to craft a whole new vintage of a nasty prescription the US has usually ordered for other political cultures, and yet it has now returned like a bulldog to bite itself.

Three of the top four candidates running for president have either contested the result (Jill Stein and Hillary Clinton) or declared millions have voted illegally (Trump).

It is now expected that Trump's business empire will be an endless source of conflict of interest under his presidency.

If "banana republic" is to be the name of this corruption, then the US is the likely contender to become the mother of all banana republics for the whole world to see.

Is Trumpism a new brand of politics?

UpFront - Did racism Trump economic anxiety in US election?

Is Trump the personification of every racist trope this white supremacist culture has created for other political contexts and until now thought had completely exorcised out of its own system but is now haunted by it?

Is Trump a classical example of frightful characters like Hitler, Mussolini, or Franco much closer to the European heritage of what might emerge as American fascism?

Is Trump a resurfacing of white supremacist genealogy much more deeply rooted inside the US colonial conquest of America and imperial warmongering around the globe?

Or is Trump perhaps the dawn of a whole new white supremacist fascism that crosses the Atlantic and reaches deep into European racism now ringing from UK to Greece - with variations on its theme evident in France, Italy, the Netherlands and elsewhere?

OPINION: Why Chomsky and Zizek are wrong on the US elections

It is perhaps too early to offer any definite answer to any one of these questions. But the fact remains that the alarming congregation of racist, white supremacist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, militaristic billionaire forces inside the White House are bound to craft a whole new vintage of a nasty prescription the US usually orders for other political cultures, and yet it has now returned like a bulldog to bite itself.

In their book "Commonwealth", political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri encourage us to "abandon all dreams of political purity and 'higher values' that would allow us to remain outside!" This admission, they believe, is only a tool towards building an alternative project, "an ethics of democratic political action within and against Empire", aimed towards "a possible global democracy".

That urgent objective will not happen unless and until the nasty Eurocentric name-calling of nations has collapsed completely upon itself, North American and Western Europeans are liberated from the noxious metaphor of "the West" and join the fold of humanity at large.

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

Friday, December 9, 2016

DNA - 09/12/2016 الأسد: الشعب السوري وطني عميل

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

DNA - 07/12/2016 دمشق لدول الخليج: للسيادة اصول

This is what will happen when Aleppo falls

AN EXCELLENT PIECE AND A MUST READ!

By David Hearst

Link

Aleppo's fall will start a new chapter of the war, not end it. How rebels respond will decide if a united Syria can emerge from its ashes

Whether by habit, or tradition, the US presidential transition is the ideal time to deal with unfinished business. The handover from one administration to its successor offers tempting opportunities to create new facts on the ground in the Middle East.

Israel used the transition between George Bush and Barack Obama to launch Operation Cast Lead on Gaza which stopped two days before Obama’s inauguration on 20 January 2009. Russia is now using the transition from Obama to Trump to do the same in Aleppo.

Both sides in the Syrian civil war understand the significance of timing. The rebels foolishly depended on Hillary Clinton’s assurances to hang on until she came into power. They had no plan B for a Clinton defeat.

Conversely, the Russians understand that they have to finish off east Aleppo by the time Donald Trump is inaugurated. With the Old City fallen, the task is almost complete.

A fear of victory

Russia’s actions, as opposed to Lavrov’s words, tell a different story. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, just over 10,000 people in Syria were killed by Russian airstrikes between 30 September 2015 and 30 October this year, of whom 2,861 were members of the Islamic State (IS) group, 3,079 fighters from rebel and Islamic factions, 2,565 males over the age of 18,1,013 children under the age of eighteen and 584 women.

Displaced children walk through the streets of Aleppo (MEE/ Zuheir al-Shimale)

Like all colonial powers, the Russian Federation has arrogated on itself the choice of deciding which Syrians live and which die

From these figures alone, and there are others, it is clear that Russia has waged total war on an unprotected population in rebel-held areas. War on its people, its hospitals, and its markets, just like it did in Grozny 16 years ago. Its actions differ little from those of the Syrian army. Like all colonial powers, the Russian Federation has arrogated on itself the choice of deciding which Syrians live and which die. And if they are in rebel-held areas, they all die together.

But that is not what worries Lavrov. Privately, Lavrov, like Pyrrhus before him, fears what victory looks like. What does “inhabited Syria”, the phrase I used earlier, actually mean, when victory has been declared? A pile of rubble, one ruined city after another, whose citizens will be totally dependent on aid for years to come?

The fictional Syrian state

More shattered than the physical infrastructure of Syria is its political one. After five years of murderous civil war, the Syrian state is a fiction, in which sectarian and foreign militias are free to roam. The main function of the Central Bank, to take just one example, is to manage Rami Makhlouf’s portfolio. A state which commands the loyalty and trust of each Syrian denomination does not exist.

Buildings in east Aleppo on verge of collapse after months of heavy bombardment (MEE/ Zuheir al-Shimale)

In the Stalingrad analogy that right-wing nationalist Russian commentators are so fond of using, the ruins of Aleppo are unlikely to be the symbol of resurgence of a new Syrian state. More likely, these ruins will become the battleground of resistance to militarily superior foreign invaders, of whom Russia is one, Iran is another, Hezbollah is a third. Russians are not the liberators of Aleppo, they are Friedrich Paulus's 6th Army, and if they stay around, they will meet the same fate.

There are two scenarios after the fall of Aleppo. The first is that the Syrian opposition in all its forms, both FSA and Islamist, will disintegrate and vanish. Assad will be left in power while talks about a transition will continue indefinitely. No elections will take place that include the refugees outside Syria for the same reason that no Palestinian elections include the Palestinian diaspora in the camps. Regime preservation will be key to all the calculations of Assad’s foreign backers, who have paid a heavy price in maintaining him in power.

Man carries dead bodies away in Aleppo (MEE/ Zuheir al-Shimale)

For this reason, when Aleppo falls, Putin and Lavrov will work overtime to declare mission accomplished as Bush did in Iraq and end the war officially. This is wishful thinking. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, was right to warn Lavrov in Rome last week that the fall of Aleppo will not be the end of the war. The degree of destruction and human displacement in this civil war will only fuel more resistance. This is not a repeat of Hama, the scene of a Muslim Brotherhood insurrection in 1982, which was contained when the city was destroyed by Assad’s father, Hafez.

Will rebels learn? [I DOUBT IT !]

The fall of Aleppo will only increase the crisis of Sunni leadership. A reaction will surely come. The big strategic question is whether it will be irrational, jihadi-led and destructive, or whether the rebels can fashion a rational response.

And this is the second scenario. Will the rebels learn the lessons of their huge strategic and military failure? These are many. They believed the various assurances from America, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar that they were about to get the battlefield weapons they needed to fight this war. They never came.

The political wing of the Syrian opposition which consisted of defected diplomats and academics in the diaspora simply could not cope with the task in hand

Michel Kilo, the exiled Christian Syrian dissident, whom the Russians tried hard to conscript, furiously accused Saudi of “committing a crime against the Syrian people”. He said: “Our brothers in Saudi Arabia are neither capable of drawing a plan nor are they able to lead a comeback against the campaign that is being waged against Arab and Islamic societies. They live just because they have money; they live in the desert. But tomorrow they will see.”

Kilo went on: “I swear on the lives of my own children we shall not leave the Gulf intact and we shall dismantle it stone by stone. You are destroying the best country in the Islamic and Arab worlds; a country whose name is Syria.”

The lesson from this is that the Syrian opposition can rely on no one. But in order to be self-sufficient, they need unity. The political wing of the Syrian opposition which consisted of defected diplomats and academics in the diaspora simply could not cope with the task in hand. They were riven with schisms. They were weak, deluded about the help they would get from America, outmanoeuvred and outgunned.

The Syrian rebels have to recover their multi-confessional face. The war started as a unarmed civilian uprising against a family-run dictatorship. They are forgotten now, but the faces of this revolution were George Sabra, a Greek Orthodox Christian and the first president of the Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, a Sunni chairman of the Transitional National Council, and Fadwa Soliman, an actress of Alawite descent.

The faces of fighters are today jihadi, sectarian, or in Kilo’s words, “non-democratic”. The original face of this revolution has to be recovered if a united Syria is ever to emerge again from the ashes of Aleppo.

- David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief, European Correspondent and Ireland Correspondent. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.