Anyone accepting "facts"
or narratives from any interested party is being played.
About the only "fact" the public
knows with any verifiable certainty about Syria is that much of that nation is
in ruins. Virtually
everything else presented as "fact" is propaganda intended to serve
one of the competing narratives or discredit one or more competing narratives.
Consider a partial list of "interested parties"
spinning their own narratives about events in Syria: (in no
particular order)
1. The government of Syria
2. non-state groups in Syria
3. Turkey
4. Saudi Arabia
5. Iran
6. Jordan
7. The government of Iraq
8. non-state groups in Iraq
9. The Kurds
10. Hamas
11. Israel
12. Lebanon
13. The Gulf States
14. Russia
15. United States
16. European Union
17. United Kingdom
18. France
19. Germany
20. Italy
21. China
This doesn't exhaust the list of
interested parties, of course, but it reflects the spectrum of competing
parties pushing a narrative that supports their particular interests in Syria.
These include neighboring countries, regional powers, global powers and
consumers of Syrian energy exports.
Let's
start by stating the obvious: the only way to
gain any reasonably accurate contexts / assessments in Syria is to have
intelligence-gathering assets on the ground. The situation is fluid and
complex, and there is no one "truth."
The only way to get any sort of handle on
the military, political and social dynamics in Syria is to have access to the
intelligence assessments and analyses of all the major players' intelligence
agencies.
In other words, the only way to get any sort
of comprehensive understanding would be to have a WikiLeaks-type release of
intelligence reports from all the players with assets on the ground and have a deep
enough understanding of the history and culture of the region to make sense of
the overlaps, conflicts, nuances and shades of "truth" presented in
each of the intel reports.
Only by collating "raw"
(unfiltered) intel gathered on the ground and high-level analysis by those
directing the various interests' campaigns could a reasonably accurate
assessment be assembled.
Short of that, we know next to nothing. What are
presented as "facts" are narratives designed to persuade us of the
fidelity of the "facts" being presented and the rightness of the
narrative supported by the presented "facts."
If the "facts" aren't designed
to support a specific narrative, then they're designed to undermine or
discredit a competing narrative.
There are several ways to push a narrative: one is to
present "evidence" that supposedly verifies the "facts,"
and the other is to limit the public's access to competing narratives and
claims.
In the good old days, the Soviet
propaganda machine was famous for erasing public figures from photos once they
ran afoul of the regime. In the photo published last week, Igor was standing
next to a KGB apparatchik, and in the photo published this week, Igor has
vanished, replaced by a snowy background--perhaps appropriate, given that Igor
ould soon be enjoying the rigors of a Siberian gulag.
Nowadays, digital manipulation is much easier
and more ubiquitous. Not just photos and videos can be edited--all sorts of
digital fingerprints can be faked.
We know from various leaks about NSA/CIA
capabilities that these agencies (and presumably others) engineer computer
viruses so they appear to be the work of foreign intelligence agencies or
hackers.
It's difficult to assess the
"facts" in a world awash in digital manipulation and misdirection.
We know a few things, but they're not "news." We know oil and
natural gas are still the primary energy sources of the industrialized global
economy. So-called renewables (so-called because wind turbines and solar panels
don't last forever and thus they are more correctly called replaceables rather than
renewables) remain a tiny sliver of total global energy consumption.
We also know that Syria and Iraq are the
geographic armature of the Mideast.
As I have noted in previous essays,
sometimes the strategy isn't to control the assets being contested so much as
disrupt competitors' enjoyment of the assets and send signals about future
costs and consequences.
The Great Game: Regime Change
in Syria (September 6, 2012)
It is a grave mistake to take any narrative or
set of "facts" presented by interested parties as being anything more
than propaganda or signaling. Only those on the ground with intelligence on all the
other players on the ground have anything close to a useful understanding of
the situation, and they can only claim to have a useful understanding if they
also possess a deep appreciation of the regional contexts, histories and
dynamics that are in play.
In
summary: anyone accepting "facts" or narratives from any interested
party is being played. It's best to retain
a healthy skepticism of all narratives and an equally healthy appreciation of
how little we know or can ever know about the full spectrum of events and
dynamics in Syria.
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