Re: Attacks on US soldiers mount: Bush admin. under pressure to escalate or retreat

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Fred Feldman wrote:
> My own bet -- basically speculation -- is that an invasion of Syria is
> the most likely form that an attempt to take arms against a sea of
> troubles will take. 

NY Times, October 24, 2003
Syria, Long Ruthlessly Secular, Sees Fervent Islamic Resurgence
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

ALEPPO, Syria, Oct. 19 — Two decades after Syria ruthlessly uprooted 
militant Islam, killing an estimated 10,000 people, this most secular of 
Arab states is experiencing a dramatic religious resurgence.

Friday Prayers draw overflowing crowds. More heavily veiled women and 
bearded men jostle unharried among city pedestrians. Family restaurants 
on the outskirts of Damascus do not serve alcohol, and one fashionable 
boutique even sports a sign advertising Islamically modest bathing suits.

Syrian experts on religious matters and others attribute the phenomenon 
— more creeping than confrontational — to various factors. Islam is 
proving appealing through much of the Arab world, including Syria, as a 
means to protest corrupt, incompetent and oppressive governments.

The widespread sense that the faith is being singled out for attack by 
Washington has invigorated that appeal, at a time when the violence 
fomented by radicals had tarnished political Islam.

In Syria, some experts attribute the sudden openness of the phenomenon 
to a far more local fear.

The hasty collapse of the Baath government next door in Iraq stunned 
Syria's rulers, particularly the fact that most Iraqis reacted to the 
American onslaught as if they were bored spectators.

In the face of threats from the United States and Israel, Syria seeks to 
forge nationalist sentiment with any means possible, experts believe, 
including fostering the very brand of religious fundamentalism that it 
once pruned so mercilessly.

"This is an attempt at mobilization," said Abdul Razzak Eid, a 
well-known political writer in this historic city, the country's second 
largest, 210 miles north of Damascus. "They want to create an aggressive 
feeling against the Americans."

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/international/middleeast/24SYRI.html



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