Wars of 2023 #4
Spy and Spirit #11
August - September 2023 themes: The Wars in the Dark
1. Commemorating ten years since Obama made the ‘red line’ statement about chemical weapons use in Syria. 🇸🇾 The world gave him a lot of crap for hesitating. I myself was hoping he’d obliterate Hama airbase with enough ordinance to shake the resolve of the Baathist regime. Instead, he accepted a deal for Assad’s forces to surrender every ounce of sarin and VX in their massive arsenal. We discovered years later that if the US had leveled Syria’s airbases, we would have blown up hundreds of political prisoners in the process that regime forces had stuffed into the facilities, hoping to embarrass America and get rid of some dissidents. I still have regrets about how the Assad regime’s survival negatively impacted views on the possibility of justice for millions of concerned citizens in the Middle East and worldwide.
2. The Sahel: coup after coup after coup. France has been ejected. Too many hypocritical rules to gain assistance from the former colonial superpower. Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso (understandably) don’t want their massacres being scrutinized by the Western media, nor do they have time to pretend everything’s kosher. If one strong man doesn’t seize power, his cohort is waiting in the wings, and bowing to foreign backers is a weakness. Thankfully, the Wagner Group and other Russian or non-state power brokers are willing to supply well-disciplined sell-swords who can carry out great violence with few men.
3. Burma’s northern rebels - They’re disciplined. They’re resourceful. They’re organized. They’re determined…and they’ve been at war for decades. Their star will continue to rise throughout 2024 unless China decides to come out against them openly in favor of the regime in Naypyidaw. Today, that seems unlikely. There will be an arms bonanza paid for by selling massive amounts of cheap opium. All belligerents are about to punish each other with a show of force. I hope I’m wrong.
4. Ethiopia’s angry war with Tigray is over temporarily. That truce is dependent on the twenty or so belligerents remaining uncommitted to their own grievances. That will be hard.
5. Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed flying high above Tver Oblast (just northwest of Moscow). Or maybe the plane hitting the ground killed him. The death was surely bittersweet for Putin. Prigozhin’s mercenaries, The Wagner Group, nearly sparked a civil war in Russia at his behest in June 2023. It would have made the Ukraine war untenable. Putin decided he had to go. Still, the late Prighozin was once the Russian president’s most valuable asset, friend, and chef. До свидания
This is SPY
The Great Game.
And this is SPIRIT
The human cost.
