In reply to Enty:
> (In reply to ice.solo)
> [...]
>
> Good point. But how do you help change someone with a 500 year old mind set?
>
in most cases i dont think they do. syria, despite being a pariah state, isnt afghanistan or somalia, its been a modernish state for a long time.
the dark ages blood lust has arisen out of the chaos of war. 2 years ago these people i dont doubt on the whole were quite normal, but have changed from what theyve been exposed to.
whats happened is the rise of extrajudicial law. the state has failed so jihadist-types get to act out their twisted islamist fantasies and others get caught up in it willingly or otherwise (in afghanistan i saw the way people were pressured to attend these things, like a new movie, it was all about being seen to be there). its exactly what the taliban did.
what to do? uphold a better alternative. its worked in other areas, where vicious locals were curtailed by more powerful regional commanders who tow a different line. its not easy, as those regional leaders are often warlords themselves, but take it far enough up the chain and you start to get powermongers willing to do deals with international bodies out of a want for legitimacy. we are now seeing this with al-shabab, the afghan taliban, hezbollah etc, and theres a long history of it working.
its not a pretty process, but when chaos has rewritten a regions playing field its one of the few choices. it demands a very focussed process.
what makes it hard is that, as nasty as syria has become, its still in its formative stages. it hasnt coalesced into a mature conflict yet, its still highly localized. this makes 'trickle up' politics impossible. sadly in some ways foreign intervation would push this along (depending how it went).
from the start theres been renegade groups plying for international recognition, but they control little reliably. there simply hasnt been the time for the playing out of relations to settle. by comparison, afghanistan, chechnya, somalia, tajikistan had all be at it for decades.
its one thing to settle conflicts between factions, but another to reboot a system thats been so wiped out. within that process are numerous well defined stage where this sort of mob blood lust flares. the goal is to resolve the playing field before we go thru too many of those, because each builds upon the other as far as inter-group slayings go.