Once upon a time, early in the previous century, a line in the sand was drawn, from Acre to Kirkuk. Two colonial powers - Britain and France - nonchalantly divided the Middle East between themselves; everything north of the line in the sand was France's; south, it was Britain's.
Many blowbacks - and concentric tragedies - later, a new line in the sand is being drawn by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Between Syria and Iraq, they want it all. Talk about the return of the repressed; now, as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Gulf Cooperation Council compound, they're in bed with their former colonial masters...
...They go after Christians with a vengeance. [1] They force Iraqi exiles in Damascus to leave, especially those settled in Sayyida Zainab, the predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood named after Prophet Muhammad's grand-daughter, buried in the beautiful local mosque. The BBC, to its credit, at least followed the story. [2]
They perform summary executions; Iraq's deputy interior minister Adnan al-Assadi told AFP how Iraqi border guards saw the Free Syrian Army (FSA) take control of a border outpost and then "executed 22 Syrian soldiers in front of the eyes of Iraqi soldiers".
The Bab al-Hawa crossing between Syria and Turkey was overrun by no less than 150 multinational self-described mujahideen [3] - coming from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Chechnya and even France, many proclaiming their allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
They burned a lot of Turkish trucks. They shot their own promo video. They paraded their al-Qaeda flag. And they declared the whole border area an Islamic state...