The situation in Syria is getting ever more complex, with the Turkish air force shooting down a Russian SU-24 bomber on November 24, 2015. Several foreign countries are taking sides in the Syrian civil war and their declared objectives do not necessarily match up with their actions or those of their supposed allies.

The US is divided over its involvement in the war. President Obama made his name in national politics through his opposition to his predecessor’s war in Iraq. Sending US ground troops into Syria would carry many of the same risks encountered in Iraq. Therefore the US has restricted itself to air strikes and support of local proxies, including the Kurds.

Initially the US was aiming for regime change in Damascus, but more recently the fight against the “Islamic State” (IS) seems to have taken top priority. If the government in Damascus was defeated before an acceptable political alternative was ready to take over, the risk is that IS would acquire a huge amount of weapons, ammunition, territory and infrastructure from the collapsed regime.

Trying to step up its air warfare against IS, the US struck a bargain with next door Turkey, a NATO member, to use its Incirlik Air Base for attacks in Syria, a request that Turkey had denied them for a long time. No sooner had the US launched the first attacks from Turkish soil that Turkish airplanes started bombing Kurdish forces in Syria. According to President Erdogan, Turkey’s goal is “fighting terrorists”, and by that it mostly means the Kurdish PKK in Turkey and the Kurdish YPG in Syria.

It soon became obvious that the Turkish government sees the Kurds and not IS as enemy #1 within Syria. This had already transpired a year earlier in the siege of Kobani, when Turkey delayed and restricted reinforcements for the Kurdish defenders of the city against IS and asked the US not to make any air drops in their support.

Most foreign fighters joining IS arrive via Turkey and exports of fuel to Turkey are a major source of hard currency for IS. Turkey seems to have done little to stop either the flow of recruits or cash to IS, the Kurds’ worst enemy in Syria. Right now, the Kurds are America’s closest ally in Syria and Turkey’s worst enemy, even though the US and Turkey — as fellow NATO members — are supposed to be allies.

President Assad of Syria is fighting a war on several fronts, against the Al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, the western-supported Free Syrian Army (FSA), IS and the Kurds. It is supported by Iran, by Hezbollah from Lebanon and by Russia. Assad and many members of the government and military are Alawites, a religious minority that is part of Shia Islam. The Alawites mostly live in the mountainous coastal region between Lebanon to the south and Turkish Hatay province in the north. Russia has its only naval base in the Mediterranean in Tartus, in the Alawite region. Regardless of whether the Assad family will remain in power or if the government can hold on to the capital of Damascus, the Alawites as an ethnic group have nowhere to go. Fear of Sunni Islamists taking revenge and maybe even committing genocide against the ethnic group of the current rulers ensures that Alawite forces will fight tenaciously to not lose control of their homeland in the west. Most observers agree that Syria is likely to end up divided, with a de-facto independent Alawite region established along the coast even if Sunni opposition forces conquer Damascus and set up a new national government.

Russia’s objective in supporting Assad is to remain relevant as a geo-political player. It has little to gain militarily, politically or economically by propping up the current bankrupt regime. But as long as Russia can be a thorn in the side of the US, Putin can demonstrate to Russians that their country is still a force to be reckoned with. In some ways Putin benefits domestically the same way as Erdogan, both burnishing their image as the local tough guy. That makes the Turkish-Russian clash even more dangerous. Just like Turkey, Russia got involved militarily to “fight terrorism”, only in its case the main target have been anti-government forces operating to the West of the IS-controlled territory, as opposed to the Kurds to the east. This also includes Turkmen, ethnic Turks in northern Syria, who were the target of the bombing run before the SU-24 was shot down by Turkish jets.

Neither Assad nor Russia place a high priority on fighting IS: If they were to defeat the barbaric hordes of IS, achieving regime change in Damascus would instantly rise to become the top priority of the US in this war again. Keeping IS in the mix is like a life insurance policy for Assad.

Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon is supporting Assad with fighters. Shiites in Lebanon feel threatened by the prospect of militant Sunnis taking over next door. Lebanon suffered through a long period of civil war starting in the 1970s and is host to more than a million Syrian refugees now.

Talks have been ongoing for negotiating a cease-fire towards a political settlement. The idea is that all parties but IS would stop fighting each other, then gang up on IS and wipe it out. Finally they would agree to a new government, presumably led by the Sunni majority with some kind of autonomy for the Alawites and the Kurds. The shooting down of the Russian bomber has made this even less likely to happen any time soon. Erdogan is not particularly keen on any settlement that will create an autonomous or independent Kurdish entity south of the border, or linked up with Iraqi Kurdistan. As long as IS is there the Kurds will keep bleeding as a proxy for US ground troops that won’t get deployed.

IS will keep fighting as long as it can keep up the stream of recruits from outside the region and money from whatever sources they can lay their hands on. The more the west and Russia retaliate with military strikes and troops for acts of terrorism such as the ones in Paris or against the Russian tourists in Sinai, the easier it is for IS to sell its story as defending the “caliphate” against western “crusaders”. The war in Syria is still young compared to the jihad that has been going on in Afghanistan since the Russian invasion in 1979 and the US invasion in 2001.

I haven’t said much about Saudi Arabia and Qatar yet, two countries that would like to see a Sunni victory in Syria but are denying that they support Islamist extremists such as IS and al-Nusra Front. What mostly differentiates Saudi-Arabia from IS is not its ideology, but its oil wealth and its royal family. Ideologically they are actually quite close, for example both the Saudis and IS still practice crucifixion and neither tolerates other religions. The Saudi government opposes the likes of IS and Al-Qaeda not because they had different values, but because those militants regard the Saudi royals as corrupt and don’t recognize their authority. Saudi Arabia’s major rival in the Middle East is Iran, Syria’s main supporter. Supporting Sunni Islamists against Assad is a way of hurting Iran.

So, what will the outcome? Frankly, I am not hopeful. When next door neighbour Lebanon erupted into civil war in 1975, it took 15 years before the country could return to a fragile peace again. There are too many external powers involved in a proxy war in Syria and so much blood has been shed already, that a political settlement is unlikely any time soon. The conflict between the Saudis and Iran has recently escalated, following the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, while Turkey has escalated its conflict with the Kurds and Russia. Even if Assad lost control of the capital, Russia is likely to keep supporting an Alawite rump state on the coast to keep its naval base and a seat at the table.

I would not be surprised if the war in Syria lasts another 10 years or more, if not for the sectarian and ethnic divisions within the country then because of the countries running the Syrian war as a regional proxy war, turning Syria into a burnt-out graveyard.

I’m a bit puzzled about the timing of Turkey’s recent attacks on Kurdish bases in northern Iraq, right after finally permitting the US to fly attacks against IS from Turkish bases. That sounds like playing both sides of the war to me… Weaken IS and its major enemy at the same time.

Does Erdoğan think the US will have to shut up about Turkish attacks on Kurdish forces if they don’t want to lose the long demanded use of Turkish bases against IS? Use of Turkish bases for the war in Syria will allow the US to step up attacks against IS, which might strengthen the position of Kurdish forces. During the siege of Kobanî, Turkey seemed determined to block Kurdish reinforcements against IS, as if it saw genocidal IS as the lesser of two evils.

Or is it simply payback time for the parliamentary triumph of the (Kurdish) People’s Democratic party (HDP), which deprived Erdoğan’s AKP of a majority in the general elections in June? Ending the peace process with Kurds may be an attempt to drive a wedge between the HDP and non-Kurdish voters, to split the opposition.

At the beginning of 2014, sales of cannabis (marijuana) to adults became legal again in Colorado. It was legal there until 1927. Personal possession and cultivation have already been legal again for one year in both Colorado and Washington, following referendums in which a majority of voters supported ending prohibition in both states. In late December, Uruguay become the first sovereign country to officially permit regulated sales of Cannabis to adults again.

What I find remarkable about these legislative changes is how relatively little fuss they caused. Unlike the 1980s, where political crusades led to increasingly harsh drug laws in many countries, with little regard for human rights, the cost of enforcement and lack of effectiveness, the responses this time have been largely dispassionate and rational. In the US the federal government has adopted a wait and see attitude, deciding to give the states space to enforce their laws as they see fit, as long as cannabis does not cross state lines. Other states are likely to follow in the next couple of years.

America has experimented with Prohibition before, as production and sales of alcohol were illegal from 1919-1933. As we know, alcohol prohibition was an abysmal failure, handing organized crime a huge business opportunity. The US then repeated that mistake with the 1937 “Marihuana Tax Act”. When the US Supreme Court finally declared it unconstitutional in 1969, President Nixon soon replaced it with the Controlled Substances Act. He ignored the recommendations of the Shafer Commission that he had tasked with investigating its harmfulness and the best way to regulate it. The Shafer commission had recommended to decriminalize it.

Over the last decades several countries and states (including the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal) have decriminalized cannabis without legalising sales. Retail sales in Dutch coffee shops are only tolerated, but technically still illegal. Suppliers of coffee shops still operate in a Black Market and can be prosecuted. Spain chose a different model, permitting personal cultivation at home as well as within cannabis social clubs. The model in Uruguay and Colorado goes one step further and is similar to how production and sale of alcohol is handled in many countries.

While there are still international conventions, such as the 1961 Single Convention that restrict national drugs laws of signatory states, they will ultimately have no permanent effect, as they permit member states to withdraw and rejoin with reservations. Bolivia did that a few years ago, to be able to legalise its traditional use of the coca plant. Any other country can do the same for cannabis.

The legal changes in Uruguay, Washington and Colorado reflect a generational change. As people who gathered personal experience with cannabis and had found it less harmful than alcohol gradually aged into their 40s, 50s and 60s, cannabis is less associated with a particular generation. It became increasingly difficult to demonize this herb. Medical use of cannabis further contributed to changes in attitudes.

It makes no sense to use heavy handed criminal law to try to deny adults the use of a less harmful alternative to alcohol. Even if we acknowledge that cannabis use is not entirely benign, laws that would be harsh enough to have a deterrent effect will almost certainly cause more harm to individuals when enforced than use of the substance itself might have. This realization will take longer in some countries than in others, but it will come. Legal discrimination against users of cannabis for recreational, spiritual and medicinal purposes will one day go the way of racial discrimination and homophobia. It took a century from the US civil war to the end of formal segregation in southern states. It has taken decades to dismantle discrimination against homosexual couples. One day we will look back on the war on cannabis users the same way and wonder how come it lasted for so long.

As the United States Supreme Courts starts considering the issue of same sex marriage, I can’t help thinking of the fact that as recently as 1967 my wife and I could not have got married in some US states because of racist laws. That was when the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that the state’s anti-miscegenation laws violated the constitutional rights of interracial couples. I think I can empathize with same-sex couples who are still denied the right to marry by unjust state laws today.

Today the historic reality of those racist laws is shocking to us. To our children and grandchildren, discrimination against gays and lesbians will be equally offensive. Same sex marriage takes nothing away from marriage between man and woman, it adds to it. If formally recognized long term commitments are beneficial between men and women, why deny them to other loving couples? I am confident that equality for same sex couples will come.

Millions of people will have cheered today when they heard the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. The leader of Al Qaeda had been on the FBI’s most wanted list since the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and became even even more infamous after the 9/11 attacks.

Bin Ladin’s death is by no means “Mission accomplished” in the struggle against terrorism in countries around the world. More likely his death will make little difference.

For the last ten years he’s been little more than a figurehead for the movement he founded. “Al Qaeda in Iraq” picked up the brand name for its guaranteed headline value, but had different roots. Likewise the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid were organised independently. Bin Laden needed the Taliban and their paymasters at the ISI in Pakistan more than they needed him.

Other than its name recognition value, there was little in Bin Laden’s “brand” that couldn’t be found elsewhere by those who shared his world view and goals. Al Qaeda’s franchise manual is not proprietary information, it has been in the public domain for years.

To me the most hopeful news this year came not through the death of this evil man but through the courage of young men and women in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, who boldly stood up against corrupt despots in their own countries. When young people in the Middle East have a stake in running their own countries, when they no longer feel powerless and abused then the likes of Al Qaeda will find it much harder to find new recruits amongst them.

Since the exciting events in Tunisia stirred activists and the masses in Egypt into action, I have been following the news with anticipation. Finally 82 year old dictator Hosni Mubarak has ceded power, opening the door to a more democratic future for over 80 million Egyptians.

At times Mubarak reminded me of a stubborn elderly relative refusing to give up driving even after multiple accidents. The amounts of money stolen by him and his family during his rule, even if it were just a fraction of the figures reported, are shocking. Hundreds lost their lives in recent weeks and thousands were arrested and tortured over many years.

Echoes of 1989

I felt reminded of the events of 1989 in central and eastern Europe, when in a matter of months and weeks regime after regime collapsed that once seemed cast in concrete for decades to come.

When the regimes in Eastern Europe fell it took months for free elections for a representative parliament and government and for comprehensive reforms of the apparatus of government. A lot of hard work still lies ahead and it will take patience and a lot of skill to solve the problems left behind by decades of violent oppression and mismanagement.

The Islamist bogeyman

Despite some understandable anxiety by some, Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979. The Egyptian revolution was the work of a broad coalition of unionists, leftists, students, young people and other secular forces as well as Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood was never at the forefront. This was a revolution about democracy and social justice, not Islamism.

Those stoking the fear of an Islamist takeover in Cairo do so for political purposes, but it is up to the Egyptians to decide how to run their country now. I hope they will do it as responsibly and maturely as they have shown themselves in the past weeks.

Democrats need not fear democracy

Israel, until now recognized by Freedom House as the only fully free country in the Middle East, should feel uplifted, not panicked at the prospect of living next door to another democracy. History has proven that in the long term democracies do make for much safer neighbours than dictatorships. Egyptians deserve freedom and justice as much as Israelis do, or Palestinians for that matter.

Supporting a brutal kleptocrat was never going to a stable basis for peace, because peace needs justice. My hope is that one day a future government of Israel will offer an outstretched hand towards a democratic Egypt and recognize it as a much better partner to do business with than Mubarak could ever be, and (I know this will take time) even as a friend.

Speech by US president Barack Obama on 11 February 2011

Good afternoon, everybody. There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place. This is one of those moments. This is one of those times. The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same.

By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian people’s hunger for change. But this is not the end of Egypt’s transition. It’s a beginning. I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead, and many questions remain unanswered. But I am confident that the people of Egypt can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity that has defined these last few weeks. For Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.

The military has served patriotically and responsibly as a caretaker to the state, and will now have to ensure a transition that is credible in the eyes of the Egyptian people. That means protecting the rights of Egypt’s citizens, lifting the emergency law, revising the constitution and other laws to make this change irreversible, and laying out a clear path to elections that are fair and free. Above all, this transition must bring all of Egypt’s voices to the table. For the spirit of peaceful protest and perseverance that the Egyptian people have shown can serve as a powerful wind at the back of this change.

The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt. We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary — and asked for — to pursue a credible transition to a democracy. I’m also confident that the same ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that the young people of Egypt have shown in recent days can be harnessed to create new opportunity — jobs and businesses that allow the extraordinary potential of this generation to take flight. And I know that a democratic Egypt can advance its role of responsible leadership not only in the region but around the world.

Egypt has played a pivotal role in human history for over 6,000 years. But over the last few weeks, the wheel of history turned at a blinding pace as the Egyptian people demanded their universal rights.

We saw mothers and fathers carrying their children on their shoulders to show them what true freedom might look like.

We saw a young Egyptian say, “For the first time in my life, I really count. My voice is heard. Even though I’m only one person, this is the way real democracy works.”

We saw protesters chant “Selmiyya, selmiyya” — “We are peaceful” — again and again.

We saw a military that would not fire bullets at the people they were sworn to protect.

And we saw doctors and nurses rushing into the streets to care for those who were wounded, volunteers checking protesters to ensure that they were unarmed.

We saw people of faith praying together and chanting – “Muslims, Christians, We are one.” And though we know that the strains between faiths still divide too many in this world and no single event will close that chasm immediately, these scenes remind us that we need not be defined by our differences. We can be defined by the common humanity that we share.

And above all, we saw a new generation emerge — a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears; a government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations. One Egyptian put it simply: Most people have discovered in the last few days … that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from them anymore, ever.

This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.

And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history — echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.

As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.

Today belongs to the people of Egypt, and the American people are moved by these scenes in Cairo and across Egypt because of who we are as a people and the kind of world that we want our children to grow up in.

The word Tahrir means liberation. It is a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people — of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.

Thank you.