Marty: Middle East and Asia 101 tutorial

Most Americans are confused about the never-ending fighting and realignments in the Middle East and parts of Asia, so here is a who’s who of various warring parties. Stick a copy of this on your refrigerator door and the next time a new armed struggle breaks out – that will be tomorrow or later in the week – you’ll be prepared to identify the key players. I won’t go into the historical record – if I did I’d have to write several books. 
First the easiest one: everyone versus Israel. All Arab countries, and almost all Islamic countries, are in a declared or undeclared war with Israel. The reasons are either maltreatment of the Palestinians, the desire to eliminate Israel, or the opportunity to control Jerusalem. However, several of the same parties actually work closely with Israel behind the scenes against others who they fear and hate more than the Israelis.
They fear their own radicals, but the Arabs have spent so many years using the Israeli boogeyman to distract their people, they can’t admit that they work with the Jewish state. The Israelis are in the same boat: They can’t say that they are working closely with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries against Iran. Everyone hates and mistrusts the government of Iran except when they need a new supply of radicals. Iran has radicals in excess; they are an export commodity like oil.
Meanwhile, the Shiite-led government of Iraq is under attack by the Sunni Al Qaeda militant splinter group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant also called the ISIS. This group wants to impose a hardline Islamic state over Iraq and the entire Levant, which consists of the island of Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and part of southern Turkey. In some cases, notably Iraq and Syria, the ISIS murderers would just be replacing the current murderers; no one may even notice.
The ISIS are the bad guys in Iraq, but they are fighting alongside the good guys in Syria trying to get rid of the bad guy Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the president of Syria and general secretary of the Ba’ath Party. The U.S. only wants to help the good-good guys in Syria, not the bad-good guys or the good-bad guys, but we are not sure we know the difference. Have you got that so far?
The Iranians and Shiites are supporting the government of Iraq, which has been severely abusing the Sunni minority who, when they are in power, are always busy abusing the Shiite minority. The most popular debating tools used to resolve these religious-political differences are car bombs and AK-47s, with beheading swords coming in a close third.
In northern Iraq, Kurdish security forces (remember the Kurds?) moved to fill the power vacuum by taking over an Iraqi air base and other posts abandoned by the military. The Turks, a member of NATO, hate the Kurds and the feeling is mutual.
In Afghanistan, we know something is going on but we have no idea what because they all hate each other except for some fellow tribe members with only one thing in common – they hate all non-Afghanis, especially westerners the most (that is, if you don’t count the Russians).
That is not a satisfying situation because we’ve been fighting to bring democracy and freedom to Afghanistan and the entire region, while each and every American administration claims they are making progress (no, I’m not making this up).