Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad

Discussion in 'Middle East' started by Margot2, Oct 18, 2015.

  1. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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  2. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Geographical Syria

    Syria is a small, poor, and crowded country. On the map, it appears about the size of Washington state or Spain, but only about a quarter of its 185,000 square kilometers is arable land. That is, “economic Syria” is about as large as a combination of Maryland and Connecticut or Switzerland. Most is desert—some is suitable for grazing but less than 10 percent of the surface is permanent cropland.

    Except for a narrow belt along the Mediterranean, the whole country is subject to extreme temperatures that cause frequent dust storms and periodic droughts.

    Four years of devastating drought from 2006 to 2011 turned Syria into a land like the American “dust bowl” of the 1930s. That drought was said to have been the worst ever recorded, but it was one in a long sequence: Just in the period from 2001 to 2010, Syria had 60 “significant” dust storms.

    The most important physical aspect of these storms, as was the experience in America in the 1930s, was the removal of the topsoil. Politically, they triggered the civil war.
     
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  3. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Last year, according to the World Bank, agriculture supplied about 20 percent of national income (GDP) and employed about 17 percent of the population.

    Before the heavy fighting began, Syrian oil fields produced about 330,000 barrels per day, but Syrians consumed all but about 70,000 of that amount.

    Sales supplied about 20 percent of GDP and a third of export earnings. Production subsequently fell by at least 50 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    Syria’s oil is of poor quality, sour, and expensive to refine. Industry, (mainly energy-related) employed about a third of the adult male population and provided a similar percentage of the national income.

    Before the war, moves were being made to transport oil and gas from farther east across Syria to the Mediterranean; obviously, these projects have been stopped. Now there is a sort of cottage industry in crude refining of petroleum products for local use and smuggling.
     
  4. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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  5. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Pre-War Syrian Foreign Relations

    The Bush administration signaled a new anti-Syrian policy in 2002 when the president included it in what he proclaimed to be the “Axis of Evil.” Covert activities were stepped up and, the following year, Bush threatened to impose sanctions (which he did impose two years later).

    In 2003, Israel used American aircraft in a strike on a Palestinian refugee camp just outside of Damascus. It was the first of a sequence of humiliating attacks that the Syrian armed forces were unable to prevent.

    The American Congress rubbed salt into that wound by passing the Syria Accountability Act, which charged the Syrians with supporting terrorism and occupying much of Lebanon as well as seeking chemical weapons.
     
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  6. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Its a pity more people don't know what is happening in Syria beyond the MSM and the screwball propaganda.
     
  7. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    The Syrian Heritage

    Since before history was written, Syria has been fought over by foreign empires—Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonian Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Turks, British, and French. Only during the Umayyad Caliphate in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. was it the center of an empire. But that relatively short period left Syria with its Islamic heritage. For many centuries, the society has been overwhelmingly Muslim.

    Syria also has historically been a sanctuary for little groups of peoples whose differences from one another were defined in religious and/or ethnic terms. Several of these communities were “leftovers” from previous invasions or migrations. During most of the last five centuries, when what is today Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, groups of Orthodox, Catholic, and other Christians; Alawis, Ismailis, and other sorts of Shia Muslims; and Yazidis, Kurds, Jews, and Druze lived in enclaves and in neighborhoods in the various cities and towns alongside Sunni Muslim Arabs.

    During Ottoman rule the population was organized in two overlapping ways. First, there was no “Syria” in the sense of a nation-state, but rather provinces (Turkish: pashaliqs) that were centered on the ancient cities. The most important of these were Damascus, which may be the oldest permanently settled city in the world today, and Aleppo. The concept of a state, much less a nation-state, did not enter into political thought until the end of the 19th century.

    Inhabitants of the various parts of what became Syria could move without feeling or being considered alien from one province of the Ottoman Empire to the next. Thus, if the grandfathers or great grandfathers of people alive today were asked about what entity they belonged to, they would probably have named the city or village where they paid their taxes.

    Martin W. Lewis/GeoCurrents

    Second, throughout its centuries of rule, the Ottoman Empire generally was content to have its subjects live by their own codes of behavior. It did not have the means or the incentive to intrude into their daily lives. Muslims, whether Turk or Arab or Kurd, shared with the imperial government Islamic mores and law.

    Other ethnic/religious “nations” (Turkish: millet) were self-governing except in military and foreign affairs. The following map is modern but shows approximately the traditional distribution of minority groups in enclaves scattered throughout the area that became Syria.


    Columbia University Gulf 2000 Project/Bill Marsh and Joe Burgess

    What the map does not show is that the same groups also moved into mainly Muslim cities and towns, where they tended to live in more or less segregated neighborhoods that resembled medieval European urban ghettos or modern American “Little Italys” or “Chinatowns.”

    Whether in enclaves or in neighborhoods, each non-Muslim community dressed according to its custom, spoke its own languages, and lived according to its unique cultural pattern; it appointed or elected its own officials, who divided the taxes it owed to the empire, ran its schools, and provided such health facilities and social welfare as it thought proper or could afford. Since this system was spelled out in the Quran and the Traditions (Hadiths) of the Prophet, respecting it was legally obligatory for Muslims. Consequently, when the Syrian state took shape, it inherited a rich, diverse, and tolerant social tradition.

    - - - Updated - - -

    The Assad Regime

    It was in answer to the perceived weakness of Syrian statehood and the disorder of Syrian political life that the first Assad regime was established in 1970 by Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current leader. The Assad family came from the Alawi (a.k.a. Nusairi) minority, which includes about one in eight Syrians and about a quarter of a million people in both Lebanon and Turkey. Like the Jews, the Alawis consider themselves the “chosen people,” but they are regarded by Orthodox Muslims as heretics. Under Ottoman pluralism, this mattered little, but as Syrians struggled for a sense of identity and came to suspect social difference and to fear the cooperation of minorities with foreigners, being an Alawi or a Christian or a Jew put people under a cloud. So, for Hafez al-Assad, the secular, nationalist Baath Party was a natural choice: it offered, or seemed to offer, the means to overcome his origins in a minority community and to point toward a solution to the disunity of Syrian politics. He therefore embraced it eagerly and eventually became its leader. Consequently, to understand Syrian affairs, we need to focus on the party.

    Thus, Saddam became as much the ogre in the bestiary of Hafaz al-Assad as he later became in America’s.

    The “Resurrection” (Arabic: Baath) Party had its origins, like the nationalist-communist Vietnamese movement, in France. Two young Syrians, one a Christian and the other a Sunni Muslim, who were then studying in Paris were both attracted to the grandeur of France and appalled by the weakness of Syria. Like Ho Chi Minh, they wanted to both become like France and get the French out of their nation. Both believed that the future lay in unity and socialism. For Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar, the forces to be defeated were “French oppression, Syrian backwardness, a political class unable to measure up to the challenge of the times,” according to the British journalist Patrick Seale’s account in The Struggle for Syria. Above all, disunity had to be overcome. Their answer was to try to bridge the gaps between rich and poor through a modified version of socialism, and between Muslims and minorities through a modified concept of Islam. Islam, in their view, needed to be considered politically not as a religion but as a manifestation of the Arab nation. Thus, the society they wished to create, they proclaimed, should be modern (with, among other things, equality for women), secular (with faith relegated to personal affairs), and defined by a culture of “Arabism” overriding the traditional concepts of ethnicity. In short, what they sought was the very antithesis of the objectives of the already-strong and growing Muslim Brotherhood.

    Like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Baath Party spread among young students. When, as a young student myself, I visited Syria in 1950, I was astonished at how vigorous the student political movements were and how seriously, even violently, the students played a national role. Hafez al-Assad was one of the first student recruits of what would become the Baath Party, and quickly became a local hero for his dedication to its cause. As Seale describes, “He became a party stalwart, defending its cause on the street … he was one of our commandos.” And he almost paid with his life for his bravery when a Muslim Brother stabbed him. So, pardon the pun, his antipathy to the Muslim Brotherhood began early and went deep.

    Like many young men of his generation, Hafez al-Assad first put his hopes in the military, which seemed, more than political parties, even the Baath, to embody the nation. He avidly studied his new profession and became a fighter pilot, but he quickly realized that the military was only a means of action and that what it did had to be guided by political ideas and organization. So, he used his military affiliation to energize his party role. This, inevitably, caught him up in the coups, counter-coups, and sundry conspiracies that engaged Syrian politicians and army officers during the 1950s and 1960s. Emerging from this labyrinth, he skillfully maneuvered himself into the leadership of his party and domination of the political and military structure of the country by 1971. And his assumption of the presidency was certified by a plebiscite in that year.

    His survival, much less his victory, was nearly a miracle, but he had not managed to solve the fundamental problem of Syrian ethnicity and particularly the role of Islam in society.

    This problem, which is so tragically and bitterly evident in Syria today, found an early expression in the writing of the new constitution in 1973. The previous constitutions, going back to French colonial times, had specified that a Muslim should hold the presidency. Despite his dedication to secular politics, Hafez al-Assad made two attempts to cater to Muslim opinion. In the first, he got the clause in the former constitutions conditioning the presidential office to a Muslim replaced by a redefinition of Islam of sorts. “Islam,” the new language stressed, “is a religion of love, progress and social justice, of equality for all…” Then, in the second move, he arranged for a respected Islamic jurisconsult (not from Syria but from Lebanon, and not a Sunni but a Shia) to issue a finding (Arabic: fatwa) that Alawis were really Shia Muslims rather than heretics. This was not merely an abstract bit of theology: as heretics, Alawis were outlaws who could be legally and meritoriously killed—as we have seen in recent events in Syria.

    The Muslim Brotherhood was furious. Riots broke out around the country, particularly in the city of Hama. For some years, Assad managed to contain the discontent—partly by granting subsidies on food and partly by curbing the already-hated political police—but the fundamental issue was not resolved. Muslim Brothers and other disaffected groups organized terrorist attacks on the government and on Assad’s inner circle, killing some of his close collaborators and exploding car bombs at installations, including even the office of the prime minister and the headquarters of the air force. Assad was told that he would soon follow Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, killed by Muslim terrorists, into the grave. As it had been periodically during French colonialism, the whole city of Damascus came under siege. Finally, the Islamic forces were ready to challenge the regime in all-out war. An army unit sent into the Muslim Brotherhood stronghold in the city of Hama was ambushed. The local Muslim guerrilla leader gave the signal for a general uprising. Overnight the city was engulfed in a vicious, “no-prisoners” insurrection. The regime was fighting for its life. As Patrick Seale, the most astute observer of those events, has written, in words that also ring true for the events of 2013:


    Fear, loathing and a river of spilt blood ruled out any thought of truce … that explain the terrible savagery of the punishment inflicted on the city. Behind the immediate contest lay the old multi-layered hostility between Islam and the Ba’th, between Sunni and ‘Alawi, between town and country…. Many civilians were slaughtered in the prolonged mopping up, whose districts razed, and numerous acts of savagery reported…. Government forces too suffered heavy losses to snipers and many armoured vehicles were hit by grenades in the rubble-strewn streets … between 5,000 and 10,000 [people died].

    After Assad’s assault in 1982, the Syrian city of Hama looked like the Iraqi city of Fallujah after the American assault in 2004. Acres of the city were submerged under piles of rubble. But then, like Stalingrad after the German attack or Berlin after the Russian siege, reconstruction began. In a remarkable series of moves, Hafez al-Assad ordered the rubble cleared away, built new highways, constructed new schools and hospitals, opened new parks, and even, in a wholly unexpected conciliatory gesture, erected two huge new mosques. He thus made evident what had been his philosophy of government since he first took power: help the Syrian people to live better provided only that they not challenge his rule.
     
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  8. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    William R. Polk first wrote for The Atlantic during the Eisenhower administration, with a report in 1958 about tensions in Iraq. Soon after that, he was recruited from a teaching position at Harvard to work on the State Department’s Policy Planning staff in the Kennedy administration.

    In the years since, he has written and taught extensively about international affairs, especially in the Middle East.

    Earlier this year, Polk wrote a series of very widely read dispatches for our site about U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Syria. He also has two new books available on Amazon. The first, Humpty Dumpty: The Fate of Regime Change, deals with the history and current affairs of Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Mali. The second is an espionage novel called Blind Man's Buff and carries the tale of the Great Game for control of Central Asia into the present.
     
  9. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

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    Fishin' lil' babies outta the water...
    :omg:
    Greece says 22 migrants drown off Aegean islands, 144 rescued
    Fri Oct 30, 2015 - Greece rescued 144 refugees and recovered the bodies of 22, including four infants and nine children, after their boats sank in two separate incidents in the Aegean sea, the coastguard said on Friday.
     
  10. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    So many dead... its hard..
     
  11. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Time for a little backstory on what is happening in Syria and why there are millions of refugees.
     
  12. HBendor

    HBendor New Member

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    Yes of course there are millions of refugees... I wish I had the time and the technical knowledge to give everyone here a true picture of Syria... Well Margot 2 it is in shamble and it is in ruins... Syria has been an enemy of Israel since 1948, I am not rejoicing on their misery... they opted for their leaders, and their leaders do not seem to be the brightest bulb on the chandelier either... Here is an article by Yoram Ettinger that describes exactly what it is that Syria is going through.

    Syrian Rhetoric vs. Mideast Reality


    ~by Yoram Ettinger


    In contrast to seemingly moderate Syrian rhetoric, Mideast reality indicates that more Americans were murdered by Assad-sponsored terrorists than were killed in the Gulf War! Assad - ruling Syrian via domestic terrorism - has marshaled international terrorism for the advancement of his regional aspirations, while retaining the element of deniability. He has harbored and supported anti-Western, anti-US, anti-Turkey, anti-Jordan and anti-Israel Islamic, secular and non-Muslim terrorists from the Mideast, Latin America, Far East and Europe.

    ... Assad has systematically violated agreements once they cease to serve his interests, abiding by them when convenient and when threatened. In 10.1990 he abused US preoccupation with Saddam 's invasion of Kuwait, violating commitments made to the US, Arab League, Lebanon and Israel, obliterating Lebanon's Christian government and massacring Christian leaders. He violated security protocols concluded with Turkey (7.1987, 4.1992, 11.1993), employing anti-Turkish terrorism (20,000 killed since 1986) in order to attain Turkish territorial and water concessions, and to transform Turkey into a Lebanon-Europe heroin transit route. He violated the 3.1976 Redline Agreement with Israel, advancing excess troops and weaponry. He also violated the pre-October 1973 and the 10.1973 cease fire agreements, the 1974 Golan Disengagement Agreement and the 7.1993 commitment to the US to prevent Hizballah rocket attacks on Israel. Assad abrogated commitments to withdraw from Lebanon (10.1978 Riad-Cairo Summit, 9.1982 Fez, Summit, 10.1989 Taif Summit).

    ...Assad has sustained strategic ties with members of Terror International, such as
    Iran, Sudan, Libya, North Korea and even his historical rival, Iraq (funneling to the
    latter Russian spare parts for military systems damaged by US bombings).
    He assisted Somali 's Col. Aideed during the costly US military intervention in Somali.

    ...Assad 's long-term ties with Russia/USSR - contrary to his short-term ties of convenience with the US - have been compatible with his values and strategic goals. He has systematically promoted the expansion of Moscow ‘s involvement in the Mideast, undermining US interests in the Persian Gulf, Eastern Mediterranean, Northern Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

    ...Rather than focusing on growing domestic needs, Assad has increased his military procurement, thus exacerbating Mideast arms race. Bolstering military ties with Russia, he has just acquired advanced weaponry - accompanied by Russian military advisors and technicians - including surface-to-air S-300 missiles (allegedly, superior to the US Patriot!) And spare parts for the air force and armored corps. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have bankrolled much of Assad 's military transactions, thus sparing themselves of Syrian-backed terrorism.
     
  13. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    This article gives a realistic picture of the problems of Syria.. by a scholar who has been visiting and studying Syria since 1950.
     
  14. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Everyone should read this.
     
  15. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    FYI...............
     
  16. HBendor

    HBendor New Member

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  17. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have never backed Syria.. They have no use for Baathists or the Muslim Brothrhood.. I take it Yoram is an Israeli.

    The author of the Atlantic piece has been in and out of Syria since 1950
     
  18. HBendor

    HBendor New Member

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    Ambassador Yoram Ettinger:
    Ambassador Yoram Ettinger Advisor Contact:
    Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger is an insider on US-Israel relations, Mideast politics and overseas investments in Israel’s high tech. He is a member of the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG), which has documented dramatic flaws behind demographic fatalism on one hand and a Jewish demographic momentum on the other hand.

    He is a consultant to members of Israel’s Cabinet and Knesset, and regularly briefs US legislators and their staff on Israel’s contribution to vital US interests, on the root causes of international terrorism and on other issues of bilateral concern.

    Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger’s OpEds have been published in Israel and in the US, and he has been interviewed on Israel’s and US’ TV and radio. He was a speaker at AIPAC Annual Conference.

    Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger – who did his graduate studies at UCLA and undergraduate at UTEP – served as Minister for Congressional Affairs at Israel’s Embassy in Washington (with a rank of an ambassador), Israel’s Consul General in Houston and Director of Israel’s Government Press Office. He is the editor of Straight From The Jerusalem Cloakroom and Boardroom newsletters on issues of national security and overseas investments in Israel’s high-tech.
     
  19. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    FYI...............
     
  20. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    FYI.. This article covers many aspect of Syria including agriculture and their oil business.
     
  21. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Best article for understanding Syria..........
     
  22. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Pre-War Syrian Foreign Relations

    The Bush administration signaled a new anti-Syrian policy in 2002 when the president included it in what he proclaimed to be the “Axis of Evil.” Covert activities were stepped up and, the following year, Bush threatened to impose sanctions (which he did impose two years later).

    In 2003, Israel used American aircraft in a strike on a Palestinian refugee camp just outside of Damascus. It was the first of a sequence of humiliating attacks that the Syrian armed forces were unable to prevent.

    The American Congress rubbed salt into that wound by passing the Syria Accountability Act, which charged the Syrians with supporting terrorism and occupying much of Lebanon as well as seeking chemical weapons.
     
  23. HBendor

    HBendor New Member

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    And the reasons behind it...


    Ain es Saheb airstrike

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Ain es Saheb airstrike
    Ein saheb strike.jpg
    IAF video of the strike
    Operational scope Strategic
    Objective Destruction of the site in Ain es Saheb, Syria
    Date October 5, 2003
    Executed by Israel Air Force Flag.svg Israeli Air Force
    Outcome Successful strike on alleged militant site
    Casualties 1 injured
    munitions destroyed
    [show] v t e
    Airstrikes on Syria
    [show] v t e
    Second Intifada
    The Ain es Saheb airstrike occurred on October 5, 2003 and was the first overt Israeli military operation in Syria since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

    Contents [hide]
    1 Operation
    2 Militant camp claims
    3 See also
    4 References
    5 External links
    Operation[edit]
    In response to the suicide bombing in Haifa 12 hours earlier by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, four Israeli Air Force 110 "Knights of the North" Squadron F-16Cs attacked an alleged Palestinian militant training camp about 24 kilometres (15 miles) northwest of the Syrian capital Damascus. A single civilian guard was reportedly injured in the strike, the first in Syrian territory in nearly thirty years. The jets took off from Ramat David Airbase at 03:00 and headed north over the Mediterranean before turning east, crossing the coastline into Lebanon and approaching the target from the west. It is uncertain whether the aircraft actually crossed the border into Syria proper as the exact type of munitions used is unknown and the target is located close to the Syrian-Lebanese border.[1][2]

    Militant camp claims[edit]
    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed the camp was used to train recruits in bomb assembly and guerrilla warfare and has released footage of the camp taken from the Al-Arabia TV station showing hundreds of weapons and underground tunnels packed with arms and ammunition. Both Syria and the Islamic Jihad denied Israeli claims, while an official of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) said the camp belongs to his group but has been long abandoned. Palestinian sources in Beirut, however, report the facility belongs to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP, not to be mistaken with the PFLP-GC) and had at the same time served as a training base for the Islamic Jihad and Hamas. These same sources reported a weapons workshop at the site, lending support to reports by the attacking pilots of secondary explosions
     
  24. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Only one person was killed.. Maybe it had been abandoned.

    The Israelis outlined many reasons for regime change in Syria as early as 1996... but bombing a refugee camp on poor intel doesn't sound cool to me.
     
  25. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    SOP for the Israelis. That's the way they roll in the shire.
     

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