Modern doomsayers are predicting Friday, Dec. 21, 2012 as the end of the world as we know it, because the Maya calendar says so. The Maya calendar abruptly ends on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012.

Peter Dunham, an archaeologist in the department of anthropology at Cleveland State University who teaches “Ancient Mysteries” says “It just means it’s time to make a new calendar.” He adds “a major cycle ends on Dec. 21, but again, it’s a cycle. When one cycle ends, a new one begins. The Maya only mentioned the year 2012 twice and in neither case do they mention the end of the world.”

With the latest change of stand taken by Russia on its solid support to Syrian President Bashar Assad (later somewhat retracted), it appears like the Mayan moment for him.

But the situation in West Asia and North Africa and elsewhere will not unfold as US led NATO and Riyadh and Doha financed GCC countries hope and wish. The fires of resistance and for freedom from authoritarian rulers in the Gulf oligarchies, the main financiers earlier of the 1980s Jihad in Afghanistan, which has destroyed south west Asia and now the greater Middle East, will blowback. Shia majority Bahrainis want freedom from its Sunni ruler. There is unrest not only in oil rich Shia regions of the Saudi Kingdom, but growing general resentment among young unemployed and under employed Sunni citizens of Saudi Arabia against the absolute rule of Saudi princes oligarchy.

A new calendar has begun, as it had after the rebuff of the Ottoman arms from the Gates of Vienna in end 16 century. Following Ottoman Empire’s decline and withdrawal from Maghreb, European powers colonized Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt beginning in 19 century.

The borders of West Asia, part of Ottoman Sultan Caliph’s domains, were drawn by the victorious Western European powers England and France after the defeat of the Ottoman armies in WWI. Known as greater Syria, that historical entity became divided into Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Occupied West bank territories and Gaza. It seems that whatever remains of the historical Syria, will be further divided into Sunni, Alawite, Christian and Kurdish and other zones of conflict. The Shia Sunni conflicts and even wars ignited and encouraged by the West could rage and engulf most people in the region.

The borders in West Asia perhaps including Turkey which has 20% Kurdish population and 15% Alevi (Shia) population will be redrawn .Already in Iraq following the US led illegal invasion and occupation since 2003 and de facto creation of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan after the 1991 war against Saddam Hussain’s occupation of Kuwait (which gave oxygen to Kurdish resistance in south east Turkey), the state is now divided into 3 parts. The US has been caught in a quagmire by the resistances in Iraq, where in the words of US Col Murtha the US army has been broken. Hence the reluctance to place GI boots in Libya (the virus of terrorism and Islamic obscurantism has now spread south of Libya) elsewhere. In the ultimate Western retreat from Eastern lands, the Iraqi sacrifice will compare with that of the Soviet Union’s resistance in WWII, which destroyed 80% of the Nazi military machine. The Yanks and the Brits just took the credit with propaganda films.

US led Western retreat and downsizing is becoming apparent, once with its military lillipods extending even into central Asia right up to China’s borders, after the collapse of USSR. Let us see how US withdraws its heavy military hardware from Afghanistan and even Iraq. Remember the sorry state of Soviet bases and its troops and citizens in it’s near abroad after the collapse of USSR.

While it is not easy to predict when it will take place but it might be matter of year or so or even less. Who had predicted the collapse of USSR so quickly. Now because of its obsession of wars and military expenditure, US is bankrupt as are most EU nations. Many centuries long warfare between Roman/Byzantine empires and the Persian empires had exhausted them both making the new power of Islam conquer territories from Morocco to the borders of China.

As and when West declines and withdraws, the main beneficiaries will be Islamic regimes and certainly not in love with the West for all their colonization, exploitation and crimes of centuries of Western domination. It should be admitted that the way the situation evolves and explodes in Syria is of prime importance for the future of the region and the world.

Read Next: A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria by Vijay Prashad