Oh Syria the victory is coming

If someone commits oppression? How can they repent? WHat can one do if they are unable to find their victim? WIll they ever be forgiven?

Salaam

Good insight into how Assad tried to undermine the revolt against him.

Blurb

In a brand new series of KJ Videos, we will take an analytical look at the Syrian civil war from the beginning to today. In this episode, we will take you way back in time when the Syrian uprisings all began

Salaam

Another perspective

After warnings of mass murder and catastrophe in Idlib, I prowled the front lines for two days. I didn't find what I'd expected

The only massed forces I came across were vast herds of sheep and, close to Aleppo, a string of camels. War might be coming, but not yet

Every journalist would like to start a report with the words: “All quiet on the western front.” Or the eastern front. And I had actually scribbled “all quiet on the northern front” in my notebook, on my rural way to the far northern village of Kansabba on Syria’s front line opposite Idlib province, when an artillery piece in the forest banged off a shell over our heads. It took 25 seconds for the sound of the explosion – on the hills to the north-east – to echo softly back to us through the trees. Then a second round. And a third. A few Syrian soldiers on motorcycles purred along the road. Front lines are like this. Sunlight, lots of clouds, a winding country lane way, an explosion and then a herd of sheep drift out of a field at the bidding of a cowled shepherd.

So goodbye to the “all quiet” bit. But here’s the problem. Syria makes no secret that it has amassed 100,000 troops around Idlib province for the “last battle” against its Islamist enemies; give or take any who can be persuaded to “reconcile” with the Syrian government via the Russians, go “home” – Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, you name it – or surrender. And as we all know, a lot of the jihadis in the Idlib “terrorist” dustbin – the Russians and Syrians use “terrorism” now with all the alacrity that George W Bush deployed after he invaded Iraq – preferred to battle on in Idlib after leaving the big cities of Syria.

Then there are the “experts” in the West who tell us that there are 30,000 fighters in Idlib. I suspect closer to 10,000. Civilians, we are informed, compose between 2,500,000 and three million of the souls in Idlib; half a million of them, in other words, may or may not be there. The civilians trapped in eastern Aleppo turned out to be a gross exaggeration once the siege ended in 2016. But maybe the higher figure in Idlib is the right one. And how do we know that 100,000 Syrian soldiers is the correct statistic? But if so, it is the largest massing of Syrian troops since the start of the war.

Thus Trumpian-UN-Merkel-Erdogan warnings of humanitarian catastrophe, mass murder, chemical attack and Armageddon had me prowling along Syrian front line roads for all of two days; yet the huge Syrian invading force remained oddly elusive. I travelled from the Turkish frontier at Kassab, through Rabia and Kansabba and behind Jourine and then up the Syrian military supply route from Hama to Abu Adh Duhour and through villages unheard of outside Syria – Omalhouteh, Tel Maseh, Ewanat Skieh, Bardah, Kafr Abeed, Blass, Alhadein – and the massed Syrian army was nowhere to be seen.

Was this really the start of the last battle, I kept asking myself? Amid a sylvan grove east of Kassab, I suddenly came across 200 Syrian troops, steel helmets, arms at attention, on parade – their commander sent a motorcycled soldier after us to ask why we were taking photographs – for this was, to be sure, a good Boys’ Own Paper picture for The Independent. Readers, please note my colleague’s snatched snapshot with this dispatch. But there were no armoured vehicles, no Iranians, no Hezbollah, no Russians, no convoys of field artillery – though I had seen the photos of the Syrian convoys a couple of weeks ago – and the only massed forces I came across were vast herds of sheep and, close to Aleppo, a string of camels. Not a single soldier was carrying a gas mask. Which would surely be a sure sign of an imminent chemical attack anywhere on the front, whoever was dropping the stuff.

Now this doesn’t mean the invading army wasn’t there. Perhaps far behind the front lines or far above Aleppo, waiting in faraway fields for zero hour, they may be passing their time. The Syrians have loudly announced their intention of crushing the last Islamist bastion in Idlib – and I can confirm that Syrian jets took off from the Hama air base on Saturday morning at around 8.30 because I could hear their roar a mile away over breakfast – but I saw no smoke clouds drifting down from Jisr al-Chougour or east of Idlib a couple of hours later as I watched from that all-too-smashed security-supply route up to Aleppo. A lone, low-flying Russian-made Syrian helicopter came thudding over the desert near Abu Adh Dahour, whose own air base was recaptured by Syrian troops last year. Just one.

So here’s what I did find on my 300-mile tour around the frontier of Idlib. At the old Kassab border crossing, the Turks are still building a massive concrete wall along the Syrian frontier, topped with barbed wire and arc lights below a cloud-shrouded mountain on which stood, just visible, a range of reconnaissance aerials. From there, a Syrian captain told me, Nato watched Syria and could probably listen to Syrian communications – although the Syrians could apparently not listen to Nato. I climbed the staircase of a broken house, its former Nusrah Islamist forces’ graffiti painted out on the internal walls – and stared across the Turkish border. There was even a bust of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the Turkish side of the frontier station.

Then a sense of déjà vu. A group of Syrian security agents walked sullenly towards us to ask the Syrian army what we were doing. There was an altercation – an instructive moment – between the two Syrian forces before we moved away. Interesting. But exactly two years ago, the same Syrian army had been confronted by the same security men at the same spot asking the same question about my presence. Not a bad repeat performance. And when I drove further east, those guns began firing across the forest, yet – again, exactly two years ago, at this very spot – the Syrian artillery – quite probably the very same guns – had lobbed off shells over our heads at the same distant Nusrah-held hillsides. Plus ça change, I suppose.

And then, near Kansafet, I climbed the crumbling steps of a shell-scarred villa where the Syrian front line troops manned sand bags above a smashed mosque and a smashed church and a bullet whacked past us from the Nusrah snipers above. When I suggested to an obliging Syrian officer that I thought there might be no great offensive – just a slow gnawing away at the boundaries of Idlib’s mini-caliphate while “reconciliation” talks dragged on between the Syrians and the Russians and the Turks and the armed groups and, hopefully, the tens of thousands of civilians trapped there – the soldier nodded and told me I was “50 per cent correct”.

It was an eerie journey. A vast empty motorway – its blue Aleppo, Lattakia and Damascus road signs proving it to be the old international M4 highway cut off by the Idlib fighters; a towering railway viaduct captured by the Syrian army; and a massive but still incomplete concrete river dam whose equipment, so the Syrians say, was stripped by Nusrah and sold to the Turks. And thousands and thousands – and thousands more — abandoned, crushed houses and cattle sheds and huts destroyed over the past three years of fighting. Nusrah had tried to bring down a motorway bridge, but their charges – exploded long ago – appeared to have blasted downwards rather than upwards, and the structure still stood.

It was around this time that I realised the purpose of the Syrian army’s presence in this sector. Not, I suspect, for an offensive against Idlib, rather to fight off opposition fighters if they were under air bombardment and tried to escape west and cross the walled Turkish border. If there is to be a last battle, Syria’s armed enemies are not supposed to slip away this time – unless, of course, the Russians and the Iranians and the Turks – basking in the aftermath of the only slightly successful Tehran talks last week – can still work out a peaceful settlement.

So this was no launching pad for an attack against Idlib. “This place is so full of mountains, valleys, hills and rocks, it would need six divisions to fight here and we’ve only got one,” a Syrian officer vouchsafed. In any case, I asked myself, how can you start an attack with massed tanks through a forest? And you can forget historical memories of the Ardennes. These forested hills are far more difficult to cross, let alone plunge down – in the style of Byron’s Assyrians – like the wolf on the fold.

On the further mountains, a clutch of elderly T-62 tanks of Warsaw Pact vintage nestled beside the road amid 80mph winds. The military road east of Idlib province, cratered and lined with the same shattered villages, was marked only by the now familiar red, white and black flagged Syrian checkpoints and flanked by vast basins of desert. Save for the lone helicopter, there was no sign of imminent catastrophe for the people or the defenders of Idlib. The sand appeared to be that cliché of all war reports – a deserted desert – and the horizon was 15 miles away. Could Syria’s legions be out there in the shimmering heat, waiting to strike? Quite possibly, but I thought I should have spotted some of them. Out of Aleppo, six heavy duty supply trucks, new imports from Russia, ground up a hill. They were all empty.

The villages along this tour of the front lines were as miserable as they were depressing. Largely abandoned, several, on the last stage of the journey, still boasted the remains of Nusrah’s illicit oil pumps – a mass of broken ironwork with black stains around them – but a few stores had reopened, closer to Aleppo. But who would want to return here when the last successful Syrian offensive in Deraa had ended with a mysterious Isis incursion in which scores of Druze civilians were slaughtered?

Well, I took a return journey down the supply route. Forty soldiers in a corrugated iron shed coffee shop, five helicopters – one reconnaissance – hovering around the recaptured airbase – a longstanding radar position – and four covered non-military trucks. Not much evidence of “Operation Dawn of Idlib” as the Syrian army are now officially calling it.

Well, you can’t have a war without a war. However true or illusory the reports are of heavy air raids in Idlib – and it remains a fact that not a single Western journalist reporting them is, so far we know, in Idlib itself – it would be ridiculous to suggest that the Russians and Syrians are not bombing the province and its cities. They are. Touring the front on military roads, as I have just done on the Syrian side of the line, does not mean that I can see every valley and wadi or spread of desert. It is a fact that there are several Russian observation posts here – but I did not see them. And one Turkish post, installed under the Russian “de-escalation” agreement, which I could not find.

My guess is that the “last battle” is still a while away. It must happen, surely. The Syrian government has said repeatedly that it will not permit its enemies to stay in a province of 6,097 square kilometres – warning, even THAT statistic might be a trifle too high! – but Syria does not want to go to war with Turkey.

Will the Turks, who allowed so many of these men into Syria, survey the future battlefield and be intimidated by the massed Syrian army (for they can assuredly survey it better than me)? No, I don’t think Turkey will be intimidated. But with Vladimir Putin’s hand on his shoulder, the Sultan Erdogan across the border might be a little more accommodating. Perhaps someone will take back the foreign fighters. Or send them to fight and die in another country. Libya, perhaps? Yemen? These men – and their families — have moved around the Middle East quite a lot these past years. There’ll be more negotiations, I suspect, between Putin and Erdogan and Assad and – through Putin – perhaps with the Saudis? Meanwhile, our leaders huff and puff and froth and roar and – across that little valley, be sure Syria’s guns continue to fire this morning. It’s not all quiet on the northern front, then. But not yet war.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-last-battle-idlib-robert-fisk-latest-a8530796.html

Salaam

Another update

Please write to your MP now without delay - War, terrible war, may be on the way again.

WMD All Over Again: Our Government moves stealthily towards a new war of choice.

IS war coming? This is the traditional season of the year for plunges into war by British governments which mislead themselves and the country about the extent and nature of what is proposed.

In August 1914 we were ushered into war by a government secretly committed to an alliance with France and Tsarist Russia which had never been discussed by Parliament or put to the Cabinet, let alone to the public, who imagined that August day that the war would be chiefly fought at sea, and never imagined vast British Armies dying in the mud of Flanders. That cost four years of privation and death, a huge increase in the power of the state, and turned us into a debtor nation. It liquidated our long-gathered foreign investments and began the process which led to the dissolution of our Empire and Naval supremacy.

We were told ( to distract us from the almost total absence of good reasons for our involvement) it was a war against a barbarous Hunnish nation which raped nuns and threw babies in the air to catch them on its bayonets. There were in fact German atrocities (though not those ones) but they were easily matched by those committed by our Russian allies on the eastern front.

In September 1939 we went to war supposedly to save Poland from Hitler, though we then did precisely nothing to help Poland and watched from afar off while it was wiped from the map. In the war that followed we fell out of the first rank of nations and became, as we have been ever since, a pensioner and servant of the United States.

So it seems to me to be wise to be wary of autumn wars, begun for supposedly good causes. You never know where or how they might end.

This week, the Middle East is in a state of grave and dangerous tension. The huge Sunni Muslim oil power, Saud Arabia, armed and/or backed diplomatically by Britain, France and the USA, is ever more hostile to Shia Muslim Iran, another oil power not as great but still as important, which is close and growing closer to Russia and China.

Bear in Mind as you consider this that Russia is also a European power, and engaged in a conlfcit with the EU and NATO in formerly non-aligned Ukraine, after the EU’s aggressive attempt to bring Ukraine into the Western orbit and NATO’s incessant eastward expansion into formerly neutral territory. There are several points at which Western troops are now remarkably close to Russian borders, for instance they are about 80 miles from St Petersburg(the distance from London to Coventry) , and the US Navy is building a new Back Sea base at Ochakov, 308 miles from the Russian naval station at Sevastopol. Just as the First World War (at root a conflict between Russia and Germany) spread like a great red stain over much of Europe and the Middle East , an Iran-Saudi war could easily spread into Europe itself.

The two powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are not yet in direct combat with each other, but fight through proxies in Yemen and Syria. It would not take much for this to become a direct war, at least as destructive in the region as the Iran Iraq war of 1980-1988, during which the ‘West’ tended to side with Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein, who had started the war and incidentally used chemical weapons at Halabja in 1988, against the Kurds. The attitude of the British Foreign Office towards this atrocity was interesting: They flatly declined to get outraged, saying: ‘We believe it better to maintain a dialogue with others if we want to influence their actions.

‘Punitive measures such as unilateral sanctions would not be effective in changing Iraq's behaviour over chemical weapons, and would damage British interests to no avail.’

The Foreign Office knows very well that its job is to defend British interests abroad, at more or less any cost. These days it seems to have concluded that British interests involve almost total subjection to the wishes of Saudi Arabia. So their current stance of supposed total horror on the subject of Chemical Weapons, especially when (as was not the case in Halabja) their use has not been established beyond doubt, may be less than wholly genuine. You’d have to ask them, but in any case I ask you to bear this half-forgotten episode in mind as you read this exchange from the House of Commons Hansard for Monday 10th September, an exchange barely reported in the media.

It resulted from an urgent question asked by Stephen Doughty MP, and answered without any apparent reluctance by Alistair Burt, who I learn to my surprise is officially entitled the ‘Minister for the Middle East’. Does the Iranian Foreign Ministry have a Minister for North-West Europe, I wonder? The whole passage can be read here :

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-09-10/debates/CF970CA2-402E-4CAC-96B4-F480CC33FC7B/Idlib

But I am especially interested in this exchange, Mr Burt's response to a clever question from the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry .I have had rude things to say about and to Ms Thornberry, but in this case she is doing her job properly and should be applauded for it The emphases are mine:

'Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)

I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth on securing it. I can only echo what he said about the terrible bloodshed and humanitarian crisis that is looming in Idlib, the urgency for all sides to work to find some form of peaceful political solution to avert it, and the importance of holding those responsible for war crimes to account.

I want to press the Government specifically on how they intend to respond if there are any reports over the coming weeks, accompanied by horrifying, Douma-style images, suggesting a use of chemical weapons, particularly ​because of how the Government responded after Douma without seeking the approval of the House and without waiting for independent verification of those reports from the OPCW. If that scenario does arise, it may do so over the next month when the House is in recess.

We know from Bob Woodward’s book that what President Trump wants to do in the event of a further reported chemical attack is to commit to a strategy of regime change in Syria—and, indeed, that he had to be prevented from doing so after Douma. That would be a gravely serious step for the UK to take part in, with vast and very dangerous implications not just for the future of Syria, but for wider geopolitical stability.

In the light of that, I hope that the Minister will give us two assurances today. First, will he assure us that if there are any reports of chemical weapons attacks, particularly in areas of Idlib controlled by HTS, the Government will not take part in any military action in response until the OPCW has visited those sites, under the protection of the Turkish Government, independently verified those reports and attributed responsibility for any chemical weapons used? Relying on so-called open source intelligence provided by proscribed terrorist groups is not an acceptable alternative. Secondly, if the Government intend to take such action, thus escalating Britain’s military involvement in Syria and risking clashes with Russian and Iranian forces, will the Minister of State guarantee the House that we will be given a vote to approve such action before it takes place, even if that means recalling Parliament?

Alistair Burt :

The co-ordinated action that was taken earlier this year with the United States and France was not about intervening in a civil war or regime change; it was a discrete action to degrade chemical weapons and deter their use by the Syrian regime in order to alleviate humanitarian suffering. Our position on the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons is unchanged. As we have demonstrated, we will respond appropriately to any further use by the Syrian regime of chemical weapons, which have had such devastating humanitarian consequences for the Syrian population.

The right hon. Lady may recall that there are circumstances, depending on the nature of any attack, in which the United Kingdom Government need to move swiftly and to keep in mind, as their utmost priority, the safety of those personnel involved in a mission. I am not prepared to say at this stage what the United Kingdom’s detailed reaction might be or to give any timescale, because the importance of responding appropriately, quickly and with the safety of personnel in mind will be uppermost in the mind of the United Kingdom.’

In other words, we’re not asking Parliament, if we can help it. When I heard this on the BBC’s ‘Today in Parliament' late last night I felt a shiver go down my spine. The White House National Security adviser, the bellicose John Bolton, yesterday presumed (which is not proven, see multiple postings here on the work of the OPCW investigations into these events) that the Assad state had used chemical weapons twice, as he said ‘if there’s a third use of chemical weapons, the response will be much stronger’. He said the USA had been in consultation with Britain and France and they had agreed this.

The House of Commons goes into recess on Thursday week, 13th September, for the party conference season, and does not come back until Tuesday 9th October. Ms Thornberry is quite right to speculate that the conflict in Idlib, where Russia and the Assad state are in much the same position as the ‘West’ and the Iraqi state were in Mosul and Raqqa not long ago (i.e confronted with concentrations of a largely beaten Jihadi enemy, who might recover if not finally defeated), could explode during that period.

Careful readers of this blog will know that the conflict in Mosul and Raqqa (as it had been in Ramadi and Fallujah in earlier efforts to save the post-Saddam Iraq state from its Jihadi Sunni enemies) were pretty violent and involved the unintended deaths of non-combatants. Our ally, Saudi Arabia, has used appalling methods in its attacks on Yemen and these have had appalling results. The moralistic bloviation of Western leaders about Syria, Russia and Iran’s parallel war against much the same sort of enemy as Assad and Russia face in Idlib is colossal hypocrisy and I am amazed that they can bring themselves to emit it, though I suspect that they are genuinely ignorant of the facts, not so much by wilfully avoiding them as by lacking the will to discover them. Even more infuriating is their ridiculous insistence, (simply not backed by reliably researched facts, obtained through secure custody chains, a standard set by the OPCW for itself) that the Assad state is guilty of previous chemical weapon use in Khan Sheikhoun and Douma.

But let us leave that to one side. Emily Thornberry, far too rarely among MPs, is aware of the true position. In her question to Mr Burt, she said ‘The Government responded after Douma without seeking the approval of the House and without waiting for independent verification of those reports from the OPCW’.

If she and other wise and cautious MPs are to be able to pursue this, and to prevent British involvement in a very dangerous and perhaps limitless war, we as citizens are obliged to act now, swiftly, before Parliament goes away on holiday.

I ask you to write, swiftly and politely, to your MP, of any reputation or party, to say that you do not favour a rush to war, to say that the guilt of Syria has not been proved in the past.

and that a rush to judgement on such issues is almost invariably unwise. See for example the lies told to Parliament about Suez, the use of the Gulf of Tonkin to obtain political support for the USA’s Vietnam disaster, the non-existent ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ which began the Iraq catastrophe and the claims of non-existent massacres and mass rapes used to rush this country into its ill-judged and cataclysmic attack on Libya. Ask only for careful consideration, for an insistence that no military action is taken by this country without Parliament’s permission after a full and calm debate.

it is all we can do.

There are many straws in the wind which suggest that we are being prepared for war. War is hell. At the very least, a decision which could have such far-reaching consequences, which could reach into every life and home, and embroil us for years, should be considered properly. The very fact that our government appears not to want us to consider it properly make sit all the more urgent that we insist on it.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/

Salaam

Another update.

Idlib conflict shaping up to be the worst of Syrian war

The Assad regime is preparing an offensive on the last rebel stronghold

The battle for Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria’s more than seven-year-long civil war, is about to start. The war is all but over. Salvaged by Russia and Iran, the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime has won. An initially broad-based rebellion against tyranny that was hijacked by jihadi extremists has lost. With Idlib it looks like this conflict — already a catalogue of horror — has saved the worst for last.

Idlib, in north-west Syria, was one of the first cities to rise up against the Assads. Taken by the regime in 2012, it was captured in 2015 by a potent alliance of the al Qaeda-linked Nusra front and Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist group supported by Turkey.

Last year it became one of four “de-escalation zones” devised by Russia in co-ordination with Iran and Turkey. Resistance in these areas was still strong and the Assad regime, short of manpower, needed breathing space. The zones then became a diplomatic figleaf to cover the regime’s renewed advances alongside Iranian-supplied militia on the ground and the Russian air force in the sky.

The pro-Assad coalition, far from de-escalating, recaptured Deraa in the south, where the rebellion began, and eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Surviving fighters and civilian refugees from these ruins were driven north to Idlib, corralled into what Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, calls the “last hotbed of terrorists” in Syria — now ripe for eradication.

Estimates vary wildly but there are thought to be between 30,000 and 70,000 fighters in Idlib province. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebranded Nusra front, is probably the most powerful group, having forcibly taken over much of the Turkish-allied Ahrar al-Sham. Ankara has regrouped its Syrian proxies into a newly minted National Liberation Front, as a counterweight to HTS, alongside 12 Turkish army “observation posts” in Idlib that are supposed to separate the warring parties.

But there are also more than 3m civilians in the area, half of them refugees from other rebel enclaves, crammed into less than 1,500 sq km. They have run out of de-escalation zones to flee to.

Those who have been displaced before will recognise the signals that preceded the offensives against their previous homes: episodic air strikes to test world opinion; targeting of hospitals and markets; the pre-emptive denunciation of jihadist provocateurs supposedly preparing chemical attacks to blame on the Syrian government (which used gas at Douma in the Ghouta offensive).

In Tehran last Friday, a summit of Russia, Turkey and Iran could not agree on a formula to spare Idlib and its desperate people from being pulverised. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s leader, publicly disagreed.

Ankara wants the offensive put on hold. A humanitarian disaster will trigger a massive new surge of refugees. Turkey, which already hosts 3.5m Syrian exiles, has closed its borders. But that will simply displace the flows into already teeming areas it controls in north-west Syria, Afrin and Jarablus. Mr Erdogan’s seizure of these territories over the past two years was allowed by Mr Putin, but on the understanding Turkey dealt with the jihadi menace in Idlib. Now Moscow plans to liquidate this threat, including large numbers of Uzbek and Chechen fighters that might blow back into Russia.

Where, at this point, are the western powers that willed the downfall of the Assads without providing Syria’s rebels with the means to achieve it, muttering it was just all too complicated?

US forces are dislodging Isis — the jihadist spawn of western recklessness in Iraq and fecklessness in Syria — from its remaining toeholds in the Euphrates valley south-east of Idlib. President Donald Trump found time to tweet that it would be “a grave humanitarian mistake” for Russia and Iran to abet a bloodbath.

European powers are busily trying to disengage from and, where possible, ignore Syria. It does not look like they are well braced for the coming refugee crisis that threatens to revive the “migrant” hysteria that seized Europe in 2015-16. Russia has been telling Germany and France it can facilitate the return of some 6m Syrian refugees, if only the EU and the US reconcile with Assad rule in the interests of stability and cough up the funds to resurrect Syria from the rubble. This is a delusion.

The Assads will never allow the re-creation of a demographic balance — a prewar population with a 70 per cent Sunni majority — that almost brought their minority regime down. The regime is preventing the return of Sunni Arab men and boys of fighting age. It has also passed decrees — notably the infamous Law 10 or Absentee Property Law — to expropriate the homes and assets of refugees.

Russia has leverage against Europe, which fears a new refugee scare. But Europeans have something Mr Putin wants: the power to normalise relations with Syria and the money to reconstruct it. Somewhere in the tangle of this mutual blackmail may lie the material for a diplomatic thrust to restrain the Idlib offensive.

What is certain is that Syria cannot be wished away. Idlib is about to put the conflict back on the international agenda — in what is shaping up to be a horrendous fashion.

https://www.ft.com/content/bb07b97a-b5c8-11e8-bbc3-ccd7de085ffe

Salaam

Another update

Blurb

Why is the USA spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Syria? Who is in control? What is their agenda?

Salaam

From Fox News of all places.

Last stand: Syria's rebel Idlib prepares for a losing battle

They dug trenches around towns, reinforced caves for cover and put up sand bags around their positions. They issued calls to arms, urging young men to join in the defense of Idlib, the Syrian province where opposition fighters expect to make their last stand against Russian- and Iranian-backed government troops they have fought for years.

This time, it's "surrender or die."

As the decisive stand for their last stronghold looms, this motley crew of tens of thousands of opposition fighters, including some of the world's most radical groups, is looking for ways to salvage whatever is possible of an armed rebellion that at one point in the seven-year conflict controlled more than half of the country.

In its last chapter, just as it has throughout the long, bloody war, the Syrian rebellion's fate lies in foreign hands. This time, the splintered and diverse rebels have only Turkey.

"The whole world gave up on us, but Turkey will not," said Capt. Nabij al-Mustafa, spokesman for the Turkish-backed umbrella group known as the National Front for Liberation.

Idlib, with its 3 million residents and more than 60,000 fighters, is Turkey's cross to bear.

Ankara has appealed to Russia and Iran, its uneasy negotiating partners, for a diplomatic resolution to the ticking bomb. At the same time, it has sent reinforcements of its troops ringing Idlib, a move designed to ward off a ground assault, at least for now.

A wide offensive is only likely after a green light from Russia. But delicate diplomatic moves are at work. Moscow is keen on strengthening ties with Turkey, at a time when Ankara's relations are at their lowest with the United States. Turkey, by calling on the United States and Europe for support, seems to be playing on that interest to pressure Russia to accept its proposals for a solution on Idlib that avoids an attack.

On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets for the second time in 10 days with Russia's Vladimir Putin, this time in Sochi, Russia.

"After proving its influence in Syria and the Middle East, Russia wants to pull Turkey away from the West much more than achieve a military victory over the armed Syrian opposition," Mustafa Ellabbad, an expert on Turkish-Arab relations, wrote in Kuwait's al-Qabas newspaper.

The province, the size of Lebanon, has been the beating heart of the rebellion for years. In rebel hands since 2015, it is the largest contiguous territory they controlled. It has access to Turkish borders, securing supply lines for weapons, fighters and aid.

For the past two years, Idlib became the shoe-box into which were pushed an estimated 20,000 rebel fighters from around the country, after their losses to government troops and surrender deals negotiated with Russia and Damascus following devastating sieges. Civilians who refused to go back under government rule were also bussed there, nearly doubling the province's population.

Among the estimated 60,000 opposition fighters in Idlib are at least 10,000 radicals affiliated with the al-Qaida-linked group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee). Thousands of foreign fighters, from China, Europe and the Middle East, are the backbone of the radical groups.

The Turkish reinforcements are going to 12 observation points that Ankara set up around Idlib last year under a deal with Russia and Iran creating a "de-escalation zone." The deal also effectively stopped an earlier government advance and set Turkey up as Idlib's protector.

Separately, Turkey has troops stationed in the enclave under its control north and east of Idlib, where it backs Syrian opposition fighters and a civilian administration. It is part of its plan to create a safe area along the border where some of the more than 3 million Syrian refugees it hosts may return.

Ankara initially sent in its troops more than two years ago to push out the Islamic State group and Syrian Kurdish fighters. For Ankara, the increasingly assertive, U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds were an existential threat that encourages the aspirations of its own Kurdish insurgents.

"In the mind of the rebellion, the hope is that from Turkish support they can have ... a republic of northern Syria, protected by Turkey like Northern Cyprus," said Fabrice Balanche, a Syria watcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

These Turkey-administered areas are likely to be the destination of the displaced and rebels of Idlib in case of an offensive.

An Idlib offensive holds multiple threats for Turkey right on its border — a humanitarian crisis, a security nightmare with thousands of gunmen loose and a defeat to its plans for the safe zone. If Syrian forces retake Idlib with no agreement on the fate of the opposition fighters, they could threaten the Turkey-controlled enclave, and Ankara would lose credibility with the fighters and leverage with Damascus on any future deal.

"There is really no way for the Syrian military and Damascus' allies to launch a military offensive on Idlib that doesn't have deeply negative, injurious effects on Turkey. There is no real way they can cushion this for Turkey," said Sam Heller, a Syria expert in the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

Turkey's strategy in the opposition areas has been complicated by the presence of radical fighters. By backing the National Front, it argued it can draw fighters away from the al-Qaida-linked HTS, the dominant power in the province, forcing it to dissolve and creating a new opposition force ready to negotiate with the Syrian government.

The strategy has had limited success.

The National Front in recent months gained control of territory in Idlib from HTS, which still controls nearly 70 percent of the province. HTS began to show signs of splits and two weeks ago, Turkey declared it a terrorist group.

But with the onset of a military offensive, HTS has set up joint operation rooms with different National Front factions.

Making a rare video appearance in late August, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani — wearing an olive-green military uniform — vowed to fight Assad's forces and said Turkish observation points were no protection.

The HTS spokesman in Idlib said now was not the time to talk about dissolving into Turkish-backed rebel groups. He underlined that an arrangement must eventually be made for the foreign fighters in the group.

"Right now, no sound is louder than that of the battle," Imad Eddin Mujahed said. "We have many military surprises; enough to upset the balance and ward off aggressors."

In rallies around Idlib the last two weeks, protesters took to the streets to deny that the province is a hotbed of extremists. Thousands raised only the flag of the Syrian revolution, a reminder that there was once a popular uprising against Assad, and Idlib is now its last bastion.

Some raised banners reading: "The rebels are our hope and the Turks are our brothers."

Syrian forces and Iranian-backed militias are likely to avoid a clash with the Turkish troops. But the stance of the Syrian government and Iran is clear-cut: They vow to recapture all Syrian territory and are loath to see an expansion of Turkish and American influence. They argue the West fueled jihadis with past support of the opposition and now must let Syria get rid of them.

"Assad and Russia gave the choice to the international community: First we kill everybody. Second thing, (they said) if you want to protect (Idlib) then take those people you think are nice ... It is cynical but puts the international community before its contradictions," said Balanche.

Al-Mustafa, the National Front spokesman, said the rebels are prepared for a battle he called "existential."

But, he added, "our cause will not end if we lose this battle."

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/09/16/last-stand-syrias-rebel-idlib-prepares-for-losing-battle.html

Salaam

Another update

British ex-soldier jailed in Turkey for fighting alongside banned Kurdish militia

Joe Robinson remains on bail and is planning appeal against his conviction

A former British army soldier has been jailed for nearly eight years in Turkey after he was convicted of fighting against the Islamic State terror group alongside a banned Kurdish militia.

Joe Robinson, 25, formerly of Accrington, Lancashire, was sentenced to seven years and six months’ imprisonment for belonging to the YPG, a Kurdish armed group proscribed as terrorists by Turkish law.

He remains on bail and is planning an appeal against his conviction, his mother, Sharon Chimejczuk, told BBC News.

His fiancee, Mira Rojkan, was given a suspended sentence for “terrorism propaganda” after sharing Facebook posts with images of the Kurdish flag and links to Kurdish songs.

Robinson and Rojkan had been holidaying in south-west Turkey when they were detained on 22 July. Armed police swooped on the resort in Didim, about 62 miles (100km) north of Bodrum, where they were staying with Rojkan’s mother.

Their arrests came three years after Robinson, who served in Afghanistan in 2012 with the Duke of Lancaster’s regiment, travelled to Syria.

He spent about a month as a combat medic alongside YPG fighters battling against Isis before crossing into Iraq and joining the peshmerga, the Iraqi government-backed army of Kurdish fighters.

Turkey views the YPG – the armed wing of the Kurdish leftwing Democratic Union party in Syria – as an ally of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

British police arrested Robinson at Manchester airport on suspicion of terrorist offences when he returned in November, but all charges were eventually dropped.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/15/british-ex-soldier-jailed-in-turkey-for-fighting-alongside-banned-kurdish-militia