Allah made everyone different thats what makes them special,so no matter what ppl say just remember you're SPECIAL!! "You are with the one you love"
Nem0
Another update
Syria: US in talks over Arab force to replace American troops
Problematic proposal is backed by national security adviser John Bolton but could worsen conflict
The Trump administration is renewing an effort to replace US troops in Syria with an Arab force, but the proposal faces substantial obstacles and could potentially exacerbate the conflict.
The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said his government was talking to Washington about raising such a force, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal that said the new US national security adviser, John Bolton, had called the Egyptian intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, to ask Cairo to play a part in building one.
There are about 2,000 US troops in Syria fighting Islamic State, but Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to withdraw them.
The idea of an Arab coalition force playing a role in Syria to combat extremist groups and contain Iranian influence has surfaced several times since 2015, but faces severe problems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are bogged down in a brutal war in Yemen, and have little manpower and few military resources to spare.
They are also locked in a dispute with Qatar, another potential contributor to a force, while Egypt is much closer to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria than its would-be Gulf partners.
Middle East experts said it was feasible Arab states could fund an army run by private contractors and possibly help recruit soldiers from developing countries such as Sudan. Erik Prince, a Trump ally who founded the military contractor Blackwater USA and now advises the UAE, is lobbying to play a role, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A similar offer he made last year to replace US troops with private contractors in Afghanistan was turned down by the Pentagon.
But Prince may have more traction in the White House over Syria. Bolton has argued that the US has borne too much of the military burden in Syria and Arab states should supply troops and material assistance in the fight against Isis.
Meanwhile, the Saudi monarchy and its regional allies are uneasy that events on the ground in Syria are being dictated by external powers, none of which are Arab.
Emile Hokayem, the senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: “The idea of an Arab expeditionary force emerges every couple of years, and it’s always seen as a politically brilliant idea to create a sense of ownership in the region.
“In reality, the politics of putting a force like that together are almost impossible.
“The question is, have the Saudis consulted the other countries before speaking on their behalf? The Saudis thought Egypt and Pakistan would come to help Yemen and they didn’t.”
The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has launched an Islamic military counter-terrorism coalition, which held its first high-level meeting last year, but it has not appeared to be intended for combat.
Charles Lister, the director of the extremism and counter-terrorism programme at the Middle East Institute (MEI), attended the inaugural conference and said the force is intended for training and assistance programmes, rather than combat operations.
Lister said there was “no precedent” for an Arab expeditionary force in Syria.
“It sounds like the Saudis are continuing to align themselves with President Trump and not speaking the 100% truth about their intent,” he said.
Any Saudi troops deployed to Syria would find themselves directly confronting Iranian fighters and their allies, which could prompt a dangerous escalation in the conflict.
Randa Slim, who directs the back-channel Track II diplomacy programme at MEI said: “It is one thing for the Saudis to pay for other ‘Islamic forces’ to do the job, and a totally different thing to send their men to a conflict theatre where they are bound to enter into direct confrontation with an entrenched Iranian-Hezbollah force.
“The other factor to consider is what is Turkey’s response to this proposal. I do not see Ankara welcoming the positions of Egyptian and/or Emirati forces on its border,” Slim said.
The Obama administration also looked at the possibility of Arab allies deploying counter-terrorist forces against Isis in Syria, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE were drawn into the battle for Yemen against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
Nicholas Heras, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said: “They preferred to send intelligence officers and money, rather than put troops on the ground.
“But for the Saudis, the trouble is their territory is being breached by Houthis every day. It doesn’t make sense for them to shift their ground forces when they have trouble securing their own border.”
Heras said it was more likely Saudi Arabia would seek to outsource recruitment to countries such as Pakistan and Sudan. “I’m sure the Saudis are up for fighting in Syria to the very last Sudanese soldier,” he said.
Russia and the West are transferring their increasingly hostile confrontation to Syria.
Recent US-led coalition strikes in response to an alleged chemical attack in Douma, a suburb of Damascus, had Western analysts hoping for a tectonic change in Washington's policy on Syria. Russia, on the other hand, was fearful that its previously unchecked influence in the battlefield was coming to an end.
The results of the joint US, UK and French strikes on three suspected chemical facilities were ultimately underwhelming and are unlikely to serve as a deterrent against the further use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad's regime.
That is not to say that US President Donald Trump blinked in the face of possible escalation with Russia. Just two months earlier, US warplanes attacked a pro-regime force in Deir Az-Zor, reportedly killing dozens of Russian mercenaries; the Russian government took days to acknowledge the attack and did not launch a military response.
While the April 14 strikes had limited effect on the ground, they did symbolically challenge the dominance of the Russian military in Syria. What is more important, they succeeded in transforming the conflict into a struggle between great powers. As rhetorical tension escalated before the strikes, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres himself pointed that out: "The Cold War is back with a vengeance," he said.
Events of the past few months, indeed, have shown that the conflict in Syria has gradually assumed the character of a Cold War-style struggle. Just like during the Cold War of the 20th century, today, positive diplomatic engagement between Russia and the US has been reduced to communication and coordination to avoid direct military confrontation. In this sense, instead of political diplomacy leading the way in bilateral relations, it is the US and Russian militaries that have now taken charge and are in constant contact, coordinating de-confliction and de-escalation.
Militaries dominating diplomacy
That the April 14 Western strikes on Syria did not result in a decisive military operation by the US and its partners against Assad's military facilities, and possibly Iranian-backed forces, was not surprising if one was to look at the conflict from a Cold-War perspective.
In the days of the Cold War, tensions would build up very quickly, but would also drop unexpectedly. The Cuban Missile Crisis - the closest that the US and the Soviet Union came to an all-out nuclear war - is a case in point. Within 13 days, rhetoric escalated to threats of pre-emptive attacks, as both sides put their armies on high alert, only to quickly negotiate a de-escalation agreement to remove threatening missile installations. At least on two occasions, civilian and military leadership on both sides chose not to respond to provocations, eventually ending the episode with just one victim - the pilot of a US U-2 reconnaissance plane shot down by the Cubans.
In Syria today, the military brass of both countries treads carefully hoping to let off steam, despite Washington's promises of using "nice and new and smart missiles" and Moscow's threats of a swift retaliation. The heated political rhetoric coming from both capitals that all too often slides into blunt threats does not match the reality of how the military establishment handles the crisis.
What we are witnessing in Syria is a disconnect between the political and military dimensions of policymaking, as sabre-rattling has become a preferred mode of communication for diplomats, while the military has become the voice of pragmatism and sanity. Political hostility on both sides has resulted in an enormous vacuum in US-Russia relations which has been filled partially by their militaries. They have seemingly maintained the only functioning platform for dialogue to avoid confrontation.
A new front for Western confrontation with Russia
What makes the current crisis more explosive than any previous episode of diplomatic squabbles over Syria is the fact that it is now firmly linked to diplomatic confrontation between Russia and the West on other fronts.
This is evident in the decision of both France and the UK to participate in the US strikes on the Syrian regime. Despite what British PM Theresa May and French PM Emmanuel Macron said about the military strikes aiming to send a strong message against the use of chemical weapons, this is not why Paris and London joined Washington in its operation.
Recently, diplomatic tensions between the UK and Russia escalated after the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury. The expulsion of diplomats on both sides came as the climax of years of escalating diplomatic confrontation between the two countries.
French-Russian relations have also soured in recent years. Macron has not shied away from demonstrating just how upset he was by what he perceived as Russian meddling in the 2017 French elections that brought him to power. During Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Paris, just days after the vote, Macron blasted Russian media for their reporting on France and called it "propaganda".
From the Kremlin's perspective, France and the UK are becoming more involved in Syria so that they channel their confrontation with Russia away from home. The idea is to have the pressure building up along the NATO's northeastern border released elsewhere, in the relative "safety" of what is wrongly perceived in Europe as a faraway conflict. For Moscow, its struggle against the growing influence of NATO at its borders was at the heart of its concerns during the Cold War.
Syria as a Cold War-era Germany
Moscow and Washington have come to realise that Syria is the most convenient place to make a point to each other. Neither Trump, nor Putin wants a military showdown in Syria, but with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) almost entirely defeated in Syria, the anti-terror campaign no longer produces the same political benefits as it used to just a year ago.
Moscow and Washington have lived off of the PR effects of their anti-terrorist campaigns in Syria long enough to understand that a lengthy process of political settlement of this conflict would not be as glorious as declarations of victory over ISIL.
With anti-terror rhetoric exhausted, Syria has become hostage to a great power rivalry. Russia and the US will continue to seek maximisation of the returns on their investments in the Syrian crisis and will continue to play off their diplomatic confrontations on its territory.
Therefore, it is not inconceivable that Syria will take the role of Cold War-era Germany. It is likely that the two great powers, along with their allies, will use the country to set up new rules of the Cold War game and new red lines. The East-West-Germany divide devised by Moscow and Washington after World War II may get a whole new meaning in the Syrian context.
In this sense, the global diplomatic confrontation between Russia and the US will not bode well for Syria and its people. Just as the Cold War propagated proxy wars across the world, ignoring self-determination rights of various peoples, so is this diplomatic conflict likely to deny the Syrian people the right to choose their own destiny.
More opinion and comment. I don't entirely agree with this (eg. western intervention is not there to help the people of Syria) but worth a read nevertheless.
Some activists have lost their moral compass with respect to Syria
I know what you are thinking: why should I read for someone who has been tortured by the Assad regime? Isn’t his opinion biased? And doesn’t his grudge against Assad prevent him from seeing the reality on the ground, as it is? If you are one of those people, please stop right here as my words won’t make a difference to your ears.
But if you are ready to read my words with an open mind then continue reading, and hopefully you will learn one thing or two.
And by the way, to the disappointment of many, my Op-Ed will not only speak to the mind but also to the heart. And because of this, I will not include any references as I find them distracting to you, the reader. Contact me on Twitter (@ArarMaher) and I will be more than happy to provide you with references.
I have been watching the Twitter debate over Syria dramatically evolve for the past five years. And nothing more appalled me than the position taken by many who consider themselves to be on the left side of the political spectrum. Those include Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, to name few. I used to have a lot for respect for them, that is until they lost their moral compass with respect Syria (just read their tweets on Palestine and Syria to find out for yourself the huge contradictions).
I tried my best within the last few weeks to engage some of those activists on Twitter but, unfortunately, I didn’t find any willingness on their part to debate the issue. In fact, I was blocked by Rania Khalek immediately after my defence of Murtaza Hussein’s balanced reporting on Syria. I found it inappropriate for her to mock a colleague and as such could no longer stay silent.
I now came to the conclusion that the inconsistency of positions taken by these activists and their cult-like stubbornness make them look closer to religious zealots than to people who are seeking the truth.
I had decided to not confront these people early on because I naively thought their position would self correct as time went by. But I was wrong as the exact opposite happened: these people- many of whom consider themselves as journalists- have become apologists for the Assad regime. They may not agree with me on this but whether they like or not their selective reporting and bias show easily in their articles and tweets.
In fact, many have even gone lower by mocking the victims of Assad’s atrocities and implicitly, or sometimes explicitly, covering up his wholesale crimes and atrocities. And that explains why, contrary to my old habit of not mentioning names, I started naming names in my tweets. That also explains why I went out of my way to write this Op-Ed, despite having made the decision to lead a private life. Consider this a harsh reaction, but for me nothing is harsher than siding with a dictator who is responsible for the majority of the misery, destruction and deaths of his own people.
Now to the facts.
One has first to acknowledge the spontaneous nature of many uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). What happened in Tunisia and Syria, for example, were spontaneous and understandable reactions by people who have been ruled with an iron-first for decades.
In Syria, under-age kids have been arrested by the Assad regime after spray painting anti-regime slogans (as far as I know those kids didn’t receive these “spray guns” from foreign powers).
What was the reaction of Assad’s Mukhabarat? Predictably, these kids were detained, tortured, and some were returned to their mothers in body bags. And when the families of those boys inquired about the fate of their loved ones they were told to forget about them. When they persisted they were told “bring us your wives and we will make you new boys”. You are smart enough to understand what this expression means.
Now, I want you to consider this: what would your reaction and feelings be as a parent if this was done to your son or daughter?
Despite the horrible atrocities carried out by the regime against peaceful protestors, the uprising, by all credible accounts, remained peaceful for months to come. Isolated incidents of shootings here and there should not distract us from the fact the majority of Syrians never thought about carrying arms to begin with. In fact, Syrians didn’t even call for the downfall of the regime during the early weeks of the uprising. They simply demanded that Assad punishes those who tortured the boys.
Assad could have of course punished the perpetrators for their crimes in order to quiet the people but, alas, a regime whose main pillar is the rule of the powerful doesn’t think like you and me.
Nothing best illustrates how the Assad regime thinks and acts than this story that was related to me directly by a 60-year old man who was imprisoned in Sednaya during the time I was there. And by the way, this gentleman was part of a 11-member group who was detained simply because him and his group demonstrated against the US invasion of Iraq without explicit permission from the government. This is the same group that Giath Matar, the famous peaceful activist whom the regime tortured and then cut his throat in September 2011, would later join.
This elder told me that while being interrogated by a high-ranking intelligence official he tried to reason with him by asking him “why don’t you treat citizens with honour and respect”. This Colonel replied “we want to rule people by the shoes”, a famous Syrian expression that signifies the use of force and humiliation as a tool to subdue the citizenry.
Have you ever watched any of Assad’s interviews? Does he seem like a person who wants to compromise in order to save the country? Didn’t he always refer to ALL of his opponents as terrorists, and he still does? So, instead of putting the onus on his opponents, however fragmented and divided they are, to lay down their arms, why not put the blame on Assad who has always held the key to end this bloodshed much earlier? If Assad really wanted peace, he could have called for elections years ago while immediately excluding his name from the ballot. Is that much to ask to end the bloodshed?
To demonstrate how Assad exploited and manipulated the word “terrorist”, he has always labeled the Muslim Brotherhood as “terrorists”. Well, journalists failed to ask him why he then had supported Hamas and hosted their leadership knowing fully well that Hamas was a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood! What is very disturbing is that the activists mentioned above now liberally use these same meaningless labels (terrorists, extremists, fanatics, etc) to describe Assad’s opponents. This is ironic, and laughable indeed, given these same activists have spent a good part of their career mocking the use of these labels when used by the “empire”.
Are Assad opponents angels? No they are not. Have some of them committed war crimes. Yes you bet, according to many credible reports. Do all people in Syria oppose Assad? Not at all, especially when you know the minority he belongs to – the majority of whom support him- forms 10% of Syrians. Do all Syrians support the rebels? No they don’t. Do some vetted rebels receive weapons from the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Of course they do. To say otherwise is to deny the obvious.
On the other side of the coin, it is equally deceiving to label all of Assad’s opponents as “Islamists”, “Al-Qaeda”, “extremists” or “terrorists”. To do so is to imitate Assad himself as to shield himself from accountability and to justify his reckless campaign of killing and destruction. It is also important to listen to how the majority of Syrians opposing Assad view these groups. What matters most is their opinions and not ours, Westerners living in comfort and peace thousands of miles away from the conflict.
On the question of intervention
These “anti-imperialist” activists have to be credited for opposing and standing up to America’s militaristic adventures abroad. Without their commendable effort the world would have been much worse today.
The problem I have is that the parallels many of them draw with respect to Syria are completely misplaced. Also, there is this assumption that intervention is always unjustifiable. I do agree that intervention for pure selfish reasons are bad but intervention can serve a good purpose when done for the right humanitarian reasons.
Also, indifference and non-intervention could, at times, have worse disastrous outcomes. One can only cite Rwanda where non-intervention had a disastrous outcome. After all, one cannot deny that Hitler could have not been stopped without the intervention of other countries, though many of these countries had different reasons for opposing him.
Don’t understand me wrong. I am by no means calling for a military intervention against Assad. I am just mentioning this to counter the idea that intervention doesn’t by itself lead to an evil or worse outcome, as religiously advocated by many of these activists. Unfortunately, many of their followers and readers take the same stand without any critical thinking or self reflection.
And by the way, intervention doesn’t have to come in a military form, or be proactive. Also, it doesn’t have to be lead by the US, an imperial power. It could be carried out by countries that have no imperial past. The aim here is to minimize the bloodshed most of which has been attributed to Assad’s indiscriminate aerial bombing.
It is also important to remind these people that the US has already intervened in Syria. An independent observer can also question why is Russia allowed to intervene with no objections raised by these same activists? Or said differently, are Russian bombs much smarter than their American sisters! Or are we to be told that Russia and Iran have no imperial ambitions in the Middle East!
Anti-imperialism is a tool and not an end. It is simply a mean to an end, the end being to fight injustice, greed and the unfair distribution of wealth. When anti-imperialism becomes an objective on its own, without carefully considering each context differently, then an opposite outcome might arise, one that is incompatible with the one it was supposed to serve.
In what follows I would like to highlight many of the moral contradictions these activists have gotten themselves into.
Yemen and Syria
Nothing shows the inconsistent position of these activists than the war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia entered the war after Hadi, the legitimate president of Yemen, was ousted by the Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia, at least that’s what the government claims, is there to help restore stability by restoring the legitimate president of Yemen.
Russia’s presence in Syria is to help maintain Assad’s rule, which Russia views as the legitimate president of Syria.
As you can see both of those claims are similar in nature yet these activists (Ben Norton doesn’t even qualify what’s happening in Yemen as a civil war) side with Russia on Syria while siding against Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Both Saudi Arabia and Russia have committed war crimes, yet only Saudi Arabia’s crimes are magnified and highlighted while those perpetrated by Russia are ignored or minimized, explicitly or implicitly.
It seems to me that the identity of the “imperial” evil force, rather than the principle being violated, is what matters to these activists.
Iraq
One reason that is frequently cited for opposing “imperialism” in Syria is the Iraq experience. Citing Iraq as a precedent is misleading, and naive at best.
There was no popular uprising when Iraq was invaded. And the context is different, suffice to say that evidence was manufactured in order to fit a post-911 narrative.
With respect to the question of changing the regime: As opposed to George Bush’s administration, the current American administration did not seek regime change Syria, contrary to claims made by these activists.
If the US wanted to get rid of Assad, Obama could have ordered drone strikes against him (please don’t tell me the US cares about international law). After all, US troops actively searched for, and eventually captured, Saddam Hussein. Not a single attempt was made to assassinate or capture Assad, or any of his senior officials for that matter. The US presence in Syria is mainly to fight ISIS and like-minded groups. To say otherwise is to neglect the immense number of airstrikes (45, 000 and counting) that have so far only targeted IS and Al-Qaeda.
The claim that the US government both finance Al-Qaeda and drone them at the same time is laughable, unless we are asked to believe 2+2=5 (I recommend you watch that famous YouTube video if you haven’t yet).
Knowing that the US is not really interested in changing the Assad regime shows the ridiculous claim with respect to the notion that Syria’s conflict could trigger a world war III, a false fear mongering argument that only serves the Assad’s dictatorial and criminal regime.
I wrote this Op-Ed not for those who have already convinced themselves that what is happening in Syria is part of a pure foreign plot, and that those groups fighting Assad are simply remote-controlled pawns.
I wrote this Op-Ed for those people who are still confused by the disinformation campaign many of these so called “anti-imperialist” activists embarked on to discredit the struggle of the Syrian people. Please know that the Syrian conflict has no simple solutions or answers, and don’t fool yourself by resorting to conspiracy theories to find digestible explanations.
If you are still confused after reading my Op-Ed, one thing I would ask you to do is to simply not side with a dictator, or justify his crimes directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly. Don’t feel forced to take a position one way or the other. In other words, you can still resist imperialism while not siding with a vicious dictator. That is the least acceptable moral position one could take.
Despite its shortcomings, the Syrian struggle for dignity and freedom has already demonstrated that the Syrian people don’t forget. I know you might think I am naive. But let me tell you this: I would rather be remembered by future generations as a naive person rather than as someone who has sided with a criminal and a fascist regime.
Arab countries to support Rojava is stupid, Kurds hate Arabs, Arabs should wake up and dump these morons
Last edited by JustTime; 04-23-2018 at 01:18 AM.
يا قافلة الخير "The Persian aggression against Iraq was a result of the arrogant, racialist and evil attitudes of the ruling clique in Iran."
-Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid at-Tikriti - العراق جمجمة العرب ورمح الله في الأرض
Fate of Syria’s Idlib being decided behind closed doors
What happens to the largest rebel stronghold will ultimately be in the hands of Russia and Turkey
Beirut: The fate of Syria’s Idlib will depend on Turkey’s ability to keep a lid on the rebel-dominated tinderbox and prevent an explosive Russian-backed government offensive on its doorstep, analysts say. Largely outside government control since 2015, the northwestern province is home to some 2.5 million people, including many rebels from other areas who were evacuated there after being defeated by government forces.
President Bashar Al Assad’s fiercest foes are being gathered in Idlib, and there would be great temptation for Russia to green light a regime offensive on the province,” Syria expert Nicholas Heras said.
But “Turkey needs Idlib to serve as a buffer against the war,” said Heras, a fellow at the Centre for a New American Security.
The war in Syria has killed more than half a million people and displaced more than half the population from their homes, including more than three million to neighbouring Turkey. Already overwhelmed, Ankara is determined to prevent more Syrians from crossing into its territory and even says it wants to create conditions for mass refugee returns.
“Turkey needs Idlib to serve as a buffer against the war. If Al Assad tried to seize Idlib, at a bare minimum hundreds of thousands of people would be displaced, and they would have few places to run to,” Heras said.
The incentive is clear for Turkey to prevent the chaos that would result from a regime assault but to do so it will have to rein in powerful rebels in the province. Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a group led by Al Qaida’s former Syrian affiliate, has faced military setbacks in Idlib in recent months. But unless Ankara decides otherwise, analysts say, the group will probably retain influence in the province where a myriad of rebels groups have vied for power since 2015. Since the start of the year, HTS has lost dozens of areas to a government offensive in the southeast of the province.
In the meantime, former allies Ahrar Al Sham and Noor Al Deen Al Zinki banded together against HTS to form the Turkey-backed Syria Liberation Front. The new group a few weeks ago launched an assault against the alliance’s positions, taking back several areas including the towns of Ariha and Maaret Al Numan.
They have “broken its military aura” as “a power that cannot be vanquished, which had helped it scare off the other factions”, said the research fellow at King’s College London. But even as HTS control of Idlib has dwindled to around 60 per cent of the province, it has retained control other key sources of political and economic power. Sam Heller, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, said HTS still holds key assets in the province.
“It lost areas in the southern countryside of Idlib but it retained the Bab Al Hawa border crossing (with Turkey) and control over the provincial capital Idlib city,” he said.
A civilian body that acts in the rebelgroup’s interests levies taxes from shopkeepers, and has tried to impose its will on local councils in the province. Heras said HTS “retains a social organising power that effectively makes it a first among equals in the opposition governance”.
“Unless Turkey wills it and devotes the military resources to combat Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, the other armed opposition groups in Idlib will not win,” he said.
Since January, Turkish troops have deployed to three observation posts in Idlib province to monitor a so-called “de-escalation zone” agreed in September by Turkey, Russia and Iran. The de-escalation is essentially a dead letter and while Russia has no forces on the ground in Idlib, its fighter jets have struck targets in support of regime forces, as they have elsewhere in Syria. The province, with its explosive cocktail of competing armed groups, is about to become the latest scene of the face-off between the two most powerful brokers in the Syrian conflict.
“Idlib is a contest between Russia and Turkey,” said Heras, who argued the deciding factor would be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erogan’s “determination to stare down” his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Heller agreed that Idlib’s fate would likely be determined by the international powers involved in Syria’s conflict.
“The province’s fate will depend on what Turkish-Russian agreements are made behind the scenes,” he said.
Blurb
"I'm done fighting, the #FSA lied to us and the #US dollars and #Saudi money they gave us ruined everything. I just want the war to be over" Listen to this interview with a "rebel" fighter evacuated from #Ghouta towards Idlib as part of an agreement with the Syrian Government
Turkeys 911km concrete and steel wall along its Syria border is nearing completion, providing another barrier to those trying to escape the heady combination of chlorine, sarin, barrel bombs and cruise missiles that now punctuate their lives.
That's in no way to minimise the Turkish siege-offensive that's currently in progress in the Kurdish - held town of Afrin just to the north, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made it clear that starving civilians to death is his chosen weapon so war.
Things are increasingly crowded and desperate on the Syrian side of the wall: of the 2.5 million people trapped in Idlib, more than 1.75 million are displaced from elsewhere. Camps lack water, food, shelter and medicine. People are living in fields, under makeshift tents, hungry, cold and under constant threat of death by types of warfare the UN banned long ago. Unsurprisingly, many try to flee to Turkey; but Turkey closed its border to them in May 2015. There have been numerous recent reports of Syrians being beaten and shot at the few remaining crossing points, together with routine deportations of those who do get through.
Human Rights Watch has interviewed dozens of Syrians in Idlib who say that over the last three months Turkish police and border guards have picked up hundreds of asylum seekers, held them overnight in tents close to the Syrian border, bused them to a border crossing close to the Syria Village of Hatya and forced them to walk across it. Satellite images confirm security posts and tents in these locations.
Many say they have been returned multiple times. Some report seeing people, including children, shot at and, in some cases, killed on Turkish soil. One hospital on the Syrian side west of Idlib said it had treated dozens of people with gunshot injuries who say they were shot by Turkish border guards. One father of four has given up trying and is now living in a field in Idlib. 'There's is still shelling here but if we die, it better to die at home', he says.
Human RIghts Watch has asked the EU to protest formally to Turkey. But at a meeting with Erdogan in Bulgaria last month, the EU merely voiced a vague concern regarding Afrin, presumably handicapped by its own morally dubious 2016 agreement with Turkey aimed at curbing refugees flows to Europe and its own failure to relocate Syrian refugees trapped in Greece as part of that agreement. Indeed, not one country has been prepared to ask Turkey to reopen its border to Syrian asylum seekers, and neither has the UN, despite calling for Syrians to be offered asylum. It seems chlorine and sarin justified bombing raids but not welcoming displaced people.
Turkey categorically denies returning Syrians to Syria, which would breach international law on 'non-refoulment', prohibiting the forced return of anyone to a place where they face a real risk of persecution, torture or inhuman and degrading treatment. Still, Turkey soon wont need to return anyone: with a 10ft- high wall in place, the hundreds of thousand of refugees in fields on the Syrian side will be trapped in harms way for good. Out of sight, and out of mind.
I am not making excuses for Assad or Iran --I am merely being pragmatic.
Who is going to replace Assad exactly? ISIS? Do we need more beheadings slave markets, which were a disgrace to Islam and an international embarrassment?
I would be happy to support a Muslim leader in Syria who could turn that country around, but where is he?
This is a tough point to deal with, but you have a point, even if Assad is defeated, whats going to replace him? You cant survive by fighting alone, how are you going to master the art of government, are you going to govern for everybody or for only for the few? How will you provide essential services? Education, health, infrastructure, how will you attract business? How will you deal with unemployment? Or are you going to becoming another tyrannical regime?
Having lived under an dictatorship for so long its a steep learning curve for the population to learn to govern itself.
Many in rebel held territories acknowledge these problem.
Another update
Turkey slams Arab League for Afrin criticism
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy has slammed the Arab League for its “unfortunate” decision to criticise Turkey’s military operation in northwest Syria, Turkish newspaper Karar reported on Tuesday.
The Arab League, a regional cooperation organisation consisting of 22 Arab states from the Middle East and North Africa, held a summit on Sunday in the Saudi city of Dhahran.
The draft resolutions prepared at the summit included criticism of Turkey’s “interference” in the internal affairs of Arab countries, and rejection of Turkey’s “Operation Olive Branch”, which captured the northwest Syrian area of Afrin from Kurdish forces in March.
“(An operation) against a terrorist organisation which aims to divide Syria at the same serves the defence of the country’s political unity and territorial integrity,” said Aksoy, referring to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish forces that had been in control of Afrin.
“It is an undeserved misfortune for Turkey that (the Arab League) has ignored the contributions of the country, which has assumed a seriously responsibility related to the accommodation of millions of refugees, the progress of the political process, and the reduction in violence and blood and tears shed since the beginning of the Syrian crisis,” said Aksoy.
Another update
How Britain engaged in a covert operation to overthrow Assad
#SyriaWar
Starting just months after the 2011 uprising, UK policy has helped to prolong and radicalise Syria’s devastating war
Some commentators in the British mainstream media believe the UK has "done nothing" in the war in Syria and lament the failure to help stop it.
In fact, Britain has engaged in a covert operation with allies to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad for more than six years, and this policy has helped prolong and radicalise the terrible war. It is British action, not inaction, that is the biggest problem with government policy towards Syria. The full story of this covert operation may take years to emerge, but some elements of it can already be pieced together.
Deepening control of the Middle East
UK covert operations appear to have begun in late 2011, a few months after popular demonstrations started challenging the Syrian regime in March of that year. Already repressive, Assad's regime resorted to violence to try to quell the protests, routinely firing into crowds, detaining thousands and subjecting many to torture.
As the number of dead at the hands of the regime mounted, so did opposition to it. The UK and its allies spotted an opportunity, which they had long been looking for, to remove an independent, nationalist regime in the region and deepen their overall control of the Middle East.
Qatar began shipping arms to opposition groups in Syria with US approval in spring 2011, and within weeks, the Obama administration was receiving reports that they were going to militant groups. By November, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi wrote that "unmarked NATO warplanes" were arriving in Turkey, delivering weapons and 600 fighters from Libya in support of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a group of Syrian army deserters.
Britain's MI6 and French special forces were reportedly assisting the Syrian fighters and assessing their training, weapons and communications needs while the CIA provided communications equipment and intelligence.
Thus, David Cameron's government began covert action in Syria while having just overthrown Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, also working alongside Islamists. Some of the Libyan militants joining the Syrian insurgency were reportedly trained by British, French or US forces in Libya to fight Gaddafi. Some would later join the Islamic State (IS) or al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra, which became the most powerful Syrian rebel group.
The 'rat line' of weapons
Britain became involved in the "rat line" of weapons delivered from Libya to Syria via southern Turkey, which was authorised in early 2012 following a secret agreement between the US and Turkey. Revealed by journalist Seymour Hersh, the project was funded by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar while "the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria".
The operation was not disclosed to US congressional intelligence committees as required by US law, and "the involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation".
Hersh noted that "many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists", some affiliated with al-Qaeda. Indeed, it is believed that Qatar – which was the UK's key ally in overthrowing Gaddafi and was now repeating its role in Syria – was pouring weapons and cash into Nusra. The Telegraph reported on a Middle Eastern diplomat saying that Qatar is responsible for Nusra "having money and weapons and everything they need".
In 2012, the British military drew up plans to form a 100,000-strong Syrian rebel army of "moderates" to overthrow Assad, which would march on Damascus under Western and Gulf air cover. Cameron was told that this "extract, equip, train” initiative would take a year to develop, but Britain's National Security Council rejected the idea as too risky.
However, the US plan that emerged in 2013 to train a large force of Syrian rebels was described as an "echo" of this British plan.
British training of rebels to fight Assad at bases in Jordan was authorised around this time, and special forces operating from there were reported to be "likely" slipping into Syria on missions. By August 2012, Britain's military and intelligence base in Cyprus was also passing on intelligence to the FSA through Turkey, while Britain provided rebel groups with satellite phones to coordinate military operations.
The Foreign Office was also “teaching negotiation and ‘stabilisation’ skills to opposition leaders, and advising on how to address the Syrian people and international audiences”.
Arms funnelled to hardline groups
It was reported that the US was fully aware that most of the arms being provided by its Saudi and Qatari allies were going to "hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups". Yet US and British involvement in the war expanded further in November 2012 when, at a conference in Qatar of the so-called "Friends of Syria" group of countries opposed to Assad, Britain announced it was seeking to organise the armed Syrian rebels into an "efficient fighting force".
Foreign Secretary William Hague planned to establish an interim government in northern Syria and to make Syria’s opposition forces "come together" on the ground, with the aim of toppling Assad.
Two days later, Britain's chief of the defence staff, General David Richards, convened a meeting in London to further arm the opposition. Soon afterwards, the US coordinated an airlift of 3,000 tonnes of arms to the FSA from Croatia with the help of Britain and other European states, paid for by Saudi Arabia.
Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, later said this massive quantity of arms ended up going "almost exclusively to the more jihadist groups". Nusra and another hardline Islamist group, Ahrar al-Sham, secured some of the weapons being supplied to the FSA, while others inadvertently made their way to IS fighters in neighbouring Iraq.
Britain was intimately involved in Obama's "Timber Sycamore" programme launched in April 2013, which became the major US operation to furnish arms and training to supposedly "vetted" Syrian opposition groups. The control rooms in Turkey and Jordan, manned by intelligence officers from the US, Britain, Turkey, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, supplied anti-tank missiles and rockets to various opposition groups.
Again, many weapons found their way to IS and al-Qaeda, sometimes being traded on the black market. The US pumped more than $1bn into Timber Sycamore, which was only shut down by President Donald Trump in 2017.
Iran: Fighting 'terror' publicly, mourning the dead secretly
The Iranian regime has struggled to justify to Iranians its extensive military involvement in Syria.
Since the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Iran's military footprint in Syria has gradually increased. In the early days of the war, Tehran's intervention was limited to sending military advisors to train Syrian forces. Today, it is recruiting and commanding a number of Shia militias which have become the dominant pro-regime forces on the ground.
In the spring and summer of 2013, as opposition forces advanced across Syria, it was the Iranian military effort that saved the Assad regime.
The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in 2014 allowed Tehran to legitimise its Syria involvement as a "war on terror" and increase its military presence. That year, the conventional military forces, the Artesh, joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its Afghan and Pakistani Shia militias (the 14,000-strong Fatemiyoun Division and the 5,000-strong Zeynabiyoun Brigade, respectively) and Lebanese Hezbollah in a more visible fashion.
In the summer of 2015, Major-General Qasem Soleimani, commander of al-Quds Brigade, the foreign arm of IRGC, visited Moscow. Three months later, Russia deployed on the ground in Syria, establishing air cover for the regime and boosting its air bombardment campaigns. The coordinated Russian-Iranian operation saved the Assad regime again.
But as body bags stream back home and the cost of maintaining the war effort increases, the Iranian regime has had to scramble for ways to justify its Syrian military operation to the Iranian public.
Public narratives, secret funerals
Although Iran was involved in the conflict in Syria from the very beginning, it was only after the rise of ISIL that official information started coming out about Iranians who had lost their lives in the war. In 2016, the number of military casualties officially passed 1,000, including high-ranking military officers whose deaths were harder to conceal. Today, the number is believed to have increased four-fold.
To justify deploying Iranian troops in Syria, the Iranian regime employed the usual "war on terror" narrative, which gained traction especially after ISIL expanded rapidly in 2014 and 2015.
Crucially, the Iranian "war on terror" seamlessly rhymed with the US-led one (the West preferred that al-Assad stay in power to fight ISIL). Both sides deliberately obscured the fact that al-Assad and ISIL are two sides of the same coin. For, al-Assad's barbarity helped produce ISIL's, which further legitimised his mass murder.
When addressing the Iranian public, the Islamic Republic has from the beginning of its Syrian intervention emphasised the need to protect shrines of Shia saints (central among them, the Sayidda Zeynab Mosque in southern Damascus, believed by Shia Muslims to house the grave of the daughter of the first Shia imam, Ali ibn Abi Talib, Prophet Mohammad's son-in-law) against "Wahhabi terrorists" - a sectarian discourse designed to appeal to the religious nationalism of Iranians.
At times, Iran's military elite has also portrayed military involvement in Syria as part of its "export of the Islamic Revolution". For instance, in February 2015, the commander of the IRGC, General Mohammad-Ali Jafari declared: "Today we see signs of the Islamic Revolution being exported throughout the region, from Bahrain to Iraq and from Syria to Yemen and North Africa."
Tehran has tried to avoid talking about the goal of defending the regime of Bashar al-Assad, although officials sometimes talk about "paying back" Damascus for its loyalty during the war with Iraq (1980-1988).
In contrast to the Iraq-Iran War, when the dead were celebrated in public funerals, Tehran has kept pictures of deployed and fallen soldiers in Syria under tight wraps. In fact, the IRGC and its paramilitary force, the Basij, have overwhelmingly kept the mourning ceremonies for their Syria casualties closed to the public.
This new secrecy constitutes an unprecedented reversal of Ayatollah Khomeini's dictum "We are alive through mourning", which he voiced only one month after the start of the war with Iraq. For decades, these funeral ceremonies reflected the Islamic Republic's Shia mourning culture, staged as public displays of stalwartness and resistance.
But the intervention in Syria made Iranian authorities fear that any public mourning of Iranian casualties could potentially backfire.
Undisclosed expenses
There is much talk in the post-ISIL era and especially in the current so-called reconstruction process in Syria, about Tehran reaping economic rewards from its years-long military support for the Assad regime.
The promised dividends of the military campaign might seem lucrative at first glance, but they are far from attainable. Not only is the Syrian economy in shambles, but Russia is also aiming to extract some profit from its intervention.
But the fact that the Iranian authorities, nonetheless, continue talking about potential economic benefits in Syria is quite indicative. They've had to justify Iranian spending on Syria at a time when the Iranian economy is not doing well.
Since the start of the war, Tehran has been lending billions of dollars to Damascus with little chance of repayment. It has also been paying for thousands of Hezbollah fighters deployed in Syria, as well as the militias it maintains.
With military expenditures in Syria being kept a secret to avoid drawing public ire, it is unclear just how much Iran is spending on its intervention there. Various estimates put that number between $6bn and $20bn annually - not an insignificant amount given a strained state budget and Iranians' socio-economic misery.
The real war for Syria is taking place in its skies
The hidden battle in Syria – the one that rarely appears on our television screens – has been raging for years between Israel and a coalition comprising the Syrian government, Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
Watching over the proceedings without directly intervening has been Russia, although that might be about to change.
The prize is control over Syrian territory but the battlefield is Syria’s skies.
According to United Nations figures, the Israeli military violated Syrian airspace more than 750 times in the four-month period leading up to last October, with its warplanes and drones spending some 3,200 hours over the country. On average, more than six Israeli aircraft entered Syrian airspace each day in that period.
Since war broke out in Syria just over seven years ago, Israeli fighter jets are believed to have carried out hundreds of offensive missions.
Israel regards the stakes as high. It wants Syria to remain an enfeebled state, ensuring Bashar Assad’s government cannot again become a regional foe. But Israel also needs to prevent other powerful, hostile actors from being drawn into the resulting vacuum.
Israel achieved one major aim early on: Western powers insisted that the Syrian government be disarmed of its large arsenal of chemical weapons, Damascus’s only deterrent against an Israeli nuclear threat.
Since then, Israel’s focus has shifted to Iran and blocking its ambitions on various fronts: to prop up Assad, establish a military presence close to Israel’s northern border and use Syria as a conduit for transferring arms to Hezbollah.
Iran’s aim is to recreate a balance of terror between the two sides and free itself from diplomatic isolation; Israel’s is to maintain its military pre-eminence and dominance of the Middle East’s skies.
In addition, Israel seeks to exploit Syria’s collapse to claim permanent title over the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967 and later annexed in violation of international law.
Mike Pompeo, the hawkish new US Secretary of State, is due in Jerusalem on Sunday to discuss the fate of the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, due for renewal next month.
Israel hopes the US will tear up the deal, allowing sanctions to be intensified and forcing Iran to concentrate on its diplomatic woes and mounting protests at home rather than project its influence into Syria.
In the meantime, tensions in Syria are ratcheting up. Unusually, Israel admitted this month that it was behind a strike on an Iranian base in Syria that killed seven Iranian troops. According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel targeted an anti-aircraft battery under construction, one Tehran hoped would limit Israel’s freedom to patrol Syria’s skies.
The attack followed Israel’s interception of a drone over northern Israel, presumably dispatched to gain the same kind of intelligence about Israeli military bases that Israel has of Iranian bases in Syria.
According to a senior Israeli military official, the move from proxy clashes to direct ones has “opened a new period” of hostilities. Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned that Israel is prepared to prevent Iran’s entrenchment in Syria, “regardless of the price”.
Echoing him, US Defence Secretary James Mattis warned on Thursday that it was “very likely” Israel and Iran were on a collision course. Neither appears to believe it can afford to climb down.
But Israel’s gameplan not only risks a dangerous escalation with Iran. It could draw Russia even deeper into Syria too.
Last week Russian officials indicated there are plans to supply the Syrian army with Russia’s advanced S-300 missile defence system. For the first time, Israeli planes would face a real risk of being shot down if they violated Syrian airspace.
So far Israel has suffered only one known loss: an F-16 was brought down in February by the Syrian army in what Israel claimed was a crew “error”.
But Israel could soon find itself with an unnerving dilemma: either it exposes its warplanes to Syrian interception, or it attacks Russian defence systems.
Russian officials have reportedly warned that there would be “catastrophic consequences” if Israel did so. But apparently unmoved, Lieberman asserted last week: “If anyone shoots at our planes, we will destroy them.”
The reality, however, is that the Russian proposal, if carried out, threatens to bring to an end impunity for an Israeli air force that has roamed the skies above parts of the Middle East at will since its lightning victory over its Egyptian counterpart in 1967.
Until now, Israeli and Russian officials have co-ordinated closely about their respective spheres of action in Syria to avoid mishaps. But events are spiralling in a direction that makes the status quo hard to sustain.
Russia has suggested that supplying Syria with the S-300 is retaliation against the US, a punishment for its airstrike on Syria earlier this month. The defence system is intended to ramp up the pressure on US President Donald Trump to make good on his recent promise to pull US troops out of Syria.
But it does so chiefly by harming Washington’s key ally in the region, Israel. Russia will effectively be introducing tripwires across Syria that Israel will be constantly in danger of setting off.
Israel’s largely successful ploy till now has been to play both sides of the Syrian war – assisting its US patron in keeping Iran on the back foot while co-operating with a Russian military committed to stabilising the Syrian government.
That approach is now beginning to unravel as Israel and the US seek to prevent Moscow and Iran from helping consolidate Assad’s hold on power. The longer the fighting continues, the more likely it is that Israel will make an enemy not just of Iran but of Russia too.
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