Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on February 16, 2012, 08:07:58 AM
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Syria gets its own thread:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/world/middleeast/al-qaeda-influence-suspected-in-bombings-in-syria.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22
WASHINGTON — Sunni extremists, including fighters linked to Al Qaeda’s franchise in neighboring Iraq, are likely responsible for two big recent bombings in the Syrian capital as well as attacks on Friday in Aleppo, the country’s largest city, American officials said Wednesday.
As the violence in Syria escalates, several analysts said, Al Qaeda is seeking to exploit the turmoil and reinvigorate its regional ambitions after being sidelined in the initial popular uprisings of the Arab Spring a year ago.
The precise role of the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda in Syria is unclear. Some intelligence officials and diplomats in Washington, Baghdad and Beirut, Lebanon, said the Qaeda franchise was responsible for the deadly bombings in Aleppo last week and in Damascus, the capital, on Dec. 23 and Jan. 6, which killed scores of people. But they acknowledged that they did not have the forensic or electronic intercept evidence to prove it.
Other officials said Sunni fighters loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda but not directly controlled by the terrorist group may also have been involved, operating in common cause with but independently of pro-democracy forces seeking to topple the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad.
“It appears to be a very complicated mixture of networks that are fighting the Syrian government, including individuals associated with Al Qaeda in Iraq,” said Seth G. Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation and the author of the coming book “Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of Al Qa’ida Since 9/11.”
Other experts agreed, saying Sunni extremists — some of whom have returned from Iraq to fight in Syria — also have the expertise to carry out large-scale bombings.
“There are plenty of people with that kind of know-how in Syria,” said Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of a recent book on Syrian-American relations. “The Assad regime helped invent the car bomb, and they have used it brilliantly to pursue their foreign policy goals. It could be Al Qaeda or simply those with a similar background carrying it out.”
Or as Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it during Senate testimony on Tuesday, “Those who would like to foment a Sunni-Shia standoff — and you know who they are — are all weighing in in Syria.”
The Syrian government has always argued that it was fighting foreign terrorists, including some from Al Qaeda, a charge dismissed as propaganda by the Syrian activists leading the uprising.
But some American officials now say Al Qaeda in Iraq, whose membership has declined substantially in recent years, is trying to take advantage of the violence in Syria and perhaps even hijack the popular uprising against the Syrian government.
Al Qaeda was caught off guard by the Arab Spring’s largely nonviolent, secular revolutions fueled by social media. The death of Osama bin Laden in May dealt the organization another major blow, and it has been seeking a foothold ever since.
“It comes as no surprise that Al Qaeda’s Iraq affiliate, through its networks in Syria, might attempt to seem relevant by going after the Assad regime,” said an American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the assessment contained classified information. “It is opportunism, plain and simple.”
Indeed, Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Bin Laden as the leader of Al Qaeda worldwide, issued a statement on Saturday urging Muslims in the region — he specifically mentioned Iraq — to support the uprising, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist communications.
The debate over Al Qaeda’s role in Syria came as the United States government on Wednesday offered to help any post-Assad government secure Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and portable antiaircraft missiles.
With violence rising and the political outcome wholly uncertain, American officials acknowledged that the effort to secure Syria’s unconventional weapons remained speculative.
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Helping out GM with his thread selection , , ,
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**Who could have seen this coming?
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/02/16/arab-spring-bears-fruit-chemical-weapons-civil-war/
February 16, 2012
Arab Spring Bears Fruit: Chemical Weapons, Civil War
The Arab Spring is finally beginning to bear fruit. An article in today’s FT reports that Syria has a decades-old chemical weapons program that may fall into the hands of terrorist groups amidst the chaos of Syria’s civil war. Syrian stockpiles include significant amounts of nerve gas and “mustard blister agent,” and while they are apparently well-protected by the Assad regime, it’s anyone’s guess what could happen to them if the regime falls. The opposition group, like its counterparts in Libya, is difficult to pin down and is a diverse set of anti-Assad elements rather than a unified movement. Should Assad fall, the fate of the weapons would lie largely on which group took power and how quickly and effectively it could secure these stockpiles. With Hezbollah and al-Qaeda reportedly eyeing the country, this is a gamble few would be anxious to take.
During the halcyon days of the protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Western media outlets were filled with lofty predictions: the end of autocracy in the Middle East, the rise of the Arab twitterati youth, and the emergence of a liberal majority in the Middle East that would wipe away decades of tyranny and oppression. One year later, with repression in Egypt, fighting in Libya, and civil war in Syria, these predictions have been revealed for what they were: wishful thinking marred by an absence of critical thought about the region and its history. The reality is much uglier.
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What Does the Syrian Opposition Believe?
A confidential survey of activists inside the country shows limited support for Islamists but high admiration for the U.S. and Turkey..Article Comments (21) more in Opinion | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ».Email Print Save ↓ More .
.smaller Larger By DAVID POLLOCK
There are increasing calls for international intervention in Syria after this weekend's massacre in Houla, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces murdered more than 100 civilians. Obstacles to intervention remain, however, especially concern that the opposition to Assad's regime is dominated by religious fundamentalists. Until recently, for example, the Syrian National Council, a group of exiled opponents of the regime, was led by Burhan Ghalioun, whose unwillingness to counter the Muslim Brotherhood was widely viewed in the West as a troubling sign of Islamist influence.
But a confidential survey of opposition activists living in Syria reveals that Islamists are only a minority among them. Domestic opponents of Assad, the survey indicates, look to Turkey as a model for Syrian governance—and even widely admire the United States.
Pechter Polls, which conducts opinion surveys in tough spots in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, completed the Syria opposition poll in December 2011. Respondents were contacted over a secure Skype connection by someone they could trust—all native Syrians—who asked them to fill out a short questionnaire anonymously in Arabic. Interviewers were selected from different social and political groups to ensure that respondents reflected a rough cross-section of overall opposition attitudes. To ensure confidentiality, the online survey could be accessed only through a series of proxy servers, bypassing the regime-controlled Internet.
Given the survey's unusual security requirements, respondents were selected by a referral (or "controlled snowball") technique, rather than in a purely random fashion. To be as representative as possible, the survey employed five different starting points for independent referral chains, all operating from different locations. The resulting sample consisted of 186 individuals in Syria identified as either opposition activists themselves (two-thirds of the total) or in contact with the opposition.
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Syrian anti-regime protesters waving pre-Baath Syrian flags in Talbisseh on May 25.
.What do these "inside" opposition supporters believe? Only about one-third expressed a favorable opinion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Almost half voiced a negative view, and the remainder were neutral. On this question, no significant differences emerged across regions.
Most of the survey's questions asked, "On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 means the most negative and 7 the most positive, how would you rate your opinion of X?" Answers of 1 to 3 were considered negative, 4 as neutral, and 5 to 7 as positive.
While many respondents supported religious values in public life, only a small fraction strongly favored Shariah law, clerical influence in government, or heavy emphasis on Islamic education. A large majority (73%) said it was "important for the new Syrian government to protect the rights of Christians." Only 20% said that religious leaders have a great influence on their political views.
This broad rejection of Islamic fundamentalism was also reflected in the respondents' views on government. The poll asked each respondent what country he or she would "like to see Syria emulate politically," and which countries the respondent "would like to see Syria emulate economically." The poll listed 12 countries, each with a scale of 1 to 7. Just 5% had even a mildly positive view of Saudi Arabia as a political model. In contrast, 82% gave Turkey a favorable rating as both a political and economic model (including over 40% extremely favorable). The U.S. earned 69% favorable ratings as a political model, with France, Germany and Britain close behind. Tunisia rated only 37% and Egypt 22%.
Iran was rated lowest of any country included in the survey, including Russia and China: Not even 2% of respondents had positive views of Iran as a political model. Fully 90% expressed an unfavorable view of Hezbollah, including 78% with the most negative possible attitude.
One of the surprises in the results is the scope of the opposition's network inside Damascus, despite their difficulties in demonstrating publicly. One-third of the respondents, whether activists or sympathizers, said they live in the Syrian capital. (To protect their privacy, the survey did not ask for more precise identification.)
This "inside" opposition is well-educated, with just over half identifying as college graduates. The ratio of male to female respondents was approximately 3 to 1, and 86% were Sunni Arab.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were ambivalent about Syrian Kurdish demands for "political decentralization" (like autonomy). Views of "Kurdish parties" were evenly divided among negative, neutral and positive. (Such feelings are evidently mutual: In the six months since the survey was completed, Syrian Kurdish organizations have increasingly decided to go their own way, separate from the other opposition groups.)
Based on a statistical analysis of the survey, most secularists among the respondents prefer weak central government, presumably as a way to safeguard their personal freedoms. On the other hand, the one-third of respondents who support the Muslim Brotherhood also tend to have a favorable view of Hamas, despite the latter movement's previous association with the Assad regime.
The survey demonstrates that the core of the Syrian opposition inside the country is not made up of the Muslim Brotherhood or other fundamentalist forces, and certainly not of al Qaeda or other jihadi organizations. To be sure, a revolution started by secularists could pave the way for Islamists to win elections, as has occurred in Egypt. But the Syrian opposition is solidly favorable to the U.S. and overwhelmingly negative toward both Hezbollah and Iran.
Mr. Pollock is senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a consultant to Pechter Polls.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/europe/russian-church-opposes-syrian-intervention.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120601
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By MARCO RUBIO
The world has watched for more than a year as the Assad regime in Syria has been slaughtering innocent civilians. The recent massacre in Houla—including of scores of children—is a reminder of why the United States must step up and lead an aggressive international campaign to hasten Bashar al-Assad's departure from power.
Several diplomatic actions are required immediately. Others, especially involving the Syrian opposition, should be incremental and seek to help anti-Assad forces get organized.
One immediately required action is to abandon any wishful thinking that the efforts of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan will help the situation, or that Russia's conscience will finally be shocked straight. The U.S. should urge Mr. Annan to condemn Assad and resign his job as envoy so that Syria's regime and other governments can no longer hide behind the facade of his mediation efforts.
Diplomacy doesn't stand a chance in Syria unless the military balance tips against Assad. With Iran and Hezbollah now directly involved in the conflict—sending soldiers and weapons into Syria—the U.S. must stop insisting that arming the opposition will only make the violence worse. The conflict is also attracting jihadis whose presence will only make an eventual reconciliation in Syria that much harder.
To address these problems, the U.S. should work with NATO, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and others to establish safe zones in Turkey and, eventually, in parts of Syria. This will help turn the opposition into a better-organized and viable force. The U.S. can provide valuable aid in the form of food, medicine, communications equipment, intelligence and logistical support.
Our allies in this mission should take the main responsibility for arming and training the most capable and trustworthy rebels now. But the U.S. should make clear that we stand ready to step in and fill key gaps between the rebels' military needs and our allies' capabilities. Empowering and supporting Syria's opposition today will give us our best chance of influencing it tomorrow, to ensure that revenge killings are rare in a post-Assad Syria and that a new government follows a moderate foreign policy.
Also crucial is helping secure Syria's chemical-weapons stockpile, which is the largest in the Middle East and poses a serious proliferation threat. Fostering a post-Assad government-in-waiting will help ensure that a plan is developed to prevent these weapons from falling into the wrong hands.
While we pursue these steps, we should also immediately pass additional sanctions against Assad. Unfortunately, the Democratic majority in the Senate has been reluctant to consider tough new sanctions legislation. I urge Majority Leader Harry Reid to take up the Syria Democracy Transition Act of 2012, which authorizes the president to impose crippling sanctions on the Syrian regime to cut off the financial lifeline that is helping keep Assad afloat.
Then there's the opportunity to assign Robert Ford, our former ambassador in Syria, as the envoy to the Syrian opposition, encouraging him to engage Jordan and Turkey and to lay the groundwork for a relationship with a post-Assad Syrian government. We can also pursue a commercial air embargo on Damascus, whereby no airport should facilitate flights to or from the Syrian capital.
By not pursuing a policy that takes bolder steps to stop Assad and assist the more pro-Western opposition leaders, we prolong this conflict and allow Syria to hurtle toward becoming a radicalized, failed state whose violence will spill over and threaten its neighbors. Such an outcome would damage American interests and delight Iran and Hezbollah.
Barack Obama is not the first president to face difficult choices about dealing with tyrants, and he won't be the last. As the Syrian ordeal reaches new levels of horror, we should take heed of Ronald Reagan's words: "It is a sad, undeniable fact of modern life that wishes are no substitute for national will. And wishful thinking only encourages the tyrants for whom human rights are as easily trampled as protesters in a city square."
America's Syria policy has been all wishful thinking and no national will. It has been based on the false hope that Assad will realize the error of his ways, that Russia and other unreliable nations will change, and that a positive outcome can be attained absent American leadership. Although U.S. policy has been that Assad must go, this demand has not been coupled with action. This devalues America's power and influence in the world, with disastrous and lasting consequences.
Mr. Rubio, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Florida and a member of the Senate's Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees.
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Marc: I forget where, but I heard conversation recently that seemed reliable to me that pointed out that Assad has major chem-bio capabilities ready to use. Whether he uses them or the Islamist fascist opposition gets ahold of them is a big deal-- something to think about.
Summary
D. Leal Olivas/AFP/GettyImages
Syrian opposition fighters on April 15
Numerous recent reports indicate that Syrian rebels have taken the April 12 cease-fire as an opportunity to regroup and rearm with weapons shipments organized, funded and transferred by other countries. The rebels claim that large numbers of assault rifles, machine guns, mortars, sniper rifles and anti-tank missiles have been smuggled into Syria in recent weeks. The weapons came to the rebels allegedly through Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, predominantly from suppliers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. With the rebels better armed and motivated and the Syrian regime determined to crush the opposition, the environment is right for the conflict to intensify.
Analysis
Supply lines through Lebanon have proved crucial, particularly because they are so close to Homs. But in the last few weeks, the number of weapons reportedly entering Syria from Turkey has increased dramatically. The Syrian rebel force in the Idlib governorate, which borders Turkey's Hatay province, is now reputed to be one of the strongest and best-equipped rebel forces in Syria and has said it is prepared to attack regime forces.
Because Hatay province is home to most of the Syrian refugee camps and serves as the Free Syrian Army's headquarters, accumulating rebel strength in Idlib makes strategic sense. Supply lines are shorter, and the rebels in Idlib have a path of retreat into Turkey in case of overwhelming pressure from government forces.
The sharp increase in the number of destroyed Syrian army tanks and armored fighting vehicles over the last month attests to the capability the rebels have gained with the new equipment, particularly with the anti-tank missiles. In addition, the Syrian rebels have been at war for more than a year now. With experience and aid from defecting Syrian troops, their fighting acumen has improved.
The influx of fighters and jihadists from other countries also bolsters the rebels. This influx includes experienced Syrian and Iraqi fighters who fought in the Iraq War against U.S. forces. Given the improvised explosive device tradecraft that these fighters have brought to Syria, they have had an enormous effect on the rebels' ability to inflict casualties and damage on the Syrian military.
The Syrian army has begun changing some of its tactics and operations to better fight an increasingly capable enemy. With Russian and Chinese diplomatic support, Damascus has grown confident that it can avoid foreign military intervention and is starting to rely more on artillery and even attack helicopter support. Artillery and aviation also allow the Syrian regime to largely avoid costly armored attacks on rebel-held urban positions where armor is more vulnerable.
Determined to prevent the rebels from acquiring and holding critical territory, the Syrian military is set to continue offensive operations with its main assault units (the 4th Armored Division, Republican Guard and 14th Special Forces). Damascus will rely more on the Shabiha, a local mercenary force, to hold territory and carry out less-demanding operations.
In a speech delivered June 14, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused the Russians of delivering attack helicopters to the Syrian regime. It is not entirely clear whether she was referring to new or refurbished Syrian helicopters, but Moscow has admitted it is transferring weaponry to Syria, including relatively advanced Buk-M2E surface-to-air missile systems. The Russians have stated -- correctly -- that air defense equipment cannot be used against the rebels since they have no air capabilities. However, this equipment will strengthen Syria's air defense network, complicating any potential NATO intervention. Syria already has a sizable inventory of attack helicopters, including 35 to 50 Mi-24 series Hind gunships. More important than whether the Russians are sending more helicopters is Syria's recent decision to use the ones they have.
One of the first known instances of the Syrian regime's using helicopters was March 22, when an Mi-8/17 "Hip" was videoed using its side-mounted machine gun. Since then, numerous videos have emerged showing helicopters being used against the rebels, including videos of Mi-24s reportedly operating over Rastan and Farkia in recent weeks. These helicopters alone will not decide the outcome of the conflict, but they can be particularly devastating to ground forces without air defense equipment. They can also be instrumental in turning the tide in localized fighting, as seen in the June 5-13 Battle of Al-Haffah, during which heavy helicopter fire forced rebels to retreat.
Attack helicopters were of great use during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Soviet forces relied particularly on the Mi-24 to provide heavy fire support against the mujahideen, who nicknamed the aircraft "Satan's Chariot" and who were largely defenseless against it until they received FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) from the CIA. Given that many members of the mujahideen became members of the Taliban and given the continuing U.S. concern about loose MANPADS, the United States and its allies would be very reluctant to deliver these weapons to the Syrian rebels.
The Syrian rebels could attempt to acquire Syrian army MANPADS, as they nearly did when they overran a Syrian surface-to-air missile site near Homs on June 10. The rebels claimed the base housed some Soviet-designed SA-7 MANPADS, but helicopter fire drove the rebels off before they could take the systems. Because Damascus is greatly intensifying its helicopter operations, Syrian military forces are likely to take considerable measure to secure their MANPADS.
Encouraged by an influx of weaponry and fighters, the Syrian rebels are becoming more confident and are determined to carry out further operations. The regime in response has escalated its crackdown and has intensified the use of helicopter gunships as well as artillery. Thus, the April 12 cease-fire is looking increasingly shaky. While the conflict is set to intensify, neither side has overcome its fundamental constraints and an end to the conflict is not yet in sight.
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Read more: Syria: The Military Nuances of the Conflict | Stratfor
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"Marc: I forget where, but I heard conversation recently that seemed reliable to me that pointed out that Assad has major chem-bio capabilities ready to use. Whether he uses them or the Islamist fascist opposition gets ahold of them is a big deal-- something to think about."
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From unreliable sources, the WMD that disappeared out of Iraq was trucked into Syria.
Largely unreported was the followup story from the Israeli strike on an alleged Syrian nuclear weapon facility: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4062001,00.html If it takes 5 years to re-build, guess what, it has been 5 years.
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I gather however that the knowledge of a ready-to-use-right-now capability is a matter known beyond a reasonable doubt to all, though similar to Libyan weaponry in the final days of Kaddaffy most are avoiding talking about it-- though here the consequences are FAR more serious. As bad as the manpads of Libya were-- and are!-- Islamofascists in Syria with chem bio on missiles and a hard on for Israel are true nightmare scenario material.
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Fouad Ajami: America, Russia and the Tragedy of Syria
By FOUAD AJAMI
The ordeal of Syria has been a rebuttal of what the diplomacy of Barack Obama once promised and stood for. It is largely forgotten now that Syria and Iran were the two regimes in the Greater Middle East that Mr. Obama had promised to "engage."
Back when he was redeemer in chief, Mr. Obama had been certain that the regime in Damascus would yield to his powers of persuasion. He cut Damascus a wide swath, stepped aside when the Syrian regime all but laid to waste the gains of the 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, assassinating and terrorizing its way back into its smaller neighbor.
When the storm that broke upon the Arabs in early 2011 hit Syria, the flaws of the Obama approach were laid bare. It took five months of hesitation and wishful thinking before Mr. Obama called on the Syrian ruler to relinquish power. That call made, he had hoped that the storm would die down, that the world's attention would drift from the sorrows of Syria.
But the intensifying barbarism of Bashar al-Assad's regime, the massacres and atrocities have given Mr. Obama nowhere to hide. A United Nations report recently determined that children as young as 9 have been subjected to "killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, and use as human shields."
Enlarge Image
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Syrians gather around a U.N. observer vehicle in the northern town of Kfar Nebel, May 29.
.For months the abdication over Syria sought cover behind the diplomacy of Kofi Annan, the designated envoy of the Arab League and the U.N. But Mr. Annan has conceded that his diplomacy has been helpless before the violence. A regime built for a crisis such as this, fine-tuned by a ruling family and a dominant sect over the last four decades, had nothing but contempt for U.N. diplomacy. "And how many military divisions does this Mr. Annan command?" was, doubtless, the sentiment of Assad's henchmen.
Indeed, the U.N. monitors there came under attack last week. En route to the besieged town of Haffa, their convoy was shot at and set upon by thugs throwing stones and wielding metal rods. U.N. chief peacekeeper Hervé Ladsous described the situation on the ground well when he said, "Keeping a peacekeeping force when there is definitely no peace to observers—that summarizes the situation." Last Saturday's official suspension of that peacekeeping effort is an acknowledgment of that glaring reality.
Those hamlets of grief that came to fame in recent days, Houla, Qubair, sites of cruel massacres, tell us that the Assad regime is convinced that no outside intervention is on the horizon. Syria is in the midst of the sectarian war Assad sought all along. He has trapped his own Alawite community, implicating it in his crimes. In the recent massacres, Sunni areas have been sacked by neighboring Alawi villages. The army did the shelling, then the Alawi neighbors closed in and did the killing—women and children shot at close range, corpses burnt, crops and livestock and homes destroyed.
This sectarian slaughter is what the Assad tyranny had wrought, and what the abdication of the democracies had fed in the cruel, long year behind us. In this ordeal, there was always another appeal to the Russians. We ascribed to them powers they did not have because their obstructionism was useful. The Assad regime, long a Russian asset in the region, is a variation on the Russian autocracy of plunder and terror. By all accounts, there is glee in Moscow that Washington and the NATO powers pay tribute to Russia.
And why would Russian strongman Vladimir Putin do us any favors over Syria? Despite Mr. Obama's inane announcement Monday at the Group of 20 Summit that he and Mr. Putin "agreed that we need to see a cessation of the violence," Russia has come to believe the Syrian regime is engaged in a war with Islamist radicals much like its own against the Chechens. Grant Mr. Putin his due; the way he brushed aside Mr. Obama's pleas on Syria should lay to rest the fantasy of a Russian compromise.
Last week U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Russian attack helicopters are being delivered to Syria and warned that this "will escalate the conflict quite dramatically." It's a sad fact that the Obama administration isn't willing to see in Homs and Jisr al-Shughur reflections of our own belief in liberty.
Why can't this president simply state the truth, that the Syrian people are rising out of decades of servitude and fear to bid for a new political life? On a recent visit to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, ordinary Syrians asked me why the U.S. is not more concerned with their fate. But they ask and anguish less and less over Mr. Obama, knowing that their sorrows have not stirred his conscience.
The Obama policy rests on a blissful belief that Syria will burn out without damage to American interests, and that the president himself can stay aloof from this crisis. By his lights, he has kept his compact with his progressive base—he liquidated the war in Iraq and has kept out of the conflict next door in Syria. It suffices that Osama bin Laden was killed, and drone attacks on al Qaeda continue apace.
The wider forces at play in the Greater Middle East do not detain this president. His political advisers have not walked into the Oval Office reporting that he'll win re-election if only he takes a more assertive stance toward the dictators in Damascus or Tehran. The world can wait—Syria has twisted for 15 months, and it is only five months until the election. And the amazing thing of it all is that Mr. Obama's Republican rival, Mitt Romney, cedes him the foreign policy domain, allowing him to pose as though all is well in the world beyond our shores.
Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author most recently of "The Syrian Rebellion," just published by Hoover Press.
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http://pjmedia.com/blog/general-mood-two-versions-of-the-houla-massacre/
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Charles Krauthammer is correctly wondering WTF with Hillary-Baraq reaching out to the Russians in this moment to hammer our a solution. The Russians have backed an evil and losing horse. Why gift them a seat at the table for what happens from here?
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For over a year, we've heard from Obama Administration officials that Western intervention would push Syria into a civil war, kill thousands and put the Assad regime's stockpile of WMD at risk of falling into terrorist hands. The U.S. hasn't intervened, and all of this has happened.
The conflict has spread beyond rebel strongholds around Hama and Homs, with vicious fighting in the capital of Damascus for a third straight day Tuesday. The regime has started to move its sizeable cache of chemical weapons for unclear reasons. An estimated 17,000 are dead; the toll rises by the dozens, sometimes hundreds, weekly. The Red Cross on Sunday declared this a civil war, subject to the Geneva Conventions.
The Obama Administration has nonetheless stayed faithful to its preferred course of inaction—to take it to the United Nations. On Wednesday, the Security Council holds another debate, this one over extending the useless U.N. monitoring mission in Syria.
The debate is playing out like all the others. A U.S.-backed resolution proposes tough sanctions and opens a crack to possible military action. Russia then threatens a veto and the resolution gets watered down to nothing, or the Russians and Chinese veto.
On Monday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the latest Western proposal "blackmail." In the next breath he expressed hope for a compromise "based on similar principles" to a Geneva agreement last month. That deal included no call for Bashar al-Assad's departure, no deadline to stop fighting, no enforcement mechanism and no threat of sanctions. It was tailor-made to buy Assad more time, and the U.S. agreed.
The Obama Administration touts its "smart diplomacy," but there must a Russian colloquialism for sucker. The U.S has turned a kleptocracy with oil and aging nukes into a diplomatic power broker in the Middle East with a veto over American action. The U.S. should at least call the Russian bluff and pull the U.N. mission out. Its mandate was to monitor a cease-fire, but there isn't one to monitor.
The cost of U.S. inaction carries a fast-rising price. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of our closer Arab partners, are arming the rebels and eager to see Assad go. They'd rather defer to American leadership but may be forced to act more robustly on their own. The same goes for Turkey, which must deal with a refugee flood. Israel worries about the loose WMD and may act to secure it. The longer we fail to step in, the harder it becomes to shape the outcome in Syria.
The U.S. has plenty of options short of sending in ground troops. The Sixth Fleet could be sent off the Syrian coast in concert with military exercises along Turkey's border. A show of preparation for intervention might prod Syria's officer corps to solve the Assad problem on their own. A no-fly zone would ground the regime's helicopters, which are being used in attacks on civilians.
The Administration's abdication to the U.N. reflects a desire to avoid conflict before the election as well as the worldview that the U.S. is a weakened power that needs the world's (which means Vladimir Putin's) approval to act. Syrians are now suffering the consequences, but the stability of the Middle East is also at risk.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303644004577523251596963194.html?mod=djem_jiewr_PS_domainid
The country's undeclared stockpiles of sarin nerve agent, mustard gas and cyanide have long worried U.S. officials and their allies in the region, who have watched anxiously amid the conflict in Syria for any change in the status or location of the weapons.
Side note: Syria has a spokesman whose name is Jihad. I can't wait until "Holy War Johnson" is on American airwaves.
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I'm not seeing us a prepared for, or even thinking about becoming prepared for, use/movement of the Syrian WMD.
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IBD Editorials
Syria's Chemical Weapons Came From Saddam's Iraq
Posted 07/19/2012 07:02 PM ET
War On Terror: As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq.
King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida.
"One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands," he said.
The irony here is that the chemical weapons stockpile of Syrian thug Assad may in large part be the legacy of weapons moved from Hussein's Iraq into Syria before Operation Iraqi Freedom.
If so, this may be the reason not much was found in the way of WMD by victorious U.S. forces in 2003.
In 2006, former Iraqi general Georges Sada, second in command of the Iraqi Air Force who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a comprehensive book, "Saddam's Secrets."
It details how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria in advance of the U.S.-led action to eliminate Hussein's WMD threat.
As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded the planes with chemical weapons materials.
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There were 56 flights disguised as a relief effort after a 2002 Syrian dam collapse.
There were also truck convoys into Syria. Sada's comments came more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence observed large truck convoys leaving Iraq and entering Syria in the weeks and months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, told a private conference of former weapons inspectors and intelligence experts held in Arlington, Va., in 2006.
According to Shaw, ex-Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, went to Iraq in December 2002 and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
Anticipating the invasion, his job was to supervise the removal of such weapons and erase as much evidence of Russian involvement as possible.
http://news.investors.com/article/618875/201207191902/syria-chemical-weapons-came-from-iraq-.htm
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Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime is facing collapse. Defections have escalated over the past month, but the magnitude of al Assad's problem became clear July 6 when the influential Tlass clan publicly broke ties with the al Assads. This signaled the unraveling of the Sunni patronage networks that have helped sustain the minority Alawite-dominated regime for more than four decades.
The next blow came July 18 with a bombing at the National Security headquarters in Damascus that eliminated several of the regime's top security bosses.
Those targeted in the bombing -- Syrian Defense Minister Dawoud Rajha, former Defense Minister Hassan Turkmani, Interior Minister Mohammad al-Shaar, National Security Council chief Hisham Biktyar and Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat (the president's brother-in-law, who was rumored to have been killed by the regime prior to the blast) -- were top suspects in a palace coup scenario. The fate of the president's brother Republican Guard and Fourth Division Commander Maher al Assad after the blast remains a mystery, but his troops are still fighting in and around Damascus and have not shown signs of a breakdown in the army's command and control.
There are some vague indications that the bombing was a pre-emptive move by the al Assads to eliminate suspected coup plotters. Whether it was a deliberate action by the al Assads or a sign of the rebels' effectiveness in penetrating the regime, the bombing is a clear sign that the regime is falling apart.
There have been too many defections, arrests and assassinations for any regime member to be certain of his or her future with the al Assads. With the loss of certainty comes the loss of unity. The Syrian president faces two stark choices. He can either make an exit before his personal security is compromised, or he can try to hold out and regain control of the situation. Al Assad's reported appearance at the presidential palace in Damascus with his newly appointed defense minister July 19 indicates he is opting for the latter, but Stratfor does not believe he will succeed. The risks of sticking with the al Assad clan are surging, and the time has come for members of the regime to seek alternatives.
The Role of Foreign Interests
Foreign diplomacy surrounding the conflict, rather than the rebels fighting within Syria, will determine what the endgame looks like. Stratfor expects a scramble among the foreign stakeholders in Syria to protect their interests and emerge from the growing chaos with some degree of leverage.
The Iranians may have the most to lose. For decades, Iran has deployed a great deal of financial, military and intelligence assets to maintain its strategic foothold in the Levant. That investment evidently is not paying off. In addition, Iran is trapped by demographics. Alawite minority rule in Syria and the regime's extension in Lebanon is the key to Iranian access to the Mediterranean. The Syrian rebels would not have come this far without a regional campaign backed by the United States, Turkey and the Saudis to reverse Iran's geopolitical fortunes over the past decade through the resurrection of Sunni rule in Syria.
Iran is becoming desperate to secure a position at the negotiating table over the impending Syrian transition. Depending on who the perpetrators were, the July 18 bus bombing targeting Israeli tourists in Bulgaria and botched attack on Israeli tourists in Cyprus suggest that Iran is relying on its militant arm to intimidate its way into this negotiation by sending the message that the cost of excluding Iran is too high to bear. Stratfor reads this as more of a sign of desperation than confidence from Tehran.
Israel will prepare for the worst but is unlikely to get militarily involved in the north. Israel Defense Forces are already on high alert for fallout from the Syrian crisis, and the Israeli government is contemplating how to respond to the recent attacks on Israeli tourists. Iran could be attempting to use an Israeli-Hezbollah rematch to divert attention and force its way into a negotiation, but neither Israel nor Hezbollah is interested in a fight. Israel sees no need to get entangled in southern Lebanon when Hezbollah is already in crisis over the impending collapse of the Syrian regime. Indeed, Hezbollah has been telegraphing to Israel that it did not carry out the attack and that it wants to avoid a confrontation. This indicates that Iran may not be able to count on Hezbollah as a reliable proxy as Hezbollah recalibrates its position in Lebanon without a Syrian sponsor.
Turkey, the United States, Saudi Arabia and France will be trying to create an alternative regime that will ensure their interests against Iran. It is still very unclear which individuals from among the remnants of the regime and the rebel opposition will be able to come together and have a chance at unifying a demographically split military to stabilize the country and regain control of jihadists mixed in with the insurgents. Several of the inner-circle members these countries could have intended to work with perished in the July 18 bombing. There are also deep disagreements among the sponsors, former regime insiders and the various opposition factions over how far regime change should go and what the composition of a new regime should be. At this point, the degradation of the al Assad regime is outpacing the planning for a transition.
Russia's Importance
The key country to watch is Russia. The Kremlin has been coy over the past several weeks, refraining from dropping support for the Syrian regime altogether yet signaling that it is ready to deal with alternatives. So while Russia continues to adamantly reject U.N. Security Council sanctions against Syria, it is also meeting with opposition groups and selectively reducing military support for the regime. Russia thought it would be able to prolong the Syrian crisis for a while and thus keep the United States preoccupied with a stalemate between the regime and the rebels by playing both sides of the conflict. But like everyone else with an interest in Syria, Russia is being pushed into action.
Moscow can see that the al Assad regime is expiring, and the Kremlin does not want to miss an opportunity in this transition.
Russia has numerous important reasons to remain deeply involved in Syria. It needs access to a warm water port in the Mediterranean without having to access this body of water from the Black Sea through the Turkish Straits. Syria is also the seventh largest customer for the Russian military industrial complex.
The third reason is the most relevant to the current geopolitical environment. The Syria-Iran axis has given Russia a useful tool for dealing with the United States. Through its relationships with Syria and Iran, Russia can either pressure the United States or open the door for negotiations, depending on where Moscow and Washington stand in their crucial part of negotiations. Russia does not want to lose that leverage and so must find a way to use the Syrian transition to keep the United States dependent on Russian cooperation in this region.
Russia has a deep intelligence footprint in Syria that it has maintained since the Cold War. Stratfor expects Russia to use the relationships related to its intelligence presence to shape a non-al Assad alternative. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French President Francois Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama have all reached out to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past week to consult on Syria. Clearly, these countries believe Russia has an important role to play in this transition, from deciding the fate of al Assad to piecing together a new regime.
Russia may have a different view of how this transition should play out, but it has to make itself appear indispensable to the process if it hopes to maintain a strong bargaining position with the United States. The pressure is on Moscow to demonstrate that indispensability -- assuming of course, that the intentions of the foreign stakeholders are not subsumed by the growing chaos in Syria.
Read more: The Endgame in Syria | Stratfor
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I'm not persuaded at all the keeping the Russians in play is a good idea. Quite the contrary! I'm with Krauthammer that this is quite foolish and that now is the time to get them out of there altogether.
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Exclusive: U.S. Rushes to Stop Syria from Expanding Chemical Weapon Stockpile
from Danger Room by Noah Shachtman
A U.S. Army chemical weapons crew takes samples from an M55 rocket. Photo: U.S. Army
The regime of embattled Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is actively working to enlarge its arsenal of chemical weapons, U.S. officials tell Danger Room. Assad’s operatives have tried repeatedly in recent months to buy up the precursor chemicals for deadly nerve agents like sarin, even as his country plunges further and further into a civil war. The U.S. and its allies have been able to block many of these sales. But that still leaves Assad’s scientists with hundreds of metric tons of dangerous chemicals that could be turned into some of the world’s most gruesome weapons.
“Assad is weathering everything the rebels throw at him. Business is continuing as usual,” one U.S. official privy to intelligence on Syria says. “They’ve been busy little bees.”
Back in July, the Assad regime publicly warned that it might just use chemical weapons to stop “external” forces from interfering in its bloody civil war. American policy-makers became deeply concerned that Damascus just might follow through on the threats. Since the July announcement, however, the world community — including Assad’s allies — have made it clear to Damascus that unleashing weapons of mass destruction was unacceptable. The message appears to have gotten through to Assad’s cadre, at least for now. Talk of direct U.S. intervention in Syria has largely subsided.
“There was a moment we thought they were going to use it — especially back in July,” says the U.S. official, referring to Syria’s chemical arsenal. “But we took a second look at the intelligence, and it was less urgent than we thought.”
That hardly means the danger surrounding Syria’s chemical weapons program has passed. More than 500 metric tons of nerve agent precursors, stored in binary form, are kept at upward of 25 locations scattered around the country. If any one of those sites falls into the wrong hands, it could become a massively lethal event. And in the meantime, Assad is looking to add to his already substantial stockpile.
“Damascus has continued its pursuit of chemical weapons despite the damage to its international reputation and the rising costs of evading international export control on chemical weapons materials,” the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a leading think tank on weapons of mass destruction issues, noted in an August profile of Syria’s illicit arms activities.
Popout
Exactly why is unclear; Assad is perfectly capable of mass slaughter with more conventional means, like tanks and cluster bombs. Perhaps his chemical precursors are relatively unstable, and he needs fresh supplies; perhaps this is a late shopping spree before the international noose tightens completely; perhaps he wants to send a warning to potential adversaries in Jerusalem and Washington.
Whatever the rationale, Assad is continuing his attempts to buy the building blocks of nerve agents like sarin. The CIA and the U.S. State Department, working with allies in the region, have recently prevented sales to Syria of industrial quantities of isopronol. Popularly known as rubbing alcohol, it’s also one of the two main chemical precursors to sarin gas, one of the deadliest nerve agents in existence. The other precursor is methylphosphonyl difluoride, or DF. The Syrians were also recently blocked from acquiring the phosphorous compounds known as halides, some of which can be used to help make DF.
At a recent meeting of the Australia Group, an informal collection of international government officials dedicated the stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, participants “discussed the extensive tactics – including the use of front companies in third countries – [that] the Syrian government uses to obscure its efforts to obtain [regulated equipment], as well as other dual-use items, for proliferation purposes.” Bottom line: “Syria continues to be a country of proliferation concern, with active biological and chemical weapons programs.”
In June, Jane’s Defence Weekly reported that North Korean engineers were spotted in Syria working on Scud-D short-range ballistic missiles, which can carry chemical warheads. Two months later, witnesses tell the German magazine Der Spiegel, Syria test-fired several of its chemical-capable missiles at the al-Safirah research center east of Aleppo.
To Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Center, these reports are signs that “Syria has not stopped the weapons of mass destruction program.”
Among American policy-makers, there’s a growing sense (perhaps a bit wishful) that Damascus will eventually fall to the rebels — despite Assad’s brutal crackdown on the uprising, and despite an often-haphazard international campaign to help the rebellion. On Thursday, rebel group announced that they had seized two more districts in the city of Aleppo. U.S. intelligence agencies are believed to be helping with the training of opposition groups, while the Pentagon denies shipping arms to the rebels. In public, American aid has largely been limited to organizational advice (Washington is trying to set up a council of opposition leaders in Doha in the next few weeks, for instance) and technical assistance. Several hundred Syrian activists have traveled to Istanbul for training in secure communications, funded by the U.S. State Department. The rebel leaders received tips on how to leapfrog firewalls, encrypt their data, and use cellphones without getting caught, as Time magazine recently reported. Then they returned to Syria, many of them with new phones and satellite modems in hand.
In the background, the U.S. is also starting to strategize for how it should operate in a post-Assad Syria. And that includes scoping out plans for disposing of Assad’s stockpiles of nerve and mustard agents. It won’t be easy: Iraq’s former chemical bunkers are still toxic, a decade after Saddam’s overthrow. The U.S. recently said it won’t be done disposing of its Cold War chemical weapon arsenal until 2023.
Disposing of chemical weapons might not be as touchy a political issue in Syria as it is in America. But Assad’s nerve agents will still be tricky to render (relatively) safe — or “demilitarize,” in weapons jargon. DF, for example, can be turned into a somewhat non-toxic slurry, if combined properly with lye and water. The problem is that when DF reacts with water, it generates heat. And since DF has an extremely low boiling point — just 55.4 degrees Celsius — it means that the chances of accidentally releasing toxic gases are really high. “You could easily kill yourself during the demil,” one observer tells Danger Room.
Naturally, this process could only begin once the DF and the rubbing alcohol was gathered up from Assad’s couple dozen storage locations. Then, they’d have to be carted far, far out into the desert — to make sure no bystanders could be hurt — along with the enormous stirred-tank reactors needed to conduct the dangerous chemistry experiments. And when it was all done, there would the result would be a whole lot of hydrofluoric acid, which is itself a poison. In other words, even if the U.S. stops every one of Assad’s chemical weapon shipments from here on out, the legacy of his illicit weapons program will linger on for decades.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/syria-chemical-weapons-2/
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Important implications here methinks , , ,
Islamists Reject Syria Rebel Group, as EU Embraces It .
By FARNAZ FASSIHI
Syrian Islamists fighting the Assad regime rejected a newly formed opposition umbrella group, raising questions about whether the new alliance can achieve its objective: to create a moderate force that can get funds and arms from foreign allies.
The umbrella group also got a boost Monday when the European Union labeled the coalition "legitimate representatives" of the Syrian people. The move stopped short of a French push for the EU to formally recognize the group, as did France, Qatar and Turkey earlier.
The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, which was formed this month in Qatar with the backing of Western allies, was intended to diminish the influence of some of those same hard-line, ultraconservative Muslim militias that on Monday rejected the group.
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Associated Press
Syrian rebel fighters check a tank they say they took after storming a military base in Aleppo on Monday.
.Still, if the Islamist groups fight on as separate entities they pose a challenge to the unity of the opposition and its ability to challenge the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in a coordinated way.
"The situation is getting worse and more difficult for anyone to manage," said Radwan Ziadeh, a prominent opposition figure and director of Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., who said the video was of concern to his group. "Bringing the [rebel Free Syrian Army] under one group is our biggest challenge."
Representatives from 13 Islamist factions, some dressed in military uniform, released a video statement of them rejecting the coalition. A Quran is prominently placed in front of a man reading the statement and on occasion the crowd breaks into chants of "Allah Akbar" or "God is Great." It wasn't clear how many fighters the factions represent, but they included one prominent militant group, Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate.
"We reached a consensus on the establishment of a just Islamic state and the rejection of any foreign plan from coalitions or councils imposed on those of us inside [Syria] no matter which side it [intervention] comes from," the man reading the statement said in the video, which was sent to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group based in London.
The council's supporters say that now is too early to judge whether the group is having impact over the war in Syria, but they assert their formation has given some members of the Free Syrian Army a moral boost. Many ordinary Syrians, opposition supporters say, are heartened to see the political leadership unify.
Meanwhile, EU diplomats said France had pushed European countries to recognize the council and to be invited to the next meeting of foreign ministers in December. Paris also raised the issue of peeling back the EU's arms embargo on Syria to allow the opposition to receive "defensive" weapons. No decisions were made on either issue.
For now, the war grinds on.
On Monday evening a bomb exploded on a minibus in Damascus that injured 10 people, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tallies victims in the conflict. The neighborhood houses low-ranking army officers.
After several days of fighting, the rebel Free Syrian Army said it appeared to be gaining the upper hand over the Special Forces 46th regiment, a well-trained army regiment in al-Atraib, southwest of the largest city of Aleppo. Opposition General Ahmed al-Faj, a field commander there, said his group of about 1,500 fighters had captured dozens of army hostages and controlled most of the 260-hectare headquarters.
The Syrian government didn't put out a statement on the fighting.
Meanwhile, Iran, which has staunchly backed Mr. Assad, hosted a two-day Syria conference called "No to violence, yes to people's rule" in Tehran that ended Monday. Iran's foreign ministry said about 200 people, including members of Syrian opposition and government, attended the event aimed at finding a non-violent solution to the Syrian crisis.
The meetings in Iran were held behind closed doors and Iranian media offered scarce coverage of its content. It was also not immediately clear which fringe factions of Syria's opposition had attended the conference and what they hoped to gain from the Islamic Republic, which has steadfastly backed Mr.Assad.
Syrian activists and opposition members from more mainstream groups said those who had traveled to Iran were not credible voices of Syria's opposition.
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The rebels have shot down a jet. Rumor has it they used a MANPAD , , , just like the 20,000 or so that are unaccounted for in the aftermath of Kadaffy's overthrow and which are often said to be rattling around eastern Libya/Benghazi, which is where Amb. Stevens and the CIA were at work running guns via Turkey to Syria.
Now, this mornings Pravda on the Hudon reports that Team Baraq is considering increasing armed support for the Syrian rebels.
No doubt they will be surprised when Isreali jets start getting shot down in a few years (or sooner) when things come to a head there , , ,
Of course it will be a bigger surprise should any of our jets be shot down , ,,
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No worries, we've been assured that they are mostly secular and only want a triumph of democracy.
The rebels have shot down a jet. Rumor has it they used a MANPAD , , , just like the 20,000 or so that are unaccounted for in the aftermath of Kadaffy's overthrow and which are often said to be rattling around eastern Libya/Benghazi, which is where Amb. Stevens and the CIA were at work running guns via Turkey to Syria.
Now, this mornings Pravda on the Hudon reports that Team Baraq is considering increasing armed support for the Syrian rebels.
No doubt they will be surprised when Isreali jets start getting shot down in a few years (or sooner) when things come to a head there , , ,
Of course it will be a bigger surprise should any of our jets be shot down , ,,
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57556705/u.s--planning-to-take-action-if-syria-crosses-chemical-weapons-red-line/
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57556705/u.s--planning-to-take-action-if-syria-crosses-chemical-weapons-red-line/
I remember when it was a bad thing to use military force on middle eastern dictators based on intel about WMD.
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As Syria's chem WMD grow in prominence on the radar screen, it is worth taking a moment to contemplate what the situation would be had Israel not taken out Syria's nuclear reactor from North Korea.
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Good point on the nuclear facility, (speaking of under-reported stories). Likewise for the Osraik facility in Iraq.
On Chemical weapons: Same people (roughly) who said it was a lie to have said there were chemical weapons in Iraq in 2002, that were (reportedly) trucked to Syria while we were debating the invasion, and not found in Iraq in 2003-2006 are now having to confront the danger they pose in Syria.
Had we bypassed the UN and attacked Saddam sooner instead of with 8 months notice to clean up and clear out, perhaps we wouldn't have falsely called Bush, Cheney, Powell, Condoleeza Rice liars then, saved thousands of Americans lives with a quicker war then, and the Syrian people might not be facing WMD attacks from their own government today.
Or is the Obama administration lying now about WMD - in order to, as Barack Obama said in 2002, "distract us from...a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from ...scandals and [economic indicators] worst...since the Great Depression"? http://usliberals.about.com/od/extraordinaryspeeches/a/Obama2002War.htm
At least we know he has given it some thought.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/2012/12/06/panetta-worries-about-syria-chemical-weapons/G3GhCWtRTFuEFunFjAJG4K/story.html
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Apart from the idea that Syria got its WMD from Saddam Hussein, what other theories/facts are there to explain how it is that it has them?
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Apart from the idea that Syria got its WMD from Saddam Hussein, what other theories/facts are there to explain how it is that it has them?
"High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ce85929c-3e0f-11e2-93cb-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2EJSWPnpl
Russia, which has stood firmly by Mr Assad, also has a responsibility to ensure the regime does not use WMD. The Soviet Union supplied Syria with much of its stocks. Moscow today has good knowledge of their location."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ce85929c-3e0f-11e2-93cb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EJSPLcoh
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http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/2/18/233023.shtml?s=lh
Ex-Official: Russia Moved Saddam's WMD
Kenneth R. Timmerman
Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006
A top Pentagon official who was responsible for tracking Saddam Hussein's weapons programs before and after the 2003 liberation of Iraq, has provided the first-ever account of how Saddam Hussein "cleaned up" his weapons of mass destruction stockpiles to prevent the United States from discovering them.
"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon," former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw told an audience Saturday at a privately sponsored "Intelligence Summit" in Alexandria, Va. (www.intelligencesummit.org).
"They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units out of uniform, that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence," he said.
Shaw has dealt with weapons-related issues and export controls as a U.S. government official for 30 years, and was serving as deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security when the events he described today occurred.
He called the evacuation of Saddam's WMD stockpiles "a well-orchestrated campaign using two neighboring client states with which the Russian leadership had a long time security relationship."
Shaw was initially tapped to make an inventory of Saddam's conventional weapons stockpiles, based on intelligence estimates of arms deals he had concluded with the former Soviet Union, China and France.
He estimated that Saddam had amassed 100 million tons of munitions - roughly 60 percent of the entire U.S. arsenal. "The origins of these weapons were Russian, Chinese and French in declining order of magnitude, with the Russians holding the lion's share and the Chinese just edging out the French for second place."
But as Shaw's office increasingly got involved in ongoing intelligence to identify Iraqi weapons programs before the war, he also got "a flow of information from British contacts on the ground at the Syrian border and from London" via non-U.S. government contacts.
"The intelligence included multiple sightings of truck convoys, convoys going north to the Syrian border and returning empty," he said.
Shaw worked closely with Julian Walker, a former British ambassador who had decades of experience in Iraq, and an unnamed Ukranian-American who was directly plugged in to the head of Ukraine's intelligence service.
The Ukrainians were eager to provide the United States with documents from their own archives on Soviet arms transfers to Iraq and on ongoing Russian assistance to Saddam, to thank America for its help in securing Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, Shaw said.
In addition to the convoys heading to Syria, Shaw said his contacts "provided information about steel drums with painted warnings that had been moved to a cellar of a hospital in Beirut."
But when Shaw passed on his information to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and others within the U.S. intelligence community, he was stunned by their response.
"My report on the convoys was brushed off as ‘Israeli disinformation,'" he said.
One month later, Shaw learned that the DIA general counsel complained to his own superiors that Shaw had eaten from the DIA "rice bowl." It was a Washington euphemism that meant he had commited the unpardonable sin of violating another agency's turf.
The CIA responded in even more diabolical fashion. "They trashed one of my Brits and tried to declare him persona non grata to the intelligence community," Shaw said. "We got constant indicators that Langley was aggressively trying to discredit both my Ukranian-American and me in Kiev," in addition to his other sources.
But Shaw's information had not originated from a casual contact. His Ukranian-American aid was a personal friend of David Nicholas, a Western ambassador in Kiev, and of Igor Smesko, head of Ukrainian intelligence.
Smesko had been a military attaché in Washington in the early 1990s when Ukraine first became independent and Dick Cheney was secretary of defense. "Smesko had told Cheney that when Ukraine became free of Russia he wanted to show his friendship for the United States."
Helping out on Iraq provided him with that occasion.
"Smesko had gotten to know Gen. James Clapper, now director of the Geospacial Intelligence Agency, but then head of DIA," Shaw said.
But it was Shaw's own friendship to the head of Britain's MI6 that brought it all together during a two-day meeting in London that included Smeshko's people, the MI6 contingent, and Clapper, who had been deputized by George Tenet to help work the issue of what happened to Iraq's WMD stockpiles.
In the end, here is what Shaw learned:
In December 2002, former Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, came to Iraq and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
Primakov supervised the execution of long-standing secret agreements, signed between Iraqi intelligence and the Russian GRU (military intelligence), that provided for clean-up operations to be conducted by Russian and Iraqi military personnel to remove WMDs, production materials and technical documentation from Iraq, so the regime could announce that Iraq was "WMD free."
Shaw said that this type GRU operation, known as "Sarandar," or "emergency exit," has long been familiar to U.S. intelligence officials from Soviet-bloc defectors as standard GRU practice.
In addition to the truck convoys, which carried Iraqi WMD to Syria and Lebanon in February and March 2003 "two Russian ships set sail from the (Iraqi) port of Umm Qasr headed for the Indian Ocean," where Shaw believes they "deep-sixed" additional stockpiles of Iraqi WMD from flooded bunkers in southern Iraq that were later discovered by U.S. military intelligence personnel.
The Russian "clean-up" operation was entrusted to a combination of GRU and Spetsnaz troops and Russian military and civilian personnel in Iraq "under the command of two experienced ex-Soviet generals, Colonel-General Vladislav Achatov and Colonel-General Igor Maltsev, both retired and posing as civilian commercial consultants."
Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz reported on Oct. 30, 2004, that Achatov and Maltsev had been photographed receiving medals from Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed in a Baghdad building bombed by U.S. cruise missiles during the first U.S. air raids in early March 2003.
Shaw says he leaked the information about the two Russian generals and the clean-up operation to Gertz in October 2004 in an effort to "push back" against claims by Democrats that were orchestrated with CBS News to embarrass President Bush just one week before the November 2004 presidential election. The press sprang bogus claims that 377 tons of high explosives of use to Iraq's nuclear weapons program had "gone missing" after the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq, while ignoring intelligence of the Russian-orchestrated evacuation of Iraqi WMDs.
The two Russian generals "had visited Baghdad no fewer than 20 times in the preceding five to six years," Shaw revealed. U.S. intelligence knew "the identity and strength of the various Spetsnaz units, their dates of entry and exit in Iraq, and the fact that the effort (to clean up Iraq's WMD stockpiles) with a planning conference in Baku from which they flew to Baghdad."
The Baku conference, chaired by Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, "laid out the plans for the Sarandar clean-up effort so that Shoigu could leave after the keynote speech for Baghdad to orchestrate the planning for the disposal of the WMD."
Subsequent intelligence reports showed that Russian Spetsnaz operatives "were now changing to civilian clothes from military/GRU garb," Shaw said. "The Russian denial of my revelations in late October 2004 included the statement that "only Russian civilians remained in Baghdad." That was the "only true statement" the Russians made, Shaw ironized.
The evacuation of Saddam's WMD to Syria and Lebanon "was an entirely controlled Russian GRU operation," Shaw said. "It was the brainchild of General Yevgenuy Primakov."
The goal of the clean-up was "to erase all trace of Russian involvement" in Saddam's WMD programs, and "was a masterpiece of military camouflage and deception."
Just as astonishing as the Russian clean-up operation were efforts by Bush administration appointees, including Defense Department spokesman Laurence DiRita, to smear Shaw and to cover up the intelligence information he brought to light.
"Larry DiRita made sure that this story would never grow legs," Shaw said. "He whispered sotto voce [quietly] to journalists that there was no substance to my information and that it was the product of an unbalanced mind."
Shaw suggested that the answer of why the Bush administration had systematically "ignored Russia's involvement" in evacuating Saddam's WMD stockpiles "could be much bigger than anyone has thought," but declined to speculate what exactly was involved.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney was less reticent. He thought the reason was Iran.
"With Iran moving faster than anyone thought in its nuclear programs," he told NewsMax, "the administration needed the Russians, the Chinese and the French, and was not interested in information that would make them look bad."
McInerney agreed that there was "clear evidence" that Saddam had WMD. "Jack Shaw showed when it left Iraq, and how."
Former Undersecretary of Defense Richard Perle, a strong supporter of the war against Saddam, blasted the CIA for orchestrating a smear campaign against the Bush White House and the war in Iraq.
"The CIA has been at war with the Bush administration almost from the beginning," he said in a keynote speech at the Intelligence Summit on Saturday.
He singled out recent comments by Paul Pillar, a former top CIA Middle East analyst, alleging that the Bush White House "cherry-picked" intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq.
"Mr. Pillar was in a very senior position and was able to make his views known, if that is indeed what he believed," Perle said.
"He (Pillar) briefed senior policy officials before the start of the Iraq war in 2003. If he had had reservations about the war, he could have voiced them at that time." But according to officials briefed by Pillar, Perle said, he never did.
Even more inexplicable, Perle said, were the millions of documents "that remain untranslated" among those seized from Saddam Hussein's intelligence services.
"I think the intelligence community does not want them to be exploited," he said.
Among those documents, presented Saturday at the conference by former FBI translator Bill Tierney, were transcripts of Saddam's palace conversations with top aides in which he discussed ongoing nuclear weapons plans in 2000, well after the U.N. arms inspectors believed he had ceased all nuclear weapons work.
"What was most disturbing in those tapes," Tierney said, "was the fact that the individuals briefing Saddam were totally unknown to the U.N. Special Commission."
In addition, Tierney said, the plasma uranium programs Saddam discussed with his aids as ongoing operations in 2000 had been dismissed as "old programs" disbanded years earlier, according to the final CIA report on Iraq's weapons programs, presented in 2004 by the Iraq Survey Group.
"When I first heard those tapes" about the uranium plasma program, "it completely floored me," Tierney said.
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Interesting points.
"The Soviet Union supplied Syria with much of its stocks. Moscow today has good knowledge of their location."
This seems contradictory, the Soviet Union ended 21 years ago. The Russians are still moving them, inside Syria? Chemical weapons tend to have a degradation quality / shelf life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin#Degradation_and_shelf_life
It is Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton claiming to have good knowledge. Reminds me of another WMD chase. Will they go to congress and to the UN like Iraq, or handle it like Libya, Pakistan, Yemen?
Are American security interests at stake? If so, is this any time to cut defense funding??
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Ummm wasn't there/isn;t there a treaty to which the Soviet Empire/Russia was/is a signatory prohibiting transfer of WMD?
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This is six days old, but still seems quite pertinent:
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Stratfor
By Omar Lamrani
The battle for Damascus is raging with increasing intensity while rebels continue to make substantial advances in Syria's north and east. Every new air base, city or town that falls to the rebels further underlines that Bashar al Assad's writ over the country is shrinking. It is no longer possible to accurately depict al Assad as the ruler of Syria. At this point, he is merely the head of a large and powerful armed force, albeit one that still controls a significant portion of the country.
The nature of the conflict has changed significantly since it began nearly two years ago. The rebels initially operated with meager resources and equipment, but bolstered by defections, some outside support and their demographic advantage, they have managed to gain ground on what was previously a far superior enemy. Even the regime's qualitative superiority in equipment is fast eroding as the rebels start to frequently utilize main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, rocket and tube artillery and even man-portable air-defense systems captured from the regime's stockpiles.
Weary and stumbling, the regime is attempting to push back rebel forces in and near Damascus and to maintain a corridor to the Alawite coast while delaying rebel advances in the rest of the country. Al Assad and his allies will fight for every inch, fully aware that their power depends on the ability of the regime forces to hold ground.
The Battle for Damascus
Visit our Syria page for related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.
It is important to remember that, despite considerable setbacks, al Assad's forces still control a sizable portion of Syria and its population centers. After failing to take Damascus in Operation Damascus Volcano in July, the rebels are again stepping up their efforts and operations in the Damascus area. However, unlike in their previous failed operation, this time the rebels are relying on an intensive guerrilla campaign to exhaust and degrade al Assad's substantial forces in Damascus and its countryside.
After the last surge in fighting around Damascus in July and August, the regime kept large numbers of troops in the area. These forces continued search and destroy operations near the capital despite the considerable pressure facing its forces in the rest of the country, including in Aleppo. Once the rebels began to make gains in the north and east, the regime was forced to dispatch some of its forces around Damascus to reinforce other fronts. Unfortunately for the regime, its operations in the capital area had not significantly degraded local rebel forces. Rebels in the area began intensifying their operations once more, forcing the regime to recall many of its units to Damascus.
Aware of the magnitude of the threat, the regime has reportedly shifted its strategy in the battle for Damascus to isolating the city proper from the numerous suburbs. The rebels have made considerable headway in the Damascus suburbs. For example, on Nov. 25 rebels overran the Marj al-Sultan military air base in eastern Ghouta, east of the capital. Rebel operations in the outskirts of Damascus have also interrupted the flow of goods to and from the city, causing the prices of basic staples such as bread to skyrocket.
Rebel Gains in the East and North
Damascus is not the only area where the regime is finding itself under considerable pressure. The rebels have made some major advances in the last month in the energy-rich Deir el-Zour governorate to the east. Having seized a number of towns, airfields and military bases, the rebels have also taken the majority of the oil fields in the governorate. They captured the Al-Ward oil field Nov. 4, the Conoco natural gas reserve Nov. 27 and, after al Assad's forces withdrew from it on Nov. 29, the Omar oil field north of the town of Mayadeen. Al Assad's forces now control only five oil fields, all located west of the city of Deir el-Zour. With the battle for the city and its associated airfield intensifying, even those remaining fields are at risk of falling into rebel hands.
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The rebel successes in Deir el-Zour have effectively cut the regime's ground lines of communication and supply to Iraq. They have also starved the regime of the vast majority of its oil revenue and affected its ability to fuel its war machine. At the same time, the rebels are reportedly already seeking to capitalize on their seizure of the eastern oil fields. According to reports, the rebels are smuggling oil to Turkey and Iraq and using the revenue to purchase arms. They are also reportedly using the oil and natural gas locally for power generators and fuel.
While all of eastern Syria may soon fall into rebel hands, rebels in the north have continued to isolate al Assad forces in Idlib and Aleppo governorates, particularly in the capital cities of those two provinces. After overrunning the 46th regiment near Atarib on Nov. 19 following a two-month siege, the rebels are now looking to further squeeze remaining regime forces in Aleppo by taking the Sheikh Suleiman base north of the 46th regiment's former base.
The Rebels' Improved Air Defense Capability
Isolated and surrounded, regime forces in the north are increasingly relying on air support for both defense and supply. However, this advantage is deteriorating every day and is increasingly threatened by the rebels' improved air defense arsenal and tactics.
The rebels first attempted to acquire air defense weaponry by seizing heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft artillery. They captured a number of air defense bases, taking 12.7 mm DShK heavy machine guns, 14.5 mm KPV heavy machine guns and even 23 mm ZU-23-2 autocannons. Over time, the rebels became more proficient with these weapons, and an increasing number of Syrian air force fixed-wing and rotary aircraft were shot down. The rebels also formed hunter-killer groups with air defense equipment mounted on flatbed trucks that provided them mobile platforms for targeting regime air and infantry units.
As more and more regime bases were taken, the rebels were able to bolster their air defense equipment through the capture of a number of man-portable air-defense systems. At the outset of the conflict, the Syrian military maintained a large inventory of shoulder-fired air-defense missiles, likely thousands of missiles ranging from early generation SA-7s to very advanced SA-24s. These missiles were stored in army bases across the country. There are also unconfirmed reports that Qatar and Saudi Arabia may have transferred some man-portable air-defense systems to the rebels through Turkey.
The rebels tallied their first confirmed kill with shoulder-fired air-defense missiles Nov. 27, when they shot down a Syrian Arab Air Force Mi-8/17 helicopter near Aleppo city. The weapon system used in the attack was likely an SA-7, SA-16 or SA-24 captured from the 46th regiment. The surface-to-air missiles are a serious upgrade in the rebels' air defense capability.
The Fight Continues
Having isolated al Assad's forces in the north and made substantial advances in the east, the rebels are poised to push farther into the Orontes River Valley to relieve the beleaguered rebel units in the Rastan, Homs and al-Qusayr areas of Homs governorate. For months, regime forces have sought to overwhelm the remaining rebel forces in Homs city, but the rebels have managed to hold out. The rebels are also set to begin pushing south along the main M5 thoroughfare to Khan Sheikhoun and the approaches to Hama. However, first they need to overwhelm the remaining regime forces in Wadi al-Dhaif near Maarrat al-Numan.
Alternatively, the regime is fighting hard to maintain its control over the Orontes River Valley around Homs in order to keep an open corridor linking Damascus to the mostly Alawite coast. Not only is this corridor at risk of eventually being cut off, but the regime is also facing a substantial push by rebel forces into northeastern Latakia governorate from Idlib. Rebels have advanced in the vicinity of the Turkman Mountain, have taken control of Bdama and are now fighting their way down in the direction of Latakia city.
While events in Damascus and Rif Damascus are increasingly worrisome for the regime, al Assad's forces in the rest of Syria are also under considerable pressure from rebel advances. It is by no means certain that al Assad's forces are under imminent threat of collapse because they still hold a great deal of territory and no major city has yet been completely taken by the rebels. The retreat and consolidation of al Assad's forces also allows them to maintain shorter and less vulnerable lines of supply. However, it is clear that the regime is very much on the defensive and has been forced to gradually contract its lines toward a core that now encompasses Damascus, the Orontes River Valley and the mostly Alawite coast. With the regime's situation rapidly deteriorating, even the attempt to stage a gradual withdrawal to the core is risky.
Read more: Al Assad's Last Stand | Stratfor
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A faction makes its case for guns and money from the US:
How the U.S. Can Help Avert A Failed State In Syria
Time to stop 'leading from behind' and get involved before Syria disintegrates..
Article Comments (11) more in Opinion | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ».
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By NASER DANAN
AND LOUAY SAKKA
President Obama on Tuesday pledged an additional $155 million in humanitarian aid to the Syrian opposition and refugees fleeing the murderous regime of Bashar Assad, bringing the total over two years to $365 million. The president also pledged, as he has before, that "The Assad regime will come to an end. The Syrian people will have their chance to forge their own future. And they will continue to find a partner in the United States of America."
While the aid is welcome and the message hopeful, what is missing is any promise of military assistance for the Free Syrian Army. Although Washington has not provided money or weapons to the FSA, it has given a green light to such transfers from other countries (mainly in the Persian Gulf) and it has authorized our U.S.-based nonprofit, the Syrian Support Group, to collect money for vetted Free Syrian Army commanders. The Obama administration has also reportedly allowed some intelligence sharing with the FSA, via Turkish and Jordanian intelligence.
This tactic of "leading from behind" should end. What is now clear to Washington and to other players in the region is that a Syrian endgame is upon us. Bashar Assad has lost control over much of the country, including a number of key military bases and the main highways that provide the lifeline of support to his remaining, demoralized troops. All that Assad firmly controls is Damascus, and his air superiority has been limited by the FSA's growing antiaircraft defenses, acquired mainly from seized Syrian army depots.
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Free Syrian Army fighters in Damascus on Thursday
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In desperation, the Syrian dictator has resorted to firing Scud missiles toward liberated areas in the north. He may also be transporting chemical weapons with a view to their possible use. Syrians and outside observers alike understand that a regime losing control of its highways, airports and military bases no longer controls the country and that its downfall is within sight.
What is most important now is to avert a failed state, akin to Somalia, that would provide militant extremists with a haven and possible access to chemical weapons in a key strategic location. This could also result in a wider sectarian conflict throughout the region. To assure this doesn't happen, the Obama administration should take these proactive steps:
• Greater support for the Syrian Opposition Coalition. Mr. Obama has already recognized the SOC as the sole representative of the Syrian people. Now is the time to extend significant financial, diplomatic and technical support so that it can continue to gain legitimacy and be ready to help negotiate a peaceful transition. Such support would include backing the creation of a representative interim government and permitting the interim government access to any frozen Syrian government funds.
• Greater support for the Free Syrian Army. Financial, diplomatic and technical support are needed if the FSA's new unified command, the Military Supreme Council, is to fill the security vacuum and secure chemical weapons stockpiles when the Assad regime falls, and serve to provide order and security to areas most vulnerable to potential revenge killings in a post-Assad era. This can be further facilitated by helping develop a core group of well-trained elite FSA forces. Such support would also help deter increasing extremism among some groups within the broader armed opposition and help further tip the military balance of power.
• Support a transitional justice plan. With the backing of Washington and the international community, a transitional justice plan would govern a truth-and-reconciliation process for the post-Assad period. But the establishment of such a plan now could also fast-track Assad's fall by providing incentives—including offers of amnesty—for the remaining members of Assad's inner circle to defect. The plan could also publicly target a fairly narrow list of gross perpetrators of war crimes, thus letting government officials who are not on the list know that they would not be arrested if they sought a way out of their predicament.
The United Nations recently estimated the death toll of Syria's civil war at more than 60,000. What began in March 2011 as a peaceful uprising against the Assad dictatorship has morphed into a bloody struggle for freedom, with the potential descent into a wider, sectarian war. Ultimately, the Syrian people will triumph. The U.S. can do more to help them.
Dr. Danan and Mr. Sakka are on the board of directors of the Syrian Support Group, a U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to the establishment of a free, independent and democratic Syria.
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Ah, I'm sure they'll be "mostly secular" this time, right?
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The Consequences of Intervening in Syria
January 31, 2013 | 1030 GMT
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Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
Vice President of Analysis
The French military's current campaign to dislodge jihadist militants from northern Mali and the recent high-profile attack against a natural gas facility in Algeria are both directly linked to the foreign intervention in Libya that overthrew the Gadhafi regime. There is also a strong connection between these events and foreign powers' decision not to intervene in Mali when the military conducted a coup in March 2012. The coup occurred as thousands of heavily armed Tuareg tribesmen were returning home to northern Mali after serving in Moammar Gadhafi's military, and the confluence of these events resulted in an implosion of the Malian military and a power vacuum in the north. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other jihadists were able to take advantage of this situation to seize power in the northern part of the African nation.
As all these events transpire in northern Africa, another type of foreign intervention is occurring in Syria. Instead of direct foreign military intervention, like that taken against the Gadhafi regime in Libya in 2011, or the lack of intervention seen in Mali in March 2012, the West -- and its Middle Eastern partners -- have pursued a middle-ground approach in Syria. That is, these powers are providing logistical aid to the various Syrian rebel factions but are not intervening directly.
Just as there were repercussions for the decisions to conduct a direct intervention in Libya and not to intervene in Mali, there will be repercussions for the partial intervention approach in Syria. Those consequences are becoming more apparent as the crisis drags on.
Intervention in Syria
For more than a year now, countries such as the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and European states have been providing aid to the Syrian rebels. Much of this aid has been in the form of humanitarian assistance, providing things such as shelter, food and medical care for refugees. Other aid has helped provide the rebels with non-lethal military supplies such as radios and ballistic vests. But a review of the weapons spotted on the battlefield reveals that the rebels are also receiving an increasing number of lethal supplies.
Visit our Syria page for related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.
For example, there have been numerous videos released showing Syrian rebels using weapons such as the M79 Osa rocket launcher, the RPG-22, the M-60 recoilless rifle and the RBG-6 multiple grenade launcher. The Syrian government has also released videos of these weapons after seizing them in arms caches. What is so interesting about these weapons is that they were not in the Syrian military's inventory prior to the crisis, and they all likely were purchased from Croatia. We have also seen many reports and photos of Syrian rebels carrying Austrian Steyr Aug rifles, and the Swiss government has complained that Swiss-made hand grenades sold to the United Arab Emirates are making their way to the Syrian rebels.
With the Syrian rebel groups using predominantly second-hand weapons from the region, weapons captured from the regime, or an assortment of odd ordnance they have manufactured themselves, the appearance and spread of these exogenous weapons in rebel arsenals over the past several months is at first glance evidence of external arms supply. The appearance of a single Steyr Aug or RBG-6 on the battlefield could be an interesting anomaly, but the variety and concentration of these weapons seen in Syria are well beyond the point where they could be considered coincidental.
This means that the current level of external intervention in Syria is similar to the level exercised against the Soviet Union and its communist proxies following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The external supporters are providing not only training, intelligence and assistance, but also weapons -- exogenous weapons that make the external provision of weapons obvious to the world. It is also interesting that in Syria, like Afghanistan, two of the major external supporters are Washington and Riyadh -- though in Syria they are joined by regional powers such as Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, rather than Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, the Saudis and the Americans allowed their partners in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to determine which of the myriad militant groups in Afghanistan received the bulk of the funds and weapons they were providing. This resulted in two things. First, the Pakistanis funded and armed groups that they thought they could best use as surrogates in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. Second, they pragmatically tended to funnel cash and weapons to the groups that were the most successful on the battlefield -- groups such as those led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose effectiveness on the battlefield was tied directly to their zealous theology that made waging jihad against the infidels a religious duty and death during such a struggle the ultimate accomplishment.
A similar process has been taking place for nearly two years in Syria. The opposition groups that have been the most effective on the battlefield have tended to be the jihadist-oriented groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra. Not surprisingly, one reason for their effectiveness was the skills and tactics they learned fighting the coalition forces in Iraq. Yet despite this, the Saudis -- along with the Qataris and the Emiratis -- have been arming and funding the jihadist groups in large part because of their success on the battlefield. As my colleague Kamran Bokhari noted in February 2012, the situation in Syria was providing an opportunity for jihadists, even without external support. In the fractured landscape of the Syrian opposition, the unity of purpose and battlefield effectiveness of the jihadists was in itself enough to ensure that these groups attracted a large number of new recruits.
But that is not the only factor conducive to the radicalization of Syrian rebels. First, war -- and particularly a brutal, drawn-out war -- tends to make extremists out of the fighters involved in it. Think Stalingrad, the Cold War struggles in Central America or the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans following the dissolution of Yugoslavia; this degree of struggle and suffering tends to make even non-ideological people ideological. In Syria, we have seen many secular Muslims become stringent jihadists. Second, the lack of hope for an intervention by the West removed any impetus for maintaining a secular narrative. Many fighters who had pinned their hopes on NATO were greatly disappointed and angered that their suffering was ignored. It is not unusual for Syrian fighters to say something akin to, "What has the West done for us? We now have only God."
When these ideological factors were combined with the infusion of money and arms that has been channeled to jihadist groups in Syria over the past year, the growth of Syrian jihadist groups accelerated dramatically. Not only are they a factor on the battlefield today, but they also will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.
The Saudi Gambit
Despite the jihadist blowback the Saudis experienced after the end of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan -- and the current object lesson of the jihadists Syria sent to fight U.S. forces in Iraq now leading groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra -- the Saudi government has apparently calculated that its use of jihadist proxies in Syria is worth the inherent risk.
There are some immediate benefits for Riyadh. First, the Saudis hope to be able to break the arc of Shiite influence that reaches from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Having lost the Sunni counterweight to Iranian power in the region with the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the installation of a Shiite-led government friendly to Iran, the Saudis view the possibility of installing a friendly Sunni regime in Syria as a dramatic improvement to their national security.
Supporting the jihad in Syria as a weapon against Iranian influence also gives the Saudis a chance to burnish their Islamic credentials internally in an effort to help stave off criticism that they are too secular and Westernized. It allows the Saudi regime the opportunity to show that it is helping Muslims under assault by the vicious Syrian regime.
Supporting jihadists in Syria also gives the Saudis an opportunity to ship their own radicals to Syria, where they can fight and possibly die. With a large number of unemployed, underemployed and radicalized young men, the jihad in Syria provides a pressure valve similar to the past struggles in Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. The Saudis are not only trying to winnow down their own troubled youth; we have received reports from a credible source that the Saudis are also facilitating the travel of Yemeni men to training camps in Turkey, where they are trained and equipped before being sent to Syria to fight. The reports also indicate that the young men are traveling for free and receiving a stipend for their service. These young radicals from Saudi Arabia and Yemen will even further strengthen the jihadist groups in Syria by providing them with fresh troops.
The Saudis are gaining temporary domestic benefits from supporting jihad in Syria, but the conflict will not last forever, nor will it result in the deaths of all the young men who go there to fight. This means that someday the men who survive will come back home, and through the process we refer to as "tactical Darwinism" the inept fighters will have been weeded out, leaving a core of competent militants that the Saudis will have to deal with.
But the problems posed by jihadist proxies in Syria will have effects beyond the House of Saud. The Syrian jihadists will pose a threat to the stability of Syria in much the same way the Afghan groups did in the civil war they launched for control of Afghanistan after the fall of the Najibullah regime. Indeed, the violence in Afghanistan got worse after Najibullah's fall in 1992, and the suffering endured by Afghan civilians in particular was egregious.
Now we are seeing that the jihadist militants in Libya pose a threat not only to the Libyan regime -- there are serious problems in eastern Libya -- but also to foreign interests in the country, as seen in the attack on the British ambassador and the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Moreover, the events in Mali and Algeria in recent months show that Libya-based militants and the weapons they possess also pose a regional threat. Similar long-lasting and wide-ranging repercussions can be expected to flow from the intervention in Syria.
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Read more: The Consequences of Intervening in Syria | Stratfor
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WSJ
WASHINGTON—A proposal to arm Syrian rebels was backed by the Pentagon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, but the White House decided not to act on the plan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed publicly for the first time at a Senate hearing on Thursday that they supported the proposal last year by senior officials including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA director David Petraeus.
The officials came to favor the plan last year with the meltdown of an international diplomatic initiative to end the Syrian civil war, according to current and former officials involved in the deliberations.
The White House stalled the proposal because of lingering questions about which rebels could be trusted with the arms, whether the transfers would make a difference in the campaign to remove Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and whether the weapons would add to the suffering, the U.S. officials said. A U.S. official cited the findings of a CIA team of analysts, which cast doubt on the impact of arming the rebels on the conflict.
The disclosures thrust a spotlight on the extent to which President Barack Obama charts his own course in the face of calls to action by members of his own team, and on the extent of his caution about entering a new conflict. The White House declined to comment on internal administration deliberations.
In the months after the start of the conflict in Syria in March 2011, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA began presenting the White House with multiple options for intervening with force, covert action or arms supplies. Options have included establishing a no-fly zone, bombing Syrian aircraft in their hangars, and funneling light arms and actionable intelligence to a select group of American-vetted rebels.
Gen. Dempsey, who is Mr. Obama's top military adviser, and other Pentagon leaders had long voiced caution about any military intervention, including a no-fly zone, because of Syria's advanced air defenses and concerns about upsetting Russia. Pentagon officials cited concerns Moscow could interfere with some U.S. supply lines to Afghanistan.
Pentagon officials, like others in the administration, were also wary of supporting rebels whose intentions and allegiances remained unclear, though CIA officers in the field had privately advocated providing arms to select rebels deemed friendly to the West, to build good will for the day when Mr. Assad is gone, according to U.S. officials.
A key turning point for many at the State Department came after a diplomatic initiative led by international envoy Kofi Annan broke down in June 2012, current and former officials said. The U.S. had seen the plan, which was supported by Russia and other major powers, as a breakthrough that would lead to a transitional governing body for Syria.
The deal's demise spurred support within the State Department for arming the rebels, according to U.S. officials. Mrs. Clinton joined forces with Mr. Petraeus to push for the administration to embrace a proposal for delivering arms.
Advocates said doing so would provide the U.S. with opportunities to shape events on the ground and build alliances.
As concern grew about Syrian unrest in the late summer and early fall, Mr. Panetta and Gen. Dempsey threw in their support, a position the two men kept private until Thursday's Senate hearing.
The proposal was also backed by the nation's top spy, James Clapper, the director of the National Intelligence, officials said.
Around the same time, in a reflection of the ongoing debate, a team of CIA intelligence analysts found that the introduction of U.S. arms wouldn't "materially" affect the situation on the ground or help the rebels overthrow Mr. Assad, a U.S. official said. The rebels were already getting substantial quantities of weapons from other countries, including U.S. allies in the Gulf, the official said. Other officials said such findings are advisory and carry far less weight than a formal intelligence assessment produced by the director of National Intelligence.
In another blow to the proposal, many of its leading advocates were poised to leave the administration. Mr. Petraeus resigned in November, over revelations that he had an extramarital affair.
Mr. Obama, in December, recognized a revamped Syrian opposition movement, but has since made no moves to introduce U.S.-supplied arms into the conflict.
The disclosures about the senior defense officials' support for the proposal came in response to sharp questions from Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) at a hearing on Thursday which was called to examine the military's response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, but which also delved into other foreign-policy challenges, including the conflict in Syria.
"How many more have to die before you recommend military action?" Sen. McCain asked Gen. Dempsey and Mr. Panetta, citing United Nations estimates that up to 60,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war. "And did you support the recommendation by…then-Secretary of State Clinton and then-head of CIA, Mr. Petraeus, that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria?"
Both Gen. Dempsey and Mr. Panetta said they did.
Mr. Panetta said he agreed with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus but also supported Mr. Obama's decision not to act on the proposal. "Obviously there were a number of factors that were involved here that ultimately led to the president's decision to make it nonlethal," Mr. Panetta said.
Mr. Panetta, who is preparing to step down from his post, "isn't committed to lethal aid now," and believes more study is required before proceeding, an official close to the defense secretary said.
Aides to Gen. Dempsey, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus had no immediate comment on the officials' positions after the testimony.
In Syria, rebel groups had hoped that Mr. Obama's re-election would give him the political leeway to throw greater support behind the Syrian opposition. But current and former officials said the rebels misjudged the White House, which remains reluctant to enter a new conflict.
Current and former officials said the path forward for the administration remains unclear.
Mr. Kerry, the new secretary of State, and Chuck Hagel, Mr. Obama's nominee to succeed Mr. Panetta at the Pentagon, are seen as more closely aligned with Mr. Obama's cautious approach to intervention in Syria than their predecessors.
But officials said John Brennan, Mr. Obama's longtime counterterrorism chief and nominee to succeed Mr. Petraeus as CIA director, could embrace greater covert action in Syria. Mr. Brennan is close to Mr. Obama and has made clear his concern about al Qaeda's growing strength in Syria.
While Mr. Obama has avoided military involvement, he has authorized nonlethal support to the rebels as well as humanitarian assistance. In one possible exception, he has warned Mr. Assad that using chemical weapons would be a "red line" that could prompt an American response.
Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com
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I wonder....
WSJ
WASHINGTON—A proposal to arm Syrian rebels was backed by the Pentagon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, but the White House decided not to act on the plan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed publicly for the first time at a Senate hearing on Thursday that they supported the proposal last year by senior officials including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA director David Petraeus.
The officials came to favor the plan last year with the meltdown of an international diplomatic initiative to end the Syrian civil war, according to current and former officials involved in the deliberations.
The White House stalled the proposal because of lingering questions about which rebels could be trusted with the arms, whether the transfers would make a difference in the campaign to remove Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and whether the weapons would add to the suffering, the U.S. officials said. A U.S. official cited the findings of a CIA team of analysts, which cast doubt on the impact of arming the rebels on the conflict.
The disclosures thrust a spotlight on the extent to which President Barack Obama charts his own course in the face of calls to action by members of his own team, and on the extent of his caution about entering a new conflict. The White House declined to comment on internal administration deliberations.
In the months after the start of the conflict in Syria in March 2011, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA began presenting the White House with multiple options for intervening with force, covert action or arms supplies. Options have included establishing a no-fly zone, bombing Syrian aircraft in their hangars, and funneling light arms and actionable intelligence to a select group of American-vetted rebels.
Gen. Dempsey, who is Mr. Obama's top military adviser, and other Pentagon leaders had long voiced caution about any military intervention, including a no-fly zone, because of Syria's advanced air defenses and concerns about upsetting Russia. Pentagon officials cited concerns Moscow could interfere with some U.S. supply lines to Afghanistan.
Pentagon officials, like others in the administration, were also wary of supporting rebels whose intentions and allegiances remained unclear, though CIA officers in the field had privately advocated providing arms to select rebels deemed friendly to the West, to build good will for the day when Mr. Assad is gone, according to U.S. officials.
A key turning point for many at the State Department came after a diplomatic initiative led by international envoy Kofi Annan broke down in June 2012, current and former officials said. The U.S. had seen the plan, which was supported by Russia and other major powers, as a breakthrough that would lead to a transitional governing body for Syria.
The deal's demise spurred support within the State Department for arming the rebels, according to U.S. officials. Mrs. Clinton joined forces with Mr. Petraeus to push for the administration to embrace a proposal for delivering arms.
Advocates said doing so would provide the U.S. with opportunities to shape events on the ground and build alliances.
As concern grew about Syrian unrest in the late summer and early fall, Mr. Panetta and Gen. Dempsey threw in their support, a position the two men kept private until Thursday's Senate hearing.
The proposal was also backed by the nation's top spy, James Clapper, the director of the National Intelligence, officials said.
Around the same time, in a reflection of the ongoing debate, a team of CIA intelligence analysts found that the introduction of U.S. arms wouldn't "materially" affect the situation on the ground or help the rebels overthrow Mr. Assad, a U.S. official said. The rebels were already getting substantial quantities of weapons from other countries, including U.S. allies in the Gulf, the official said. Other officials said such findings are advisory and carry far less weight than a formal intelligence assessment produced by the director of National Intelligence.
In another blow to the proposal, many of its leading advocates were poised to leave the administration. Mr. Petraeus resigned in November, over revelations that he had an extramarital affair.
Mr. Obama, in December, recognized a revamped Syrian opposition movement, but has since made no moves to introduce U.S.-supplied arms into the conflict.
The disclosures about the senior defense officials' support for the proposal came in response to sharp questions from Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) at a hearing on Thursday which was called to examine the military's response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, but which also delved into other foreign-policy challenges, including the conflict in Syria.
"How many more have to die before you recommend military action?" Sen. McCain asked Gen. Dempsey and Mr. Panetta, citing United Nations estimates that up to 60,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war. "And did you support the recommendation by…then-Secretary of State Clinton and then-head of CIA, Mr. Petraeus, that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria?"
Both Gen. Dempsey and Mr. Panetta said they did.
Mr. Panetta said he agreed with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus but also supported Mr. Obama's decision not to act on the proposal. "Obviously there were a number of factors that were involved here that ultimately led to the president's decision to make it nonlethal," Mr. Panetta said.
Mr. Panetta, who is preparing to step down from his post, "isn't committed to lethal aid now," and believes more study is required before proceeding, an official close to the defense secretary said.
Aides to Gen. Dempsey, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus had no immediate comment on the officials' positions after the testimony.
In Syria, rebel groups had hoped that Mr. Obama's re-election would give him the political leeway to throw greater support behind the Syrian opposition. But current and former officials said the rebels misjudged the White House, which remains reluctant to enter a new conflict.
Current and former officials said the path forward for the administration remains unclear.
Mr. Kerry, the new secretary of State, and Chuck Hagel, Mr. Obama's nominee to succeed Mr. Panetta at the Pentagon, are seen as more closely aligned with Mr. Obama's cautious approach to intervention in Syria than their predecessors.
But officials said John Brennan, Mr. Obama's longtime counterterrorism chief and nominee to succeed Mr. Petraeus as CIA director, could embrace greater covert action in Syria. Mr. Brennan is close to Mr. Obama and has made clear his concern about al Qaeda's growing strength in Syria.
While Mr. Obama has avoided military involvement, he has authorized nonlethal support to the rebels as well as humanitarian assistance. In one possible exception, he has warned Mr. Assad that using chemical weapons would be a "red line" that could prompt an American response.
Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com
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Summary
STR/AFP/GettyImages
Hezbollah militants during a funeral procession in the Lebanese city of Baalbek on Oct. 8.
A rumor is circulating in Lebanon that Hezbollah is recruiting specialized Syrian Alawite troops to leave Syria and join its organization. Meanwhile, Syrian rebel forces appear to be making tangible progress in their offensives against loyalist forces in the north around the city of Aleppo and in the south around Damascus. Though Alawite troops are well-equipped and dug in around the capital, they are outnumbered and facing an inevitable battle of attrition against an array of Sunni rebel groups.
At this stage of the conflict, Syria's remaining Alawite forces with the means to defect are each facing an existential choice: either stick with their fellow Alawites against growing odds in Syria or secure a personal exit strategy. Hezbollah's alleged poaching efforts suggest that individual interests may have begun to outweigh the collective interests of the Alawite and broader Shiite minority communities. Should specialized Alawite troops begin leaving for alternative careers in Lebanon, serious cracks in what is left of Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime are likely to emerge, raising doubts about Alawite staying power in Damascus.
Analysis
Visit our Syria page for related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.
Hezbollah has purportedly been reaching out to senior Alawite officers, including members of al Assad's Praetorian Guard from the Fourth Armored Division (commanded by the Syrian president's brother, Maher al Assad) and the Republican Guard. According to rumors, the Lebanese militant group has been offering housing in Beirut and employment within the organization should the Syrian regime face impending collapse, allowing such officers to avoid Sunni reprisal attacks, arrests and possible extradition to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. To support preparations for a Sunni challenge to its authority in Lebanon and possible Israeli strikes, the Shiite militant group is believed to be specifically targeting Alawite officers who would provide valuable expertise in operating advanced weaponry and communications systems, as well as lessons in fighting asymmetric conflicts.
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It is too early to tell how many Syrian Alawite officers have accepted Hezbollah's offers, but the alleged overtures highlight concerns about the al Assad regime's ability to stand its ground in Damascus. Hezbollah has already played a substantial role in helping Syrian Alawite forces repel Sunni rebels and sever opposition supply lines through Lebanon, but that support has come at a cost to the group's own capabilities and morale. Sunni militants in Lebanon, in coordination with local Sunni clerics, appear to be making progress in cutting off the Syrian regime's vital overland supply line through the Bekaa Valley along the Beirut-Damascus highway. Fighters from the rebel Free Syrian Army reportedly are operating in Sunni towns and villages in the Bekaa Valley, as well as in northern Lebanon, in support of these interdiction efforts. Sunni fighters have been particularly active in Mdairji, a town on the Beirut-Damascus highway in the western mountain range overlooking the Bekaa Valley.
Syrian and Lebanese Sunnis still face a substantial challenge in avoiding countermoves by the sizable pockets of Shiite and Christian forces that lack an interest in seeing a Sunni majority come to power in Syria. But the progress demonstrated by Sunni rebel forces in targeting regime supply lines between Lebanon and Damascus indicate that al Assad's minority allies in Lebanon are facing constraints in countering interdiction efforts, including the threat of some minority leaders striking deals with Sunni forces in pursuit of individual interests. One such leader to watch in this regard is Lebanese army commander Jean Kahwaji, a Maronite who is rumored to be considering a run for the presidency in 2014 and who may need to cooperate with local Sunnis.
VIDEO: Battle for the Damascus Suburbs
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Whether evaluating the motives of the Hezbollah leadership, a war-weary Alawite commander in the Republican Guard or a Lebanese army general, at this stage of the Syrian conflict, actions taken on the assumption that the Syrian regime will collapse will likely become more common. This perception could have a substantial impact on the morale of remaining Alawite forces that are digging in for an intensifying battle for Damascus.
Read more: In Syria, a Possible Decision Point for Alawite Troops | Stratfor
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Summary
AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images
Syrian anti-regime protesters wave a pre-Baath Syrian flag, now used by the Free Syrian Army, during a demonstration in Aleppo
Hezbollah is known to aid Alawite forces in Syria, and as the Syrian rebellion gains momentum, the rebel Free Syrian Army and allied Lebanese Sunni fighters are starting to challenge the Shiite militant group more directly. On Feb. 21, after issuing a flurry of threats against Hezbollah, the Free Syrian Army claimed to have attacked Hezbollah positions. Both sides subsequently denied those claims, but the day's events revealed both the inevitability of the Syrian conflict's spilling into Lebanon and the fears both sides have of prematurely precipitating such hostilities.
Analysis
The Free Syrian Army warned in a statement Feb. 21 that it would attack Hezbollah inside Lebanese territory if Hezbollah did not stop shelling Syrian villages from Lebanon within 48 hours. The Free Syrian Army then claimed to have attacked Hezbollah. In a first alleged attack, fighters supposedly targeted two Hezbollah vehicles in Syria's western al-Qusayr district with machine guns and anti-tank weaponry. A second attack allegedly struck northern Lebanon's Hermel province and consisted of several Free Syrian Army brigades launching mortar shells on a Hezbollah artillery position in the mostly Alawite village of Hosh al-Sayyed Ali. Later in the day, the Free Syrian Army denied attacking Hezbollah at all.
These events provide a glimpse into how Syria's Sunni rebellion will eventually challenge Hezbollah's position in Lebanon. Despite the Free Syrian Army's denial of involvement in the attacks, Stratfor has received information that the rebel group recently has tried to target Hezbollah. In addition to the alleged attack in Hermel province, three Hezbollah fighters were reportedly killed Feb. 20 in an attack on a Lebanese village in the northern Bekaa Valley.
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Clashes between Hezbollah and Sunni fighters on both sides of the Syria-Lebanon border are inevitable, and small-scale skirmishes have already taken place as both sides try to secure their own supply lines into Syria and interdict those of their adversary. Stratfor highlighted last year how Hezbollah fighters were particularly active in the Syrian town of Al-Qusayr, since controlling that bulge of the Orontes River Valley basin was crucial to the group's efforts to pool resources for an Alawite-Shiite enclave in the northern Bekaa Valley. Such an enclave will become particularly important when Alawite forces lose control of Damascus and when Syria disassembles into a patchwork of ethnic and religious territories. Hezbollah has already assumed control of several Shiite villages along the river basin and is trying to hold its position against encroaching Free Syrian Army rebels. Hezbollah's position in the Al-Qusayr region has been critical to helping the Syrian regime stabilize the Homs area and keep its supply lines to the coast and the north open. It therefore comes as little surprise that the Free Syrian Army is claiming fresh attacks on Hezbollah in Al-Qusayr, where Hezbollah and Free Syrian Army fighters have already clashed in recent months.
Should Sunni rebels start to feel more confident in their militant campaign against Alawite forces in Syria, these sorts of clashes are likely to become more frequent, and they will reach deeper into Lebanon as Hezbollah tries to demonstrate the costs of challenging its still-powerful position as a militant group in the country. Salafist leaders in Sidon in southern Lebanon are already threatening to storm Hezbollah's apartments in the area, which could serve as another catalyst for sectarian clashes in the country. Hezbollah understands the difficulty it will face in losing its supply lines through Syria, but it remains the largest, best trained and best equipped militia in the region.
That reputation alone will not spare Hezbollah from an emboldened Sunni resistance, however. Many Lebanese Sunnis, as well as more transnationally-minded Salafists, are keen on expanding the Sunni rebellion into Lebanon to challenge the authority of Shiite Hezbollah. But as the rush of denials revealed Feb. 21, there are still many Sunnis who fear that a fight with Hezbollah, when Alawite forces are still present in Damascus, would be premature. Likewise, Hezbollah is not looking to rush into a fight with its Sunni adversaries. The group is focused on preparing for a post-al Assad security environment, and a large part of that preparation entails gearing up for what may be an unavoidable civil war in Lebanon.
- See more at: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/syrias-rebels-risk-starting-premature-conflict-lebanon#sthash.Mgh9RMMH.dpuf
Read more: Syria's Rebels Risk Starting a Premature Conflict in Lebanon | Stratfor
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http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2
From the article:
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition demanded independent investigations Wednesday into countering accusations of the use of chemical weapons, allegations that some U.S. officials question.
The demands, made in writing to the United Nations, came a day after the government and the rebels accused one another of using chemical weapons in fighting in the flashpoint province of Aleppo and a rural suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus.
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I remember when it was impossible for middle eastern dictators to possess WMD...
:roll:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2
From the article:
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition demanded independent investigations Wednesday into countering accusations of the use of chemical weapons, allegations that some U.S. officials question.
The demands, made in writing to the United Nations, came a day after the government and the rebels accused one another of using chemical weapons in fighting in the flashpoint province of Aleppo and a rural suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus.
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http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/04/03/flash-threat-from-rebel-syria-becomes-clear-and-what-really-happened-in-the-benghazi-murders/?singlepage=true
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http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/operations/296145-white-house-intelligence-says-syrias-assad-used-chemical-weapons
From the article:
The White House told senators Thursday that the intelligence community believes Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons in Syria, crossing a “red line” set by President Obama.
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What's more, I have seen reports that the Israelis think so too.
Team Baraq apparently is looking for more certainty. Given what's involved here, I can't say that this is a bad thing, though my trust in Team Baraq is de minimis.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/26/the-ball-is-in-your-court-mr-president.html
From the article:
The Bush administration’s weapons-of-mass-destruction debacle in Iraq unfortunately means that only a UN confirmation of Syrian chemical weapons use will have real international credibility. The U.S., U.K., and Israeli intelligence assessments carry too much baggage to convince skeptics. Even George W. Bush recognized this in 2007, when he told Israel he could not use the American military to destroy a North Korean nuclear reactor built in Syria because of the legacy of his botched intelligence on Iraq.
But going to the United Nations needs to be done with alacrity like Bush’s father did after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The key is to get Moscow to accept that use of chemical weapons crosses the line—and to demand concerted international action, even if it goes against Vladimir Putin’s man Assad. With U.N. proof, Putin can be boxed in. China will not stand alone against a U.N. Security Council consensus. That will leave Assad with only Iran and Hezbollah as allies.
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They make a good starting point. But the 'botched intelligence' or botched credibility of the US, UK and Israel exists in the same world as the botched credibility of Putin, Russia, the politburo of China and the UN itself. The botched intelligence was regarding stockpiles of WMD, 8 months later. Failure to find those (maybe they were transported to Syria) did not change the fact that Iraq had used chemical weapons on his own people and his neighbor, admitted in the article, and would have become a nuclear power by now without the action taken. Going to the UN over chemical weapons in Syria is like passing more laws in Washington against illegal gun use here. If we prove that Syria is a rogue nation, axis of evil, used chemical weapons on its own people, then what? Compliance will require military action. Who will do that? And then what?
"Obama has an opening thanks to Asad’s use of chemicals, but it is fraught with peril if handled recklessly."
Our Syrian policy is fraught with peril no matter what course we take.
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/26/syria_chemical_weapons_strategy_obama
From the article:
You've got to hand it to him. Bashar al-Assad may be a cruel and ruthless dictator, but he does know how to play his cards. His careful, incremental introduction of chemical weapons into the Syrian conflict has turned President Barack Obama's clear red line into an impressionist watercolor, undermining the credible threat of U.S. military intervention. Despite Obama's statement on Friday that "we've crossed a line," Assad knows that the United States does not want to be dragged into a Middle Eastern civil war and is attempting to call Obama's bluff.
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Wow, it's like a new era of American weakness! Who could have forseen this?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/26/syria_chemical_weapons_strategy_obama
From the article:
You've got to hand it to him. Bashar al-Assad may be a cruel and ruthless dictator, but he does know how to play his cards. His careful, incremental introduction of chemical weapons into the Syrian conflict has turned President Barack Obama's clear red line into an impressionist watercolor, undermining the credible threat of U.S. military intervention. Despite Obama's statement on Friday that "we've crossed a line," Assad knows that the United States does not want to be dragged into a Middle Eastern civil war and is attempting to call Obama's bluff.
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Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense launchers in Moscow last year. U.S. intelligence reports say Russia shipped SA-22 Pantsir-S1 units to Syria in 2008.
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers pressed the Obama administration to intervene in Syria's civil war, citing the regime's alleged chemical-weapons use, as the White House weighed its response against a sobering fact: Damascus has developed a world class air-defense system.
President Obama faces mounting pressure from lawmakers to help put an end to Syria's civil war. This while Damascus has developed a top-secret air-defense system. Washington Institute's Andrew Tabler has analysis. (Photo: AP)
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That system, built, installed and maintained—largely in secret—by Russia's military complex, presents a formidable deterrent as the White House draws up options for responding to a U.S. intelligence report released last week concluding that Damascus likely used chemical weapons on the battlefield.
Leading Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Sunday said they didn't believe the U.S. should send American troops into Syria. They and the Obama administration are wary about U.S. involvement in another Middle East conflict after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But some called for a no-fly zone and more humanitarian aid.
Previously undisclosed details about Syria's antiaircraft systems outline the evolution of one of the most advanced and concentrated barriers on the planet, developed to ward off U.S. and Israeli warplanes, say U.S. intelligence and defense officials. The Obama administration only sporadically intervened to try to stop its construction, the officials say.
In White House meetings about military options for Syria, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, frequently singles out Mr. Assad's air-defense prowess as the single biggest obstacle to U.S. intervention, according to current and former officials who participated in the briefings.
Advocates of military action believe the threat posed by Syria's defenses is overstated by the Obama administration, in part to justify not taking action. Some have cited Israel's successful bombing in January that targeted a suspected SA-17 antiaircraft missile shipment.
However, as Pentagon officials later learned, the Israeli planes never entered Syrian airspace.
Instead, the Israeli warplanes were flying over Lebanon when they executed what is called a "lofting" maneuver—using a sudden burst of speed and altitude to catapult a bomb across the border to the target about 10 miles inside Syria, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. account of the Israeli operation.
Israeli officials said the decision was made to bomb from the relative safety of Lebanese airspace for diplomatic as well as security reasons. The Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
Gen. Dempsey has told the White House that stealth aircraft and ship-based, precision-guided missiles could destroy many Syrian air-defense sites relatively quickly. But he has warned policy makers that mobile launchers would be harder to find and destroy and that their location among population centers likely would mean civilian casualties.
Officials believe any operation would also be costly and dangerous to U.S. personnel.
On Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), a sharp critic of Mr. Obama's Syria policy, didn't discuss those risks in arguing that the U.S. should support a no-fly zone with unmanned aircraft to protect civilians and rebels. Other lawmakers called for more humanitarian aid.
"We can get in and out. That's not the issue," said a senior U.S. official. "The issue is can you take out the entire air defense system and keep it down. That's just completely a different kettle of fish."
U.S. officials were aware of Russia's involvement and tracked many of the upgraded systems during a period of rapid modernization after a 2007 Israeli airstrike on a suspected Syrian nuclear site. But the Americans rarely interfered, viewing Iran as the region's larger threat and, under the Obama administration, initially pursuing improved ties with both Russia and Syria.
Obama administration officials say they raised their concerns with Moscow in their meetings even if they knew Russia was unlikely to respond.
Now, with evidence mounting that the Syrian regime has used at least small amounts of chemical weapons against opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, the consequences of policy choices from a prior decade may limit the ability of the U.S. and its allies to respond today.
President Barack Obama has set the use of chemical weapons as a "red line" that could trigger U.S. military involvement. Reluctant to intervene, however, the White House has called for a deeper international investigation into evidence pointing to the likelihood that Syrian forces have gassed their opponents.
"We knew the Syrians were bolstering their air defense systems. We saw this as a Syrian effort to deter Israeli incursions," said one of the senior U.S. officials who helped oversee those efforts during Mr. Obama's first term. "But we [the U.S.] would pay attention to it sporadically. We had to pick and choose. The main focus was Iran."
U.S. officials believe Russia's goal in helping Mr. Assad was to deter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from intervening in Syria as the alliance did in Libya in 2011 and in Serbia in 1998, operations Moscow opposed.
U.S. officials believe Russian technicians are on hand with many of the Syrian air-defense units, providing technical assistance. The Russians, many employees of Russian defense contractors, repair broken equipment with components imported from Russia, the officials said.
Officials at the Russian embassy in Washington said they don't discuss military and technical cooperation with other countries. But Moscow has denied any special relationship with Mr. Assad, arguing that Russia is supporting the principle of nonintervention.
The first air-defense deals between Russia and Syria date back decades. But Russia in recent years has stepped up shipments to modernize Syria's targeting systems and make the air defenses mobile, and therefore much more difficult for Israel—and the U.S.—to overcome.
The U.S. detected Mr. Assad was seeking major air defense expansions after a series of foreign incursions, including the 2007 Israeli bombing of a suspected nuclear site at al Kibar; the February 2008 assassination in Damascus of Imad Mugniyah, a high-ranking Hezbollah military commander; and a September 2008 car bombing that U.S. officials say targeted a Syrian military intelligence facility.
Embarrassed by Israel's ease of access to his country, Mr. Assad plunged into an effort to procure batteries of Russian interceptors and early warning systems. He arrayed them in overlapping concentric circles in and around population centers.
According to an internal U.S. intelligence assessment, in August 2008, Russia began shipping SA-22 Pantsir-S1 units to Syria. The system, a combination surface-to-air missile and 30 mm antiaircraft gun, has a digital targeting system and is mounted on a combat vehicle, making it easy to move. Today, Syria has 36 of the vehicles, according to the U.S. assessment.
In 2009, the Russians started upgrading Syria's outdated analog SA-3 surface-to-air missile systems, turning them into the SA-26 Pechora-2M system, which is mobile and digital, equipped with missiles with an operational range of 17 miles.
The U.S. is particularly worried about another modernized system provided by Moscow—the SA-5. With an operational range of 175 miles, SA-5 missiles could take out U.S. planes flying from Cyprus, a key NATO base that was used during Libya operations and would likely be vital in any Syrian operation.
Since March 2011, when the rebellion against Mr. Assad started, Russia has continued to support the air-defense system, providing key components and replacement parts, and sending technicians to test it, U.S. officials say.
Officials suspect one of the Pechoras shot down a Turkish reconnaissance plane last June, an incident closely studied by the U.S. and cited as evidence the system hasn't been degraded by the conflict.
Last November, U.S. intelligence agencies learned that a flight from Russia to Syria was carrying components for the SA-17 Grizzly antiaircraft system, according to U.S. officials, who say resupply flights continue.
The Pentagon decided it could do little to stop the shipments, reflecting Washington's shifting views of Damascus and a lack of U.S. influence with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"A major focus has been on offensive weapons, not defensive," a senior Obama administration said of the U.S.'s approach under Mr. Obama toward arms transfers to Syria.
Defense officials worried that raising U.S.-Russian tensions over Syria could prompt Moscow to retaliate by making it harder for the U.S. to use needed air and ground routes though Russian territory to withdraw military supplies from Afghanistan.
Pentagon officials concluded it wasn't realistic to try to block all sales of air-defense systems. Instead, they decided to target what officials called "game changers"—the systems that most threaten Israel and the U.S.
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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2013/04/26/61511/responding-to-the-assad-regimes-likely-use-of-chemical-weapons/
From the article:
Together, the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons and the regional strain of the refugee crisis call for additional actions from the United States, its regional partners and allies, and the international community as a whole.
American strategy so far has aimed at using tools short of direct and overt U.S. intervention to bring an end to the Assad regime.
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No US Troops in Syria
It would be a major mistake to put American troops in Syria.
No one in the region wants us invading yet another country. None of our allies want our strength diverted from Iran. There is no practical mission American forces could accomplish without a very large commitment.
America has three practical interests in Syria.
Of the highest urgency is keeping the large Syrian chemical weapons stockpile from getting into the hands of terrorists. Imagine the Boston bombing with a chemical weapon and you can immediately see why containing the Syrian chemical weapons is a very high, practical value for the United States.
Second, it would be helpful in containing and undermining Iranian power if the Assad dictatorship (its only major ally) were to fall.
Third, there is significant risk in having millions of refugees destabilize Jordan and weaken Turkey.
None of these interests justify a major American military campaign in Syria.
Syria's neighbors have an even greater interest in ending the war and controlling the chemical weapons. Israel, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all have a vested interest in making sure chemical weapons don't show up in their country. The United States can provide intelligence, technical support, and in a worst case air power to destroy the sophisticated and massive Syrian anti-aircraft defenses (built with Russian help to stop Israel).
If the neighbors are not sufficiently worried to act, however, the United States should not be drawn in to acting for them.
We are in a period of retrenchment on military spending. Adding a third major war would lead to either massive increases in defense spending or a collapse of the Pentagon as an effective system.
The red line President Obama established about chemical weapons has to be a red line for the neighbors and for the world community. It cannot be simply a red line for the American military.
We should ponder the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and think long and hard before launching our third major war in 12 years.
No US troops in Syria is a pretty good place to draw the line.
Your Friend,
Newt
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Marc:
Newt's point about those in the region should be motivated to act as well, indeed, before us, is a good one. My conversations with those of the sort who would be sent to do the deed tell me that there is little to no belief in the mission or our CiC.
Still, it is also in the US's interest that these chem weapons not get in enemy hands.
As far as US credibility goes, some posturing now (including the stupidity of giving night vision goggles to the rebels) will not change the fact that the damage is already done.
Baraq should have had some thinking in place about what he would have us do BEFORE he uttered "red line" and "the president of the US does not bluff" and certainly once he did utter the words, some serious contingency planning should have been ordered. Instead we are left with the distinct impression that pretty much no thinking whatsoever has been done.
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My 3 point plan for no ground troops in Syria: Day 1) Take out the nuclear facilities in Iran with air strikes. Day 2) Take out the North Korean missile threat with air strikes. Day 3) Call Pres. Assad and ask if we can talk.
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Sounds fun, but haven't the Iranians put a lot of their facilities in civilian areas? Isn't the US track record on nuke weapon program detection a tad weak after Iraq?
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"Isn't the US track record on nuke weapon program detection a tad weak after Iraq?"
The final word I read (Iraq Study Group) was that Saddam was 6 years away from being fully nuclear - 11 years ago. I don't know about our track record, but our credibility is gone. One of the stories from the WMD elusive stockpile hunt was that the chemical weapons were being trucked to Syria. If true, we were twiddling in meeting rooms with a seven month delay while they were moving, hiding, saving chemical weapons that perhaps still haunt us. We still don't know what happened. I don't hear anyone even ask the question now, where did Assad's chemical weapons originate?
If our President is planning to do nothing, drawing a lot of red lines for rogue states to cross isn't particularly helpful. 'If you gas your people one more time, we will, we will, we will help the rebels with bandages and medicine!'
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Israel has a different way of expressing concern about Syrian weapons:
September 6, 2007, Operation Orchard was an Israeli airstrike on a nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. The White House and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) later confirmed that American intelligence had also indicated the site was a nuclear facility with a military purpose. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jWIBgbzyBkHnJzQeMi80gXfjX0-Q
Jan 30, 2013, Israeli jets bombed a convoy near the Lebanese border, apparently hitting weapons destined for militant group Hezbollah. http://www.france24.com/en/20130131-israel-tight-lipped-over-air-raid-syrian-military-facility
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Syria's Chemical weapons and locations?
(http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2013/05/02/where-are-syria-s-chemical-weapons/_jcr_content/body/inlineimage.img.503.jpg/1367493399406.cached.jpg)
A citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows black smoke rise from buildings due to government forces shelling in Aleppo, Syria, on March 19. (Aleppo Media Center/AP)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/02/where-are-syria-s-chemical-weapons.html
“We’ve lost track of lots of this stuff,” said one U.S. official. “We just don’t know where a lot of it is.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303644004577523251596963194.html
July 13, 2012: U.S. Concerned as Syria Moves Chemical Stockpile
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/world/middleeast/obama-threatens-force-against-syria.html
Pres. Obama Aug 19, 2012: “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is, we start seeing a whole bunch of weapons moving around or being utilized.”
What is a "red line for us"? NY Times calls it "Mr. Obama’s first direct threat of force against Syria". Question remains, what is a "direct threat of force" translated from the original weasel-speak?
Obama's Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper of 'Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular' fame, clarifies: “It would be very, very situational dependent to render an assessment"
http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/intel-chief-uncertain-us-ability-secure-all-syrian-chemical-arms/
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Editor's Note: According to reports, Israel launched a second round of airstrikes May 5 against Damascus. Syrian officials say a military research facility was among the targets hit. Since the strike, Israel has deployed two of its Iron Dome defense systems and closed northern Israel's airspace until May 9, while the Syrian military is rumored to have deployed several missiles aimed at Israel.
A reported Israeli airstrike into Syria on either May 2 or May 3 is another spillover effect of the country's ongoing civil war. Details are still scarce on the alleged strike, with U.S. officials reporting somewhat contradictory information to different news outlets, but the primary target of the strike is believed to have been a weapons shipment to Hezbollah, likely in transit. The Lebanese Army had earlier reported increased Israeli Air Force activity over its airspace -- a total of 16 flights by Israeli warplanes between the evening of May 2 and the afternoon of May 3, particularly over Marjayoun, Al Khayyam and Bint Jbeil.
As the Syrian conflict intensifies, it will continue to draw in Syria's neighbors over concerns ranging from rising jihadist threats to weapons proliferation.
The airstrikes are not the first reported Israeli ones on Syria this year. In January 2013, the Israeli Air Force is believed to have struck a shipment of weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon consisting of SA-8 Gecko and reportedly SA-17 Grizzly surface-to-air weapons systems. As is the case with this week's strikes, the Israeli aircraft reportedly did not penetrate Syrian airspace, likely attacking their target by using altitude and speed to lob weapons such as U.S.-supplied Joint Direct Attack Munitions across the border into Syria or by using self-powered munitions such as the Delilah cruise missile.
Israeli officials have privately stressed that Israel maintains its own specific redlines in the Syrian conflict and that despite U.S. President Barack Obama's reported stance, the use of chemical weapons against rebels is not one of them. Specifically, Israeli officials have stressed that they will not tolerate transfers of chemical weapons, ballistic missiles, advanced air-defense systems or sophisticated anti-ship missiles to Hezbollah -- or jihadist seizures of such weapons.
Over the past months, the Syrian regime has also effectively withdrawn its forces from the Golan Heights in order to use them against the rebel threat encroaching on Damascus. This has heightened Israeli concern that jihadists will take advantage of the security vacuum in the Golan Heights to begin staging attacks against Israeli units in the area. Israel has said such action will not be tolerated.
Countries near Syria are already feeling the effects of the war. A massive influx of refugees is adding further stress to the already unstable economies of Lebanon and Jordan, and earlier this week a Turkish guard was killed in a border dispute with armed Syrians. Iraq is seeing increased jihadist activity linked to the Syrian conflict. As the conflict in Syria continues to rage, the spillover effects from the civil war will continue to manifest themselves.
Read more: An Israeli Airstrike into Syria | Stratfor
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second post of day
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May 5, 2013 | 1511 GMT
According to Lebanon's Hezbollah-affiliated Almayadeen television channel, senior Syrian officials have said the Syrian military has deployed missile batteries aimed at Israel, Israel News reported May 5. The sources also allegedly said Syria is willing to equip the Lebanese resistance with new weaponry of all types. Israel, which maintains its own redlines in the Syrian conflict, has said it will not tolerate transfers of chemical weapons, ballistic missiles, advanced air-defense systems or sophisticated anti-ship missiles to Hezbollah.
Read more: Syria: Military Has Reportedly Deployed Missiles Aimed At Israel | Stratfor
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The latest Israeli airstrikes on Syria were predicated on two key factors. First, the Syrian regime is weakening so much that it cannot control its territory and, by extension, its weapons stockpiles could fall into the hands of non-state actors such as Hezbollah and al Qaeda. Second, Israeli intelligence discovered that a shipment of Iranian-made Fateh-110 short-range tactical ballistic missiles was being delivered to Hezbollah. Logistically it is difficult to prevent advanced weapons systems, particularly chemical agents, from proliferating once a regime has lost control of them, so further preventive strikes can be expected.
For its part, Syria has responded by saying any additional attacks from Israel will incur immediate retaliation. Syrian President Bashar al Assad reportedly sent a message to Washington (via Moscow), in which he authorized the use of ground-to-ground and ground-to-air missiles in the event of such retaliation. However, Syria lacks the military capability to follow through on its threats.
Analysis
Airstrikes on Syrian soil belie the fact that Israel is not taking sides in the Syrian civil war. As far as Israel is concerned, regime loyalists and the various rebel militias both threaten Israeli national security. And in some ways, it is in Israel's interest to prolong the collapse of the al Assad regime and to further the military stalemate: Doing so ensures that the conflict remains confined to Syria as much as possible.
But it is unclear whether Israel can actually achieve this. Even the United States, were it to get involved militarily, could not successfully confine the violence to Syria. Thus the limited airstrikes, which will likely continue as long as deemed necessary, are preventative measures rather than signs of assistance. Any future strikes likewise would be meant to mitigate risks as they appear.
However, any intervention that targets the Syrian regime and its allies has unintended consequences. For example, it enables al Assad and his allies to shape regional perceptions -- namely, that Israel and the rebels are fighting together. This complicates matters for rebels and their affiliate groups, which along with many Arab states have condemned the Israeli airstrikes.
The Syrian regime, Iran and Hezbollah would like to use this situation to their advantage. They believe drawing Israel into the conflict would be a useful way to ease the rebellion's pressure on them. Until these latest Israeli strikes, provoking Israel could also have been seen as too self-serving. But now that Israel has intervened on its own, there is an opportunity to escalate the situation and elicit a deeper Israeli involvement in Syria.
Their reasoning is that it would be difficult for the rebels to fight the Syrian regime if the country were under attack from Israel. But that calculation entails large risks, which would further undermine the already tenuous positions of Syria, Hezbollah and Iran. It is unclear whether the al Assad regime and its allies would be willing to take those risks.
They would like to see some Sunni jihadist groups operating in Syria begin targeting Israel in an effort to divide the rebels' attention. Whether that will happen remains unclear. But the Israeli strikes have created a situation in which the Syrian civil war, heretofore a regional sectarian struggle, could turn into a wider international conflict.
Read more: Syria: Unintended Consequences of Israeli Airstrikes | Stratfor
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By JAY SOLOMON, ADAM ENTOUS and JULIAN E. BARNES
WASHINGTON—Israel has warned the U.S. that a Russian deal is imminent to sell advanced ground-to-air missile systems to Syria, weapons that would significantly boost the regime's ability to stave off intervention in its civil war.
(A 2012 photo shows a Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile system during a parade rehearsal near Moscow.)
U.S. officials said on Wednesday that they are analyzing the information Israel provided about the suspected sale of S-300 missile batteries to Syria, but wouldn't comment on whether they believed such a transfer was near.
Russian officials didn't immediately return requests to comment. The Russian Embassy in Washington has said its policy is not to comment on arms sales or transfers between Russia and other countries.
The government of President Bashar al-Assad has been seeking to purchase S-300 missile batteries—which can intercept both manned aircraft and guided missiles—from Moscow going back to the George W. Bush administration, U.S. officials said. Western nations have lobbied President Vladimir Putin's government not to go ahead with the sale. If Syria were to acquire and deploy the systems, it would make any international intervention in Syria far more complicated, according to U.S. and Middle East-based officials.
According to the information the Israelis provided in recent days, Syria has been making payments on a 2010 agreement with Moscow to buy four batteries for $900 million. They cite financial transactions from the Syrian government, including one made this year through Russia's foreign-development bank, known as the VEB.
The package includes six launchers and 144 operational missiles, each with a range of 125 miles, according to the information the Israelis provided. The first shipment could come over the next three months, according to the Israelis' information, and be concluded by the end of the year. Russia is also expected to send two instruction teams to train Syria's military in operating the missile system, the Israelis say.
Russia has been Mr. Assad's most important international backer, outside of Iran, since the conflict in Syria started in March 2011, and supplies Syria with arms, funding and fuel. Russia maintains a naval port in Syria, its only outlet to the Mediterranean. Moscow also has publicly voiced worries that a collapsed Syria could fuel Islamist activities in its restive Caucasus regions.
Secretary of State John Kerry met with Mr. Putin on Tuesday in Moscow. The leaders said they would stage an international conference this month aimed at ending the civil war. U.S. officials couldn't say whether Messrs. Kerry and Putin or their teams discussed the arms sale.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is scheduled to visit Mr. Putin in Russia on Friday. The White House on Wednesday said Mr. Cameron would visit Washington on Monday to discuss issues including Syria's civil war and counterterrorism, plus trade and economic issues, with President Barack Obama.
The Obama administration has argued that Mr. Assad has to leave office as part of a political transition in Damascus. The Kremlin has maintained that he retains a large base of support and should be included in negotiations over a future Syrian government.
Should Mr. Putin's government go ahead with the sale, it would mark a significant escalation in the battle between Moscow and Washington over Syria. U.S. officials said they believe Russian technicians are already helping maintain the existing Syrian air-defense units.
The first air-defense deals between Russia and Syria date back decades. Russia in recent years has stepped up shipments to modernize Syria's targeting systems and make the air defenses mobile, and therefore much more difficult for Israel—and the U.S.—to overcome.
According to a U.S. intelligence assessment, Russia began shipping SA-22 Pantsir-S1 units to Syria in 2008. The system, a combination of surface-to-air missiles and 30mm antiaircraft guns, has a digital targeting system and is mounted on a combat vehicle, making it easy to move. Syria has 36 of the vehicles, according to the assessment.
In 2009, the Russians started upgrading Syria's outdated analog SA-3 surface-to-air missile systems, turning them into the SA-26 Pechora-2M system, which is mobile and digital, equipped with missiles with an operational range of 17 miles, according to the assessment.
The U.S. is particularly worried about another modernized system Moscow provides—the SA-5. With an operational range of 175 miles, SA-5 missiles could take out U.S. planes flying from Cyprus, a key North Atlantic Treaty Organization base that was used during Libya operations and would likely be vital in any Syrian operation.
The U.S. has stealth aircraft and ship-based, precision-guided missiles that could take out key air-defense sites. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has privately told the White House that shutting down the system could require weeks of bombing, putting U.S. fighter pilots in peril and diverting military resources from other priorities.
According to an analysis by the U.S. military's Joint Staff, Syrian air defenses are nearly five times more sophisticated than what existed in Libya before the NATO launched its air campaign there in 2011. Syrian air defenses are about 10 times more sophisticated than the system the U.S. and its allies faced in Serbia.
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com, Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com and Julian E. Barnes at julian.barnes@wsj.com
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I can't remember disagreeing with VDH.
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/count-me-out-on-syria/?singlepage=true
Count Me Out on Syria by Victor Davis Hanson May 13th, 2013
There are good reasons to go into Syria, but far better ones to stay out.
Let us review a few of them. Syria is a humanitarian crisis with over one million refugees and 70,000 dead. But there are similar outrages in Mali, Somalia, and the Sudan. Why no calls to go there as well? Would U.S. troops, planes, or massive shipments of weapons stop the killing, or simply ensure endless cycles of death following the Assad departure? Will Syria’s Christians and other minorities become worse off with or without Assad?
More importantly, we do not at this late stage know which terrorist is a pro-Western Google-type, and which is a hard-core jihadist. The history of the Middle East in particular (see Iran in 1980) and world history in general (cf. France, 1794 or Russia, 1917) suggests that the more extreme, better organized revolutionary zealots, even when in the minority, usually win out over the moderate and sensible reformers in the post-war sorting out and sizing up. There are not many Washingtons, Jeffersons, or Madisons in the annals of revolutionary history.
When Assad goes, the postbellum mess will either go straight to the sham election of a Mohammed Morsi type, who will try to suspend the very constitution that brought him to power, or we will witness round two of Libyan-type violence. The bitter remedy for either, of course, is an Afghanistan or Iraq occupation, in which Americans spend blood and treasure to teach locals not to be their tribal selves. But that third alternative is absolutely politically unsustainable.
Of course, there are also strategic reasons for toppling Assad. How wonderful to see Hezbollah lose their Iranian-arms conduit, or to remove Syria from the Iran-Hezbollah axis. But is that not happening now anyway?
Apparently Israel thinks so. As I understand, their new cynical but strategically adept policy runs something like the following: now and then when Assad shows signs of recovery, or more bloodlust, or renewed interest in bringing down the region with him, bomb his assets just a little bit to refigure the score. That confuses everyone in Syria: do rebels damn or thank Israel, or both? Do Sunni nations smile or scowl? Does Assad retaliate and deplete his arsenal that is so critical to killing his fellow Arabs? Will rebels join with Assad against Israel, or remember that it helped them a bit when on the downside? In short, so far America has not intervened, and Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah are all three worse off for it.
Well apart from Benghazi, Susan Rice and Samantha Power’s Libya is a blueprint for nothing. This time around we will not get UN approval after assuring Russia and China last time that our “humanitarian aid” and “no-fly zones” did not entail ground support, which of course it immediately did. Do we want again to ignore the U.S. Congress and seek permission instead from the UN and Arab League? Was the murder of Americans in Benghazi preferable to the so-called “new Gaddafi,” whom everyone from John McCain to the Europeans were suddenly fond of as a “reformer” intent on handing power over to his Westernized progeny?
And who not long ago said Bashar al-Assad was a “reformer”?
And who visited Syria in 2007 while Americans were dying in Iraq from jihadists harbored in Syria? And who blasted Bush for alienating Syria by ostracizing such an otherwise eager interlocutor (“The road to Damascus is the road to peace”)?
Consistency Should Matter
I have another confession about why, as a supporter of removing Saddam Hussein, I did not favor either the Libyan bombing or the proposed Syria intervention. In short, I have no confidence in those now calling for intervention to be there should things not go as planned. More have been killed in Afghanistan during Obama’s 52 months than during Bush’s nearly seven years. Announcing simultaneous surges and withdrawal dates is not wise. After all the blood and treasure spent in Iraq, not leaving a tiny monitoring force was shortsighted. An administration that not only lied about Benghazi but knew it was lying does not inspire confidence, especially in its amoral calculus in promoting a pre-election narrative of a weakened al-Qaeda after the killing of bin Laden and a reforming Libya after the removal of Gaddafi over the interest of truth and the safety of our own in Benghazi.
Consistency of any sort should matter also. I admire those like a Max Boot who wanted to go into Iraq and supported the cause to the bitter end. I even sort of admire a Pat Buchanan who thought Iraq a folly, and as a useful idiot on MSNBC damned those like me who supported the occupation. And I even admire Dennis Kucinich-types who thought intervention was wrong and staying on worse, and were ridiculed when the statue fell and the “Mission Accomplished” euphoria persisted. But I have no admiration for the zealots who called for the attack, basked in the spectacular removal of the Hussein regime, and then peeled off as the violence spiked and the soldiers were more or less on their own.
Like most of you, I did not write a letter in 1998 calling for the preemptive removal of Saddam Hussein. Most of us were indifferent to Bill Clinton’s regime change act. And I think most of us did not even know about those who wrote another letter to George W. Bush after 9/11 calling for preemption in Iraq again. But most of us agreed with 70% of the people that the Congress had logic and morality in their 2002 23-writ resolution calling to oust Hussein. Colin Powell made a sincere, but flawed, presentation. (It was not just the faulty intelligence, but the failure to mention all of the congressional resolutions for war.)
Once we did go in — along with the widespread support of the American people — I vowed to support the American effort to rebuild the country to the bitter end. And the end was certainly bitter. But by 2009 the American role in the war was all but over, a plan for a residual force to ensure the peace was in place, and what happened after that was now up to a new administration. I think leaving in toto was a bitter mistake, but leave we did and as a nation we live with the consequences.
Most Who Called for Removal of Saddam Eventually Turned on Bush
Here is my point. Most of those who called for preemption between 1998 and 2001 eventually turned on Mr. Bush, who had listened to them. Almost all the liberal and conservative pundits of the New York Times and Washington Post who wanted intervention eventually bailed with the suspect excuse of something like “my three-week brilliant take-down, your stupid five-year occupation.” Some claimed missing WMD gave them an out (as if we suddenly also learned that Saddam had not posted rewards for suicide bombers, murdered thousands, tried to kill a U.S. president, harbored terrorists, broke UN resolutions, gassed his own people, etc.).
Those who once sung Bush’s praises the loudest and urged him onward (give him the Nobel Prize, nuke Saddam, “I wrote the Axis of Evil line,” sweep the Middle East) were always the most clever of critics, as if the more Hillary screamed or Harry Reid declared the surge lost, the more we would forget their October 2002 calls to arms.
If in 2002 Iraq was to be a “cakewalk,” by 2004 it was “Bush’s war.” To name just a few across the political spectrum in random order, I’m sure that a Francis Fukuyama, Fareed Zakaria, Andrew Sullivan, George Will, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., Thomas Friedman, John Kerry, and thousands of others all had legitimate reasons in abandoning the cause of Iraq. Lord knows it was unwise to let thousands of scattered Ba’athist soldiers roam the streets of Iraq unemployed. How stupid was it to focus only on WMD when the Congress gave lots of reasons to remove Saddam? More tragic still was pulling out of Fallujah in April 2004 only to have to retake it in November. Why was a junior three-star mediocrity like Ricardo Sanchez put in charge of ground troops in Iraq? Why did Tommy Franks just quit almost at the moment the three-week war stopped and the reckoning started? “Bring ‘em on” and “Mission Accomplished” are speaking loudly while carrying small sticks. The list of screw-ups goes on and on. But the fact remains that victory in war goes not to those who make no mistakes, but to those who learn the most quickly from them in order to ensure the fewest in the future.
I also grant that one can change one’s mind. But here is the point, to paraphrase Matthew Ridgway of the mess he inherited in Korea: the only worse thing for a great power with global responsibilities than fighting a poorly conducted war is losing one. I know too the age-old nostrums — that was then, this is now, things change, only with self-reflection comes wisdom, change is sometimes necessary, etc., etc.
But I have also lost all trust in the Democratic Senate, the commentariat, and the media to call for any U.S. intervention in the Middle East, given that there is a chance that it will go badly, the zealots will bail, and the soldiers alone will be stuck on the battlefield in a Middle East miasma, with little support at home — a Michael Moore lauding the enemy as “Minutemen,” a MoveOn.Org labeling Petraeus “General Betray Us,” an Alfred Knopf published novel imagining the assassination of a U.S. president, a prominent conservative confessing how he was “duped” by the “neo-cons,” and on and on. Again, been there, done that, sick of it.
One day drones and Guantanamo are war crimes originating from Afghanistan and Iraq, the next day they are … what, exactly? One day in 2004 Barack Obama has no problem with current U.S. policy in Iraq (“There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage”); one day in 2007 he wants all U.S. combat troops out by March 2008? In short, there is no evidence that either those in this administration or our elites in general are up for another bloody slog in the Middle East.
I also have only little sympathy now for “Arab reformers,” especially those ensconced at U.S. and European universities. Yes, Iraq was a mess. Bush was a twangy Texan, we know. I am sorry that we do not have mellifluous Martin Luther Kings or Abraham Lincolns around to send in F-16s. The fact remains that Bush was also an idealist, naïve maybe, but not an imperialist or colonialist. He was someone who really believed in establishing the chance of freedom in the Middle East, in the manner that he sought to provide cheap AIDS medication for Africa or expand Medicare prescription drugs, whether all on borrowed money or not. Hate him if you must for being a naïf, but not a British imperialist or Nixonian strategist.
Yes, call him dumb, naïve, amateurish, but not conniving or Kissengerian — as his realist critics, in fact, lamented. So the U.S. removed a monster who had killed a million. It stayed on at great cost. It took no oil. It took no territory. It ended up without even a base. After 9/11 it sought to remove a terrorist-subsidizing tyrant, end the no-fly zones, create something better, and spread constitutional governments in the wake. The Chinese, French, and Russians ended up profiting from U.S. blood and treasure.
Please, Spare Us Now “You Owe Us Help”
If Arab reformers ever wanted a shot at democracy, Iraq was still their golden opportunity. Instead, almost all damned the effort and caricatured Americans. I once in 2006 sat in a clinic in Tripoli listening to Arab intellectuals (or rather Gaddafi minders) explain to me the Jewish roots of the Iraqi war, and how Americans were siphoning oil off in the desert and flying it in tankers home. Finally, I could not even follow all the conspiracy theories concocted to explain how wicked the Maliki government was.
Please, spare us now “you owe us your help.” Al Jazeera one day magically can show videos of an IED tearing apart American soldiers, and the next day it is just a “media outlet” that gives Al Gore millions of its petrodollars for his access to cable TV. I’m sure it will advocate for Assad to go, for reformers to take his replace, and demonize the U.S. and “the Jews” all through the process.
We have been there, done that, and we have learned some great lessons about the 21st century, pre-modern Middle East, and any interventions into it: a) Arab reformers damn the U.S. for doing nothing, but they will damn it far more for doing something; b) interventionists believe that all success is their offspring, and failure is outsourced to someone else, usually the military or those who sent the military in; c) the Middle East lesson of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya is that only a huge U.S. ground presence, in the fashion of postwar Italy, Germany, or Japan, coupled with abject defeat of the enemy, can lead to any chance of consensual government.
Without bloody fighting and without massive U.S. aid either the enemy wins and takes over, or what replaces the enemy reverts to the mindset of the enemy. We can stand-off bomb as we did in the Balkans to bring something better, but the Balkans are in Europe, and we still have troops in the Balkans, and lots of those who pushed Clinton into bombing later wanted him to stop when it seemed all we could do was hit embassies and rest homes rather than missile sites.
Does this mean that under no circumstances should we ever bomb Iran, or take out a mass murderer with WMD? Perhaps not. But it does suggest that after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, neither is the Middle East ready for U.S. invention nor is this generation of American elite leadership up for the task.
There is irony in seeing the opportunistic war critic Barack Obama out-drone Bush or be attacked on his Left by liberals, who rail at his callousness in not intervening in Syria. But there is not enough irony for schadenfreude — given that American soldiers might be sent into a theater by those who would support them only to the degree that they were deemed successful and blame their setbacks on everyone but themselves.
A nearly bankrupt and divided America after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya is not up for Syria — and an Arab Spring that on its own chose Winter does not deserve any more American blood.
Sorry, that’s just the way it is.
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My 3 point plan for no ground troops in Syria: Day 1) Take out the nuclear facilities in Iran with air strikes. Day 2) Take out the North Korean missile threat with air strikes. Day 3) Call Pres. Assad and ask if we can talk.
I like it.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/14/world/meast/syria-eaten-heart/?hpt=hp_t1
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Summary
A series of Russian diplomatic interactions with the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom over Syria are raising questions about whether Moscow is preparing to shift its position on Syria and to drop support for Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime to facilitate a political transition in Damascus. The United States and Russia are now trying to co-host a peace conference, dubbed "Geneva 2," to reach a political solution to the conflict. A negotiated settlement on Syria involving Russia that extricates the al Assad regime without a U.S.-led military intervention is an ideal outcome for the United States, but such expectations amount to little more than wishful thinking.
The United States and Russia are still worlds apart on a number of broader issues in play. And though Russia has strong intelligence capabilities in Syria and a relationship with the al Assads, it cannot convince a minority regime to give up an existential struggle when its prospects for amnesty are so dim. Russia will make attention-grabbing moves on Syria to try to extract political concessions from the West, but the Kremlin is not prepared to sacrifice its Alawite allies in Damascus just yet. In fact, with a group of Russian warships heading to the Mediterranean Sea, Moscow is still trying to reinforce the embattled regime.
Analysis
In a previously unscheduled visit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 14 in Sochi. Putin reportedly extended the invitation to Netanyahu because Israel had been growing concerned that Russia was preparing to transfer the S-300 air defense system to Syria within the next few months. Syria already has a relatively robust air defense system, but the addition of the S-300 air defense system would bolster its capabilities and augment the complexities attached to a potential military intervention. Also, Russian technicians would maintain and operate the air defense system, further complicating Israeli attempts to target these weapons systems without drawing itself into a broader conflict with Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied that Russia had any intention to sell the S-300s to Syria. He did, however, claim that Russia was delivering an air defense package to Syria under a 2010 agreement without providing any details on whether the weapons package would include the S-300 system.
Russia typically threatens to sale sensitive weapons to countries branded as political pariahs by the West as a way to grab Washington's attention on issues that Moscow deems critical. This is an old game that Russia has played with the United States over the past decade, leaking potential sales of S-300 systems to Iran to demand a conversation with the United States on issues like U.S. ballistic missile defense plans in Europe. This time the original source of the leak was U.S. media, citing U.S. and Israeli defense officials. This would mark a departure from Russia's usual method in leaking such sales through Russian media or defense officials. It is possible that the United States and Israel raised the S-300 issue as a way to build up opposition to Russia and to cast Moscow as an irresponsible stakeholder in Syria. But the threat of Russian weapons sales to Syria alone appears to have been enough to compel a last minute meeting between the Israeli Prime Minister and Russian leader.
A day before Netanyahu traveled to Sochi, British Prime Minister David Cameron had some unusually optimistic things to say about Russian involvement in Syria. Cameron met with Putin in Sochi on May 10 and then met with U.S. President Barack Obama on May 12 in Washington to discuss Syria. Following his meeting with Putin, Cameron said that he believes Putin is "prepared to adopt a more flexible approach on Syria." Cameron admitted that Russia was far from abandoning its support for the al Assad regime but said that he was struck by Putin's willingness to consider the Western point of view on Syria.
The apparently positive response that Cameron was able to elicit from Putin stands in marked contrast to the United States' recent interactions with Russia. In the lead-up to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's visit to Moscow on May 6, speculation was building that the United States was going to try to come to an agreement with Russia on Syria, particularly since the threat of chemical weapons proliferation was filling the headlines at the time. But the meeting between Kerry and Putin was visibly strained. While in Moscow Kerry made a point to meet with Russian nongovernmental organizations -- some of which were anti-Kremlin. Putin also made Kerry wait for hours before meeting with him. Russia appears to be holding onto one of its main negotiating tools -- its weapons support for Syria -- to pressure the United States, while Washington is using its main leverage -- Western support of nongovernmental organizations in Russia -- to pressure Moscow. So far, this appears to fit into the pattern of U.S.-Russian retaliatory relations.
That Putin responded favorably to Cameron has more to do with Russia's strategic goals for Europe than it has to do with Syria. For the first time in two decades, we have seen a warming of relations between London and Moscow, driven primarily by the two countries' expanding energy relationship. Putin may have been willing to say the right things to Cameron to make the U.K. leader appear influential to Obama, but how far Russia is willing to go in cooperating with the West on Syria is another question.
Russia has a strategic interest in maintaining a naval presence in the Mediterranean at Syria's Tartus port. Even as Syria fragments along ethnic and sectarian lines, Tartus would still likely remain under Alawite control, making it imperative for Russia to maintain close ties with the ethnic minority when Moscow is already a clear adversary of the Sunni rebels. Moscow is one of the few countries that can hold a conversation with the United States, still has influence in the al Assad regime and has strong intelligence capabilities on the ground in Syria that could prove critical to Western attempts to seize and secure chemical weapons stockpiles. Russia may cooperate sporadically to entice the West, by restricting fuel shipments or certain weapons transfers, but as long as the United States acts disinterested, much less confrontational, with Russia, Moscow has little incentive to sacrifice its existing influence in Syria.
Currently, Russia is reinforcing its supply lines to Syria. It is deploying five to six warships with support ships from its Pacific fleet to establish a permanent presence in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. A permanent command structure in the Mediterranean would oversee a constant presence of these ships that would be rotated in from different fleets. Critically, Russia's reinforced naval presence in the Mediterranean would not only entrench Russian interests in the region but could also provide a secure line of supply for the Alawites in Syria unless foreign groups want to risk a military conflict on the Mediterranean by trying to blockade these shipments.
Moreover, the conflict in Syria has likely surpassed diplomatic aspirations to negotiate a political exit for al Assad. The Alawites are engaged in an existential fight against Syria's Sunni majority, and their fate is joined by a substantial number of Shia in Lebanon and Iraq. In the absence of any legitimate offers for amnesty or protection for Alawites in Syria, there is little reason for them to give up the fight at this stage. On the other side of the conflict, Syria's Sunni population, emboldened by a broader Sunni regional effort to crack Iran's Shiite arc of influence, is not likely to cease fighting after a great deal of blood has already been shed, only to see a settlement in which power is shared with its sectarian adversaries. At most, the outside powers could attempt to come to an agreement to limit external support for both sides of the conflict.
But even if the United States and Russia can come to terms, which is looking unlikely, regional players like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey have a vested interest in this fight and will also be driven by sectarian interests. The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and others will continue to host conferences aiming for a political settlement to preclude the need for a foreign military intervention, but in the end, this is a struggle that will be decided on the battlefield in Syria, not in a diplomatic negotiation conducted by foreigners.
Read more: The Challenges of U.S.-Russian Diplomacy on Syria | Stratfor
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/world/middleeast/syrian-army-moves-to-rebel-held-qusayr.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130520
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I disagree with much of the tone of this piece, though eventually it does get to the significance of these missiles.
Syria: Misplaced Concern Over Possible Russian Missile Shipments
Analysis
MAY 30, 2013 | 1115 Print - Text Size +
A Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile system outside Moscow on April 18, 2012. (KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
Reports that Russia has delivered S-300 air defense missile batteries to Syria have yet to be confirmed. But even if the reports are true, the missiles would have a fairly negligible impact beyond deterring possible military intervention in the future. According to The New York Times, Syrian President Bashar al Assad confirmed May 30 that Russia already had delivered some of these weapons systems and that more were on the way -- so far, no one else has confirmed the delivery. However, the concern surrounding their introduction to the Syrian civil war is fairly overstated.
Analysis
The S-300s need to be kept in perspective. With their considerable range, they cover the full spectrum of aerial threats. They can target strategic enabler aircraft, such as aerial refueling tankers and early warning aircraft, and defend against low-flying cruise missiles. But these missiles -- indeed, any surface-to-air missile -- are completely useless against the Syrian rebels, who have neither an air force nor the munitions the S-300s are designed to combat.
When integrated in an overlapping and mutually supporting integrated air defense system -- as it would be in Syria -- the S-300 is a sophisticated weapon. Typically it operates in concert with several other surface-to-air missiles. Short-ranged but versatile point-defense systems -- such as the Pantsir-S1, which Syria operates, and the Tor missile system -- work to shield the S-300 from enemy anti-radiation missiles and other threats.
However, the S-300s are vulnerable to attack when they are deployed outside larger missile defense networks. For this reason, the batteries will be of little use to non-state actors such as Hezbollah and jihadists. Technically the missiles are mobile, but in reality the batteries are not very maneuverable and are highly conspicuous. Moreover, their radar emissions make them easy to detect. Non-state actors would be better served using other, lower-tech surface-to-air missiles, such as the 9K33 Osa and the 9K35 Strela-10.
In addition, S-300s are complex weapons that require significant expertise to operate, and it is unclear whether the Syrian military has received the requisite training. Given their sophistication, S-300s would necessitate several months of training to acquire basic competency. If Syrian crews have not already trained in Russia, then Russian personnel would have to at least partly operate the missile systems.
A Tool for Deterrence?
While the S-300s are worthless in the fight against Syrian rebels, they are nonetheless useful for other reasons -- namely, discouraging any military intervention. Once fully integrated into the Syrian air defense network, the S-300s will help deter foreign airstrikes. Certainly the batteries alone will not be able to repel a NATO or Israeli air campaign, but they will raise the risk of damage and casualties involved in an intervention. (Moreover, if Russian personnel are needed to operate the systems, their presence would also deter military intervention.)
In addition, the S-300 would enable Syria to strike deep into Israeli and Lebanese airspace. This would threaten a key aspect of Israel's military dominance of Syria. Israel has long been concerned with the presence of S-300s in the region, so it comes as no surprise that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon warned of an Israeli response in the event Syria acquired the missiles. (Yaalon also said the delivery had not yet been made.)
Diplomatic efforts are expected to continue in hopes of convincing Russia to halt delivery. If these efforts fail, Israel has several options to disable the systems, including stand-off cruise missile strikes and AGM-78 (or, possibly in the future, AGM-88) anti-radiation missiles.
If confirmed, the delivery of S-300s will damage Israeli-Russian relations. Russia argued that if it did provide Syria with the missiles, it did so only out of contractual obligation, which predates the civil war. However, the timing of the alleged delivery sends a political message. Russia is unhappy with the European Union for lifting its weapons embargo to Syria, and it is unhappy with the United States for refusing to strike a larger bargain to work with Russia on the Syrian issue. The delivery could be a message to the West that Moscow still has leverage.
Beyond the alleged delivery of the S-300 system, it is important to highlight the sheer scope of Russian support for al Assad. This support includes economic and financial aid, the delivery of spare parts for military equipment and, according to a document published May 30 in The Washington Post, other weapons and ammunition germane to the ongoing conflict. At the same time, Russia is organizing another peace conference with the United States to show that it can play a role other than al Assad's primary weapons supplier.
Absent a fundamental understanding with the United States on more strategic issues, Russia's core interest is to sustain al Assad and prolong the conflict. For now, it is abundantly clear that Moscow is not ready to sacrifice its influence in Damascus.
Read more: Syria: Misplaced Concern Over Possible Russian Missile Shipments | Stratfor
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57589252/u.s.-syria-used-chemical-weapons-crossing-red-line/
What say we here?
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57589252/u.s.-syria-used-chemical-weapons-crossing-red-line/
What say we here?
Buraq now has a fig leaf for arming and supporting the MB once again.
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Here is another POV:
Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
June 14, 2013
I'll be on "Real News" on The Blaze once again this evening. There are
two possible reactions to this: "Wow! Will Cain, Amy Holmes and the rest
of the gang must find your analysis invaluable!" or "Wow, a lot of other
pundits must be on vacation these days!"
The Administration Finally Acknowledges Brutal Reality in Syria
I guess I should give the Obama administration some credit; part of me
wondered if they would try to avoid acknowledging the Syrian regime's
use of chemical weapons forever, or at least until the Syrian civil war
ended.
Whatever your view on what our Syria policy ought to be, I hope we can
all agree that it hurts this country to be claiming to be unable to see
or verify chemical weapons use that the rest of the world seems to be
openly acknowledging and discussing.
Dan Drezner is pretty cheery:
Naturally, this will feed the "return of the liberal hawks" meme
that's spreading in some quarters. Other commentators will gnash
their teeth or decry that this is the first ill-considered step
towards dragging the United States into another Middle Eastern war.
To your humble blogger, this is simply the next iteration of the
unspoken, brutally realpolitik policy towards Syria that's been going
on for the past two years. To recap, the goal of that policy is to
ensnare Iran and Hezbollah into a protracted, resource-draining civil
war, with as minimal costs as possible. This is exactly what the last
two years have accomplished . . . at an appalling toll in lives
lost.
This policy doesn't require any course correction . . . so long as
rebels are holding their own or winning. A faltering Assad simply
forces Iran et al into doubling down and committing even more
resources. A faltering rebel movement, on the other hand, does
require some external support, lest the Iranians actually win the
conflict. In a related matter, arming the rebels also prevents
relations
with U.S. allies in the region from fraying any further.
So is this the first step towards another U.S.-led war in the region?
No. Everything in that Times story, and everything this
administration has said and done for the past two years, screams deep
reluctance over intervention. Arming the rebels is not the same thing
as a no-fly zone or any kind of ground intervention. This is simply
the United States engaging in its own form of asymmetric warfare. For
the
low, low price of aiding and arming the rebels, the U.S. preoccupies all of its
adversaries in the Middle East.
Doug Mataconis argues that a policy that leads to more Rwanda-like death
tolls is not merely acceptable, but the wiser choice than intervention:
I don't deny that Syria is a tragedy, but not every tragedy demands
that the United States ride to the rescue. For example, in the 1990s,
the civil war in Rwanda led to massive numbers of deaths in what
turned into a Tutu-Hutsi bloodbath. President Clinton didn't intervene
in that conflict, for what I would argue were wise reasons, but
reports now indicate that it is one of the decisions of his Presidency
that he regrets. Notwithstanding the horrible
legacy of that war, Clinton is wrong to have any regrets. The idea of the United
States intervening in a tribal war in the middle of Africa is as absurd now as it
was then. In all likelihood, U.S. involvement in Rwanda would have just made a bad
situation worse. And, that's why we ought to keep our noses out of the tragedy in
Syria.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57589252/u.s.-syria-used-chemical-weapons-crossing-red-line/
What say we here?
Whose side should we be on when there is no good side to take? Neither. No help, no arms, no troops, no involvement, with the exception of keeping a keen eye on containment.
More than a million people died in the Iran-Iraq war that Saddam caused. A massive human tragedy and it didn't even receive a mention in the 23 justifications for removing him from power. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Iraq_Resolution_of_2002
It is dry powder and elevated readiness for the U.S. on this one. We should be building up our economy for deterrence and to withstand big wars. We need to re-think and re-build our arsenal to handle desert, jungle, mountain, air, sea and space in the coming turmoil. We have lessons still to learn from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Gaza, West Bank, Somalia, the pirates on the Horn, China seas, N. K., Kashmir, Boston, al qaida arrests in Minneapolis, expired Visas, our southern border, the Arctic conflict brewing with Russia, among others.
In the case of Syria, we can side with a genocidal dictator or help the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaida expand and legitimize their power. Afterward, they will still be sworn to destroy us.
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BTW I would note that "our guy" in 2008 JMcC, has vigorously supported intervention in both Libya and Syria.
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Russia Outmaneuvers Obama Over Syria
America is playing catch-up with Putin in the Middle East. The G8 meeting starting Monday should be interesting.
By JOHN BOLTON
President Obama's belated acknowledgment that Syria's regime has used chemical weapons effectively forced his decision on Thursday to arm the opposition. Whether Mr. Obama's U-turn alters the conflict's course is a different question. One thing seems certain: Russia's support for Bashar al-Assad remains unwavering. It should make for an interesting G-8 meeting on Monday and Tuesday in Northern Ireland.
Since Syria's civil war began, Mr. Obama has insisted, contrary to fact, that the U.S. and Russia have a common interest in resolving the crisis and stabilizing the Middle East. Secretary of State John Kerry's recent efforts to secure Russian co-sponsorship of a peace conference, at which Washington will push for Assad's ouster, reflect Mr. Obama's illusion.
The objective evidence consistently demonstrates that Russia has no interest whatever in eliminating its only remaining Arab ally. Moscow's military and financial assistance to Damascus continues undiminished, along with its hold on the Cold War-era Tartus naval base, strategically positioned on Syria's Mediterranean coast—but now facing only a phantom U.S. Sixth Fleet. Despite the hoopla surrounding the announcement of the proposed peace talks, their starting date, attendees, agenda and prospects all remain uncertain.
.
.Most dramatically, Russia last month reaffirmed its commitment to deliver sophisticated S-300 air-defense missile systems to Assad. Although Israeli leaders have played down the sale's significance, this combination of advanced radars and missiles, which can defeat any non-stealthy aircraft (and Israel does not now have stealth planes), could change the strategic balance in Syria as well as in Lebanon and Iran—to Israel's detriment and ours.
Altering that broader strategic balance is precisely what Russia intends, exploiting President Obama's McGovernite "come home, America" policies, repeated in May when he again declared the war on terror almost over. Mr. Obama's continuing lack of interest in global threats to the U.S. is another manifestation of his inattention to defending the tenuous global stability on which the world's economy—and America's—critically rests.
Three years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded with Vladimir Putin not to sell S-300 systems to Iran. Mr. Netanyahu feared that Iran's nuclear program, sheltered behind the S-300 air defenses, would be impervious to Israeli strikes. Although the U.S. could penetrate and destroy S-300s in Iran, Israel does not believe (and didn't in 2010) that Mr. Obama is serious when he says "all options are on the table" concerning Washington's possible military steps.
Perhaps responding to still-unknown Israeli commitments, Mr. Putin agreed not to send S-300 missiles to Iran, publicly citing Security Council Resolution 1929—the last substantive United Nations sanction against Tehran that Russia and China have permitted. This is more than a little ironic, since Russia had previously contended that Resolution 1929's arms sanctions did not bar sales of antiaircraft missiles, an assessment entirely shared by the Obama administration.
Because Russia's public interpretation of Resolution 1929 is clearly incorrect, the interpretation could easily be reversed, or simply ignored, should Russia so choose. Since 2010, Israel has reportedly trained against S-300s previously sold to Cyprus, but this is hardly equivalent to confronting them in combat situations wielded by skilled operators. Despite Israel's recent bluster regarding S-300s, Mr. Netanyahu reprised his pilgrimage to Moscow on May 14, this time hoping to block the Syrian sale. Mr. Putin refused.
Enlarge Image
CloseAssociated Press
President Obama and Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Los Cabos, Mexico, in 2012.
.Much, therefore, depends on how effectively Moscow trains Assad's military, or, even more chillingly, whether Russian crews will operate S-300s in Syria, which would definitely raise the stakes for NATO or Israeli attacks on the missile or radar emplacements.
There is enormous political symbolism in the S-300 deal, which is bolstered by Russian sales of antiship missiles and MiG fighters, and naval deployments to the Eastern Mediterranean. Russia's support to prevent Assad's fall is already having a considerable impact on the conflict, whatever steps Mr. Obama may now hesitatingly undertake.
The spillover prospect of using S-300s to protect Hezbollah's weapons in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley is significant both for Israel and for Hezbollah's ever-larger role in Syria's hostilities. Iran's mullahs also benefit, especially if S-300s bound for Syria find their way into Iranian hands. The ever-closer Tehran-Moscow relationship underlines the essentially negligible prospects for negotiating Iran out of its nuclear-weapons program.
While Mr. Obama sleepwalks, Mr. Putin is ardently pursuing Russia's Middle East objectives. He has always been clear about his larger goals.
In 2005, Mr. Putin told the Russian Federation Assembly that "the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the [last] century," which he clearly hoped to remedy. Mr. Putin's neo-imperialistic goals now extend globally. In Soviet days, Americans joked that Sergei Lavrov, now Russian foreign minister, was a closet royalist, but he longs less for a Romanov restoration than for a return to the czars' hegemonic achievements.
While the evidence about Russia's strategic objectives may not be conclusive, the direction is ominous. And as long as America operates on the assumption that the U.S. has common interests with Russia in Syria, Lebanon, Iran or the Middle East generally, we will see Moscow's influence rise and ours decline. Even in today's Washington, that's a scandal.
Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
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a) http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/06/17/watch-share-both-parties-are-dragging-us-into-war-in-the-middle-east/
b) I know! Lets give these guys night vision goggles and manpads!
http://dcclothesline.com/2013/06/17/syrian-rebels-sing-we-destroyed-america-with-a-civilian-airplane/?fb_source=pubv1
c) Is what we are doing a matter of doing what is necessary to keeping this thing going and letting them kill each other?
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Hey, let's support these mujahadeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, what downside could there be?
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Worth noting there that there was one helluva an upside too-- arguably precipitating the fall of the Soviet Empire.
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Supporting the muj started with Carter. Forcing the Soviet collapse was Reagan's doing.
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Yes, in part by arming the M. with stingers.
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A very small part.
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Well, I'd quibble with that, IMHO the Soviet defeat in Afg was more than a very small part, but anyway, let's return to the subject of the thread.
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Lee Smith writing online for The Weekly Standard, June 17:
As if there isn't already enough on the agenda for the G-8 Summit, now Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is threatening Europe . . . explaining [to the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung] that European Muslims traveling to Syria to fight the regime "will return, battle-hardened and with an extremist ideology." The reality, however, is that Europe has much to fear from the regime, which waged a campaign of terror in Europe, particularly Paris, in the 80s. Then under the direction of Bashar's father Hafez, the regime's most notorious operation on the continent was the 1986 Hindawi Affair. An agent of the Damascus regime, Nezar Hindawi, put a bomb in the bag of his girlfriend, an Irish woman unaware of what she was carrying on board a Tel Aviv-bound EL AL flight out of London's Heathrow airport. After the airline's security detected the explosives, Hindawi took refuge in the Syrian embassy in London, leading to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to break off diplomatic relations with Syria.
When the Assad regime issues threats, it's worth taking them seriously.
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Intervention in Syria Is a Very Bad Idea
By Victor Davis Hanson
June 17, 2013 12:01 PM
Syria is turning out to be a sort of Spanish Civil War of our age, with Hezbollah and Iran playing the role of fascist Italy and Germany, and the Islamic nations and jihadists that of Stalin’s Russia, as the moderates disappear and the messy conflict becomes a proxy war for greater powers, with worse to come.
There were always problems for the Obama administration intervening in Syria besides the usual bad/worse choices in the Middle East between authoritarianism and Islamic extremism and the president’s own preference for sonorous sermons rather than rapid action.
For all of 2012, Barack Obama ran on the theme that he had removed the last troops from Iraq and soon would do the same in Afghanistan. So a third intervention in Syria was not to be a campaign talking point, especially after Benghazi.
Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and John Kerry were all on record saying that Assad’s Syria was more or less reforming, the nuances of its newfound moderation missed by the supposedly swaggering Bush administration. Lead from behind in Libya had led to Benghazi, not an empowered Arab Spring.
Our record elsewhere is no better. The Muslim Brotherhood certainly did not turn out to be “largely secular” or uninterested in political power. The Egyptian economy is a disaster. Asking the Arab League and the U.N. — but not the U.S. Congress — before intervening in Libya also proved a model for nothing, especially after we hoodwinked the Russians and the Chinese at the U.N. into voting for a no-fly zone and humanitarian aid, only to offer no ground support to the Libyan rebels. I doubt Russia and China will vote for any such similar U.N. resolution for Syria.
U.S. influence in the Middle East and North Africa is at a new post-war low. That Iran supposedly plans to send 4,000 fighters to Syria suggests that it is not too afraid of anyone threatening its nuclear facilities or of the supposedly crushing oil boycott.
There is no guarantee that American air support or close training might not end up in some sort of American ground presence — the only sure guarantee that so-called moderates might prevail should Assad fall. Of course, any costly intervention would eventually be orphaned by many in the present chorus of interventionists in a manner that we also know well from Iraq. We are told that dealing a blow to Iran and Hezbollah would be a good thing, and no doubt it would be. But in the callous calculus of realpolitik, both seem already to be suffering without U.S. intervention.
Thousands are dying and that is a terrible thing, but how exactly the U.S. could stop the killing is a mystery, as is why the Syrian dead are more important than the greater aggregate humanitarian disaster in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, or Mali. The jihadists who did a photo-op with John McCain do not assure us that weapons used against Assad’s army, Hezbollah terrorists, and Iranians won’t go rogue. If an airliner goes down, we will know that they already have.
The president finally seems to want to do something. But that something is complicated by his past calls for Bashar Assad to leave, and his unserious red lines about the use of chemical weapons. It is said that Obama is finally prepared to act a bit, shamed by the two Clintons’ usual backstage politicking and his own worries of doing something to make his own scandals disappear under news bulletins of new national-security crises.
But Syria is hopelessly more complicated and messy than it was 18 months ago. The arrival of Susan Rice and Samantha Power into respective higher positions of power is said to be a sudden catalyst for action, but the former’s credibility is shot, and the latter’s Arab Spring portfolio is, too. The Kerry/Rice/Power team, led from behind by Obama on the back nine, cannot yet define how they would oversee a consensual government to replace Assad, given that under the protocols of American support for the Arab Spring even a pro-U.S. authoritarian would be unacceptable.
Most Americans do not favor intervention of any serious sort, and Obama is not up to drumming up public support. He announced a surge and then simultaneous withdrawals in Afghanistan; since then he rarely mentions the war or the brave Americans stuck there fighting it. A campaign theme was that the United States was all out of Iraq, without a small residual force to keep the Maliki government somewhat honest.
In short, Team Obama does not have its heart in doing much of anything in the Middle East — not in Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, or in the War on Terror in general. Given that the American people have no great love for most of those killing one another in Syria, we would be wise to stay out, and send food and medicine to alleviate the suffering of the innocent.
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Obama Succeeded in Libya; He's Failing in Syria' (Steve Clemons, The Atlantic)
"In the case of Libya, Obama acted surgically and preempted the typical slippery slope to a larger military intervention that involved 'owning the outcomes' inside Libya. Obama's strategy worked, and the U.S. in partnership with France, England, the UAE, and Qatar delivered a low-cost political transition inside Libya.
With Syria, Obama is behaving in ways that run counter to the decision criteria he applied in Libya. He is committing intelligence and military resources to a crisis that does not have UN Security Council sanction, and he is not framing his response to the chemical weapons use in terms of either punishing the commanders who authorized their use -- or to secure those weapons. Instead, Obama is joining the rebel forces and committing to a regime change formula that could potentially falter. And that is before calculating the global strategic costs of getting in a nasty stand-off with Russia whose support is needed on other global challenges.
This is sloppy interventionism -- strategically inchoate, potentially at conflict with other larger and more important U.S. strategic goals, and potentially the kind of commitment that obligates the United States to support a rebellion that America avoided doing in the Libyan case."
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http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/27/islamists_auction_off_cars_to_buy_heat_seeking_missiles_for_syrian_rebels
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/30/catholic-priest-beheaded-in-syria-by-al-qaeda-linked-rebels-as-men-and-children-take-pictures-and-cheer/
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Not clear to me who it is that put this EXTREMELY brutal video together,
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b57_1372272008
there seems to be quite a collection of various languages amongst the crowd beheading the two captives, but the CIA and the Mossad are blamed for supporting this.
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Summary
A recent series of attacks in Syria is seriously threatening the rebels' unity. On July 11, Islamic State of Iraq and Sham fighters in Syria allegedly assassinated Kamal Hamami, a leader of the rebel Supreme Military Council, in the Turkmen mountains near the northern city of Latakia. The perpetrator of many such attacks, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham risks undermining its own position in Syria as well as that of the wider rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime.
Analysis
The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham's attacks have been part of the group's fight for territory and a leadership position within the wider jihadist movement in Syria. This effort has often led to tensions and skirmishes between the group and Jabhat al-Nusra, which the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham has attempted to subsume. The group has also been agitated by the Supreme Military Council's close coordination with the West. It opposes any Western interference in Syria and does not want to see any coordination with the West in the effort to topple Bashar al Assad.
In fact, Paris, London and Washington have been pushing the more moderate rebel groups, such as the Supreme Military Council, to act against the jihadist groups, including al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham. Though open strife between the rebel factions undermines the rebellion, the West is worried about the jihadist groups' growing strength and influence in Syria. The jihadists have assimilated many foreign fighters, including many from Europe, and there is considerable concern that the groups could seize chemical and other weapons, such as man-portable air defense systems, or send hardened militants back to the West.
An outright conflict between the Supreme Military Council and the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham would throw the rebels into turmoil at a time when the wider rebel movement is facing significant pressure from regime forces in Homs and Damascus. However, such a rift also could greatly allay Western fears over arming the rebels. For instance, the U.S. Congress will be far more inclined to support the Supreme Military Council if the council is actively fighting not only the al Assad regime but also its one-time allies, the jihadists.
However, it is doubtful that an influx of weapons would counterbalance the damage to the rebellion caused by infighting. Already the rebellion has been threatened by increased clashes between Kurdish fighters and the rebels, among different rebel groups over energy resources and among the different jihadist groups.
Indeed, ever since Islamic State of Iraq leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi moved his group into Syria and claimed that a merger had taken place between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syrian jihadist movements, tensions have been building within the rebel ranks. Unlike Abu Mohammad al-Golani, who is nominally the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Baghdadi has been uncompromising in his dealings with other rebel groups and civilian groups alike. While al-Nusra has provided social services in an attempt to cultivate good will from the populace and has coordinated with other rebel groups, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham has repeatedly been accused of carrying out executions across Syria and has repeatedly attacked other rebel groups. For example, on July 5 the group allegedly assassinated the leader of the Hamza Assad Allah Brigade and his brother in the town of al-Dana.
Al-Baghdadi and his group's unrestrained violence is reminiscent of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's leadership in Iraq. The extremism of al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq ultimately worked against the group, driving the Sunni tribes toward the coalition with the creation of the Sons of Iraq program. While the threat from al-Baghdadi's group is unlikely to lead the broader rebellion in Syria to side with the al Assad regime, various rebel groups will increasingly end up fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham just as they fight the regime. Even al-Nusra may find itself increasingly pushed toward greater cooperation with the Supreme Military Council against al-Baghdadi.
Despite its significant combat expertise, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham simply does not have the numbers to face off against both the regime and other rebel groups. The United States has already placed a $10-million bounty on al-Baghdadi (second only to the bounty on al-Zawahiri), and with his group increasingly isolated, al-Baghdadi's odds of survival get smaller every day.
Read more: In Syria, One Group's Aggression Challenges the Rebels' Unity | Stratfor
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second post
Legal Fears Slowed Aid to Syrian Rebels
By ADAM ENTOUS
A string of cautionary opinions from administration lawyers over the last two years sheds new light on President Barack Obama's halting and ultimately secretive steps to provide military support to rebels in Syria's deadly civil war.
Members of the so-called Lawyers Group of top legal advisers from across the administration argued that Mr. Obama risked violating international law and giving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad the legal grounds—and motivation—to retaliate against Americans, said current and former officials.
Syrian rebels last week headed to the town of Bsankol in the northwestern province of Idlib to join comrades fighting regime forces for the control of the highway that connects Idlib with Latakia.
The group's arguments in part help explain why the White House agonized over Syria intervention and why Mr. Obama eventually opted to provide military aid to the rebels covertly through the Central Intelligence Agency, to help mitigate the legal risks and keep the U.S.'s profile low.
Administration lawyers recently determined that providing such aid was allowed under U.S. domestic law, helping to clear the way for limited arms shipments to handpicked groups of rebels likely starting in August. But the lawyers sidestepped questions over international law by asserting that supporting the rebels was justified by a number of factors: the humanitarian crisis in Syria, alleged human-rights violations by the regime and Iranian arms shipments that violate U.N. Security Council sanctions.
"They are assuming the risks," said a former administration official involved in the legal debate.
U.S. Legal Grounds for Backing Syrian Rebels
Experts say President Bill Clinton took a similar approach in justifying the Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999, which, like the Syria effort, wasn't authorized by the U.N. Security Council.
"An old trial lawyer adage is that when the law is not on your side, argue the facts instead," said John Bellinger, a former State Department legal adviser during the Bush administration. "Here, the [administration] is saying that the aid is permissible under U.S. domestic law but is careful to avoid saying the aid is permissible under international law."
U.N. Security Council resolutions that could authorize outside intervention in Syria have been blocked by Russia, which was critical of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led mission in Libya in 2011, constraining the U.S.'s legal options.
As a consequence of the decision to provide support through the CIA, officials say, U.S. military aid to rebel forces is more limited than it would have been had it gone through the military. The CIA's arming of the rebels is expected to begin now that a tentative accord has been reached with lawmakers who had threatened to freeze some funding, officials said. Lawmakers are still demanding that the administration report back with further justification for the CIA program before taking additional action, officials say.
A reconstruction of the debate over arming the Syrian opposition shows how much administration lawyers played a cautionary role in the process, parrying calls for more assertive U.S. action by citing the risks of skirting international law, triggering a shooting war and setting legal precedents that could be cited by other countries, such as Russia and China.
At the State Department, lawyers reviewing the proposals found themselves at odds with their more forward-leaning bosses—former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and now John Kerry—who both pushed a reluctant Mr. Obama to ramp up military support to the rebels, including through the provision of arms. Some of the lawyers involved were uncomfortable with what they saw as a policy that could be seen as similar to the Reagan administration's backing of Nicaragua's Contra guerrillas in the 1980s.
Some of them cited a 1986 decision from the International Court of Justice on the American role in Nicaragua that said the U.S. was in "breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another state."
U.S. officials give two possible explanations as to why the lawyers were cautious. Some say it reflected the extent to which Mr. Obama and his legal advisers sought to draw a distinction with the Bush administration and its approach to international law. Others say it reflected Mr. Obama's deep reluctance to take steps that could lead the U.S. into another war in the Middle East. The Lawyers Group, which has existed in previous administrations, works by consensus in order to avoid presenting "the client"—the president—with split legal decisions.
Key members of the group raised objections soon after the start of the Syrian uprising, in March 2011, when some in the State Department argued for recognizing the opposition and severing ties to the regime, said current and former officials.
Then-State Department legal adviser Harold Koh and other administration lawyers argued that could be viewed as meaning the U.S. no longer recognized Mr. Assad's government, officials involved in the debate said. That, they argued, could relieve him of his responsibilities under international law such things as the use of chemical weapons under his government's control. After months of internal debate, the administration called on Mr. Assad to "step aside" but didn't recognize the opposition.
In summer 2012, the White House began to focus on State Department and CIA proposals to ramp up support to the rebels, from providing nonlethal military support, including body armor and night-vision goggles, to small arms, officials say.
In response, the Lawyers Group questioned whether the State Department could provide military support directly to forces fighting a war in which the U.S. wasn't formally engaged. Lawyers also told the White House that providing military aid would allow Mr. Assad under international law to declare Americans combatants, whether in military uniforms or not, and target them for taking sides in another country's civil war.
The lawyers said even a State Department proposal to supply rebel fighters with food rations could give Mr. Assad legal grounds go after Americans.
"The giving of aid is the equivalent of taking sides—if you give them guns or you give them food to survive, you're still supporting them in the effort and the other side can consider you the enemy," one former Obama administration official said.
In December, Mr. Obama recognized a Western-backed opposition coalition as the "legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime," a carefully worded statement that administration lawyers believed stopped short of full recognition.
The legal debate over providing military support to the rebels came to a head earlier this year.
In February, Secretary of State Kerry was poised to fly to Rome where officials hoped he would announce a U.S. decision to, for the first time, provide nonlethal military equipment along with halal meals and medical kits, directly to the Western-backed rebel army of Gen. Salim Idris, current and former U.S. officials said.
At the time, the administration balked at authorizing the State Department to provide military equipment: Using the State Department to do so was "legally available" under domestic law, but questionable under international law. As a result, Mr. Kerry announced only plans to provide food rations and medical kits, disappointing the opposition.
Some lawyers continued to raise objections to even the pared-down plan, arguing that Gen. Idris's Free Syrian Army should deliver the supplies only to unarmed civilians, instead of giving them to fighters, said an official briefed on the matter.
In the end, the State Department delivered the rations and medical kits based on a legal determination that such provisions didn't count as military aid because they didn't improve the fighters' ability, officials said. Moreover, the White House decided the aid couldn't be given exclusively to fighters, but should also go to nonfighters.
While the smaller CIA footprint may reduce the risk that Mr. Assad will launch attacks on U.S. personnel arming and training rebels mainly in Jordan and diplomats and aid workers in other countries such as Lebanon, current and former officials say the legal risks remain.
The lawyers told the White House that Mr. Assad was under no obligation to draw a distinction between the CIA and other branches of the U.S. government.
"Once Assad claims a right to attack American citizens, we're in a whole new game," a former official said.
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http://mobile.wnd.com/2013/04/russia-delivers-new-al-qaida-warning-to-u-s/
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http://mobile.wnd.com/2013/04/russia-delivers-new-al-qaida-warning-to-u-s/
Of course, Buraq wouldn't support them otherwise.
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Syria
Anti-tank guided missiles recently supplied by Saudi Arabia are boosting rebel positions in southern Syria. (Q: Where did the Saudis get them? From us? Why is there not limitation on resale?!?) Opposition fighters reportedly used the Russia-designed Konkurs anti-tank weapons in an assault on the Syrian army in Daraa as well as near the rebel stronghold of Laja. According to some experts, the recent arms deliveries may signal the beginning of a major supply line, headed by Saudi Arabia, into southern Syria. Meanwhile, the U.S. Defense Department is converting a warehouse on the outskirts of the Jordanian capital of Amman into a military operations center, Centcom Forward-Jordan, in order to coordinate support for the Jordanian military. The move comes as Jordan copes with a soaring refugee crisis from the Syrian civil war and as concerns of cross-border spillover increase. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey, said the mission is to show Jordanians "that they can count on us to continue to be their partner." He continued, "We are at our best when we can actually shape events and prevent conflict." Thousands of Syrian refugees flowed into the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq on Thursday, crossing a new pontoon bridge over the Tigris River. According to the United Nations, between 5,000 and 7,000 refugees followed an initial group of about 750 people, adding to the over 150,000 Syrian refugees already registered in Iraq.
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I know, after throwing away our accomplishments in Iraq and now totally unwilling to confront Iran, led by this Commander in Chief and and his well-earned reputation for gravitas and advised by Samatha Powers, Susan Rice, and John Kerry, lets start mucking around in Syria to tilt things in favor of AQ. After all, it worked so well in Libya , , ,
http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/army/318653-hagel-us-military-ready-for-all-contingencies-in-syria
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second post of the night
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323407104579034633663263254.html?mod=us_news_newsreel#
Sounds like a clusterfuck coming down the pike to me-- but at least our military is well-funded and knows its CIC has its back , , , and Iran knows that Sec Def Hagel will be a real hardass with it if necessary. After all, look at the position he took on sanctions , , ,
I do like that the UN is not regarded as the only game in town for getting "permission" , , ,
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I remember when it was very bad to go to war in the middle east over WMD.
Massive protests from the peace movement in 3.....2.......never.
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Andrew Roberts: Syria's Gas Attack on Civilization
It takes a barbarian to employ poison gas. Assad joins the ranks of Mussolini, Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
By
ANDREW ROBERTS
'Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling, fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; but someone still was yelling out and stumbling, and flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . ."
Wilfred Owen's poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est," describing his experience of a chlorine-gas attack in World War I, highlights its horror and explains in part the thinking behind the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, which comprehensively outlawed such weapons in 1925.
Only 4% of all battlefield deaths in the Great War had been caused by gas, yet the foul nature of those deaths meant that gas held a particular terror in the public imagination. Since 1925, it has only been countries that are recognized to be outside the bounds of civilization that have taken recourse to it.
The latest outlaw to do so is Syria's dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who deployed chemical weapons against opponents of his regime in the suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21, according to press reports and a statement over the weekend by Doctors Without Borders.
The first was Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy, which unleashed mustard gas on the Ethiopian subjects of Emperor Haile Selassie in the Abyssinian campaign of 1935-41. The gas dropped by the Italian air force was known by the Ethiopians as "the terrible rain that burned and killed."
The horrific results wrought upon unarmed civilians, photographed by the International Red Cross, were much the same as Wilfred Owen described in his poem about a comrade on the Western Front who had failed to put his gas-mask on in time: "Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, as under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning."
Although both the Axis and Allied powers in World War II considered using poison gas, neither did, possibly through fear of retaliation. Adolf Hitler did use gas to perpetrate his Holocaust against the Jews in Europe. But he did not unleash this weapon on the battlefield—not even on the Eastern Front, where he considered that he was fighting against Slavic untermenschen (sub-humans).
His hesitation to use gas on the battlefield was not due to the fact that he had himself been gassed in the trenches of World War I, but because he rightly suspected an overwhelming Allied response to any first use of such a weapon. Winston Churchill actively considered using poison gas both defensively—in June 1940, when Britain faced invasion—and offensively, in July 1944, to aid the attacks on the Ruhr. Fortunately, no invasion came in 1940, and in 1944 he and the British chiefs of staff decided against the use of poison gas, putting moral considerations above the undoubted military benefits.
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Getty Images
A soldier succumbs to poison gas in France, 1918.
In the Korean War, the Chinese and North Korean intelligence services alleged that the United States had used aircraft to drop flies, fleas and spiders infected with anthrax, cholera, encephalitis, plague and meningitis in "germ bombs." In January 1998, documents in the Russian presidential archives conclusively proved that the charges were entirely fraudulent—invented as a way of blaming America for outbreaks of these infectious diseases in their own countries.
Some Marxist fellow-travellers in the West, such as the British academic Joseph Needham, promoted these foul libels, but even they—and, significantly, the disinformation machines of Beijing and Pyongyang—never went so far as to accuse the U.S. of using poison gas. They recognized that no one would believe that United Nations forces in Korea would be so barbaric as to resort to such weapons.
In 1987 and 1988, Saddam Hussein launched attacks on no fewer than 40 Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, using new mixtures of mustard gas and various nerve agents such as Sarin, Tabun and VX. (Ten milligrams of VX on the skin can kill a man, while a single raindrop weighs eighty milligrams.) The worst attack came on March 16, 1988, in Halabja.
Iraqi troops methodically divided the town into grids, in order to determine the number and location of the dead and the extent of injuries, thereby enabling them scientifically to gauge the efficacy of various different types of gases and nerve agents. One of the first war correspondents to enter the town afterward, the late Richard Beeston of the Times of London, reported that "Like figures unearthed in Pompeii, the victims of Halabja were killed so quickly that their corpses remained in suspended animation. There was a plump baby whose face, frozen in a scream, stuck out from under the protective arm of a man, away from the open door of a house that he never reached."
Between 4,000 and 5,000 civilians, many of them women and children, died within a few hours at Halabja, through asphyxiation, skin burns and progressive respiratory shutdown. However, a further 10,000 were "blinded, maimed, disfigured, or otherwise severely and irreversibly debilitated," according to a report by the University of Liverpool's Christine Gosden.
These victims later suffered neurological disorders, convulsions, comas and digestive shutdown. In the years to come, thousands more, the State Department noted, were to suffer from "horrific complications, debilitating diseases, and birth defects" such as lymphoma, leukemia, colon, breast, skin and other cancers, miscarriages, infertility and congenital malformations, leading to many more deaths.
It takes a barbarian to employ poison gas. Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler (with Zyklon B) and Saddam Hussein were three such, and today another is Assad. Yet the Chinese and Russians continue to excuse and defend him, and the White House ties itself into rhetorical knots in order to avoid having to topple him.
It's true that in this civil war, shrapnel and Kalashnikov bullets have killed many more of the 100,000 Syrians than has poison gas. Nevertheless, it is right that the use of poison gas by Assad be singled out for special condemnation.
Wilfred Owen, who was himself killed a week before the end of the Great War, recalled in "Dulce et Decorum Est" his gassed comrade's "white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin" and how he heard "the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues." There is a long and honorable history of the civilized world treating those dictators who use poison gas as qualitatively different from the normal ruck of tyrants whose careers have so stained the 20th and 21st centuries.
President Obama, who talks endlessly of the importance of civilized values, must now uphold this one.
Mr. Roberts, an historian, is the author, most recently, of "The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War" (Harper, 2011).
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This piece makes an important point about chem warfare and the consequences of it going unpunished, but it is completely devoid of any solutions beyond a call to "Do something!"
As Doug's post of the George Will piece in the UN thread nearby notes, the great likelihood is that the "something" will be a "gesture".
In the absence of a coherent strategy (and see the recent posts in the Foreign Policy thread for some ideas), FWIW my sense of things for Syria in this moment is this:
"Don't do something! Just stand there!"
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Attention dictators! When you engage in mass murder, don't use chemical weapons, or you might be subjected to token military gestures.
Maybe Buraq can just send Assad an IPod with a collection of his speeches.
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John Kerry's statement:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/26/read-the-full-transcript-kerrys-speech-on-syria-chemical-weapons-and-the-need-to-respond/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
http://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-iran-issue-explicit-warning-to-israel-if-us-attacks/
Good thing Iran has not armed Hamas and Hezbollah with over 50,000 rockets that cover pretty much the entirety of Israel, probably including Israel's nuke facility. Oh wait , , ,
Good thing we have an aircraft carrier sitting off shore. Oh wait , , ,
Good thing we have maintained the number of carriers off of Iran. Oh wait , , ,
I have predicted several times here that Israel made a historic error when it did not finish Hezbollah all the way to the Bekkaa (Sp?)Valley the last time it invaded Lebanon. President Bush had given them green light but then when Hezbollah fought well, they quit. I hope I am wrong about this , , ,
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David Burge @iowahawkblog
If Syria used chemical weapons against the VMAs, would we be so quick to condemn them?
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VMA?
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VMA?
MTV's Video Music Awards. Where you can see civilization die in realtime.
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Only a graduate from Columbia's school of journalism (propaganda) could come up with this contrast as a defense of her One. Of course she now works for the very 'objective' out fit Time:
****6 Ways Syria 2013 Isn’t Iraq 2003
A ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to deal with WMDs may sound familiar, but these two plots are vastly different
By Jay Newton-Small @JNSmallAug. 28, 201319 Comments
Presidential Reunion: Scenes from the Opening of the Bush Library
Brooks Kraft / Corbis for TIME
President Barack Obama applauds former president George W. Bush at the dedication of the George W. Bush presidential library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Follow @TIMEPolitics
An American president says a Middle Eastern country has weapons of mass destruction. He builds a “coalition of the willing” for a military strike against said country.
Sound familiar?
It could be President Barack Obama in 2013 or President George W. Bush in 2003, or so fear liberal Democrats leery of getting involved in yet another war in the Middle East.
“While the use of chemical weapons is deeply troubling and unacceptable, I believe there is no military solution to the complex Syrian crisis,” Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat who famously was the only member to vote against authorizing the war in Afghanistan, said Tuesday in a statement on her Facebook page. “Congress needs to have a full debate before the United States commits to any military force in Syria — or elsewhere.”
But Obama, who ran on a platform in 2008 of ending Bush’s wars in the Middle East, isn’t Bush, and there are important distinctions between the two scenarios. Here are six ways Syria 2013 isn’t Iraq 2003:
Regime change
Bush made no secret that his plan was to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. This time around, the Obama administration is taking pains to say that ousting Syrian strongman Bashar Assad is the last thing they want as it would only create a power vacuum the disorganized Syrian opposition isn’t ready to fill. “I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are not about regime change,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday. “They are about responding to a clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons.”
A limited engagement
U.S. officials are looking at a two-day, limited strike on Syria, which would not involve any American boots on the ground — compared to the 130,000 U.S. troops Bush had already mustered on Iraq’s borders by the time he declared his intentions to the public. The purpose in Syria is to punish Assad so that he knows he cannot use chemical weapons against his own people with impunity. Striking the weapons themselves could potentially create too much collateral damage, so Syrian military sites are being selected. Whereas Bush envisioned five months in Iraq — which turned into 10 years — Obama hopes his engagement will be counted in days, not weeks.
Arab support
Most of the Arab world opposed Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The entire Arab League except Kuwait condemned the war. And Turkey denied the U.S. use of its military bases. This time around, most of the Arab world, with the exceptions of Iraq and Lebanon, supports strikes against Assad, and Saudi Arabia and Turkey are in talks to potentially participate in the military operation.
European support
Remember Freedom Fries? France and much of Europe weren’t wild about going to war in Iraq. France is now spearheading the effort to oust Assad, although Germany and southern Europe remain skeptical of military involvement. Britain, of course, was as much on board with Iraq in 2003 as it is with Syria in 2013.
WMDs
This time, there’s next to no doubt they actually exist. The pretense for the war in Iraq was disproven: Hussein’s alleged WMD stockpiles were never found. In this case, the international community has, with the exception of Russia and Iran, accepted and condemned the use of chemical gas in Syria last week that killed as many as 1,300 people.
Congress
Bush asked for and received overwhelming permission and support from Congress to invade Iraq. When asked, Carney on Tuesday said Syria poses a “significant challenge to or threat to the United States’ national security interests.” The language is important, as the president must seek permission from Congress to go to war unless the U.S. is imminently threatened. So, Carney’s careful categorization would seem to indicate that no matter what Lee wants — she sent a letter with 20 of her colleagues asking Obama seek permission from Congress to engage in Syria— he likely will go this alone as he did Libya.
Maybe Obama should allow the debate in Congress. It’d be a headache, for sure, and the posturing could last longer than the intervention itself, but it might also reassure nervous members like Lee who worry Obama is getting the U.S. into another decade-long war in the Middle East. And given U.S. polls showing huge opposition to engagement in Syria, it might help assuage the American public as well.
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/28/6-ways-syria-2013-isnt-iraq-2003/#ixzz2dGvrMUJU*****
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1)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/28/how-u-s-strikes-on-syria-help-al-qaeda.html
2)
Also, Col. Ralph Peters, (who, btw got Afpakia right when after we overthrew the Taliban said we should leave) is emphatically against this on the ground of enemies killing enemies being a good thing. Also, he does not feel the CiC has close military advisers and is failing to consider Hebzollah counters to Israel and Iranian counters to the Straights of Hormuz.
3) Obama's Bluff
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Stratfor
By George Friedman
4)
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/weapons/how-the-us-could-take-out-syrias-chemical-weapons-14826307
Images of multiple dead bodies emerged from Syria last week. It was asserted that poison gas killed the victims, who according to some numbered in the hundreds. Others claimed the photos were faked while others said the rebels were at fault. The dominant view, however, maintains that the al Assad regime carried out the attack.
The United States has so far avoided involvement in Syria's civil war. This is not to say Washington has any love for the al Assad regime. Damascus' close ties to Iran and Russia give the United States reason to be hostile toward Syria, and Washington participated in the campaign to force Syrian troops out of Lebanon. Still, the United States has learned to be concerned not just with unfriendly regimes, but also with what could follow such regimes. Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have driven home the principle that deposing one regime means living with an imperfect successor. In those cases, changing the regime wound up rapidly entangling the United States in civil wars, the outcomes of which have not been worth the price. In the case of Syria, the insurgents are Sunni Muslims whose best-organized factions have ties to al Qaeda.
Still, as frequently happens, many in the United States and Europe are appalled at the horrors of the civil war, some of whom have called on the United States to do something. The United States has been reluctant to heed these calls. As mentioned, Washington does not have a direct interest in the outcome, since all possible outcomes are bad from its perspective. Moreover, the people who are most emphatic that something be done to stop the killings will be the first to condemn the United States when its starts killing people to stop the killings. People would die in any such intervention, since there are simply no clean ways to end a civil war.
Obama's Red Lines
U.S. President Barack Obama therefore adopted an extremely cautious strategy. He said that the United States would not get directly involved in Syria unless the al Assad regime used chemical weapons, stating with a high degree of confidence that he would not have to intervene. After all, Syrian President Bashar al Assad has now survived two years of civil war, and he is far from defeated. The one thing that could defeat him is foreign intervention, particularly by the United States. It was therefore assumed he wouldn't do the one thing Obama said would trigger U.S. action.
Al Assad is a ruthless man: He would not hesitate to use chemical weapons if he had to. He is also a very rational man: He would use chemical weapons only if that were his sole option. At the moment, it is difficult to see what desperate situation would have caused him to use chemical weapons and risk the worst. His opponents are equally ruthless, and we can imagine them using chemical weapons to force the United States to intervene and depose al Assad. But their ability to access chemical weapons is unclear, and if found out, the maneuver could cost them all Western support. It is possible that lower-ranking officers in al Assad's military used chemical weapons without his knowledge and perhaps against his wishes. It is possible that the casualties were far less than claimed. And it is possible that some of the pictures were faked.
All of these things are possible, but we simply don't know which is true. More important is that major governments, including the British and French, are claiming knowledge that al Assad carried out the attack. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a speech Aug. 26 clearly building the case for a military response, and referring to the regime attack as "undeniable" and the U.S. assessment so far as "grounded in facts." Al Assad meanwhile has agreed to allow U.N. inspectors to examine the evidence onsite. In the end, those who oppose al Assad will claim his supporters concealed his guilt, and the insurgents will say the same thing if they are blamed or if the inspectors determine there is no conclusive evidence of attacks.
The truth here has been politicized, and whoever claims to have found the truth, whatever it actually is, will be charged with lying. Nevertheless, the dominant emerging story is that al Assad carried out the attack, killing hundreds of men, women and children and crossing the red line Obama set with impunity. The U.S. president is backed into a corner.
The United States has chosen to take the matter to the United Nations. Obama will make an effort to show he is acting with U.N. support. But he knows he won't get U.N. support. The Russians, allies of al Assad and opponents of U.N.-based military interventions, will veto any proposed intervention. The Chinese -- who are not close to al Assad, but also oppose the U.N.-sanctioned interventions -- will probably join them. Regardless of whether the charges against al Assad are true, the Russians will dispute them and veto any action. Going to the United Nations therefore only buys time. Interestingly, the United States declared on Sunday that it is too late for Syria to authorize inspections. Dismissing that possibility makes the United States look tough, and actually creates a situation where it has to be tough.
Consequences in Syria and Beyond
This is no longer simply about Syria. The United States has stated a condition that commits it to an intervention. If it does not act when there is a clear violation of the condition, Obama increases the chance of war with other countries like North Korea and Iran. One of the tools the United States can use to shape the behavior of countries like these without going to war is stating conditions that will cause intervention, allowing the other side to avoid crossing the line. If these countries come to believe that the United States is actually bluffing, then the possibility of miscalculation soars. Washington could issue a red line whose violation it could not tolerate, like a North Korean nuclear-armed missile, but the other side could decide this was just another Syria and cross that line. Washington would have to attack, an attack that might not have been necessary had it not had its Syria bluff called.
There are also the Russian and Iranian questions. Both have invested a great deal in supporting al Assad. They might both retaliate were someone to attack the Syrian regime. There are already rumors in Beirut that Iran has told Hezbollah to begin taking Americans hostage if the United States attacks Syria. Russia meanwhile has shown in the Snowden affair what Obama clearly regards as a hostile intent. If he strikes, he thus must prepare for Russian counters. If he doesn't strike, he must assume the Russians and Iranians will read this as weakness.
Syria was not an issue that affected the U.S. national interest until Obama declared a red line. It escalated in importance at that point not because Syria is critical to the United States, but because the credibility of its stated limits are of vital importance. Obama's problem is that the majority of the American people oppose military intervention, Congress is not fully behind an intervention and those now rooting the United States on are not bearing the bulk of the military burden -- nor will they bear the criticism that will follow the inevitable civilian casualties, accidents and misdeeds that are part of war regardless of the purity of the intent.
The question therefore becomes what the United States and the new coalition of the willing will do if the red line has been crossed. The fantasy is that a series of airstrikes, destroying only chemical weapons, will be so perfectly executed that no one will be killed except those who deserve to die. But it is hard to distinguish a man's soul from 10,000 feet. There will be deaths, and the United States will be blamed for them.
The military dimension is hard to define because the mission is unclear. Logically, the goal should be the destruction of the chemical weapons and their deployment systems. This is reasonable, but the problem is determining the locations where all of the chemicals are stored. I would assume that most are underground, which poses a huge intelligence problem. If we assume that perfect intelligence is available and that decision-makers trust this intelligence, hitting buried targets is quite difficult. There is talk of a clean cruise missile strike. But it is not clear whether these carry enough explosives to penetrate even minimally hardened targets. Aircraft carry more substantial munitions, and it is possible for strategic bombers to stand off and strike the targets.
Even so, battle damage assessments are hard. How do you know that you have destroyed the chemicals -- that they were actually there and you destroyed the facility containing them? Moreover, there are lots of facilities and many will be close to civilian targets and many munitions will go astray. The attacks could prove deadlier than the chemicals did. And finally, attacking means al Assad loses all incentive to hold back on using chemical weapons. If he is paying the price of using them, he may as well use them. The gloves will come off on both sides as al Assad seeks to use his chemical weapons before they are destroyed.
A war on chemical weapons has a built-in insanity to it. The problem is not chemical weapons, which probably can't be eradicated from the air. The problem under the definition of this war would be the existence of a regime that uses chemical weapons. It is hard to imagine how an attack on chemical weapons can avoid an attack on the regime -- and regimes are not destroyed from the air. Doing so requires troops. Moreover, regimes that are destroyed must be replaced, and one cannot assume that the regime that succeeds al Assad will be grateful to those who deposed him. One must only recall the Shia in Iraq who celebrated Saddam's fall and then armed to fight the Americans.
Arming the insurgents would keep an air campaign off the table, and so appears to be lower risk. The problem is that Obama has already said he would arm the rebels, so announcing this as his response would still allow al Assad to avoid the consequences of crossing the red line. Arming the rebels also increases the chances of empowering the jihadists in Syria.
When Obama proclaimed his red line on Syria and chemical weapons, he assumed the issue would not come up. He made a gesture to those in his administration who believe that the United States has a moral obligation to put an end to brutality. He also made a gesture to those who don't want to go to war again. It was one of those smart moves that can blow up in a president's face when it turns out his assumption was wrong. Whether al Assad did launch the attacks, whether the insurgents did, or whether someone faked them doesn't matter. Unless Obama can get overwhelming, indisputable proof that al Assad did not -- and that isn't going to happen -- Obama will either have to act on the red line principle or be shown to be one who bluffs. The incredible complexity of intervening in a civil war without becoming bogged down makes the process even more baffling.
Obama now faces the second time in his presidency when war was an option. The first was Libya. The tyrant is now dead, and what followed is not pretty. And Libya was easy compared to Syria. Now, the president must intervene to maintain his credibility. But there is no political support in the United States for intervention. He must take military action, but not one that would cause the United States to appear brutish. He must depose al Assad, but not replace him with his opponents. He never thought al Assad would be so reckless. Despite whether al Assad actually was, the consensus is that he was. That's the hand the president has to play, so it's hard to see how he avoids military action and retains credibility. It is also hard to see how he takes military action without a political revolt against him if it goes wrong, which it usually does.
5) • The Worst Argument for War in Syria Is Spreading CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
The Worst Argument for War in Syria Is Spreading
Some hawks want America to strike no matter how bad an idea it seems to be.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORFAUG 28 2013, 8:30 AM ET
Earlier this week, I criticized the Washington Post editorial board for advocating acts of war against Syria without addressing (or seeming to even consider) the costs, risks, and likelihood of success. There are pro-war arguments I can respect, however opposed to another war as I am. But the Post's editorial struck me at the time as a particularly frivolous, irresponsible call for war.
I've subsequently been shocked to discover that this madness masquerading as logic -- circumstance demands an act of war, no matter the consequences! -- is now being made consciously and explicitly.
Here's Eugene Robinson writing in the Post:
History says don't do it. Most Americans say don't do it. But President Obama has to punish Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's homicidal regime with a military strike -- and hope that history and the people are wrong.
And here's Aaron David Miller writing in Politico:
So far, Obama has been the Avoider-in-Chief when it comes to Syria. But the latest use of chemicals by Assad -- perhaps their most extensive deployment since Saddam Hussein killed thousands of Kurds in Halabja - mandates a response, no matter how ineffective or risky it proves to be.
This shouldn't require saying, but if you believe that long experience suggests a particular war is a bad idea -- if you believe that a particular war is likely to be risky and ineffective -- you ought to oppose it! Imprudent acts of war cause more death and devastation than would their absence.
Opposing wars likely to prove imprudent is the moral thing to do.
How is that now in dispute?
6) Comments from a knowledgeable observer:
The original French protectorate split Syria into three provinces. The Alawites had the coast north of Lebanon. The Druze had a small part of the southeast. The rest of Syria was called Damascus. The Alawites held the power because they held the only access to the Mediterranean for an otherwise landlocked nation.
, , ,
Remember that the Alawi are really Sunni Twelvers (with a more pronounced recognition of Jesus) that controlled the only coastline of the current nation. They dealt from a position of power. The Sunni majority accept the secular Alawi like the Assads because it gives them access to the Mediterranean through Latakia. Also, remember that Assad’s father was military who was part of a pro-Baath tribunal that helped Syria secede from the United Arab Republic (Egpyt) and that he came to power after there was a split on the Ba’ath movement in Syria around 1970.
7) Question (GM your google fu skills may serve us well once again here) What is the true history of the US supporting Hussein with regard to his gassing the Kurds?
8) Worth comparing is the number killed by the chem attacks and the number of Coptic Christians killed without notice by our CiC.
9) A dubious source perhaps, but worth noting http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/syrian-rebels-used-sarin-nerve-gas-not-assads-regi/
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7) Question (GM your google fu skills may serve us well once again here) What is the true history of the US supporting Hussein with regard to his gassing the Kurds?
http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/nyt-041303.gif
(http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/nyt-041303.gif)
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http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-2645455.html
Pelosi Defies Bush, Meets Syrian Leader
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the White House on Mideast policy, meeting with Syria's leader Wednesday and insisting "the road to Damascus is a road to peace." The Bush administration criticized the visit, saying she was following a road lined with victims of terror.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Pelosi was rewarding a "bad actor" in the Mideast. The tough White House response highlighted the clash between the administration and congressional Democrats, who have stepped up their push for change in U.S. policy in the Mideast and the Iraq war.
Washington accuses Syria of supporting terror for its backing of the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah. It also says Syria is fueling Iraq's violence by allowing Sunni insurgents to operate from its territory and is destabilizing the Lebanese government.
The Bush administration has rejected direct talks with Damascus until its changes its ways. But Democrats — and some Republicans — say the refusal of dialogue has closed doors to possible progress in resolving Mideast crises.
Pelosi and a delegation of five congressional Democrats and Ohio Republican Dave Hobson met for three hours with Assad, including a lunch with him in Damascus' historic Old City.
The meeting brought no immediate change in Syria's stances. Afterward, Pelosi said that despite differences over whether to talk with Syria, "there is absolutely no division between this delegation and the president of the United States on the issues of concern."
She said she expressed to Assad "our concern about Syria's connections to Hezbollah and Hamas" and militant fighters slipping across the Syrian border into Iraq.
Pelosi said she brought a message to Assad from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel was ready for peace talks with Syria. Assad gave assurances that "he's ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel," Pelosi said.
The Israeli government later underlined that its stance that it is "seeking peace with Syria, but that this would only be possible if Syria abandoned terror and stopped providing assistance to terror groups."
Assad has repeatedly said over the past year that Damascus is willing to negotiate with Israel, insisting the talks must lead to the return of the Golan Heights, seized by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War.
Despite the lack of breakthroughs, the high-profile meeting put new pressure on the White House. Rep. Tom Lantos, the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who was in Pelosi's delegation, said the meeting "reinforced very strongly" the potential benefits of talking to Syria.
"We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Pelosi told reporters.
That brought a sharp attack from Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council.
"Unfortunately that road is lined with the victims of Hamas and Hezbollah, the victims of terrorists who cross from Syria into Iraq," he said. "It's unfortunate that she took this unilateral trip which we only see as counterproductive."
Syria hosts the exiled leadership of Hamas, as well as other Palestinian radical groups, and is a major patron of Hezbollah. Syria insists that Hamas is a legitimate resistance movement working for Palestinian freedom and Hezbollah is a regular Lebanese political party.
In an interview with ABC News, Cheney said Assad has "been isolated and cut off because of his bad behavior and the unfortunate thing about the speaker's visit is it sort of breaks down that barrier."
"It means without him having done any of those things he should do in order to be acceptable, if you will, from an international standpoint, he gets a visit from a high ranking American anyway," Cheney said.
In response, Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi's spokesman, underlined that Pelosi pressed Assad on issues of concern.
"The administration has rejected the bipartisan recommendations of the Iraq Study Group to engage Syria and instead continues to engage in a war of words with Republicans and Democrats on this issue," he said from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, where the delegation met Wednesday evening with Saudi King Abullah.
Last year, the Iraq Study Group — chaired by former Republican secretary of state James Baker II and former House Democrat Lee H. Hamilton — recommended Washington open talks with Iran and Syria to try to resolve the war in Iraq and other regional crises.
Bush rejected the recommendations. But in February, the U.S. joined a gathering of regional diplomats in Baghdad that included Iran and Syria for talks on Iraq.
Since 2005, Washington has succeeded in largely isolating Damascus, with its European and Arab allies shunning Assad. The last high-ranking U.S. official to visit Syria was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in January 2005.
But that isolation has weakened in recent months, with some European officials and a number of American lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — visiting Damascus.
"These people in the United States who are opposing dialogue I tell them one thing: Dialogue is ... the only method to close the gap existing between two countries," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told reporters after Wednesday's Assad-Pelosi meeting.
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http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/143161
Clinton Calls Assad 'Reformer' as Video Shows Massacre
US says it will not intervene militarily in Syria just because of some 'police actions' but Al-Sanamayn video shows slaughter.
By Gil Ronen
First Publish: 3/27/2011, 6:43 PM / Last Update: 3/27/2011, 6:54 PM
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the U.S. would not intervene militarily in Syria as it is doing in Libya, and drew a distinction between Libya's Muammar Qaddafi and Syria's Bashar Assad. The latter, she explained, is seen by congressmen from both parties as “a reformer.”
“What’s been happening there the last few weeks is deeply concerning," she told CBS's Face the Nation regarding Syria, "but there’s a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities," as Qaddafi has done, and the violence by the Assad regime, which merely amounted to "police actions which, frankly, have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see.”
Clinton said that the circumstances that preceded the intervention in Libya -- international condemnation, and resolutions by the Arab League and United Nations Security Council -- are “not going to happen” regarding Damascus.
Even as Clinton explained the fine differences between Qaddafi and Assad, videos from Al-Sanamayan, near Daraa, appeared to document a massacre of civilians as it occurred.
The first video shows protesters running away from a loud hair of gunfire, the source of which is not clearly visible. The shooting goes on for over a minute as the crowd becomes frenzied and casualties are carried away. The second video shows people grieving over bodies lined up in a makeshift morgue.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/28/syria-a-mission-destined-for-failure/
Syria: A mission destined for failure
posted at 10:01 am on August 28, 2013 by Bruce McQuain
One of the first things any military commander must do is define the mission clearly and succinctly. It must have a goal and that goal must be achievable with the assets the commander is willing or able to commit to the mission.
What it shouldn’t be is some nebulous one-over-the-world hand wave of a mission driven by politics and open to interpretation. Unfortunately, it appears that’s precisely the type mission the Obama administration is ginning up for Syria according to the NY Times:
President Obama is considering military action against Syria that is intended to “deter and degrade” President Bashar al-Assad’s government’s ability to launch chemical weapons, but is not aimed at ousting Mr. Assad from power or forcing him to the negotiating table, administration officials said Tuesday.
“Deter and degrade” are open to interpretation and Syria could and likely would initiate another chemical attack after the US attacks just to point out that they’re neither deterred or degraded.
Here’s the problem:
The strikes would instead be aimed at military units that have carried out chemical attacks, the headquarters overseeing the effort and the rockets and artillery that have launched the attacks, according to the options being reviewed within the administration.
An American official said that the initial target lists included fewer than 50 sites, including air bases where Syria’s Russian-made attack helicopters are deployed. The list includes command and control centers as well as a variety of conventional military targets.
A) We’ve told them where we’ll strike. Since it is a limited strike and it is going to be against specific units, Syria has the option of dispersing them, an option I’m sure they’ll take. They’ll also likely disperse them in to highly populated urban areas where they can.
B) We’ve told them what we’re going to strike. Since they have thousands of artillery pieces capable of firing chemical shells, it is unlikely a limited strike is going to even seriously dent that capability. Moving artillery into the cities would likely deter the US more than the US would deter Syria. Helicopters can be moved as well. They don’t need long runways. Other aircraft will be dispersed And finally, command and control are easily moved and dispersed.
C) We’ve told them how we’re going to strike. It is clear that if an attack does happen it is not something that is supported by the majority of the American people for various reasons. Couple that with a seemingly risk averse commander and you can pretty well define how this will happen – missiles. Specifically Tomahawk missiles. Given our history of their use, you can pretty much guess at what and where they’ll be aimed.
D) We’ve pretty well told them it won’t be much of a strike.
Perhaps two to three missiles would be aimed at each site, a far more limited unleashing of American military power than past air campaigns over Kosovo or Libya.
Result?
Well even the administration knows this is a recipe for failure so they immediately engage is a classic attempt to lower expectations:
Some of the targets would be “dual use” systems, like artillery that is capable of firing chemical weapons as well as conventional rounds. Taking out those artillery batteries would degrade to some extent the government’s conventional force — but would hardly cripple Mr. Assad’s sizable military infrastructure and forces unless the air campaign went on for days or even weeks.
The goal of the operation is “not about regime change,” a State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said Tuesday. Seeking to reassure the public that the United States would not be drawn into a civil war in the Middle East, and perhaps to lower expectations of what the attack might accomplish, Obama administration officials acknowledged that their action would not accomplish Mr. Obama’s repeated demand that Mr. Assad step down.
And what would we accomplish? Well likely the opposite of what we hoped would happen – deterrence and degradation. Assad would be invited to prove the US wasn’t successful in either by doing what? Using chemical weapons once again. His reasoning would be that since he’s being accused of doing so, and supposedly punished for doing so, there’s no reason not to do it again.
Then what?
~McQ
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GM strikes again with deadly aim up from the memory hole!
However, with regard to Saddam's chem attacks on the Kurds, please give me a pithy summary of whether we helped or knew and looked away.
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Two Minds on Syria
George Packer
So it looks like we’re going to bomb Assad.
Good.
Really? Why good?
Did you see the videos of those kids? I heard that ten thousand people were gassed. Hundreds of them died. This time, we have to do something.
Yes, I saw the videos.
And you don’t want to pound the shit out of him?
I want to pound the shit out of him.
But you think we shouldn’t do anything.
I didn’t say that. But I want you to explain what we’re going to achieve by bombing.
We’re going to let Assad know that chemical weapons are over the line. There’s a reason they’ve been illegal since Verdun or whenever.
Except when Saddam used them against the Kurds—we knew, and we didn’t say a word.
Is that a reason to let Assad use them against his people?
At this point, I don’t think Assad is too worried about the Geneva Conventions.
He should have to think hard before using them again.
He’s a bloody dictator fighting for survival. He’s going to do whatever he has to do.
Not if we really hurt him. Not if we pound his communications centers, his air-force bases, key government installations. He’ll be more likely to survive if he doesn’t use chemical weapons.
Killing civilians while we’re at it.
These would be very specific targets.
The wrong people always get killed.
Maybe. Probably. But if you were a Syrian being bombed by Assad every day, trying to keep your head down and your family alive, wouldn’t you want the world to respond, even if a few more people die? I think so.
Easy for you to say.
Hey, can we not personalize this?
Weren’t you just saying that I don’t care about dying children? (Pause.) So you want us to get involved in their civil war.
I’m not saying that.
But that’s what we’ll be doing. Intervening on the rebel side, tipping the balance in their favor.
Not necessarily. We’ll be drawing a line that says dictators don’t get to use W.M.D.s without consequences.
You can’t bomb targets on one side of a civil war without helping the other side.
It would be very temporary. We’d send Assad a clear message, and then we’d step back and let them go on fighting. We’re not getting involved any deeper than that, because I know what you’re going to say—
The rebels are a bunch of infighting, disorganized, jihadist thugs, and we can’t trust any of them.
I’m not saying we should.
And what do we do if Assad retaliates against Israel or Turkey? Or if he uses nerve gas somewhere else?
We hit him again.
And it escalates.
Not if we restrict it to cruise missiles and air strikes.
Now you’re scaring me. Have you forgotten Iraq?
Not for a single minute.
My point is that you can’t restrict it. You can’t use force for limited goals. You need to know what you’ll do after his next move, and the move after that.
It only escalates if we allow ourselves to get dragged in deeper. Kosovo didn’t escalate.
This isn’t Kosovo. The Syrian rebels aren’t the K.L.A. Assad isn’t Milosevic. Putin isn’t Yeltsin. This is far worse. Kosovo became a U.N. protectorate. That’s not going to happen in Syria.
You think Putin is going to risk a military confrontation with the U.S. and Europe?
I think Russia isn’t going to let Assad go down. Neither is Iran or Hezbollah. So they’ll escalate. This could be the thing that triggers an Israel-Iran war, and how do we stay out of that? My God, it feels like August, 1914.
That was a hundred years ago. Stop with the historical analogies.
You’re the one who brought up Verdun. And Kosovo.
I brought up Kosovo because you brought up Iraq. That’s the problem with these arguments. Iraq! Vietnam! Valley Forge! Agincourt! People resort to analogies so they don’t have to think about the matter at hand.
And because they don’t know anything about the matter at hand.
I know what I saw in those videos.
Thank God Obama doesn’t make foreign policy that way. He knows what he doesn’t know about Syria. He’s always thinking a few steps ahead. He’s not going to get steamrolled by John McCain and Anderson Cooper.
At a certain point, caution is another word for indecisiveness. Obama looks weak! Or worse—indifferent. Anyway, he should have thought ahead when he called chemical weapons a “red line.” He set that trap a year ago, and now we’re in it.
Why does it have to be a trap?
Because our credibility is on the line.
Thank you, Dr. Kissinger.
See, that’s another thing people do in these arguments.
What?
“You sound like so-and-so.” It shouldn’t matter who else is on your side. I mean, you’re in bed with Rand Paul. Anyway, credibility matters even if Kissinger said so. You have to do what you say you’re going to do, especially with bullies.
I don’t think Obama committed himself to any one course of action. But if he does bomb them, we’re involved in that war, and I sure hope his advisers have thought through all the potential consequences better than you have.
Inaction has consequences, too. Assad gases more people, the death toll hits two hundred thousand, the weapons get into Hezbollah’s hands, Iran moves ahead with its nuclear program, the Syrian rebels disintegrate and turn to international terrorism, the whole region goes up in sectarian flames.
And how does firing cruise missiles at Damascus prevent any of this?
It doesn’t. But, look, all of this is already happening with us sitting it out. If we put a gun to Assad’s head, we might be able to have more influence over the outcome. At least we can prevent him from winning.
A violent stalemate. How wonderful for the Syrians. Some people think that’s the best solution for us.
I’m not saying that.
What are you saying?
I don’t know. I had it worked out in my head until we started talking. (Pause.) But we need to do something this time.
Not just to do something.
All right. Not just to do something. But could you do me a favor?
What’s that?
While you’re doing nothing, could you please be unhappy about it?
I am.
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Third post of the day:
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/08/27/Video-Biden-Will-Impeach-Bush-if-He-Attacks-Iran-Without-Congressional-Authority
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Third post of the day:
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/08/27/Video-Biden-Will-Impeach-Bush-if-He-Attacks-Iran-Without-Congressional-Authority
I'm sure most dems would point out that it was Bush they were talking about, and Syria is like a totally different country, so it's apples and oranges.
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However, with regard to Saddam's chem attacks on the Kurds, please give me a pithy summary of whether we helped or knew and looked away.
http://hnn.us/articles/862.html?page=1
Monday, January 22, 2007 - 23:11
He Has Gassed His Own People
HNN Staff
"Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people, willing to use weapons of mass destruction against Iraq citizens. "--President Bush, March 22, 2002
"As he said, any person that would gas his own people is a threat to the world."--Scott McClellan, White House spokesman, May 31, 2002
Over the past six months President Bush has repeatedly reminded the public that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people. What he has neglected to mention is that at the time Saddam did so the United States did nothing to stop him. Indeed, as Samantha Power makes clear in an account in her new book, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, the United States refused even to condemn the killing of civilians.
The infamous gas attack took place in mid-March 1988 in the Kurdish town of Halabja, the crossroads of an ongoing battle waged between a joint Kurdish-Iranian force and the Iraqi army. Caught in the middle were innocent civilians, including women and children.
From Power's account:
"It was different from the other bombs," one witness remembered. "There was a huge sound, a huge flame and it had very destructive ability. If you touched one part of your body that had been burned, your hand burned also. It caused things to catch fire." The planes flew low enough for the petrified Kurds to take note of the markings, which were those of the Iraqi air force. Many families tumbled into primitive air-raid shelters they had built outside their homes. When the gasses seeped through the cracks, they poured out into the streets in a panic. There they found friends and family frozen in time like a modern version of Pompeii: slumped a few yards behind a baby carriage, caught permanently holding the hand of a loved one or shielding a child from the poisoned air, or calmly collapsed behind a car steering wheel.
Halabja was the "most notorious and the deadliest single gas attack against the Kurds," killing 5,000 civilians. But as Power notes, it was just one of some forty chemical assaults staged by Iraq against the Kurdish people.
The official U.S. government reaction to Halabja? At first the government downplayed the reports, which were coming from Iranian sources. Once the media had confirmed the story and pictures of the dead villagers had been shown on television, the U.S. denounced the use of gas. Marlin Fitzwater told reporters, "Everyone in the administration saw the same reports you saw last night. They were horrible, outrageous, disgusting and should serve as a reminder to all countries of why chemical warfare should be banned." But as Power observes, "The United States issued no threats or demands." The government's objection was that Saddam had used gas to kill his own citizens, not that he had killed them. Indeed, subsequently State Department officials indicated that both sides--Iraq and Iran--were responsible perhaps for the gassing of civilian Kurds.
On August 20, 1988 Iran and Iraq ended their war. Within days Iraq again gassed the Kurds. A front-page story in the New York Times summed up the purpose of the latest assault: "Iraq has begun a major offensive [meant to] crush the 40-year-long insurgency once and for all." After a delay of weeks Secretary of State George Shultz condemned the assaults. But the United States again failed to act, even as hundreds of thousands of Kurds were being uprooted from their homes and forced into the mountains, tens of thousands killed. By 1989, says Powers, 4,049 Kurdish villages had been destroyed.
Why had the United States not acted? That was what William Safire and a few other columnists in the media wanted to know. Years later James Baker explained:
Diplomacy--as well as the American psyche--is fundamentally biased toward "improving relations." Shifting a policy away from cooperation toward confrontation is always a more difficult proposition--particularly when support for existing policy is as firmly embedded among various constituencies and bureaucratic interests as was the policy toward Iraq."
Domestic special interests had a stake in the survival of Saddam. Exports to Iraq of American agricultural products were large: 23 percent of U.S. rice exports went to Iraq; a million tons of wheat. When members of Congress threatened to pass a sanctions bill against Iraq, the White House opposed the measure.
In 1989 President George Herbert Walker Bush took power and ordered a review of United States policy toward Iraq. According to Power:
The study ... deemed Iraq a potentially helpful ally in containing Iran and nudging the Middle East peace process ahead. The "Guidelines for U.S.-Iraq Policy" swiped at proponents of sanctions on Capital Hill and a few human rights advocates who had begun lobbying within the State Department. The guidelines noted that despite support from the Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, and State Departments for a profitable, stable U.S.-Iraq relationship, "parts of Congress and the Department would scuttle even the most benign and beneficial areas of the relationship, such as agricultural exports." The Bush administration would not shift to a policy of dual containment of both Iraq and Iran. Vocal American businesses were adamant that Iraq was a source of opportunity, not enmity. The White House did all it could to create an opening for these companies"Had we attempted to isolate Iraq," Secretary of State James Baker wrote later, "we would have also isolated American businesses, particularly agricultural interests, from significant commercial opportunities."
Powers mordantly comments: "Hussein locked up another $1 billion in agricultural credits. Iraq became the ninth largest purchaser of U.S. farm products.... As Baker put it gently in his memoirs, 'Our administration's review of the previous Iraq policy was not immune from domestic economic considerations.'"
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Exactly what I was looking for GM, thank you.
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http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/CandidateQA/ObamaQA/
Barack Obama's Q&A
By Charlie Savage
Globe Staff / December 20, 2007
1. Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?
The Supreme Court has never held that the president has such powers. As president, I will follow existing law, and when it comes to U.S. citizens and residents, I will only authorize surveillance for national security purposes consistent with FISA and other federal statutes.
2. In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites -- a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?)
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.
As for the specific question about bombing suspected nuclear sites, I recently introduced S.J. Res. 23, which states in part that “any offensive military action taken by the United States against Iran must be explicitly authorized by Congress.” The recent NIE tells us that Iran in 2003 halted its effort to design a nuclear weapon. While this does not mean that Iran is no longer a threat to the United States or its allies, it does give us time to conduct aggressive and principled personal diplomacy aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
3. Does the Constitution empower the president to disregard a congressional statute limiting the deployment of troops -- either by capping the number of troops that may be deployed to a particular country or by setting minimum home-stays between deployments? In other words, is that level of deployment management beyond the constitutional power of Congress to regulate?
No, the President does not have that power. To date, several Congresses have imposed limitations on the number of US troops deployed in a given situation. As President, I will not assert a constitutional authority to deploy troops in a manner contrary to an express limit imposed by Congress and adopted into law.
4. Under what circumstances, if any, would you sign a bill into law but also issue a signing statement reserving a constitutional right to bypass the law?
Signing statements have been used by presidents of both parties, dating back to Andrew Jackson. While it is legitimate for a president to issue a signing statement to clarify his understanding of ambiguous provisions of statutes and to explain his view of how he intends to faithfully execute the law, it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability.
I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law. The problem with this administration is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation. The fact that President Bush has issued signing statements to challenge over 1100 laws – more than any president in history – is a clear abuse of this prerogative. No one doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president's constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush Administration has gone much further than that.
5. Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?
No. I reject the Bush Administration's claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.
6. Does executive privilege cover testimony or documents about decision-making within the executive branch not involving confidential advice communicated to the president himself?
With respect to the “core” of executive privilege, the Supreme Court has not resolved this question, and reasonable people have debated it. My view is that executive privilege generally depends on the involvement of the President and the White House.
7. If Congress defines a specific interrogation technique as prohibited under all circumstances, does the president's authority as commander in chief ever permit him to instruct his subordinates to employ that technique despite the statute?
No. The President is not above the law, and the Commander-in-Chief power does not entitle him to use techniques that Congress has specifically banned as torture. We must send a message to the world that America is a nation of laws, and a nation that stands against torture. As President I will abide by statutory prohibitions, and have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors.
8. Under what circumstances, if any, is the president, when operating overseas as commander-in-chief, free to disregard international human rights treaties that the US Senate has ratified?
It is illegal and unwise for the President to disregard international human rights treaties that have been ratified by the United States Senate, including and especially the Geneva Conventions. The Commander-in-Chief power does not allow the President to defy those treaties.
9. Do you agree or disagree with the statement made by former Attorney General Gonzales in January 2007 that nothing in the Constitution confers an affirmative right to habeas corpus, separate from any statutory habeas rights Congress might grant or take away?
Disagree strongly.
10. Is there any executive power the Bush administration has claimed or exercised that you think is unconstitutional? Anything you think is simply a bad idea?
First and foremost, I agree with the Supreme Court's several decisions rejecting the extreme arguments of the Bush Administration, most importantly in the Hamdi and Hamdan cases. I also reject the view, suggested in memoranda by the Department of Justice, that the President may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security, and that he may torture people in defiance of congressional enactments. In my view, torture is unconstitutional, and certain enhanced interrogation techniques like “waterboarding” clearly constitute torture. And as noted, I reject the use of signing statements to make extreme and implausible claims of presidential authority.
Some further points:
The detention of American citizens, without access to counsel, fair procedure, or pursuant to judicial authorization, as enemy combatants is unconstitutional.
Warrantless surveillance of American citizens, in defiance of FISA, is unlawful and unconstitutional.
The violation of international treaties that have been ratified by the Senate, specifically the Geneva Conventions, was illegal (as the Supreme Court held) and a bad idea.
The creation of military commissions, without congressional authorization, was unlawful (as the Supreme Court held) and a bad idea.
I believe the Administration’s use of executive authority to over-classify information is a bad idea. We need to restore the balance between the necessarily secret and the necessity of openness in our democracy – which is why I have called for a National Declassification Center.
11. Who are your campaign's advisers for legal issues?
Laurence Tribe, Professor of Law, Harvard University
Cass Sunstein, Professor of Law, University of Chicago
Jeh C. Johnson, former General Counsel of Department of the Air Force (1998-2001)
Gregory Craig, former Assistant to the President and Special Counsel (1998-1999), former Director of Policy Planning for U.S. Department of State (1997-1998)
12. Do you think it is important for all would-be presidents to answer questions like these before voters decide which one to entrust with the powers of the presidency? What would you say about any rival candidate who refuses to answer such questions?
Yes, these are essential questions that all the candidates should answer. Any President takes an oath to, “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The American people need to know where we stand on these issues before they entrust us with this responsibility – particularly at a time when our laws, our traditions, and our Constitution have been repeatedly challenged by this Administration.
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Operation Mom Jeans
Operation Nobel Peace Prize II
Affirmative Action Baby (Whoops, that's a Secret Service codename for someone at the white house)
Operation Power (Short for this is how Samatha Power uses Syria and Iran as proxies to attack Israel)
Operation What Scandals?
Operation Syrians Invented Twerking
Operation Avenge Trayvon (The NYTimes has now coined the term "White-hispanic-Syrian".)
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For the record, I believe the decision to continue funding the Egyptian military can be legally justified by saying that underlying "coup" is the notion is that it is anti-democratic and here the military was carrying out the openly demonstrated will of the majority of the Egyptian people to rescue it from one man, one vote, one time to install religious fascism. Nonetheless the essence of this piece seems quite sound to me.
==========================================
A weirdly worded wandering to war
By GEORGE F. WILL
Last Updated: 11:27 PM, August 28, 2013
Barack Obama’s foreign-policy dream — cordial relations with a Middle East tranquilized by “smart diplomacy” — is in a death grapple with reality. His rhetorical writhings illustrate the perils of loquacity. He has a glutton’s rather than a gourmet’s appetite for his own rhetorical cuisine, and has talked America to the precipice of a fourth military intervention in the crescent that extends from Libya to Afghanistan.
Characterizing the 2011 Libyan project with weirdly passive syntax (“It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions”), he explained his sashay into Libya’s civil war as pre-emptive: “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
With characteristic self-satisfaction, Obama embraced the doctrine “R2P” — responsibility to protect civilians — and Libya looked like an opportunity for an inexpensive morality gesture using high explosives.
Last August, R2P reappeared when he startled his staff by offhandedly saying of Syria’s poison gas: “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” The interesting metric “whole bunch” made his principle mostly a loophole and advertised his reluctance to intervene, a reluctance more sensible than his words last week: Syria’s recidivism regarding gas is “going to require America’s attention and hopefully the entire international community’s attention.”
Regarding that entirety: If “community” connotes substantial shared values and objectives, what community would encompass Denmark, Congo, Canada, North Korea, Portugal, Cuba, Norway, Iran, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Poland and Yemen?
Words, however, are so marvelously malleable in the Obama administration, the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “coup” (“a change in the government carried out violently or illegally”) somehow does not denote what happened in Egypt.
Last week, an Obama spokesman said: “We have made the determination that making a decision about whether or not a coup occurred is not in the best interests of the United States.” So convinced is this White House of its own majesty and of the consequent magic of its words, it considers this a clever way of saying the law is a nuisance.
Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act forbids aid to “any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup” until the president determines that “a democratically elected government” has been restored. Secretary of State John Kerry was perhaps preparing to ignore this when he said something Egypt’s generals have not had the effrontery to claim — that the coup amounted to “restoring democracy.”
Perhaps Section 508 unwisely abridges presidential discretion in foreign policy, where presidents arguably deserve the almost unfettered discretion they, with increasing aggressiveness, assert everywhere. And perhaps if Obama were not compiling such a remarkable record of indifference to law, it would be sensible to ignore his ignoring of this one.
But remember Libya. Since the War Powers Resolution was passed over Richard Nixon’s veto in 1973, presidents have at least taken care to act “consistent with” its limits on unilateral presidential war-making. Regarding Libya, however, Obama was unprecedentedly cavalier, even though he had ample time to act consistent with the Constitution by involving a supportive Congress. As Yale Law School’s Bruce Ackerman then argued:
“Obama has overstepped even the dubious precedent set when President Bill Clinton bombed Kosovo in 1999. Then, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel asserted that Congress had given its consent by appropriating funds for the Kosovo campaign. It was a big stretch, given the actual facts — but Obama can’t even take advantage of this same desperate expedient, since Congress has appropriated no funds for the Libyan war. The president is simply using money appropriated to the Pentagon for general purposes to conduct the current air campaign.”
Obama is as dismissive of red lines he draws as he is of laws others enact. Last week, a State Department spokeswoman said his red line regarding chemical weapons was first crossed “a couple of months ago” and “the president took action” — presumably, announcing (non-lethal) aid to Syrian rebels — although “we’re not going to outline the inventory of what we did.”
The administration now would do well to do something that the head of it has an irresistible urge not to do: Stop talking.
If a fourth military intervention is coming, it will not be to decisively alter events (which we cannot do) in a nation vital to US interests (which Syria is not). Rather, its purpose will be to rescue Obama from his words.
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http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/28/20227083-un-meets-to-discuss-resolution-on-syria-action?lite
"Meanwhile, a terror group linked to al Qaeda pledged a “volcano of revenge” against Syria. A branch of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant said it would attack Syrian government security and military targets, according to a statement highlighted by the SITE monitoring service and reported by Reuters.
"U.S. Navy officials said four destroyers are lined up ready to strike: the USS Barry, the USS Mahan, the USS Ramage and the USS Gravely."
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Third post
Syria and the Limits of Comparison
Robert D. Kaplan
Because so many war plans simply do not survive the reality of war itself, each war is a unique universe unto its own and thus comparisons with previous wars, while useful, may also prove illusory. One of the many wrong assumptions about the Second Gulf War before it started was that it would somehow be like the First Gulf War, in which the pessimists had been humiliated by the ease of the victory. Indeed, the Second Gulf War unfolded in vastly different ways, this time proving the pessimists right. That is why the recent media refrain comparing a military operation in Syria with the one in Kosovo in 1999 worries me.
There are profound differences.
Syria has a population ten times the size of Kosovo's in 1999. Because everything in Syria is on a much vaster scale, deciding the outcome by military means could be that much harder.
Kosovo sustained violence and harsh repression at the hands of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, which was met with a low-intensity separatist campaign by the Kosovo Liberation Army. Violence was widespread but not nearly on the scale of Syria's. Syria is in the midst of a full-fledged civil war. The toppling of Milosevic, moreover, carried much less risk of ever-expanding anarchy than does the toppling of Syrian ruler Bashar al Assad.
Kosovo was more or less contained within the southern Balkans, with relatively limited chance for a spillover -- as it turned out -- into neighboring countries and territories. Full-scale sectarian anarchy in Syria threatens to destabilize a wider region.
The Kosovo Liberation Army may have been a nasty bunch by some accounts, with criminal elements. But it was not a threat to the United States like the transnational jihadists currently operating in Syria. For President Bill Clinton to risk bringing to power the Kosovo Liberation Army was far less of a concern than President Barack Obama possibly helping to midwife to power a Sunni jihadist regime.
Kosovo did not have a complex of chemical weapons facilities scattered throughout its territory as Syria does, with all the military and logistical headaches of trying to neutralize them.
The Kosovo war campaign did not have to countenance a strong and feisty Russia, which at the time was reeling from Boris Yeltsin's incompetent, anarchic rule. Vladimir Putin, who has significant equities in al Assad's Syria, may do everything in his power to undermine a U.S. attack. Though, it must be said, Putin's options should Obama opt for a significant military campaign are limited within Syria itself. But Putin can move closer to Iran by leaving the sanctions regime, and ratchet-up Russia's anti-American diplomacy worldwide more effectively than Yeltsin ever wanted to, or was capable of.
The Kosovo war did not engage Iran as this war must. For all of the missiles that America can fire, it does not have operatives on the ground like Iran has. Neither will the United States necessarily have the patience and fortitude to prosecute a lengthy and covert ground-level operation as Iran might for years to come, and already has. A weakened or toppled al Assad is bad for Iran, surely, but it does not altogether signal that America will therefore receive a good result from this war. A wounded Iran might race even faster toward a nuclear option. It is a calculated risk.
The Kosovo war inflicted significant pain on Serbian civilians through airstrikes, but the Syrian population has already been pummeled by a brutal war for two years now, and so it is problematic whether airstrikes in this case can inflict that much more psychological pain on the parts of the population either still loyal or indifferent to the regime.
The goal in Kosovo was to limit Serbia's geographic influence and to ignite a chain of events that would lead to Milosevic's ouster. Those goals were achieved: Milosevic was forced from power in the fall of 2000, largely because of a chain of events stemming from that war. His ouster, as I wrote in The New York Times on Oct. 6, 2000, meant the de facto death of the last ruling Communist Party in Europe, even if in its final years it had adopted national-fascism as a tactic. Because the war was in significant measure a result of the efforts of a single individual, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, it demonstrated how individuals can dramatically alter history for the better.
Kosovo thus symbolized the power of human agency over impersonal forces in order to wrest a victory for human rights. This is a popular cause among liberal journalists and intellectuals, as is the desire to do something to punish the massive human rights violations of the al Assad regime. The comparison between Kosovo and Syria follows from that. But it is a flawed comparison: Elegantly toppling Milosevic incurred no negative side effects. Toppling al Assad could lead to a power center in the Levant as friendly to transnational jihadists as the one in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was in the late 1990s until 2001.
Of course, the Obama administration will try to calibrate its military effort in a way to avoid further jihadi chaos in Syria. But even with overwhelming firepower, it is not necessarily in control. Whereas ending Milosevic's rule meant an end to ethnic cleansing, it is far from certain that sectarian carnage would end with al Assad's demise; it might possibly even intensify, with Sunnis exacting revenge on a weakened and cornered Alawite community.
Obama faces a dilemma more extreme than the one Clinton faced in Kosovo. If he chooses limited military strikes to send a message against the use of chemical weapons, he risks looking weak, especially following the powerful rhetoric employed by his secretary of state, John Kerry. If he chooses regime change -- while not calling it that -- he threatens to unleash a jihadi nightmare. He may try a middle option calibrated to seriously erode al Assad's power base while sending a message to Russia and Iran to help him negotiate a stable transfer of authority in Damascus -- something that might yet open up a wider diplomatic process with Iran. But that is obviously very difficult to do.
Keep another thing in mind about Kosovo. At that time, the United States had not been in a ground war for a quarter-century and thus the American people were not weary of war. Even so, Clinton rightly calculated that the public would not tolerate casualties on the ground in a war that did not involve a naked American interest. But the American public is now tottering from more than a decade of bloody ground war, and so Obama has even less leeway than Clinton, even as Syria presents a greater military challenge than Kosovo.
So far, Obama has handled the Middle East tolerably well. (?!?!) He has reduced and ended ground force commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, while avoiding quagmires elsewhere in the face of regional change and chaos. This is in keeping with the leadership of a global maritime power that has serious military commitments in Asia and elsewhere, even as its energy dependency on the Middle East is on the wane. But Obama now faces a defining event that will test his commitment to keep America out of regional quicksand while being able to wield considerable power in the region at the same time. If Obama prosecutes a significant military operation, one thing is certain: Syria will be its own war for the United States with its own narrative, for better or worse.
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Fourth post
Irony abounds!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/29/216739517/obama-hasnt-made-case-for-striking-syria-rumsfeld-says
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http://theaviationist.com/2013/08/28/russian-evacuation-syria/?fb_source=pubv1#.Uh5FmpKkqHd
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Interesting BBG. At the same time, Putin says they are sending ships and a sub?
Separately here's this: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/28/20227083-obama-on-syria-i-have-not-made-a-decision?lite
If I read this correctly, we are waiting on the Brits, and the Brits are waiting on the UN inspectors to report, and for its parliament to vote , , , not once but twice. Given the Ruskis' and the Chinese vetoes to come the UN will not be on board and it seems not likely that the British parliament will be either-- after all they would not want to be "Baraq's poodle".
Thus it seems likely that Baraq will
a) not have the UN
b) not have the Brits
c) not have spoken to let alone gotten a vote from the US Congress
d) not have a clue as to how to get himself out of the corner into which he has painted himself , , , and our country.
:cry: :cry: :cry:
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A Serious Bombing Strategy
The Syrian air force is 'this close to being defeated.'
President Obama said Thursday he hasn't decided whether to attack Syria, adding that any strike would be a brief "shot across the bow" in response to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons. We can't recall another President suggesting his goal was to miss his military target. But assuming he does want to hit something and have a military impact, our suggestion would be to take out the regime's air force.
So far the debate over military intervention has been posed as a false choice: Either do the pinprick attack that multiple White House leaks seem to portend, or do a much larger intervention that means a long campaign and ever-deepening military commitment. The former won't make much difference and might even strengthen Assad, while the latter is intended to frighten the American public into believing any intervention means another Iraq or Afghanistan.
The latter fear has been enhanced, regrettably, by the Administration itself and especially by the public declarations of Mr. Obama's chief military adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey. Asked in July by the Senate Armed Services Committee for a possible plan of action in Syria, General Dempsey sent a three-page letter that made any intervention seem both arduous and expensive.
His unclassified overview is so sketchy it's hard to judge it in any detail. But its clear message is that any kind of air suppression campaign would cost about $1 billion a month, go on endlessly, and lead to a quagmire. Even a limited attack with standoff weapons that operate from a distance would require "hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines, and other enablers" and "the costs would be in the billions," the General wrote.
The analysis was so one-sided that if left Senators Carl Levin and John McCain notably frustrated. Given that General Dempsey is now planning the limited strike option he didn't include when answering the Senate, it's hard not to conclude that the General wanted to make any strike seem too costly to undertake. This politicized testimony has become a pattern with General Dempsey, who often sounds more like an Administration official than an independent military counsel.
Meanwhile, another analysis making the Pentagon rounds shows there is a more realistic military option. It comes from Christopher Harmer, a former Naval aviator now at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think-tank. The plan has been examined and broadly endorsed by retired four-star General Jack Keane, one of the architects of the 2007 "surge" that saved the day in Iraq.
Mr. Harmer starts with the proposition that the Syrian air force is far from mighty, with only 100 or so planes and perhaps only 50 of them still operational. They fly from only six major airfields controlled by the regime. "The Syrian air force is this close to being defeated," he says, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart.
These columns have endorsed a no-fly zone in Syria, but Mr. Harmer says that isn't necessary. Target those six airfields—their runways, bomb and fuel depots, control tower and radars—and you can essentially shut down the bombing raids that have so harmed the opposition. Going after the aircraft would also be desirable but is unnecessary if the Syrians can't sustain flight operations. The U.S. might need to attack the airfields again if the Syrians are able to repair and rebuild, but similar sorties could do the job.
Even better, Mr. Harmer says all of this can be done by using standoff weapons like Tomahawk cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles like the JASSM. No U.S. pilot would be put in harm's way, since no aircraft would have to enter Syrian air space. The attack also wouldn't require taking down Syria's air defenses, which he says in any case are far less capable than advertised.
Every military operation has risks, and even in this scenario Syria and Iran could hit back at other U.S. targets, such as embassies, or at our allies. But the point of the Harmer analysis, says General Keane, is that there is a practical and limited military option that does serious damage to the regime's capacity to wage war against its own people.
This in turn would level the battlefield for the opposition. The Syrian military strategy has been to spread terror by dropping bombs indiscriminately on rebel-held territory. The chemical attack in part of Damascus was merely an extension of that bloody strategy. The Harmer bombing plan would have even more impact if it were accompanied by arming moderate rebel groups, as the White House promised in June.
***
Which brings us back to Mr. Obama's goal in striking Syria. So far, we're told, the U.S. has provided no direct lethal aid to the rebels. We also hear the Saudis have been supplying less military aid than they otherwise would due to U.S. opposition. This suggests the Administration isn't sure it wants to oust Assad from power.
If this is true, then a mere "shot across the bow" attack could leave Assad even stronger. He'll know that he survived the "consequences" that Mr. Obama promised with only minimal damage. He'll also know he can unleash his air force and perhaps even chemical weapons again with little chance of further U.S. military response. All the more so after Assad has watched the debate in Western capitals over even limited bombing, including Thursday's defeat in the British Parliament.
A pinprick attack portends more months or years of civil war, leading to an eventual Assad-Iran victory or perhaps a divided country. The jihadist groups, now a minority in the opposition, will grow as the war drags on and they focus on holding territory rather than fighting the regime.
We'd support a larger military intervention aimed at regime change. Short of that, any U.S. military strike should focus on doing enough damage to the Syrian air force so the rebels can change the regime themselves.
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Second post of the morning, in the interest of balance:
Year Five of Obama's Foreign Policy Ineptitude
The Price of Appeasement and Tolerance in the Middle East
By Mark Alexander · August 29, 2013
"A universal peace ... is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts." --James Madison (1792)
2013-08-29-alexander-1
History of the World 101: Tyranny does not leave vacant the void created by appeasement and tolerance.
In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain addressed his countrymen infamously insisting that signing the Munich Agreement and adopting a policy of appeasement and tolerance toward Adolf Hitler would provide "peace for our time."
Seventy years and some very hard lessons later, candidate Barack Hussein Obama promised another "peace for our time," adopting Chamberlain's foreign policy and insisting he could mollify our radical Islamist foes and "reset" our relationship with Middle Eastern states by resolving the conflict between Western democracy and Islamic fascism. Recall, too, that he did so to great applause from his legions of mesmerized supporters.
Regarding the post-9/11 Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and the larger War on Terror, Obama promised, "Let me be as clear as I can be. I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in and I will give them a new mission and that is to end this war -- responsibly, deliberately, but decisively."
Of course, the only way to end a just war "responsibly, deliberately, but decisively" is through victory.
Obama based his foreign policy expertise with Islamists on little more than a grossly naïve assertion: "I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."
At that time, it was abundantly clear to anyone who could think beyond the cadence of Obama's rhetoric that he was a national security neophyte. Little has changed since then.
A few months after his first election, Obama departed on his now-infamous Middle East Apology Tour, with the objective of appeasing the world's most dangerous fascist movement since the Third Reich -- Islamists occupying the borderless nation of "Jihadistan" -- one that is singularly devoted to the destruction of Western democracy, and one that seeks the imposition of a worldwide caliphate and Shariah law.
Obama's National Security Adviser, Denis McDonough, insisted that Obama was uniquely qualified to satiate the threat of Islamist regimes, noting, "the president himself experienced Islam on three continents before ... you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans are a key part of Illinois and Chicago."
Well, "community organizer" to the rescue!
Obama insisted a key part of his policy toward Islamist states was the need to re-educate Americans about the "religion of peace," stating, "I think that in the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
There are indeed about 2.5 million Muslims in the U.S., but Obama's "largest Muslim countries" calculus neglected the fact that there are 205 million Muslims in Indonesia, 180 million in Pakistan, 175 million in India, 80 million in Egypt, 74 million in Iran, 32 million in Iraq, 30 million in Afghanistan, 25 million in Yemen and 20 million in Syria, and a billion Muslims in other countries around the world.
On the first stop of his Apology Tour, Obama outlined his Middle Eastern policy, telling Islamic masses in Cairo: "[I have] unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things ... confidence in the rule of law; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. ... America and Islam share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. ... Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism -- it is an important part of promoting peace. ... The fear and anger that [9/11] provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. ... It's easier to start wars than to end them. It's easier to blame others than to look inward. ... America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own. ... Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance."
Thus saith Obama, but the lesson, tragically, did not endeth with the "Obama Doctrine."
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President George W. Bush's Doctrine of Preemption toward Islamist terrorists was clear, and it was predicated on these tenets: Know our enemy; Take the fight to that enemy and keep it on their turf in order to prevent them from bringing it to ours; Don't appease or tolerate this enemy, annihilate them.
I recall John McCain, in his 2008 campaign against Obama, being asked how long we should be in Iraq. He responded, "A hundred years," meaning that our continued presence in the region was critical to stability. Of course McCain was pilloried by Obama's Leftist NeoCom cadres, but the fact is, McCain understood the nature of the Long War commitment we would have to make in order to contain the Islamist threat. (For the record, virtually every terrorist act in the last five decades has been perpetrated by Islamists.)
Now, five years into Obama's Middle East policies, he has damaged our relations with Israel and tolerated Iran's nuclear ambition. In addition, he has surrendered our military capabilities in Iraq and will soon do so in Afghanistan. As a result, much of the Middle East is now in chaos.
In the aftermath of Benghazi, with Egypt and Syria on the verge of civil war, and with clear indications that Islamic Jihad is alive and well, it is abundantly clear that Obama's foreign policy in the region has failed miserably. Now, his feckless administration is scrambling for solutions.
Clearly, we are in need of a total "reset" of our policy regarding Islamist states. Unfortunately, however, we can't obtain a retroactive reset of the 2008 or 2012 presidential elections.
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The cost of the War on Terror, both in terms of blood and treasure, has been enormous. But make no mistake, that cost will pale in comparison to the cost of our recovery from and response to a nuclear detonation in an East Coast urban center, which may well be the price we pay for years of Obama's appeasement and tolerance of Islam, and his ignorance of Fourth Generation Warfare in this, the Second Nuclear Age.
The pendulum of politics and foreign policy has become well defined since World War II.
The bloodiest and most costly conflicts since then have begun under Democrat presidents and ended under Republican presidents. The Korean War began under the watch of Harry Truman and ended under the watch of Dwight Eisenhower. The Vietnam War began and escalated under Democrats Kennedy and Johnson and ended under Republican Richard Nixon. And, of course, the decades-long Cold War began under Harry Truman and ended under Ronald Reagan and his successor, George H.W. Bush.
In the Middle East, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Jimmy Carter's appeasement and tolerance led to the rise of Islamist regimes, especially that which now controls Iran. Bill Clinton's equivocal response to the Islamist threat led to the 9/11 attack on our country, resulting in the launch of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
There is a distinct pattern here, one that is characterized by increasing hostilities in the wake of the Left's appeasement and tolerance, followed by decreasing hostilities when the Right takes corrective action.
Now, under Nobel Peace Prize-winning Obama, Islamist coalitions are thriving and oppressing millions. And, once again, they are threatening our national interests in the region and in our homeland.
This week's regional challenge: What to do about the Syrian regime's suspected use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians. For those of us with family members on active duty, this challenge hits close to home.
My suggestion: Use this opening to take out Syria's air power and chemical weapon resources. This will not end the conflict in Syria, but it will limit Bashar al-Assad's ability to use those resources elsewhere.
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The piece makes many points with which I am quite sympathetic. However, a big part of the problem I have is this:
To undertake what the piece suggests means a willingness to follow through if our enemies escalate in response and we are led by a man who simply is in over his head quite badly.
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Third post:
following up on GM's research for us:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran
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My good friend Rob Crowley writes (note the date):
=============================
When I was a younger man….
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/10/letters-to-the-editor/303495/
As a veteran of two Clinton-era contingency operations, I found Joshua Marshall's reverence for Senator Kerry's foreign-policy wonks puzzling. Surely we aren't so far removed from the Clinton years that we look back on that era's shiftless foreign policy as a model of success. I make this point not to criticize the Clinton Administration but to suggest that the members of the "professional national-security apparatus" whom Marshall affords such praise may deserve more-critical scrutiny. One might even argue, in the post-9/11 world, that the approach they embodied then and espouse now is due for some tough reappraisal.
May I make the indelicate suggestion that the vehemence of ex—Clinton officials such as Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and Rand Beers flows from a combination of intellectual arrogance and concern for their own legacies? Although the situations in both Afghanistan and Iraq came to a head under the current Administration, no rational observer would conclude that either threat emerged overnight. In the former case the Clinton Administration chose to deal with Osama bin Laden with a few cruise missiles and other half-hearted measures. In the latter case, although the Administration adopted the policy of regime change in 1998—a policy Senator Kerry supported—it took little action to further this end. With that in mind, it seems disingenuous to entertain criticism of current policies from those who could have applied the ounce of prevention but failed to do so. The same could easily be said of our tensions with North Korea and Iran.
The multilateral approach the Kerry policy team advocates seems to depend significantly and tellingly on the circumstances. Although Senator Kerry's advisers criticize President Bush for failing to secure UN approval for the invasion of Iraq, they cite the bombing of Serbia, executed without UN approval, as a success story. Moreover, whereas U.S. policy toward North Korea encourages that country's neighborsto take part in resolving conflict on the peninsula, Senator Kerry advocates bilateral talks. Marshall accepts these policy differences as reasoned and nuanced; a more cynical observer might suspect a touch of political expedience and opportunism.
At the end of the day, Marshall's evaluation of the Kerry foreign-policy team suffers from a curious lack of patience. No one in the Bush Administration would argue, I believe, that the post-invasion operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have gone perfectly. As in any operation, numerous errors and miscalculations have occurred. Intelligence is never perfect, the enemy has a vote, and successful counterinsurgency, not to mention nation-building, takes time. With that in mind, I would remind readers that the Balkans, with a relatively Western mindset and history, remain home to a multinational force roughly a decade after the first intervention. Surely no one should expect miracles in the short run from operations in Afghanistan, a failed state that has never had a strong central government, or Iraq, a multi-ethnic state ruled by a dictator for the past three decades.
Although this is not a generous view, I submit that the brilliance now attributed to Senator Kerry's foreign-policy advisers was less apparent when they were in a position to demonstrate it directly. It is far easier to speak of what someone else should have done than to make the correct choices yourself. Of course, as always, history will be the judge.
Rob Crowley
Sammamish, Wash.
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5th post
An Unwilling Coalition: U.S. Options Dwindle in Syria
Analysis
August 30, 2013 | 0901 Print Text Size
An Unwilling Coalition: U.S. Options Dwindle in Syria
British protesters hold signs in front of the Palace of Westminster in London on Aug. 29. (ANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
With the British leg of the Syria operation collapsed, U.S. President Barack Obama is evidently not getting the multinational coalition his administration was expecting to share the burden of a limited strike operation against Syria and the aftermath. The United States has the choice of unilaterally firing a symbolic but ineffective shot to demonstrate action for the sake of action, waging a highly unpopular multi-month air-land attack alone or abandoning the military campaign altogether.
Without a meaningful coalition, the United States has little choice but to focus its efforts on a highly ambitious and difficult negotiated settlement involving Russia and Iran. However, the low prospects of that negotiation on top of the limited utility of a unilateral punitive strike could lead the United States to back off its position on Syria unless it sees a significant shift from still wavering NATO allies France and Turkey.
Analysis
The only countries that have contributed military assets to a potential Syria operation so far are the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Only the United States and the United Kingdom have dispatched vessels that are actually capable of launching cruise missiles to strike targets in Syria. The United States has five destroyers and an unknown number of submarines in the area, and the United Kingdom has one submarine nearby to strike targets in Syria. The United Kingdom also has one amphibious ship, two frigates and six Typhoon fighters in Cyprus for air defense, and France has also dispatched a frigate that can contribute in an air defense role.
The State of the Coalition
On Aug. 29, the British Parliament voted against military action in Syria. The loss of London as a potential coalition partner is critical because the United Kingdom is the only viable ally with the ability to strike with land attack cruise missiles from the sea beyond the Syrian anti-ship missile defenses. Many other NATO allies, including France, have the capability to launch standoff attacks using air-launched cruise missiles such as the Storm Shadow, but such munitions typically have much shorter range than the Tomahawk missile and would require the deployment of tactical aviation squadrons to air bases closer to Syria. Such a deployment would necessarily raise the stakes.
The United States so far looks to be the only country that would militarily engage Syrian targets in the event of an intervention. If the strike were to escalate, then other allies that have not yet refused participation, most notably France and Turkey, could contribute tactical fighter squadrons, warships and other assets. Paris also has the option of dispatching the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier in support of operations. Notably, French President Francois Hollande told Le Monde newspaper Aug. 30 that, even with the United Kingdom bowing out of the operation, France could still participate in a U.S.-led strike against Syria. However, France has decided to buy some time to get a clearer picture of the situation in the United Nations, the White House and within its own Parliament before making any firm commitments. A parliamentary debate in France is scheduled for Sept. 4 to weigh the military option. The French president is not bound by the need for parliamentary approval of a strike, but his already low popularity will make it difficult for Paris to commit to an operation in its former colony without sufficient parliamentary backing.
Due to geographic proximity, Turkey could provide critical support if a military operation escalates beyond a limited strike. But Turkey is also the NATO member most vulnerable to retaliatory strikes, and although the government issued strong statements calling for action, the already constrained government in Ankara could be calculating that it is not worth the risk to join a dwindling coalition at this point, particularly for a limited strike scenario.
A Trying Negotiation
The mounting limitations on the U.S. military option will redirect U.S. attention to an uphill diplomatic effort with difficult negotiating partners. Russia has an opportunity to demand U.S. attention on a number of issues related to defining a Russian sphere of influence in former Soviet territory and having the United States respect the boundaries that Moscow sets. The United States needs a creative diplomatic solution in Syria, and Russia might be able to deliver such a solution given its influence within the Syrian regime. It will be politically difficult to fashion a settlement that would grant Syrian President Bashar al Assad and his inner circle amnesty, especially since al Assad has little reason to trust a deal when he is likely to be tried for war crimes. There may be more innovative ways to facilitate an "escape" for al Assad (most likely to Iran) to then pave the way for the creation of a post-al Assad regime.
There likely are Russian efforts underway to pick out and present to the United States the Alawite regime members who could fill a void left by al Assad. However, removing al Assad could open the regime up to fracturing and will likely be violently rejected by the Sunni rebels, a situation that could spiral beyond the Russians' control and create an even bigger political mess in Damascus. Moreover, any such deal would be designed to allow Russia and Iran to preserve political influence in Damascus. The United States could get a reprieve from its current military predicament, but it would still in the longer term have to deal with an emboldened Russia and Iran. Even if the United States scrapped both a military operation and a negotiation, Russia and Iran would still be in a comfortable position.
Russia currently has the upper hand in Syria, and Moscow certainly would not mind having the United States embarrassed by inaction on Syria or, better yet, bogged down in another military operation in the Middle East. Still, Russia has a rare opportunity to engage in a long-deferred negotiation on issues that extend well beyond Syria. Moscow is unlikely to pass up that opportunity, but the negotiation itself may be too ambitious for the time. The United States is already seeing its credibility over even a limited, punitive Syria military operation erode, but it also is unlikely to strike a deal that strengthens Iran and Russia over a country whose civil war is manifesting beyond the control of any one foreign player. Given the constraints, the United States may begin backing off its position that a military operation is necessary and, for now, absorb the risk of having a reputation for issuing questionable ultimatums.
Read more: An Unwilling Coalition: U.S. Options Dwindle in Syria | Stratfor
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6th post
Eight things to consider before intervening in Syria (ECFR)
Anthony Dworkin, Daniel Levy and Julien Barnes-Dacey write for the European Council on Foreign Relations:
1. What are the goals of intervention?
* All statements coming from the western leaders most likely to undertake military action (US, UK and France) suggest a narrow focus on chemical weapons (CW), rather than action designed to sway the overall trajectory of the conflict in Syria. PM Cameron went as far as to say, “this is not even about the Syria conflict. It is about the use of chemical weapons.” On the overall conflict, all continue to suggest that ultimately a political outcome is needed.
* Beyond a perceived sense of the need to ‘do something’, the intention seems to be to send a signal on CW to deter further use in the Syria arena and reinforce a global norm alongside an apparent goal of restoring western credibility. Washington in particular seems to have become convinced that non-action on its own red line would imply a presidency that has replaced gung-ho with gun-shy to an extent that might undermine global assessments of American willingness to deploy hard power as well as generating criticism from inside the DC bubble.
* Given the dominance of the CW prism in western messaging, the potential consequences of military action for the Syria conflict and for a dangerously polarised and destabilised region are being paid insufficient attention. Less than one per cent of casualties in Syria are even being attributed to CW claims – if there is a plan involving military action to reduce the suffering of Syrians and improve the situation, then presumably that would be aired irrespective of proof of CW use. The assumption therefore has to be that no good plan exists. Nevertheless and as is known to decision-makers, any action will have consequences well beyond the CW issue – so any proposed action should also be measured against broader criteria of prospective implications for Syria and broader regional issues (including sectarian escalation, refugee flows and instability in Iraq and Lebanon, radicalisation and diplomacy with Iran).
* The West will be consciously trying to impact the Syria military balance if there is a strike – but there is a danger that the options under consideration could make the situation worse in Syria, in the region and for the prospects of crisis management diplomacy. The US Chair of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey set out his reservations regarding military action to Senator Levin on July 19th here and Congressman Engel on August 19th here (before the Ghouta incident). Nothing has changed militarily since Ghouta and Dempsey’s letters remain the most authoritative open source assessment that should caution against Western military engagement.
2. The chemical weapons dilemma
* If CW have been used in Syria, then preventing its further use in no way suggests that Syrian casualties and suffering will be reduced, given that at least 99% of deaths are not attributable to CW. It would therefore appear legitimate to question whether preserving the norm on CW should trump all other considerations on the impact for Syria and the region in driving our policy.
* There are two options for addressing CW in the Syria context – deterrence or control of CW stocks. In General Dempsey’s letter to Senator Levin July 19th he devotes a paragraph to what it would take to “control chemical weapons” (that can be downloaded here). The conclusion being the necessary deployment of a no-fly zone, missile strikes, and “thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces would be needed to assault and secure critical sites.” We are led to believe that such an option is not under consideration; therefore CW will not be controlled.
* That leaves deterrence – the proximate justification for any potential strike and an argument that may in a narrow sense be vindicated. But there are no guarantees that Assad will be deterred, that there are not better options for achieving deterrence, that the negatives of a strike will not outweigh this potential positive or that deterrence on CW is where the preponderance of attention should be focused given that 99% of casualties are non-CW related. These points are further explored in the rest of this memo.
* Another CW danger in the Syria arena is likely to be the scenario of such weapons falling into the hands of irregular and notably AQ affiliated or AQ-Style salafi jihadist groups. There are good reasons that the West has sought to avoid a total collapse of the Syria state, an ill-considered military option could undermine that goal and accentuate the danger of CW capabilities reaching multiple users.
3. The problem with evidence
* We may now be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the Assad regime has deployed chemical weapons. Yet that determination has not been made in a sufficiently robust way. We must at least take seriously and acknowledge that there is a degree of conviction with which some non-western actors are making a counter case – whether that be in Russia, China, Iran or elsewhere in the region and the world, notably on a ‘cui bono’ (who benefits) basis.
* The suggested irrefutability of the western claim is undermined by the sense that we are being hasty and rushing to conclusions and that we have pre-determined the outcome of the UN inspections currently being undertaken by not giving those sufficient time. It is worth remembering that the UN inspectors on the ground, a development that the West pushed for hard at the UN, are ostensibly in Syria to review claims of CW use from five months ago, western leaders would therefore appear to be on shaky ground in claiming that an investigation of CW use from five days ago is too little, too late.
* Given that the backers of the Assad government in Moscow and Tehran have rushed to condemn CW use a better strategy might be to pursue a stronger evidentiary base. It will not be easy for Assad to use or use again CW on a mass scale and in ways that would be ever-more detectable under these circumstances.
* Such an approach to inspection missions of ‘moving the goalposts’ also carries the danger of sending an unhelpful signal to Iran at this particularly delicate and potentially hopeful moment in diplomatic efforts with Iran.
4. The legality challenge
* The legality of military strikes against Syria in the absence of authorisation by the UN Security Council is at best questionable. There does not appear to be any basis to claim that military action is being undertaken in self-defence. While the use of chemical weapons undoubtedly violates international law, this does not mean that a coalition of countries has the right to take punitive action without UNSC authorisation. Therefore the only possible legal basis for action lies in the disputed notion of humanitarian intervention.
* There are precedents for military action without UNSC authorisation to prevent harm to civilians (most notably NATO’s intervention in Kosovo and the creation of safe havens for refugees in Iraq in 1991-2 are the two most recent examples). However few states have explicitly claimed that military intervention for humanitarian purposes can be lawful, and a large number of states have rejected the notion. While the UK asserted a right of humanitarian intervention in the case of Kosovo, the US took a more cautious approach in describing the action as justified on a one-off basis. Moreover at least one supporting factor in the case of Kosovo (the support of the relevant regional organisation) is arguably lacking in this case, as the Arab League has not supported military intervention, despite its condemnation of the use of chemical weapons.
* Whatever legal arguments are advanced, an attack on Syria would inevitably fuel the belief around the world that western powers are willing to act outside the UNSC when they wish. Military action would help reinforce the international norm against the use of CW, but arguably undermine the norm against the use of force without UNSC backing. Every time that western countries bypass or act outside of the UN Security Council we undermine international legality and collective security, which is not in our long term interest.
5. The military dynamic of western intervention
* All the signalling from western leaders is that any military action would be limited in scope and duration. That is easy to say and is backed up by a lack of appetite displayed in public opinion polls, western militaries and even by political leaders to be stuck in another prolonged Middle Eastern military engagement.
* But as General Dempsey quoted in his letter, “Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is harder to avoid.” What if evidence arises of new CW use? We would certainly be incentivising a Syrian opposition whose main goal for a long time now has been to draw in western military intervention. They would do everything to make claims of new atrocities and to provoke the Government. What if regional and other backers of the Assad regime respond by escalating their own involvement? There will be an understandable temptation to recalibrate a prohibition on CW use into a general prohibition on “killing too many innocent people at once.”
* Standing firm on any strike being a one-off is not only difficult, it can also be self-defeating if the goal is deterrence and restoration of credibility – it can end up making one look weak.
6. Impact on the trajectory of the Syria conflict
* Despite western protestation to this being limited, proportional and CW-focused, the targets will undoubtedly be Syrian government military assets so there will be a direct impact on the trajectory of the fighting in Syria and the balance of power. But not in a decisive way – for that the intervention would have to be massive and ownership assumed of the Syria crisis and its aftermath, something most western politicians wisely continue to oppose.
* In that context, it is hard to imagine but we must take into account that this can get worse for Syrians, even more destabilising for the region and can generate new threats to western security.
* There is a great unpredictability to how the regime, the various rebel factions and the regional actors will respond to any western strike. The regime has not yet unleashed all the firepower it has. The rebels will undoubtedly see this as an opening to a more extensive western military intervention and will calibrate their actions and PR efforts accordingly.
* In terms of domestic opinion in Syria, which is still a relevant factor, it is hard to see how the regime does not benefit with its public if and when American missiles dispatched from offshore locations appear over their skies, especially if there are civilian casualties.
* Finally and crucially, how will this impact the flow of refugees? There are already reports of a significant uptick in refugees crossing the border, including an accelerated departure of the business community whose presence at least keeps some kind of economy ticking over. This would come on top of an already devastating and dramatic refugee crisis that is stretching the coping mechanisms of neighbouring states and has already seen an accelerated number of refugees from Kurdish areas into Iraq in recent weeks. The possible impact on the refugee situation cannot be a secondary consideration.
7. Impact on the region
* Credibility matters for the West as much as for anyone else, including the adherence to red lines. It might be the case that the Assad regime is deterred and makes certain recalculations regarding the overall trajectory of the conflict in response to western action. Likewise Iran and even Russia but that is far from guaranteed and probably belongs in the ‘unlikely’ category.
* The Syria conflict is the epicentre of a regional conflict but the current western debate on Syria and a potential strike is taking place absent a broader strategic conversation on prioritising what matters most for western interests in the Middle East. The default position is to continue to see the emasculation of Iran as the primary concern despite growing evidence that the greatest threat from the region is a cycle of sectarian escalation with Syria at its core that this is fuelling radicalisation, which is giving rise to unprecedented chaos and new ungoverned spaces, that is threatening to push Lebanon and Iraq deeper into the abyss and to generate a new momentum for anti-western jihadism.
* An attempt to rethink the region should therefore focus on a strategy, the centre point of which is regional de-escalation, requiring more, not less, diplomacy with those with whom we disagree both in the region and beyond, notably Iran and Russia. Such a strategy would notably push any opening for rapprochement/dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia, rather than encouraging maximalism on either side. It is hard to see how a military escalation can serve this goal; it is though easy to see how it would further squeeze the space for sectarian de-escalation.
* In thinking through response options, significant weight must be given to consequences regarding new diplomatic openings with Iran and to what this might do to the formative stage of the Rouhani Presidency.
8. A diplomatic alternative?
* There is some speculation that any limited western military action could serve as a pivot to a renewed diplomatic effort. For now such speculation appears optimistic. But a diplomatic push would be the right approach before any strike and while making it more difficult, it would be the right thing to do after such action. If the intention is to redouble diplomacy post-strike we would question the logic in that but hope for the diplomatic component to be pursued with greater vigour and courage than in the past.
* As we have previously argued, most western policy debate, has, until now, navigated between military-lite and diplomacy-lite options. Military-lite is what is under consideration now; diplomacy-lite is not to bite the bullet on accepting that there will be a role for the Assad government during any transition or that one needs to include Iran. Going all-in on diplomacy is what we should be doing. It was hinted at in May 2013 when Kerry and Lavrov first announced a Geneva II gathering but was largely placed in abeyance ever since. Some of that diplomatic failure is attributable to how ineffective the West has been with its own allies in the region and with the Syrian opposition (partly a creature of the West’s invention). A planned meeting this week on Syria between the US and Russia has already been postponed and the UN Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been marginalised. That needs to change and a more concerted and blunt diplomatic effort needs to be made, including to bring the opposition to the negotiating table and to engage Iran on Syria and not just on the nuclear file. It is hard to see how a military strike enhances the prospects for diplomacy.
* In the immediate term, if there is a diplomatic alternative it might include: (a) to work to expand at the UN the mandate of the inspectors regarding the current allegations of CW use, pushing Russia on this issue will play to an area in which they are on the defensive – rather than where their position is stronger, namely in opposing military force; (b) to thereby establish a clearer evidentiary basis on CW use in advance of further discussions at the Security Council; and (c) this would build on the positions that Russia, China and Iran have taken against CW use and for greater evidence, in order to push Assad on inspectors; (d) a second phase for such an approach could try to promote options for CW oversight in Syria as well as the broader diplomatic effort.
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Mirrored from The European Council on Foreign Relations
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http://world.time.com/2013/08/30/for-turkey-planned-u-s-missile-strikes-on-syria-not-good-enough/
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-23892594
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Krauthammer argued today that despite the horrendous and incompetent actions and words of our incompetent CiC, the US needs to keep respect for its word; indeed IIRC correctly he called for far more decisive action than our wannabe CiC. He said it with a lot more eloquence than I just did.
He was quite scathing and contemptuous of Baraq's statements today to the effect of "there's no hurry".
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hama_massacre
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WASHINGTON — President Obama’s aides were stunned at what their boss had to say when he summoned them to the Oval Office on Friday at 7 p.m., on the eve of what they believed could be a weekend when American missiles streaked again across the Middle East.
President Obama on Saturday presented his most fervent case yet that Syria needed to be punished for a deadly chemical weapons attack.
In a two-hour meeting of passionate, sharp debate in the Oval Office, he told them that after a frantic week in which he seemed to be rushing toward a military attack on Syria, he wanted to pull back and seek Congressional approval first.
He had several reasons, he told them, including a sense of isolation after the terrible setback in the British Parliament. But the most compelling one may have been that acting alone would undercut him if in the next three years he needed Congressional authority for his next military confrontation in the Middle East, perhaps with Iran.
If he made the decision to strike Syria without Congress now, he said, would he get Congress when he really needed it?
“He can’t make these decisions divorced from the American public and from Congress,” said a senior aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. “Who knows what we’re going to face in the next three and a half years in the Middle East?”
The Oval Office meeting ended one of the strangest weeks of the Obama administration, in which a president who had drawn a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons, and watched Syrian military forces breach it with horrific consequences, found himself compelled to act by his own statements. But Mr. Obama, who has been reluctant for the past two years to get entangled in Syria, had qualms from the start.
Even as he steeled himself for an attack this past week, two advisers said, he nurtured doubts about the political and legal justification for action, given that the United Nations Security Council had refused to bless a military strike that he had not put before Congress. A drumbeat of lawmakers demanding a vote added to the sense that he could be out on a limb.
“I know well we are weary of war,” Mr. Obama said in the Rose Garden on Saturday. “We’ve ended one war in Iraq. We’re ending another in Afghanistan. And the American people have the good sense to know we cannot resolve the underlying conflict in Syria with our military.”
The speech, which crystallized both Mr. Obama’s outrage at the wanton use of chemical weapons and his ambivalence about military action, was a coda to a week that began the previous Saturday, when he convened a meeting of his National Security Council.
In that meeting, held in the White House Situation Room, Mr. Obama said he was devastated by the images of women and children gasping and convulsing from the effects of a poison gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus three days before. The Aug. 21 attack, which American intelligence agencies say killed more than 1,400 people, was on a far different scale than earlier, smaller chemical weapons attacks in Syria, which were marked by murky, conflicting evidence.
“I haven’t made a decision yet on military action,” he told his war council that Saturday, according to an aide. “But when I was talking about chemical weapons, this is what I was talking about.” From that moment, the White House set about formulating the strongest case for military action it could.
Last Sunday, it issued a statement dismissing the need to wait for United Nations investigators because their evidence, the statement said, had been corrupted by the relentless shelling of the sites. By Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry, who had long advocated a more aggressive policy on Syria, delivered a thunderous speech that said President Bashar al-Assad was guilty of a “moral obscenity.”
By midweek, administration officials were telling reporters that the administration would not be deterred by the lack of an imprimatur from the Security Council, where Syria’s biggest backer, Russia, holds a veto.
Yet the president’s ambivalence was palpable, and public. While Mr. Kerry made his fiery case against Mr. Assad, Mr. Obama was circumspect, sprinkling his words with caveats about the modest scale of the operation and acknowledgments of the nation’s combat fatigue.
“We don’t have good options, great options, for the region,” the president said in an interview Wednesday on PBS’s “News Hour,” before describing a “limited, tailored” operation that he said would amount to a “shot across the bow” for Mr. Assad.
Page 2 of 2)
White House aides were in the meantime nervously watching a drama across the Atlantic. They knew that Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to win the British Parliament’s authorization for action was in deep trouble, but the defeat on a preliminary motion by just 13 votes on Thursday was a jolt. Although aides said before the vote that Mr. Obama was prepared to launch a strike without waiting for a second British vote, scheduled for Tuesday, the lack of a British blessing removed another layer of legitimacy.
Mr. Obama was annoyed by what he saw as Mr. Cameron’s stumbles, reflecting a White House view that Mr. Cameron had mishandled the situation. Beyond that, Mr. Obama said little about his thinking at the time.
It was only on Friday that he told the aides, they said, about how his doubts had grown after the vote: a verdict, Mr. Obama told his staff, that convinced him it was all the more important to get Congressional ratification. After all, he told them, “we similarly have a war-weary public.”
And if the British government was unable to persuade lawmakers of the legitimacy of its plan, shouldn’t he submit it to the same litmus test in Congress, even if he had not done so in the case of Libya?
Mr. Obama’s backing of a NATO air campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 had left a sour taste among many in Congress, particularly rank-and-file members. More than 140 lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, had signed a letter demanding a vote on Syria.
Moving swiftly in Libya, aides said, was necessary to avert a slaughter of rebels in the eastern city of Benghazi. But that urgency did not exist in this case.
Indeed, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Mr. Obama that the limited strike he had in mind would be just as effective “in three weeks as in three days,” one official said.
Beyond the questions of political legitimacy, aides said, Mr. Obama told them on Friday that he was troubled that authorizing another military action over the heads of Congress would contradict the spirit of his speech last spring in which he attempted to chart a shift in the United States from the perennial war footing of the post-Sept. 11 era.
All of these issues were on Mr. Obama’s mind when he invited his chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, for an early evening stroll on the south lawn of the White House. In the West Wing, an aide said, staff members hoped to get home early, recognizing they would spend the weekend in the office.
Forty-five minutes later, shortly before 7, Mr. Obama summoned his senior staff members to tell them that he had decided to take military action, but with a caveat.
“I have a pretty big idea I want to test with you guys,” he said to the group, which included Mr. McDonough and his deputy, Rob Nabors; the national security adviser,
Susan E. Rice, and her deputies, Antony J. Blinken and Benjamin J. Rhodes; the president’s senior adviser, Dan Pfeiffer; and several legal experts to discuss the War Powers Resolution.
The resistance from the group was immediate. The political team worried that Mr. Obama could lose the vote, as Mr. Cameron did, and that it could complicate the White House’s other legislative priorities. The national security team argued that international support for an operation was unlikely to improve.
At 9 p.m., the president drew the debate to a close and telephoned Mr. Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to tell them of his plans.
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Third post:
Though the attempted wit is not entirely successful nor the logic , , , rigorous, there is a legitimate point being posed by this piece. Unfortunately it flinches from taking the final step-- that by his prior and ongoing steps Baraq has made the actions he calls counter-productive. Thanks to Baraq and his allies, we no longer are what we were and are in no position to enforce this line. It is an ongoing and growing tragedy.
War, What Is It Good For?
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: August 31, 2013 210 Comments
The following is a not-entirely-verified draft of remarks President Obama planned to deliver this weekend announcing a strike in Syria. It was found in a rubbish bin outside the White House shortly after he changed course and decided to seek Congressional approval first:
MY fellow Americans, I’m speaking to you tonight because, at my orders, the United States has begun punitive strikes against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
There’s a formula to this kind of address: some references to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding inside Syria’s borders, some nods to the international community’s support, some claims about the threat the Assad regime poses to American interests, and finally a stirring peroration about freedom, democracy and human rights.
But it’s my second term, and I’m awfully tired of talking in clichés.
So let’s be frank: Striking Syria isn’t going to put an end to the killing there or plant democracy in Damascus, so it’s hard to make the case that our values are really on the line.
Nor are our immediate interests: Assad’s regime doesn’t pose a direct threat to the United States or our allies, and given the kind of people leading the Syrian rebellion these days, we may be better off if the civil war drags out as long as possible without a winner.
Nor do we have much in the way of official international support — no Security Council, no Arab League, not even the British. We’re down to the same “coalition of the willing” we started with in the 1770s: It’s just us and the French.
Even at home, I don’t have many cheerleaders. My base is naturally antiwar, half the Republican Party has turned anti-interventionist, and the hawks of the right and left see this kind of strike as too limited to be worthwhile.
No, this one’s on me. And I owe you an explanation of what I’m thinking.
Basically, it comes down to America’s role on the international stage, and how we can use our extraordinary military preponderance for our own good and the world’s.
One answer, embraced by my predecessor, is that we should be in the business of spreading democracy by force of arms. American military power should be deployed to challenge authoritarian powers whenever possible, to protect democratic governments and movements whenever necessary, and to topple dictators outright when the opportunity presents itself.
The experience of Iraq and Afghanistan exposed the limits of this expansive approach. Which is why I promised to chart a different course. After neoconservatism, I pledged a mix of realism and liberal internationalism, in which military force would be used much more sparingly, and American power would be placed in the service of a stable, rule-based, multilateral world order.
I still believe in the “stable” and “rule-based” part. But what the view from this office has taught me is that real stability still depends almost exclusively on the United States military’s monopoly on global force. Multilateralism is a nice idea, but right now it’s the Pax Americana or nothing. There’s nobody else prepared to act to limit the ambitions of bad actors and keep them successfully boxed in.
And that’s really all this intervention is about. There is an acknowledged line around the use of chemical weapons, Assad’s government flagrantly crossed it, and we’re the only ones who can make him pay a price.
Of course there’s something arbitrary about telling a dictator he can kill his subjects with bullets but not gas. But there’s something arbitrary about any constraint we impose on lesser powers. The point is to sustain an environment of constraint, period — in which troublemakers are constantly aware they can only push so far before American military power pushes back.
True, pushing back won’t necessarily make the underlying political and humanitarian situation better. But that isn’t why we do it. It’s not really about fixing problems or transforming regions or winning final victories. (That was the mistake that George W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson made, and that Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower avoided.) It’s about demonstrating that there are limits to what other governments can choose to do without repercussions, and maintaining our credibility when we threaten to rain those repercussions down.
Look: I know Thomas Aquinas wouldn’t endorse a war for American credibility, and I know the Barack Obama of 2007 probably wouldn’t either. But most of my post-cold-war predecessors would, and did. And they’ve bequeathed me a world that — no matter what the headlines suggest — is more at peace than at any point in human history.
It’s not a world free of tyranny, like my predecessor foolishly promised to pursue. But it’s a world with fewer invasions, fewer war crimes, fewer massacres than in the past. And if we want to keep it that way, there has to be a price for crossing lines.
So that’s the why of it. Thank you for your attention, and may God bless — and, if necessary, forgive — the United States of America.
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I nominate this Dog Brothers Forum, not Biden for President in 2016.
Most here have been advocating we hit Iran nucs for *years*.
Unfortunately it doesn't appear that will happen. It appears the plan is containment.
There is likely a back up offensive plan but only if shoved into it.
As for what to do in Syria. In my most expert military, strategic, political, and in international affairs opinion I think we do as Doug suggested: hit all WMD sites in Syria (though not yet convinced about NK).
I also agree with one Middle East analyst on CNN (I don't know his name) who said a more credible "red line" would have been the Syrian air force. Thus we should destroy Assad's planes.
Congress should stand up. Forget idiotic "shots across the bow". The Congressional authorization should be to do the job and not half assed laughable crap. Get rid of all known WMD and air force.
Or, do nothing. Forget 'face'. We are not Japanese. Reagan pulled out of Lebanon. He didn't worry about his face or his reputation. He worried about America and our military.
Frankly I prefer do nothing or as we have suggested for many years now go after Iran.
As for NK, I haven't thought about it much. But come to think of it suppose we just get rid of that monstrous family there. It is not the middle east.
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http://tomnichols.net/blog/2013/08/28/the-realities-of-the-coming-syrian-war/
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Some interesting thoughts. I don't agree with all of them.
I do like this:
"Few concepts have polluted American strategic thought as badly as the “Powell doctrine,” a Cold War relic from Colin Powell’s days in uniform that never made much sense and has since been consistently misapplied in recent years. In its various forms and emendations by Powell, it basically says: Never fight unless you absolutely have to, and only fight wars you know you can win. Buy low, sell high. Rotate your tires. Never poke your sister in the eye with a stick. That sort of stuff"
Watching Colin Powell these last five years keeps provoking the question, "how in the world did this guy become Joint Chief of Staff?"
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Obama’s Plan to Blame Syria on Congress
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On September 2, 2013 @ frontpagemag.com
Obama’s belated agreement to take the Syrian strikes before Congress, while asserting that he will not be bound by whatever Congress decides, buys him a convenient exit strategy.
The Congress trap will let Obama opt out of an attack that he is ambivalent about while blaming Republicans for destroying American credibility. Even now the progressive spin machine is roaring into action and denouncing Congress for not immediately returning to session to consider Obama’s plan.
Considering that Obama waited for two years before deciding to bomb Syria, it seems ridiculously hypocritical of his political palace guard to denounce Congress for not immediately springing into action; but hypocrisy is hardly an obstacle for a Democratic Party that dramatically reversed its position on Iraq and now once again favors unilateral wars over WMDs.
Obama’s Rose Garden speech baited the trap with its warning to Congress to avoid partisan politics.
“I ask you, members of Congress, to consider that some things are more important than partisan differences or the politics of the moment. Ultimately, this is not about who occupies this office at any given time; it’s about who we are as a country. I believe that the people’s representatives must be invested in what America does abroad,” Obama said.
That is the Catch 22 trap. Either Congress adopts an unpopular attack in order to do the supposedly responsible thing or it gets accused of sabotaging American credibility for partisan politics and is held responsible for a great many dead children.
Obama prefers creating Alinskyite political traps for his opponents over doing the responsible thing. And his favorite trap is the one that shifts the blame for his irresponsibility to the Congressional Republicans who have been his favorite target ever since Bush retired to paint dog pictures.
Either Congress “invests” in Obama’s war and immunizes him from criticism by the Republican Party. Or Obama opts out of the war and blames Republican obstructionism for undermining American credibility abroad while splitting the Republican Party between interventionists and non-interventionists.
Obama’s speech and the distorted media coverage of it have given the impression that Congress gets the final say and that Republicans either have to give Obama a blank check on Syria or get the blame. These are the same cynical tactics that Obama has employed on the economy.
When faced with a difficult political choice, Obama’s natural instinct is to find someone to blame and to use that blame to sow division among his enemies while escaping responsibility for his own disaster.
On the debt ceiling, Obama self-righteously insisted that he would not allow Congress to avoid “paying our bills”. The bills were actually his bills, but he frequently uses the singular possessive pronoun for things that he believes that he controls but does not own, like the United States military, but shifts over to the plural possessive pronoun when trying to avoid responsibility for things that he should own up to.
“Now is the time to show the world that America keeps our commitments,” Obama said in the Rose Garden. But America had made no such collective commitments. Congress certainly had not.
When avoiding responsibility, Obama uses “Our” to mean “Mine”. What he really means is that having made a mess of Syria, he intends to dump the problem on Congress and make it “our problem” while still keeping all of his options open.
Once Congress begins debating Syria, the media will spin it as “partisanship” and an inability to reach a decision while contrasting that unfavorably with the decisiveness that led Obama to announce that his red line had been crossed some months later. Congress will be lambasted in editorials and cartoons for being unable to make a decision while Syrian children are dying.
Congress can give Obama the option of staying out of Syria while scoring political points. And that is why the Republican Party has to be careful when navigating these treacherous political currents.
Americans largely oppose intervention in Syria. So do most other countries. The Republican Party should not undermine its 2014 prospects by rubber stamping an unpopular military campaign that will raise Obama’s profile and reward Al Qaeda. But it should also avoid giving the appearance of irresponsibility that the media will be looking to seize on.
The best way to blunt the push for war is to ask the tough questions about the links between Al Qaeda and the Free Syrian Army, why so little attention is being paid to chemical weapons manufacture by the Al Nusra Front and whether the strikes will actually destroy Assad’s WMD stockpiles or whether they are only meant as the symbolic gesture that some officials have said that they will be.
Obama has said that he does not intend to intervene in the war or to implement regime change by military means. These assertions would be more credible if he were not arming the Syrian rebels and if he were willing to carry out drone strikes against Al Nusra Front leaders, instead of limiting the attack to the Syrian military, implicitly favoring the operatives of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Mitt Romney failed to be fully prepared when challenging Obama’s Libyan War narrative. Republicans should learn from his mistake.
Benghazi was the outcome of Obama’s Libyan War. Republicans failed to hold him accountable for that. Now Obama has thrown another war with even more dangerous implications into the lap of Congress while hoping that it will blow up in their faces.
The debate will provide a national forum to question whether we should be picking a side in this war. The interventionists will point to photos of dead children, a staple of regional conflicts, but Republicans should instead ask the hard questions about the number of dead and exiled Christians at the hands of the Islamist militias we will be fighting to protect. And they should even call on some of them to testify.
In Libya, Obama claimed that the humanitarian plight of the people of Benghazi required urgent military intervention, but it was really the Islamist militias of Benghazi that he was worried about. In Syria, any strikes will be conducted on behalf of the same Islamist militias scrambling to hold on to cities that were once full of Christians, but are now run by Sunni Islamic Jihadists implementing Islamic law at gunpoint.
Obama intends to use Syria as a weapon in a political power struggle against the United States Congress, but it’s also an opening for exposing his Muslim Brotherhood alliances and the wisdom of his Muslim Brotherhood regime change operations in Syria and Egypt.
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Obj. et al:
Please respond to the following assertions:
1) Agree or disagree: If necessary we should go to war to stop Iran's nuke program.
2) Agree or disagree: We are at war with Iran in Syria.
3) Agree or disagree: If we do nothing, Iran will think it has green light to go nuke.
4) Agree or disagree: This means the Saudis et al will also take steps to go nuke.
5) Agree or disagree: If we do nothing, Israel will feel it has to act to stop Iran's nukes, just as it took out Saddam's nukes at Osirak in 1983 and the Syrian nuke program being built by the Norks a few years ago. Given how dug in the Iranian program is, Israel may feel it has to go nuke first as a matter of natural survival.
6) Agree or disagree: If we do nothing (this includes shooting some missiles up some camels' asses and pretending it is action) either we establish that chem warfare will be tolerated and/or if anarchy results or AQ takes over there is a goodly chance that the world's largest stockpile of chem weapons falls into AQ hands.
7) Agree or disagree: If we do nothing, the growing refugee problem will cause the King of Jordan, our best Arab friend (and of Israel too) in the mideast, to fall.
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Some Republicans criticized Obama for threatening to act alone. OK so he now goes to Congress. So Congressional Republicans should stand up and do the right thing - Americans don't want another war - do not authorize it.
Most Americans don't want to be the world's policemen.
Sure, the media, university, Democrat party socialist/fascist machine will spin it to their way of propaganda.
Bottom line people will vote their pocket books. Not for chemical weapons use in Syria.
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OK, so what when Jordan's king falls and the Palestinians take over and Israel is beset from Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan (all aided by Iran)? What when Iran goes nuke and much of the Arab world with it? What when Israel tries to take out Iran's nukes?
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U.S. Still Hasn't Armed Syrian Rebels
By ADAM ENTOUS and NOUR MALAS
In June, the White House authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to help arm moderate fighters battling the Assad regime, a signal to Syrian rebels that the cavalry was coming. Three months later, they are still waiting.
The delay, in part, reflects a broader U.S. approach rarely discussed publicly but that underpins its decision-making, according to former and current U.S. officials: The Obama administration doesn't want to tip the balance in favor of the opposition for fear the outcome may be even worse for U.S. interests than the current stalemate.
U.S. officials attribute the delay in providing small arms and munitions from the CIA weapons program to the difficulty of establishing secure delivery "pipelines" to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands, in particular Jihadi militants also battling the Assad regime.
Allied rebel commanders in Syria and congressional proponents of a more aggressive military response instead blame a White House that wants to be seen as responsive to allies' needs but fundamentally doesn't want to get pulled any deeper into the country's grinding conflict.
In June, the White House authorized the C.I.A. to help arm moderate fighters battling the Assad regime, a signal to Syrian rebels that the cavalry was coming. Three months later, they are still waiting. Adam Entous reports on the News Hub. Photo: AP.
The administration's view can also be seen in White House planning for limited airstrikes—now awaiting congressional review—to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons.
Pentagon planners were instructed not to offer strike options that could help drive Mr. Assad from power: "The big concern is the wrong groups in the opposition would be able to take advantage of it," a senior military officer said. The CIA declined to comment.
The White House wants to strengthen the opposition but doesn't want it to prevail, according to people who attended closed-door briefings by top administration officials over the past week. The administration doesn't want U.S. airstrikes, for example, tipping the balance of the conflict because it fears Islamists will fill the void if the Assad regime falls, according to briefing participants, which included lawmakers and their aides.
Squaring those positions will be one focus of congressional hearings on the proposed strikes starting Tuesday, administration and congressional officials said. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry are among those slated to testify.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said it was "shameful" that promised U.S. arms haven't materialized, given recent shipments of advanced weapons from Russia and Iran in support of Mr. Assad.
After meeting with President Barack Obama on Monday, Sens. McCain and Lindsey Graham, another leading Republican critic of the administration's approach to the conflict, said they believed the administration was formulating a plan to "upgrade" the capabilities of moderate rebels, but they offered no details.
Sen. McCain also held out the prospect that Mr. Obama would consider widening the targets for strikes to degrade Mr. Assad's ability to carry out chemical weapon and conventional attacks.
Growing frustration with the slow pace of the CIA arming and training program has prompted calls from lawmakers and some Arab leaders to shift the effort to the Pentagon, said congressional officials who favor the move. White House and Pentagon officials had no immediate comment.
Putting the Pentagon in charge would allow the U.S. to do "industrial strength" arming and training, Sen. Bob Corker, the top ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview Monday.
Some lawmakers accused the White House of failing to deliver on its promises because of concerns it would get blamed if the effort went wrong and for fear of getting trapped in a proxy fight that pits Mr. Assad and his backers—Iran, Russia and Hezbollah—against an array of opposition groups, some linked to al Qaeda and others supported by the U.S. and some Arab allies.
"There's been a major disconnect between what the administration has said it's doing relative to the rebels and what is actually happening," said Sen. Corker, who recently visited rebel leaders in Turkey. "The (CIA) pipeline has been incredibly slow. It's really hurt morale among the Syrian rebels."
Many rebel commanders say the aim of U.S. policy in Syria appears to be a prolonged stalemate that would buy the U.S. and its allies more time to empower moderates and choose whom to support.
"The game is clear to all," said Qassem Saededdine, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council. "When it comes to the interests of superpowers…the average Syrian comes last."
Some congressional officials said they were concerned the administration was edging closer to an approach privately advocated by Israel. Israeli officials have told their American counterparts they would be happy to see its enemies Iran, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and al Qaeda militants fight until they are weakened, giving moderate rebel forces a chance to play a bigger role in Syria's future.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been particularly outspoken with lawmakers about his concerns that weakening Mr. Assad too much could tip the scales in favor of al Qaeda-linked fighters.
When the CIA arms program was revealed in June, it was described by U.S. officials as a change in Mr. Obama's approach to the conflict and the beginning of a process to build up the armed opposition against Mr. Assad.
It took nearly a year for the idea to gain traction in a skeptical White House, which last summer authorized the CIA to join Saudi Arabia and other allies to train handpicked rebels at a secret base in Jordan. At the time, Mr. Obama balked at providing arms. Nonlethal U.S. military support, such as medical kits and night-vision goggles, started arriving in small quantities this spring.
Congressional committees that oversee the CIA and its budget initially raised questions about the covert arms program, officials said, delaying startup funding.
The CIA also appeared conflicted about the effort's utility. Congressional officials said CIA leaders in briefings indicated they believed that U.S. arms would only have a limited impact on the fight in a country awash in weapons. They also told Congress the U.S. was investing little compared with Iran and Hezbollah, which the U.S. believes will do whatever it takes in Syria to prevail.
But CIA officials told lawmakers providing arms would help the agency build relationships with rebel forces and give it greater leverage with such allies as Saudi Arabia, which provide the bulk of arms and money.
"When we have more skin in the game, it just puts us in a position to have deeper relationships with the opposition but also work more effectively with other countries who are doing a lot in terms of support," a senior administration official said.
A former senior administration official involved in the effort was more dismissive, describing the CIA program as "designed to buy time without getting the U.S. deeply involved in the civil war."
—Carol E. Lee, Julian E. Barnes and Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.
Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com and Nour Malas at nour.malas@dowjones.com
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OK, so what when Jordan's king falls and the Palestinians take over and Israel is beset from Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan (all aided by Iran)? What when Iran goes nuke and much of the Arab world with it? What when Israel tries to take out Iran's nukes?
I don't see who are the good guys in Syria so I don't support this intervention or tipping the balance. I support containment and improving our own readiness. But if I were in congress I think I would vote for authorization of use of force and put this right back on the President to do (or not do) the right thing based on best judgment of the advice and information he is getting from our intelligence and our military. There is so much we don't know from here. The rebels have a history with Sarin gas too, for example. But I would not want the Commander in Chief's hands tied due to the concerns well-articulated above.
Striking the nuclear facilities in Iran, adding support for the King of Jordan, having Israel's back, these are responses too. Much of what is happening in Syria is not about us.
Elephant in the room: If intervention (in Syria) is right, for Syria, for the region and for the world, then the structure and composition of the UN Security Council is wrong. The moral compass of 2013 planet earth goes through Putin and the oppressors in the Chinese ruling committee?! Are we joking? What is our Nobel prize winning, Befuddlement in Chief going to do about THAT? (nothing)
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Syria: A Comprehensive Look at the Options for Intervention
Analysis
August 27, 2013 | 1225 Print Text Size
Syria: A Comprehensive Look at the Options for Intervention
The USS San Jacinto cruiser fires a Tomahawk cruise missile toward Iraq in 2003. (MARK WILSON/Getty Images)
Summary
The United States and its allies have a few options if they proceed with an intervention in Syria, a prospect that seems increasingly likely. A limited punitive strike on critical targets meant to discourage future use of chemical weapons would be the simplest operation. Another option would be to target the Syrian regime's chemical weapons delivery systems and storage facilities, but this option would require significantly more resources than the limited strike, and the risk of mission creep would be high.
Another problem with targeting the regime's chemical weapons is that such weapons are notoriously difficult to destroy. Therefore, the West could elect to deploy ground forces to secure the chemical weapons and ensure their destruction. Such a mission would be tantamount to a full-scale invasion, and thus we believe it is very unlikely.
Analysis
In general, the larger and more complex the operation, the more time it will take, the more of a leading role the United States will have to assume and the more obvious the force buildup will be.
Limited Punitive Strike
A limited punitive strike on regime targets is the least risky option and requires the fewest resources. This option would seek to demonstrate American and allied credibility by striking regime targets, including command and control facilities and other high-value and symbolic targets. The purpose of a punitive strike would be to dissuade the al Assad regime from the further use of chemical weapons in the civil war without crippling the Syrian regime itself.
Target Set
In this scenario there are more possible targets than the West is interested in attacking. Command and control facilities will likely be prioritized, driving home the message that the regime leadership, particularly the military leadership, would pay for the decision to use chemical weapons. However, Bashar al Assad himself would probably not be targeted because his death would tie the coalition deeper into the conflict than it wants to be.
Specific facilities that may be targeted are the Defense Ministry, the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, the Political Security Directorate, the Interior Ministry, the 4th Armored Division and Republican Guard headquarters in Damascus, the headquarters of the three Syrian army corps and various key communication and command and control facilities across the country. The specific artillery units that are believed to have participated in the chemical weapons attack could also be on the list.
Assets Required
In total, the United States and its allies would need to strike fewer than a hundred targets in such a mission, although some targets would require multiple munitions and repeated strikes. The majority of these targets could be engaged with non-penetrating cruise missiles, but those with hardened defenses or those that are buried underground would require bunker-busting munitions.
Given U.S. resources and their current deployment, Washington is already in a position to commence a limited punitive strike. A crucial advantage is that the United States would not need to deploy tactical aviation in this strike and would not need to penetrate the Syrian air defense network with non-stealth warplanes. The United States already has four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean. Two of the destroyers can carry up to 96 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the other two can carry as many as 90 Tomahawk missiles. In reality, the vessels carry other missiles, such as air defense missiles, so the Tomahawk payload is usually much less -- about half would be a good estimate. Therefore, it can be assumed that the four destroyers can deploy around 180 Tomahawk missiles.
If the payload of the nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine that is likely nearby is added, then the number of Tomahawk missiles on U.S. naval vessels already in theater is at least 334 -- and likely more because other nuclear attack submarines are almost certainly in the region. If needed, strategic bombers and even tactical fighters can deploy air-launched cruise missiles such as the JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile) from beyond the range of Syrian air defenses. These aircraft can stage out of Europe and the Middle East or, in the case of the bombers, can even come from the continental United States.
For hardened targets, the United States can rely on B-2 bombers flying missions from the continental United States. Each B-2 can carry 16 2,000-pound (about 900 kilograms) penetrating bombs or 8 5,000-pound bombs, enabling it to strike multiple targets in one mission.
Cripple the Regime's Chemical Weapons Delivery Capability
Should the United States and its allies decide to take the mission a step further, they could attempt not only to discourage the further use of chemical weapons but also to remove the regime's ability to use the weapons. The command, control and communication facilities would still be targeted, but the operation would also need to strike at a much wider network of targets and their associated defenses.
Target Set
The mission would focus on the three main ways the regime can deliver its chemical weapons: the air force, the ballistic missile force and the artillery force.
Although several regime airfields have been neutralized or captured by the rebels, several others are still operable. In theory, aircraft from at least 13 airfields can participate in a chemical weapons attack. To neutralize an airfield, the United States can crater the airfield, strike parked aircraft, destroy fuel and ammunition stores and disable ground control, radar and maintenance facilities. Some of the airfields contain a considerable number of aircraft hangars and bunkers. For example, the Tiyas air base has some 30 aircraft shelters, not all of which can survive a Tomahawk strike.
Battlefield use during the conflict has significantly diminished the Syrian ballistic missile force. At least half of the regime's ballistic missile inventory has been expended in strikes against rebel-held territory, leaving approximately a couple of hundred missiles at most. Syrian ballistic missiles, especially the larger ones, are mostly concentrated in a few bases around the country, of which the 155th and 156th brigades based in al-Qutayfah appear to be particularly prominent. At these bases the Syrians have constructed several underground drive-in vehicle storage bunkers to protect their transporter erector launchers as well as other underground bunkers for missile storage. Other notable bases that house ballistic missiles include the Hirjillah army barracks and the Mezze and Dumayr tactical surface-to-surface missile storage facilities. Roughly one-third to one-half of the chemical weapons inventory is believed to have been assigned for ballistic missile delivery prior to the Syrian civil war.
The best estimates for the Syrian army's remaining artillery inventory ranges from 1,000 to 2,000 pieces, including towed, self-propelled and multiple-rocket artillery. As the conflict has progressed, the Syrian army has dispersed its artillery holdings in support of its widespread operations. While the artillery pieces are not located in hardened positions, their dispersal complicates their targeting.
Assets Required
Adequately neutralizing all three forces, and thus crippling the regime's ability to carry out chemical weapons attacks, would require a significant contribution of resources by the United States and its allies. The risk of mission creep is high, and the campaign would tie the United States deeply into the Syrian conflict. Simply eliminating the bulk of the regime's artillery and air force would instantly tilt the balance of power toward the rebels, implicating the United States in the responsibility of post-al Assad Syria. The psychological impact of such a campaign should also not be underestimated; loyalist forces under incessant air attack while fighting on the front lines against the rebels would be under considerable stress.
Significant post-strike analysis would be necessary in such an expansive campaign, and the effort to neutralize the regime's artillery assets in particular would require extensive tactical and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets. Given the need to operate within the range of Syrian air defenses with non-stealth aircraft, a comprehensive suppression of enemy air defenses campaign would also be necessary. The Syrian air defense network has suffered several blows during the civil war but remains dense and dangerous.
Many more Tomahawk-equipped vessels would be required for the initial campaign to take out air defenses as well as the follow-on strikes, and U.S. Navy carriers with tactical aviation assets, especially electronic warfare aircraft such as the EA-18G Growler, would need to be deployed. Indeed, electronic warfare would figure prominently in such a campaign, from jamming to cyber attacks. At least one super carrier would be needed, but more could be deployed depending on the number of tactical aviation squadrons sent by the U.S. Air Force and allied countries.
U.S. Deployments Near Syria
Without short-range basing from countries such as Cyprus, Turkey, Jordan or Greece, operations by tactical fixed-wing aircraft would be greatly complicated because of the limited combat radius of those aircraft. The deployment of combat search and rescue elements would also necessitate forward bases (or aircraft carriers) close to Syria. In total, at least 400 Tomahawk missiles would likely be needed for the operation before a comprehensive fixed-wing campaign could commence -- more than twice the number fired during the intervention in Libya. Such a campaign would require a variety of munitions, including anti-radiation missiles, cruise missiles, penetrating bombs, air-to-air missiles, gravity bombs and air-to-ground tactical missiles.
Notably, several variables can shape the nature of the conflict. There are hundreds if not thousands of different orders of battle that can be deployed based on wide-ranging factors, such as the allies' commitments, available basing, cost, commanders' preferences and enemy resilience. For example, something as simple as whether Turkey joins the mission dramatically alters the scenario, immediately bringing 200 or more tactical fighters to the operation (by the simple fact of their being within range and Turkey being vulnerable to retaliation and operating accordingly).
Secure the Chemical Weapons in Syria
The most ambitious and risky operation would be to attempt to secure the regime's chemical weapons to definitively prevent their further use. This operation would probably also signal the demise of the al Assad regime. In many ways, this option would be synonymous with an invasion of Syria, since any attempt to secure the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal would necessitate significant ground forces. It is for this reason that we believe the likelihood of this option to be very remote.
Target Set
Scant information is publicly available on Syria's chemical weapons program. However, Syria is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, and until July 23 the regime had not publicly admitted to possessing the weapons. The al Assad regime is suspected of having VX, sarin, tabun and mustard gas, and it purportedly can produce a few hundred tons of chemical agents per year.
Several major storage and production sites are believed to be located near Homs, Hama, Eastern Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia and Palmyra. An additional 45-50 smaller facilities are believed to be spread across the country. While the United States and other Western allies have proved that they have active intelligence and surveillance of numerous sites, it would be nearly impossible for the entire stockpile to be accounted for at any one time, and it can assumed that all locations are not known.
Chemical weapons are difficult to destroy completely. The most common method is incineration at very high temperatures over a sustained period of time in a contained system. Munitions used by the military almost never reproduce these effects, especially the ones designed to penetrate a hardened structure. Another problem is the sheer volume of material. Estimates put Syrian stockpiles in the hundreds of tons of various types.
The most likely result of strikes on hardened facilities holding chemical weapons is the destruction of some of the material and the release of some into the atmosphere while the rest remains protect by the collapsed structure in rubble. In other words, a strike would succeed in destroying the material only partially while potentially causing collateral damage (many of the facilities are near populated areas) and only temporarily denying the regime the use of any remaining stockpiles.
Assets Required
Securing all of Syria's chemical weapons would necessitate a comprehensive suppression of enemy air defenses campaign. This first step would require strategic and tactical air assets combined with naval platforms, similar to the steps taken to eliminate the chemical weapons delivery capability. However, the difference is that securing the weapons would also require ground forces to be deployed in the country.
Securing even a few chemical weapons manufacturing or storage facilities would require the deployment of numerous detachments of special operations forces. Such a deployment would likely be preceded by the seizure of a Syrian airfield, which would serve as a temporary base for the operations. After the initial campaign to suppress the regime's air defenses, all threats within the vicinity of the airfield would be targeted and special operations forces would be flown in for either a combat drop or air landing. From there, the airfield would be used as a temporary bridgehead to launch several smaller operations aimed at grabbing specific sites.
The benefit of such an operation is that it would quickly put highly trained assets on the ground in moderate numbers with no buildup necessary in neighboring countries, meaning that tactical surprise could be achieved. Once the bridgehead is established, it would then be used as an air bridge to bring in reinforcements such as the 82nd Airborne Division. Absolute dominance of the airspace would have to be maintained during such an operation.
Chemical weapons are difficult to comprehensively eradicate; in about four decades the United States has destroyed only about half of its stockpiles. Units seizing chemical weapons sites could not simply strap C4 explosive blocks to them for the same reason that cruise missile strikes would not work: little is destroyed and much of it would just be flung around, risking unintended contamination and only temporarily denying the material to the enemy.
A comprehensive scenario that entails the seizure of all known stockpiles and roots out any missed supplies would essentially entail a full-scale invasion of Syria. The U.S. military reportedly estimates that it would need 75,000 troops to secure the entire network of Syrian chemical weapons. This is probably a low estimate. This option would be very complex and multifaceted. Again, a requisite suppression of enemy air defenses campaign would have to take place so the United States could dominate the airspace. Ground forces would have to be bought into theater in numbers, primarily in Jordan or Turkey. An amphibious component involving U.S. Marines could be utilized to establish beachheads on the Syrian coast. Special operations forces could also be tapped in conjunction with the 82nd Airborne Division to seize critical airfields to open up further fronts or capture time-sensitive targets deep in the Syrian core.
This would take a lot of time. Similar buildups for Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom took months. There would be little to no strategic or tactical surprise, and the United States and its allies would rely on raw firepower and rapid movement. This would be a full combined arms operation, where air and naval assets would facilitate the movement of ground forces.
This is the option with the greatest potential for bogging down forces in an occupation. Chemical weapons are hard to deal with and require time to destroy and longer still to move elsewhere and destroy. Either way, a standing army will find itself in Syria for at least a few months. Any form of mission creep into nation re-stabilization or building extends the timeline indefinitely. Even if the invasion went well, as it did in Iraq, the occupation period creates an opening for guerrilla or insurgent warfare waged by the fallen regime, Islamist extremists, disenfranchised rebels or all of the above.
Read more: Syria: A Comprehensive Look at the Options for Intervention | Stratfor
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Obj. et al:
Please respond to the following assertions:
1) Agree or disagree: If necessary we should go to war to stop Iran's nuke program.
Well, unless you want them to have a nuke to strike the great satan with...
2) Agree or disagree: We are at war with Iran in Syria.
Iran has been at war with us since 1979, sadly it's pretty much been one way.
3) Agree or disagree: If we do nothing, Iran will think it has green light to go nuke.
Yeah, they've had that green light for years, it got especially bright when they got Buraq in the white house.
4) Agree or disagree: This means the Saudis et al will also take steps to go nuke.
Why wouldn't they?
5) Agree or disagree: If we do nothing, Israel will feel it has to act to stop Iran's nukes, just as it took out Saddam's nukes at Osirak in 1983 and the Syrian nuke program being built by the Norks a few years ago. Given how dug in the Iranian program is, Israel may feel it has to go nuke first as a matter of natural survival.
Israel has been nuclear for a long time now, but I very much doubt we would ever see a first use from Israel.
6) Agree or disagree: If we do nothing (this includes shooting some missiles up some camels' asses and pretending it is action) either we establish that chem warfare will be tolerated and/or if anarchy results or AQ takes over there is a goodly chance that the world's largest stockpile of chem weapons falls into AQ hands.
The Soviets used chem weapons in A-stan. Did we go to war over that? There have been and will be mass murders using everything from starvation to machetes. Why are chemicals so special?
7) Agree or disagree: If we do nothing, the growing refugee problem will cause the King of Jordan, our best Arab friend (and of Israel too) in the mideast, to fall.
Best then to use our assets to support him rather than a masturbatory waste of cruise missiles.
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GM's post below is right on the money. However, I don't think he goes far enough. We have a President who has neither the will nor the determination to do what needs to be done regarding Iran, and should have been done decades ago. There are no "good guys" to support in Syria. If we back the rebels, we are backing Al-Qaeda.
Lindsey Graham and John McCain long ago lost their grip on reality. If they think they are going to get any sort of agreement from Obama which he will honor - they are truly psychotic. Obama doesn't want to do anything meaningful in Syria. I believe he is in sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many previous administrations have by their inaction led us to the point where Obama will either by action or inaction cause the Middle East to ignite.
So - we are left with the ugly consequences of a powder keg region set to explode - quite possibly into another World War. Iran will not stop when it gets nukes (and it is only a matter of time, if they don't already have them) with nuking Israel. We will be a target as well. Just as with WWII - the United States is going to be drawn into this war whether it wants to or not. We will be attacked - whether by an EMP or a direct nuclear assault. If anyone thinks either Obama or this impotent Congress is going to do ANYTHING effective to stop this - they had better put down the crack pipe.
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(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/OBAMAYOURERACIST2.jpg)
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Right when we found out Chemical weapon use was awful, the President's advisers also found out it would be a good way to further divide the Republican party with themselves, to divide Republicans with the American people, and to keep tax reform and Obamacare repeal off the table.
Didn't Hillary recently call Assad a reformer? And didn't Kerry recently say to Assad: Shall we enjoy another bottle of Dom Romane Conti?
(http://www.weeklystandard.com/sites/all/files/images/image003_0.jpg)
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Is this any more a defense or reason than the left's use of the Saddam/Rummy handshake?
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Is this any more a defense or reason than the left's use of the Saddam/Rummy handshake?
No, but the left did take power back in Washington using such tactics, and the right must play on their field since honest policy debates never happen.
There was a reason the US cooperated with Iraq in 1983, opposing Iran. Rumsfeld (reportedly) tried to leverage our support there for his help with terrorism in Lebanon. Hillary saying Assad is a reformer showed naivete or ignorance. What was Kerry thinking at this dinner other than - Look! I'm dining with world leaders!
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Forgive my ignorance on the subject: was Kerry a senator in the picture of SecState? If the latter, why shouldn't he be meeting with a world leader? Especially one that the US has hopes will cease the killing of civilians.
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If I'm not mistaken this was Sen. Kerry of the Foreign Relations Committee.
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If I'm not mistaken this was Sen. Kerry of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Thanks. In that case, should he still not be meeting with world leaders?
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If I'm not mistaken this was Sen. Kerry of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Thanks. In that case, should he still not be meeting with world leaders?
Well, he working to sabotage Bush's isolation of Syria, so of course it's fine!
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Nothing says stop the ceaseless killing of civilians like fine social dining and enjoying a laugh and a story or two over a fine bottle of US taxpayer provided wine. If the party affiliation was opposite, as pointed out, the left (and media) would be all over this.
A serious military strike on Syria, if taken, should kill the threat at the head, which means likely killing both spouses of the first couple and perhaps their children. Didn't we already meet with them, warn them, etc.? But instead we hear of "a shot across the bow" as the "proportional" response to alleged genocide. Are these personal relationships that may be keeping us from making such a strike really not noteworthy? I disagree.
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I didn't say that, GM.
And is it personal relationships or Russia, Doug?
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And note well that the media, other than Fox News, is praising McCain for "shaming" Kilmeade. How sickening. If we can't even identify the enemy, we are toast. Sadly, this administration is in sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood - as I mentioned earlier. McCain seems to be a useful idiot in my estimation. There are reports claiming that Obama is secretly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. This wouldn't surprise me at all - but neither does it really matter. He is acting as if he is one of them.
www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/09/03/McCain-allahu-akhbar
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FIWIW, Ret. 4 Star General Jack Keene, of whom I have a favorable initial impression, speaks well of the FSA.
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Boehner’s Syria Surrender
Posted By Matthew Vadum On September 4, 2013 @ frontpagemag.com
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) indicated yesterday he trusts President Obama to carry out military strikes against Syrian government targets as punishment for that government’s alleged use of poison gas against its own citizens.
“The use of these weapons has to be responded to, and only the U.S. has the capability,” Boehner said after President Obama feted him at the White House. “I’m going to support the president’s call for action and I believe my colleagues should support this call for action.”
Boehner’s decision is already hurting his standing in his own political party, further embittering rank-and-file conservatives who accuse him of being a weak leader. Boehner’s action amounts to siding with the same administration that lied its way into war in Libya, tried to cover up the deadly fiasco in Benghazi, Libya, and that even now sides with the Islamofascist terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
On Aug. 31, with his approval ratings and second-term agenda in tatters, President Obama said ”after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets.”
It will not be “an open-ended intervention” and there would be no “boots on the ground,” he said. “I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out.”
“What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?”
After Obama described himself inaccurately as “president of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy” –the U.S. is a constitutional republic, not a democracy– he said he would ask Congress for authorization to use force overseas.
Although Obama said he believes he already possesses “the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.”
“We should have this debate,” he said, “because the issues are too big for business as usual. And this morning, John Boehner, [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell agreed that this is the right thing to do for our democracy. ”
After months of heel-dragging, the administration said several weeks ago that Syria’s government crossed the much-vaunted “red line” President Obama laid down for U.S. action in that regime’s two year war against opposition forces. Obama said last summer that if Syria used chemical weapons such an action would be a “game-changer” for the United States.
Pundit Charles Krauthammer said Obama isn’t seeking congressional approval now because he holds lofty principles:
His respect for the separation of powers and for the role of Congress is rather minimal, as he showed with suspension of provisions of health care, the creation of the DREAM Act and one executive fiat by suspending half of the immigration laws.
Look, this isn’t a sudden stroke of constitutionalism. This is simply expediency and delay. The problem is not that he’s not selling his strategy. It’s that he doesn’t have a strategy. And that’s the reason everybody, left, right, and center, has no idea what he’s doing. He zigzagged left and right. He telegraphs he’s going to strike, he does nothing. He calls on the Congress and then goes off and plays golf when his secretary of state had given a speech the day before with remarkable urgency and passion.
More likely Obama is trying to divide the Republican Party internally and get the GOP associated with what promises to be a disastrous foreign policy move.
As Obama adviser David Axelrod gloated on Twitter, “Big move by [president of the United States]. Consistent with his principles. Congress is now the dog that caught the car. Should be a fascinating week!” Obama knows that throwing the issue to Congress should take the GOP’s focus off the much more important legislative battles of the weeks ahead.
Obama and his advisers also know they can count on friendly media outlets to spin whatever transpires overseas in the administration’s favor.
Obama’s determination to win congressional approval comes after British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government suffered a humiliating defeat in the House of Commons. Considering how badly Obama has treated the British since taking office, it’s not all that surprising that a resolution authorizing the use of British military might in the proposed U.S.-led Syrian adventure was defeated in Parliament last week in a vote of 285 to 272.
Meanwhile, Obama’s plan to assault Syrian government targets was also embraced yesterday by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
Despite the endorsements, Obama still faces an “uphill battle” for congressional support, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.
That there will be much of a battle in Congress is difficult to believe. According to Bloomberg News, “no U.S. president has ever been turned down by Congress when asking to use military force.”
Boehner’s entirely predictable move is just the latest in a long series of unnecessary capitulations by the famously conflict-averse lawmaker. It very likely foreshadows Boehner’s approaching cave-ins on raising the national debt ceiling, Obamacare funding, and immigration reform.
Some conservatives have offered half-hearted endorsements of the enterprise. Others say Obama must attack Syria to maintain U.S. prestige.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says the U.S. must hit Syria to remain credible as a superpower, an argument rejected by foreign policy veteran Andrew McCarthy. “No matter how wrong [McCain] is, the Republicans seem to line up behind him,” McCarthy said on Mark Levin’s radio show last night.
There are always going to be plenty of double-level, Realpolitik, chess-player justifications for intervening in a place like Syria but in the end it is unclear how attacking the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will serve America’s national interests.
Assad is aligned with the Islamists in Iran and the opposition to his regime consists largely of Islamists themselves. There is no silver lining to U.S. involvement in Syria. The Middle East is a mess as it more or less always has been.
And it is unclear how bombing government targets in Syria will serve any larger purpose — political, strategic, or humanitarian.
At a congressional hearing yesterday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey was unable to explain what the administration hoped to accomplish by attacking Syria.
“What is it you’re seeking?” asked Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).
“I can’t answer that, what we’re seeking,” Dempsey said.
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John McCain and ‘Allahu Akbar’
Posted By Robert Spencer On September 4, 2013 @ frontpagemag.com
Tuesday morning, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) got a bit hot under the collar when Brian Kilmeade of Fox News noted that the Syrian rebels whom Barack Obama and McCain want to aid militarily were shouting “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” as rockets hit Syrian government offices. McCain’s response to Kilmeade demonstrated not only his ignorance of Islam, but his abysmal misjudgment of what is happening in Syria. And on the basis of that ignorance, he is aiding Obama’s rush to yet another war.
“I have a problem,” Kilmeade said, “helping those people screaming that after a hit.” That incensed McCain, who shot back: “Would you have a problem with an American or Christians saying ‘thank God? Thank God?’ That’s what they’re saying. Come on! Of course they’re Muslims, but they’re moderates and I guarantee you they are moderates.”
Wrong on all counts. In the first place, it does not mean “thank God,” as McCain seems to have affirmed when he said, “That’s what they’re saying.” Allahu akbar means “Allah is greater” – not, as it is often translated, “God is great.” The significance of this is enormous, as it is essentially a proclamation of superiority and supremacism. Allah is greater – than any of the gods of the infidels, and Islam is superior to all other religions.
Al-Islam.org states this obliquely: “Allahu akbar implies that God is superior to all tangible and intangible, temporal and celestial beings.” This may seem to be an innocuous theological statement until one recalls that Islam has always had a political aspect, and Islamic jihadists always shout “Allahu akbar” when attacking infidels. It is a declaration of the superiority of their god and their way of life over those of their victims. 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta also stated that it was meant to make the infidels afraid. He wrote instructions to jihadists that were found in his baggage: “Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.”
In equating this war cry, which we recently saw Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members shouting as they destroyed a church and tore off its cross, with “thank God,” McCain was manifesting the moral equivalence that is not only fashionable these days, but required for acceptance into polite society. Only wretched “Islamophobes” don’t accept the mainstream media and government dogma that Christianity is just as likely as Islam to incite its adherents to violence. That there aren’t any Christians anywhere shouting “thank God” as they fire rockets at anyone doesn’t deter McCain from making this equivalence. Religious dogmas, and that’s what the idea that Christianity and Islam are equally violent is, are not subject to the same standards of evidentiary proof as are more mundane realities.
And he guarantees that the Syrian rebels are moderates? This is the John McCain who, according to Lebanon’s Daily Star, “was unwittingly photographed with a known affiliate of the rebel group responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims one year ago, during a brief and highly publicized visit inside Syria” in May.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers later tried to do damage control for this disastrous photo-op, saying: “A number of the Syrians who greeted Senator McCain upon his arrival in Syria asked to take pictures with him, and as always, the Senator complied. If the individual photographed with Senator McCain is in fact Mohamed Nour [the kidnapper], that is regrettable. But it would be ludicrous to suggest that the Senator in any way condones the kidnapping of Lebanese Shia pilgrims or has any communication with those responsible.”
Fair enough. Accidents will happen. Mistakes will be made. But at the time that the picture was taken, McCain didn’t treat it as if it had been some random and meaningless photo-op with people he didn’t know. Instead, on May 28, he tweeted out the photo and added: “Important visit with brave fighters in #Syria who are risking their lives for freedom and need our help.” Accordingly, it is ludicrous for McCain to be insisting now that “they’re moderates and I guarantee you they are moderates” when he and/or his staff were so out of touch in May that he may have been photographed with a Sunni jihad terrorist. He has already demonstrated his inability to distinguish Syrian “moderates” from “extremists.” So why should we trust him now?
What’s more, while McCain is guaranteeing that the Syrian rebels are moderates, the New York Times reported months ago that “nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.” The situation of the secularists has not improved since then. And the Long War Journal reported on June 29 that the Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant, which is “al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria,” has “cooperated with Free Syrian Army units to establish sharia, or Islamic law, in Aleppo and in eastern Syria.” What is the Free Syrian Army? McCain’s moderates: “the US government is backing the Free Syrian Army despite the group’s known ties to the Al Nusrah Front.”
McCain’s appalling ignorance and Obama’s ongoing enthusiasm for all things Muslim Brotherhood, including the Syrian opposition, are leading the U.S. into disaster. McCain, as a leader of the Republican Party, ought to be articulating a coherent and rational alternative to Obama’s potentially catastrophic adventurism and rush to intervene in Syria despite lacking a clear goal and genuine allies on the ground within the country. Instead, he and John Boehner and the rest of the Republican establishment are falling over themselves to see who can say “Me too” to Barack Obama fast enough.
What America needs most in these dark days of fantasy-based policymaking is a loyal opposition. But that is the one thing we do not have. Not in any effective sense, as our warships wait in the Mediterranean for the signal to start firing on Syria, with enthusiastic bipartisan support.
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"And is it personal relationships or Russia..." [ that may be keeping us from killing this genocidal dictatorship at the head]?
Good question. If that is the right policy, either way we are not doing it for the wrong reason (IMO). What do we gain from appeasing Putin? He will attack us? (doubtful) He will blackmail us and expose Snowden secrets? (already happening) We will lose his cooperation on other matters? (what cooperation?)
My reason to not intervene is that I see no good outcome with or without intervention. Don't inject America and anti-Americanism into an Arab-Muslim vs. Arab-Muslim * conflict without a good outcome possible or likely. (* More precisely, Sunni, Arab, Kurdish, Turkoman, Shia, Alawite, Imami, Ismailis, Shafi'i Madhhab, Hanafi, Hanbali vs. same or similar)
If one side truly wished to be a permanent ally of the US and Israel in exchange for our support, and offered genuine peace, stability and containment upon victory, then we should negotiate our help. That is not the case.
This in fact has turned into a big political diversion over a nothing policy - a proverbial "shot across the bow". The President over his Presidency has taken bigger shots at Fox News and Rush Limbaugh than he has at the al-Assad regime.
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This from a friend:
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One of the accusations against Assad on the part of the "rebels" is that he is a traitor, who was allowed to keep his job because he cooperated with the West and with America - and also, hadn't fired a shot against the "Zionist entity" in 40 years.
To the extent that this is true, and to a large extent it is, we should think that our interest should be in supporting Assad - rather than volunteering to serve as an al Qaeda Air Force, and fight against him. We should be interested in stopping - or slowing - the wave of Islamist revolutions, NOT in encouraging them (leave alone fighting on their behalf).
The real issue in the region is that Iran is about to join the nuclear club. If that happens, some of the Sunni states will follow - among them, quite a few crazy and half crazy ones. The world will be a mess.
What we need to do is to make a deal with the Russians and the Chinese, and to give them their "victory" in Syria -- in return for cooperation in applying pressure on Iran. THIS is where our focus needs to be. In comparison, the entire Syrian thing is just a side show and a distraction. Once Iran is brought under control, Assad will toe the line.
But - it will never happen. Our political leaders are idiots.
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The Syrian Political Charade
A funny thing happened on the way to the U.S. attacking Syria: Barack Obama decided to seek congressional approval. Such is not his usual wont. Since occupying the Oval Office, Obama has made a practice of issuing executive orders and other decrees about all manner of policy preferences without bothering to go to Congress. He attacked Libya without Congress, but now with Syria he's seeking an accomplice -- though he still insists he doesn't need one.
Columnist George Will notes that, ironically, the British Parliament's rejection of military action prompted Obama to go to Congress. "If Parliament had authorized an attack," Will wrote, "Obama probably would already have attacked, without any thought about Congress' prerogatives."
The outcome of a looming congressional vote on military action is uncertain -- the sides don't break along party lines. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) support Obama's call, as does Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). But significant numbers of the rank-and-file aren't convinced, despite assurances from Secretary of State John Kerry that we won't be "going to war in a classic sense."
The issue for many in Congress -- as well as grassroots Americans -- is whether a limited strike will achieve any clear policy objective that serves vital U.S. interests. Kerry warns that "we cannot allow Assad to be able to gas people with impunity." But will a strike eradicate Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons stores now that he's had time to move and protect them? If we weaken or remove Assad, will al-Qaida rebels come out on top? Will a limited strike sufficiently chastise Assad for crossing the "red line" Obama now ridiculously asserts he "didn't set"? And if a strike is strong enough, what reaction can we expect from Syria, Iran or Russia?
In short, Obama has turned this into a political charade. Any principle governing our response was lost as soon as he opened his mouth.
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Russia claims that they have evidence that it was the Syrian rebels that used the chemical weapons. What if they use that as justification to strike the rebels? What would our Nobel Peace Prize winning president do? Sent the US Navy to square off with the Russians?
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Conan: Syrian's Assad called Pres Obama “weak.” Obama was so angry he plans to ask Congress for permission to think up a good comeback.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/the-senates-syria-hearing-live-updates/?id=ed01ca14-222b-4a23-b12c-c0b0d9d4fe0a
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/the-senates-syria-hearing-live-updates/?id=ed01ca14-222b-4a23-b12c-c0b0d9d4fe0a
John McCain, war hero, political zero.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/world/middleeast/brutality-of-syrian-rebels-pose-dilemma-in-west.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130905
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/us-syria-crisis-usa-rebels-idUSBRE98405L20130905
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This could go under a number of different topics, but I haven't noticed the gratitude expressed by this administration, the media or U.N. that Israel took a much more serious action 6 years ago than what is contemplated now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/washington/14weapons.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Israel Struck Syrian Nuclear Project, Analysts Say
By DAVID E. SANGER and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: October 14, 2007
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.
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The only just reason to attack Syria’s chemical weapons facilities is to prevent them from being used against us or our allies. Their use in the Syrian civil war gave us the cover to do so; but that would have required Obama to use the same rationale as Bush 43 used in 2003 to justify invading Iraq. The President could have invoked the War Power Act when he announced the strikes after they had already occurred.
However, Obama has mishandled completely the situation. He has given Russia time to move naval forces into eastern Mediterranean. He has given Iran and its proxies time to prepare. He has given Assad time to prepare. By his dithering, he has made things worse. And, now, he has subjected an otherwise justifiable pre-emptive strike to prior Congressional approval where some are trying to authorize more overt involvement in the civil war.
The proper way to have handled this situation was to have denounced the gas attack and propose a UN Security Council resolution to authorize UN action against Syria. Do not announce our military intentions; but use the diplomatic dithering at the UN as time to prepare quietly the air strike. Once the Russians and Chinese announced their intent to veto the resolution, bring it to a vote and have it vetoed on the record. Thereafter, state your disappointment with the result and stop talking. Then, order the air strikes on the Syrian chemical weapons targets and go on TV once they have occurred and announce your decision and reasons for it. During the same address, announce your intention to seek Congressional approval for additional air strikes if they are needed. A real leader would have done something like the scenario proposed above. His actions would have received bipartisan support. The first strike military objective of degrading Syria’s chem weapons abilities would have been achieved. Putin and Russia would have been neutralized to post facto complaining. The G-20 meeting would have been a non-event.
Unfortunately, we just re-elected a blabbering fool as Commander-in-Chief. We and our allies must now survive 40 more months of his “leadership”. Unfortunately, for us and our allies, the Russians, Iranians and their proxies are now certain of his administration’s incompetence. It is now much worse than Carter.
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Well, this is his first real job.
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Aint't that the fg truth!
What do you think of my friend's analysis?
=========================
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/iran-managing-us-military-action-syria?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130905&utm_term=FreeReport&utm_content=readmore&elq=84feada3b3fb46f2aebdcd8d19f0fb14
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Spot on. Sadly people like your friend tend to not run for office while people like Lurch, Hillary, Carlos Danger and Buraq do.
Aint't that the fg truth!
What do you think of my friend's analysis?
=========================
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/iran-managing-us-military-action-syria?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130905&utm_term=FreeReport&utm_content=readmore&elq=84feada3b3fb46f2aebdcd8d19f0fb14
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As usual I too was impressed with him.
Next, here's this: Reliability unknown:
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/09/05/alan-grayson-syria-intelligence-manipulated
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Summary
The United States clearly does not want to act on its own in Syria -- doing so would leave it solely responsible for whatever happens in the absence of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. And yet there are indications that Washington may be planning a comprehensive campaign meant to degrade the Syrian regime and its military capabilities. This kind of campaign differs markedly from the limited strike option, a more symbolic, punitive measure that would target command and control or leadership targets but would not remove al Assad from power. Comprehensive strikes would benefit the Syrian rebels, who want to topple al Assad by any means necessary, but ultimately Washington does not want to give the rebels too decisive an edge.
Analysis
On Sept. 4, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution that provides for broader military action. The resolution would give the military up to 90 days to intervene and contains a clause allowing it to degrade the al Assad regime's chemical weapons capabilities. There have also been indications from government officials and U.S. lawmakers that the White House may indeed try to alter the balance of power in the Syrian civil war. Most notably, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that the planned military operation would involve "a significant strike" that would in fact weaken the regime.
But public statements are not always the best indicators of how nations will act. Ultimately, deployed assets and military operations will reveal the extent to which Washington will act against the regime itself. The extent of the damage and the target sets will also determine whether U.S. military action will be merely symbolic or have an appreciable effect on the civil war.
Syria: How U.S. Military Action Could Alter the Civil War
The movement of certain assets, particularly the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group to the Red Sea, is particularly interesting. But the strike group has not yet been committed to a potential strike, and more important, Stratfor has not yet seen the deployment of other units needed to support comprehensive strikes. Indeed, degrading Syria's chemical weapons capabilities would require more military assets than the United States has in the region. However, moving the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group and tactical aircraft to the region would only take a few days. If the United States wanted to expand the scope of this mission, it could do so very quickly.
Notably, the United States could hybridize its strike options. It could tailor a set of ongoing strikes to hit a number of air bases, aircraft and facilities critical to the regime's air power. Otherwise, it could damage the regime's ballistic missile force and overall inventory of tube and rocket artillery through attrition. While such actions fall within the scope of a limited operation -- they could hardly be considered comprehensive -- they would nonetheless give the rebels the advantage in their own fight against al Assad.
The White House will have to walk a tightrope between demonstrating a credible response to the regime's alleged use of chemical weapons and the fear that their response against the regime will be too powerful. Given that al Assad has controlled Damascus during the two years marked by civil war, he could probably weather a limited U.S. strike. But in war, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and even the best plans are susceptible to miscalculation, escalation, mission creep and unintended consequences. Any of these outcomes could shape the course of Syria's civil war beyond Washington's intentions.
Read more: Syria: How U.S. Military Action Could Alter the Civil War | Stratfor
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Kerry & McCain using paid lobbyist as source expert on nature of FSA.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/06/new_york_times_issues_correction_on_syrian_rebel_story
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Michael Yon posts:
Syria: Russia Bolstering Naval Presence
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-russia-putin-syria-20130906,0,1054459.story
In addition to supplying arms, Russia can supply Syria with intelligence. For instance, when any attack begins, Russia can provide them advanced warning. Cruise missiles are slow. Israel must be thinking of ways to sink Russian ships with plausible deniability.
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Syria: A Renewed Focus on Arming the Rebels
Analysis
September 6, 2013 | 1706 Print Text Size
A rebel fighter carries homemade mortar rounds in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa on Sept. 3. (MEZAR MATAR/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
With the U.S. military preparing for a possible intervention in Syria, most of the debate around whether the U.S. Congress should authorize military action against the Syrian regime has focused on a potential strike. However, some lawmakers and White House officials are pushing to dramatically increase the supply of weapons to Syrian rebels as well. The United States already has such a program in place through the CIA, but the Obama administration has proposed shifting responsibility for arming and training the rebels to the Pentagon, which has units specifically designed for this type of operation and the logistical capability to pull it off in a timely manner.
While such a program would likely put the rebels on more equal footing with forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al Assad, it could have long-term repercussions. A rapid, massive increase in the flow of weapons into Syria would inevitably result in guns falling into the hands of fighters who Washington fears would use them against U.S. interests in the future. Because to this risk, the imperative to keep the Syrian civil war and its long-term consequences manageable will frame U.S. decisions about whether and how to more forcefully intervene.
Analysis
Throughout Syria's civil war, the rebels have been outgunned by forces loyal to al Assad, which have access to a much wider spectrum of weapons. This imbalance has prompted continual pleas from rebel groups and their representatives for access to advanced small arms, including anti-tank guided missiles and man-portable air-defense systems, capable of offsetting the regime's armor and air power.
However, the West has resisted efforts to heed such calls. The Syrian opposition consists of hundreds of groups espousing a variety of ideologies, including secularism, nationalist Islamism and radical jihadism. The fear is that arming the wrong group would mean that, say, a man-portable air-defense system supplied initially for use against al Assad's air force could be used months or years later to attack an airplane full of civilians elsewhere in the world.
Syria: How U.S. Military Action Could Alter the Civil War
Approving a faction and supplying it weapons that would make a difference on the battlefield but could not be transferred to another group is difficult. The West wants to control exactly where the weapons go, but that is nearly impossible to achieve considering the number of third-party fighters involved in the war. Already there is considerable video evidence that weapons provided by foreign sponsors to the Free Syrian Army, an approved group, have ended up in the hands of jihadist groups.
After an alleged chemical weapons attack in June, the United States agreed in principle to arm the rebels. Since 2012, the CIA has overseen the vetting and arming of rebel groups with assistance from other countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. As a clandestine organization with responsibilities across the globe, it has been necessary to outsource much of this operation to third parties and manage it from afar. Weapons have indeed made it to Syria and been used to some effect, but the arming process has been slow and the volume delivered has been so small that their battlefield impact has been minimal. Presently, there is no evidence that the United States has provided any arms directly to the rebels.
Impact of Pentagon Control
Shifting oversight of the operation to the Pentagon and making it overt would leverage various assets that could rapidly accelerate the flow of weapons to the rebels. The Pentagon already has units that are designed for this type of task, specifically the U.S. Army Special Forces (known commonly as the Green Berets), though other special operations forces could also be utilized. One of the Green Beret's main unit missions is training foreign personnel in weapons usage and basic tactics. Moreover, the U.S. military's strategic logistics network is peerless and equipped to rapidly move huge amounts of material and numbers of men into theaters. The Pentagon simply is better able to move large volumes of weapons, along with soldiers who can teach rebels how to use them.
Done effectively, this effort could have positive effects on the ground for the rebels over a short time frame. Nonetheless, the risk of long-term repercussions would remain. Even if rebel groups could be vetted quickly enough to keep up with the influx of weapons, it would still be impossible to fully control the movements of weapons once they are in theater. In a combat zone, it must be assumed that a certain percentage of weapons will be sold, traded, stolen or simply given away.
These weapons would be operational for decades, and even ones with tracking chips or wired to fail after a certain amount of time could be modified by enterprising fighters or merchants. Some could be used against Western interests throughout the region once the focus shifts away from the al Assad regime. As demonstrated by the flow of arms away from Libya after the Western intervention there in 2011, such weapons can be used in unintended ways over a large geographic area.
Thus, U.S. planners will be weighing the option of arming the rebels in balance with the depth and scope of whatever strike operation in Syria, if any, is chosen. It is impossible for the United States to fully manage the Syrian civil war, but it will make every effort to contain the fallout.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/sunday-review/the-hands-tied-presidency.html?hp&_r=0
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/06/you_got_a_better_idea
http://www.theonion.com/articles/poll-majority-of-americans-approve-of-sending-cong,33752/?ref=auto
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http://nationalreview.com/corner/357646/mccains-moderate-rebel-army-well-quit-if-you-take-al-qaeda-away-andrew-c-mccarthy
AQ to kill Christians
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/al-qaeda-vows-to-slaughter-christians-after-u-s-liberates-syria/
Mission creep
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-syria-strikes-20130908,0,6708714.story
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Watching the talking head cable shows this AM has slews of arguments for military action. Every single one is illogical and basically is so confusing one can only conclude we should not get involved.
Just face it. One cannot predict the outcome of war or guarantee results.
You go to war to defeat an enemy. Not to manage outcomes around the world.
Now Drudge is suggesting Brock, Nobel peace winner is going to tie Syria to Iran. All of sudden he is in a political jam and NOW he makes a case for action against an Iranian proxy?
This rational is even more crazy.
I don't believe the ineptitude. This is all about the ONE.
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I was waiting for this. It's about the Israel lobby. It's the Jews again:
"The dirty little not-so-secret behind President Obama’s much-lobbied-for, illegal and strategically incompetent war against Syria is that it’s not about Syria at all. It’s about Iran—and Israel. And it has been from the start."
Quite the contrary Dreyfus. Obama has done everything he can to do the opposite from the "Israel" lobby.
****Robert Dreyfuss
Bob Dreyfuss
News of America's misadventures in foreign policy and defense.
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Obama's Syria War Is Really About Iran and Israel
Bob Dreyfuss on September 5, 2013 - 12:25 PM ET
President Barack Obama meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
The dirty little not-so-secret behind President Obama’s much-lobbied-for, illegal and strategically incompetent war against Syria is that it’s not about Syria at all. It’s about Iran—and Israel. And it has been from the start.
By “the start,” I mean 2011, when the Obama administration gradually became convinced that it could deal Iran a mortal blow by toppling President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a secular, Baathist strongman who is, despite all, an ally of Iran’s. Since then, taking Iran down a peg has been the driving force behind Obama’s Syria policy.
Not coincidentally, the White House plans to scare members of Congress into supporting the ill-conceived war plan by waving the Iranian flag in their faces. Even liberal Democrats, some of whom are opposing or questioning war with Syria, blanch at the prospect of opposing Obama and the Israel lobby over Iran.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
Item for consideration: a new column by the Syria analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the chief think tank of the Israel lobby. Andrew Tabler headlines his piece: “Attacking Syria Is the Best Way to Deal with Iran.” In it, he says:
At first glance, the festering Syria crisis seems bad news for diplomatic efforts to keep Iran from developing nuclear capabilities. In actuality, however, achieving U.S. objectives in the Syria crisis is an opportunity to pressure Iran into making hard choices not only in Syria, but regarding its nuclear program as well. More U.S. involvement to achieve its objectives in Syria will inevitably run counter to Tehran’s interests, be it to punish the Assad regime for chemical weapons use or to show support for the Syrian opposition in changing Assad’s calculus and forcing him to “step aside” at the negotiating table or on the battlefield.
Many in U.S. policymaking circles have viewed containing swelling Iranian influence in Syria and preventing Iran from going nuclear as two distinct policy discussions, as the Obama Administration only has so much “bandwidth” to deal with Middle East threats. But the recent deepening of cooperation between Tehran, Hezbollah and the Assad regime, combined with their public acknowledgement of these activities, indicates that they themselves see these activities as furthering the efficacy of the “resistance axis.”
Like every alliance, its members will only make hard policy choices if the costs of its current policies far outweigh the benefits. U.S. strikes on the Assad regime, if properly calibrated as part of an overall plan to degrade the regime, would force Tehran to become more involved in Syria in order to rescue its stalwart ally. This would be costly for Iran financially, militarily and politically. Those costs would make the Iranian regime and its people reassess aspirations to go nuclear.
Needless to say, such a strategy is bound to be counterproductive, since—by slamming Syria, never mind toppling Assad—Washington is likely to undermine doves and bolster hawks in Tehran and undermine the chances for successful negotiations with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, who’ll be speaking at the UN General Assembly later this month.
In fact, both Russia and Iran have signaled recently, in the wake of Syria’s obvious deployment and use of sarin gas and other deadly weapons that they might be getting ready to join the rest of the world in condemning Syria’s chemical warfare, and that makes it far more likely that the much-postponed US-Russia “Geneva II” peace conference on Syria might work. The hawkish Washington Post today notes Rouhani’s new administration in Tehran is softening its tone on Syria, and it reports that the new Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has acknowledged the Syria has erred, saying: “We believe that the government in Syria has made grave mistakes that have, unfortunately, paved the way for the situation in the country to be abused.”
Meanwhile, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, while issuing scathing denunciations of the coming U.S. attack on Syria, has dropped broad hints that he might be willing to join with other nations if and when the United Nations weapons team concludes that Assad used nerve gas, suggesting that Russia might not block a UN Security Council resolution against Syria. In his much-reported interview with the Associated Press, Putin insisted on waiting for the UN report:
“If there is evidence that chemical weapons have been used, and used specifically by the regular army, this evidence should be submitted to the U.N. Security Council. And it ought to be convincing. It shouldn’t be based on some rumors and information obtained by intelligence agencies through some kind of eavesdropping, some conversations and things like that.”
Then, according to the Washington Post, Putin declared that he might join a UN-sponsored coalition on Syria:
He said he “doesn’t exclude” backing the use of force against Syria at the United Nations if there is objective evidence proving that Assad’s regime used chemical weapons against its people. But he strongly warned Washington against launching military action without U.N. approval, saying it would represent an aggression. Russia can veto resolutions at the U.N. Security Council and has protected Syria from punitive actions there before.
But a change in tone on the part of Russia and Iran—the latter of whom the Obama administration still refuses to invite to Geneva II if and when it occurs—won’t mean a thing if the object of war with Syria is to send a message to Iran. As Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for Bloomberg, says, for Israel it’s all about Iran:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel would prefer that Obama enforce his red line on chemical weapons use, because he would like to see proof that Obama believes in the red lines he draws. From Netanyahu’s perspective, Israel isn’t unduly threatened by Assad. Syria constitutes a dangerous, but ultimately manageable, threat.
Netanyahu believes, of course, that Iran, Syria’s primary sponsor, poses an existential threat to his country, and so would like the Iranians to understand very clearly that Obama’s red lines are, in fact, very red. As Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me last night, the formula is simple: “If the Iranians do not fear Obama, then the Israelis will lose confidence in Obama.”
In his round-robin television appearances on Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry—now the administration’s über-hawk—repeatedly said that bombing Syria would send a message to Iran. As he told Fox News on Sunday:
“The fact is that if we act and if we act in concert, then Iran will know that this nation is capable of speaking with one voice on something like this, and that has serious, profound implications, I think, with respect to the potential of a confrontation over their nuclear program. That is one of the things that is at stake here.”****
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Some interesting action footage , , ,
http://www.mrcolionnoir.com/news/crazy-footage-of-syrian-resistance-fighters-getting-vaporized/
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As quoted in the Huckabee e-newsletter:
75,000 Ground Troops
One big concern about a strike toppling the Syrian government is that if Bashar al-Assad has chemical weapons – and nobody seriously doubts that – what happens to his weapons?... ….The possibility of al-Qaeda-linked Syrian rebel groups gaining access to Assad’s chemical weapons is already keeping planners at the Pentagon awake at night. The British newspaper, the Daily Mail, claims that an anonymous Defense Department official told them of a secret report on Assad’s chemical weapons program. It was prepared for President Obama last year, at the request of the NSA. According to the source, US Central Command estimates that it would take more than 75,000 ground troops to go into Syria and secure the chemical weapons factories and stockpiles. So if you wonder why Obama keeps talking about striking Assad but not doing enough to drive him out of power, it’s easier to understand once you know what the alternative would be.
Question: What if Baraq backs off (e.g. Congress votes no and he uses that as an out) and the civil war continues leading to the risk of capture of the chems by FSA forces? By AQ forces? Do we go in and take them?
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second post
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/8/rep-buck-mckeon-obama-can-win-syria-votes-undoing-/
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Third post
WSJ
Syria 'Welcomes' Russian Call to Give Up Chemical Weapons
Foreign Minister Is Cagey About Compliance After Rare Russian Push
By JAMES MARSON And NICHOLAS WINNING
Russia backed a demand by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that Syria put its chemical weapons under international control and then destroy them—a proposal that, according to Russian media reports, Syria said it welcomed, without saying whether it would comply.
Mr. Kerry said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government could prevent U.S. military action in response to what the U.S. said was a chemical-weapons attack on Aug. 21 by handing over its chemical weapons to the international community. Syria has denied using chemical weapons and blamed Syrian rebels for the attacks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday echoed that narrative on Friday, saying the attack was a provocation by the opposition to win international military aid.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia, one of the strongest supporters of the Assad regime, urged Syria to comply with Mr. Kerry's call.
"We are calling on the Syrian leadership not just to agree to put chemical-weapons stores under international control, but also to their subsequent destruction, as well as fully fledged accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention," Mr. Lavrov said.
Mr. Moallem didn't provide any specifics, other than to say that Syria welcomed the Russian proposal.
"The Syrian Arab republic welcomes the Russian initiative, motivated by the concerns of the Russian leadership for the lives of our citizens and the security of our country," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters in Moscow, according to Russia's Interfax news agency.
He said Syria agreed to the proposal "out of our faith in the wisdom of the Russian leadership, which is striving to prevent American aggression against our people."
Mr. Moallem didn't provide any further details of how soon Syria might agree to the Russian proposal or whether Damascus supported both turning over its chemical weapons to international monitors and ultimately destroying them, as Mr. Lavrov proposed.
Mr. Moallem didn't address Russia's call for Damascus to accede to the global convention banning chemical weapons.
The Russian proposals were a rare sign of apparent agreement between Moscow and Washington, as President Barack Obama mounts an intensive campaign to convince Congress and the American public that a military strike on Syria is necessary in response to what the U.S. said was the killing of over 1,400 people with chemical weapons on Aug. 21.
Russia has supported Mr. Assad in the country's civil war and has opposed U.S. plans for a strike against Mr. Assad's forces
Mr. Kerry, who has been traveling through Europe in recent days on a diplomatic push, said earlier on Monday in London that it was clear the Syrian government was unwilling to relinquish control of its chemical weapons.
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European Pressphoto Agency
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague speak to the media in the Foreign Office in London on Monday.
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President Obama, in a week poised to define his second term, will press his case in coming days to Americans wary of opening a new military front in the Middle East, including a nationally televised address Tuesday evening. He also is sending aides to hold closed-door intelligence briefings for members of Congress about the alleged gassing deaths of more than 1,400 Syrian civilians by Mr. Assad's forces.
At a joint news conference in London with his British counterpart, Mr. Kerry said there was no question the Assad regime was responsible for the Damascus chemical attack. It has a "huge stock" of chemical weapons, and the movement and use of them was tightly controlled by Mr. Assad himself, his brother, and a general, whom he didn't name, he said.
Asked whether there was anything the Syrian government could do to stop U.S. strikes, Mr. Kerry said, "Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week ... without delay and allow the full and total accounting for that, but he isn't about to do it and it can't be done, obviously."
Timeline: Punitive Strikes
U.S. military action against Syria likely would join a growing list of instances in which the U.S. has fired Tomahawk cruise missiles.
View Graphics
Mr. Kerry said he understood the legacy of the Iraq conflict, but that the U.S. administration wasn't "going to war" in Syria.
"We will be able to hold Bashar Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria's civil war," he said.
A broad international coalition is central to the U.S. administration's efforts to persuade American lawmakers that military action has international support before they vote on the issue this week.
Mr. Obama's top challenge, as Congress returns Monday from summer recess, will be to find backing from enough lawmakers for a resolution authorizing a strike. The president faces an unusual alliance seeking to block military action, one comprised of the president's closest allies among liberal Democrats—including members of the Congressional Black Caucus—and his most strident critics among Republicans.
The administration's argument is that the U.S. case that Mr. Assad's forces used chemical weapons in the Aug. 21 attack is now settled—an assertion that Mr. Assad denied in an interview with Charlie Rose of PBS and CBS.
"We are no longer debating whether it happened or whether it didn't happen," White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said on CNN, part of a blitz of television interviews Sunday. "Congress has an opportunity this week to answer a simple question: Should there be consequences for him for having used that material?"
Mr. Obama will also go to Capitol Hill Tuesday to meet with Senate Democrats, a Senate Democratic aide said.
The Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution authorizing Mr. Obama to use force in Syria. The current resolution, which could be amended, backs a military mission designed, in part, to change the momentum of the Syrian civil war and set the stage for Mr. Assad's departure.
But it isn't clear whether Congress—particularly the House, where Mr. Obama faces a more difficult battle—will back such a measure. Many lawmakers have said they oppose the resolution as too broad, and their contention likely was bolstered during the recess as they heard constituents back home voice concern. The House isn't expected to vote before next week.
After a week of intense White House lobbying on Capitol Hill following Mr. Obama's surprise decision to seek authorization from Congress for a military strike, some lawmakers say they remain unsure who was responsible for the alleged chemical-weapons attack or remain unconvinced a strike would be the appropriate response.
White House officials, including Mr. Obama, have argued that if Congress fails to pass a resolution the U.S. will be seen as less credible on the international stage and adversaries such as Iran and the Lebanese-based militant political group Hezbollah would be emboldened.
The White House has left open the possibility that Mr. Obama would proceed with military action if a vote in Congress fails. Administration officials also haven't ruled out presidential action if the House and Senate pass different resolutions yet are unable to agree on a compromise measure, but say it is too early to consider such a scenario.
In Moscow on Monday, Russia's Mr. Lavrov said—after talks with his Syrian counterpart—that military strikes on Syria could cause an "outburst of terrorism" in the region and trigger a new wave of refugees.
But Mr. Kerry said the risk of not acting in Syria was greater than the risk of acting. "I don't believe we can shy from this moment," he said.
Prime Minister David Cameron had been a strong advocate of international military action to target Syria's alleged chemical-weapons capabilities, but he was forced to rule out British involvement after failing to convince the U.K. parliament to back his plans in a vote—a setback for Washington's efforts to build support for a show of force in Syria. British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Mr. Kerry devoted a sizable part of their opening remarks at their joint news conference to expressing how U.K.-U.S. relations—the so-called "special relationship"—remained strong. Mr. Hague said Britain supported the U.S. work toward Syrian peace talks in Geneva, addressing the humanitarian crisis from the Syrian conflict, supporting the moderate opposition in the civil war, and getting strong support for a response to Assad regime's alleged use of chemical weapons. Mr. Kerry said the relationship between the two longtime allies was described as special and essential because it was so, based on shared values on freedom, opportunity and rights.
"Our bond ... is bigger than one vote, bigger than one moment in history," he said.
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4th post
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/21/saudi-inmates-fight-syria-commute-death-sentences/1852629/
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The Russian offer is a good way for Putin to get back those chemicals, delivery mechannisms and other agents that he and the USSR sent to Assad's father and to the late Saddam Hussein. We would not want to find that a permanent member of the UN Security Council had been trading those items in violation of the 1993 UN Treaty - would we?
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Rick:
That is a very interesting thought!
Question: What chance was there of the West getting its hands on the physical evidence? Wasn't Baraq just talking purposeful misses and goodness! we would NEVER do anything to actually go get the chems!
What chance do you think there is of this actually coming together? At the moment it looks like it could sure get our CiC partially out of the corner into which he has painted us and himself.
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"The Russian offer is a good way for Putin to get back those chemicals, delivery mechannisms and other agents that he and the USSR sent to Assad's father and to the late Saddam Hussein. We would not want to find that a permanent member of the UN Security Council had been trading those items in violation of the 1993 UN Treaty - would we?"
Yes, interesting to wonder what motivates Putin; he is certainly not concerned helping the US our Pres. Obama or the our best interests of the civilized world. I was wondering if we will ever know what part of Assad's stock came from Saddam.
Another post mentioned horse trading. If Putin helps Obama save face here, what is he expecting in return? ("Please tell Vladimir I will have more flexibility to [unilaterally disarm] after my reelection.")
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http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/10/politics/us-syria-obama-solutions/
(CNN) -- It's a stunning turn of events that could change everything on Syria.
Facing the threat of a U.S. military strike, the country's leaders Tuesday reportedly accepted a Russian proposal to turn over its chemical weapons.
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Nothing scares a nation into pleading guilty and giving up its arsenal like "facing the threat of a U.S. military strike" that is "unbelievably small". Something else is going on here.
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After we kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait with The Gulf War, the deal was that he would turn over his WMD. In 1997 SH drove out the UN inspectors. With his impeachment President Clinton "wagged the dog" and , , , then did nothing. President Bush 43 then came in with SH's WMD whereabouts still unknown-- and these ten years plus where with Iraq at peace.
Here the country is in the middle of a vicious civil war. Only last week, the UN inspectors were shot at and had to retreat. So exactly how is this to play out?
Peering into my very murky and very cracked crystal ball, I'm thinking Putin-Assad's play will be to call for a cease fire (i.e. Assad gets to stay in power) and then, with only an "incredibly tiny" attack by an incredibly-grateful-for-getting-his-ass-bailed-out-by-Putin Baraq to fear, Putin-Assad will stall and dither forever.
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"Assad gets to stay in power... Putin-Assad will stall and dither forever."
Bret Stephens, WSJ, has a similar view:
"All Americans are reduced when Mr. Kerry, attempting to distinguish an attack on Syria with the war in Iraq, described the former as "unbelievably small." Does the secretary propose to stigmatize the use of chemical weapons by bombarding Bashar Assad, evil tyrant, with popcorn? When did the American way of war go from shock-and-awe to forewarn-and-irritate?
Americans are reduced, also, when an off-the-cuff remark by Mr. Kerry becomes the basis of a Russian diplomatic initiative—immediately seized by an Assad regime that knows a sucker's game when it sees one—to hand over Syria's stocks of chemical weapons to international control. So now we're supposed to embark on months of negotiation, mediated by our friends the Russians, to get Assad to relinquish a chemical arsenal he used to deny having, now denies using, and will soon deny secretly maintaining?"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323623304579059571477464750.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
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A friend with a strong military background comments:
I'll start, but probably not finish, the list of why Russia wins:
1) Russia got inside our OODA loop in on of the most elegant moves you're likely to see. Kerry blurted out an option that wasn't really on the table for Syria. Russia called his bluff. Russia acted brilliantly and decisively when the world has watched our leadership flail like the amateurs they are.
2) Russia has control of the situation/timing in Syria, not us. We certainly aren't going to act against Syria while Russia keeps giving us smiley face reports on how Assad needs just a bit longer to turn over his chem. You have to cut them some slack, my American friends, they're in the middle of a civil war. Blah, blah, blah, until they win.
3) Russia stepped back up to the big table in the Middle East. The last time anyone really gave a damn what the Russians thought about the Middle East was in 1973 (apart from when they sent that message to the kidnappers in Beirut in the early 1980s). Now they're driving the train.
4) Russia keeps its warm water port and ally in the region. Because Russia controls the timing of our operations, it can keep us from tilting the odds against Assad.
5) If we gripe about how the Syrians are taking too long to live up to their end of the deal, we look like whiners and the Russians look like the mature ones.
6) Russia will have a freer hand in helping Syria with troops and advisors. After all, they'll need folks operating on the ground to facilitate the Syrians' transfer of the chem. If you're into realpolitik, this is probably in our interest and that of the Israelis, but makes us look even more impotent.
7) There is no downside for Russia as far as "pressure to be a good international citizen." Who, exactly, is going to hold them to account? And what would holding them to account even look like?
8) Do we really believe that Assad is going to turn over weapons he denies he even has? I seem to recall similar WMD inspection efforts in the Middle East taking quite awhile and not ending particularly productively.
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"A friend with a strong military background comments..."
Yes, all very well put. Outmaneuvered is an extreme understatement on so many levels. We are settling in to watch a puppet show. Putin shows the type of influence we once wished we had. He snapped his fingers and people responded - events turned his way. We snap ours and things turn the opposite way.
Reagan said trust but verify, but no one said we could control them. Putin will be in control of timing and process and will be a wimpering puppy.
The only way to deal with a power like Russia is to know they will act in their interest, and we are their rival, if not enemy. Even Kerry and Obama must know they are not going to act in ours. Watching them rely on Putin and get their strings pulled in not going to be pretty.
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What could be worse for America's standing in the world than a Congress refusing to support a President's proposal for military action against a rogue regime that used WMD? Here's one idea: A U.S. President letting that rogue be rescued from military punishment by the country that has protected the rogue all along.
That's where President Obama now finds himself on Syria after he embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer to take custody of Bashar Assad's chemical weapons. The move may rescue Mr. Obama and Congress from the political agony of a vote on a resolution to authorize a military strike on Syria. But the diplomatic souk is now open, and Mr. Obama has turned himself into one of the junior camel traders.
What a fiasco. Secretary of State John Kerry, of all people, first floated this escape route for Assad on Monday in Europe where he was supposed to be rallying diplomatic support for a strike. The remark appeared to be off-the-cuff, but with Mr. Kerry and this Administration you never know. In any case before Mr. Kerry's plane had landed in the U.S., Russia's foreign minister had lept on the idea and proposed to take custody of Assad's chemical arsenal to forestall U.S. military action.
The White House should have rebuffed the offer given Russia's long protection of Assad at the United Nations—a fact noted with scorn on Monday by Mr. Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice. Instead Mr. Obama endorsed the Russian gambit as what "could potentially be a significant breakthrough." The Senate immediately called off its Wednesday vote on the military resolution. By Tuesday Assad had accepted the offer that he hopes will spare him from a military strike.
France will press for a U.N. Security Council resolution supposedly for U.N. inspectors to supervise the dismantling of Syria's stockpiles, though Russia will no doubt try to put itself in the lead inspecting role. On Tuesday Russia was even objecting to a French draft that would blame the Syrian government for using chemical weapons. Mr. Putin also insisted the U.S. must first disavow any military action in Syria, even as he and Iran make no such pledge.
On second thought, fiasco is too kind for this spectacle. Russia has publicly supported Assad's denials that he used sarin gas, but we are now supposed to believe it will thoroughly scrub Syria of those weapons. We are also supposed to believe Assad will come clean about the weapons he has long denied having and still denies using.
Oh, and we can be confident of this because U.N. or Russian inspectors or someone will be able to locate the entire chemical arsenal, pack up arms that require enormous care in transport, and then monitor future compliance in the continuing war zone that is Syria.
Even if you believe this will happen, or is even possible, Assad will emerge without punishment for having used chemical weapons. He can also be confident that there will be no future Western military action against him. Mr. Obama won't risk another ramp-up to war given the opposition at home and abroad to this effort.
Assad will also know he can unleash his conventional forces anew against the rebels, and Iran and Russia will know they can arm him with impunity. The rebels had better brace themselves for a renewed assault. At the very least, Mr. Obama should compensate for his diplomatic surrender by finally following through on his June promise to arm and train the moderate Free Syrian Army. Otherwise he runs the risk of facilitating an Assad-Iran-Russian triumph.
The alacrity with which Mr. Obama embraced Russia's offer suggests a President who was looking for his own political escape route. His campaign to win congressional support has lost ground in the week since he needlessly blundered into proposing it. His effort to rally international support foundered last week at the G-20, where Mr. Putin looked dominant, and Mr. Obama's approval rating has been falling at home.
In his Tuesday speech, Mr. Obama tried to put his best face on all of this. He took credit for it by claiming that his threat of "unbelievably small" military force, as Mr. Kerry advertised it, induced Assad to see the light. He claimed that he had personally floated the idea of international monitoring of Syria's weapons. But this admission merely underscores how eager Mr. Obama is to find a Syria exit short of having to follow through on his military threats. His speech amounted to a call to support a military strike that his actions suggest he desperately wants to avoid.
The world will see through this spin. A British commentator in the Telegraph on Monday called this "the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began," and that's only a mild exaggeration. A weak and inconstant U.S. President has been maneuvered by America's enemies into claiming that a defeat for his Syria policy is really a triumph.
The Iranians will take it as a signal that they can similarly trap Mr. Obama in a diplomatic morass that claims to have stopped their nuclear program. Israel will conclude the same and will now have to decide if it must risk a solo strike on Tehran. America's friends and foes around the world will recalculate the risks ahead in the 40 dangerous months left of this unserious Presidency.
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crafty -
The risk to Putin would have been more thorough UN inspections after the strikes. At that time, a Russian link to the chemical weapons could have been discovered. So, Syria (with Russian support) agrees to turn over the weapons. Note - that does not state permit inspections before turning over the weapons. Both Assad's father and Saddam Hussein received Soviet military aid.
Also, I don't think that Kerry's comment was a throw-away. I think that he was urged to make that statement - and make it seem a throw-away.
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Obama's Successful Foreign Failure
The president may look incompetent on Syria. But his behavior fits his strategy to weaken America abroad.
By NORMAN PODHORETZ - September 8, 2013
It is entirely understandable that Barack Obama's way of dealing with Syria in recent weeks should have elicited responses ranging from puzzlement to disgust. Even members of his own party are despairingly echoing in private the public denunciations of him as "incompetent," "bungling," "feckless," "amateurish" and "in over his head" coming from his political opponents on the right.
For how else to characterize a president who declares war against what he calls a great evil demanding immediate extirpation and in the next breath announces that he will postpone taking action for at least 10 days—and then goes off to play golf before embarking on a trip to another part of the world? As if this were not enough, he also assures the perpetrator of that great evil that the military action he will eventually take will last a very short time and will do hardly any damage. Unless, that is, he fails to get the unnecessary permission he has sought from Congress, in which case (according to an indiscreet member of his own staff) he might not take any military action after all.
Getty Images
President Obama on Friday at the G-20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Summing up the net effect of all this, as astute a foreign observer as Conrad Black can flatly say that, "Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and before that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States."
Yet if this is indeed the pass to which Mr. Obama has led us—and I think it is—let me suggest that it signifies not how incompetent and amateurish the president is, but how skillful. His foreign policy, far from a dismal failure, is a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish. The accomplishment would not have been possible if the intention had been too obvious. The skill lies in how effectively he has used rhetorical tricks to disguise it.
The key to understanding what Mr. Obama has pulled off is the astonishing statement he made in the week before being elected president: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." To those of us who took this declaration seriously, it meant that Mr. Obama really was the left-wing radical he seemed to be, given his associations with the likes of the anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, not to mention the intellectual influence over him of Saul Alinsky, the original "community organizer."
So far as domestic affairs were concerned, it soon became clear—even to some of those who had persuaded themselves that Mr. Obama was a moderate and a pragmatist—that the fundamental transformation he had in mind was to turn this country into as close a replica of the social-democratic countries of Europe as the constraints of our political system allowed.
Since he had enough support for the policies that this objective entailed, those constraints were fairly loose, and so he only needed a minimum of rhetorical deception in pursuing it. All it took was to deny he was doing what he was doing by frequently singing the praises of the free-enterprise system he was assiduously working to undermine, by avoiding the word "socialism," by invoking "fairness" as an overriding ideal and by playing on resentment of the "rich."
But foreign policy was another matter. As a left-wing radical, Mr. Obama believed that the United States had almost always been a retrograde and destructive force in world affairs. Accordingly, the fundamental transformation he wished to achieve here was to reduce the country's power and influence. And just as he had to fend off the still-toxic socialist label at home, so he had to take care not to be stuck with the equally toxic "isolationist" label abroad.
This he did by camouflaging his retreats from the responsibilities bred by foreign entanglements as a new form of "engagement." At the same time, he relied on the war-weariness of the American people and the rise of isolationist sentiment (which, to be sure, dared not speak its name) on the left and right to get away with drastic cuts in the defense budget, with exiting entirely from Iraq and Afghanistan, and with "leading from behind" or using drones instead of troops whenever he was politically forced into military action.
The consequent erosion of American power was going very nicely when the unfortunately named Arab Spring presented the president with several juicy opportunities to speed up the process. First in Egypt, his incoherent moves resulted in a complete loss of American influence, and now, thanks to his handling of the Syrian crisis, he is bringing about a greater diminution of American power than he probably envisaged even in his wildest radical dreams.
For this fulfillment of his dearest political wishes, Mr. Obama is evidently willing to pay the price of a sullied reputation. In that sense, he is by his own lights sacrificing himself for what he imagines is the good of the nation of which he is the president, and also to the benefit of the world, of which he loves proclaiming himself a citizen.
The problem for Mr. Obama is that at least since the end of World War II, Americans have taken pride in being No. 1. Unless the American people have been as fundamentally transformed as their country is quickly becoming, America's decline will not sit well. With more than three years in office to go, will Mr. Obama be willing and able to endure the continuing erosion of his popularity that will almost certainly come with the erosion of the country's power and influence?
No doubt he will either deny that anything has gone wrong, or failing that, he will resort to his favorite tactic of blaming others—Congress or the Republicans or Rush Limbaugh. But what is also almost certain is that he will refuse to change course and do the things that will be necessary to restore U.S. power and influence.
And so we can only pray that the hole he will go on digging will not be too deep for his successor to pull us out, as Ronald Reagan managed to do when he followed a president into the White House whom Mr. Obama so uncannily resembles.
Mr. Podhoretz was the editor of Commentary from 1960-95. His most recent book is "Why Are Jews Liberals?" (Doubleday, 2009).
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Rick:
I was not aware that UN inspections after Baraq's threatened strikes were part of the equation. I thought it was more "shoot & scoot".
Marc
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"Obama delivered the clearest, the most concise and the most morally compelling foreign-policy address of his presidency.
This observation is not designed as cheerleading for Obama."
Me: The problem is, Mr. Shapiro, once one is a known outright serial liar there is nothing one can say that has any credibility. Just wait till Iran has a few dozen nuclear devices. If you think we have trouble now just we wait. And wait we are doing.
****Obama’s message on Syria: Look the other way or accept moral duty?
President Barack Obama addresses the nation in a live televised speech from the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013. President Obama blended the threat of military action with the hope of a diplomatic solution as he works to strip Syria of its chemical weapons. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)
Walter Shapiro
Walter Shapiro 2 hours ago PoliticsBarack ObamaSyria
As a long ago White House speechwriter (Jimmy Carter) and a devoted student of presidential rhetoric, I have spent the past 24 hours searching for a historical parallel to Barack Obama’s address to the nation on Syria.
We are used to presidential speeches on war (Vietnam, the Gulf War, the 9/11 horrors, Afghanistan, Iraq and the many smaller struggles along the way). Occasionally, we have reveled in presidents announcing breakthroughs for peace, whether it was the end of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis or the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian accords.
But never has a president — down in the polls and stymied in Congress — spoken to the nation in prime time about an unpopular attack that he may not launch against a nation that is not a direct security threat to the United States. Just to add to the degree of rhetorical difficulty, this punitive bombing lacks the support of the United Nations, NATO or even our most loyal ally, Great Britain.
But Tuesday night — after a day of diplomatic flurries that may have averted the immediate crisis — Obama delivered the clearest, the most concise and the most morally compelling foreign-policy address of his presidency.
This observation is not designed as cheerleading for Obama. The president blundered into the crisis with ill-thought-out threats about “red lines” over chemical weapons; he waited too long to go to Congress; and may have only been rescued when the Russians — up to now, Bashar Assad’s enabler — seized on what may have been an accidental comment by Secretary of State John Kerry.
In short, misjudgments by the Obama national security team have made the selling of an air war over Syria even more difficult than it otherwise would have been.
But in many ways, Obama redeemed himself Tuesday night with a powerful invocation of American exceptionalism. “When, with modest effort and risk,” the president said, “we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer in the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes America exceptional.”
Critics have suggested that since Obama has postponed congressional votes that he appeared likely to lose, the speech was a wasted interruption of prime-time programming. That interpretation is simply wrong. Ever since Obama decided to go to Congress for approval of what he regards as the least-bad policy in Syria, we have been treated to a fascinating preview of foreign policy debates in the age of social media.
In prior crises, the president’s meetings with leading figures in Congress have been shrouded in secrecy. Now there are endless live interviews and immediate Twitter feeds summarizing closed sessions. There has, in fact, been more transparency on Syria than on, say, the Obama-John Boehner budget negotiations.
..View gallery."
Syria - History of politics and conflict from 1920 …
March 8, 2005 - A Syrian soldier riding on top of a tank gestures after leaving his position, in Dah …
Maybe what we are seeing here is how foreign policy gets made in a post-Iraq environment. Even as the polling turned against Obama, the American people also expressed comfort with the notion that a president has to go to Congress for permission to bomb another country when American lives are not on the line. A recent Pew Research Center/USA Today poll found that 61 percent of Americans believe that Congress — not the president — needs to authorize air strikes over Damascus.
This is as it should be. Even though Obama has repeatedly said that he believes that he has the authority to act on his own, most constitutional experts from both the right and left say that it would be a dangerous over-assertion of presidential power.
Obama acknowledged the historic belittling of Congress’ constitutional powers in Tuesday night’s speech when he talked about “a decade that put more and more war-making power in the hands of the president … while sidelining the people’s representatives from critical decisions about when we use force.” Of course, Obama himself contributed to this dangerous growth of the Imperial Presidency when he declined to go to Congress for authorization to wage the 2011 air campaign over Libya.
But Obama now has turned to Congress — and set an important precedent for the future. As he put it, “I believed it was right, in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security, to take the debate to Congress.”
As a result, we are discussing Syria in the open with all the messiness that comes with democracy. Advocates of unbridled presidential power may not like it, but this approach comes a lot closer to what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.
We have also learned in recent days that the American people are rightly skeptical of military operations solely designed to make a point. That’s why the hardest argument for Obama to make is explaining the national security benefits that would flow from an air strike designed “to deter Assad from using chemical weapons” and “to degrade his regime’s ability to use them.”
“Deter” and “degrade” are not normally fighting words. And once again Tuesday night, Obama repeated his promise, “I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.” In fact, the pledge of no boots on the ground has been made so often by administration officials that it almost seems that we are more likely to invade Denmark than Syria.
Hypotheticals are always tricky, but I wonder how the American people might have reacted if Obama had ever followed through on his initial resolve that Bashar Assad must go. There was a hopeful moment, back in 2011, when Islamic militants represented only a small portion of the uprising against Assad. Even then our aversion to foreign military operations probably would have prevented majority support for actively aiding the Syrian rebels. But that goal would have, at least, given a strategic coherence to what Obama and Company were trying to achieve.
But no American should minimize the barbarism of chemical weapons. In a world where civil wars are raging and terrorism is an ongoing threat, it may seem prissy to talk about the rules of war. But the horrors of a chemical warfare attack are a century old. Wilfred Owen, the British poet who died in the final week of World War I, captured the soldier’s-eye memories of a gas attack:
.Crisis In Syria: Presidential Address to the Natio ….Play video."
Crisis In Syria: Presidential Address to the Natio …
“Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…”
The truth is that we are by choice and by fate the only nation in the world that can enforce the rules of war and, yes, take steps to prevent atrocities. It was our decision as a people to remain the greatest military power on the face of the earth both after World War II and the American victory in the Cold War. We have become the indispensable nation, and the other countries of the world are free riders when we offer to take the risks and bear the burden of preventing a dictator from gassing his own people.
After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are understandably war weary and gimlet-eyed realists about what can happen when the pronouncements of politicians collide with the realities of 21st-century combat. There are no slam-dunks and not everything that starts “limited” ends up “limited.”
But we also can go too far in the other direction as we flee from any course of action that has even the flicker of military risks. Syria is a charnel house, an inferno of despair — and America is the only nation on the face of the earth that can do anything significant to limit the suffering.
After our history of ill-fated wars and hyperbolic claims, we may not choose to take up that burden. We may decide that our problems are too grave at home for another bout of international altruism. We may decide that the evidence of Syrian chemical attacks is too ambiguous, or we may distrust Obama too much to believe that a military operation would change things for the better.
But no American should be blind to the reality that we have made a choice. We have decided to stay on the sidelines and hope for the best. Hope that maybe a United Nations resolution or Russian intervention or Syrian fears can succeed in eliminating Assad’s chemical arsenal.
As Obama declared Tuesday night, “When dictators commit atrocities, they depend on the world to look the other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory.”
This is the choice facing America this morning: Do we avert our eyes or do we sadly and grimly accept our moral duty?****
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Syrian Conflict Goes Back 13 Centuries
By Dmitry Chen
10 Sep 2013
“And when, on a gentle spring morning after several days of siege, that host streamed through a breach in the walls of Damascus, murder and pillage ensued that scarce abated with the sunset.”
No, this isn’t a prediction. It is from a novel I wrote about eighth-century Syria, Iran and Iraq.
I hate being a prophet.
If we (Europe, Russia, the U.S.) all stick our military hands into Syria, there will be plenty of quiet chuckles echoing through the Arab world: “Welcome, you idiots, to exactly where we wanted you. Now do the dirty job for us.”
To understand what is happening in Syria, one must look at the larger picture. And that larger picture is the ancient and bitter Arab-Iranian rivalry, today manifested in the Arab world’s attempts to nip off bits of the Iranian sphere of influence, this particular bit being Syria.
When the conflict began, there was no America. There was no Europe, not really (we have to wait for Charlemagne to be born). The eastern Roman Empire was half alive, half gobbled up by the Arabs. And Iran -- well, it had been wiped out as an enlightened, ancient empire a century before, in 651. After that, the Arabs took a long rest on the borders of Sogd (modern-day central Asia, with its capital in Samarkand), which they began to conquer only in 712.
Why the rivalry? Why did the conquerors (the Arabs) so loathe the conquered (the Iranians)? That’s where the eighth century comes in. A hundred years after the Arabs destroyed Iran, their own empire, which stretched from Spain to the Chinese border, was a teetering wreck, being devoured from the inside by rivalries and bad government.
Then, in 747, a revolt began in Iran that would eventually overthrow the Umayyad dynasty, replacing it with the Abbasids. The Abbasids would go on to build Baghdad and rule the huge Islamic caliphate for 500 years -- until the arrival of Genghis Khan and his Horde.
Yes, the Abbasids were Arabs, but their scribes, builders and literati were Iranians and the Arabs who cared to learn from them. As a result, the Iranians gradually all but took over their conqueror’s empire from the inside.
What an exquisite revenge -- an ancient nation that refused to give in, even when it was impossible to hold on.
Are there echoes of this stubbornness in current Iranian negotiating behavior regarding nuclear proliferation? There are. One needs to understand the roots of this ancient nation to appreciate how the Iranians negotiate against all odds -- just as they did in the eighth century, refusing to believe they were finished. And no, they won’t give in today.
Here is the crucial bit: The Arab-Iranian divide is far more than cultural. In the eighth century, subjugated Iran was also abandoning its ancient religion -- Zoroastrianism -- and creating its own, unique strand of Islam, Shiite, that stood in opposition to the dominant Sunni strand favored by the Abbasids.
A historian would tell us to remember that today’s conflict in Syria can be traced back to an Arab-Iranian -- Sunni-Shiite - - rivalry that is 13 centuries old.
This novelist can tell you that he has been there, back in eighth-century Damascus, and the streets were drenched in blood.
One thousand two hundred sixty-six years have passed. Unfortunately, little has changed.
Dmitry Chen is a Russian-born author of eight novels, including The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas, which has just been published in English. It takes place in eighth-century Syria, Iran, Iraq and Sogdia.
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Analysis
Editor's note: Periodically, Stratfor publishes guidance produced for its analysis team and shares it with readers. This guidance sets the parameters used in our own ongoing examination and assessment of events surrounding Syria's use of chemical weapons as the crisis evolves into a confrontation between the United States and Russia. Given the importance we ascribe to this fast-evolving standoff, we believe it important that readers have access to this additional insight.
In the wake of President Barack Obama's change of tack from a strike on Syria, the threat of war has not dissolved. It has, however, been pushed off beyond this round of negotiations.
The president's minimalist claims are in place, but they are under serious debate. There is no chance of an attack on chemical weapons stockpiles. Therefore, the attack, if any, will be on command and control and political targets. Obama has options on the table and there will be force in place for any contingency he selects. Nothing is locked in despite public statements and rhetoric in Washington, London, Paris or Moscow.
Remember that all public statements now are meant to obscure real plans and intentions. They are intended to shape the environment. Read them, but do not look at them as anything more than tactics.
The issue has morphed into a U.S.-Russian confrontation. Russia's goal is to be seen as an equal of the United States. It wins if it can be seen as a protagonist of the United States. If it can appear that Washington has refrained from an attack because of Russian maneuvers, Moscow's weight increases dramatically. This is particularly the case along Russia's periphery, where doubts of American power abound and concern over Russian power abides.
This is not merely appearance. After all that has been said, if the United States buys into some Russian framework, it will not be seen as a triumph of diplomacy; it will be seen as the United States lacking the will to act and being pushed away out of concern for the Russians.
The Russian ploy on weapons controls was followed by the brilliant move of abandoning strike options. Obama's speech the night of Sept. 10 was addressed to the U.S. public and Obama's highly fractured base; some of his support base opposes and some -- a particular audience -- demands action.
He cannot let Syria become the focus of his presidency, and he must be careful that the Russians do not lay a trap for him. He is not sure what that trap might look like, and that's what is unnerving him as it would any president. Consequently, he has bought time, using the current American distaste for military action in the Middle East. But he is aware that this week's dislike of war can turn into next week's contempt on charges of weakness. Obama is an outstanding politician and he knows he is in quicksand.
The Russians have now launched a diplomatic offensive that emphasizes to both the Arabs in the Persian Gulf opposing Bashar al Assad and the Iranians supporting him that a solution is available through them. It requires only that they ask the Americans to abandon plans for action. The message is that Russia will solve the chemical weapons problem, and implicitly, collaborate with them to negotiate a settlement.
Obama's speech on Sept. 10, constrained by domestic opinion, came across as unwilling to confront the Russians or al Assad. The Russians are hoping this has unnerved al Assad's opponents sufficiently to cause them to use the Russians as their interlocutors. If this fails the Russians have lost nothing. They can say they were statesmen. If it succeeds, they can actually nudge the regional balance of power.
The weakness of the Russian position is that it has no real weight. The limit on American military action is purely domestic politics. If the United States chooses to hit Syria, Russia can do nothing about it and will be made to look weak, the tables thus turned on them.
At this point, all signs indicate that the domestic considerations dominate U.S. decision-making. If the Russian initiative begins to work, however, Obama will be forced to consider the consequences and will likely act. The Arabs suspect this and therefore will encourage the Russians, hoping to force the U.S. into action.
The idea that this imbroglio will somehow disappear is certainly one that Obama is considering. But the Russians will not want that to happen. They do not want to let Obama off the hook and their view is that he will not act. Against this backdrop, they can appear to be the nemesis of the United States, its equal in power and its superior in cunning and diplomacy.
This is the game to watch. It is not ending but still very much evolving.
Read more: Analytic Guidance: The Syria Crisis | Stratfor
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A friend comments:
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/11/pro-syrian-opposition-analyst-fired-for-lying-on-resume/
I saw this earlier and was not surprised. What concerns me is that the "powers that be" know this is going on. They know the facts, and choose to ignore the facts.
What are the real agendas behind O and Kerry (BTW, I was in Vietnam)?
This is not about the use of Chemical Weapons at all. If it had been, action would have been taken over a year ago. Instead, they wait until now, even though there is no actual evidence to link Assad to the use of the weapons.
Is the real reason the desire for Saudi Arabia and Quatar to put a natural gas line to Europe through Syria, which had been denied by Assad?
Is the real reason simply support for Sunni over Shiite, even though Sunni has a large AQ element?
Is the real reason to create a situation whereby Iran would attack Israel? After all, O and Kerry are not really supporters of Israel?
Is the real reason to hide the fact that Benghazi was all about supplying weapons to the Syrian rebels prior to the attack?
Our leadership is not being truthful with the American public about their motivations.
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"This is not about the use of Chemical Weapons at all. If it had been, action would have been taken over a year ago. Instead, they wait until now, even though there is no actual evidence to link Assad to the use of the weapons."
No one really knows what goes on "behind the scenes". True. But it does appear the administration doesn't really know what to do. Stay out of it. Inject ourselves into it?
There is political pressure on both sides. Doesn't it seem that Obama's history suggests he would rather stay out?
Several concepts need to be re - evaluated such as:
1) "managing" events in foreign countries.
2) supporting "democracy" in regions where there has never really been any such thing.
3) promoting *our* interests and re-evaluating what those are exactly.
4) supporting friends of the US who may not be otherwise admirable ie; Mubarak ( was better than what we have now in Egypt )
5) expecting to be able to foretell the outcome of every military intervention (not possible); (We went into Iraq in 1992 with overwhelming force and achieved a better than expected outcome - but who knew in advance.)
(We can thank Powell for backing us into this corner - prudent but not realistic)
6) do "limited" military interventions make sense
7) should not military interventions be with the purpose to *win*.
8) seeking international approval for everything we do - forget about Congressional approval. (we can thank G H Bush for this one as predicted by some including George Will, and myself, 20 yrs ago)
9) Why do we seek international support for everything then we are the ones thus responsible to carry it all out and do the dirty work?
Surely people can think of many more questions to which this administration has no coherent approach.
I don't buy a conspiracy theory per se other than it is all about politics for the One and his liberal agenda. I do buy the administration is confused as to how to approach this. In the context of "transforming" America. In the context that American/European capitalism/colonialism viewed as "white" policies of the past were bad for the world.
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Most of those questions (which are very good) can better be discussed on the Foreign Policy thread.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/world/middleeast/listing-demands-assad-uses-crisis-to-his-advantage.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130913&_r=0
WASHINGTON — Not long ago, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria seemed a remote and embattled figure, with the United States threatening airstrikes and other Arab leaders denouncing him for having used chemical weapons against his own people.
Yet in recent days, he appears, paradoxically, to have turned the crisis to his advantage, making clear to a global television audience that he aims to use President Obama’s own “red line” against him.
In exchange for relinquishing his chemical arsenal, Mr. Assad said Thursday, he will require that the United States stop arming the Syrian opposition — a demand that might seem wishful from the leader of a devastated country where civil war has left 100,000 dead, two million living as refugees and large swaths of territory beyond his control.
Mr. Assad outlined his demands on Thursday, telling a Russian TV interviewer that the arms-control proposal floated by his patron in Moscow would not be finalized until “we see the United States really wants stability in our region and stops threatening, striving to attack and also ceases arms deliveries to terrorists.”
Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a blunt response to Mr. Assad’s comments after meeting Thursday with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, saying the standard procedures for identifying and securing the weapons were too slow in Syria’s case. “There is nothing standard about this process,” Mr. Kerry said. “The words of the Syrian regime, in our judgment, are simply not enough.”
Mr. Assad, sounding relaxed and confident, hinted in his interview that the Russian proposal — which requires Syria to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention — could become a lever for endless negotiations and delays, much as Saddam Hussein delayed arms control inspectors during the 1990s. “It doesn’t mean that Syria will sign the documents, fulfill the obligations, and that’s it,” Mr. Assad said.
The state-owned Syrian newspaper Al Watan put it bluntly in a headline on Thursday: “Moscow and Damascus pull the rug out from under the feet of Obama.”
Mr. Assad’s comments on Thursday were the latest chapter in a rhetorical offensive by the Syrian president and his surrogates, who seem to feel that global perceptions of the Syrian opposition — with its strong component of Islamic radicalism — have shifted in their direction. Mr. Assad has granted interviews to American and French reporters in recent weeks, and has brought back the media adviser who had largely disappeared from public view for the past two years, a Western-educated interpreter and author named Bouthaina Shaaban.
Ms. Shaaban is a skilled interlocutor who helped Mr. Assad shape his image in the West as a reform-minded leader during the years before the uprising in 2011. Her re-emergence has “signaled a coherent determination to launch a media blitz,” said Jon Snow, a veteran anchor for Britain’s Channel 4 news.
In recent weeks, thousands of Syrians have recorded personal appeals to members of Congress and the American public urging them to oppose an airstrike, though it is not clear whether those efforts are coordinated with their government.
For the rebels, who could often use a tip or two in the area of public relations, all of this is unqualified bad news. “It is disappointing,” said Najib Ghadbian, the main Syrian opposition group’s special representative to the United States. “If the regime wants to play with this, it could take months or years. This is why we need accountability.”
A rebel brigade commander named Moaz al-Yousef, reached by telephone, spoke bitterly of Mr. Obama’s interest in the Russian proposal — and the delay of the Congressional votes — as a betrayal.
“We had hopes, it was a dream, and now it’s gone and we feel disappointed,” he said. “We should completely cut off our relationship with him — Obama has completely lost his credibility.”
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The rebels’ foreign backers were almost equally derisive. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, dismissed the Russian proposal in a speech in Istanbul on Thursday, saying that Mr. Assad was merely buying time for “new massacres.”
In his interview with Russian television, Mr. Assad hinted at another possible stumbling block in the prospective chemical weapons agreement by saying Israel should ratify it first. Israel has signed the accord but not ratified it, and is extremely unlikely to do so in light of the difficulty of verifying Syrian compliance in the midst of a civil war.
For Mr. Assad, the Russian proposal comes as a welcome reprieve. Even before the chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, his military was effectively locked in a stalemate with the opposition, despite the intervention of militia fighters from Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement, in recent months. Although Mr. Assad won a few important victories, he has still not pushed the rebels from the Damascus suburbs. That, many analysts say, was the goal of the chemical weapons attack, in a rebel-held part of the eastern suburb of Ghouta.
After the attack, Mr. Assad was clearly bracing for an American strike, with the military moving key units and the capital largely emptied out. But the Congressional debate over military intervention suggested — to the Syrians — a lack of American resolve, and the Russian proposal bolstered Mr. Assad’s confidence, even at the cost of admitting for the first time the existence of Syria’s chemical weapons program.
“Assad appears to have the impression that the Americans may want him to go, but not now,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “So you can now expect him to go on the offensive.”
Some analysts cautioned that Mr. Assad could be overplaying his hand.
“The Syrian regime swings between nihilism and triumphalism; there’s nothing in between,” said one Damascus-based analyst who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. “The chemical weapons deal — there is no deal, it’s very impractical, and if that becomes clear, it could put Obama in a stronger position vis-à-vis airstrikes.”
The analyst added that Mr. Assad’s comments on Thursday could be less a reflection of his own thinking than of what the Russian leadership wants him to say. “Syrian foreign policy has been contracted out to Russia, and Assad was speaking to Russian talking points,” the analyst said. “That is troubling in itself.”
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Chem Weapons being dispersed
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/world/meast/syria-rebel-leader-accusation/index.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/13/us-syria-crisis-weapons-report-idUSBRE98C03U20130913
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second post
Summary
The U.S.-led military strike in Syria has been delayed by Russia's diplomatic proposal, but Syria knows the danger is not over. With the threat still looming, Syria is trying to limit the scope of a potential strike by ensuring that its northern neighbor, Turkey, is sufficiently intimidated so it remains on the sidelines of the operation. The most effective way for Syria to accomplish this is through the Kurds.
To that end, Syrian President Bashar al Assad has already launched a diplomatic effort to make peace with the Kurdish leadership in both Syria and northern Iraq in order to drive a wedge between Ankara's relations with the Kurds. At the same time, he is trying to forge an alliance with Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria against Sunni rebels. There are limits to al Assad's strategy, but the move comes at an opportune time since Ankara is seeing its own peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey derail.
Analysis
Omer Ose, a Kurdish member of the Syrian Parliament, traveled this week to northern Iraq with an important message for the Kurdistan Regional Government leadership from al Assad. Ose told Kurdish media outlet Rudaw on Sept. 10 that al Assad had instructed him to communicate to the Iraqi Kurdish leaders that the Syrian government is not against them and that he would like to invite Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani to Damascus for an official state visit. Ose said that al Assad is also aware of Barzani's pledge on Aug. 10 to use all capabilities to defend Syrian Kurdish civilians against jihadist attacks in Syria and that he would allow the Kurdistan Regional Government to send its peshmerga fighters to Syria to fulfill that pledge.
Ose appears to be an ideal emissary for al Assad to reach out to the Kurds. Based out of Damascus for the past three decades, Ose has maintained close relations with the al Assad clan even through the civil war. At the same time, Ose has a strong relationship with the region's main Kurdish groups, including the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey (Ose's brother was a member of the group before he was killed in action) and the Democratic Union Party, Syria's largest and best-organized Kurdish organization. Ose has been on a mission to convince the region's main Kurdish organizations to reach a peace settlement with the al Assad government. Quiet security cooperation has already taken place between government forces and Syrian Kurds, and Democratic Union Party members are able to come and go through government checkpoints. Stratfor has received indications that most of the Kurdish parties are seriously considering the government's proposal for further cooperation, though the Democratic Union Party has so far rejected the idea of holding a news conference with Ose to publicly unveil a peace settlement with the Syrian regime.
Al Assad's strategy behind this outreach to the Kurds is based on three critical goals: deterring Turkey from military action in Syria, counterbalancing Turkey's attempts to expand influence in Syria and recruiting allies in the regime's battle against Sunni rebels.
Problems in Turkey's Strategy
Turkey is already facing growing complications on the Kurdish front. The Turkish government prided itself on pursuing a grand strategy to resolve its Kurdish separatist problem by pursuing an ambitious peace deal with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish acronym, PKK, while simultaneously strengthening economic linkages with energy-rich northern Iraq, a refuge for Kurdish fighters. This strategy was already facing a number of hurdles, but the power vacuum that developed in Syria's heavily Kurdish-populated northeast only compounded the problem for Ankara.
Under the leadership of the Democratic Union Party and in the footsteps of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, Syria's Kurdish leadership is now trying to carve out its own autonomous zone while battling jihadists for territory in the northeast. Already dealing with an active battle zone next door -- fighting that will serve as prime recruiting ground for both Kurdish militants and jihadists with potential interest in attacking Turkey -- Ankara now must also worry about Syrian Kurdish autonomy derailing its integration efforts with Kurds in Turkey.
Turkey has tried forging a relationship with Syria's Democratic Union Party with little success, as rumors abound of Turkey backing local Sunni fighters at the same time to keep Syrian Kurdish fighters occupied. Meanwhile, as Stratfor predicted, Turkey's peace track with the PKK is derailing. Alleging that the Turkish government has stalled in fulfilling its end of the first phase of the peace process (the passing of judicial reforms to free Kurdish prisoners and grant Kurdish cultural rights), the PKK has announced that it is halting the withdrawal of its fighters from Turkey. Internal Kurdish communiques are calling for popular demonstrations against the Turkish government to pressure Ankara to fulfill its pledges. Notably, the group is not calling for a resumption of attacks, which would erase the progress made thus far on the peace track, but is instead taking advantage of the protest culture that formed this summer with the Gezi park demonstrations to apply a different kind of pressure on the Turkish government.
Common Interests
Syria can try to take advantage of Turkey's multifaceted Kurdish problem by splitting Turkey and the region's main Kurdish groups through its own diplomatic outreach. Turkey is already wary of Syrian and Iranian efforts to strengthen covert ties with Kurdish militant factions using Syria as a staging ground for attacks in Turkey.
Syria's Kurdish leadership will be especially wary of publicly aligning itself with the pariah of the region, but there is a precedent for a working relationship between Damascus and Syrian Kurds. Ose, the Syrian Kurdish emissary, illustrates the patronage networks the Syrian regime relied on for decades to contain Kurdish separatism. The current, polarizing civil war conditions obviously complicate those arrangements, but the Kurds and the regime are, for now, facing a common threat from Sunni rebel fighters, including a growing number of jihadists who have made their way to Syria and are unwilling to cede control over a sizable share of Syria's energy resources to the Kurds.
At the same time, the Kurds are well aware that a strong Alawite regime in Damascus with consolidated control over the country would find common cause with Sunni Arabs to contain Kurdish separatism, as it did before the civil war. Surrounded, the Kurds often have to make deals with their adversary to make the most of their current condition. For now, the Kurdish imperative is to advance Syrian Kurdish autonomy and insulate Kurdish territory in both Syria and Iraq from a growing jihadist threat. With the country already deeply fragmented, al Assad will be willing to pay the price of recognizing Kurdish autonomy and empowering the regional Kurdish leadership in exchange for allies on the battlefield.
The region's Kurdish groups -- from Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government to the PKK in Turkey to the Democratic Union Party in Syria -- will all try to use this offer from al Assad as leverage in their own negotiations with Turkey while keeping public distance from al Assad. Turkey will not be able to prevent quieter cooperation between the Syrian regime and the Kurds, however, and that will add yet another significant complication to a Kurdish containment strategy already fraught with problems.
Read more: The Syrian Regime Reaches Out to the Kurds | Stratfor
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third post
Arming the Rebels in Syria
Syrian rebels
After months of delay, the CIA began delivering weapons to Syrian rebels over the last couple of weeks. The deliveries themselves mark an escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war, even without our own planes dropping bombs. Some may naïvely hope those arms are going to all the friendly good guys John McCain keeps telling us about, but the reality is that jihadis continue to make up a growing part of the opposition.
The Free Syrian Army is the largest rebel force, and McCain and John Kerry estimate that just 10-15% of its 100,000 fighters are al-Qaida affiliates. Senior U.S. military officials disagree, however, with one saying that Islamist groups now constitute "more than 50%" of the anti-Assad force, "and it's growing by the day."
Khaled Saleh of the Syrian Opposition Coalition says the support is welcome, "But if you compare what we are getting compared to the assistance Assad receives from Iran and Russia, we have a long battle ahead of us." Indeed, even as Vladimir Putin mocked Barack Obama and the U.S. in his bit of New York Times sophistry, and as Putin offered the phony deal on Syrian chemical weapons, he continues to aid his client, Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, to add insult to injury for Barack Obama, Assad tacked on a new condition for turning over his chemical weapons stockpiles: "When we see the United States really wants stability in our region and stops threatening, striving to attack, and also ceases arms deliveries to terrorists, then we will believe that the necessary processes can be finalized," he told Russian state television. On the other hand, Obama threatens to strike if Assad doesn't turn over his weapons.
This sad saga just keeps getting worse for our feckless commander in chief.
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The rebels at work: http://benswann.com/al-qaeda-backed-syrian-rebels-decapitate-young-boy-warning-graphic/
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYsB8cL8_UU&noredirect=1
but Glenn Beck demurs , , ,
http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/09/13/glenn-christiane-amanpour-is-biggest-fraud-i-have-ever-seen/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-09-13_256855&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_256855_256867
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324755104579071330713553794.html?mod=trending_now_3
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What did Murdock call Amanpour - the "war whore"?
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This piece makes a number of cogent points, but I diverge in some important respects. As the piece notes "a happy outcome , , , requires a finely calibrated strategy from the beginning. The Bush administration did not have one in Iraq, evinced by the absence of post-invasion planning." I agree (See Thomas Ricks's "Fiasco" for a serious history of what went wrong-- and it is from this that the problems in Iraq arose. Had Bush-Rumbo handled things with competence (and had they not had to fight destructive, unpatriotic, and sometimes treasonous headwinds from major players in the Congress and the pravdas) then the other factors discussed here by Kaplan would not have kicked in.
How Syria Is Like Iraq
Global Affairs
Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - 04:00 Print Text Size
Global Affairs with Robert D. Kaplan
Stratfor
By Robert D. Kaplan
I supported the war in Iraq. It was an agonizing mistake. I made the mistake because I did something a serious foreign policy thinker should never do: I allowed my emotions to affect my thinking. My emotions were stirred by several visits to Iraq I had made as a reporter in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with the machinal, totalitarian intensity employed by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania. Iraq under Saddam was like a vast prison yard lit by high wattage lamps, in which everyone was watched all the time, and everyone lived in absolute fear. I had my American passport taken away from me by Saddam's secret police for ten days in 1986 while I was reporting on the Kurds in the north of the country. I had tasted the fear with which Iraqis themselves lived.
I thus assumed for years thereafter that nothing could be worse than Saddam's rule. Following 9/11, I did not want to forcibly spread democracy in the Arab world like others did; nor did I want to topple dictators per se. I wanted only one dictator gone -- Saddam -- because he was so much worse than a mere dictator. He was a tyrant straight out of Mesopotamian antiquity.
I was wrong.
I was wrong because of the following reasons:
I did not adequately consider that even in the case of Iraq, things could be worse. Though, in 1994, I had written extensively and in depth about the dangers of anarchy in the Third World, I did not fully consider how dangerously close to anarchy Iraq actually was, and that Saddam was the Hobbesian nemesis keeping it at bay. Saddam was cruel beyond imagining because the ethnic and sectarian differences in Iraqi society were themselves cruel and bloodthirsty beyond imagining.
I was insufficiently cold-blooded in my thinking. I did not fully consider whether it was in the American interest to remove this tyrant. After all, President Ronald Reagan had found Saddam useful in trying to contain neighboring Iran. Perhaps Saddam might still be useful in containing al Qaeda? That is how I should have been thinking.
I was thinking only two steps ahead, not the five or six steps ahead required of serious analysis when the question concerns going to war. I wanted to remove Saddam (step one) and replace him with another general (step two). As I said, I had serious misgivings, in print, back then about democracy in the Arab world. But I should have been thinking even more about the consequences of such a newly empowered general not gaining control of the Kurds in the north, or of the Shia in the south. I should have been thinking more of how Iran would intervene on the ground with its intelligence services. I should have been thinking more about how once Saddam were toppled, simply replacing him might be a very complex affair. I should have been overwhelmed by the complexities of a post-Saddam Iraq. I wasn't sufficiently.
I did not consider the appetite for war -- or lack thereof -- of the American public. The American public was in a patriotic frenzy following 9/11. I should have realized that such a frenzy simply could not last. I should have realized that there would be a time limit regarding how long public support could be sustained for having boots-on-the-ground in large numbers in the Middle East. World War I for the United States had lasted less than 20 months. World War II for the United States lasted little more than three-and-a-half years. Americans tired of the Korean War in about that same time-frame, and revolted against the Vietnam War when it went on longer. The fact that I was emotionally involved in toppling Saddam did not mean the public would be so.
Finally, I did not consider the effect of a long-term commitment in Iraq (and Afghanistan) on other regional theaters. The top officials in any administration -- the president, secretary of state, and so on -- have only a limited amount of hours in a day, even if they work 70-hour weeks. And if they are spending most of those hours dealing with the Middle East, America's influence in the Pacific, Latin America, and elsewhere must suffer. America, therefore, must be light and lethal, rarely getting bogged down anywhere: in fact, I wrote and published exactly this -- but in mid-2003, after the invasion of Iraq had already commenced. I just did not foresee American forces getting bogged down as they did. That was a failure of critical thinking. For the truth is, nobody seeks a quagmire: a quagmire only occurs when people do not adequately consider in advance everything that might go wrong.
On its face, Syria resembles Iraq in much of the above. The supporters of robust military intervention are not sufficiently considering how things could become even worse after the demise of dictator Bashar al Assad, with full-scale anarchy perhaps in the offing; how Assad might still serve a cold-blooded purpose by containing al Qaeda in the Levant; how four or five steps ahead the United States might find itself owning or partially owning the situation on the ground in an anarchic Syria; how the American public's appetite for military intervention in Syria might be less than they think; and how a long-term commitment to Syria might impede American influence in other regional theaters. The Obama administration says it does not want a quagmire and will avoid one; but that was the intention of the younger Bush administration, too.
Of course, each war or intervention is different in a thousand ways than any other. So while I have listed some similarities in the ways we can think about these wars, Syria will unfold in its own unique manner. For example, it is entirely possible that the Obama administration will not get bogged down, and that its intervention, if it still ever comes to that, will pivotally affect the situation for the better by serving as a deus ex machina for a negotiated cease-fire of sorts. For the very threatened use of power can serve as its own dynamic, revealing, in this case, the limitations of Russia and Iran which were obscured as long as America did relatively little to affect the situation.
The problem, however, is that such a happy outcome in Syria usually requires a finely calibrated strategy from the beginning. The Bush administration did not have one in Iraq, evinced by the absence of post-invasion planning. And, at least as of this writing, the Obama administration seems to lack one as well. Instead, it appeared until recently to be backing into a military action that it itself only half-heartedly believes in. That, more than any of the factors I have mentioned above, is what ultimately gives me pause.
Read more: How Syria Is Like Iraq | Stratfor
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second post
Inside White House, a Head-Spinning Reversal on Chemical Weapons
How the U.S. Stumbled Into an International Crisis and Then Stumbled Out of It
By ADAM ENTOUS, JANET HOOK and CAROL E. LEE
When President Barack Obama decided he wanted congressional approval to strike Syria, he received swift—and negative—responses from his staff. National Security Adviser Susan Rice warned he risked undermining his powers as commander in chief. Senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer pegged the chances of Congress balking at 40%. His defense secretary also raised concerns.
Mr. Obama took the gamble anyway and set aside the impending strikes to try to build domestic and international support for such action.
He found little of either. Congress's top leaders weren't informed of the switch until just an hour or so before Mr. Obama's Rose Garden announcement and weren't asked whether lawmakers would support it. When the president's chief of staff, Denis McDonough, announced the decision on a conference call with congressional committee leaders, some were so taken aback they seemed at first to misunderstand it.
Outside the U.S., Arab leaders privately urged the U.S. to bomb, but few backed Mr. Obama publicly. The United Kingdom pulled the plug on a joint operation two days after indicating to the White House it had the votes to proceed. Compounding the confusion, the same day a potential breakthrough emerged via a diplomatic opening provided by Russia, the administration sent a memo to lawmakers highlighting why Russia shouldn't be trusted on Syria.
This account of an extraordinary 24 days in international diplomacy, capped by a deal this past weekend to dismantle Syria's chemical-weapons stockpile, is based on more than two dozen interviews with senior White House, State Department, Pentagon and congressional officials and many of their counterparts in Europe and the Middle East. The events shed light on what could prove a pivotal moment for America's role in the world.
Through mixed messages, miscalculations and an 11th-hour break, the U.S. stumbled into an international crisis and then stumbled out of it. A president who made a goal of reducing the U.S.'s role as global cop lurched from the brink of launching strikes to seeking congressional approval to embracing a deal with his biggest international adversary on Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Obama saw the unintended outcome as better than the alternative: limited strikes that risked pulling the U.S. into a new conflict. It forestalled what could have been a crippling congressional defeat and put the onus on Russia to take responsibility for seeing the deal through. U.S. officials say the deal could diminish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical stockpile more effectively than a strike, though it leaves Mr. Assad and his conventional arsenal in place.
"I'm not interested in style points," Mr. Obama told his senior staff in a closed-door meeting Friday, according to a participant. "I'm interested in results."
Not everyone is pleased. Mr. Obama infuriated allies who lined up against Mr. Assad and his regional backers Iran and Hezbollah. French officials, who were more aggressive than the U.S. in urging a strike, feel they have been left out on a limb. And Russia has been reestablished as a significant player on the world stage, potentially at the expense of the U.S.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) joined a chorus of Republican lawmakers critiquing the deal, calling it a "Russian plan for Russian interests" that leaves Mr. Assad in power. "Putin is playing chess, and we're playing tick-tack-toe," he told CNN.
Mr. Obama was first briefed on the chemical-weapons attack on the morning of Aug. 21. As intelligence agencies began tallying the dead and reviewing intercepted communications that they say made clear Mr. Assad's forces were to blame, White House officials knew the incident was a game changer. Later, the U.S. would say the attack killed more than 1,400.
Key U.S. allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia, started applying pressure. Saudi Arabia's influential ambassador to the U.S., Adel al-Jubeir, and other diplomats raced back to Washington from their August vacations to advocate strikes, according to officials and diplomats.
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Mr. Obama initially appeared to be receptive to arguments for acting forcefully. Meeting on Aug. 24 with his national security advisers, he made clear he leaned toward striking.
"When I raised the issue of chemical weapons last summer, this is what I was talking about," Mr. Obama said, referring to his "red line" declaration in August 2012. The Navy positioned five destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, each armed with about 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) was in a car en route to a GOP fundraiser in Jackson Hole, Wyo., when he received his first high-level White House contact. His staff had earlier put up a blog post chiding the White House for not consulting Congress. A few hours later, White House Chief of Staff McDonough called to explain the options. No mention was made of asking Congress to vote.
The next day, Mr. Obama spoke to British Prime Minister David Cameron. Both leaders made clear they were ready to strike and agreed on an approach designed to deter Mr. Assad from using chemical weapons again, not bring down the regime. "They were ready to go," said an official briefed on the call.
Mr. Cameron rushed politicians back from vacations. While parliamentary approval wasn't legally required, he was conscious of the damage invading Iraq had done to one of his predecessors, Tony Blair. The U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff and British forces already had hammered out details of a "combined contingency operation," a senior U.S. official said.
Late in the day before the parliamentary vote, Mr. Cameron was forced to change tack. Under pressure from politicians, he split the process in two: an initial vote on the principal of intervention, then a second on whether the U.K. should become directly involved.
At that point, Mr. Obama's advisers concluded the U.K. would end up bowing out.
On the night of Wednesday, Aug. 28, Mr. Obama called House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to talk through the options. Ms. Pelosi later told colleagues she didn't ask Mr. Obama to put the question to a vote in Congress.
On Thursday, Aug. 29, the U.K. Parliament shot down Mr. Cameron, a major embarrassment to the British leader that raised pressure on the U.S. to seek other support. Opposition came from not only Labour but from Mr. Cameron's own Conservative Party. Mr. Cameron threw in the towel, saying the British Parliament had spoken and the government would "act accordingly."
The vote shocked Mr. Putin, who later told Russian state TV he thought legislatures in the West voted in lock-step, "just like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union." Moscow's alarm and frustration was growing as the move toward military action advanced, bypassing the U.N. Security Council where Moscow had veto power.
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The U.K. parliamentary vote happened as National Security Adviser Rice, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel were beginning a conference call with congressional leaders. During the call, Mr. Hagel, who was traveling in Asia, raised the question of U.S. credibility. He said South Korea was concerned U.S. inaction would make North Korea think it could get away with using chemical and biological weapons.
On Friday, Aug. 30, signs of congressional unease were mounting. Some 186 Democrats and Republicans signed letters asking the president to seek congressional authorization.
That day, Mr. Kerry made an impassioned speech defending the president's decision to consult with Congress as the right way to approach "a decision of when and how and if to use military force."
Five Navy destroyers were in the eastern Mediterranean, four poised to launch scores of Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria, according to military officials. Officers said they expected launch orders from the president at between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday. To make sure they were ready to answer reporters' questions, Pentagon officials conducted a mock news conference.
Around 5 p.m., Mr. Obama went on a 45-minute walk with Chief of Staff McDonough. Mr. Obama summoned his top advisers to meet in the Oval Office at around 7 p.m.
"I have a big idea I want to run by you guys," Mr. Obama started. He asked for opinions on seeking congressional authorization. Everyone was surprised, except Mr. McDonough, a consistent voice of caution on getting entangled in Syria.
Ms. Rice expressed reservations. From a national-security perspective, she said, it was important the president maintain his authority to take action, according to a senior administration official. Mr. Pfeiffer, the senior adviser, gave his assessment of the political odds and the consequences of failure.
Mr. Obama called Mr. Hagel, who, like Ms. Rice, raised concerns. He thought "the administration's actions and words need to avoid the perception of swinging from vine to vine," according to a senior administration official.
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, sent a draft of an announcement to the president at 1 a.m. Saturday, and it was reworked until shortly before being popped into the teleprompter. Mr. Obama also worked the phones to notify congressional leaders—but not to seek their advice.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) was preparing a turkey sandwich in his Louisville, Ky., home when he took the call. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was called in Nevada. Mrs. Pelosi was in San Francisco.
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Mr. Boehner was in a hotel in Steamboat Springs, Colo., when the president called. According to an aide, they discussed the logistics of a House vote. Mr. Boehner told Mr. Obama it would be hard to call lawmakers back to Washington quickly, and that he would need time to sell it.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) was on a treadmill in a Los Angeles gym and watched the news on Fox television. When a friend asked what was going on, Mr. Waxman replied, "He's going to Congress, and I'm sweating."
Mr. Obama also alerted French President François Hollande, who had been waiting for Washington to launch strikes. Mr. Obama now told his French counterpart he needed to build support in Washington, from Congress, according to a senior French official.
It swiftly became clear the White House faced a fight. On Sunday, Sept. 1, members of both parties were questioning the White House proposal.
That day, the administration convened its first of several classified briefings for lawmakers. Dozens of House members and senators showed up in the middle of a congressional recess and on Labor Day weekend.
That night, the president called one of his closest friends in Congress, Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) at home in Springfield, Ill., and talked to him for more than a half-hour. Like many liberal Democrats, Mr. Durbin was torn. The situation had echoes of the war in Iraq, which he had opposed. He hung up still unsure what he would do. (He ended up approving the strikes in a Senate committee vote.)
In an effort to sway House Democrats, the administration held a conference call briefing the House Democratic Caucus. One Democrat on the call was openly critical: Rep. Rick Nolan, a freshman from Minnesota who said an isolated strike could escalate.
"Have we forgotten about the lessons of Southeast Asia and a president who said we need to have our boys fight there," Mr. Nolan said, according to an official familiar with the exchange.
Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, shot back: "No, I haven't forgotten that. I know it pretty well. And I fought against that war. That's not what anyone's talking about."
After the briefing, Mr. Nolan said he was more convinced that military strikes were a bad idea.
After a Sept. 3 meeting Mr. Boehner, Ms. Pelosi and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) gave strong statements of support for the administration's resolution. But both Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Boehner said they weren't going to "whip" the vote—Congress-speak for making the vote a test of party loyalty.
Mr. Obama hoped to use the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg to shape international consensus for a military assault. He left the conference with half the members unconvinced.
While Saudi Arabia and Turkey voiced support for the U.S. position, other Arab allies were silent, reinforcing Mr. Obama's worries about going it alone. Diplomats from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates told lawmakers they would like to help win votes in the House. But they made clear that they weren't prepared to endorse the idea publicly because they feared for their security if the U.S. strikes sparked a backlash or reprisals.
By the time Mr. Obama got back to Washington, his aides thought the resolution could make it through the Senate, but felt the House was lost.
The way out of the impasse came by accident during a news conference in London on Sept. 9. Secretary of State Kerry, in response to a question, ad libbed that Syria could avert a U.S. attack if it gave up its chemical weapons.
Minutes later, his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, called him. "I'd like to talk to you about your initiative," Mr. Lavrov said from Moscow, where he was hosting a delegation of Syrian diplomats.
"I don't know what you're talking about," the American diplomat jokingly replied.
Even though both sides had previously discussed such an idea, State Department and White House officials were skeptical. How would inspectors do their work in the middle of a civil war? Also, working with the Russians seemed implausible. The same day Mr. Kerry made his fateful remark, the State Department sent Congress a memo detailing: "Russian Obstruction of Actions on Syria."
Things changed quickly once the White House realized Mr. Kerry's inadvertent remark may have provided a way around the political impasse.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a supporter of the Syrian strikes, was lunching in the Senate Dining Room with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., who persuaded her the Russians were sincere. Other lawmakers also saw hope for a new diplomatic initiative—and for avoiding a vote they were dreading.
While prepping for a series of TV interviews, Mr. Obama told his senior aides of the proposal and said, "Let's embrace this and test it."
U.S. and French diplomats said there was an early push by the allies to seek a binding U.N. Security Council resolution that could authorize the use of force if Syria didn't meet its obligations. French diplomats drafted a resolution with muscular language.
Russia rejected the language outright and U.S. diplomats worked behind the scenes to pull France into line with a compromise that Moscow could accept.
Hours after Messrs. Kerry and Lavrov's London phone call, the American and Russian bureaucracies mobilized, say U.S. and Russia officials involved in the process.
Mr. Obama's speech to the nation on Sept. 10, initially intended to sell lawmakers on supporting strikes, instead called for postponing action in Congress to explore the Russian proposal.
It infuriated Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), one of the few vocal GOP supporters of the Syria strikes, for not making the case about the risk to U.S. credibility. He snapped at Mr. McDonough in an email: "You guys are really hard to help, OK?"
On Sept. 11, Mr. Kerry spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he believed Russia wasn't bluffing and that a deal was possible, according to American and Middle Eastern officials briefed on the exchange. Israel shared U.S. concerns that strikes could strengthen rebels linked with al Qaeda and allow them to seize Mr. Assad's weapons.
Rebel leaders based in Turkey and Jordan were angry about the unfolding diplomacy, but were told by U.S. and European diplomats not to publicly reject the plan. But several spoke out. "To hell with America," said Brig. Gen. Adnan Selou, a Syrian defector who used to head a chemical-warfare program in Syria and now is based in Turkey. "We don't recognize this plan."
Messrs. Kerry and Lavrov arrived in Geneva Thursday afternoon without even a broad outline of a plan. Both sides agreed on the extent of Mr. Assad's stockpiles and began discussing next steps.
Mr. Lavrov and his deputy surprised the Americans by sticking to their position that Syrian rebel forces, rather than Mr. Assad, were behind the chemical-weapons attack, and spinning conspiracies about how Saudi Arabia and other Arab states played a role in overseeing it.
In a blow to the French, Messrs. Lavrov and Kerry hashed out a framework agreement omitting any mention of who was to blame for the chemical attacks. The agreement also made military intervention an increasingly remote possibility.
Mr. Putin celebrated with an op-ed in the New York Times, lecturing Americans on the failings of their government's policies.
A senior administration official said Mr. Obama felt—even more so after Mr. Putin's op-ed—that "if Putin wants to put his credibility on the line in supporting this proposal," then the White House would make sure he owns it.
Having given up on prospects of a U.N. Security Council resolution that threatened force for noncompliance, the U.S. told the Russians it reserved the right to take military action if Mr. Assad doesn't meet the agreement's terms.
On Sunday, Mr. Assad's warplanes again bombed the Damascus suburbs after a short-lived lull in air attacks after Aug. 21.
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Shocking, yes. Who could have seen that coming? I suppose anyone alive and awake the last time we fought this battle.
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The problem IS a terrible one and in fairness we need to note that many of the criticisms leveled at Baraq are as quite inconsistent with each other as Baraq has been with himself.
What do WE here advocate?
Ignore the chem attacks? What implications flow from this?
Do something? What specifically? Bomb it? Seize the chems?
WHAT EXACTLY DO WE ADVOCATE?
I will go first:
1)
a) Achieve a status of forces agreement with Iraq upon coming into office. Whoops! Baraq blew that one.
b) Have done nothing in Libya or go to the Congress or do what we did but go in to snatch Kaddafy's weapons
c) have defended our folks in Benghazi, have avenged our folks in Benghazi
d) Support the military, or at least not opposed in it Egypt in responding to the people's will in overthrowing the MB.
e) spoken up for religious tolerance e.g.the Christians in Iraq, Egypt, Syria
f) something coherent in Afpakia
g) not neuter our military's budget
h) not demonstrated weakness for five years
i) genuine ongoing conversation with Congress over the years
j) not having made regime change a policy or if it were, then having acted upon it by supporting the rebels before AQ got involved
k)not have made a red line without thought of being called on it
2) OK so much for hindsight.
WHAT SHOULD BARAQ HAVE DONE WHEN HIS RED LINE WAS CROSSED?
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http://www.barenakedislam.com/2013/09/14/syria-obama-backed-fsa-rebels-storm-chrisitan-holy-sites-warning-christians-to-convert-or-be-beheaded
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I would note that many of us were/are quite content with the idea of letting AQ and Assad kill each other.
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By DOUGLAS J. FEITH
Bashar Assad may have pulled off the most successful use of chemical weapons in history. For the two years leading up to the Aug. 21 Damascus sarin gas attack, President Obama was saying that the Syrian dictator "must go." No longer. In one month, Assad has risen from outlaw butcher to partner in disarmament.
America's Syria policy today focuses not on mass murder, or on the metastasizing humanitarian and refugee crisis, or on combating the interests of Iran and its Hezbollah proxies in keeping Assad in power. Rather, with Russian President Vladimir Putin's help, U.S. policy under President Obama is concentrating on chemical-weapons disarmament.
Secretary of State John Kerry labors to enlist Assad in an arms-control project even while alleging that the dictator has used nerve gas in violation of Syria's obligations under the 1925 Geneva Protocol. U.S. policy is not to oust the Assad regime or even to encourage the Syrian people to do so. President Obama has now created a U.S. interest in preserving Assad in power.
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Pigeons lie on the ground after dying from what activists say is the use of chemical weapons.
This means Assad must stay, not go, for he is needed to negotiate and implement an arrangement to destroy Syria's chemical weapons. The arrangement, if successfully negotiated, will take years to implement. Arms control evidently means never having to say you're sorry.
Meanwhile, the Syrian rebels are exasperated and mistrustful, having seen Washington dangle the prospect of U.S. military strikes, only to back away. The Iranians are drawing comforting lessons about the lengths that the Obama administration will go to avoid military action in the Middle East. The Russians have been promoted from reprehensible accomplices in Assad's evil to indispensable peace negotiators—while they remain accomplices to that evil.
What lesson will dictators around the world derive from all this? They will see that there is enormous utility in creating a chemical-weapons arsenal, and even in using such weapons. Sarin gas, VX, anthrax and the like can be valuable for intimidating one's enemies, foreign and domestic, and for killing them. They can then be traded away at a very high price under the right circumstances. They can serve as a lifesaver for a dictator on the skids.
Clever dictators will realize that they can barter their chemical-weapons arsenals to buy time to crush an insurrection and then rebuild the arsenal after the population has been pacified.
This is what comes of focusing on what Mr. Obama legalistically calls the "international norms" barring chemical weapons use. By choosing not to tackle the difficult strategic and humanitarian challenges posed by the Syrian civil war, the president is now rewarding the very offenses that he said he wanted to punish. In the name of arms control, he is incentivizing the proliferation of chemical weapons. In the name of international law, he is undermining respect for treaties. In the name of U.S. interests, he is emboldening America's enemies.
Bashar Assad must be blessing the sarin gas that killed all those men, women and children on Aug. 21. If he did order that attack, it was a master stroke. The victims of chemical weapons shake in agony. Assad, Vladimir Putin and Iran's Ali Khamanei shake with laughter.
Mr. Feith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, served 2001-05 as U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324807704579082924138453120.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303796404579096782311389904.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
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Assad's U.N. Partners
Syria's chemical weapons declaration is far from complete..
After over two years of doing nothing to stop Syria's civil war, the U.N. Security Council has finally agreed on a plan for Bashar Assad to surrender his chemical weapons. The U.S. and its allies as well as Assad's patrons in Russia hailed a diplomatic breakthrough at Turtle Bay, but this resolution still does nothing to hasten the conflict's end.
The resolution adopted on Friday evening obliges the regime in Damascus to fully declare its arsenal of chemical weapons and to dismantle them by the middle of next year. It commits Syria not to share its mustard and sarin gas stocks and other munitions with friends at Hezbollah and elsewhere.
Related Video
Assistant books editor Sohrab Ahmari on the U.N. resolution to eliminate Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons. Photo: Associated Press
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If you choose to believe in the power of arms control over rogue actors, this is progress. But for realists the early signs aren't good. Last weekend Syria submitted its declaration of its chemical weapons and delivery systems. The declaration hasn't been made public but our sources say it isn't complete. The Syrians disclosed 32 sites, while U.S. intelligence believes there are about 50.
Some of the munitions are mobile, and while the Syrians did admit to eight such mobile sites, the Syrians hid them when President Obama threatened to bomb in response to the August 21 sarin gas attack outside Damascus. The U.S. and Israel have a good idea of what the Syrians have and may still be hiding. The trick will be to compel Assad's cooperation.
The resolution's most notable weakness is its lack of teeth. There's not a word about holding anyone in Syria accountable for last month's or the 13 or so other chemical attacks. As for compliance with the disarmament clauses, Assad can breathe easy.
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A photo made available by the Syrian Arab News Agency showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in an interview with the Chinese television station CCTV, in Damascus on Monday.
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Under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, the Security Council can approve punitive measures such as sanctions or air strikes if Syria doesn't comply. Except that's not in this resolution. The British ambassador at Turtle Bay called it "binding and enforceable," and America's ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power warned of "consequences for non-compliance."
But read the fine print. Assad can play cat and mouse with inspectors or even launch another chemical attack. The only U.N. recourse is to call another Security Council meeting. Then we're back where we started.
Russia has vetoed three resolutions intended to sanction Assad since 2011, and the Obama Administration was reluctant to act without U.N. approval even before this agreement. Assad knows the threshold for American intervention is even higher after President Obama asked Congress for permission to strike Syria but then grabbed Russia's diplomatic lifeline rather than act on his own.
The U.N. deal caps a successful few weeks for the Syrian dictator. He faced down the world's last superpower. His regime may or may not have to give up its chemical weapons, but he's bought himself time to continue to use Iranian arms and Hezbollah fighters to defeat the opposition. With U.S. Tomahawks taken off standby, Syria's fighter jets and helicopters have been redeployed against the rebels. Conventional weapons have killed the vast majority of the more than 100,000 dead in Syria.
Administration defenders say this chemical deal may be a diplomatic bridge to a larger Syrian peace. A negotiated peace is desirable, but it's hard to see how sparing Assad from the fear of a Western attack will make him any more likely to negotiate. He and his Iranian patrons think they can win.
As for the Syrian opposition, they see all of this as an Assad victory and a Western betrayal. Earlier this week, 13 rebel groups broke with the Turkish-based, moderate Syrian Supreme Military Council and are expected to align with the Islamist fighters affiliated with al Qaeda. Far from leading to a larger peace, the chemical weapons diplomacy seems to have radicalized both sides.
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IMHO the following piece by a man with genuiine background in the region makes many valid and uncomfortable points, even as there are substantial flaws in what it proposes.
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Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Next Breeding Ground for Global Jihad
Washington may have already helped create the deadliest Islamic movement since the Taliban merged with al Qaeda.
By
REUEL MARC GERECHT
When President Obama declared that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad must "step aside" two years ago, many believed that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. intervened on behalf of the rebels battling the regime. Now that seems increasingly out of the question. The growing power of hard-core Islamic radicals among the rebels has made the White House, and many in Congress, look upon the Syrian opposition with little enthusiasm. Instead, Washington focuses on the charade of trying to relieve Assad of his chemical weapons, as if that will have any effect on the civil war.
America ignores the rebels at its peril. Yet on the left and right, anti-interventionists argue against American airstrikes, or any serious military aid, because such assistance would abet al Qaeda-linked jihadists. Perhaps what these anti-interventionists don't realize is that the president and Congress may have already done their part to create the most deadly Islamic movement since the Taliban merged with al Qaeda in the 1990s.
Social order in the Muslim world depends, as it so often does elsewhere, on older men keeping younger men in check. In Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban's medieval mores—a zealously crude form of village Pashtun ethics—gained the high ground because older men and their moderating social structures had been obliterated over three decades by Afghan communists, Soviets and civil war.
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A Sunni Muslim imam from the Liwa al-Tawhid rebel group talks to his comrades in Aleppo in September.
Urban culture—the core of Islamic civilization—was wiped out. The elites of the country's primary ethnic groups, who had been based in the bustling, literate, Persian-speaking culture of Kabul, went into exile or became brutal warriors. Heartless men bred by battle embraced Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born Sunni militant. Bin Laden's vision of jihad against the United States easily melded into the Taliban's localized jihad against Ahmad Shah Masoud, the Sunni Tajik commander who formed the Northern Alliance and kept the Taliban from conquering all of Afghanistan.
To be sure, Syrian Sunni culture is vastly more cosmopolitan and urbanized than Afghan Sunni culture. Syria is where Arab Bedouins first became polished men of arts and letters and transformed Byzantine architecture into a Muslim motif that defined Islamic elegance for centuries. But the shocking satellite photos of a constantly bombarded Aleppo, the center of Sunni Syria since the 10th century, ought to warn us how quickly society can be transformed—no matter how sophisticated.
Though Arab Syrian nationalism is more solid now than when it was born 90 years ago, it isn't nearly as deep as Syrians' Muslim identity. And in times of tumult in the Middle East, Islam—and the ancient divide between Sunnis and Shiites—comes to the fore. Shatter Syria into fragments, and radical Islamists who appeal to a higher calling, just as they did in Afghanistan, are guaranteed to attract young men who yearn for a mission beyond their destroyed towns and villages. There may be as many as 1,000 Sunni rebel groups scattered across Syria, stocked with such fighters.
The Taliban played on tribal sentiments while always appealing to a post-tribal, Muslim conception of state. The Islamist fighters in Syria appear to be following the Taliban's playbook. Loyalty among these men isn't ultimately based on family, tribe, town or even country, but on the supremely fraternal act of holy war.
We don't know what the recuperative power is for Sunni Syrian society. We do know that whatever the power is now, it will be much reduced in six months. If Assad's manpower reserves can hold out for another year and a half or two years, Syrian Sunni society could be beyond help.
In such a Hobbesian world, radical Sunni groups that promise "stability"—of security, home and private property—could win over a popular base that would be very difficult to dislodge. This was how the Taliban were initially welcomed into Pashtun towns that were shellshocked by war.
Right now, the three seriously radical, armed outfits in Syria—Jabhat al-Nusra, the Ahrar al-Sham, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—likely have no more than 15,000 fighters among them, according to a study of the Syrian opposition by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That's less than 15% of the opposition's forces—too small a number to consolidate power and rule a post-Assad Syria.
That may be the only good news out of Syria: It's not too late for the U.S. to influence the war in favor of the rebels who are not bent on establishing an Islamist state.
Right now, Washington seems paralyzed by fear of U.S. weaponry getting into jihadist hands, which is why it has held off on doing more than having the CIA train rebels in Jordan. To make a real difference, the CIA will have to get involved inside Syria, but it won't take a lot of men to monitor supply lines and figure out who is using U.S. weaponry.
If the U.S. is able to save Syrian Sunni society from the cancer that Assad has created, Western air power will be required to neutralize the regime's huge advantage in artillery and chemical weapons, which Assad will surely keep in reserve, despite any pledges he makes to the United Nations. The weapons provided through CIA covert action will unlikely be sufficient to knock out the regime's huge inventory of Soviet and Russian heavy weaponry.
But if the U.S. continues to do nothing other than entertain the chemical-weapons disarmament theater orchestrated by Russia, the West will surely rue America's passivity. Hard-core holy warriors won't leave Americans alone because the U.S. has declined to fight. That's the painful lesson of the 1990s. Contrary to what the president has suggested, the U.S. doesn't get to declare the battle against Islamic radicalism over.
One thing is certain: The anti-American Sunni Islamic militancy in Syria is now hotter and more magnetic than the latent jihadism that came to power with Mullah Omar and the Taliban in 1996. In the early 1990s, when the Taliban's ideology was gestating in Pakistani religious schools and the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, hardly a soul at CIA headquarters paid any attention to the region. It was far away, the Soviets were gone, and Americans, it was said, were "fatigued" from their Cold War exertions.
Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA operative, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is the author of "The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East" (Hoover, 2011).
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http://www.barenakedislam.com/2013/10/12/syria-obama-backed-jihadist-rebels-doing-what-they-do-best-beheading-warning-very-graphic-images/
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http://www.barenakedislam.com/2013/10/12/syria-obama-backed-jihadist-rebels-doing-what-they-do-best-beheading-warning-very-graphic-images/
Is Andrew going to go there to teach them that jihad means fuzzy bunnies?
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WSJ:
Watchdog: Syria Destroys Chemical-Arms Equipment
Organization Had Set Nov. 1 Deadline
By Naftali Bendavid
Updated Oct. 31, 2013 5:51 a.m. ET
Syria has completed the destruction of all its chemical weapons production equipment, an international disarmament agency announced Thursday, bringing an end to the first phase of a high-profile program to eliminate the country's chemical weapons.
Syria was tasked, under a U.S.-Russia agreement, with dismantling all equipment used for the production, mixing and filling of chemical arms by Nov. 1. The next, more elaborate stage involves destroying the chemical stockpile itself—an estimated 1,000 tons of chemicals and components—in the first half of 2014.
"The Joint Mission is now satisfied that it has verified—and seen destroyed—all of Syria's declared critical production and mixing/filling equipment," the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said, referring to its joint mission with the United Nations. "Given the progress made in the joint OPCW-U.N. mission in meeting the requirements of the first phase of activities, no further inspection activities are currently planned."
The OPCW had said Monday that it could not reach two of Syria's 23 chemical weapons sites because they were in contested areas not under the government's control. On Thursday, officials said they were satisfied that those sites were no longer in use.
"Syria declared those sites as abandoned and that the chemical weapons program items they contained were moved to other declared sites, which were inspected," OPCW said.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/04/syria-journey-into-nightmare-war
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Much cynicism was expressed here over the possibility of the gas actually getting destroyed, but at the moment it looks like quite a lot of it (most? all?) is about to be destroyed.
Members of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) met at The Hague on Friday to discuss a plan to destroy Syrian chemical munitions. Syria and the OPCW agreed that the deadly nerve agents should be destroyed outside Syria, and on Thursday the United States requested that Albania host the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile in its domestic facilities. The 41-member Executive Council of the OPCW adjourned its deliberations while the Albanian government considers the plan, which will rid of 1,300 tons of sarin and other nerve agents confiscated from Syrian weapons facilities. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama is expected to announce whether his government will agree to the U.S. request later on Friday, but some Albanian lawmakers have raised objections over the plan's environmental and political risks. On Thursday, hundreds of Albanian citizens protested outside the parliament chanting "no to chemical weapons." Last week, international inspectors confirmed that they secured 22 of 23 chemical weapons sites inside Syria and that the Syrian government met the November 1 deadline to eliminate or "render inoperable" all chemical weapons facilities.
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second post
People with Kurdish flags sit in the back of a truck as they celebrate what they said was the liberation of villages from Islamist rebels near the city of Ras al-Ain in the province of Hasakah, Syria on Nov. 6. Reuters
NUSAYBIN, Turkey—When Hussein Cemo fled with his family to this dusty border town from Syria's ethnic Kurd-dominated northeast to escape attacks from radical Islamist militia, he feared being marooned for years.
Three months later, after a series of battlefield victories by Kurdish militia and a strengthening of Kurdish political power across Syria's northeast, the 44-year old mechanic is hoping to soon take his family home.
"We fled because our town was attacked by Islamists, but now Kurdish fighters are taking territory rapidly and setting up new administrations," said Mr. Cemo, in the living room of a three-bedroom apartment housing 15 of his extended family, all Kurds. "God willing, the area will soon be totally safe, and we will be able to return home," he said.
Across Syria's oil-rich northeast, the country's long-repressed Kurdish community is capturing territory and taking increasingly bold steps toward autonomy.
On Tuesday, Syria's leading Kurdish party, the People's Democratic Union, or PYD, announced it would form an interim administration to govern northeastern Syria. It is the clearest signal yet that Syrian Kurds view the civil war as an opportunity to carve out a self-governing enclave—similar to their ethnic kin in neighboring Iraq.
The move comes after Kurdish militia fighters seized more than 20 villages and strategic towns across the region, capitalizing on infighting among radical Islamist groups, including those affiliated with al Qaeda.
Analysts said Kurdish moves toward self-rule underline how war-torn Syria is balkanizing along ethnic lines in ways that will be difficult to reverse.
The moves could also have seismic consequences beyond Syria's borders, where neighboring states, such as Turkey and Iran, have long suppressed nationalist sentiments among their own sizable Kurdish populations.
"Kurds are becoming considerably more powerful and foreign governments have been surprised by how rapidly their strength has grown. But the question is now whether they have the capability to build institutions without resources or major income," said Henri J. Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.
More than 30 million Kurds live across an area that includes parts of Turkey, Iraq and Iran as well as Syria. Kurds speak multiple dialects and are represented by a plethora of often opposing political parties and organizations. Yet they have also managed to maintain a separate identity, partly because of the lines Arabs, Turks and Iranians have drawn to separate themselves from Kurdish communities.
Driving the military gains is the PYD's rapidly expanding militia—The People's Defense Units, or YPG—which claims to have 45,000 armed members, who also do police work, preventing civil disorder.
Militia spokesman Redur Xelil said in a telephone interview that the militia launched a broad offensive last month in response to repeated attacks on Kurdish communities by Islamist fighters. Some 2,500 Islamist fighters and 210 Kurdish militia have been killed since the groups started clashing sporadically in July, he added, a claim that could not be independently verified.
"We now control 70% of Syrian Kurdish territory…We have prepared plans to take control over all of it," Mr. Xelil said.
Growing Kurdish assertiveness in Syria has been watched nervously by neighboring states. Turkey, which is engaged in delicately balanced peace talks to halt its own conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a close PYD ally, has said the moves risk breaking the country apart and sowing further instability along its border.
Enlarge Image
Syrian Kurds wave flags as they gather on the border with Turkey, near Mardin's Nusaybin district, on Nov. 7 to protest against the construction by the Turkish government of a 2.5-kilometer-long wall along the border between Turkey and Syria. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Ankara is fortifying sections of its border that separate Turkish and Syrian Kurds; a move that has provoked furious reaction among local Kurds. Turkish Kurds say it is to divide Kurdish communities as Syrian Kurds become emboldened. Ankara says it trying to prevent smuggling and protect Turkish territory from Syria's war spilling over.
The PYD's rise has also alarmed political leaders in Kurdish-run northern Iraq, who are wary of the group's militant links and Marxist philosophy.
Masoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government, warned on Wednesday that the PYD was "dividing Kurds" and accused the group of arresting and killing its opponents, a charge the party denies. His caution came before a meeting Saturday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ally.
Syrian Kurds themselves are also divided over the party's rising power, with some factions aligned with the western-backed opposition Syrian National Council. The region's other main party, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), didn't sign the plan for self-administration and has declined to comment on the declaration. The KDP is also aligned with western-backed opposition, which has a separate plan.
Enlarge Image
Kurdish Democratic Union Party head Saleh Muslim speaks during a conference in Paris on Nov. 13 Reuters
Despite Kurdish gains, the power they have amassed remains diffuse and precarious. In Kurdish-controlled towns, the apparatus of the Syrian state still operates in tandem with the new administration, fueling accusations from Sunni-dominated opposition groups that the PYD is colluding with the regime. Damascus still collects taxes and pays the wages of most state employees. Christian mayors and bureaucrats loyal to President Assad still ply their trade, while the portraits of Syria's president remain on the walls of some state buildings.
The PYD has repeatedly denied colluding with Damascus stressing that Kurds were seen as second class citizens by the regime, often denied passports or government jobs.
The Syrian government hasn't made any public statements on Kurdish autonomy. It still pays some public sector employees, while the PYD has set up a separate tax system to fund its militia.
"It's true that the regime is still present throughout the region, but they are not leaving their bases or interfering as the Kurds build their power. They will have to leave or adapt to the new reality," said Ramzia Mohammed, a Kurdish councilor from the Syrian city of Qamishli.
Yet expanding Kurdish self-governance has failed to stem a growing humanitarian and economic crises in the region, with shortages in electricity, water and basic foodstuffs sparking a surge in cases of diseases such as polio and Tuberculosis, according to the Red Crescent RCB.T 0.00% humanitarian relief agency. Neighboring states that object to expanding PYD power have closed border crossings, placing the region under an effective embargo, Kurdish officials say.
"These policies risk turning Syrian Kurdish areas into the world's largest refugee camp," said Ayse Gokkan, mayor of Nusaybin, who has repeatedly criticized Ankara's stance against Syrian Kurds. "We need to deliver drugs and other supplies to help these people urgently."
But many of the thousands of Syrian Kurds who have fled across the border to this Turkish frontier town back the PYD as the guarantors of security and the party best placed to build institutions to secure Kurdish rights.
Syrian residents, analysts and refugees say that feeling is reflected on the ground in Kurdish Syria, where the PYD's dominance has been consolidated by recent battlefield victories.
Red, green and yellow-banded Kurdish flags now fly above municipal buildings. The PYD party's militia police Kurdish towns and cities. The party controls the distribution of food, water and fuel, and have set up their own makeshift courts.
PYD leaders say this week's declaration of an interim administration—a blueprint for a hundred-strong general assembly set to govern the region after elections next year—will be followed by a new constitution and the ejection of remaining regime forces from Kurd-controlled territory. The constitution would replace the existing Assad-era constitution, which still nominally prevails in the Syrian Kurdish regions.
"While others have been fighting, we have been establishing institutions in finance, public services and defense. Our transitional government is to run this area comprehensively and we are preparing for a new constitution soon," said Alan Semo, a PYD spokesman.
Meanwhile, in the Turkish border town, Mr. Cemo says he hopes he can soon cross back to Syria, inspect the family home and visit his two eldest sons, who are fighting with the YPG militia.
"They told us not to come now, because they are still clearing the area, but soon. We're still waiting but now we have more hope," he said.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/world/middleeast/syrian-governments-forces-gain-but-a-siege-war-goes-on.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131117
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Obama "Cherry Picked" Intel on Syrian Chemical Attack to Justify U.S. Strike
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/obama-cherry-picked-intel-on-syrian-chemical-attack-to-justify-u-s-strike?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Obama+%22Cherry+Picked%22+Intel+on+Syrian+Chemical+Attack+to+Justify+U_S_+Strike&utm_campaign=20131210_m118254818_12%2F10%3A+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Obama+%22Cherry+Picked%22+Intel+on+Syrian+Chemical+Attack+to+Justify+U_S_+Strike&utm_term=Obama+_22Cherry+Picked_22+Intel+on+Syrian+Chemical+Attack+to+Justify+U_S_+Strike
Click here to watch: Did Syrian rebel group have sarin?
A US investigative journalist has charged President Barack Obama with knowing that a Syrian rebel group had the capability to produce chemical weapons - but ignoring it and placing blame on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime instead, according to the Business Standard. Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published a scathing article in the London Review of Books this week accusing the President of "deliberate manipulation of intelligence" in the chemical weapons case to justify intervention in the conflict. The United Nations investigative teams examined the attack site and wrote a report following the news, eventually confirming that sarin gas had been used but not blaming either side for the attack. While Hersh states that Assad's forces are still responsible for the August 21 chemical attack, which left at least 1,400 dead outside of Damascus, he maintains that the US government purposely obfuscated the facts for its own reasons. "[Obama] had claimed to have an iron-clad case but suddenly agreed to take the issue to Congress, and later to accept Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical weapons," writes Hersh, toward the end of the article. "It appears possible that at some point he was directly confronted with contradictory information: evidence strong enough to persuade him to cancel his attack plan, and take the criticism sure to come from Republicans."
According to Buzzfeed, Hersh's reports are based on a secret cable sent to a senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency in July, allegedly stating along with later documents that the Al Nusra Front had the ability to produce sarin gas. Hersh's claim are detailed, describing how the knowledge moved up the entire chain of command in the US government, how the US allegedly conducted studies determining the best way to clear both sides of their chemical weapons stash, and declared that a full-blown initiative into Syria would be too costly - both financially and for the war-weary US public. He cites a number of top military and government officials, confidential documents, and suspicious excerpts from Obama's speech in August regarding the attack. Hersh also notes that the government has preyed on public ignorance on the nature of Sarin. "You don't store sarin - you store the chemicals to make Sarin," he stated, in an interview with Democracy Now. "It's far too volatile to store." He claims that a warning system is in place in Syria - a covert surveillance network - which allows the US to monitor chemical weapons production, and that Israel is also privy to that information. Administration officials denied the charges and said there was no evidence to support Hersh's claims. "The suggestion that there was an effort to suppress intelligence is simply false," said Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
According to the Huffington Post, Hersh originally sent the article to The Washington Post, but was rejected for "not being up to standards." Hersh is a Pultizer-Prize winning journalist who exposed the 1969 My Lai Massacre and cover-up, as well as the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Gharib in 2004. The report surfaces as the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) begins preparations to destroy most of Assad's chemical weapons stash later this month.
WATCH HERE
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U.S. Suspends Non-Lethal Aid into Northern Syria
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The United States has suspended all non-lethal aid to the opposition in northern Syria after forces from the Islamic Front seized bases and warehouses belonging to the Western-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC). The announcement came from a U.S. Embassy spokesman in the Turkish capital of Ankara, who added that humanitarian assistance would not be disrupted. The Islamic Front is a new coalition of six major Islamist rebel groups. Last week, it severed from the SMC and Free Syrian Army and on Friday took over FSA headquarters in Idlib province at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey. According to the U.S. Embassy spokesman, the situation is being investigated to "inventory the status of U.S. equipment and supplies provided to the SMC." The United States has committed $250 million in non-lethal assistance to be delivered to the Syrian National Coalition, local opposition councils, and the SMC. The aid has included food rations and medical supplies, but under U.S. code, could additionally consist of communications equipment, intelligence assistance, and body armor. Meanwhile, one of the most prominent figures in Syria's peaceful protest movement, human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh, disappeared from her apartment in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus with her husband and two other activists overnight Monday. Zaitouneh was a founder of the opposition Local Coordination Committees. Colleagues said that she began receiving threats after she started investigating abuses by rebels with another organization she founded, the Violations Document Center.
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It is interesting reading the flow of thought in this thread. My church is based in Damascus and we have a number of Middle-Eastern immigrants to the United States in the congregation. The current government did a pretty good job of protecting members of minority religions withing its borders. The result of which is that many Syrians seem to have a very different view of Assad than what the administration has put forth. Not an angel by any means, but maybe one of the few options to maintain a secular state in that region?
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Woof Al:
Great to see you here-- welcome aboard!
Marc
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http://www.mintpressnews.com/censored-on-syria-the-new-yorker-washington-post-decline-to-publish-hersh-story/174825/
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http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/plundered-syrian-torah-scrolls-said-held-by-al-qaeda-linked-rebels?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Al-Qaeda+Holding+Holy+Torah+Scrolls+in+Syria%2C+Demand+Release+of+Prisoners&utm_campaign=20131215_m118325305_12%2F15%3A+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Al-Qaeda+Holding+Holy+Torah+Scrolls+in+Syria%2C+Demand+Release+of+Prisoners&utm_term=Plundered+Syrian+Torah+scrolls+said+held+by+Al-Qaeda-linked+rebels
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The Obama administration's policy in Syria has been such a muddle as to hardly qualify for the word "policy." First it was "don't cross this red line," and then it was, "I didn't say anything about a red line." Now, the administration can't decide whether to back only "moderate" rebels, just throw money and support to anybody holding an anti-Assad sign, or go along with other Western nations in throwing up their hands and supporting Assad. Foreign Policy reports, "On Monday, the State Department confirmed its openness to engaging with the Islamic Front following the group's seizure of a Free Syrian Army headquarters last week containing U.S.-supplied small arms and food. 'We wouldn't rule out the possibility of meeting with the Islamic Front,' State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said." In other words, "We support whoever occupies that building."
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The civil war in Syria took a strange turn this week as General Salim Idriss, leader of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), reportedly fled for Qatar. Or maybe it was Turkey. Or, actually, Idriss later claimed he didn't flee at all but had left the country before the Islamic Front took over his headquarters. Only the Islamic Front was supposedly helping the general. The FSA is the focus of Western efforts to arm, train and support some semblance of moderate resistance to Bashar al-Assad's murderous regime. But as you can see from this bizarre telling of events, it's difficult to distinguish between groups and to tell what's actually happening in Syria.
Over the last year, so-called moderates have been losing ground to al-Qaida and its ilk, and anti-Assad forces have become ever-more dominated by radical Islamists. Those jihadis now hold most of the northern Syria territory under rebel control, and have seized numerous stores of weapons and supplies belonging to the moderates. In other words, the West has ended up supplying the Islamists because they're inseparable from any “moderates.” The Obama administration still says it plans to attend the Geneva peace talks in January and may, in fact, decide to support Islamist groups – provided their not allied with al-Qaida. (No, we're not kidding.)
Some may argue that the U.S. was too slow and insufficient in arming moderate rebels, and that this delay allowed jihadis to overrun the opposition. It's more likely, however, that this was only a matter of time. The “Arab Spring” has turned out to be nothing but a Middle East-wide radical Islamist uprising, replacing lousy, murderous, secular leaders with fanatical Muslims. Pick your poison.
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/31/the_rise_of_syrias_islamic_front_al_qaeda?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Flashpoints%20Complete%2010%2F7&utm_campaign=Flashpoints%2001-02-14#sthash.PTnyrt9Z.dpbs
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Summary
Despite Ankara's growing desire to seek a negotiated solution to the Syrian crisis and avoid a confrontation with Iran, the risk of clashes between Turkey and the Syrian regime remains as Turkey continues supporting the Syrian rebels.
Analysis
The Turkish General Staff announced Jan. 2 that Syrian air missile batteries used their radars to lock onto two Turkish F-16 jets conducting a sortie to monitor Syrian aircraft close to the Turkish border. Given the harassment of the radar lock and the already elevated tensions between Syria and Turkey, the incident could have escalated into a skirmish.
Turkish media also reported Jan. 2 that a truck heading from Kirikhan in Turkey's Hatay province toward the Kilis province and onward to Syria was stopped briefly on the road between Kirikhan and Reyhanli in Hatay province. However, due to intervention from local government officials, it was not searched and was allowed to continue on its way. Speculation that the truck was carrying weaponry has not been confirmed; Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala simply stated that the truck was carrying "aid" to Turkmen in Syria.
While the Turkish government consistently has denied supplying rebels in Syria and is actively hunting down Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant cells, there is plenty of evidence that significant flows of weapons (as well as foreign fighters) cross the Turkish border and find their way to rebels. It is therefore entirely plausible that the truck was indeed carrying weaponry to Syrian rebels. Turkey has ties with Turkmen rebels -- a small subset of the Syrian insurgency -- and with the Free Syrian Army, and Ankara even selectively supports certain Kurdish and Islamist factions in its efforts to play different sides of the rebellion against each other.
With the rise of jihadist activity in northern Syria and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's advances near Turkish border crossings, the Turks have greatly toned down their calls for Bashar al Assad's ouster and have increased monitoring of their border crossings. At a time when the United States is pursuing negotiations with Iran, Ankara has incrementally moved toward involving Tehran in seeking a potential approach to the Syrian crisis that favors stability over the complete overthrow of the regime.
However, the Turks have hardly stopped supporting rebels in Syria and continue to be heavily involved -- along with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and the United States -- in transferring aid and materiel to rebel camps, particularly the beleaguered rebel Supreme Military Council. Having committed itself publically to the demise of al Assad's regime, Ankara would like to avoid the humiliation of seeing al Assad stay in power, particularly since his regime would be unlikely to forget Turkey's involvement against him. Turkey likewise will be hard pressed to forget Syrian-sponsored militant attacks that have taken place in Turkey's borderland with Syria. To have a stake in the game as well as to achieve a negotiated solution that is at least somewhat favorable to Turkey (however unlikely), the rebels need to get enough support not to be annihilated, and they are getting at least some of that support from Ankara.
Moreover, Turkey is also very concerned about the emerging power of both the jihadists and Kurdish militia forces in Syria. By maintaining a direct connection to amenable Syrian rebel groups, Ankara can try to play different rebel factions against each other in an attempt to mitigate the jihadist and Kurdish separatist threat.
Syrian Air Defense Network
Click to Enlarge
The Turks have also greatly expanded their air patrols close to the Syrian border since the Syrian military shot down a Turkish military aircraft on June 22, 2012. The increased tensions on the border have since resulted in numerous exchanges of artillery fire, as well as the destruction of a Syrian helicopter by Turkish aircraft after it allegedly violated Turkish airspace on Sept. 16, 2013.
Domestic considerations, foreign policy initiatives and greater wariness about the growing presence of transnational jihadist forces in Syria have curbed Ankara's enthusiasm for a violent demise to the al Assad regime. However, Turkey continues to funnel aid to the rebels through various programs -- whether by sending in mostly nonlethal aid in collaboration with a hesitant West or by cooperating with the more proactive states of the Gulf Cooperation Council in dispatching weaponry to rebel groups.
As operations intensify across the length of the Turkish-Syrian border, the risks of clashes between Turkey and the Syrian regime, transnational jihadists or the advancing YPG Kurdish militia remain very real. Indeed, sharing a vast border with a destabilized Syria, Ankara cannot hope to completely isolate itself from Syria and can only take measures to diminish the risk.
Read more: Turkey's Role in the Syrian Rebel Landscape | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/09/breaking_the_reign_of_terror_syria_al_qaeda
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The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, January 21, 2014 - 03:59 Print Text Size
Stratfor
By Reva Bhalla
International diplomats will gather Jan. 22 in the Swiss town of Montreux to hammer out a settlement designed to end Syria's three-year civil war. The conference, however, will be far removed from the reality on the Syrian battleground. Only days before the conference was scheduled to begin, a controversy threatened to engulf the proceedings after the United Nations invited Iran to participate, and Syrian rebel representatives successfully pushed for the offer to be rescinded. The inability to agree upon even who would be attending the negotiations is an inauspicious sign for a diplomatic effort that was never likely to prove very fruitful.
There are good reasons for deep skepticism. As Syrian President Bashar al Assad's forces continue their fight to recover ground against the increasingly fratricidal rebel forces, there is little incentive for the regime, heavily backed by Iran and Russia, to concede power to its sectarian rivals at the behest of Washington, especially when the United States is already negotiating with Iran. Ali Haidar, an old classmate of al Assad's from ophthalmology school and a long-standing member of Syria's loyal opposition, now serving somewhat fittingly as Syria's National Reconciliation Minister, captured the mood of the days leading up to the conference in saying "Don't expect anything from Geneva II. Neither Geneva II, not Geneva III nor Geneva X will solve the Syrian crisis. The solution has begun and will continue through the military triumph of the state."
Widespread pessimism over a functional power-sharing agreement to end the fighting has led to dramatic speculation that Syria is doomed either to break into sectarian statelets or, as Haidar articulated, revert to the status quo, with the Alawites regaining full control and the Sunnis forced back into submission. Both scenarios are flawed. Just as international mediators will fail to produce a power-sharing agreement at this stage of the crisis, and just as Syria's ruling Alawite minority will face extraordinary difficulty in gluing the state back together, there is also no easy way to carve up Syria along sectarian lines. A closer inspection of the land reveals why.
The Geopolitics of Syria
Before the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement traced out an awkward assortment of nation-states in the Middle East, the name Syria was used by merchants, politicians and warriors alike to describe a stretch of land enclosed by the Taurus Mountains to the north, the Mediterranean to the west, the Sinai Peninsula to the south and the desert to the east. If you were sitting in 18th-century Paris contemplating the abundance of cotton and spices on the other side of the Mediterranean, you would know this region as the Levant -- its Latin root "levare" meaning "to raise," from where the sun would rise in the east. If you were an Arab merchant traveling the ancient caravan routes in the Hejaz, or modern-day Saudi Arabia, facing the sunrise to the east, you would have referred to this territory in Arabic as Bilad al-Sham, or the "land to the left" of Islam's holy sites on the Arabian Peninsula.
Whether viewed from the east or the west, the north or the south, Syria will always find itself in an unfortunate position surrounded by much stronger powers. The rich, fertile lands straddling Asia Minor and Europe around the Sea of Marmara to the north, the Nile River Valley to the south and the land nestled between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers to the east give rise to larger and more cohesive populations. When a power in control of these lands went roaming for riches farther afield, they inevitably came through Syria, where blood was spilled, races were intermixed, religions were negotiated and goods were traded at a frenzied and violent pace.
Consequently, only twice in Syria's pre-modern history could this region claim to be a sovereign and independent state: during the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty, based out of Antioch (the city of Antakya in modern-day Turkey) from 301 to 141 B.C., and during the Umayyad Caliphate, based out of Damascus, from A.D. 661 to 749. Syria was often divided or subsumed by its neighbors, too weak, internally fragmented and geographically vulnerable to stand its own ground. Such is the fate of a borderland.
Unlike the Nile Valley, Syria's geography lacks a strong, natural binding element to overcome its internal fissures. An aspiring Syrian state not only needs a coastline to participate in sea trade and guard against sea powers, but also a cohesive hinterland to provide food and security. Syria's rugged geography and patchwork of minority sects have generally been a major hindrance to this imperative.
Syria's long and extremely narrow coastline abruptly transforms into a chain of mountains and plateaus. Throughout this western belt, pockets of minorities, including Alawites, Christians and Druze, have sequestered themselves, equally distrustful of outsiders from the west as they are of local rulers to the east, but ready to collaborate with whomever is most likely to guarantee their survival. The long mountain barrier then descends into broad plains along the Orontes River Valley and the Bekaa Valley before rising sharply once again along the Anti-Lebanon range, the Hawran plateau and the Jabal al-Druze mountains, providing more rugged terrain for persecuted sects to hunker down and arm themselves.
Syria's River Systems
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Just west of the Anti-Lebanon mountains, the Barada river flows eastward, giving rise to a desert oasis also known as Damascus. Protected from the coast by two mountain chains and long stretches of desert to the east, Damascus is essentially a fortress city and a logical place to make the capital. But for this fortress to be a capital worthy of regional respect, it needs a corridor running westward across the mountains to Mediterranean ports along the ancient Phoenician (or modern-day Lebanese) coast, as well as a northward route across the semi-arid steppes, through Homs, Hama and Idlib, to Aleppo.
The saddle of land from Damascus to the north is relatively fluid territory, making it an easier place for a homogenous population to coalesce than the rugged and often recalcitrant coastline. Aleppo sits alongside the mouth of the Fertile Crescent, a natural trade corridor between Anatolia to the north, the Mediterranean (via the Homs Gap) to the west and Damascus to the south. While Aleppo has historically been vulnerable to dominant Anatolian powers and can use its relative distance to rebel against Damascus from time to time, it remains a vital economic hub for any Damascene power.
The Greater Levantine Region
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Finally, jutting east from the Damascus core lie vast stretches of desert, forming a wasteland between Syria and Mesopotamia. This sparsely populated route has long been traveled by small, nomadic bands of men -- from caravan traders to Bedouin tribesmen to contemporary jihadists -- with few attachments and big ambitions.
Demography by Design
The demographics of this land have fluctuated greatly, depending on the prevailing power of the time. Christians, mostly Eastern Orthodox, formed the majority in Byzantine Syria. The Muslim conquests that followed led to a more diverse blend of religious sects, including a substantial Shiite population. Over time, a series of Sunni dynasties emanating from Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley and Asia Minor made Syria the Sunni-majority region that it is today. While Sunnis came to heavily populate the Arabian Desert and the saddle of land stretching from Damascus to Aleppo, the more protective coastal mountains were meanwhile peppered with a mosaic of minorities. The typically cult-like minorities forged fickle alliances and were always on the lookout for a more distant sea power they could align with to balance against the dominant Sunni forces of the hinterland.
Sectarian Divisions in Syria and Lebanon
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The French, who had the strongest colonial links to the Levant, were masters of the minority manipulation strategy, but that approach also came with severe consequences that endure to this day. In Lebanon, the French favored Maronite Christians, who came to dominate Mediterranean sea trade out of bustling port cities such as Beirut at the expense of poorer Sunni Damascene merchants. France also plucked out a group known as the Nusayris living along the rugged Syrian coast, rebranded them as Alawites to give them religious credibility and stacked them in the Syrian military during the French mandate.
When the French mandate ended in 1943, the ingredients were already in place for major demographic and sectarian upheaval, culminating in the bloodless coup by Hafiz al Assad in 1970 that began the highly irregular Alawite reign over Syria. With the sectarian balance now tilting toward Iran and its sectarian allies, France's current policy of supporting the Sunnis alongside Saudi Arabia against the mostly Alawite regime that the French helped create has a tinge of irony to it, but it fits within a classic balance-of-power mentality toward the region.
Setting Realistic Expectations
The delegates discussing Syria this week in Switzerland face a series of irreconcilable truths that stem from the geopolitics that have governed this land since antiquity.
The anomaly of a powerful Alawite minority ruling Syria is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon. Alawite forces are holding their ground in Damascus and steadily regaining territory in the suburbs. Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is meanwhile following its sectarian imperative to ensure the Alawites hold onto power by defending the traditional route from Damascus through the Bekaa Valley to the Lebanese coast, as well as the route through the Orontes River Valley to the Alawite Syrian coast. So long as the Alawites can hold Damascus, there is no chance of them sacrificing the economic heartland.
It is thus little wonder that Syrian forces loyal to al Assad have been on a northward offensive to retake control of Aleppo. Realizing the limits to their own military offensive, the regime will manipulate Western appeals for localized cease-fires, using a respite in the fighting to conserve its resources and make the delivery of food supplies to Aleppo contingent on rebel cooperation with the regime. In the far north and east, Kurdish forces are meanwhile busy trying to carve out their own autonomous zone against mounting constraints, but the Alawite regime is quite comfortable knowing that Kurdish separatism is more of a threat to Turkey than it is to Damascus at this point.
The fate of Lebanon and Syria remain deeply intertwined. In the mid-19th century, a bloody civil war between Druze and Maronites in the densely populated coastal mountains rapidly spread from Mount Lebanon to Damascus. This time around, the current is flowing in reverse, with the civil war in Syria now flooding Lebanon. As the Alawites continue to gain ground in Syria with aid from Iran and Hezbollah, a shadowy amalgam of Sunni jihadists backed by Saudi Arabia will become more active in Lebanon, leading to a steady stream of Sunni-Shiite attacks that will keep Mount Lebanon on edge.
The United States may be leading the ill-fated peace conference to reconstruct Syria, but it doesn't really have any strong interests there. The depravity of the civil war itself compels the United States to show that it is doing something constructive, but Washington's core interest for the region at the moment is to preserve and advance a negotiation with Iran. This goal sits at odds with a publicly stated U.S. goal to ensure al Assad is not part of a Syrian transition, and this point may well be one of many pieces in the developing bargain between Washington and Tehran. However, al Assad holds greater leverage so long as his main patron is in talks with the United States, the only sea power currently capable of projecting significant force in the eastern Mediterranean.
Egypt, the Nile Valley power to the south, is wholly ensnared in its own internal problems. So is Turkey, the main power to the north, which is now gripped in a public and vicious power struggle that leaves little room for Turkish adventurism in the Arab world. That leaves Saudi Arabia and Iran as the main regional powers able to directly manipulate the Syrian sectarian battleground. Iran, along with Russia, which shares an interest in preserving relations with the Alawites and thus its access to the Mediterranean, will hold the upper hand in this conflict, but the desert wasteland linking Syria to Mesopotamia is filled with bands of Sunni militants eager for Saudi backing to tie down their sectarian rivals.
And so the fighting will go on. Neither side of the sectarian divide is capable of overwhelming the other on the battlefield and both have regional backers that will fuel the fight. Iran will try to use its relative advantage to draw the Saudi royals into a negotiation, but a deeply unnerved Saudi Arabia will continue to resist as long as Sunni rebels still have enough fight in them to keep going. Fighters on the ground will regularly manipulate appeals for cease-fires spearheaded by largely disinterested outsiders, all while the war spreads deeper into Lebanon. The Syrian state will neither fragment and formalize into sectarian statelets nor reunify into a single nation under a political settlement imposed by a conference in Geneva. A mosaic of clan loyalties and the imperative to keep Damascus linked to its coastline and economic heartland -- no matter what type of regime is in power in Syria -- will hold this seething borderland together, however tenuously.
Read more: The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War | Stratfor
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Obama's Syria Policy Has Failed
Secretary of State John Kerry is evidently not overly pleased with his boss's policy regarding Syria. Kerry reportedly told a gathering of 15 senators that Obama's policy isn't working because Bashar al-Assad's regime is not keeping its promises regarding chemical weapons, because peace talks in Geneva are failing, and because the Russians are doing the entirely expected -- propping up their man Assad. It's encouraging to hear that Kerry may be aware of the failure, but it's too much to hope that he's seen the light.
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I'm sure Israel will get blamed.
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Syria
Following a deadlocked second round of talks, UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi is reportedly advancing Syria peace talks between regime and opposition actors into a third round Friday. While the United States and Russia, co-sponsors of the peace talks, have promised to pressure their respective Syrian allies, disagreement among the powers has sharpened. On Friday Russia lashed out against the United States, accusing it of pursuing "regime change" in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov remarked, "The only thing they want to talk about is the establishment of a transitional governing body." Disagreement also surrounds draft UN resolutions on Syria's humanitarian crisis. Russia has stated its rejection of a Western-Arab draft resolution calling for greater humanitarian access, and has proposed its own resolution focused on combatting "terrorism." In a strongly-worded statement, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos urged the UN Security Council to use its "levers" to ensure humanitarian access to Syrians, calling regime and opposition attempts to obstruct aid delivery "flagrant" violations of humanitarian law. On Friday, the United Nations voiced concern over a possible "major assault" by regime forces against the opposition-held town Yabroud, noting a concentration of military forces in the area. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that President Barack Obama has requested new policy options for Syria as the country's crisis worsens.
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http://shoebat.com/2014/03/03/muslims-force-christian-convert-islam-brutally-behead/
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U.S. Funded Syrian Relief Flowed Despite Radical Elements
Steven Emerson, Executive Director
March 5, 2014
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U.S. Funded Syrian Relief Flowed Despite Radical Elements
by John Rossomando
IPT News
March 5, 2014
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4307/us-funded-syrian-relief-flowed-despite-radical
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Nearly Half of Syria’s Chemical Stockpile Has Been Removed
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The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reported that nearly half of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal has been removed from the country for destruction abroad. The OPCW issued a statement Wednesday saying 45.6 percent of Syria's chemicals have been exported so far in 10 shipments, including two over the past week that included some of the regime's most lethal chemicals. The Syrian government has asked to be given until April 27 to remove its complete stockpile, which is two and a half months after the initial deadline. It remains unclear if a dispute over Syria's 12 chemical production facilities has been settled. Syria has proposed sealing the facilities, keeping them intact, which the United States has demanded Syria destroy them. Meanwhile, Syrian government forces and Hezbollah fighters ambushed dozens of wounded rebel fighters as they attempted to flee the besieged area of al-Hosn in Homs province. The attack came as part of a regime offensive working to reclaim territories along the Lebanese border, and after Syrian troops recaptured al-Hosn. Eleven armed men were reportedly killed in Thursday's ambush, and 41 wounded Syrian rebels crossed over a river into Lebanon. The intense clashes provoked Syrian troops to close the Bqaiaa border crossing into the neighboring country.
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Syria
The United Nations on Thursday warned of increasing militant links between Iraq and Syria. U.N. Special Envoy to Iraq Nickolay Mladenov told the U.N. Security Council, "The ongoing conflict in Syria has added a regional dimension to sectarian tensions and is affording terrorist networks the occasion to forge links across the border and expand their support base." In addition to security challenges, the World Health Organization has described the polio outbreak in Syria as "arguably the most challenging outbreak in the history of polio eradication" as there have been 38 cases reported in Syria, and one confirmed case in Iraq. Ninette Kelley, regional representative for Lebanon for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees warned of the threat posed to Lebanon from the almost one million refugees that have poured into the country from Syria. She noted, "If this country is not bolstered, then the very real prospect of it collapsing and the conflict of Syria spreading full force to Lebanon becomes much more likely."
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The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 150,344 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011. According to the group, the figure includes 51,212 civilians, 37,781 opposition fighters, and 58,480 regime forces. On Monday, Syrian government forces recaptured Observatory 45, a strategic position in the regime stronghold of Latakia province, countering recent opposition gains in the region.
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http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441304579479500649988892?mod=WSJ_article_EditorsPicks
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http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626304579509401865454762?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories&mg=reno64-wsj
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The United States said it will recognize the offices of Syria's main opposition alliance, the Syrian National Coalition, as diplomatic missions. The State Department also pledged $27 million in nonlethal aid bringing the total U.S. assistance since the beginning of the Syrian conflict to $287 million. The moves have come ahead of talks between Secretary of State John Kerry, and other senior U.S. officials, and a delegation of Syrian opposition leaders, including SNC President Ahmad Jarba. While granting the opposition coalition diplomatic status does not mean the United States is recognizing the SNC as Syria's government, it will make it easier to facilitate banking and security services. Jarba said it was a "diplomatic blow against Assad's legitimacy and demonstrates how far the opposition has progressed."
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FSA Cooperation With Al-Qaida Continues in Syria
by John Rossomando • May 9, 2014 at 4:08 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4380/fsa-cooperation-with-al-qaida-continues-in-syria
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Cooperation between the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, continues even as the FSA tries to obtain more American arms.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, an FSA element, has teamed up with Jabhat al-Nusra in recent weeks in attempts to capture strategic hilltops in Syria's southwestern Quneitra province overlooking the Israel-held Golan Heights.
"The FSA and Nusra Front are cooperating on the front line," Abu Omar Golani, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front's media coordinator, told the Journal.
FSA forces have struggled over the past year to seize the hills in the area from government forces. Cooperation between the FSA and Jabhat al-Nusra has included "military operations rooms" where they jointly planned strategy before battles and helped coordinate unit activities, according to Golani.
FSA leaders denied that such coordination was taking place even though Jamal Maarouf, head of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, has previously admitted to fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra.
"It's clear that I'm not fighting against al-Qaida. This is a problem outside of Syria's border, so it's not our problem. I don't have a problem with anyone who fights against the regime inside Syria," Maarouf told the U.K.'s Independent newspaper last month.
Maarouf also expressed his support for Jabhat al-Nusra in a January Twitter post, saying all of the anti-Assad forces – including the al-Qaida affiliate – were fighting together against the regime.
The news comes as Ahmed Jarba, president of the rebel Syrian National Coalition (SNC), is in Washington this week and is slated to meet with President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Jarba publicly appealed to the Obama administration to provide the FSA with more advanced weapons, especially shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles such as the Stinger. He vowed that advanced weapons systems would only be used by select "professional" fighters to ensure that they do not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.
Videos surfaced in the Internet over the past month showing FSA fighters using U.S.-made TOW anti-tank missiles. Rumors in the Israeli press suggest that the CIA has moved weapons to Jordan and plans to start arming small groups of "vetted" Syrian rebels within a month.
Fears that such weapons could fall into Jabhat al-Nusra's hands have spurred reluctance on Capitol Hill to arm the FSA rebels, who have experienced a recent spate of defections.
Numerous FSA Supreme Military Council officials have expressed support for Jabhat al-Nusra, or had their brigades fight alongside the al-Qaida franchise, since Syria's civil war started in 2011.
Such developments may serve to further reinforce reluctance in Washington to arm the FSA.
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I wonder if this is what the explosion of the "crater" at the battle of Petersburg, Virginia in 1864 looked like:
http://news.yahoo.com/massive-tunnel-bomb-hits-syrian-army-video-095628015.html
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http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/05/al-qaeda-militants-destroy-3000-year-old-artifacts-in-syria/?PageSpeed=noscript
http://news.yahoo.com/jihadists-execute-seven-syria-two-crucifixion-202451027.html
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/27/obama-deploy-us-military-advisers-syria/
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I have been trying to read up on what our options might be in Syria. Thought this might be aprpeciated around here.
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/moderate-syrian-rebel-application-form
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But but but supporting the FSA proves Hillary is harder than Baraq!
Good to see you posting here again Mike.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/05/would-you-believe-it-looks-like-assad-hid-his-chemical-weapons/
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Mission to Purge Syria of Chemical Weapons Comes Up Short
By Adam Entous and Naftali Bendavid
Updated July 23, 2015 8:31 p.m. ET
66 COMMENTS
In May of last year, a small team of international weapons inspectors gained entry to one of Syria’s most closely guarded laboratories. Western nations had long suspected that the Damascus facility was being used to develop chemical weapons.
Inside, Syrian scientists showed them rooms with test tubes, Bunsen burners and desktop computers, according to inspectors. The Syrians gave a PowerPoint presentation detailing the medical and agricultural research they said went on there. A Syrian general insisted that the Assad regime had nothing to hide.
As the international inspectors suspected back then, it was a ruse, part of a chain of misrepresentations by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to hide the extent of its chemical-weapons work. One year after the West celebrated the removal of Syria’s arsenal as a foreign-policy success, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the regime didn’t give up all of the chemical weapons it was supposed to.
An examination of last year’s international effort to rid Syria of chemical weapons, based on interviews with many of the inspectors and U.S. and European officials who were involved, shows the extent to which the Syrian regime controlled where inspectors went, what they saw and, in turn, what they accomplished. That happened in large part because of the ground rules under which the inspectors were allowed into the country, according to the inspectors and officials.
The West was unable, for example, to prevent Mr. Assad from continuing to operate weapons-research facilities, including the one in Damascus visited by inspectors, making it easier for the regime to develop a new type of chemical munition using chlorine. And the regime never had to account for the types of short-range rockets that United Nations investigators believe were used in an Aug. 21, 2013, sarin gas attack that killed some 1,400 people, these officials say.
Obama administration officials have voiced alarm this year about reports that Mr. Assad is using the chlorine weapons on his own people. And U.S. intelligence now suggests he hid caches of even deadlier nerve agents, and that he may be prepared to use them if government strongholds are threatened by Islamist fighters, according to officials familiar with the intelligence. If the regime collapses outright, such chemical-weapons could fall into the hands of Islamic State, or another terror group.
“Nobody should be surprised that the regime is cheating,” says Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria under President Barack Obama. He says more intrusive inspections are needed.
The White House and State Department say last year’s mission was a success even if the regime hid some deadly chemicals. Western nations removed 1,300 metric tons of weapons-grade chemicals, including ingredients for nerve agents sarin and VX, and destroyed production and mixing equipment and munitions. U.S. officials say the security situation would be far more dangerous today if those chemicals hadn’t been removed, especially given recent battlefield gains by Islamists. Demanding greater access and fuller disclosures by the regime, they say, might have meant getting no cooperation at all, jeopardizing the entire removal effort.
“I take no satisfaction from the fact that the chlorine bombs only kill a handful at a time instead of thousands at a time,” says Thomas Countryman, the assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation. “But it is important to keep a perspective that the most dangerous of these inhumane weapons are no longer in the hands of this dictator.”
The following account of the inspectors’ efforts on the ground is based on interviews with people who were involved. Syrian officials in New York and Damascus didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
Inspectors from The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, together with U.N. personnel, arrived in Damascus in October 2013 to an especially difficult work environment. They were in a war zone, and rebel forces viewed them with hostility because the inspection process forestalled U.S. airstrikes, which the rebels were counting on to weaken the Assad regime.
Veto power
Because the regime was responsible for providing security, it had an effective veto over inspectors’ movements. The team decided it couldn’t afford to antagonize its hosts, explains one of the inspectors, or it “would lose all access to all sites.” And the inspectors decided they couldn’t visit some sites in contested areas, fearing rebels would attack them.
Under the terms of their deployment, the inspectors had access only to sites that the Assad regime had declared were part of its chemical-weapons program. The U.S. and other powers had the right to demand access to undeclared sites if they had evidence they were part of the chemical-weapons program. But that right was never exercised, in part, inspectors and Western officials say, because their governments didn’t want a standoff with the regime.
Russia, Mr. Assad’s longtime ally, had used its clout at the U.N. and the OPCW to limit the mandate of the inspectors, preventing them from accusing the regime directly of using chemical weapons, such as in the 2013 sarin attack.
In its initial confidential declaration to the OPCW, the regime identified 23 sites where 1,300 metric tons of chemicals were stored. The regime also admitted to having more than 100 missile warheads, mainly Scud missiles, and roughly 1,100 aerial bombs, which principally posed a threat to Israel.
The sites stretched for more than 240 miles, from an air base 16 miles from the Jordan border in the south to a facility close to Turkey in the north. A network of bunkers hiding chemical weapons was located just 3 miles from a major Hezbollah base.
Among the biggest surprises for the inspectors was Syria’s fleet of mobile chemical-weapons production facilities, housed on 18-wheeler trucks. They looked so much like regular trucks that they even carried advertisements, including one for a Hungarian moving company.
Scott Cairns, a chemist and munitions expert who was one of the inspection mission’s leaders, says it was “unlike any other program that I’ve seen or read about.”
The big question looming over the whole operation was how forthcoming the regime had been about the scope of its chemical-weapons work. As the inspections were beginning, in private briefings for U.N. and congressional officials, U.S. intelligence agencies gave the regime an informal grade of B-plus for truthfulness, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
Central Intelligence Agency analysts initially thought the declaration matched what they believed the regime had. Some intelligence officials at the Pentagon were more skeptical, believing that Syria may have squirreled away a secret reserve, defense officials say.
The inspectors were suspicious of Syria’s claim to have only 20 tons of ready-to-use mustard agent, which can be loaded into artillery shells, aerial bombs and rockets. U.S. intelligence agencies expected the Syrians to have hundreds of tons.
When U.N. officials pressed the matter, the Syrians said they had destroyed hundreds of tons of mustard agent in fire pits before agreeing to the inspections. The inspectors were skeptical, noting that it had taken other countries decades to destroy similarly large stockpiles.
Inspectors also were suspicious of Syrian claims that a high percentage of chemical-weapons warheads and bombs—around 30% of the total—had been detonated during exercises and trials. Additional stocks, Syria claimed, were converted into conventional weapons. The worry was that the regime was keeping weapons in reserve.
Jerry Smith, a retired British military officer, was in charge of field operations for a team of international weapons inspectors involved with trying to rid Syria of chemical weapons. ENLARGE
Jerry Smith, a retired British military officer, was in charge of field operations for a team of international weapons inspectors involved with trying to rid Syria of chemical weapons. Photo: Matthew Lloyd for The Wall Street Journal
Syria’s declaration listed only strategic weapons—Scud warheads and aerial bombs meant for war with Israel—not short-range munitions, including the rockets that an earlier U.N. inquiry found at the site of the August 2013 sarin attack.
Members of the inspection team didn’t push for answers, worried that it would compromise their primary objective of getting the regime to surrender the 1,300 tons of chemicals it admitted to having. “It was a question of priorities,” says one team member.
After traveling to the Syrian capital from Beirut in a convoy of armored Toyota Land Cruisers, the inspection team took over the ninth floor of the Four Seasons hotel, which they turned into a makeshift command center. The team included weapons experts, chemists, medics and negotiators. Three were native Arabic speakers.
Jerry Smith, a retired British military officer who had taken part in similar OPCW operations during his seven years with the organization, was in charge of field operations.
That first night, Mr. Smith and other team leaders drove to Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to meet their main contact, Gen. Hassan al-Sharif.
Weeks earlier, Gen. Sharif had hosted a U.N. team sent to investigate the sarin attack. His message at the time was that Syria didn’t have a chemical-weapons program. Now, Syria was admitting to having chemical-weapons sites, and it was Gen. Sharif’s job to ensure inspectors got access to them.
The Syrians laid out the ground rules. Inspectors could visit only sites Syria had declared, and only with 48-hour notice. Anything else was off-limits, unless the regime extended an invitation.
“We had no choice but to cooperate with them,” said Mr. Cairns. “The huge specter of security would have hampered us had we gone in there very aggressively or tried to do things unilaterally.”
At 7 a.m. on Oct. 6, 2013, seven inspectors headed out for the team’s first inspection. A U.N. security officer had insisted on armored vehicles as escorts. The Syrians sent two slow-moving, Soviet-era BRDM-2 vehicles armed with machine guns, and two unmarked vehicles filled with Syrian intelligence agents toting AK-47s.
The slow speed of the convoy—15 m.p.h.—unnerved the inspectors. They later told the Syrians to get rid of the BRDM-2s, concluding they were better off being less conspicuous and more agile.
The convoy stopped first at the mouth of a bunker in the side of a hill. It was covered with camouflage netting. Inspectors in protective suits entered two at a time and walked through concrete tunnels to chambers filled with steel containers. The containers held chemicals that, when mixed together, created sarin. The bunker also contained aerial bombs and warheads.
Parked outside the bunker were mobile weapons-production facilities that sat on 18-wheelers. Inspectors would later liken the vehicles to Transformers toys because they looked so ordinary on the outside. As such, they would have been difficult to target from the air.
“This wasn’t kitchen chemistry,” Mr. Smith recalls thinking. “It was a piece of quality engineering.”
Syrian guards carried the empty aerial bombs out of the bunker and laid them in a row. The Syrians had stored them without chemicals inside. Mr. Cairns says the bombs contained two internal chambers separated by a thin membrane. When the bombs are filled with chemicals, activating them requires turning a crank attached to the back of the bomb, which rotates a rod inside, pierces the membrane and mixes the chemicals.
The inspectors directed the Syrians to destroy the bombs by rolling over them with a bulldozer. But that failed to dent them. Mr. Smith spotted a nearby tank and asked a Syrian colonel to use it. The tank rolled over each bomb repeatedly. Eventually, it crushed one.
Mr. Smith was amazed. A Syrian officer thumped his chest and said: “Made in Syria.”
In Homs, the inspectors slept in abandoned villas ringed by Syrian troops. On the main road into the city, inspectors toured one of the largest sarin storehouses, surrounded by a wall but few guards. Mr. Smith says it was “hidden in plain sight.”
At another site, guards were bearded and weren’t wearing Syrian army uniforms. Many were equipped with German-made G3 rifles, a weapon often carried by Iranian forces. Inspectors suspected they were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or an Iranian-backed militia.
Other facilities were too risky to approach. To check on one near Aleppo, where there was heavy fighting, inspectors sent Syrian troops with tamper-proof cameras to confirm the regime’s claims that all chemicals had been removed. For another, inspectors spoke to rebel leaders over Skype to negotiate safe passage, but in the end decided against going because they thought they could be targeted.
Dangerous Mission: Destroying Chemical Weapons at Sea
Getting the deadly chemicals out of Syria was fraught with difficulty. They had to be shipped through often-dangerous terrain to the port of Latakia on the Mediterranean, where they could be loaded onto ships to be destroyed at sea.
First, the tall legs on the tanks storing the chemicals had to be cut so the vessels would fit into trucks. Some weren’t cut evenly and chemicals spilled in transit.
At a meeting at a U.S. military headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, an American admiral laid out a plan for moving the chemicals. The plan assumed the international community would be able to control the speed, frequency and order of deliveries to the port. Mr. Smith informed the admiral that the Assad regime was calling the shots.
In Latakia, which was flooded with Syrian soldiers, a Danish vessel was charged with transferring the most dangerous chemicals to an American ship. Syrian soldiers were taken aback when Danish Marines stepped ashore, prompting Mr. Smith to step between them. Gen. Sharif defused the situation by inviting the Danish captain for tea.
In February 2014, with the Syrians dragging their feet on delivering the declared chemicals to Latakia, the OPCW created a new team to try to identify what the Syrians might have been hiding.
Suspected gaps
The new team flew into Damascus once a month to meet with Gen. Sharif and Syria’s leading scientists. As inspectors pressed the Syrians about suspected gaps in their initial weapons declaration, new details about the program began to emerge.
U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies had long suspected that there were research facilities in Damascus run by the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, or SSRC. In a bombing run in early 2013, Israeli warplanes had struck a convoy of trucks next to one of them. Israel believed the trucks were carrying weapons for Hezbollah.
At first, the Syrians told the new team they had no research facilities at all because they had developed their weapons in the field using what they described as “pop-up” labs. The inspectors had seen intelligence that suggested otherwise.
During an informal dinner in April 2014, inspectors half-jokingly suggested that the Syrians should allow them to visit an SSRC facility.
“If you are so interested, why don’t you just come along?” a Syrian official responded, according to Mr. Smith.
A Syrian man received treatment at a field hospital following a suspected chlorine-gas attack by Assad forces in Idlib in May. ENLARGE
A Syrian man received treatment at a field hospital following a suspected chlorine-gas attack by Assad forces in Idlib in May. Photo: Firas Taki/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
One Saturday the following month, the inspectors’ motorcade entered one of the SSRC compounds in Damascus. The facility’s director told the inspectors that no chemical weapons had been developed there. The facility had done research on detecting chemical agents and on treating people exposed to toxins, he said.
Gen. Sharif attended the presentation, which included an Arabic-language PowerPoint. The slides explained the SSRC’s work in areas including oncology and pesticides. The skeptical inspectors urged the Syrians to come clean about all their research and development facilities.
Last October, the Syrian regime added several research facilities to its official declaration of chemical-weapons sites, including the one in Damascus visited by inspectors that May. That gave inspectors the right to visit them for examinations. Western officials say samples taken by inspectors at the sites found traces of sarin and VX, which they say confirms that they had been part of the chemical-weapons program.
Earlier this year, American intelligence agencies tracked the regime’s increasing use of chlorine-filled bombs. The weapons-removal deal didn’t curtail the work of Syria’s weapons scientists, allowing the regime to develop more effective chlorine bombs, say U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence. The regime denies using chlorine.
The CIA had been confident that Mr. Assad destroyed all of the chemical weapons it thought he possessed when the weapons-removal deal was struck. In recent weeks, the CIA concluded that the intelligence picture had changed and that there was a growing body of evidence Mr. Assad kept caches of banned chemicals, according to U.S. officials.
Inspectors and U.S. officials say recent battlefield gains by Islamic State militants and rival al Qaeda-linked fighters have made it even more urgent to determine what Syria held back from last year’s mass disposal, and where it might be hidden. A new intelligence assessment says Mr. Assad may be poised to use his secret chemical reserves to defend regime strongholds. Another danger is that he could lose control of the chemicals, or give them to Hezbollah.
The team that visited the SSRC facility in Damascus recently asked the regime for information about unaccounted for munitions. Officials say there has been no response from Damascus.
“Accountability?” asks Mr. Cairns, the inspector. “At this point in time, it hasn’t happened.”
Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com and Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com
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Syria
The U.S. has spent nearly $500 million to train just 60 rebels from the Free Syrian Army to take on Islamic State. Now, just two weeks after they hit the ground in Turkey, the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra has kidnapped one of their leaders. Reuters reports that Nusra fighters captured Nadim al-Hassan, a leader from the "Division 30" group, north of Aleppo.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443296/aleppo-fall-obama-legacy-american-weakness
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Is one thing , but sarin gas , well that is different : :roll:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446546/us-airstrikes-syria-bashar-al-assad-donald-trump-intervention-foreign-policy-error
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Did Prez Trump do a "Facta Non Verba" on Assad?
So he could control him?
Yes, he did on Assad, N Korea, China...
https://medium.com/incerto/facta-non-verba-how-to-own-your-enemies-ea79a34c9c49 (https://medium.com/incerto/facta-non-verba-how-to-own-your-enemies-ea79a34c9c49)
Facta non Verba: How to Own Your Enemies
Dead horse in your bed — Friendship via poisoned cake –Roman Emperors and U.S. presidents –A living enemy is worth ten dead ones
The best enemy is the one you own by putting skin in his game and letting him know the exact rules that come with it. You keep him alive, in the knowledge that he owes this to your benevolence. The notion that an enemy you own is better than a dead one was perfected by the order of the Assassins, so we will do some digging into the work of that secret society.
An offer very hard to refuse
There is this formidable scene in the Godfather when a Hollywood executive wakes up with the bloody severed head of a horse in his bed, his cherished race horse. He had refused to hire a Sicilian American actor for reasons that appeared iniquitous, as while he knew the latter was the best for the role, he was resentful of the “olive oil voice” that charmed one of his past mistresses and fearful of its powers to seduce future ones. It turned out that the actor, who in real life was (possibly) Frank Sinatra, had friends and friends of friends, that type of thing; he was even the godson of a capo. A visit from the consigliere of the “family” neither succeeded to sway the executive, nor softened his Hollywood abrasiveness –the fellow failed to realize that by flying across the country to make the request, the high ranking mobster was not just providing the type of recommendation letter you mail to the personnel department of a state university. He had made him an offer that he could not refuse (the expression was popularized by that scene in the movie).
It was a threat, and not an empty threat.
As I am writing these lines, people discuss terrorism and terrorist groups while making a severe category mistakes; there are in fact two totally distinct varieties. The first are terrorists that are terrorists for about every person equipped with ability to discern and isn’t a resident of Saudi Arabia or works for a think tank funded by Sheikhs; the second are militia groups largely called terrorists by their enemies, and “resistance” or “freedom fighters” by those who don’t dislike them.
The first includes nonsoldiers who indiscriminately kill civilians for effect and don’t bother with military targets as their aim isn’t to make military gains, just to make a statement, harm some living humans, produce some noise and, for some, a low-error way to go to paradise. Most Sunni Jihadis, of the type to take incommensurable pleasure in blowing up civilians, such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, the “moderate rebels” in Syria sponsored by former U.S. president Obama’s, are in that category. The second group is about strategic political assassination –the Irish Republican Army, most Shiite organizations, Algerian independence fighters against France, French resistance fighters during the German occupation, etc.
For Shiites and similar varieties in the Near and Middle East, the ancestry, methods, and rules originate in the order of the Assassins, itself following the modus of the Judean Sicarii during Roman times. The Sicarii are named after the daggers they used to kill Roman soldiers and, mostly their Judean collaborators, owing to what they perceived was the profanation of the Temple and the land.
I have the misfortune to know a bit about the subject as I am the only one of those “notable” former students listed on the Wikipedia page of the Lycée Franco-Libanais, my elementary and high school, whose notability doesn’t originate for having, like my classmates and childhood friends, having being the victim of a successful or attempted assassination.
The Assassins
Sanjar became in 1118 the sultan of the Seljuk Turkish Empire of Asia minor (that is, modern day Turkey), Iran, and parts of Afghanistan. Soon after his accession, he woke up one day with a dagger next to his bed, firmly planted in the ground. In one version of the legend, a letter informed him that the dagger thrusted in hard ground was preferable to the alternative, being plunged in his soft breast. It was a characteristic message of the Hashishins, a.k.a. Assassins, making him aware of the need to leave them alone, say send them birthday gifts, or hire their actors for his next movie. Sultan Sanjar had previously snubbed their peace negotiators; so they moved to phase two of a demonstrably well planned out process. They convinced him that his life was in their hands and that, crucially, he didn’t have to worry if he did the right thing –they had proven to him that they were both in control and reliable. Indeed Sanjar and the Assassins had a happy life ever-after.
You will note that no explicit verbal threat was issued. Verbal threats reveal nothing other than weakness and unreliability. Remember, once again, no verbal threats.
The Assassins were a 11th-14th C. sect related to Shiite Islam and was (and still is through its reincarnations) violently anti-Sunni. They were often associated with the Knight Templars as they fought frequently on the side of the crusaders –and if they seem to share some of the values of the Templars, in sparing the innocent and the weak, it is more likely because the former group transmitted some of their values to the latter. The chivalric code of honor has, for second clause: I shall respect and defend the weak, the sick, and the needy.
The Assassins supposedly send the same message to Saladin, informing him that the cake he was about to eat was poisoned… by them.
The ethical system of the Assassins is that political assassination help prevent war; threat of the dagger-by-your-bed variety are even better for bloodless control[1]. They supposedly aimed at sparing civilians and people who were not directly targeted. The methods focusing on precision meant to reduce what is now called civilian “collateral damage”.
Assassination as Marketing
Those readers who may have tried to get rid of pebbles in their shoes (that is, someone you bothers you and doesn’t get the hint) might know that “contracts” on ordinary citizens (that is, to trigger their funeral) are relatively easy to perform and inexpensive to buy. There is a relatively active underground market for these contracts. In general, you need to pay a bit more to “make it look like an accident”. However skilled historians and observers of martial history would recommend the exact opposite: in politics, you should have to pay more to make it look intentional.
In fact, what Captain Weisenborn, Pasquale Cirillo, and I discovered, when we tried doing a systematic study of violence (debunking a confabulatory thesis by the science writer Steven Pinker), was that war numbers have been historically inflated… by both sides. Both the Mongols and their panicky victims had an incentive to exaggerate, which acted as a deterrent. Mongols weren’t interested in killing everybody; they just wanted submission, which came cheaply though terror. Further, having spent some time perusing the genetic imprints of invaded populations, it is clear that if the warriors coming from the Eastern steppes left a cultural imprint, they certainly left their genes at home. Gene transfer between areas by happens by group migrations, inclement climate, unaccommodating soil rather than war.
More connected to recent events, I discovered that the Hama “massacre” of Syrian Jihadis by Assad senior was at least an order of magnitude lower than what was reported; the rest came from inflation –numbers swelling over time from 2,000 to close to 40,000 without significant information. Simply, Assad wanted, at the time, to intimidate and his enemies, the Islamist and their journalist sympathizers, former U.S. president Obama’s wanted to aggrandize the event.
Assassination as Democracy
Now, political life; if the democratic system doesn’t fully deliver governance –it patently doesn’t, owing to cronyisms and the Hillary Montanto-Malmaison style of covert legal corruption; if the system doesn’t fully deliver governance, we have known forever what does: an increased turnover at the top. Count Munster’s epigrammatic description of the Russian Constitution explains it: “Absolutism tempered by assassination”.
While today’s politicians have no skin in the game and do not have to worry so long as they play the game, thanks the increased life expectancy of modern times, they stay longer and longer on the job. France’s pseudo-socialist Francois Mitterrand reigned for fourteen years, longer than many French Kings; thanks to technology he had more power over the population than most French Kings. Even a United States President, the modern kind of Emperor (unlike Napoleon and the Tsars, Roman emperors before Diocletian were not absolutists) tends to last at least four years on the throne, while Rome had five emperors in a single year and four in another. The mechanism worked: consider that all the bad Emperors Caligula, Caracalla, Elagabalus, Nero ended their career either murdered by the Pretorian guard or, in the case of Nero, suicide in anticipation. In the first four hundred years of empire, only 20, that is less than a third, of emperors died a natural death, assuming these deaths were truly natural.
[1] It appears that what we read about the Assassins can be smear by their enemies (including the apocryphal accounts according to which their name comes from consumption of Hashish, Cannabis in Arabic, as they would get into a trance before their assassination).
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-04-28-13-49-00
NK makes sense to me. This stuff doesn't unless if had to do with ISIS?
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/world/middleeast/syria-assad-prison-crematory.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
Syrian Crematory Is Hiding Mass Killings of Prisoners, U.S. Says
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U.S. Strikes Advancing Syrian-Led Troops
Military action taken to protect U.S.-backed rebels
By Maria Abi-Habib
May 18, 2017 2:44 p.m. ET
3 COMMENTS
WASHINGTON—The U.S.-led military coalition in Syria launched airstrikes on Syrian regime forces as they approached U.S.-backed rebels in al-Tanf, on the border with Jordan, according to two U.S. officials.
The U.S. strikes hit advancing regime forces at 4 p.m. local time to head off their advance on al-Tanf, where U.S. special operations forces operate along with Maghaweer al Thawra, an elite Syrian rebel force.
“The coalition struck regime elements in vicinity of Tanf after the regime failed to respond to warning to stop [the] advance,” said one U.S. official briefed of the incident. “There have been worries recently that this would happen as regime and regime-affiliated forces get closer to Tanf.”
Over the past week, U.S. officials have expressed concern that Syria’s government and its allies were preparing to launch a military offensive at al-Tanf, officials said.
It was unclear what elements of the Damascus-aligned forces the coalition airstrikes hit. They Syrian government is supported by Russian forces, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias and Iran.
The incident at al-Tanf brings the U.S. and the Syrian regime and its allies closer to full-on military conflict when the U.S. and Russia are discussing ways to de-escalate and find ways to avoid striking each other in Syria’s volatile mix of regional and international forces fighting on various fronts.
The U.S. in April struck a Syrian air base with dozens of cruise missiles in response to the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons, in the first such U.S. operation. The strike on Wednesday apparently was the first to target Syrian military personnel.
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ok we wipe out Assad . then what?
didn't we go through this in somaila, iraq, lybia etc?
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(http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/070404/070404_assad_hmed_330a.grid-6x2.jpg)
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17920536/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/pelosi-shrugs-bushs-criticism-meets-assad/#.WR-R6WjyvIU
Pelosi shrugs off Bush’s criticism, meets Assad
Democrat raises issues of Mideast peace, Iraq with Syrian president
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets with President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Wednesday.
updated 4/4/2007 9:28:36 AM ET
Print Font:
DAMASCUS, Syria — U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday for talks criticized by the White House as undermining American efforts to isolate the hard-line Arab country.
Pelosi said Assad assured her of his willingness to engage in peace talks with Israel, and that she and other members of her congressional delegation raised their concern about militants crossing from Syria into Iraq, as well the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas.
The Californian Democrat spoke to reporters shortly after talks with Assad at the end of a two-day visit to Syria.
She said the delegation gave the Syrian leader a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert whose essence was that Israel was ready to hold peace talks with Syria.
She did not say more about the message, but Israel has previously made such talks conditional on Syria’s cutting off its support for hard-line Palestinian groups and Hezbollah.
“We were very pleased with the assurances we received from the president that he was ready to resume the peace process. He’s ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi and accompanying members of Congress began their day by holding separate talks with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem and Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa and then met Assad, who hosted them for lunch after their talks.
Pelosi’s visit to Syria was the latest challenge to the White House by congressional Democrats, who are taking a more assertive role in influencing policy in the Middle East and the Iraq war.
Bush voices criticism
Bush has said Pelosi’s trip signals that the Assad government is part of the international mainstream when it is not. The United States says Syria allows Iraqi Sunni insurgents to operate from its territory, backs the Hezbollah and Hamas militant groups and is trying to destabilize the Lebanese government. Syria denies the allegations.
“A lot of people have gone to see President Assad ... and yet we haven’t seen action. He hasn’t responded,” he told reporters soon after she arrived in Damascus on Tuesday. “Sending delegations doesn’t work. It’s simply been counterproductive.”
Pelosi did not comment on Bush’s remarks but went for a stroll in the Old City district of Damascus, where she mingled with Syrians in a market.
Wearing a flowered head scarf and a black abaya robe, Pelosi visited the 8th-century Omayyad Mosque. She made the sign of the cross in front of an elaborate tomb which is said to contain the head of John the Baptist. About 10 percent of Syria’s 18 million people are Christian.
At the nearby outdoor Bazouriyeh market, Syrians crowded around, offering her dried figs and nuts and chatting with her. She bought some coconut sweets and looked at jewelry and carpets.
On Tuesday night, Pelosi met Syrian human rights activists, businessmen and religious leaders at the U.S. ambassador’s residence.
‘Better late than never’
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem was quoted Wednesday as saying that Pelosi and other members of Congress were “welcome” in Syria.
“Better late than never,” he told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anba in an interview. He said the visits were taking place because Americans and Europeans had realized that their policy of trying to isolate Syria had failed.
However, the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, was quoted as saying Syria was “wary of the sudden U.S. openness” and would respond cautiously.
“Syria will not hurriedly offer concessions when it refused to offer them under much greater pressure from the United States in the past,” he said in an interview with the Al-Baath newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling party.
“Syria will take a step forward every time the Americans take one,” he added.
Toward U.S. engagement with Syria?
Democrats have argued that the United States should engage its top rivals in the Mideast — Iran and Syria — to make headway in easing crises in Iraq, Lebanon and the Israeli-Arab peace process. Last year, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended talks with the two countries.
Bush rejected the recommendations. But in February, the United States joined a gathering of regional diplomats in Baghdad that included Iran and Syria for talks on Iraq.
Visiting neighboring Lebanon on Monday, Pelosi noted that Republican lawmakers had met Assad on Sunday without comment from the Bush administration.
She said she hoped to rebuild lost confidence between Washington and Damascus.
‘No illusions’
“We have no illusions but we have great hope,” said Pelosi, who met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah earlier Tuesday.
Relations between the United States and Syria reached a low point in early 2005 when Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus to protest the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese blamed Syria — which had troops in Lebanon at the time — for the assassination. Damascus denied involvement.
Washington has since succeeded in largely isolating Damascus, with its European and Arab allies shunning Assad. The last high-ranking U.S. official to visit Syria was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in January 2005.
The isolation, however, has begun to crumble in recent months, with visits by U.S. lawmakers and some European officials.
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"ok we wipe out Assad . then what?"
Among the arguments for this:
1) We break up the Russian Iranian axis from the Indian Ocean to the Baltic Sea, perhaps even denying the Russian naval base on the Syrian coast
2) We establish credibility in the Sunni world as a strong horse. Note the assemblage the Saudi have pulled together for Trump's visit.
3) Arguably this enables pressure on Iran viz both its nuke program and its ICBM program.
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"Among the arguments for this:
1) We break up the Russian Iranian axis from the Indian Ocean to the Baltic Sea, perhaps even denying the Russian naval base on the Syrian coast
2) We establish credibility in the Sunni world as a strong horse. Note the assemblage the Saudi have pulled together for Trump's visit.
3) Arguably this enables pressure on Iran viz both its nuke program and its ICBM program."
Sounds good, but ......
When has any intervention in the Middle East ever gone according to plan? How do you know we create a vacuum that allows Iran to move in even more strongly then before?
We are going to start another , forever occupation of predominantly Americans and a few token "international" forces who will ceaselessly be training the few but the brave who want American style democracy to fight against the rest?
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Fair points all-- OTOH what happens if we leave the Middle East to the Russian-Iranian Axis?
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Fair points all-- OTOH what happens if we leave the Middle East to the Russian-Iranian Axis?
Let it burn. The latest Sunni-Shia war can kick off and we can watch.
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• Syria: We need to better understand the level of cooperation between Russia and the U.S. in Syria. Despite the increase in tensions between the two countries over sanctions, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar has reported on a potential agreement for the U.S.-backed Syrian groups that control the al-Tanf border crossing to hand it over to Russian-backed Syrian forces.
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Politics & Policy
Israel's Campaign to Break the Iranian-Russian Alliance in Syria
One conflict held them together. Now it’s ending, and Iran may suffer.
by Eli Lake
26
June 1, 2018, 11:15 AM PDT
Power play.
Photographer: Ivan Sekretarev/AFP, via Getty Images
Since Iran and Russia reached an agreement in the summer of 2015 to coordinate a military campaign to save the regime of Syria's dictator, that war has held together an unholy alliance of those three states. It worked. Bashar al-Assad has withstood the uprising.
Now, as that war comes to a close, the Iranian-Russian alliance that saved the Assad regime appears to be fraying. Consider some recent developments. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Assad that foreign military forces will exit Syria at the onset of a political process to end the war. This week, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said all foreign forces – a reference to Iran and its allied militias – should immediately leave the Daraa province, which borders Israel. On Friday a leading Arab newspaper is reporting that Israel and Russia reached an agreement this week for just that.
All of this is significant for a few reasons. To start, being forced to withdraw from Syria would be a major blow to Iran’s prestige at a moment when its economy is bracing for crippling sanctions following America's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. What's more, the removal of Iran and its allied militias from Syria would stymie Tehran's plans for a land bridge to southern Lebanon – a supply line of advanced weapons to Iran's most important client, Hezbollah.
Preventing a permanent Iranian presence in Syria has been a top priority for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the last two years. In 2017 he pressed the Trump administration to commit to challenge Iranian forces in Syria after victory in the campaign against the Islamic State. He was not successful in Washington, so he tried something different: He went to Moscow.
Israel has had a channel to Moscow since Russia first established its air presence in Syria in fall 2015. This channel though was primarily to warn Russia's military when Israel launched airstrikes on convoys and shipments of arms to Hezbollah. In the last year, Netanyahu and his top ministers have stepped up diplomacy with Moscow to make the strategic case that it's not in Russia's interest to allow Iran to turn Syria into a client state like Lebanon, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
The latest such visit was on Thursday when the Israeli defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, flew to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart. Following those meetings, Lieberman tweeted: "The state of Israel appreciates Russia's understanding of our security concerns, particularly regarding the situation at our northern border."
So far, that understanding has resulted in a new policy from Russia toward Israeli airstrikes in Syria. Russia has the ability to protect Iranian forces with its own air force and air defense systems in Syria, but it has opted not to use them to stop Israel.
Elliott Abrams, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, told me Friday that Netanyahu has been explaining to Putin " the threat to Israeli security posed by Iran's presence in Syria." Abrams said the message was initially asking Putin to constrain Iran, which Putin had been unwilling to do. But over time, Russia has changed its position. "We see there is a gap between Iranian and Russian interests, and Netanyahu has been explaining that," Abrams said. "It seems to be coming to fruition now."
An element of the Israeli strategy has also been to back up the diplomacy with force in Syria. In the last two months, the Israelis have gone farther into Syrian territory to strike Iranian targets than they had before. In April Israeli airstrikes hit a base deep in Syrian territory, where Iranian commanders were coordinating militias. On May 10, a day after Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, Iran and Israel exchanged strikes, with Israel hitting major Iranian infrastructure inside Syria.
What's notable about the May 10 strike is that no Russian officials condemned it. The day before, Netanyahu was in Moscow for meetings with Putin. Netanyahu told Israeli reporters after he returned home that he did not expect Russia to try to protect Iranian targets from Israel.
It's too soon to say whether Israel's diplomacy with Russia will result in the removal of Iran and its allied militias from Syria altogether. A senior Israeli diplomat warned me this week that no agreement has been made for all of Syria, and that Israel would not be satisfied with a partial agreement to only keep Iranian forces away from its border.
Even so, Netanyahu has succeeded diplomatically where the Obama and Trump administrations had failed. The prime minister understands something the Americans have forgotten: Diplomacy can be effective only if the other side believes you are willing to use force if it fails.
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Iran: Iranian President Hasan Rouhani told French President Emmanuel Macron that his government has not ruled out withdrawing Iranian troops from Syria, if there were no longer a need for foreign troops there. This comes about a month after Russia called for foreign troops to leave Syria. Under what conditions could there be a withdrawal of foreign troops? What would be Iran’s motivations for leaving Syria, and is this the first time Rouhani has made such a comment? Watch for any reactions from the U.S. and Turkey.
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Putin’s Confliction Zone
How the Russians conned Trump in southwestern Syria.
Syrians displaced by government forces' bombardment in the southern Daraa province countryside ride in tractors and trucks near the town of Shayyah, south of the city of Daraa, towards the border area between the Israeli-occupied Golan heights and Syria, June 28.
Syrians displaced by government forces' bombardment in the southern Daraa province countryside ride in tractors and trucks near the town of Shayyah, south of the city of Daraa, towards the border area between the Israeli-occupied Golan heights and Syria, June 28. Photo: mohamad abazeed/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
By The Editorial Board
June 28, 2018 6:47 p.m. ET
47 COMMENTS
The White House has confirmed that Donald Trump will meet with Vladimir Putin at a July 16 summit. Whatever else happens, let’s hope Mr. Trump doesn’t make another agreement like the one his Administration struck with Russia in 2017 for a “deconfliction” zone in southwestern Syria.
Bashar Assad’s regime is now firing artillery and conducting airstrikes on rebel areas in Daraa and Quneitra provinces near Jordan and Israel with Russian and Iranian help. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports at least 90 people have died and the United Nations estimates about 45,000 civilians have fled.
The attacks violate a July 2017 agreement among Russia, Jordan and the U.S. to “de-escalate” conflict in the area so the countries could turn their attention to fighting Islamic State. A State Department official said at the time that the U.S. was “morally bound where there’s an opportunity to bring about a cease-fire to save people’s lives and to de-escalate the violence.” Morally bound apparently doesn’t translate well to Russian.
The cease-fire was a head fake, which then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Mr. Trump were eager to believe. The lull in fighting in the southwest allowed Mr. Assad to press offensives elsewhere, especially against rebel strongholds in the Damascus suburbs in May. That campaign is now done, so Mr. Assad can turn to wiping out the rebels in the southwest, no matter the previous arrangement.
The Trump Administration has reacted by waving its hands and begging Mr. Putin to stop. Last month State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert headlined a statement “Assad Regime Intentions in the Southwest De-escalation Zone,” imploring Russia to “live up to its self-professed commitments.” This month Ms. Nauert issued another statement to “request that Russia fulfill its commitments.” Last week U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley issued another entreaty. Begging is embarrassing.
Mr. Assad and his backers figure that Mr. Trump wants to proclaim mission accomplished in Syria and bring U.S. troops home. The White House’s limp reaction to the fighting in southwestern Syria shows they’re probably right. Mr. Putin has been watching all this and wondering if Mr. Trump can be conned as easily and as often as Barack Obama was.
Appeared in the June 29, 2018, print edition.
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https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/09/25/john-bolton-us-not-leaving-syria-unless-iran-does/
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Couple of days ago I read this from the Washington hoarse compost:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/syria/us-troops-in-syria/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2baca524c3dd
Then today I read this :
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/19/donald-trump-signals-troop-withdrawals-from-syria/
Like one day Trump - willing to "shut down " Fed gov for wall money then next day it is the opposite
I have no idea what or who to believe
don't know why all this happening .
is it conflicting media reports?
is it fake news?
is it Donald changing his mind from day to day ?
is he finally cracking from the strain from those who ceaselessly try to destroy him in every way imaginaageable ?
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The decision to leave makes me quite uneasy. That said,
a) He ran on getting us out of needless wars;
b) he defined our mission as getting ISIS, not much more;
c) this is far from the first time he has wanted to make this move
d) there is, as has been noted here in not inconsiderable detail for several years, the complexity of Turkey's strategy in all this-- is Turkey going to serve to block Iranian hegemony? Are we going to let the Kurds get fukked over yet again as part of trying to reach an understanding with Turkey? Turkey controls the Bosphorus-- what implications for Ukraine? For dealings with Russia?
That said, my initial reaction is that this is a mistake.
Team Trump has been weak in understanding that Lebanon is controlled by Hamas; if Iran establishes land bridge then likelihood of war with Israel increases etc
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"The decision to leave makes me quite uneasy.
...
my initial reaction is that this is a mistake."
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I agree. This looks like a mistake.
Stay until ISIS is defeated? Our exit last time (out of Iraq) under Pres. Obama is what enabled the rise of ISIS.
We should maintain some presence - if we have any right or justification to do so and if we can effectively defend those who stay.
Are we declaring Syria a victory or a defeat? If this is a victory then we have earned some right to stay behind to ensure the 'peace'. Did we leave Germany or Japan on the day fighting ended? What did we negotiate in exchange for our help and our leaving? Maybe something Trump isn't disclosing. If nothing, this is Obama level thinking all over again.
"Team Trump has been weak in understanding that Lebanon is controlled by Hamas"
Hezbollah? I also think Pompeo and Bolton get it as much as we do. Mattis probably too. Either the plan is better than what appears on the surface or other voices in the administration or other considerations won out over these high officials.
ISIS and Islamic jihad wanted a caliphate and began to conquer and form one. The goal isn't limited to the middle east. They want Spain too, France, Britain, Sweden, etc. and the US eventually.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Near_East_ISIS_controlled_areas-fr.svg/460px-Near_East_ISIS_controlled_areas-fr.svg.png)
ISIS controlled areas, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISIL_territorial_claims
To call it a thousand year war from their side is an understatement. Does anyone believe they have given up?
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It really irks me when the LEft accuses W of mass murder
We are not killing Arabs - they kill each other.
indeed we got rid of Saddam a mass tyrant and then they go ahead and kill each other even more
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-executed-600-iraqi-prisoners-rights-group-says/
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"Team Trump has been weak in understanding that Lebanon is controlled by Hamas"
"Hezbollah?"
Correct. My brain fart.
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By Raja Abdulrahim
Dec. 23, 2018 10:00 a.m. ET
AL-DADAT, Syria—On a warm October morning, Mona al-Mukhlif set out with her life’s possessions for the city of Raqqa to live with her two children. Several roadside checkpoints later, not one-third of the way there, she was nearly out of money and stranded.
“I’m stuck here until someone has pity on me,” said Ms. Mukhlif, who is 55, sitting on a rock by the side of the road surrounded by pots and pans, foam mattresses and a baby carriage. “They’re all thieves.”
Syria’s nearly eight-year war has gutted the country’s economy. Inflation has soared and output has fallen. Factories and industrial zones have been reduced to rubble. Three-quarters of working age Syrians are either unemployed or inactive, the World Bank said last year. But roadside extortion is still booming. The business has become an enduring feature of Syria’s wartime economy, with pro-government soldiers and militias as well as antiregime rebels exploiting insecurity to justify their checkpoints, where bribe-taking and kidnapping are rife. The most lucrative ones—often taking advantage of the humanitarian need arising from a battle or siege—are sometimes referred to as millionaire checkpoints.
“It’s quite pervasive to the point that it becomes its own industry,” says Alex Simon, Syria program director for Synaps, a Beirut-based research firm that has tracked the social and economic impact of Syria’s conflict. A report from Synaps described the country’s economy as “cannibalistic,” where “impoverished segments of Syrian society increasingly survive by preying upon one another.”
Internal borders that divide warring parties mean ordinary Syrians must cough up cash to navigate daily life, even as the conflict begins to wind down. The predatory practices also ratchet up the costs of goods that cross the country, as the same checkpoints which extract bribes also impose internal tariffs.
Bribes are factored into bus and taxi fares, residents say. As they pass through checkpoints, experienced taxi and bus drivers will often reach out and pay the allotted amount—sometimes cash, sometimes a carton of cigarettes.
Factories and industrial zones in Syria have been reduced to rubble. Above, a destroyed factory last year.
The war’s disruption to industry and the reduced incentive to work has weighed heavily on Syria’s economy, the World Bank said. The bank estimates that during fighting from 2011 until the end of 2016, Syria shed an estimated $226 billion of its economic output. A recovery could take decades, it said.
As much of the fighting has subsided, the Syrian government says it is trying to tackle various forms of corruption to spur any recovery.
In July, the Syrian government cabinet approved a number of measures to curb corruption by individuals and establishments, saying that nobody is above the law; it added that no leniency would be shown in dealing with the problem now that the country was on the cusp of reconstruction, according to Syrian state media.
The Syrian government didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Residents trying to flee fighting in northern Aleppo province earlier this year confronted demands for thousands of dollars to pay smugglers to cross regime-controlled checkpoints, according to Abdulrahman Ahmad, who paid 1,000,000 Syrian pounds, or nearly $2,000 for himself and his wife. The smugglers paid kickbacks to the Syrian soldiers, he said.
Unlike such millionaire checkpoints, more modest operations have allowed some rebel outfits to pay salaries, buy food and purchase weapons. A rebel commander in northern Syria said his group and others have turned to checkpoints to make up for lost foreign funding.
Roadside bribes aren’t the only means of wringing revenue from Syrians.
A camp north of Raqqa for internally displaced people.
A camp north of Raqqa for internally displaced people. Photo: Ahmed Deeb for The Wall Street Journal
In August, Human Rights Watch released a report accusing the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria of unlawfully restricting the movement of people living in internal displacement camps, by confiscating IDs and preventing them from leaving the camps at will. Some camp residents had to pay officials or smugglers to get out to access health care or reunite with their families, according to the report.
“Unfortunately we have seen that people have tried to benefit from the extreme loss and suffering of Syrians,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “There has been no limit to the level of exploitation.”
An official at one of the camps mentioned in the report defended the policy for security reasons and insisted it was easy for residents to obtain passes, renewed every 10 days, to enter and leave. He denied that people had to pay to get out.
Abductions also appear increasingly common. Kidnapping victims—once mostly the country’s wealthy businessmen—now include aid and medical workers. They are seen as key to a big payday, given that humanitarian aid is one of the few sources of funding in some parts of the country.
In October, the head of a large charity operating in Syria was kidnapped at a checkpoint, according to the organization’s security supervisor, who didn’t want his name or organization identified for fear it would make them more of a target. The security supervisor said the kidnappers asked the man while he was blindfolded how much to ask in ransom.
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Hours later, though, the kidnappers released the charity organization’s chief without a ransom being paid because of the local attention his case had drawn, the security supervisor said.
In September, Mr. Ahmad’s brother-in-law, a father of four who works with the Syrian government’s media agency, was kidnapped by a rebel group after being pulled off a bus at a checkpoint. Kidnappers, Mr. Ahmad said, wanted $5,000.
“If we pay they’ll let him go, but if we don’t give them money they’ll keep him locked up,” Mr. Ahmad said. “Where are we going to get $5,000?”
His abductors didn’t seem to care. By November Mr. Ahmad’s brother-in-law still wasn’t free, and his ransom price had gone up to $6,000.
“The big fish eat the little fish,” said Mr. Ahmad.
Back at the al-Dadat checkpoint, the stranded Ms. Mukhlif waited to find a driver to ferry her across yet another checkpoint on the way to Raqqa. A man in a pickup truck offered to drive her for 1,000 Syrian pounds, or about $2, to the square of a nearby town where she could catch a bus to Raqqa.
The ride would only get her slightly closer to her destination, but she could at least afford it. She still wasn’t sure she would have enough money to reach her children, but she climbed in, her possessions sloppily thrown into the back, and the truck drove off in a cloud of dust.
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U.S.’s Mideast Pullout, Mattis Exit Alarm Europeans
Trump’s unilateral decision to remove troops from Syria and Afghanistan sparks fresh calls in Europe for greater strategic independence from Washington
By Laurence Norman and
Daniel Michaels
Dec. 22, 2018 7:00 a.m. ET
BRUSSELS—President Trump’s unilateral decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan combined with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s planned departure have sparked unease across Europe and fresh calls for greater strategic independence from Washington.
The planned quick exit of American troops surprised European diplomats who had been in talks in recent weeks with the U.S. State Department on how to jointly stabilize areas of Syria and Iraq where Islamic State extremists were uprooted.
Consultation before the announcement “would have been helpful,” said German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer on Friday, voicing a frustration expressed across Europe.
European officials say they worry that Russia and Iran will fill the gap of diminishing U.S. presence and cite a growing estrangement in a trans-Atlantic alliance that has helped sustain peace and prosperity for generations. Diplomats expressed a sense of betrayal because Europe faces much greater threats from terrorists, missiles or refugees from these countries than the U.S. does.
Syrians fleeing Islamic State and Syria’s civil war were among more than one million people who crossed Europe’s borders in 2015, roiling Europe’s political landscape to this day.
In Afghanistan, Europeans have thousands of troops alongside U.S. forces as part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission to support the fragile government and fight the Taliban. U.S. cuts there potentially put remaining forces at greater risk, just as many European governments were adding troops under pressure from the U.S. The Europeans are now likely to reassess their commitments.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, left, visited allied troops in Afghanistan in 2016. Europeans are concerned about the planned U.S. troop departure there.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, left, visited allied troops in Afghanistan in 2016. Europeans are concerned about the planned U.S. troop departure there. Photo: Gregor Fischer/Zuma Press
Beyond Mr. Trump’s decisions, his unpredictability rekindles anxiety many Europeans felt with his surprise 2016 election victory. “We just see now all the questions coming back that came two years ago,” said Ulrich Speck at the German Marshall Fund, a think tank in Berlin.
Mr. Trump’s abrupt decisions on Syria and Afghanistan follow his decision early this year to pull the U.S. from the 2015 Iran deal aimed at containing Tehran’s nuclear program. He acted despite European entreaties not to and efforts in Paris, London and Berlin to accommodate his demands by placing additional restrictions on Iran.
Europeans are also concerned that Mr. Trump’s withdrawal could further embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has actively supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and—closer to Europe—is supporting rebels in Ukraine.
“Deterrence is rooted in perception,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former Italian ambassador to NATO. “Trump has already undermined it in words. Syria’s withdrawal undermines it in deeds. Moscow is watching.”
U.S. officials say the Trump administration is not retreating from the world stage and will continue to press its global influence. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently told an audience in Brussels that Mr. Trump “is returning the United States to its traditional, central leadership role in the world.”
Examples he cited include U.S. renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, its pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and its demand that the World Trade Organization and other multilateral bodies restructure or lose U.S. support.
Still, unilateral U.S. military and diplomatic moves have prompted growing calls in Europe for greater strategic independence. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both recently advocated creation of a European military force. In Berlin on Friday, the new leader of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said it was time to reflect on “greater responsibility for Europe in the face of developments in the U.S.”
Following through on such calls has proven difficult. Europeans are struggling to coordinate their military planning and adapt to less support from Washington despite years of U.S. admonishments to spend more on defense. Mr. Trump has lambasted European NATO allies for failing to meet commitments but he has only amplified a longstanding U.S. grievance.
In 2011, President Obama’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, warned European NATO members of “a dim, if not dismal future for the trans-Atlantic alliance” unless Europeans increased military spending. Only three of NATO’s 27 European members now meet their 2014 commitments to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense and fewer than a dozen have plans to do so by 2024.
President Trump, speaking Friday in Washington, didn’t warn U.S. allies in Europe about his plans to remove U.S. troops from Syria, prompting frustration across the continent.
President Trump, speaking Friday in Washington, didn’t warn U.S. allies in Europe about his plans to remove U.S. troops from Syria, prompting frustration across the continent. Photo: joshua roberts/Reuters
Still, Europeans have been heartened by increased U.S. military spending and deployments in Europe to counter Russia since Mr. Trump took office. Many credited Mr. Mattis, a retired four-star marine general and strong advocate for NATO and Europe. His resignation Thursday in protest against Mr. Trump’s decisions on Syria and Afghanistan dismayed Europeans.
“What this signals—particularly the departure of Jim Mattis—is that the bastion of the trans-Atlantic alliance in the Trump administration is gone,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the International Affairs Institute think tank in Rome and a defense-policy adviser to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. She sees Mr. Trump’s other top advisers as a mix of isolationists and interventionists.
“They don’t share very much but what they do share is a complete disdain for international institutions and multilateralism—and ultimately those are the things that the trans-Atlantic alliance is made up of.”
Mr. Trump’s decisions could also affect diplomacy at its day-to-day level.
Marc Otte, a former European EU Special Representative for the Middle East and an adviser to the Belgian Foreign Ministry, said European-U.S. cooperation on planning for parts of Syria freed from Islamic State had been premised on a continued U.S. troop presence providing security and helping with logistics.
“The announcement is not only another blow to the concept of U.S. alliances and to U.S. allies, Mr. Otte said. “It’s also a blow to people who were setting up programs” in Syria.
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The toddler in the backseat doesn't get consulted about the drive.
U.S.’s Mideast Pullout, Mattis Exit Alarm Europeans
Trump’s unilateral decision to remove troops from Syria and Afghanistan sparks fresh calls in Europe for greater strategic independence from Washington
By Laurence Norman and
Daniel Michaels
Dec. 22, 2018 7:00 a.m. ET
BRUSSELS—President Trump’s unilateral decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan combined with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s planned departure have sparked unease across Europe and fresh calls for greater strategic independence from Washington.
The planned quick exit of American troops surprised European diplomats who had been in talks in recent weeks with the U.S. State Department on how to jointly stabilize areas of Syria and Iraq where Islamic State extremists were uprooted.
Consultation before the announcement “would have been helpful,” said German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer on Friday, voicing a frustration expressed across Europe.
European officials say they worry that Russia and Iran will fill the gap of diminishing U.S. presence and cite a growing estrangement in a trans-Atlantic alliance that has helped sustain peace and prosperity for generations. Diplomats expressed a sense of betrayal because Europe faces much greater threats from terrorists, missiles or refugees from these countries than the U.S. does. (Then put on your big girl panties and take care of yourselves.)
Syrians fleeing Islamic State and Syria’s civil war were among more than one million people who crossed Europe’s borders in 2015, roiling Europe’s political landscape to this day.
In Afghanistan, Europeans have thousands of troops alongside U.S. forces as part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission to support the fragile government and fight the Taliban. U.S. cuts there potentially put remaining forces at greater risk, just as many European governments were adding troops under pressure from the U.S. The Europeans are now likely to reassess their commitments.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, left, visited allied troops in Afghanistan in 2016. Europeans are concerned about the planned U.S. troop departure there.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, left, visited allied troops in Afghanistan in 2016. Europeans are concerned about the planned U.S. troop departure there. Photo: Gregor Fischer/Zuma Press
Beyond Mr. Trump’s decisions, his unpredictability rekindles anxiety many Europeans felt with his surprise 2016 election victory. “We just see now all the questions coming back that came two years ago,” said Ulrich Speck at the German Marshall Fund, a think tank in Berlin.
Mr. Trump’s abrupt decisions on Syria and Afghanistan follow his decision early this year to pull the U.S. from the 2015 Iran deal aimed at containing Tehran’s nuclear program. He acted despite European entreaties not to and efforts in Paris, London and Berlin to accommodate his demands by placing additional restrictions on Iran.
Europeans are also concerned that Mr. Trump’s withdrawal could further embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has actively supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and—closer to Europe—is supporting rebels in Ukraine.
“Deterrence is rooted in perception,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former Italian ambassador to NATO. “Trump has already undermined it in words. Syria’s withdrawal undermines it in deeds. Moscow is watching.”
U.S. officials say the Trump administration is not retreating from the world stage and will continue to press its global influence. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently told an audience in Brussels that Mr. Trump “is returning the United States to its traditional, central leadership role in the world.”
Examples he cited include U.S. renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, its pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and its demand that the World Trade Organization and other multilateral bodies restructure or lose U.S. support.
Still, unilateral U.S. military and diplomatic moves have prompted growing calls in Europe for greater strategic independence. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both recently advocated creation of a European military force. In Berlin on Friday, the new leader of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said it was time to reflect on “greater responsibility for Europe in the face of developments in the U.S.”
Following through on such calls has proven difficult. Europeans are struggling to coordinate their military planning and adapt to less support from Washington despite years of U.S. admonishments to spend more on defense. Mr. Trump has lambasted European NATO allies for failing to meet commitments but he has only amplified a longstanding U.S. grievance.
In 2011, President Obama’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, warned European NATO members of “a dim, if not dismal future for the trans-Atlantic alliance” unless Europeans increased military spending. Only three of NATO’s 27 European members now meet their 2014 commitments to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense and fewer than a dozen have plans to do so by 2024.
President Trump, speaking Friday in Washington, didn’t warn U.S. allies in Europe about his plans to remove U.S. troops from Syria, prompting frustration across the continent.
President Trump, speaking Friday in Washington, didn’t warn U.S. allies in Europe about his plans to remove U.S. troops from Syria, prompting frustration across the continent. Photo: joshua roberts/Reuters
Still, Europeans have been heartened by increased U.S. military spending and deployments in Europe to counter Russia since Mr. Trump took office. Many credited Mr. Mattis, a retired four-star marine general and strong advocate for NATO and Europe. His resignation Thursday in protest against Mr. Trump’s decisions on Syria and Afghanistan dismayed Europeans.
“What this signals—particularly the departure of Jim Mattis—is that the bastion of the trans-Atlantic alliance in the Trump administration is gone,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the International Affairs Institute think tank in Rome and a defense-policy adviser to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. She sees Mr. Trump’s other top advisers as a mix of isolationists and interventionists.
“They don’t share very much but what they do share is a complete disdain for international institutions and multilateralism—and ultimately those are the things that the trans-Atlantic alliance is made up of.”
Mr. Trump’s decisions could also affect diplomacy at its day-to-day level.
Marc Otte, a former European EU Special Representative for the Middle East and an adviser to the Belgian Foreign Ministry, said European-U.S. cooperation on planning for parts of Syria freed from Islamic State had been premised on a continued U.S. troop presence providing security and helping with logistics.
“The announcement is not only another blow to the concept of U.S. alliances and to U.S. allies, Mr. Otte said. “It’s also a blow to people who were setting up programs” in Syria.
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https://www.lawfareblog.com/story-american-islamic-state-member-allegedly-captured-syria
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https://www.lawfareblog.com/story-american-islamic-state-member-allegedly-captured-syria
Very strange, how such a peaceful religion is so misunderstood by its adherents.
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hey, why be an ophthalmologist
when one can become a murderous tyrant instead:
Wikipedia:
***Medicine: 1988–1994
In 1988, Assad graduated from medical school and began working as an army doctor at the Tishrin Military Hospital on the outskirts of Damascus.[37][38] Four years later, he settled in London to start postgraduate training in ophthalmology at the Western Eye Hospital.[39] He was described as a "geeky I.T. guy" during his time in London.[40] Bashar had few political aspirations,[41] and his father had been grooming Bashar's older brother Bassel as the future president.[42] However, Bassel died in a car accident in 1994 and Bashar was recalled to the Syrian Army shortly thereafter.
Bassel al-Assad, Bashar's older brother, died in 1994, paving the way for Bashar's future presidency.
Rise to power: 1994–2000
Soon after the death of Bassel, Hafez al-Assad decided to make Bashar the new heir apparent.[43] Over the next six and a half years, until his death in 2000, Hafez prepared Bashar for taking over power.
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TTT
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https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-isis-20160327-story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/16/us-military-syrian-isis-fighters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsAH6_3XLtA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2L0Wy2rM3Ic0UjSzhQ1X-_Yw6FtwdtthuZU5RnIhJkWPevnE4IFffMGHM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/07/joe-biden-is-the-only-honest-man-in-washington/
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The ever thoughtful Israeli journalist Caroline Glick
http://carolineglick.com/al-baghdadi-and-trumps-syrian-chessboard/
Articles
Al-Baghdadi and Trump’s Syrian Chessboard
11/01/2019
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US President Donald Trump’s many critics insist he has no idea what he is doing in Syria. The assassination of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by US Special Forces showed this criticism is misplaced. Trump has a very good idea of what he is doing in Syria, not only regarding ISIS, but regarding the diverse competing actors on the ground.
Regarding ISIS, the obvious lesson of the Baghdadi raid is that Trump’s critics’ claim that his withdrawal of US forces from Syria’s border with Turkey meant that he was going to allow ISIS to regenerate was utterly baseless.
The raid did more than that. Baghdadi’s assassination, and Trump’s discussion of the mass murderer’s death showed that Trump has not merely maintained faith with the fight against ISIS and its allied jihadist groups. He has fundamentally changed the US’s counter-terror fighting doctrine, particularly as it relates to psychological warfare against jihadists.
Following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration initiated a public diplomacy campaign in the Arab-Islamic world. Rather than attack and undermine the jihadist doctrine that insists that it is the religious duty of Muslims to fight with the aim of conquering the non-Muslim world and to establish a global Islamic empire or caliphate, the Bush strategy was to ignore the jihad in the hopes of appeasing its adherents. The basic line of the Bush administration’s public diplomacy campaign was to embrace the mantra that Islam is peace, and assert that the US loves Islam because the US seeks peace.
Along these lines, in 2005, then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice prohibited the State Department, FBI and US intelligence agencies from using “controversial” terms like “radical Islam,” “jihad” and “radical Islam” in official documents.
The Obama administration took the Bush administration’s obsequious approach to strategic communications several steps further. President Barack Obama and his advisors went out of their way to express sympathy for the “Islamic world.”
The Obama administration supported the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood against Egypt’s long-serving president and US ally Hosni Mubarak and backed Mubarak’s overthrow with the full knowledge that the only force powerful enough to replace him was the Muslim Brotherhood.
As for the Shiite jihadists, Obama’s refusal to support the pro-democracy protesters in Iran’s attempted Green Revolution in 2009 placed the US firmly on the side of the jihadist, imperialist regime of the ayatollahs and against the Iranian people.
In short, Obama took Bush’s rhetoric of appeasement and turned it into America’s actual policy.
The Bush-Obama sycophancy won the US no good will. Al Qaeda, which led the insurgency against US forces in Iraq with Iranian and Syrian support was not moved to diminish its aggression and hatred of the US due to the administration’s efforts.
It was during the Obama years that ISIS built its caliphate on a third of the Iraqi-Syrian landmass and opened slave markets and launched a mass campaign of filmed beheadings in the name of Islam.
In his announcement of Baghdadi’s death on Sunday, Trump unceremoniously abandoned his predecessors’ strategy of sucking up to jihadists. Unlike Obama, who went to great lengths to talk about the respect US forces who killed Osama bin Laden accorded the terrorist mass-murderer’s body, “in accordance with Islamic practice,” Trump mocked Baghdadi, the murdering, raping, slaving “caliph.”
Baghdadi, Trump said, died “like a dog, like a coward.”
Baghdadi died, Trump said, “whimpering and crying.”
Trump posted a picture on his Twitter page of the Delta Force combat dog who brought about Baghdadi’s death by chasing him into a tunnel under his compound and provoking him to set off the explosive belt he was wearing, and kill himself and the two children who were with him.
Trump later described the animal who killed Allah’s self-appointed representative on earth as “Our ‘K-9,’ as they call it. I call it a dog. A beautiful dog – a talented dog.”
Obama administration officials angrily condemned Trump’s remarks. For instance, former CIA deputy director Mike Morell said he was “bothered” by Trump’s “locker room talk,” which he said, “inspire other people” to conduct revenge attacks.
His colleague, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired admiral James Winnefeld said that Trump’s “piling on” describing Baghdadi as a “dog” sent a signal to his followers “that could cause them to lash out possibly more harshly in the wake.”
These criticisms are ridiculous. ISIS terrorists have richly proven they require no provocation to commit mass murder. They only need the opportunity.
Moreover, Trump’s constant use of the term “dog” and employment of canine imagery is highly significant. Dogs are considered “unclean” in Islam. In Islamic societies, “dog” is the worst name you can call a person.
It is hard to imagine that Baghdadi’s death at the paws of a dog is likely to rally many Muslims to his side. To the contrary, it is likely instead to demoralize his followers. What’s the point of joining a group of losers who believe in a fake prophet who died like a coward while chased by a “a beautiful dog – a talented dog?”
Then there is Russia.
Trump’s critics insist that his decision to abandon the US position along the Syrian border with Turkey effectively surrendered total control over Syria to Russia. But that is far from the case. The American presence along the border didn’t harm Russia. It helped Russia. It freed Russian President Vladimir Putin from having to deal with Turkey. Now that the Americans have left the border zone, Turkish President Recep Erdogan is Putin’s problem.
And he is not the main problem that Trump has made for Putin in Syria.
Putin’s biggest problem in Syria is financial. The Russian economy is sunk in a deep recession due to the drop in global oil prices. Putin had planned to finance his Syrian operation with Syrian oil revenues. To this end, in January 2018, he signed an agreement with Syrian President Bashar Assad that effectively transferred the rights to the Syrian oil to Russia.
But Putin hadn’t taken Trump into consideration.
US forces did not withdraw from all of their positions in Syria last month. They maintained their control over al-Tanf airbase which controls the Syrian border with Jordan and Iraq.
More importantly, from Russia’s perspective, the US has not relinquished its military presence adjacent to Syria’s oil facilities in the Deir Azzour province on the eastern side of the Euphrates River. Indeed, according to media reports, the US is reinforcing its troop strength in Deir Azzour to ensure continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields.
To understand how high a priority control over Syria’s oil installations is for Putin it is worth recalling what happened in February 2018.
On February 7, 2018, a month after Putin and Assad signed their oil agreement, a massive joint force comprised of Russian mercenaries, Syrian commandos and Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces crossed the Euphrates River with the aim of seizing the town of Khusham adjacent to the Conoco oil fields. Facing them were forty US Special Forces deployed with Kurdish and Arab SDF forces. The US forces directed a massive air assault against the attacking forces which killed some 500 soldiers and ended the assault. Accounts regarding the number of Russian mercenaries killed start at 80 and rise to several hundred.
The American counter-attack caused grievous harm to the Russian force in Syria. Putin has kept the number of Russian military forces in Syria low by outsourcing much of the fighting to Russian military contractors. The aim of the failed operation was to enable those mercenary forces to seize the means to finance their own operations, and get them off the Kremlin payroll.
Since then, Putin has tried to dislodge the US forces from Khusham at least one more time, only to be met with a massive demonstration of force.
The continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields and installations requires Putin to continue directly funding his war in Syria. So long as this remains the case, given Russia’s financial constraints, Putin is likely to go to great lengths to restrain his Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah partners and their aggressive designs against Israel in order to prevent a costly war.
In other words, by preventing Russia from seizing Syria’s oil fields, Trump is forcing Russia to behave in a manner that protects American interests in Syria.
The focus of most of the criticism against Trump’s Syria policies has been his alleged abandonment of the Syrian Kurds to the mercies of their Turkish enemies. But over the past week we learned that this is not the case. As Trump explained, continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields provides the Kurdish-controlled Syrian Democratic Forces with the financial and military wherewithal to support and defend its people and their operations.
Moreover, details of Baghdadi’s assassination point to continued close cooperation between US and Kurdish forces. According to accounts of the raid, the Kurds provided the Americans with key intelligence that enabled US forces to pinpoint Baghdadi’s location.
As to Turkey, both Baghdadi and ISIS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Mujahir, who was killed by US forces on Tuesday, were located in areas of eastern Syria controlled by Turkey. The Americans didn’t try to hide this fact.
The Turkish operation in eastern Syria is reportedly raising Erdogan’s popularity at home. But it far from clear that the benefit he receives from his actions will be long-lasting. Turkey’s Syrian operation is exposing the NATO member’s close ties to ISIS and its allied terror groups. This exposure in and of itself is making the case for downgrading US strategic ties with its erstwhile ally.
Even worse for Turkey, due to Trump’s public embrace of Erdogan, the Democrats are targeting the Turkish autocrat as Enemy Number 1. On Tuesday, with the support of Republican lawmakers who have long recognized Erdogan’s animosity to US interests and allies, the Democratic-led House overwhelmingly passed a comprehensive sanctions resolution against Turkey.
The al-Baghdadi assassination and related events demonstrate that Trump is not flying blind in Syria. He is implementing a multifaceted set of policies that are based on the strengths, weaknesses and priorities of the various actors on a ground in ways that advance US interests at the expense of its foes and to the benefit of its allies.
Originally published in Israel Hayom.
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Retaking Syria. The Syrian government is reclaiming a lot of the territory it lost in the course of the country's civil war, thanks in no small part to Russian airstrikes. In the past weekend alone, the regime has consolidated control over 12 townships and villages west of Aleppo, a province once considered one of Syria’s most important financial hubs. The regime’s complete control over the M5 highway and seizure of Sahraa and Nubl, close to the Syrian-Turkish border, has enabled forces to envelop and pressure Turkish positions in eastern Idlib.
Turkey has since reinforced what many are calling a “steel line” along Turkish observation posts outside the city of Idlib, dispatching a convoy of 100 vehicles and 45 armored personnel carriers, howitzers and commando units to halt Syria’s advance west into the city. Turkey and Syria exchange the occasional gunfire, but so far no major clashes have been reported.
Russia and the U.S., meanwhile, continue to compete for Turkey’s limited cooperation in Syria. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently met with an official from the U.S. State Department, and even spoke on the phone with President Donald Trump, who praised the Turkish leader’s efforts to prevent a “humanitarian disaster” in Syria and condemned Russia’s support for the government in Damascus. And last weekend, the foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey met to discuss possible avenues of cooperation in Syria. (Those discussions continue today.) Even so, it’ll be difficult for the two to find much middle ground. Ankara is preoccupied with preventing migrant flows into Turkey and strengthening a buffer zone along its southern border, while Russia is focused on helping its ally Syria retake its country.
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Iran Trying to Return to 'Business as Usual' in Syria
by Yaakov Lappin
Special to IPT News
June 11, 2020
https://www.investigativeproject.org/8433/iran-trying-to-return-to-business-as-usual-in
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New U.S. Sanctions Will Keep Syria Firmly in Russia and Iran's Corner
2 MINS READ
Jun 22, 2020 | 10:00 GMT
New U.S. sanctions against the Syrian government will likely leave Damascus dependent on Russian and Iranian support, while deterring aid from potential future partners such as China and the United Arab Emirates. On June 17, the United States sanctioned 39 individuals associated with the Syrian government, including President Bashar al Assad and his wife. Washington also indicated that more sanctions were to come in order to force the Syrian government back into U.N.-led peace negotiations.
With stronger U.S. sanctions now in effect, countries that have previously shown interest in providing Syria aid are unlikely to see many opportunities in the war-torn country's reconstruction. The Syrian economy — already wracked by nine years of civil war, the loss of vital trade due to nearby Lebanon's economic meltdown, and the now likely spread of COVID-19 inside Syria — has very few ways to reverse its current downward trajectory without reconstruction, which the U.N. estimates will require $500 billion in foreign aid. But Syria's closest allies, Russia and Iran, are unwilling and unable to provide that sum due to their own constrained budgets, which has left Damascus looking for other potential partners, including the United Arab Emirates and China. Following sanctions, however, these countries and their businesses are unlikely to risk incurring potentially powerful U.S. sanctions in pursuit of economically limited reconstruction contracts in Syria, leaving Damascus with Moscow and Tehran as its primary links with the international community.
New U.S. sanctions will likely leave Syria dependent on Russian and Iranian support, while deterring aid from potential future partners such as China and the United Arab Emirates.
The sanctions will also exacerbate Syria's already dire economic situation, which is producing dissent from inside Syrian loyalist territories, and increasingly threatens the stability of the al Assad family's hold on the state. The financial fallout could undermine the Syrian government's military capabilities, creating a more permissive environment for militants, including those affiliated with the Islamic State and al Qaeda, to regroup and potentially expand their operations in the country.
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The Caesar Act and Assad’s Moment of Reckoning
The measure is aimed as much at Syria’s patrons as it is Syria itself.
By: Hilal Khashan
Last December, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act – with strong bipartisan Congressional support – to hold the Syrian regime accountable for atrocities committed by security forces against protesters who demanded political reforms. The measure was born from a report prepared by the Syria Study Group of the United States Institute of Peace arguing that to safeguard its national security, the U.S. ought to quit downplaying its role in shaping the outcome of the Syrian conflict. The report rejected Bashar Assad’s claim that his government had won the war and that the world must accept its legitimacy as the sole representative of the Syrian people.
The Caesar Act took effect earlier this month as the familiar battle lines in the war are wearing down. Russia has consolidated its naval and air presence along the coast and reached terms with Turkey to de-escalate tensions in northwestern Syria. The Kurds control most of the northeast. The Islamic State is defeated, and its remnants have gone underground. The U.S. has been criticized for years for being able to articulate what it didn’t want in Syria but never what it wanted. The Caesar Act means to fix this, not just in Syria but also in Lebanon.
Breaking the Alawites
The origins of the act are nearly as old as the Syrian conflict itself. In June 2012, the Action Group for Syria held a peace conference in Geneva, during which it issued a roadmap for peace that called for an immediate halt of the violence. The Syrian government ignored it. Later, in 2015, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2254, which affirmed its commitment to the June 2012 Geneva communique, advocating free elections and encouraging exiled Syrians to participate in the peace talks. The communique also entitled them to an unobstructed and safe return to their original place of residence in Syria. The Caesar Act means to compel Syria to abide by the U.N. resolution.
The Caesar Act is more stringent than all the sanctions that came before it because it lumps in the countries that cooperate with Damascus. However, it gives Damascus the option of ending the sanctions campaign provided it implements unequivocal measures to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict. It does this in part by targeting the Assad regime’s supporters, its Alawite constituency, and its regional backers. It doesn’t spare the Syrian people, but since it applies unprecedented pressure on the regime and its foreign backers, the Caesar Act’s impact on Lebanon threatens to speed up the country’s total economic collapse and exploits its inherently flawed political system.
The repercussions of the Caesar Act on the Syrian regime are staggering. It will aggravate the social and economic crisis to the point where it may actually affect the powerbrokers in the Alawite community. It may also deepen the family feud already underway in the Assad clan, including the rivalry between Bashar Assad and his maternal cousin, Rami Makhlouf. The rivalry has stunned the Alawite community since it is over entitlement to material resources and not the preservation of the sect’s political power. Assad is keen on transferring control over Syria’s economic assets from Makhlouf, sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, to the family of Assad's wife Asma al-Akhras, who is not under sanctions. For years, Makhlouf served as the business front for the regime after it adopted economic neoliberalization and privatization. His business endeavors are extensive and cover a broad range of domains.
One would expect the poorer Alawites who fought and died in droves for Assad to rethink their loyalty to a government obsessed with personal wealth. It’s difficult for Alawites to accept the imposition of sanctions after the regime deluded them into believing they won the war. The Alawites are growing increasingly restive and disillusioned with the regime. There is muted anger and frustration over the casualties they’re taking. More than one-third of all Alawites in the Syrian army have died since the war began.
Lebanon, another pillar of Assad’s power, is meanwhile facing its gravest economic and financial crisis since its independence in 1943, and Hezbollah is under more pressure to pull out from Syria. An increasing number of Lebanese, including Shiites, are unable to make ends meet. Hezbollah’s constituency is mostly poor working class. If it continues to support the Syrian regime, Hezbollah will put Lebanon face to face with the United States, which expects Beirut to take a clear stand on sealing its border with Syria.
The Caesar Act could make the situation in Lebanon go from bad to worse. Assad expects Hezbollah to continue to provide Syria with badly needed supplies. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah pledged to keep open the line of supplies to Syria: “Those who offered martyrs to keep Syria united and free from falling to America and Israel will not allow it to succumb to the Caesar Act.” In a dramatic and unprecedented escalation apparently against Israel, Nasrallah announced that Hezbollah would not allow the Caesar Act to hurt Lebanon and threatened to kill whoever tries to starve its people.
The Lesser Evil
The Russian military intervention in 2015 to save Assad added to the complexity of the Syrian conflict. It elevated the Russian position as the dominant actor in Syria without dislodging Iran, which became a second-tier actor. The war degraded Assad’s regime, and Syria devolved into a proxy battlefield. But Iran’s loss of dominance in Syria didn’t mean it lost the influence it wields in Lebanon via Hezbollah.
Russia is disillusioned with Assad because, despite rescuing his regime from collapse, he did not evict Iran and Hezbollah from Syria and resisted halting the war against the opposition. Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t even hide his exasperation with Assad and clearly prefers a quick exit from Syria, especially after he achieved his objectives there. He fears that an extended stay there would turn it into another Afghanistan for the Russian military.
Russia now prefers to get rid of Assad because it perceives him as incompetent and incapable of realizing that Iran is an agent of subversion in the region, which Tehran considers an arena of confrontation with the U.S. Putin privately welcomes the Caesar Act because it does not target Russian interests in Syria, and its consequences for the Assad regime do not disturb him. He understands that he must work closely with the U.S. to bring about a settlement for the Syrian conflict, and it is clear to him that the Caesar Act could make that happen. Putin is keenly aware that for Russian companies to participate in the reconstruction of Syria, Moscow needs to establish an entente with Washington.
As for Iran, the U.S. has made it clear that it will not allow Tehran to use Syria and Lebanon as bargaining chips to spread its regional influence. To that end, the Caesar Act informs Iran that the U.S., in consultation with Russia, determines its influence in Syria, which rules out military intervention. Clearly this doesn’t sit well with leaders in Tehran, who seem determined to resist. On June 20, Hezbollah released a video clip that showed coordinates of targets in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel that it claims are within range of its missiles. Nasrallah commented on the extraordinary revelation that “no matter what you do to block the pathway, it is over, and the task is done” – a reference to frequent Israeli attacks on missile manufacturing sites in Syria and arms convoys destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Nasrallah’s defiance drew an immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reiterated his determination to prevent Iran from enabling Hezbollah to develop advanced missile technology. There is little doubt that Hezbollah’s missile announcement is meant to provoke an Israeli response. It appears that the so-called axis of resistance – Iran, Syria, Hezbollah – has concluded that regional war is a lesser evil than economic strangulation.
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https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/diplomacy/turkey-condemns-oil-deal-between-us-and-ypg-terrorist-group-for-financing-terrorism
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/us-foreign-policy-syria-iraq-deter-russia-iran-difficult-task/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202020-09-01&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/02/coalition-plans-expand-giant-isis-prison-syria/172270/
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/25/us-airstrike-hits-iran-backed-militias-syria-repor/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=HcrwJKez%2FA7KZndRginNFArVLdcPkQHXTD9HPNPTomx1WqOvjywv8KY3OXjkTDo9&bt_ts=1614298721656
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‘Red Line’ Review: The Calculus Didn’t Change
U.S. diplomacy didn’t stop Bashar al-Assad from murdering Syrians with chemical weapons. It only gave him cover.
A poison-hazard sign in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 5, 2017.
PHOTO: OGUN DURU/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
By John Bolton
March 15, 2021 6:35 pm ET
Barack Obama’s 2013 deal to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons was touted at the time as proof that arms-control diplomacy can avert peril without resorting to force. The deal proved many things, but not that. It allowed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to escape from the consequences of his own malfeasance. It also showed rogue states and terrorists how to survive, and Iran and Russia how to play America. The losers: Syria’s people, America’s credibility, and Middle Eastern peace and security.
President Biden yearns to rejoin his former boss’s Iran nuclear-weapons deal, which was under intense negotiation as the Syria drama unfolded. Before he does that, he may wish to read Joby Warrick’s “Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America’s Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World.” This study, by a longtime national security reporter at the Washington Post, has important implications for countering proliferation generally.
Syria’s military precipitated the 2013 crisis by bombing Moadamiyeh, outside Damascus, with sarin, a deadly nerve agent, killing over 1,400 people. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the attack “the worst use of weapons of mass destruction in the twenty-first century.” Fortunately a U.N. inspection team was in Damascus to investigate reports of prior chemical-weapons strikes and so brought international attention to it.
How would Mr. Obama respond? In 2011 he had said, “Assad must go.” But despite substantial assistance to anti-government rebels, Mr. Assad remained in power. Then, in August 2012, Mr. Obama casually observed that “a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus.”
Not by much. Although Mr. Obama considered responding militarily, he hesitated. He was “uneasy” after German chancellor Angela Merkel urged caution and British prime minister David Cameron lost a House of Commons vote that eliminated Britain as a partner. Trying to shift responsibility, Mr. Obama sought congressional approval, which he didn’t need and didn’t get anyway. At hand were the makings of a humiliating debacle.
Secretary of State John Kerry saw no diplomatic path for Mr. Assad to surrender or destroy his chemical weapons, saying on Sept. 9 that “he’s not about to do it.” But Mr. Assad did it—albeit not as a result of U.S. negotiations. Although the facts are unclear, the Syrian dictator had delegated authority to use chemicals to his generals, meaning the Moadamiyeh attack might have been ordered without considering the proximity of U.N. inspectors or even knowledge of Mr. Obama’s “red line.” Mr. Assad rapidly concluded he had made a terrible mistake and agreed to a deal.
Moscow applied pressure but clearly never intended to jettison Mr. Assad. Two years later, Russia significantly increased its air presence at Syria’s Khmeimim air base, complementing its nearby Tartus naval facility. Mr. Obama was again surprised. “Oh God, they’re getting ready to go in. They’re not going to let Assad lose,” said one adviser. Mr. Kerry, having been told that Russian planes were deploying to Syria, remarked cluelessly that “the level and type [of aircraft] represents basically force protection.” He was wrong. If the Russians only wanted to protect their assets, they could have kept them at home.
Mr. Assad didn’t surrender everything. In 2015, following the destruction of Syria’s declared chemical-weapons materials, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigators found indications in Syria’s records that Mr. Assad may have concealed assets. This is critical. The OPCW and the U.N. depended on what Syria declared; they had little capability to gather additional evidence, and foreign intelligence in Syria was obviously inadequate. Mr. Warrick enumerates not only sarin, but considerable amounts of other nerve agents and toxic chemicals that went unaccounted for.
Mr. Assad simply switched chemicals. Instead of using sarin, the regime carried out scores, perhaps hundreds, of strikes using chlorine, not explicitly banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention but nonetheless used as an asphyxiant, which the Convention generically prohibited. This was, as Mr. Warrick puts it, “a perfect loophole.” Said one expert, “It’s brilliant . . . Low-casualty, but psychologically effective.”
Mr. Assad, Mr. Warrick demonstrates, was not “chastened or deterred.” At Khan Sheikhoun, in April 2017, Syria’s military again used sarin, proving either that it still had the nerve agent or had resumed production of it. President Trump’s military retaliation was inadequate. Mr. Assad subsequently used chlorine, striking several times, including a significant attack in Douma, one year later. After a confused internal debate, Mr. Trump retaliated again. He had learned nothing about Syria, Iran or Russia, concluding instead that the U.S. ought to withdraw its forces from the region completely, which he tried unsuccessfully to do for two years.
It is therefore wrong to conclude, as Mr. Obama’s admirers still do, that successful diplomacy ended Mr. Assad’s chemical-weapons threat. Mr. Warrick acknowledges that “ultimately neither president succeeded in changing Assad’s behavior or shortening Syria’s war.” The Syria case proves that mere physical destruction of mass-destruction weapons and materials is insufficient. While Syria (or Iran) possesses the knowledge and ability to produce them, it can always rebuild what it “destroys.”
Iran emerged victorious from two presidents’ failures against Mr. Assad’s chemical bellicosity. For America, Mr. Assad is not the central threat; the real menace is Tehran, which has emerged even more dominant inside Syria, buttressing its arc of control from Iran through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. The mullahs almost certainly saw Mr. Obama’s hesitancy to use force in Syria as fear of undercutting the ongoing Iran nuclear negotiations. They correctly surmised that the American president wanted a nuclear deal more than he wanted to guarantee eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons.
The ayatollahs now watching Mr. Biden can discern this desire anew. Messrs. Obama and Biden both proceed, despite their denials, as if deals themselves are the objectives, not whether they are effective or ineffective. Their blinkered focus on the “deal” is very Trumpian, and correspondingly damaging to American national security. That is the real lesson.
Mr. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the March 16, 2021, print edition as 'The Calculus Didn’
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https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/03/syria-us-commanders-hold-line-and-wait-biden/172808/
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/03/ambassador-ends-his-service-front-lines-syria/173022/
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In Syria, Russia Plays With Fire by Restricting Idlib Aid
4 MIN READJul 13, 2021 | 20:38 GMT
Civilians and humanitarian workers form a human chain calling for the continuation of U.N.-authorized aid near Syria’s Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey.
Civilians and humanitarian workers form a human chain near Syria’s Bab al-Hawa border crossing calling for the continuation of U.N.-authorized aid from Turkey.
(OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP via Getty Images)
Russia's push to erode humanitarian conditions in Syria's Idlib province could trigger retaliatory attacks from Turkish forces and local militant groups, raising the risk of another major Russo-Turkish military confrontation and a new refugee surge into Turkey. Since the beginning of the year, Russia has been squeezing humanitarian corridors that lead into the still rebel-held province, which hosts around 2 million internally displaced Syrians. In February 2021, Russian warplanes struck logistics centers associated with the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the Syria-Turkey border, where U.N.-authorized humanitarian aid flows into Idlib. Then, through the spring, Moscow signaled it might block the re-authorization of the crucial crossing, which is the only one still operating under a 2014 U.N. mandate that allows aid through Turkey. On July 9, Russia voted to re-authorize the Bab al-Hawa post, but only under the condition that it remain the sole crossing and would be subject to greater scrutiny.
In February 2020, a Russian airstrike killed 33 Turkish soldiers in Idlib, sparking a major military confrontation between the two that both Moscow and Ankara were eager to de-escalate through a cease-fire the following month.
Before the last major round of fighting in Idlib province, Russian-backed Syrian forces had been attempting to undermine Turkey’s control of Idlib by attacking small slices of territory and surrounding Turkish-manned observation posts designed to prevent incursions.
By controlling the flow of aid from Turkey, Russia and its allies in the Syrian government are hoping to influence the behavior of militants in Idlib and create leverage to cut deals with rebel groups to surrender. Damascus and its allies will be able to cut off aid in reaction to militant attacks or offensives, and may also seek to direct aid to certain groups that agree to surrender. Such efforts, however, will risk exacerbating the already dire humanitarian crisis in northwest Syria.
Syria’s economy in both Idlib remains deeply damaged, with basic goods and services scarce, including gas, bread and electricity. The inflow of humanitarian aid is crucial to maintaining livable conditions at refugee camps in Idlib.
The United Nations has warned that without aid deliveries into the province, Idlib’s 3.4 million people — 2 million of whom are refugees — would face imminent hunger.
Idlib’s Role in the Syrian Civil War
Idlib was the site of years of back-and-forth fighting between Syrian factions and their various allies. But in 2015, Idlib emerged as a major rebel bastion following the Islamic State’s seizure of much of the Euphrates River Valley and rebel forces’ setbacks in southern Syria. The Syrian government also cut deals with some rebel enclaves to allow them to withdraw to Idlib province, including the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta in 2018. After the fall of Aleppo to government forces in 2016, Idlib remains the last remaining rebel-dominated province in the war-torn country, with the other areas not under Syrian control protected by either Turkey or the United States.
In retaliation, Turkey and militant groups in Idlib are likely to attack Syria and its allies to pressure them to regrant access to aid without restrictions. Turkey, its proxies, and more independent militant groups can threaten the fragile cease-fire in the province and escalate their attacks on the Syrian-aligned forces along the current frontlines, including by targeting Russian forces in the more distant Latakia province with drones and artillery. Turkey can also use its physical control of the Idlib border to re-open humanitarian corridors without U.N. authorization, but that unilateral decision would worsen Turkey-Russia relations and also potentially lead to Russian sabotage efforts against new crossings. Militants not under Turkish influence could inflict casualties on Syrian or Russian forces, sparking a major Syrian-led counterattack on Idlib. Conversely, Syrian and Russian forces, responding to Turkish or militant harassment designed to loosen aid restrictions, might inflict heavy losses on Turkish forces, compelling Turkey to militarily respond.
A larger military conflict would likely push more Syrian migrants into Turkey. A surge of displaced Syrians to Turkey’s borders would further fuel anti-Syrian sentiment from Turks concerned that their country’s limited financial resources are being used on refugees. But another major Russo-Turkish confrontation would likely produce a new wave of refugees into Turkey, especially as further Syrian-led advances will cut down on the already limited territory still under rebel control.
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In Syria’s Civil War, the South Reemerges as a Battleground
Jul 30, 2021 | 20:33 GMT
A picture taken on Aug. 2, 2018, shows destroyed buildings in the southern Syrian city of Daraa.
A picture taken on Aug. 2, 2018, shows destroyed buildings in the southern Syrian city of Daraa.
(MOHAMAD ABAZEED/AFP via Getty Images)
If government and rebel forces in Syria fail to ink a new cease-fire agreement, an escalation of fighting in the south could inspire unrest in other regime territories and send a new flood of refugees into Jordan. Tensions erupted between regime and rebel forces in the southern border city of Daraa on July 29, marking what the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights called the “most violent and broadest clashes in Daraa since it came under regime control.” The Syrian Al-Watan newspaper claimed a military operation had begun against rebel forces, while activists and opposition sources said that rebels had taken military checkpoints and repelled government attacks. Daraa has been in crisis since June 25, when Syrian forces demanded former rebels turn over light weapons under a cease-fire deal signed in 2018. But rebels balked at the prospect, with Syrian forces surrounding the city in an attempt to pressure rebels into...
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/syria-villagers-fear-exit-of-american-troops-after-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-11630610921
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U.S. troops attacked in Syria. A few rockets allegedly hit a base in southern Syria that houses American troops on Wednesday, AP's Lita Baldor reported. None of the Americans were injured, but it's unclear if the Syrian forces at al-Tanf were hurt.
Reminder: The U.S. outpost remains in place ostensibly to fight ISIS, though it's location also location also presents a target for Syrian and Iranian-linked troops in the region.
Says one critic: "The longer U.S. forces remain in Syria on an open-ended and ill-defined mission, the more likely an American will be pointlessly killed or seriously injured by a rocket or drone attack," said Daniel DePetris of the Defense Priorities think tank in Washington. "The only responsible course is a full withdrawal, saving U.S. troops from needless risk."
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wasn't obamas withdrawal what led to ISIS to start with ?
so let's do it again?
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Trump said "We're destroying the Caliphate and then we are leaving."
The generals hornswoggled him and left some behind. What purpose do they serve now other than to be a target and as such, a trip wire?
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17871/afghanistan-withdrawal-terrorist-cocktail
why could this not happen in Syria?
not sure
but just asking
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The question is fairly posed, but I would submit the two fields of battle are quite distinct in their characteristics.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17871/afghanistan-withdrawal-terrorist-cocktail
why could this not happen in Syria?
not sure
but just asking
The global jihad has Afghanistan and 85 billion dollars worth of weapons. They don’t need Syria.
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Israel's Shadow War Dented Iran's Takeover of Syria, But Only Temporarily
by Yaakov Lappin
IPT News
October 25, 2021
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9046/israel-shadow-war-dented-iran-takeover-of-syria
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Daily Memo: Renewed Tensions in Syria, Washington and Brussels Reach Truce
Turkey is reportedly planning a new offensive in northeast Syria.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Rumblings in Syria. Turkish forces fired heavy artillery over the weekend at a Syrian village called al-Dibs, located on the Aleppo-Hasaka M4 highway north of Raqqa, as speculation grows that Ankara is planning a new offensive in northeast Syria. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces had mobilized new recruits in Raqqa and Hasaka to plan for a possible Turkish assault. Pro-government forces, accompanied by Russian helicopters, also bolstered their presence in al-Bab in eastern Aleppo province and Ain Issa in northern Raqqa province. Also over the weekend, Russian forces conducted over 20 airstrikes in northern Syria, targeting Idlib province and Aleppo’s countryside, including some areas inside the de-escalation zone. The strikes came days after Russian warplanes arrived at the Qamishli International Airport in northeast Syria. Russia’s actions here support local media speculation over a potential Kurdish-Russian rapprochement triggered by a possible Turkish offensive.
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By: Geopolitical Futures
Syrian maneuvers. Russia and Syria conducted several simultaneous joint flight exercises from Syrian airfields. The main maneuvers took place around the Tiyas air base, recently repaired following Israeli strikes. Meanwhile, Kurdish media said Russia intends to build two large air bases in northwest Syria to counter threats from the United States. Turkey and Russia are also in talks over a potential Turkish military operation in the Syrian border city of Kobani against Syrian Kurdish forces.
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Arab-Kurdish alignment. A leading member of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Council called on all ethnic and religious groups in Syria to unite against a potential Turkish offensive. He emphasized the need for Kurdish-Arab unity and said his group is ready to engage unconditionally in dialogue with the Assad government and the opposition. The head of the Syrian Arab Jibour al-Milhim tribe also noted Kurdish-Arab tribal unity in north and east Syria and called on both groups to defend their territory against Turkey.
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https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/01/04/us-military-coalition-in-syria-takes-out-rocket-launch-sites/?fbclid=IwAR2oL1PzU0-lOHBrRNvOM9VVyEY62DsStNH0M-P8Q3RtMntU8AmlNFuXaUI
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U.S., Kurds struggle to regain hold of prison
Facility in Syria holds thousands of ISIS fighters
BY SARAH E. DEEB ASSOCIATED PRESS BEIRUT | Clashes between U.S.backed Syrian Kurdish fighters and radical Islamist militants continued for a fourth day Sunday near a prison in northeastern Syria that houses thousands of members of the Islamic State terror group, the Kurdish force said.
The standoff follows a bold assault by the extremists that breached the premises of Gweiran Prison, allowed an unknown number of militants to escape and killed dozens of U.S.-backed fighters who guard the facility.
Kurds and private analysts had long warned that the detention camps for hardened ISIS operatives were a ticking time bomb, and the Trump administration pushed — often futilely — to allies in Europe and the Middle East to take back their nationals who were housed at the prison camps.
The Kurdish-led forces, with assistance from the U.S.-led coalition in the form of surveillance, intelligence and airstrikes, have contained the threat, the coalition said in a statement Sunday.
Several dozen militants remain holed up in one wing of the prison, to the north and in adjacent buildings, still firing at the Kurdish forces trying to dislodge them.
A spokesman for the Kurdish forces, Farhad Shami, said the militants have used hundreds of minors held in the same facility as human shields, preventing a final assault.
More than 3,000 suspected IS militants are believed to be held in Gweiran, the largest facility in Syria housing ISIS militants, including over 600 under the age of 18. Freeing large numbers of veteran operatives could provide a boost to the group as it seeks to rebuild a “caliphate” that at its height spanned huge areas of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
“While it is militarily defeated, [ISIS] remains an existential threat to the region,” said Commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve Maj. Gen. John W. Brennan. “Due to its severely degraded capability, [Islamic State’s] future survival is dependent on its ability to refill its ranks through poorly conceived attempts” like the Gweiran prison attack.
The coalition said it was analyzing the situation to determine if the group is still planning other such attacks in Syria and Iraq.
In their attack, the ISIS militants had attempted to destroy a new, more secure facility under construction next to the Gweiran prison, and have seized arms from prison guards before murdering them, the coalition added.
The Kurdish forces said militants on Sunday staged a new attack on the prison, also known as al-Sinaa prison, in an attempt to break the security cordon and support inmates still in control of parts of the prison.
In a statement, the Kurdishled force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, said the attack on the northern section of the prison in the city of Hassakeh was repelled and the militants were chased into a nearby residential area. Another SDF spokesman Siamand Ali said ISIS fighters arriving from outside the city also tried to attack the prison and were repelled.
A resident near the prison said warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition flew over the prison earlier Sunday, breaking the sound barrier. U.S.-backed Kurdish forces were heard calling on militants in the prison and in surrounding buildings to turn themselves in. Mr. Ali said between 150 and 200 militants are believed currently holed up in the northern wing of the prison and adjacent residential area.
The attack launched Thursday was the biggest by IS militants since the fall of the group’s caliphate in 2019. Its demise came after ISIS lost its last territory in Syria in following a yearslong military campaign backed by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the prison break on its Aamaq news service Friday, describing it as ongoing.
In an ambitious attack, more than 100 militants armed with heavy machine guns and vehicles rigged with explosives attacked the facility aiming to free their comrades. A car bomb was detonated nearby at a petroleum warehouse, creating a diversion and leaving fire and smoke in the air for two days.
A video posted by the militants late Saturday showed vehicles ramming through what appears to be the walls of the prison, creating large holes. Dozens of men were seen walking in the facility in the dark, seemingly escaping the prison. The Kurdish-led forces said Friday they have so far arrested over 100 inmates who escaped but the total number of fugitives remains unclear.
Islamic State quoted one of its militants in a statement posted late Saturday on its news service who said the attack began with two foreign suicide bombers who detonated two trucks at the gate of the prison and along its walls, causing major damage and casualties. Then militants fanned out, first heading to the prison towers and the petroleum warehouse. A second group attacked a Kurdish post nearby while two other groups clashed with nearby patrols and cut supply lines to undermine the prison defenses.
The assault coincided with riots inside the prison, where militants seized weapons and held guards and prison staff hostage, the militant group said, claiming that it freed more than 800 militants, some of whom are taking part in the ongoing operation.
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After a nearly weeklong bloody siege, U.S.-backed troops finally have control of that ISIS prison in northeastern Syria. According to the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and New York Times reporting from the scene, an estimated 500 people were killed in the siege and clean-up operations, which featured several U.S. airstrikes.
At least 374 of those killed had alleged links to ISIS, according to the S.D.F. And that death toll "also included about 40 S.D.F. fighters, 77 prison staff and guards, and four civilians," Jane Arraf of the New York Times reported Monday.
Wider significance: The S.D.F. told Arraf that "the prison assault was part of a larger plot to also attack the giant detention camps in the same region that hold tens of thousands of people, most of them wives and children of ISIS fighters." Continue reading, here.
The White House used the opportunity to nudge allies to take back ISIS prisoners stuck in Syrian facilities, like the prison in Hasakah. "The barbarity of ISIS's actions during this attack reaffirms why this group must be denied the ability to regenerate and why nations must work together to address the thousands of ISIS detainees in inadequate detention facilities," National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement on Sunday. "ISIS remains a global threat that requires a global solution," he added. More here.
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https://www.yahoo.com/gma/us-military-carries-counterterrorism-mission-055800605.html
""Last night AT MY DIRECTION, U.S. military forces in northwest Syria successfully undertook a counterterrorism operation to protect the American people and our Allies, and make the world a safer place," he said in a statement. "Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi—the leader of ISIS. All Americans have returned safely from the operation. I will deliver remarks to the American people later this morning. MAY GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS."
WOW - IMPRESSIVE
WE DO HAVE A REAL COMMANDER IN CHIEF. :roll: :wink:
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Prison break: ISIS fighters launched a brazen attack to free their comrades
Hundreds died in the ensuing battle. Here’s how it played out.
Fighting continued between Kurdish-led forces and Islamic State fighters on Jan. 22 after militants attacked Ghwaryan prison. (YPG Press Office via Storyful)
By Louisa Loveluck and Sarah Cahlan
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Thursday Jan. 20
Friday Jan. 21
Saturday Jan. 22
Sunday Jan. 23
Monday Jan. 24
Tuesday Jan. 25
Wednesday Jan. 26
Thursday Jan. 27
Friday Jan. 28
Saturday Jan. 29
Sunday Jan. 30
HASAKAH, Syria — The militants of the Islamic State announced their most brazen attack in years with a truck bombing that blasted a hole in the exterior wall of a Syrian prison holding thousands of their comrades. The Jan. 20 attack triggered a 10-day battle that spilled into the surrounding streets of Hasakah in northeastern Syria, drew American and British ground and air forces back into combat in support of their local allies, and energized global supporters of the Islamic State like little else since its so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq was defeated three years ago. By the time the fighting was finished and the devastated prison was back in the hands of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, more than 500 people were dead, about three-quarters of them suspected militants, the SDF reported. And scores, maybe hundreds, of prisoners had escaped, free to raise the Islamic State’s black flag and fight again.
Satellite imagery of the al-Sina’a prison in al-Hasakah, Syria, eight days after the ISIS attack on the facility. (Maxar Technologies)
Down but not defeated, thousands of Islamic State insurgents wage Syrian fight anew
Thursday Jan. 20
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The video published on ISIS channels early on Jan. 21 shows militants swarming the makeshift jail. (Telegram)
As the truck bombing lights up the night sky, scores of militants swarm the Ghwaryan prison, which reportedly houses more than 3,000 Islamic State suspects and about 700 adolescent boys, who in many cases had been taken to the caliphate as youngsters and then became separated from their parents either during its final days or after being placed in displacement camps with their mothers. Small-arms fire crackles outside the complex, also known as Sina’a prison. Inside, prisoners begin to riot, according to officials from the SDF and U.S.-led coalition, believing their comrades are staging a prison break. They overpower guards, killing several, and take kitchen staff hostage. As SDF troops counter the attack, U.S.-led coalition aircraft carry out initial airstrikes in support.
Friday Jan. 21
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Islamic State fighters are seen after they attacked the Ghwaryan prison in Hasakah, Syria, on Jan. 21. They were later arrested by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. (Syrian Democratic Forces/AP)
The skirmishing quickly spreads to several surrounding neighborhoods. Clashes reportedly damage the town’s power lines — knocking out electricity — while Islamic State fighters take up positions in residential neighborhoods, using townspeople as human shields, the SDF alleges. Hundreds of people flee the area, seeking refuge elsewhere with family and friends or sheltering in mosques. Some prisoners, who had initially tried to aid the assault by setting their blankets and plastic goods on fire, stream past the prison walls to join the battle. Others consolidate their positions inside the building.
Civilians fled their houses after fighters with the Syrian Democratic Forces clashed with Islamic state group fighters outside the Ghwaryan prison. (Mohammed Hassan)
Saturday Jan. 22
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People watch as the bodies of alleged Islamic State members are transported in Hasakah, Syria, on Jan. 29 during a search for prisoners who escaped from the Sina’a prison during an Islamic State attack. (AFP/Getty Images)
As fighting enters its third day, American and British ground forces have joined the fray, deploying Bradley Fighting Vehicles to bolster SDF efforts to seal off the conflict area. From above, the U.S.-led coalition carries out a series of airstrikes with Hellfire missiles and larger munitions. Apache attack helicopters strafe militant positions. Inside the prison, SDF forces are battling to regain control but face stiff resistance from militants who continue to hold kitchen staff hostage, while Islamic State militants outside the walls are ambushing SDF fighters in the al-Zuhour and al-Taqqadum neighborhoods. Thousands of terrified residents stream away on foot, as security forces arrive to evacuate them.
Sunday Jan. 23
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Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces fighters take their positions at the defense wall of the Ghwaryan prison, in Hasakah, Syria, on Jan. 23. (Hogir Al Abdo/AP)
By Sunday, the fiercest fighting is centered on the prison’s southern and northern wings, and SDF fighters are finding it hard to make progress. Both sides are taking heavy casualties. The northern wing houses the 700 adolescent boys, some as young as 12. Like the adults, they are a mix of Syrians, Iraqis and other foreigners who have been held for years without trial while waiting to be repatriated to their homes. As night falls, human rights groups express grave concern for the boys inside the cells. In an audio message shared with Human Rights Watch, an Australian teenager pleads for help.
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An Australian teen described the scene inside the prison, saying he was injured and could see many dead around him.
Inside Syria’s teeming ISIS prisons: Broken men, child inmates and orders to break free
Monday Jan. 24
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In an annotated video from the YPG Press office, Kurdish-led forces continued "clean up" operations on Jan. 24 at Ghwaryan prison. (YPG Press Office via Storyful)
As day breaks, coalition F-16 jets resume airstrikes, taking out Islamic State positions around the prison and helping Kurdish-led special forces advance, the SDF reports. With supporting fire from the coalition’s Bradley Fighting Vehicles, SDF troops try to storm militant positions inside the prison. In the meantime, the SDF takes what it says is the rare step of introducing its Soviet-era T-62 tanks into the battle. Throughout the day, the SDF calls for the militants’ surrender over loudspeakers. Several hundred accept. Late in the afternoon, three buses transfer prisoners to Alaya prison, several hours away, according to the Rojava Information Center.
Tuesday Jan. 25
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Soldiers with the SDF set a checkpoint in Hasakah, Syria, on Jan. 25. (Orhan Qereman/AP)
SDF tanks and armored vehicles penetrate the prison compound. Islamic State fighters armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles battle SDF soldiers in the courtyard. As the day unfolds, the Kurdish-led force announces it has recaptured a block of prison buildings, and while more militants surrender, others appear to dig in. Most of the kitchen staff is reportedly freed. But concerns are spiking about the well-being of the boys still trapped inside, possibly being used as human shields and caught up in the fighting.
Video published on ISIS channels shows inside the Ghwaryan prison, the center of a week-long standoff (Telegram)
Outside the prison, SDF troops are carrying out combing operations, not just in nearby neighborhoods but as far afield as neighboring provinces, in pursuit of insurgents who have gone to ground.
Wednesday Jan. 26
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Video released by the SDF press office showed what were described as surrendered ISIS mercenaries at the Ghwaryan prison (SDF via Storyful)
Even as Apache helicopters circle above, the sounds of gunfire fall silent as medical teams are reportedly allowed to enter the prison to treat wounded militants and other prisoners and, in return, several guards are released by their captors. Inside the northern wing, the SDF has begun negotiating with the final holdouts. By midafternoon, rumors are swirling that the battle is over. Then SDF spokesman Farhad Shami confirms it: “The Peoples’ Hammer Operation has culminated with our entire control of the al-Sina’a prison in al-Hasaka and the surrendering of all [ISIS] terrorists.” The claim of victory, though, proves to be premature.
Thursday Jan. 27
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U.S. soldiers stand guard in Hasakah on Jan. 27, a day after the Syrian Democratic Forces announced they had regained full control of the facility from Islamic State militants. (Baderkhan Ahmad/AP)
It doesn’t take long for the claim of victory to unravel. By midday, the SDF issues a new statement acknowledging that as many as 90 militants are still holed up in the basement under the north wing. In the streets surrounding the prison, SDF fighters trade fire from rooftops with the remaining prison attackers, and other clashes flare elsewhere in Hasakah. In neighborhoods around the prison, the SDF’s special forces are going house to house looking for militants believed to be hiding. The vast magnitude of death is now coming into focus, and witnesses say that the bodies of fallen militants are being collected with dump trucks.
SDF's special forces searched for ISIS militants in neighborhoods surrounding the Ghwaryan prison. (Mohammed Hassan)
Friday Jan. 28
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Inmates emerge from the Ghwaryan prison on Jan. 28 while Kurdish-led forces wait out militants still holed up inside. (YPG Press Office)
The SDF delivers an ultimatum to the final holdouts: surrender or face an all-out assault. But military sources say that it’s still unclear whether the SDF will risk it, given the loss of life this might entail. As the Kurdish-led force waits out the entrenched militants, soldiers clear defeated Islamic State fighters and other inmates from the compound, giving them a chance to get out alive. Many require medical attention.
Saturday Jan. 29
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With the battle now well into its second week, those residents of Hasakah who did not flee remain under lockdown. In Ghwaryan and Zouhour districts, close to the prison, residents have been left without access to drinking water, bread, fuel and medical care. SDF forces continue to carry out sweeps across the city.
Sunday Jan. 30
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Members of the SDF give a news conference announcing that the Ghwaryan prison in Hasakah is under their control on Jan. 31. (AFP/Getty Images)
It’s finally over, SDF officials say. The prison is back under control, and in the surrounding neighborhoods, the guns have largely fallen quiet. The largest, deadliest battle with the Islamic State since the defeat of its so-called caliphate nearly three years ago has come to a close. “We announce the end of the sweep campaign in Sina’a prison in Ghwaryan neighborhood of Hasakah and the end of the last pockets in which ISIS militants were holed up in the [prison’s] northern dormitories,” the SDF announces. It would later disclose the death toll: 121 among the SDF, 374 suspected members of the Islamic State and four civilians. Officials would not provide figures for the number of prisoners unaccounted for.
Outside the prison, SDF commanders direct their troops to continue combing districts across the city, looking for sleeper cells or caches of weapons. Other searches are taking place in towns around the region. In Hasakah, hundreds of civilians are still camped out in a mosque, where the stench of fear and sickness fills the air. “This is not over for us,” says one soldier, taking rest for a moment from the SDF’s raids. “We still have a long way to go.”
Video recorded on Feb. 1 shows Ghwaryan prison after nearly two weeks of fighting. (Mohammed Hassan)
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Lessons of an Antiterror Success Against Islamic State
Good thing Trump didn’t go through with pulling out of Syria.
By The Editorial Board
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Updated Feb. 3, 2022 9:24 pm ET
Review & Outlook: With the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi comes a valuable reminder that the threat of Islamic extremism hasn’t gone away. Images: AFP/Getty Images/White House/Zuma Press Composite: Mark Kelly
U.S. special forces staged an overnight raid in northwest Syria Thursday that ended in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. The world is now a slightly better place, and the lessons of the successful operation are worth recounting.
Administration officials who briefed the press said Hajji Abdullah, as al-Qurayshi was known, detonated a suicide bomb and killed members of his own family as U.S. troops approached. His ISIS predecessor killed himself in the same way in 2019 rather than be captured, so the U.S story is plausible.
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The operation was certainly high-risk and it’s a relief no Americans were killed. One reason President Biden may have ordered the raid, rather than dispatch a missile from afar, is the collateral damage from the mistaken drone strike in the final days of the U.S. retreat in Afghanistan. That strike killed numerous innocents, and the White House no doubt wanted to avoid similar headlines. The women and children who died this week did so at the hand of the jihadist, according to U.S. officials.
One lesson is the importance of maintaining the forward deployment of U.S. counterterror forces. Donald Trump came close to withdrawing from Syria—and it’s fortunate he changed his mind. As of last month some 900 U.S. troops were stationed in Syria with another 2,500 in Iraq. Their mission is to help local forces prevent an ISIS resurgence, and their presence means that antiterror operations needn’t rely on “over the horizon” capability as we now must in Afghanistan.
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Another lesson is the benefit of local allies on the ground. U.S. officials praised the Syrian Democratic Forces as “critical, vital enablers for operations like this.” That probably included intelligence from months of searching for and then monitoring Hajji Abdullah at his safe house. We wish we now had such allies against ISIS and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
ISIS lost its physical caliphate in Syria and Iraq nearly three years ago, but the group and its affiliates haven’t gone away. ISIS terrorists carried out 2,705 attacks with more than 8,000 casualties around the world last year, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. It has dramatically increased attacks in Afghanistan, where it clashes with the ruling Taliban, but the organization also remains active in Iraq and Syria.
Hajji Abdullah supervised these operations from his Syrian residence, communicating by courier. His demise will disrupt their operations, though no doubt new leaders will emerge in this long war. The temptation is to say the war against radical Islam is unwinnable so why keep fighting it?
But by keeping jihadists on defense abroad, we reduce their ability to plot attacks against the U.S. homeland. We know what can happen when the plotters feel unthreatened. Mr. Biden’s chaotic and needless Afghanistan withdrawal thrilled radicals around the world and may still lead to renewed terror attacks. All the more reason to welcome this week’s operation against one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.
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March 24, 2022
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Syria Mulls Pulling Out of Iran’s Orbit
Assad is enlisting Abu Dhabi’s help in curtailing Iranian influence in his country.
By: Hilal Khashan
Last week, Syrian President Bashar Assad visited the United Arab Emirates, his first foreign trip since the Syrian uprising in 2011. The U.S. State Department issued a stern statement taking issue with the attempt to legitimize Assad’s rule, given the horrendous crimes he committed in a war that has killed more than 500,000 Syrians and has left 150,000 missing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. rejects efforts to rehabilitate Assad and his regime. But the trip followed years of normalization efforts between Arab countries and the Syrian government.
Throughout the war, several Arab states maintained diplomatic ties with Syria, others resumed them in 2013, and still others cooperated on security matters. In welcoming Assad, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed described Syria as an essential cornerstone of Arab security. After their meeting, the two leaders issued a joint statement that called for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria, the preservation of its territorial integrity, and a peaceful end to the conflict. But for Assad, one of the top goals of the visit was to enlist Abu Dhabi’s support in curbing Iran’s influence in Syria, marking a policy shift that Washington will likely support.
Western Disinterest in Syria
The hope that the Syrian uprising would quickly unseat Assad was short-lived. After Assad successfully portrayed his repressive policies as a war on terrorism, interest in the Syrian conflict dwindled. In 2012, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy launched the Friends of Syria Group after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution to condemn the atrocities committed by the Syrian regime against demonstrators demanding freedom. Conferences organized by the group in 2012 included representatives from 70 countries and numerous international and regional organizations. By 2013, only 11 countries participated in the gatherings, which were suspended shortly thereafter.
Iranian and Pro-Iran Militia Presence in Syria
(click to enlarge)
It was a sign of the West’s increasing disinterest in the conflict. In 2013, when the Assad regime used nerve gas to kill 1,429 Syrians, including 426 children, the British Parliament voted against military action. U.S. public opinion also opposed strikes against the regime, and President Barack Obama decided against intervention. The rationale for not punishing Assad was that the U.S. had no vital interest in Syria. Similarly, Washington hasn’t taken any punitive measures against Arab countries that have normalized relations with Damascus. Though the State Department said the U.S. doesn’t encourage reestablishing diplomatic ties with the Assad regime, it accepts that Arab countries can choose their own paths forward. The U.S. opposes the Syrian regime’s reintegration into the Arab order, but only in principle. It also hasn’t ruled out working with Assad when peace in Syria is restored. The U.S. made it clear only that it would not lift sanctions on the Syrian government or contribute to Syria’s reconstruction before the Assad regime reaches a political agreement with opposition groups on a post-conflict political system.
Abu Dhabi’s Motive
In 2011, the Arab League suspended Syria’s membership in the group as many Arab countries severed their diplomatic ties with the Assad government. But Assad’s derailing of the peaceful Syrian uprising actually served Arab authoritarianism well. He transformed Syria into a theater for sectarian conflict and geopolitical struggle, and gave Arab rulers the ability to suppress uprisings in their own countries, presenting the cost of change as too great to bear and a choice between stability and bloodshed. Normalization became possible only after authoritarian Arab leaders defeated uprisings in their countries and sabotaged demands for a transition to democracy.
Abu Dhabi filled the void left by Washington’s disinterest in the conflict, especially after Obama did not oppose Russian military involvement in the civil war. In 2018, the UAE reopened an embassy in Damascus, which encouraged several other Arab countries such as Jordan and Bahrain to do the same.
Indeed, many Arab states – Qatar being the exception – have expressed interest in normalizing relations with the Assad regime. Egypt was the first to do so in 2013 after Abdel Fattah el-Sissi overthrew Mohammad Morsi as Egypt's president. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed, commonly known as MBZ, is currently making the final arrangements to rehabilitate Assad among his Arab peers, although not at the international level. Arab countries seeking to reestablish diplomatic ties with Syria don’t insist that Assad initiate reforms or release political prisoners as a precondition for normalization. They do, however, want to encourage Assad to distance himself from Iran. They see normalization as the first step toward curtailing Iran’s influence in Syria, which would ultimately erode its dominance of Iraqi politics, choke Hezbollah, and convince Tehran to abandon its drive to dominate the region.
Assad, meanwhile, needs to secure a solid Arab political ally to advance his unbridled business interests. The UAE, a stable and prosperous Arab state, fits the bill. During his recent visit to the country, Assad landed in Dubai, the business capital of the UAE, and departed from Abu Dhabi, its political capital. He explored with his hosts in both cities new horizons for cooperation in vital domains. Assad’s UAE interlocutors said they wanted to invest in renewable energy and real estate development in Syria. They were keen on not antagonizing Iran before the conflict ends and reconstruction funds are made available. To justify the trip, MBZ said ending the conflict requires pragmatism and that, without a conclusion to the war, Iran will consolidate its hold on Syria, especially now that Russia is preoccupied in Ukraine.
As for Israel, many believe that both Israel and the Syrian regime want to normalize relations, but in reality neither country is interested in signing a formal peace treaty, though Israel remains committed to Assad’s political survival. His father, who ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000, refused to sign a peace treaty with Israel because resisting Israel was his only source of popular legitimacy. But Israel also saw no reason to make peace with a country that didn’t have the military capability to challenge it on the battlefield. For both countries, establishing formal relations is unimportant and should not prevent them from cooperating either directly or through the UAE.
Disdain for Iran
Iran, meanwhile, is worried about Syria’s reintegration in the Arab world and Assad’s intentions, especially after his visit to the UAE. Even though Iran and its Shiite proxies – with the support of Russian airpower – helped prevent the collapse of the regime in Damascus, Assad dislikes Iran and loathes its religious ideology. He’s stuck in an alliance started by his late father, who sided with Iran in 1980 in its war against his rival Baathist Party in Iraq. In Syria, Iran is quietly trying to create a class of citizens loyal to it, similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and tailors its economic activities to the poor. Tehran has been pressing Assad to grant Iranian businesses long-term contracts lasting up to 50 years to invest in electricity, roads, bridges and construction.
The two countries recently established a joint bank in preparation for post-war reconstruction and economic rehabilitation efforts. They also agreed to develop several free trade areas in Syria to promote Iranian exports that currently constitute only 3 percent of Syrian imports – a small fraction compared to 30 percent of imports from Turkey. Iran is trying to alter the foundations of its influence in post-war Syria, from a substantial military presence to economic dominance, despite Assad’s subtle resistance. He regards Russia as the guarantor of his regime and of Alawite security, and is therefore willing to grant Moscow a significant stake in Syria’s recovery. So far, Russia has made substantial investments in the phosphate and oil sectors, a petrochemicals plant in Homs, and the Tartus commercial port. But Assad is unwilling to give Iran an equal share in the post-war economy, despite Iran receiving promises of cooperation and participating in business conferences that resulted in nothing more than pictures for the media.
In spite of the robust cultural ties between the two countries – thanks to Tehran’s sustained efforts over the past two decades to promote Iranian culture, religion, language, education and history in Syria – Alawites view Iran with disdain, believing that Tehran tried to proselytize them into its faith. Economic ties between the two countries are also weak, deliberately blunted by Assad. The Syrian leader has avoided making substantial economic commitments to Iran, signing financial deals with Iranian companies but never implementing them. This arrangement is causing increased frustration in Tehran. Since the 2011 uprising, Iran has spent around $30 billion to shore up the Syrian regime and wants to claim the economic spoils of peace.
Russia's Limits
MBZ believes that Moscow can play a critical role in stabilizing the Assad regime and in enabling Israel to degrade Iran’s assets in Syria. It’s unclear to what extent Russia’s war in Ukraine will adversely impact Middle Eastern leaders’ perception of Moscow as a global power. But in the long term, Russia’s deployment in Syria is not viable and will not make it a Mediterranean military power.
Russia’s foreign policy differs strikingly from the United States’ in that it lacks focus and depth, pursuing opportunities regardless of geographic location. Russia’s post-Soviet foreign policy is defined by the Primakov Doctrine, charted in 1996, which aims to establish Russia as an independent center of power in foreign affairs to end U.S. global hegemony. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin have moved to put the doctrine into action in Russia’s near abroad. To aid them in this endeavor, Russian forces gained valuable experience in Syria. Last year, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu told executives of helicopter manufacturer Rostvertol that, in Syria, Moscow was able to test and perfect its state-of-the-art Mi-35M attack helicopter, along with more than 320 other weapons. Russian pilots gained training on targeting hospitals, schools, markets and factories, an experience that is proving helpful in the war in Ukraine.
Russian air power decimated anti-Assad forces, enabling the regime and Iranian proxies to prevail in the war after two years of inconclusive battle. However, after its brutal use of indiscriminate attacks, it’s unlikely that Russia will be able to exploit Syria’s hydrocarbon assets.
It seems that Assad’s visit to the UAE – during an international crisis whose end is uncertain – was premature. Russia’s conduct in Ukraine is reminiscent of its indiscriminate air campaign in Syria. Its significant military difficulties will likely encourage Iran to contest Russia’s supremacy in Syria, either consolidating Tehran’s position or triggering a massive Israeli military action
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May 26, 2022
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The Battle Over Syria
The country has long been an arena of regional rivalry and foreign intervention.
By: Hilal Khashan
During the First World War, Britain and France agreed to partition the territory bordering northern Arabia, often called the Fertile Crescent, between themselves in anticipation of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse. Their 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement dismembered the region, creating artificial states without foundations. While the British held on to Iraq and Palestine, the French seized Syria, creating two improbable political entities: the modern-day countries of Lebanon and Syria. All of the new countries were rife with political instability and ideological divisions. Syria, however, stood out as the most troubling entity thanks to its religious diversity, ethnic divisions, regionalism, external loyalties and foreign interventions. This piece tracks the country’s evolution as a state since its independence in 1946. It demonstrates how foreign intervention immensely shaped its politics, making it an arena of regional contestation.
State, Society and Politics
The early 20th century saw the rise of intense Arab identity in Syria, which led the country to be known as the beating heart of Arab nationalism. Initially, it emerged as a sentimental protest movement against the Ottomans’ attempts to Turkify Arabs. But it remained largely an urban phenomenon and failed to develop into a unifying force of a population sharing a political vision and economic interests. Syria emerged as a weak and fragmented state that lacked experience in self-rule. For millennia, it was under the control of a succession of foreign rulers ranging from the Romans to the Byzantines, Persians, Mesopotamians and Muslim conquerors, first from Arabia and later from the Abbasids, the Seljuks and the Ottomans. Demographically, Syria is a complex state that includes Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Armenians. It is also a patchwork of religious sects comprising Sunnis, Greek Orthodox Christians, Druze, Ismailis and Alawites.
Ottoman Empire Versus Modern-Day Borders
(click to enlarge)
From independence until its 1958 merger with Egypt to form the United Arab Republic, Syrian politics underwent many changes. The fledgling democracy failed because of the army’s intervention in its politics, leading to four military coups between 1949 and 1954. The U.S. embassy backed the first coup by Army Chief of Staff Husni al-Zaim. Four days later, the new government in Damascus agreed to allow the Trans-Arabian Pipeline to cross Syrian territory to reach two designated oil terminals on the Mediterranean, a move that the previous government had opposed.
Ideological divisions crippled Syrian politics as the Aleppo-based People’s Party sought union with the Hashemites in Iraq and Jordan, while the pro-Egyptian National Party prevailed in Damascus. The right-leaning and pro-Western Syrian Social Nationalist Party supported the country’s joining the Baghdad Pact before reemerging as a leftist party in the 1960s. Its ideological nemesis, the Socialist Baath Party, championed the cause of Arab nationalism and union with Egypt. Political conspiracy, assassinations, army politicization and the threat of a communist takeover drove Arab nationalist officers to fly to Cairo and pressure Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to unite with Syria and save it from turmoil. The push for a merger occurred several months after Turkey threatened to invade Syria, claiming it had become a Soviet satellite state.
The Assad Dynasty’s Rise
For Syria’s urban Sunnis, military service was often seen as an unwanted burden. They preferred to pursue careers in business and either paid their way out of conscription or completed only the mandatory two years of service. But for the Alawites, Syria’s most economically disadvantaged sect, military service was seen as a career, providing them with an opportunity for social mobility. As a result, they became overrepresented in the army and the officer corps. The many coups led by Sunni factions, both successful and failed, led to purges that exacerbated the imbalance between Sunnis and Alawites.
In 1966, a successful coup brought three officers – two Alawites and one Druze – to power. Before the end of the year, the two Alawites – air force commander and right-wing Baathist Hafez Assad and left-wing Baathist Gen. Salah Jadid – eliminated the Druze officer in another coup. Assad became defense minister, while Jadid resigned from the military to become a powerful member of the Syrian government. The striking absence of a Sunni officer among the new rulers ushered in a new era of Syrian politics, which eventually led to the popular Sunni uprising in 2011.
In 1970, Assad overthrew Jadid, and a year later ran uncontested for the Syrian presidency, winning 99.996 percent of the votes, according to official results. Assad transformed Syria into an Alawite-run state, even though he surrounded himself with Sunni lackeys. Under Assad, Alawites accounted for 90 percent of the officer corps, and after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the army’s mission changed from preparing for conflict with Israel to defending the regime. Assad sided with Iran during its 1980-1988 war with Iraq, supplying it with Scud missiles and allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to enter Lebanon in 1982 to establish Hezbollah. Before his death in 2000, he removed all rivals to pave the path for his son Bashar’s succession.
Despite developing good relations with Iran, Hafez Assad maintained close ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, especially Saudi Arabia. He also regulated Iran’s influence in Lebanon. However, his son succumbed to Iranian influence, especially after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, leading to Iran’s penetration of Syrian society, military and foreign policy. The 2011 uprising occurred by default in solidarity with those who overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, as many Syrian Sunnis looked up to Egypt as a role model.
Iran and Russia
Bashar Assad’s militarization of the uprising backfired as the rebels seemed positioned to overthrow his regime. He appealed to Iran for help, and the Iranians took advantage of the opportunity to expand their Shiite allies’ presence to more than 600 locations throughout regime-held territory. But Iran’s IRGC and Shiite proxy forces were not faring well against the rebels, so Assad enlisted the help of the Russians, who provided major air support for the regime beginning in 2015. Russian military advisers tried to rebuild the Syrian army, which had been shattered by war and defections, to help it become self-reliant and end its dependence on Iranian-backed militias. But corruption and lack of discipline prevented the Syrian army from reorganizing. It continued to depend on Hezbollah and pro-Iranian militias to provide critical battlefield support for the Fourth Division, the regime’s only credible fighting force.
Iranian and Pro-Iran Militia Presence in Syria
(click to enlarge)
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has redeployed its forces in Syria to safeguard its Tartus naval facility and Hmeimim air base. This hasn’t changed the balance of power on the ground, however, because the IRGC provides most of the fighters and Russia’s contribution is limited to air raids, which often decide the outcome of battles.
Russia is keen to protect its military assets in Syria, believing it can’t afford to retreat militarily on all fronts. Soon after launching the war in Ukraine, Russian fighter jets flew over Turkish-backed Syrian National Army positions, dropping flares to warn the group against attacking regime-controlled areas. It also continues to build ties in the Middle East, presenting itself as a credible ally to the region’s despotic rulers, who view President Vladimir Putin’s leadership style as similar to theirs. But it’s now likely to assume a defensive posture in Syria, especially as tensions between Iran and Israel rise.
Iran, meanwhile, has worked closely with Syrian security forces through its proxies to smuggle narcotics from southern Syria into Jordan for distribution in GCC markets. The departure of the Russian police from the area has accelerated smuggling activities, for which the regime’s Fourth Division, commanded by Assad’s brother, Maher, has provided cover. The most popular narcotic, counterfeit captagon, is widely manufactured in Syria. Drones ship the more expensive heroin and crystal methamphetamine over the heavily guarded border, where clashes frequently occur between the smugglers and the Jordanian army. The Jordanians have warned that if the Syrian government doesn’t rein in the smugglers, they could launch a major military operation across the border to stem the trade of illicit goods.
Ending the War
The implications of Russia’s diminishing role in Syria largely depend on whether the Biden administration has the motivation to fill the vacuum. Given Washington’s reluctance to become directly involved in the Syrian crisis, the anti-regime opposition needs to convince the U.S. that post-war Syria will emerge as a pro-Western oasis of peace. Since invading Iraq in 2003, the U.S. has changed its tactics in the Middle East, opting to use sanctions to change the behavior of governments that do not support its policies instead of overthrowing them. It also supports the U.N.’s special envoy to Syria in his bid to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
Russia’s predicament in Ukraine coincides with Western pressure on Assad to bring about national reconciliation and cooperate with the secular Syrian opposition. Assad has been adamant about resisting genuine political reforms, including power-sharing and administrative decentralization. He instead embarked on a comprehensive policy of demographic change, banning the return of refugees and demolishing entire neighborhoods. But changes in the international environment forced Assad to reconsider his political recalcitrance and accommodate the opposition in order to stay in power.
Assad’s visit to the United Arab Emirates in March aimed to rehabilitate his regime amid a regional drive – led by the UAE, Israel, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia – to resolve the region’s conflicts. Syrian authorities have begun releasing thousands of prisoners ahead of the eighth round of U.N.-sponsored talks between government representatives and the opposition to agree on a new constitution for Syria. Arab countries are pushing the two sides to reach a compromise deal in an effort to block Iran’s infiltration there. An agreement on a new constitution could help Syria end the 11-year civil war and restore relations with Turkey and Arab countries, namely Saudi Arabia.
The invasion of Ukraine has pulled the Middle East into the West’s confrontation with Russia, despite regional leaders’ hope to maintain neutrality. The Europeans now realize that they made a mistake by abandoning Syria when the Russians launched their military campaign there, believing the war had no impact on their collective security. As Europe tries to wean itself off Russian energy, the Middle East will become increasingly important. The prospects for ending the Syrian conflict seem more promising now than at any time since the uprising began. Assad has the backing of most Arab regimes, which want him to strike a deal with Turkey to expedite international investment in Syria’s post-war reconstruction. Turkey’s economic crisis and presidential elections next year have shifted the focus of its regional policy from confrontation to conciliation.
Though they have no issue with Russia’s role in Syria, Arabs and Israelis can’t tolerate Iran’s presence there and believe ending the conflict hinges on ending Tehran’s hold over the regime. Israel has readied itself to deal with Iran’s expanding influence in the country. Its recent military exercises, the largest in years, are aimed at sending a clear message to Iran that the Israeli military is ready to act if needed. Israeli attacks on Iranian assets in Syria have increased noticeably since the beginning of the Ukraine war and are likely to accelerate. And despite high-level visits between Iranian and Syrian officials, the Assad regime views the strikes favorably, believing that Iran has violated Syria’s sovereignty and sabotaged its relations with the Arab world. It seems Tehran has overstayed its welcome.
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June 9, 2022
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Daily Memo: New Syria Deployments, Putin-Raisi Talks
Both Moscow and Damascus are making preparations for an expected Turkish operation in northern Syria.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Reinforcements. According to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Russia sent personnel carriers, armored vehicles, medium and heavy weapons, and anti-aircraft missiles to its al-Mabakir base near Tal Tamr in Hasakah province in northeast Syria. The Syrian government also reportedly deployed reinforcements near Manbij in northern Aleppo province. These movements are in response to Turkey's planned military operation in the area.
Putin and Raisi. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi discussed bilateral issues, the Syrian peace process and the Iran nuclear negotiations during a call on Wednesday.
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/post/2625909/general-state-of-war-is-growing
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September 1, 2022
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The Dilemma of Resolving the Syrian Conflict
After more than a decade of fighting, there’s no end in sight.
By: Hilal Khashan
The Syrian conflict has largely disappeared from the headlines as the country’s political situation has reached a stalemate. But the protracted war often starts to garner more attention when major events abroad involve one or more of its key players. Such is the effect the war in Ukraine has had on the Syrian crisis. Prospects for ending the conflict are bleak, considering the regime’s disinterest in a settlement and the country’s fragmented population. Given the region's emerging order, peace in Syria would also require foreign actors to reach an agreement, which is unlikely because of their conflicting interests.
No End in Sight
The Syrian conflict has no end in sight. The essential dilemma lies in the fact that none of the peace initiatives proposed since 2011 has explicitly addressed Bashar Assad’s role in the transition period and his political fate in postwar Syria. It’s the only Arab country whose uprising did not lead to the head of state’s fall, resulting in a protracted conflict causing incalculable human loss, demographic dislocation and material destruction. Many Arab political systems are autocratic and repressive, but in Syria, where the Alawite minority has ruled since Hafez Assad took power in 1971, the level of repression at its peak probably exceeded even the oppression under Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
Syrian Ethnic and Sectarian Groups: 2017
(click to enlarge)
The fall of Hosni Mubarak’s government in Egypt inspired the Syrian uprising, which initially did not demand the regime’s collapse. Peaceful demonstrators presented moderate demands for freedom and combating corruption, but the army nevertheless attempted to nip the protests in the bud. Syrians still hopeful that Assad would lead Syria’s reform process were disappointed by his speech on March 30, 2011, in which he described the protests as a seditious conspiracy orchestrated by foreign powers and pledged to defeat them before proceeding with reforms. It’s understandable that most Syrians today would prefer that Assad be removed from national politics altogether. More than a decade after the uprising that turned into a bloody civil war, he hasn’t delivered on his promises of reform, reconstruction and repatriation of refugees.
For Assad, a monopoly of power is a guarantee that the existential threat to him and the Alawite sect will be eradicated. His supporters destroyed the country to protect his presidency, and he has ignored all attempts at making peace. In August 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama said Assad must introduce fundamental reforms or step down. In 2012, the Arab League announced an initiative that involved Assad giving up his powers and relying on his deputy, Farouk al-Shara, to lead a transitional phase that would end with genuine reforms. But the regime in Damascus categorically rejected it, and since then, al-Shara has disappeared from the political scene. Also in 2012, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented a peace plan that did not explicitly refer to Assad’s departure but emphasized the need for a political solution that would meet the aspirations of the Syrian people, hinting that a fundamental change in the regime’s structure would not allow for Assad’s continued rule. Then came the Geneva Conference, which resulted in a plan for a political solution that was unanimously adopted by the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 2254 in December 2015.
The Geneva plan also didn’t explicitly require Assad’s removal from power. It provided a roadmap to an acceptable settlement for the countries that agreed to it, primarily the U.S. and Russia. The document discussed the formation of a transitional governing body comprising the regime, the opposition and civil society representatives, with full executive powers that would eventually lead to a democratic government. It also stipulated that the body would be formed by consensus, considered by observers as a positive ambiguity as it gave veto power to both the opposition and the regime. Still, opposition forces believed that Assad would have to be excluded from the country’s future as a prerequisite for reaching a political solution. Most countries that participated in the Geneva Conference also agreed that Assad had no place in Syria’s future – save for Russia, which upheld Assad’s right to be part of the transition and to run for the presidency again.
With Moscow’s intervention beginning in September 2015, the peace process took a different path. The Geneva document was supplanted by the Astana and Sochi talks. Accompanying these developments were the growing disputes between the opposition’s supporters. The Russians regained the upper hand on the ground, eventually luring Turkey to the Astana process. Russia’s approach to ending the fighting involved two components. The first focused on establishing a durable cease-fire and four deescalation zones, which meant the destruction of opposition-controlled areas and relocation of rebel fighters to the northwestern province of Idlib. In the second component, Russia prioritized forming a committee to amend the 2012 constitution or draft a new one. More than seven years after the Astana process began, the constitution remains unchanged.
Territorial Control in Syria | September 2022
(click to enlarge)
This approach contradicts U.N. Resolution 2254, which called for the formation of a transitional government, followed by a constitutional process leading to parliamentary and presidential elections. But the international parties that supported the opposition did not take a stand against Russia’s undermining of the Geneva document. Some countries even quietly advised the opposition to participate in the Astana process due to the lack of viable alternatives. The issue of Assad’s exit from politics was no longer a priority for diplomatic efforts. In 2021, Assad ran for a fourth presidential term and won seven more years in office.
The Challenge of Reconstruction
U.S. sanctions, imposed under the 2020 Caesar act, prevented Assad from turning his military victory into a political one by linking Syria’s reconstruction process to a political solution. Today, reconstruction efforts are hampered by the lack of progress on a number of fronts. The peace process is stalled. A quarter of Syria’s 22 million people have fled the country, and another quarter have been internally displaced. The economy and infrastructure are in tatters. Illiteracy has risen, with no more than 37 percent of children having access to primary education. More than 90 percent of Syrians live in poverty, and 60 percent suffer from food insecurity. Most strategic resources, such as hydroelectric dams, oil fields and phosphate mines, are out of the regime’s control.
The only real stick that countries opposing Assad have used are unilateral sanctions, which have allowed his principal backers in Iran, Russia and China to continue to prop up his regime unimpeded. Assad managed to bypass the sanctions, leaving his people to bear the brunt of the burden. The cost of rebuilding Syria exceeds $1 trillion, and even if the antagonists were able to find a solution to the conflict, it’s unlikely that investors would want to play a role in the country’s rehabilitation, with the business environment still unstable and corruption rampant.
De Facto Partitioning
Since Russia’s war in Ukraine began, the Astana process has become less effective. The last meeting of the Astana group – consisting of Russia, Iran and Turkey – was held in Tehran less than two months ago with no tangible results. It seems that Syria is now at risk of partitioning, with influential countries having concluded that resolution of the conflict is futile and containment is the best possible scenario.
A political settlement would be disastrous for Assad because any reconciliation arrangement would eventually lead to his ouster. Syrians, including many Alawites, are tired of living under his control. Less than a third of residents in areas under his rule support him, while two-thirds of residents want to emigrate. Sanctions are not strong enough of a deterrent to force Assad to accept a genuine settlement.
Syria’s fate is ambiguous because the presence of foreign militaries does not allow any of the parties to the conflict to decide the country’s future. It seems partitioning is the only possible way out of the predicament. In fact, the country has already de facto partitioned, with national, religious, sectarian and political factions having developed self-administrations to manage their civil affairs. The regime, meanwhile, seems to have bet that Syria’s return to the Arab League, if it happens, will end the crisis on its terms.
The French destroyed the Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1920 and controlled it until 1943, creating an artificial state without foundations. The Syrian state brought together an amalgam of disharmonious people, since France built it on a sectarian and ethnic fault line. It was only a matter of time before it disintegrated, and reconstituting it is implausible
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So, was Trump right to order us out of Syria (only to be foiled by the generals?)
Deal or No Nuclear Deal, U.S.-Iran Skirmishes in Syria Are Here to Stay
4 MIN READSep 7, 2022 | 15:29 GMT
A U.S. Oshkosh M-ATV Mine Resistant Ambush Protected military vehicle patrols near the Syria-Turkey border in a village east of Qamishli in Syria's northeastern Hasakah province on Aug. 21. The village was subject to bombardment the previous week.
A U.S. Oshkosh M-ATV Mine Resistant Ambush Protected military vehicle patrols near the Syria-Turkey border in a village east of Qamishli in Syria's northeastern Hasakah province on Aug. 21. The village was subject to bombardment the previous week.
(Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
A recent round of Iran-U.S. skirmishes in Syria demonstrates that bilateral tensions will linger regardless of a potential nuclear deal, and more such conflicts could eventually threaten U.S. political support for troop deployment in Syria. Reported Iran-backed forces launched a drone on Aug. 15 at the U.S. military garrison in al-Tanf, Syria, and on the same day, a rocket attack took place against U.S. forces in the northeast of the country. In retaliation, the United States struck targets linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Syria-Iraq border on Aug. 23. Iran continued the skirmishes, responding on Aug. 24 with more attacks on U.S. forces that wounded at least three troops, and the United States responded again with attack helicopters and artillery, reportedly killing several militants.
Iran and the United States' conflicts of interest in Syria have led to several skirmishes, including those with drone attacks on the al-Tanf military base in 2020 and 2021, but typically the skirmishes end after a single round of attacks and retaliation.
Iran's involvement in Syria is rooted in efforts to maintain its land bridge to allies in Lebanon and to restore Syrian President Bashar al Assad's full control over the country. U.S. troops are officially in Syria to conduct counterterrorism missions rather than focus on Iran.
Ongoing nuclear talks will not resolve Washington and Tehran's competing strategies in Syria, making future clashes likely and potentially even larger in scope and duration. Ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations over the restoration of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal do not cover other issues of geopolitical competition between them, like Iran's support for proxy militias, Iran's development and deployment of ballistic missiles, and the United States' deployment of forces throughout the region. So even if Iran and the United States strike a nuclear deal (which is uncertain), Iran will remain focused on trying to undermine Washington's position in Syria. Meanwhile, the United States does not currently plan to withdraw from Syria, in part because the Islamic State remains an underground movement in Iraq and Syria that could resurge if regional counterterrorism operations and/or U.S.-allied Kurdish militias weaken. Additionally, the recent round of sustained clashes between Iran and the United States in Syria suggests that both sides are willing to escalate conflicts within the confines of proxy theaters, as this will enable them to remain diplomatically functional on issues like Iran's nuclear program. Such escalated proxy conflicts will result in a heightened risk of larger clashes between the two sides in Syria and Iraq.
Iran similarly has compartmentalized its competition with Turkey, as the two countries officially maintain economic and diplomatic ties even though they back opposing sides in Syria.
In February, Islamic State militants attacked prisons around Hassakeh, Syria, and were suppressed with U.S. assistance.
Future clashes between the United States and Iran will threaten American political support for Washington's counterterrorism mission there, especially if there are U.S. casualties. Syria is low in the U.S. public mind at the moment due to preoccupations with bigger geopolitical challenges, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China's threats against Taiwan, but that could change in the face of persistent harassment by Iran and/or U.S. casualties. Additionally, many former officials who have worked in Syria over the years have become critical of the U.S. strategy in Syria, with former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford describing it as similar to the United States' experience in Vietnam. With the Syrian civil war nowhere near resolution, the perception that the United States is stuck in a quagmire likely will grow, and greater public scrutiny of the war likely would result in demands to withdraw forces from Syria.
U.S. military involvement in Syria has always had a light footprint because of the legacy of the Iraq and Afghan wars, which caused a deep and lasting public skepticism of wars in the Middle East. There are only around 800-900 U.S. troops left in Syria, down from a high of several thousand at the height of the war against the Islamic State.
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How many billions of dollars in weapons and equipment are we leaving behind?
So, was Trump right to order us out of Syria (only to be foiled by the generals?)
Deal or No Nuclear Deal, U.S.-Iran Skirmishes in Syria Are Here to Stay
4 MIN READSep 7, 2022 | 15:29 GMT
A U.S. Oshkosh M-ATV Mine Resistant Ambush Protected military vehicle patrols near the Syria-Turkey border in a village east of Qamishli in Syria's northeastern Hasakah province on Aug. 21. The village was subject to bombardment the previous week.
A U.S. Oshkosh M-ATV Mine Resistant Ambush Protected military vehicle patrols near the Syria-Turkey border in a village east of Qamishli in Syria's northeastern Hasakah province on Aug. 21. The village was subject to bombardment the previous week.
(Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
A recent round of Iran-U.S. skirmishes in Syria demonstrates that bilateral tensions will linger regardless of a potential nuclear deal, and more such conflicts could eventually threaten U.S. political support for troop deployment in Syria. Reported Iran-backed forces launched a drone on Aug. 15 at the U.S. military garrison in al-Tanf, Syria, and on the same day, a rocket attack took place against U.S. forces in the northeast of the country. In retaliation, the United States struck targets linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Syria-Iraq border on Aug. 23. Iran continued the skirmishes, responding on Aug. 24 with more attacks on U.S. forces that wounded at least three troops, and the United States responded again with attack helicopters and artillery, reportedly killing several militants.
Iran and the United States' conflicts of interest in Syria have led to several skirmishes, including those with drone attacks on the al-Tanf military base in 2020 and 2021, but typically the skirmishes end after a single round of attacks and retaliation.
Iran's involvement in Syria is rooted in efforts to maintain its land bridge to allies in Lebanon and to restore Syrian President Bashar al Assad's full control over the country. U.S. troops are officially in Syria to conduct counterterrorism missions rather than focus on Iran.
Ongoing nuclear talks will not resolve Washington and Tehran's competing strategies in Syria, making future clashes likely and potentially even larger in scope and duration. Ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations over the restoration of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal do not cover other issues of geopolitical competition between them, like Iran's support for proxy militias, Iran's development and deployment of ballistic missiles, and the United States' deployment of forces throughout the region. So even if Iran and the United States strike a nuclear deal (which is uncertain), Iran will remain focused on trying to undermine Washington's position in Syria. Meanwhile, the United States does not currently plan to withdraw from Syria, in part because the Islamic State remains an underground movement in Iraq and Syria that could resurge if regional counterterrorism operations and/or U.S.-allied Kurdish militias weaken. Additionally, the recent round of sustained clashes between Iran and the United States in Syria suggests that both sides are willing to escalate conflicts within the confines of proxy theaters, as this will enable them to remain diplomatically functional on issues like Iran's nuclear program. Such escalated proxy conflicts will result in a heightened risk of larger clashes between the two sides in Syria and Iraq.
Iran similarly has compartmentalized its competition with Turkey, as the two countries officially maintain economic and diplomatic ties even though they back opposing sides in Syria.
In February, Islamic State militants attacked prisons around Hassakeh, Syria, and were suppressed with U.S. assistance.
Future clashes between the United States and Iran will threaten American political support for Washington's counterterrorism mission there, especially if there are U.S. casualties. Syria is low in the U.S. public mind at the moment due to preoccupations with bigger geopolitical challenges, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China's threats against Taiwan, but that could change in the face of persistent harassment by Iran and/or U.S. casualties. Additionally, many former officials who have worked in Syria over the years have become critical of the U.S. strategy in Syria, with former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford describing it as similar to the United States' experience in Vietnam. With the Syrian civil war nowhere near resolution, the perception that the United States is stuck in a quagmire likely will grow, and greater public scrutiny of the war likely would result in demands to withdraw forces from Syria.
U.S. military involvement in Syria has always had a light footprint because of the legacy of the Iraq and Afghan wars, which caused a deep and lasting public skepticism of wars in the Middle East. There are only around 800-900 U.S. troops left in Syria, down from a high of several thousand at the height of the war against the Islamic State.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11286905/US-special-forces-conducted-midnight-raid-Syria-killing-ISIS-leader-taking-captive.html
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Small military force in heavy danger during Syria mission
Critics see little reason to remain in war zone
BY BEN WOLFGANG THE WASHINGTON TIMES
President Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria in October 2019.
Three years later, the nation has quietly become one of the U.S. military’s hottest and most dangerous war zones. Fewer than 1,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Syria, but those men and women have come under repeated drone and rocket attacks from Iran-backed militias, prompting regular retaliatory strikes.
What’s more, U.S. forces last week carried out two major attacks on Islamic State leaders hiding in Syria. It was the latest in a string of missions to take out high-value terrorist targets who sought sanctuary and viewed the country as the globe’s most fertile recruiting ground for jihadis.
Ensuring the lasting defeat of the Islamic State, or ISIS, remains the Pentagon’s stated goal for keeping troops in Syria, even though the once-mighty extremist group was declared “territorially defeated” more than three years ago. U.S. forces conduct their own counterterrorism raids and partner closely with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led military outfit that has spent years battling ISIS and the government of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
The combination of high-stakes counterterrorism missions and ongoing clashes with Iran-backed groups have put U.S. forces in constant danger in Syria. Critics see little in the way of direct American interests in the country and even fewer legal justifications for a U.S. presence with no end date or clear metrics for victory.
“There is no national security interest of America at all in Syria, period. There’s not,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, now a senior fellow at the think tank Defense Priorities, which advocates for a more restrained U.S. military role abroad.
“There are plenty of people who call themselves ISIS who still reside in that area. That does not represent a threat to the United States,” Col. Davis said in an interview. “The operation does nothing to even minimize the local threat. It doesn’t even affect our national potential terrorist threat.”
The U.S. presence, he said, “is going to continue to drift along aimlessly for the foreseeable future until there’s a mass casualty event … and 20 guys get killed,” likely in an attack on U.S. bases by militias linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Although the U.S. has taken out numerous top ISIS officials in Syria over the past several months, Col. Davis and other critics say the American footprint is so relatively small that it couldn’t effectively stop a major Islamic State resurgence.
Pentagon officials say the U.S. presence is necessary for regional security and is highly effective at taking ISIS leaders off the battlefield.
U.S. troops carried out two highstakes missions against ISIS fighters last week. The first, a helicopter raid outside the northeastern Syrian village of Qamishli, led to the death of Rakkan Wahid al-Shammari. The Pentagon said he was a pivotal figure in the smuggling of weapons and fresh fighters to ISIS pockets in the area.
About 24 hours later, U.S. airstrikes in northern Syria killed ISIS official Abu-Hashimi al-Umawi and another Islamic State figure, the Pentagon said.
“This strike will degrade ISIS’ ability to destabilize the region and strike at our forces and partners,” Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement after the strike. “Our forces remain in the region to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS.”
The strikes last week were just the latest U.S. operations in Syria. In July, a U.S. drone strike killed Maher al-Agal. Pentagon officials said he was the leader of ISIS in Syria. That strike was widely viewed as a major foreign policy victory for President Biden and an example of how the U.S. can conduct successful counterterrorism operations in the theater even after the end of formal combat operations in Iraq, the full U.S. withdrawal from Syria, and other drawdowns in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere across the broader region.
Combating ISIS, however, is just one aspect of the complex conflict in Syria, which has been gripped by civil war for more than a decade. Iran-backed militias are active inside the country. Most notable are Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, which have direct ties to the IRGC. The groups carried out attacks this summer on U.S. military installations, including an Aug. 15 drone strike on the al-Tanf base.
No Americans were killed in the attack, but the Biden administration responded with helicopter and gunship strikes on militia sites in Syria. Even though the stated U.S. mission in Syria has nothing to do with Iran, American military officials have made it clear that they are ready and willing to hit those groups when necessary.
“We will respond appropriately and proportionally to attacks on our service members,” Gen. Kurilla said in an August statement. “No group will strike at our troops with impunity. We will take all necessary measures to defend our people.”
The presence of ISIS fighters and Iran-linked extremist organizations is just one piece of the complex geopolitical puzzle in Syria.
Russian troops are inside the country to support Mr. Assad’s government in its fight against rebel groups and supposedly to help stamp out the remnants of ISIS. U.S. troops have also had close encounters with Russian forces.
The Pentagon reported in August 2020 that Russia sent vehicles into Syrian zones controlled by U.S. forces. One of the Russian vehicles collided with an American vehicle as Russian helicopters flew low overhead.
The two countries traded blame in harshly worded statements, and neither admitted fault.
Until early last year, part of the American military mission in Syria involved guarding valuable oil fields from Mr. Assad’s government troops and its allies, and from ISIS fighters. In early 2021, the Biden administration said that mission was no longer a priority in Syria.
Further complicating matters, Turkey considers elements within the SDF to be terrorists and has blasted the U.S. for its association with the group. Mr. Trump ordered the 2019 U.S. military drawdown in Syria amid a looming Turkish operation to eliminate suspected terrorists associated with the SDF, his second order to pull American forces from the country.
His first, in late 2018, led to the immediate resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis.
Legal scholars looking at the array of actors and the often-murky U.S. mission in Syria have called on the Biden administration to clarify its long-term objectives and to find a legal basis for keeping troops there.
“The Biden administration’s policy objectives in Syria are laudable. But it remains unclear whether any of them can be met through maintaining a U.S. military presence in the country, for how long doing so remains lawful (even if it was at the start), and whether viable alternative strategies exist to meet these goals,” said Tess Bridgeman and Brianna Rosen, co-editor and senior fellow, respectively, at Just Security, a national security and foreign policy forum at the New York University School of Law.
“Those are the next questions the Biden administration must urgently address,” they wrote in a recent analysis
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Haven't read this yet and it is FA, but IIRC it sounds like they have come around to what Trump wanted to do?
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An Exit Strategy for Syria
The Case for Withdrawing U.S. Troops
By Christopher Alkhoury
October 10, 2022
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/syria/exit-strategy-syria
When U.S. President Joe Biden took office, U.S. Syria policy was detached from reality. The Biden administration decided to recalibrate U.S. goals, eliminating both the legally precarious notion of securing Syrian oil facilities and the impractical desire to oust all Iranian forces from a country that has long-standing ties with Iran. The Biden team decided it was time to refocus U.S. efforts on the original mission: the defeat of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). The president’s team signaled, first privately with a high-level delegation to Syria in May 2021 and then publicly with off-the-record statements to the press in July 2021, that the United States would maintain a limited military presence of approximately 900 troops in Syria and resume providing targeted stabilization assistance to restore essential services, such as water and electricity, in areas controlled by U.S.-backed forces. The plan was to do this until conditions became more favorable for a negotiated political settlement to the Syrian civil war.
This adjustment was driven by a recognition that although U.S.-backed forces hold sizable swaths of Syrian territory, the United States’ political and diplomatic influence remains limited. Plus, the alternative options are grim. Investing considerably more resources, both financial and military, in hopes of securing an ill-defined political outcome that is highly unlikely to overcome the core challenge in Syria—that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won the war—is neither strategically advisable nor politically tenable. Yet a decision to draw down U.S. forces in Syria so soon after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would be politically costly and further shake regional confidence in the United States’ commitment to the Middle East.
Still, the status quo comes with its own risks. The battlefield in Syria is complex, and Russian, Syrian, and U.S. forces are operating in increasingly close proximity. At the same time, there has been a significant uptick in Iranian-backed militia attacks targeting U.S. positions and a renewed threat of a Turkish military incursion directed at U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. Given all this, the Biden administration needs to address these questions: Is a continued U.S. military presence in Syria necessary, and is it worthwhile?
The Biden administration seems to be holding out hope that conditions will change or improve and that a better negotiated settlement or off ramp will become apparent. Yet every day that passes increases the risks to U.S. forces and weakens, not strengthens, the United States’ bargaining position in terms of what can be obtained from Assad and Russia in exchange for a U.S. departure. Instead of muddling through, the United States should focus on negotiating an exit that, as quickly as possible, secures its two core interests in Syria: U.S. access to Syrian airspace and the safety of Syrians who fought alongside U.S. forces to defeat ISIS.
THE OLD MISSION
Syria is becoming an increasingly dangerous environment in which to operate, but ISIS is not primarily responsible for the surge in violence. Violent events in Syria—such as shelling and artillery attacks—are up more than 20 percent this calendar year, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit data collection, analysis, and crisis-mapping project. Most of the violence is committed by state actors, including the Assad regime and Turkey. ISIS’s activity, by contrast, is on a downward trajectory, according to the latest report from the U.S. Defense Department’s inspector general. ISIS claimed 201 attacks between April 1 and June 30, a decrease of more than 60 percent, year over year. Although ISIS remains a persistent threat in Iraq and Syria, it is largely unable to conduct coordinated offensive operations in these countries or plan and direct attacks abroad.
This means the activity of the approximately 900 U.S. military personnel stationed in Syria is also significantly down from its peak. U.S. forces are still providing enabling support, most notably intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities and logistics, to allied militias, including the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). In January, U.S. military support was pivotal in helping the SDF secure a prison in Hasakah, a city in northeastern Syria, after ISIS launched an attack to free its members being held there. More than 500 people died in the battle, including 121 SDF fighters. Overall, however, U.S. troops are not conducting as many partnered missions with the SDF. There have been only two operations where the SDF and U.S. forces were fighting side by side so far this year, according to public reporting by the Defense Department and the SDF.
Where U.S. military activity is happening has also changed, shifting to places where the United States has fewer eyes and ears on the ground. Instead of being concentrated in northeastern Syria, where U.S. forces are based, operations against high-value ISIS targets are taking place in Idlib and other areas nominally under the control of various elements of the Syrian opposition. Two ISIS leaders were killed in Idlib Province: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019 and his replacement, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, in 2022. In June, U.S. forces captured an ISIS bomb-maker in an Aleppo village controlled by Turkish-backed opposition forces, and the following month, a U.S. drone strike killed another high-level ISIS target not far away. A U.S.-raid just last week targeted ISIS elements in a Syrian regime-controlled village. The shift in the epicenter of the fight against ISIS suggests that U.S. forces are still able to capture or kill high-level ISIS operatives in parts of Syria where there is no U.S. troop presence on the ground. That should come as welcome news: an on-the-ground presence may be advantageous, but it is not necessary to safeguard U.S. national security interests.
A GEOPOLITICAL MINEFIELD
Even with ISIS violence down, the risks to U.S. troops are growing. Some stem from the increasingly tense relations between the United States and Russia, which have jeopardized what used to be a relatively professional line of communication between U.S. and Russian forces operating in Syria. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian aircraft have engaged in a series of dangerous actions. In June, for example, Russian jets directly targeted Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra, an opposition group backed by the United States. The group is located near the al-Tanf Garrison, a U.S. military base, inside a “de-confliction zone” that Russia had once respected as off-limits. Russia reportedly gave U.S. forces just 30 minutes notice before violating the zone. Such behavior further increases the risk of an unintended direct conflict between the United States and Russia
The war in Ukraine is having another insidious effect. As Russia diverts resources to its war with its eastern European neighbor, Iran has filled the vacuum in Syria, becoming much more influential and less risk averse. Iranian-backed forces are increasingly threatening U.S. operations with direct and indirect fire, launching at least 19 rocket and drone attacks against U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria so far this year. In August, after Iranian-backed forces conducted a coordinated drone and indirect fire attack on two separate U.S. military outposts, the United States responded with targeted strikes on nine uninhabited Shiite militia positions, including weapons caches and checkpoints—which led to more counterattacks from Iranian-backed militias. And as nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran continue to stall, Iran is likely to use its militias in Syria to put additional pressure on the United States in an effort to secure on the battlefield what remains elusive at the negotiating table.
Turkey, a member of NATO and a U.S. ally, is also increasing pressure on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. The country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has threatened a renewed military push to achieve his long-held goal of creating a 19-mile buffer in Syria to secure the Turkish border and to enable Syrian refugees living in Turkey to return home. Turkey has fought a decades-long war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in southeastern Turkey and views the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as a direct extension of the PKK. The United States, in contrast, has designated the PKK as a foreign terrorist organization but has worked closely with the YPG in Syria in the fight against ISIS—indeed, the YPG is frequently referred to as the “backbone” of the SDF by U.S. officials.
Every day that passes increases the risks to U.S. forces.
Since Iran, Russia, and Turkey held trilateral talks in June, Turkey has expanded its use of drone, artillery, and airstrikes in Russian-controlled airspace, targeting U.S. partners. Turkey has conducted at least 56 drone strikes so far this year, killing some 50 SDF fighters, including non-YPG elements, and ten civilians. The surge in activity since the trilateral talks has led the SDF leadership to publicly lament that Russia has greenlighted the increased Turkish air activity and blame the United States and Russia for not stopping it. Turkey’s actions further weaken the U.S. position in northeastern Syria because they divert SDF attention away from ISIS and force the SDF to seek support from Russia and the Assad regime to counter Turkish aggression. Earlier this year, the SDF facilitated the deployment of additional Syrian government forces to SDF-controlled territory to stymie a Turkish incursion. The situation is likely to get worse ahead of the 2023 Turkish elections, with Erdogan potentially willing to take greater risks to stave off defeat.
If all this were not bad enough, the SDF’s hold over territory is also weakening. The COVID-19 pandemic and global inflation have undermined an already dire economic and health situation in northeastern Syria. Cholera has broken out in the region, with over 2,000 suspected cases since September 10 and ten reported deaths. U.S. sanctions on Syria are continuing to weaken the broader national economy on which northeastern Syria is dependent. Even though the United States is doing its part to support the Syrians most in need, providing an astounding $1.5 billion in humanitarian assistance in Syria in 2022 alone, it can only do so much.
The Trump administration froze humanitarian assistance for Syria in March 2018, as it weighed a potential withdrawal and sought additional contributions from foreign partners, and the Biden administration wisely unfroze it. But the amount of funding pales in comparison to the need. The United States and its partners in the coalition against ISIS never intended to provide reconstruction assistance or to rebuild areas of Syria damaged in the war. Instead, the goal was to retake territory from ISIS and quickly provide essential services and repair key infrastructure so that basic life could resume. Since 2011, the United States has given over $1.3 billion in stabilization assistance to that end. But without significantly more money from the West, the SDF lacks the resources to govern effectively. Even though the SDF invests oil revenues—primarily from oil it sells to the Assad regime—into salaries for local administration in Kurdish and Sunni areas, there is simply not enough revenue to sustain administrative and social services, much less fully rebuild areas damaged by war. Local officials claim at least 30 percent of Raqqa remains in ruins more than three years after major combat operations there ended. Unemployment, particularly among the young, is high. As a result, local populations feel neglected and marginalized, leading to an exodus of those who can afford smugglers and a surge of ISIS recruits among those too poor to escape.
HEAD FOR THE EXITS
ISIS remains a persistent threat, but unlike the period from 2015 to 2019, when ISIS controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, it no longer has a safe haven where it can plan and conduct terrorist attacks targeting the West. This means U.S. forces have achieved their original mission. The ISIS threat that remains today can be contained without putting U.S. forces in harm’s way. The U.S. military should continue to target high-level ISIS operatives in drone and airstrikes as well as targeted raids to maintain consistent counterterrorism pressure on what remains of the group. This model has already proved effective in areas of Syria where U.S. forces have not been physically present over the last several years. Also key to this approach would be withdrawing amicably enough to maintain relations with its Syrian partners so that the United States can continue to utilize human intelligence and to secure access to Syrian airspace. Despite current geopolitical tensions, a U.S. departure loosely coordinated with Russia is the only way to achieve these objectives.
If U.S. forces were to depart in an uncoordinated fashion, the most likely result would be a Turkish military offensive to achieve Erdogan’s stated objectives—an intervention that would very likely displace hundreds of thousands of Syrians and irreparably damage U.S. relations with the SDF. Meanwhile, the Assad regime is militarily incapable of occupying all the territory currently under SDF control. If U.S. forces left tomorrow through a negotiated settlement with Russia, a nominal regime presence, not a full-scale occupation, is the most likely outcome in the areas once controlled by the United States. But even that would still pose grave risks to U.S. partners left behind, since the Assad regime could detain or kill prominent members of the SDF to weaken U.S. influence in areas that would then be under Syrian control. The United States should do all it can to limit the extent of Syrian government atrocities through diplomatic and economic pressure. It should call on Sunni Arab partners in the region—for example, the United Arab Emirates—that are normalizing relations with Assad to do the same.
Fortunately, the Israelis have proved that securing access to Syrian airspace is indeed possible through a combination of diplomacy with Russia, which controls the most advanced air defense systems in Syria, and brute force against the Assad regime if Israeli aircraft are threatened. A loosely coordinated U.S. departure would significantly improve the likelihood of reaching a diplomatic agreement on access to Syrian airspace, and the United States would retain an inherent right to self-defense if threatened by regime forces while conducting strikes against ISIS.
Nearly seven years after the first U.S. boots hit the ground in Syria, it is time for Washington to withdraw its troops. A U.S. military presence in Syria is no longer a strategic asset; it is a vulnerability
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Daily Memo: Turkish Airstrikes in Syria, Russian Energy Exports to Europe
The strikes targeted Kurdish groups in the north of the country.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Turkey in Syria. Turkey launched air strikes on Sunday against Kurdish militants in northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the strikes, dubbed Operation Claw Sword, on Monday, saying they were necessary because of said Russia’s failure to remove “terrorists” from the area, as it had agreed to do through a deal reached in Sochi. Russia’s engagement in Syria has declined since it began its invasion of Ukraine.
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https://dailycaller.com/2022/11/23/syrian-democratic-forces-us-turkey-invasion/?utm_medium=email&pnespid=r6g5FyoaJaUUwuXQq22pTY7SvUyhDMR3P_Guy7cyqxhmD_bGWAJyC216zHqcccYMqOU4vVkV
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/watch/missile-strikes-on-u-s-base-in-syria-days-after-turkey-s-military-operation-key-details/vi-AA14zDtn?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=514dafd978394502a8667b00b98c0c4f&category=foryou
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Daily Memo: Syrian Kurds Worried About a Turkish Offensive
A Kurdish commander has already reached out to Moscow for talks on the matter.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Appealing for help. A commander with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces reportedly met with the head of Russian forces in Syria to discuss a potential Turkish operation in the north of the country. The same Kurdish commander also said over the weekend that the SDF suspended its operations against the Islamic State amid Turkish airstrikes in the region, in an apparent warning to Washington. Ankara has been signaling that it could launch a ground offensive in northern Syria against Kurdish militants there.
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December 2, 2022
The U.S. military's partners in Syria just suspended all joint operations with the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS terrorists in the region, officials from the Syrian Democratic Forces told Reuters on Friday.
Why? The Turkish military is preparing a ground invasion into Kurdish-held lands in northern Syria. (Kurds are often referred to as the world's largest stateless ethnic group.) And this new long-teased invasion is the latest in a series of Syrian incursions over the past several years as Ankara's military looks to crush a Kurdish insurgency that's been simmering since the 1980s and has featured dozens of deadly attacks inside Turkey carried out by militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. The last time Turkey's military overtly entered northern Syria was back in October 2019 during Ankara's Operation Peace Spring.
The critical link: The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are at least partly composed of Kurdish fighters organized under the Kurdish People's Defense Units, known as the YPG. And they've been particularly useful for the U.S. military as they operate inside Syria—against the publicly-declared wishes of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus, which itself has been fighting a civil war against numerous factions, including ISIS, for more than a decade.
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More recently, Ankara attacked Kurdish elements with cross-border airstrikes and long-range artillery in both Syria and Iraq during the month of November in an operation Turkey dubbed "Claw Sword." According to the BBC, dozens of people were reportedly killed in Syria alone after the strikes, which followed a bombing on the streets of Istanbul that killed six people on 13 November. The SDF, YPG, and PKK all denied involvement in the attack; and each accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of leveraging the bombing as a pretext to launch a new ground invasion into northern Syria—roughly six months ahead of Turkey's upcoming general election in June, which could see Erdogan cling to power for a third consecutive four-year term.
Erdogan's goal with the operation is to remove all Kurdish people "from within thirty kilometers (18.6 miles) of the Turkish border, at least west of the Euphrates River," writes Rich Outzen of the Atlantic Council. By establishing this "safe zone," Erdogan is hoping to "enable refugee returns, and ensure Turkish influence over eventual political arrangements to end the war in Syria." What's more, Outzen argues, there's not all that much standing in Turkey's way—including both the Americans and the Russians. And that contributes to a "betting line in Ankara…that ground operations west of the Euphrates will be tacitly tolerated if modest in scope and careful in execution." Read more, here; or check out a similar analysis with an eye on Turkish politics from Aaron Stein of War on the Rocks on Wednesday, writing on Twitter.
Recall that Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin rang his Turkish counterpart on Wednesday to discourage a new ground offensive in northern Syria. The next day, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters, "We are operating at a reduced number of partnered patrols with the SDF," but the patrols had not been stopped by that point. It would be only hours later that the SDF made that call, according to Reuters.
"We certainly do recognize Turkey's valid security concerns when it comes to protecting their people inside their borders," Ryder said at the Pentagon. "But again, the focus here is on preventing a destabilizing situation which would put ISIS in an ability to reconstitute, and no one wants to go back to what we saw in 2014 with a terrorist group running amok and taking large swathes of land with thousands and thousands of people killed."
Related reading:
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January 17, 2023
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The Drivers of Turkish-Syrian Rapprochement
A successful entente would alter the security landscape of northeastern Syria.
By: Caroline D. Rose
Despite the efforts of the U.S., Europe and regional actors to isolate the Syrian government, Turkey in recent weeks has conducted several high-level intelligence, defense and diplomatic meetings with Syrian officials. A meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar Assad looks increasingly possible. The two sides are likely too far apart for complete normalization, but circumstances will continue to compel Turkey to pursue influence within Damascus and forge a Turkish-Russian-Syrian entente that would alter the security landscape of northeastern Syria.
From the beginning of the Syrian civil war, Turkey has staunchly opposed the Assad regime. In 2011, it severed diplomatic relations with Damascus and threw considerable support behind the Syrian opposition and armed rebels in the country’s north. Turkey has refrained from engagement with the Syrian regime, focusing instead on constraining Kurdish armed groups – such as the People's Protection Units (YPG) – that Turkey says sponsor Kurdish separatism and violence across Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Second, Ankara has worked to establish a peace corridor – a buffer zone to repatriate Syrian refugees and prevent violent spillover into Turkey – along the border.
Territorial Control in Syria, December 2022
(click to enlarge)
For the past six years, Turkey has reverted to a cycle of military escalation to counter Kurdish militants and establish this corridor under Operation Claw. Though these attempts have garnered some ground and leverage in northeastern Syria, one obstacle has stood in its way: the U.S. military presence in Syria’s northeast and Washington’s partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish group that Turkey contends is aligned with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Turkey’s and America’s competing interests in northeastern Syria have created friction between the NATO allies and have frustrated Turkish attempts to establish its corridor.
However, recent shifts in Turkey and elsewhere have created opportunities for a Turkish pivot in northeast Syria. Worsening economic conditions in Turkey have translated into political frustrations at home, including anger directed at the 4 million Syrian refugees residing in Turkey. This, combined with rising friction between Turks and Kurds following a Nov. 13 terrorist attack in Istanbul, has increased Erdogan’s urgency to secure a repatriation zone in Syria’s north and counter Kurdish armed groups. In November and early December, the Turkish government failed to accomplish this militarily through Operation Claw-Sword, stopping short of a ground incursion amid international pressure and signs of blowback among dormant Islamic State cells throughout northeastern Syria.
Having exhausted the military option and eager to act before June 18 elections, the Turkish government has begun to explore incremental engagement with the Assad regime, supplemented by mediation with Russia. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has calculated rapprochement with the Syrian regime into its electoral strategy, gaining approval not only from key AKP officials and coalition partners such as the far-right Nationalist Movement Party but also from the main opposition force, the Republican People’s Party. The Turkish government has proceeded cautiously, initiating high-level meetings between intelligence and defense officials and building momentum to eventually convene both countries’ foreign ministers and heads of state. One key feature of these efforts has been the mediating role of Russia. Moscow hosted the first high-level meeting between Turkish intelligence and defense officials and worked to draft plans for an amended Turkish-Syrian-Russian “roadmap” in Syria’s northeast. The plan could reportedly reopen the Aleppo-Latakia highway, expand joint patrols between military forces and set the groundwork for incrementally pushing the YPG from Turkey’s intended buffer zone along the border – Ankara’s ideal alternative to another failed military intervention.
Amid the slew of engagements with the Syrian government, Turkish officials such as Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin have tried to counterbalance with affirmations of support for the Syrian opposition and expressions of Turkey’s commitment to a fair constitutional process within U.N. parameters. And despite a chorus of support from AKP political allies and adversaries alike, public demonstrations in Turkey against engagement and cautionary statements from NATO allies have put pressure on the Turkish government. Without a change in the Syrian regime’s position, full-scale normalization between Turkey and Syria remains a distant prospect. But a combination of electoral, economic and security pressures in Turkey will drive Ankara to shape a new status quo with Russia and Syria along its southern border.
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January 19, 2023
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The Push to Normalize Ties with Syria’s Assad
Rehabilitation of the Assad government provides a model for despotic regimes throughout the Arab world.
By: Hilal Khashan
A growing number of Arab countries have recently begun to restore relations with the Syrian regime after a decade of civil strife and failed attempts to overthrow its leader, Bashar Assad. The rise of ultra-radical jihadist groups, such as the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, convinced the U.S. to suspend its support of groups that aimed to overthrow the Assad regime. This encouraged Russia to step in and save Assad’s government after Iranian proxies failed to defeat the rebels. As his administration slowly emerges from isolation, authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa want to highlight the success of Assad’s government as proof that the use of brute force is a legitimate way of suppressing threats. Assad’s political survival has given these regimes confidence that uprisings in their own countries are unlikely to succeed. But Syria’s fragmentation and the continued presence of foreign militaries suggest that the standoff will continue for years to come.
Normalization Drive
The United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain began moving toward normalizing relations with Syria more than two years ago. The UAE took the lead, pledging to build a solar power plant in Syria shortly after sending its foreign minister to Damascus. Bahrain reappointed an ambassador to Syria. Egypt pressed for the Assad regime’s return to the Arab League after its suspension in 2011. The king of Jordan, a close ally of Washington, obtained permission from the U.S. to resume commercial ties with Syria. Border crossings between them have reopened, and trade relations have returned to prewar levels.
The drive to reestablish ties came without any expectation that the Syrian government would be open to genuine political reform or even the release of political prisoners. Arab governments justify their position by saying they want to help Syria reduce Iran’s influence in the country, confront the Turkish occupation of border areas, and contain radical Islamic movements that control Idlib province in the northwest. In recent weeks, there were several indications that the Turkish government may also normalize relations with the Assad regime, especially after a meeting in Moscow between Turkish and Syrian officials. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even indicated an in-person meeting with Assad could happen.
This shift was made possible by the Assad government’s survival after more than a decade of civil war. So far, there’s been no hint from the United States of consequences for governments that choose to restore diplomatic ties with Syria, despite its introduction in 2019 of the Caesar Act, which allows Washington to impose sanctions on countries and entities cooperating with the Assad regime. Instead, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington has made it clear to its regional partners that now is not the time to improve relations with Syria. He also encouraged them to consider Assad’s horrific human rights record over the past 12 years, including his continued refusal to allow life-saving humanitarian aid to reach millions of desperate Syrians. Nor has the United States pushed for a peaceful political solution to the conflict based on U.N. resolutions accepted by the opposition, which has expressed its willingness to negotiate a settlement with the regime.
But Washington’s passive response shouldn’t be surprising. In 2012, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, said the United States would not impose a no-fly zone or intervene directly in the conflict. He also stressed that the U.S. wouldn’t provide the opposition with weapons, suggesting it didn’t want to be directly involved in toppling the regime. When Assad used chemical weapons, killing thousands of civilians, the U.S. merely confiscated his chemical weapons arsenal, despite President Barack Obama having previously said that their use in the Syrian conflict was a “red line.”
In 2017, the CIA discontinued its support program, which started in 2013, for moderate fighters in the Free Syrian Army trying to overthrow the regime. Washington essentially gave up on Syria, leaving it to Russia and Iran to fight for influence. Jordan has also softened its stance on the Assad regime, fearing that its fall could lead to unrest at home. Likewise, Turkey abandoned its position on regime change after reaching an understanding with Russia and Iran in 2016.
The conflict is now in a stalemate, with little hope for a settlement in the foreseeable future. The U.S. and other key Western countries prefer to focus on alleviating the human suffering caused by 12 years of war. Washington is the most important financial contributor to Syrian refugee programs, providing more than $15 billion in humanitarian aid for Syria and refugee host countries, namely Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Germany received more than 600,000 Syrian refugees, the most of any country that doesn’t share a border with Syria. None of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries have signed the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and therefore don’t offer protection for Syrian refugees.
Foreign Presence
Despite the emerging detente, several countries continue to have a military presence in the war-torn country. The United States doesn’t see Syria as strategically important, but it does maintain a symbolic military presence in Syria’s northeast to prevent Turkey from attacking the Syrian Democratic Forces, its ally in the fight against the Islamic State. It currently maintains 28 military sites in Syria to counter the Russian and Iranian presence in the region. U.S. patrols control the Rumailan oil fields east of the Euphrates, where most of Syria’s oil wealth is located.
Territorial Control in Syria, December 2022
(click to enlarge)
Hezbollah forces and other Shiite militias loyal to Iran are deployed in 117 locations along the Lebanese-Syrian border, concentrated on the strategic Qusayr road juncture. They deploy troops to positions stretching from Homs to Aleppo, as well as near the cease-fire line in the Golan. As for Turkey, it deploys forces to 122 military sites along the northern border. Russian troops occupy 75 locations, the most important of which are the Hmeimim air base near Latakia and the naval facility in Tartus. They monitor U.S. patrols and extremist Islamic movements in Idlib and Homs in the northwest and Deraa in the southwest.
The competition between Russia and Iran no longer revolves around economic interests or influence over state institutions. Moscow wants to guarantee Assad will remain within the Russian orbit, while Iran wants to keep him as the head of a pariah regime isolated regionally and internationally so it can continue to manipulate him. Iran doesn’t want to see the Assad government’s reintegration into the Arab region and rejects the Turkish rapprochement with Damascus.
The Iranians are aware of suggestions in the media that Assad disapproves of Iran’s religious ideology and complains about Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ efforts to control him. They also know how to tighten the reins, however. The mullahs still remember how Bashar Assad’s late father, Hafez, had to set limits on their influence over his policy toward Arab and Western countries. Iran now has full control over the Assad regime, which is why Saudi Arabia pressured Egypt to reverse its support of Syria’s reintegration into the Arab system.
Most Arab countries, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and now Egypt, want Syria to rejoin the Arab League. Whether this happens is contingent on the success of the Saudi-Iranian negotiations on their own rapprochement. However, it’s unlikely that normalization of ties between Syria and Arab governments will weaken Iran’s presence in the country.
Implications for the Region
Assad’s success in retaining power over the past decade provides a model for despotic regimes in the Arab world to maintain control even when facing a mass uprising or full-out war. In Iraq, the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces implemented some of the violent methods used by the Assad regime to defeat the opposition. The same is true of the Shiite Amal Movement and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where demonstrators and activists were violently suppressed while the army remained neutral.
The rehabilitation of the Assad regime means forgiving it for the crimes it committed against the Syrian people in a war that killed at least half a million people and displaced more than 14 million, representing half of the country’s population. Some 100,000 Syrians were also arrested by the regime and remain missing. Tyranny emerged victorious in Syria, with the root causes of the 2011 uprisings still left unaddressed. Thus, normalization with the Assad regime would continue the cycle of conflict and tyranny that has characterized Middle East politics for decades. The Syrian experience shows that a determined regime can suppress a rebellion, no matter how intense, and win a decadelong war, regardless of the cost.
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https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/04/russian-warplanes-are-trying-dogfight-us-jets-over-syria-general-says/385736/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
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https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/04/uparmed-10s-return-mideast-skies-amid-tension-iran-russia/385727/
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May 31, 2023
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Is the Drug Trade Really Driving Normalization With Syria?
Damascus’ rehabilitation will continue full-steam ahead, regardless of counter-narcotics initiatives
By: Caroline D. Rose
After more than a decade of isolation, the Assad regime is now moving toward normalizing ties with its Middle Eastern neighbors. The governments of the region are not just restoring economic and commercial relations with the war-torn country but are also willing to deal directly with Damascus. This new approach has extended to cooperation on the illicit trade of captagon, an amphetamine-type stimulant whose popularity has soared in recent years. Coinciding with an uptick in captagon trafficking to Middle Eastern markets, particularly in the Arab Gulf, the issue has risen to the top of the agenda in regional normalization talks with Damascus – ignoring the key fact that elements of the Syrian regime are themselves responsible for the bulk of captagon production and trafficking in the region. But the growing prominence of the drug trade in the Syria rapprochement talks has prompted questions about what’s behind this sudden shift.
The Captagon Trade
While captagon has been traded throughout the Middle East for at least two decades, production and trafficking operations have exploded in recent years. The drug has become popular with a wide range of demographic groups, but little is known about its chemical composition. The few laboratory tests that have been done found that the pill can contain between zero and 45 percent amphetamine, as well as other components like caffeine, quinine, procaine and even toxic levels of copper and zinc. While the primary destination markets are in the Arab Gulf (particularly Saudi Arabia), production is concentrated in regime-controlled Syrian territory and Lebanon’s Qalamoun Mountain range.
Syria | Middle Eastern Hub for Captagon Transit
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Amid the ongoing fighting, economic decline and battle for contested areas, the Syrian regime, particularly its security and intelligence apparatus, was in need of alternative sources of revenue. Since 2018, evidence has mounted that the regime has played a substantial role in establishing large manufacturing sites along the country’s Mediterranean coast and southern border regions. It has reportedly facilitated major smuggling operations from regime-controlled ports like Latakia and coordinated with partners such as Hezbollah and Iran-linked militias to aid cross-border trafficking into neighboring markets. The most prominent producers and traffickers reportedly have strong links to the Assad family, including cousins of President Bashar Assad as well as his brother. They also appear to have connections to the regime’s Fourth Armored Division, Military Intelligence branch, and the country’s private agricultural, business, pharmaceutical and manufacturing sectors.
As the regime has stepped up its role in the trade, concerns have grown over the effects of captagon smuggling on local law enforcement and public health. This is especially the case in Jordan, a country that has experienced a wave of violent clashes related to smuggling operations along the Syrian border. In 2021, Jordan halted normalization efforts with Syria after reopening the Jaber-Nassib border crossing, which induced a flood of captagon trafficking and violent incidents between Jordan’s armed forces and smugglers. Along with Saudi Arabia and Israel, Jordan also voiced concerns about the increased presence of Hezbollah and Iran-linked militias in the captagon trade in Syria’s southern regions of Daraa and Swayda, which allow these groups greater advantage to expand influence and target adversaries.
Iran ‘Deal’ 3.0
But are concerns about the captagon trade really the driving force behind the region’s sudden warming ties with the Assad regime? To answer this question, it’s important to look at what else was happening in the region around this time. The rush to rapprochement happened after the catastrophic February 2023 earthquake in southern Turkey and Syria – which gave many Arab governments an excuse to communicate directly with Damascus and send humanitarian aid into regime-held territories. But these developments also coincided with another, quieter undercurrent in the region: warming Iran-Saudi relations.
Secret negotiations (brokered by China) between Saudi and Iranian delegations were taking place at this time, putting pressure on Middle Eastern governments to establish diplomatic channels with Damascus. Saudi Arabia was forging a new approach to Iran following failed nuclear negotiations in Vienna and signs that the U.S. was indeed disengaging from the region. Meanwhile, Iran, hurting from years of sanctions, was exploring pathways toward regional reintegration and economic relief. While the Iran-Saudi agreement has been broad-based and, thus far, largely focused on the civil war in Yemen, it’s clear that the issue of Syria’s reintegration also entered the negotiations. Since 2015, Iran has played a prominent role in protecting the Assad regime’s hold on power, mainly through its elite Quds Forces and proxies like Hezbollah and other militias. But this has been a costly endeavor for cash-strapped Iran, creating a strong incentive for Tehran to encourage a regional embrace of the Syrian regime.
The informal understanding between Riyadh and Tehran has been that Iran won’t come out of the shadows alone. Syria is a non-negotiable part of the package. This explains why Saudi Arabia quickly became a leader in efforts to readmit Syria into the Arab League and restart diplomatic ties more generally. It also explains recent reports that Saudi officials are considering offering the Syrian regime a $4 billion investment package in return for Damascus’ agreement to reduce its role in the captagon trade and cooperate in other counter-narcotics initiatives.
There are limits to just how far the region can go to limit captagon access. As with any illicit trade, it’s impossible to eliminate it completely. It will take a lot to incentivize the Syrian regime to abandon this lucrative business and genuinely implement deals in which it has promised to reduce its role. But given that the Iran-Saudi rapprochement is the driving force behind the Syrian normalization efforts, Damascus’ rehabilitation will continue full-steam ahead, regardless of the future of counter-narcotics initiatives in the region.
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https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/russia-continues-harass-us-jets-over-syria-top-air-force-general-says/387528/
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By: Geopolitical Futures
The U.S. in Syria. Russia has information that the United States is reinforcing its military contingent in Syria, Moscow’s envoy to Damascus said on Thursday. He claimed that Washington is strengthening its positions in the country’s northeast and in Al-Tanf, the site of a U.S. military base. Last week, Turkish media also reported that the U.S. was sending reinforcements to northeastern Syria. A convoy of armored vehicles, fuel tankers and ammunition reportedly arrived in Hasakah province 12 days ago headed for U.S. bases and military posts.
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Should US Troops Stay in Syria?
by Lawrence A. Franklin • July 5, 2023 at 6:00 am
The primary agenda of the Russian-Iranian meeting was reportedly "to discuss expelling the United States from Syria, which may indicate Russia's intent to facilitate Iranian-backed attacks on US forces."
Above all, the US presence is important as a blocking force to deny Iran an uninterrupted land bridge to Lebanon and the eastern Mediterranean, and to check the Iranian regime's long-term expansionist dream of "exporting the revolution."
Iran already effectively controls three countries in addition to its own – Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen – and has been broadening its influence throughout Latin America.
Any drawdown of the US troop presence at al-Tanf will also tempt adversarial "great powers" in Syria -- such as Iran, Russia and especially Turkey -- to attack US allies in the region, starting with the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The US presence, in addition, greatly helps safeguard the liberty of countless Syrians from the tyrannical Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad...
The pro-democratic forces in Syria and border regions in Iraq also help to prevent the remnants of the Islamic State (ISIS) from reconstituting itself into a robust terrorist entity, as they have already started to do.
US Assistant Secretary of Defense Celeste Wallander, during her September 2022 visit to the region, characterized the mission of these forces as "to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS."
Departure also would likely further decrease confidence in US pledges to defend vulnerable democracies throughout the world. Both Taiwan and archipelago countries in Southeast Asia would probably be the most affected by any US plan that abandoned the Kurds to Turkey, Iran and ISIS.
A withdrawal of US forces from their current Syrian redoubts will almost certainly imperil the sovereignty of Iraq, Syria as well as the mission of Kurdish troops. These missions include: guarding prisons that hold hundreds of incarcerated ISIS jihadists as well as monitoring the expansive displaced persons camp at al-Hol, which hosts tens of thousands of the wives and children of ISIS jihadists.
If the Kurds are not able to execute their mission of suppressing ISIS, the failure would quickly lead to a rapid expansion of the terrorist group.
[C]losure of the US mission in Syria would cause alarm among allies and risk accelerating an already precipitous decline in US influence throughout the Middle East.... There is little doubt that the image of US primacy on the world stage, as after the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, will deteriorate even further. Ally and adversary alike will seek non-American alternatives to protect their national interests.
Although continued US troop presence in Syria is not without risk, withdrawal from the region would no doubt trigger an even greater risk to America's interests -- while remaining in Syria accomplishes much at minimal cost.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-attack-on-u-s-drone-spurs-fears-of-escalation-over-syria-ff3b9f98?mod=hp_lead_pos10
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Toward the brink. A sizable force of Turkish-backed Arab tribes is deploying in the direction of Manbij in northern Syria to confront U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which are mostly Kurdish. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he supports the Arab tribes in their fight to reclaim their land from Kurdish “terrorists.”
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Syria on the Verge of Collapse?
by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi • September 15, 2023 at 5:00 am
The country's southern province of al-Suwayda', whose population primarily comes from the Druze minority, is currently witnessing protests on an unprecedented scale.
There has also been a definite paradigm shift in these protests: ... Calls for the government to resign, for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad and a political transition are now stronger and more prevalent.
However much one might sympathise with the protests, they are probably unlikely to shift the situation in a significant way. The protestors, although immensely courageous, are too few, and have little leverage.
The current status quo means that Syria is effectively divided into three major zones: the majority of the country that is held by the Damascus-based government backed by Russia and Iran; the northeast held by the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (the second largest zone of control); and parts of the northwest and north of the country on and near the border with Turkey, controlled by an assortment of insurgent factions that are backed by Turkey to varying degrees.
There is much debate about the causes of Syria's economic downturn, but it seems clear that the decline can be attributed in significant part to the Syrian government's economic isolation and its shortage of hard currency.
In the meantime, the Syrian government has no real solutions to its economic woes. It has been offering up measures such as increasing the salaries of state employees and military personnel while also raising the price for fuel.
Some impugn government corruption but consider criticism of Assad himself to be a red line: they seem to think that he is doing all he can to try to help the country -- while being surrounded by corrupt officials.
It is nonetheless important to be realistic about what these protests can achieve. The protestors remain committed for now to sustaining a civil disobedience movement that is peaceful.... Moreover, the Syrian government is adopting a non-confrontational stance towards the protests. The government seems to have issued general directives to its security forces in the province to lie low and avoid opening fire or any repressive measures unless they are attacked.
There are really only two ways in which Assad can be brought down: either by being militarily overthrown (not being contemplated by any international power) or if the elites propping up his rule decide that his presidency is no longer worth preserving...t seems that those closest to Assad who could bring about his removal from within are either largely unaffected by the situation or possibly even benefitting from it.
Sanctions – well-intended no doubt to prevent governments from brutalizing their own people even further and to encourage the leadership toward a democratic form of rule –seem simply not to work. First, it is harder for people who are starving successfully to rise up against a dictatorship: they are too busy looking for food and there is an understandable fear of reprisals. Countries such as Russia and Iran, as we well know, find ways around sanctions; or else the population starves while the leaders go on living in indifferent comfort.
Perhaps a more realistic approach might be: rather than tying sanctions to vague hopes of political transition, sanctions could instead be linked to more specific concessions such as serious efforts to combat drug trafficking, the release of political prisoners, and so on.
Otherwise, sanctions often deliver just a punitive message, which, although understandable for dictators such as Assad, does not really accomplish anything in terms of accountability, change or bettering the lot of Syrians like the protestors in al-Suwayda'.
Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda', whose population primarily comes from the Druze minority, is currently witnessing protests on an unprecedented scale. Pictured: People protest in al-Suwayda', Syria on September 5, 2023. (Photo by Sam Hariri/AFP via Getty Images)
Syria is clearly on the verge of collapse in terms of the economy and humanitarian situation.
The country's southern province of al-Suwayda', whose population primarily comes from the Druze minority, is currently witnessing protests on an unprecedented scale. While the province has previously seen protests motivated primarily by the country's deteriorating economic and livelihood situation, these protests are now far more widespread in the province and larger in scale.
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In Syria, Battle Lines Are Blurring
Iranian proxies’ reinforcement of the Assad regime may be more than Israel can bear.
By: Caroline D. Rose
On Oct. 5, multiple suicide drones struck a military academy graduation in Homs, a city deep within Syrian regime-controlled territory. The attack killed 89 people and wounded some 290, making it the deadliest event in the Syrian civil war since 2019. Though there has been no claim of responsibility, the attack likely originated from opposition-held areas in the country’s northwest. The Assad regime has responded with a severe, indiscriminate bombing campaign.
The regime’s allies and adversaries took note of its retaliation, but the eruption of violence on Oct. 7 between Hamas and Israel in and around the Gaza Strip soon captured international attention. The Syrian regime has taken advantage, increasing and prolonging its bombardment of opposition-held Idlib and Aleppo. But although events in Syria have slipped from the front pages, the lines between the Syrian regime’s crackdown, Israel-Hamas clashes and Iran-backed militias’ support for Hamas and the Assad regime are blurring, increasing the risk of a wider war.
Syria’s Crackdown
On the surface, President Bashar Assad’s regime is the most stable it has been in years. It controls approximately 70 percent of Syrian territory and is steadily normalizing relations with neighboring countries. But the regime has failed to regain control in the north and east, and already desperate economic conditions are deteriorating. Signs of political dissent are starting to show.
Territorial Control in Syria | October 2023
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Prior to the Oct. 5 attack in Homs, the regime, aided by Russian warplanes, was already conducting periodic strikes in opposition-held areas. It has targeted Turkey-backed militias as well as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an al-Qaida-linked group that commandeered large swaths of terrain in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo. Adding to the regime’s concerns is the renewed threat of a Turkish ground offensive in the north, on top of ongoing Turkish drone strikes targeting Kurdish fighters in Hasakah and Qamishli in the northeast and the Turkish government’s desire to repatriate millions of Syrian refugees. With the war in Ukraine diverting Russian military support, the Assad regime is eager to demonstrate that it is still capable of imposing its will.
Conditions in the war-torn south aren’t making things easier. In Sweida and Daraa provinces, citizens fed up with skyrocketing prices, an 80 percent drop in the currency’s value and scant public services are increasingly demonstrating against the regime. Their anger has been building for a long time – and in fact, Daraa city is where the failed revolution began in 2011 – but the regime added fuel to the fire in August when it boosted public sector wages and pensions. To the protesters, the regime was padding the pockets of government cronies instead of disseminating wealth among struggling provinces and villages. In Sweida, protesters even raided the offices of the ruling Baath Party – a bold move considering the regime’s history of crackdowns.
Iran’s Proxy Network
To meet the expanding security challenges amid diminished Russian military assistance, the Assad regime has been able to count on the support of Iran-backed militias and Hezbollah. These forces have aided the Syrian regime’s 4th Armored Division and intelligence apparatus, conducting patrols, protecting military headquarters, recruiting new members and deterring the formation of mass opposition movements. (They are also involved in the production and trafficking of the amphetamine drug Captagon along the Lebanese and Jordanian borders.) While the assistance of Iranian proxies strengthens the Syrian regime, it has also blurred the line between the Syrian civil war and the ongoing Iran-Israel rivalry in the Middle East.
Iran's Sphere of Influence
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This increased collaboration has alarmed Israel and Jordan. Israel has frequently conducted airstrikes along its border with Syria, targeting suspected Hezbollah and Iranian depots, shipments and personnel. Jordan has carried out fewer airstrikes but has voiced concern about the increased presence of Iran-backed actors, citing their role in the Captagon trade.
The outbreak of violence in Gaza and Israel’s potential ground invasion could further transform southern Syria. Concerned that Iran could encourage Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies to attack it, Israel is pre-emptively attacking suspected Iranian arms shipments in southern Syria and Lebanon. On Oct. 12, a day before Iran’s foreign minister was due to arrive in Syria, Israeli forces bombed airports in Aleppo and Damascus, temporarily knocking both out of service. Israel also reinforced its troop presence in the north near Lebanon and Syria and has exchanged cross-border fire with Iran-backed militias.
Hamas’ attack on Israel and the ensuing instability have enabled the Syrian regime to bombard opposition-held areas in the northwest without too much international condemnation. In the south, Russian support and especially the growing involvement of Iran-backed militias have supported the regime’s efforts to reconsolidate its influence. But as Israel’s military campaign against Hamas and Iranian proxies intensifies, the actions of Iran and its partners in Syria will come under greater scrutiny. The very involvement of Iran’s proxies raises the risk that several of the region’s conflicts could blend together.
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Iranian maneuvers. Iran has set up an operational headquarters in Daraa province in southwestern Syria. Meanwhile, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds forces has reportedly visited Damascus three times since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.