Syria Superthread [merged]

[CougarKing]

Assad's air force continues to be a major factor in the fight against the rebels, in spite of past losses to the rebels.

Defense News

Truce Near Damascus Broken as Warplanes Bomb Aleppo
Dec. 26, 2013 - 01:13PM  |  By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE 

BEIRUT — A day-old truce in a besieged rebel-held town near Damascus broke down Thursday as Syrian warplanes bombed the divided northern city of Aleppo for a 12th straight day, activists said.

By Wednesday, the Aleppo air blitz that began on Dec. 15 had killed at least 422 people, mostly civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group relying on activists and other sources inside the war-torn country.

In Moadamiyet al-Sham, near the capital, clashes broke out on Thursday afternoon, a day after opposition and regime sources announced a truce for the town, which had been under a suffocating army siege for a year.

The opposition blamed President Bashar al-Assad's troops for breaking the truce.

"They opened heavy machine-gun fire without any reason. It means there are people from the regime who don't want the siege on our town to be lifted. They are trying to end the truce in any way possible," Ahmad, a local activist, told AFP via the Internet.

The Syrian Revolution General Commission, a network of activists on the ground, confirmed the fighting, and said the army was sending "heavy reinforcements" towards the town.

On Wednesday rebels raised the national flag above the town in accordance with a ceasefire deal that was supposed to allow food in, but Ahmad said none had arrived.

Negotiations were under way for another truce in Barzeh, northern Damascus, according to activist Emad al-Barzawi, but he said "there has been no decision yet."

Barzeh has come under frequent bombardment in recent months, forcing hundreds of residents to flee.

In Aleppo, the country's second largest city and onetime commercial hub, the air force kept up its offensive a day after 12 people were killed in aerial attacks in and around the city, said the Observatory.

Regime aircraft launched a fresh attack using TNT-packed barrels against the city's Hanano district, and another air strike against Daret Ezza in the surrounding province, according to the Observatory.

The European Union, the United States and the Arab League have condemned the air force's use of barrel bombs, and the US-based Human Rights Watch has described their use as "unlawful" because they do not discriminate between civilians and fighters.

"When the bombing starts, you feel like you're going to die any second," Abu Omar, an activist in the town of Marea near Aleppo, told AFP via the Internet.

"The regime sees us all as terrorists — fighters, civilians, men, women, children. To them, anyone who lives in a liberated (rebel) area is a terrorist."

An estimated 126,000 people have been killed since the start of Syria's uprising, which began with peaceful protests in March 2011 but escalated into a civil war after regime forces fired on demonstrators.

The regime has always referred to the opposition as "terrorists," even before the rise of powerful jihadist groups among the rebels.

Pro-regime newspaper Al-Watan said the army had carried out "door-to-door operations" on Wednesday in Adra, northeast of Damascus, where it said 57 "terrorists" have been killed.

State news agency SANA meanwhile said Islamist rebels assassinated a Muslim cleric in Damascus province "while he was on his way out of the mosque after evening prayers."

 

[Haletown]

Meanwhile, next door in Turkey, some more wheels fall off the bus.


http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/12/27/the-end-of-erdogans-cave-of-wonders-an-i-told-you-so/

The Middle East is coming unglued, centuries old simmering hatreds - Arab vs Persian, Sunni vs Shia are bubbling up and if they are not handled well the region is in for some nasty, bloody times ahead.

Syria could be the fuse.

 

[vonGarvin]

Syria could be the fuse.

Time for another, no-holds-barred crusade? 

 

[PuckChaser]

Time for another, no-holds-barred crusade?

And our Army's current boots are just as good as the soldiers from the last Crusades!  ;D

 

[Lightguns]

Shrug as long as they kill one another over there.......

 

[vonGarvin]

And our Army's current boots are just as good as the soldiers from the last Crusades!  ;D

No.  Theirs were better

Shrug as long as they kill one another over there.......

I'd agree: but that's not all they're killing

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Anyone that wants to see what Urban warfare with AFV looks like need to subscribe to ANNA news. Lots of very good footage. This one is on tank recovery under sniper fire. Some of the video's have English subtitles others not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS7TQBEgxsI

 

[Rifleman62]

Looks like one guy is carrying either a AN/PRC-25 or an AN/PRC-77 radio set.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Yep apparently the design has been copied quite a bit, it shows up in quite a few of these video's

 

[CougarKing]

More pics from the Syrian War from last month, plus an update on the specially-equipped ship tasked with destroying Syria's chemical weapons at the bottom of this post:

US Ship Equipped To Destroy Syria's Chemical Weapons


ABOARD THE MV CAPE RAY — With special machinery installed in the hold of this American cargo ship, the MV Cape Ray is poised to embark on an unprecedented mission to destroy Syria’s lethal chemical agents at sea.

At a shipyard in Virginia, the 650-foot (197.5-meter) ship from the Maritime Administration’s reserve fleet has been outfitted with two portable hydrolysis systems designed to neutralize the most dangerous chemicals in Syria’s arsenal.

“I’m waiting for my sailing orders,” said Capt. Rick Jordan, clad in overalls and a construction helmet.

The US officer told reporters he expects to get the green light to set off “within about two weeks.”

Under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States, Syria was supposed to remove its key chemical weapons components by the end of 2013.

But the country’s raging civil war, logistical problems and bad weather have held up plans to move chemical agents out of Syria to the port of Latakia, according to the joint UN-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mission overseeing the effort.

The most dangerous elements used for mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin are supposed to be loaded soon onto cargo ships and escorted to Italy by Danish and Norwegian naval vessels.

In waters off Italy, about 700 tons of chemical agents will then be loaded onto the Cape Ray, according to Frank Kendall, Pentagon undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

The US ship will then head out to an undisclosed location in the Mediterranean to begin the task of neutralizing the chemical agents.

Inside the cavernous vessel, all is ready to accommodate a 35-member crew and 63 specialists overseeing the hydrolysis operation, as well as a security team.

(...)

Defense News

 

[CougarKing]

Reportedly moderate Syrian rebels fighting against the Al Qaeda-affiliated ISIL rebel group.

Yahoo News via Reuters

Syrian rebels launch fierce offensive against al Qaeda fighters

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebel factions battled fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) across north-west Syria on Saturday in the heaviest clashes between President Bashar al-Assad's opponents in nearly three years of conflict, activists said.

The apparently coordinated strikes against the ISIL come after months of increasing resentment of the powerful al Qaeda-linked group, whose radical foreign jihadis and have alienated many ordinary Syrians in rebel-held territory.

Activists said dozens of fighters were killed in the clashes between rival rebel groups which have raged since Friday in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, close to the border with Turkey.

Rebel infighting has strengthened Assad's hand ahead of planned peace talks in Geneva on January 22. The president, backed by Shi'ite fighters from Iraq and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, has pushed back rebels around Damascus and in central Syria, and faces little pressure to make concessions.

One group of fighters battling ISIL was the newly formed Mujahideen Army, an alliance of eight brigades who accused the al Qaeda affiliate of hijacking their struggle to topple Assad.

They said ISIL fighters were "undermining stability and security in liberated areas" through theft, kidnapping and trying to impose their own brand of Islam, and vowed to fight them until ISIL was disbanded or driven out of Syria.

In response, ISIL pledged to fight back. "The blood of our brothers will not be shed in vain," it said in a statement.

(...)

 

[CougarKing]

Hizbullah takes delivery of advanced Syrian weapons
02 January 2014

The Wall Street Journal reported on 2 January that Yakhont anti-ship missile systems were been disassembled and smuggled into Lebanon, while other advanced weapons are being stored at Syrian sites under Hizbullah's control. It added that the militant group does not as yet have all the components it needs to operate the Yakhont, a supersonic Russian missile that has a range of up to 300 km.

A US official corroborated the report for The New York Times , saying that as many as 12 Yakhont missiles are now in Hizbullah's possession inside Syria and some of the components had been taken to Lebanon. The official said that Syria was transferring the missiles to Hizbullah to make it harder for Israel to destroy them with air strikes. ...

Hizbullah's ability to exploit the over-the-horizon range of the Yakhonts is also questionable, given its lack of aircraft with target acquisition radars. However, the missiles would be a threat to stationary platforms working in Israel's Leviathan gas field.

Jane's

 

[Dissident]

"I can't wait until the Middle East really explodes. Ancient hatred and modern weapons. My kind of show, man!"
-George Carlin

Are we there yet?

 

[OldSolduer]

"I can't wait until the Middle East really explodes. Ancient hatred and modern weapons. My kind of show, man!"
-George Carlin

Are we there yet?

Very close if not there.

 

[tamouh]

Some intelligence sources claiming Al-Qaeda is financed in part by the Syrian regime itself even as it fights it. Double game to taint the rebels as terrorists and extremist.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10585391/Syrias-Assad-accused-of-boosting-al-Qaeda-with-secret-oil-deals.html

The Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad has funded and co-operated with al-Qaeda in a complex double game even as the terrorists fight Damascus, according to new allegations by Western intelligence agencies, rebels and al-Qaeda defectors.

Jabhat al-Nusra, and the even more extreme Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS), the two al-Qaeda affiliates operating in Syria, have both been financed by selling oil and gas from wells under their control to and through the regime, intelligence sources have told The Daily Telegraph.

Rebels and defectors say the regime also deliberately released militant prisoners to strengthen jihadist ranks at the expense of moderate rebel forces. The aim was to persuade the West that the uprising was sponsored by Islamist militants including al-Qaeda as a way of stopping Western support for it.

The allegations by Western intelligence sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, are in part a public response to demands by Assad that the focus of peace talks due to begin in Switzerland tomorrow be switched from replacing his government to co-operating against al-Qaeda in the “war on terrorism”.

“Assad’s vow to strike terrorism with an iron fist is nothing more than bare-faced hypocrisy,” an intelligence source said. “At the same time as peddling a triumphant narrative about the fight against terrorism, his regime has made deals to serve its own interests and ensure its survival.”
.....
.....

 

[a_majoor]

More Smart Diplomacy tm progress. Only about 5% of the chemical weapons stockpile has been turned over, while Assad continues to receive the material and moral support of Russia and Iran:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/02/05/kerry-calls-broken-chemical-weapons-agreement-in-and-of-itself-a-significant-milestone/

Kerry Calls Broken Chemical Weapons Agreement ‘In and of Itself, a Significant Milestone’
Posted By Bridget Johnson On February 5, 2014 @ 3:41 pm In Middle East,Politics | No Comments

Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN that the Obama administration’s policy on Syria hasn’t failed, but “is just very challenging and very difficult.”

He hailed the chemical weapons agreement, the requirements of which Bashar al-Assad has barely met, “is, in and of itself, a significant milestone.”

“And it is progressing. Yes, it’s been slowed down a little bit in the last month, but we have been raising that profile of questions about it and I think it’s now speeding up again,” Kerry continued. “…Before we got that agreement, Assad was using those weapons against his people. Now he’s not and he can’t. So we have eliminated a critical grotesque tool that this man was willing to use ruthlessly against his own people. And we’re moving it out.”

Assad has been dropping barrel bombs — an oil drum packed with explosives, oil and shrapnel — on civilians instead.

Kerry conceded that the deal with the international community to dispose of his chemical weapons stockpile meant that “Assad has improved his position a little bit,” but “he’s still not winning.”

“I don’t want to make any excuse whatsoever. We want this to move faster. We want it to do better,” he said. “But I remember talks around Vietnam, where it took Henry Kissinger a year to get the size and shape of the table decided. It took another several years before they even came to some kind of an agreement.”

“I don’t want it to be years. We don’t have years in Syria. But the point I’m making is that diplomacy is tough, slogging, slow work and hard work. But we’re beginning to see the — the shaping of how you might potentially get somewhere. And we are always in the process of reevaluating whether there’s more we can do, should do. We’ll work with Congress. We’re working internally to figure out if we should — if there’s a way to get more response from the Russians, more response from Assad.”

Syria missed another deadline in the chemical weapons deal today. Less than 5 percent of its arsenal has been turned over for disposal.

According to the United Nations’ timeline, by this day on the calendar more than 90 percent of the stockpile should have been relinquished.

“This is just the latest evidence that the agreement brokered by the United States and Russia has only strengthened Assad. Rather than feeling pressure to leave, with ongoing Russian and Iranian support, Assad has dug in. At talks in Switzerland last month, Assad’s representatives would not even agree to allow humanitarian access to besieged cities such as Homs. Now we see evidence that Assad is up to his old brutal tactics, dropping barrel bombs and indiscriminately killing civilians, including many children,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said today.

“…We are going to be living with the consequences of the Obama Administration’s failed Syria policy for decades to come. It is time for the administration to increase pressure on Assad instead of giving him more room to maneuver.”

 

[CougarKing]

This update goes hand-in-hand with US SecState John Kerry saying this year that the military option against Syria may be back on the table if Syria continues to delay:

Defense News

UN: Syria Must Speed Up Removal of Chemical Weapons
Feb. 6, 2014 - 07:12PM  |  By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

UNITED NATIONS — Syria must move faster to remove its deadly chemical weapons stockpile and meet the June 30 deadline set for destroying its arsenal, the UN Security Council demanded Thursday.

The 15 member nations “call upon the Syrian Arab Republic to expedite actions to meet its obligations,” the council’s president for the month, Lithuania’s UN ambassador Raimonda Murmokaite, told reporters.

The chemical weapons must be transported to the Syrian port of Latakia “in a systematic and sufficiently accelerated manner,” Murmokaite insisted, after summarizing the closed door discussions the council held earlier Thursday with Sigrid Kaag, who is tasked with coordinating Syria’s disarmament.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has pledged to eliminate Syria’s entire chemical weapons arsenal by the end of June or face sanctions, including the possible use of force.

Less than five percent of the deadly stockpile has been removed from Syria, according to Washington, and Damascus has just missed another key deadline.

Rejecting in part Damascas’ explanations for the delay, the Security Council noted that, according to UN assessments, “Syria has sufficient material and equipment” as well as “substantial international support” to transport their chemical weapons stockpile in line with deadlines.


(...)

 

[a_majoor]

The problem with the failure of US policy in Syria is that it inflames several parties to the conflict and threatens to expand the scale and scope of the war as effects spill over into neighbouring nations and groups. The end result may well be we get drawn in without being prepared or wanting to be part of this at all (and we sure as heck don't want to be drawn into that conflict). Given the total lack of direction or even understanding of what is going on by the Administration, if/when we do get drawn in, it won't be on our own terms either....

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/02/15/slaughter-in-the-cities-ineffectual-mumbling-in-the-white-house/

Slaughter in the Cities, Ineffectual Mumbling in the White House

This is what a policy looks like when it dies and goes to hell. The FT reports that violence is ramping up in Syria, with Assad agents using devastating “barrel bombs” against rebel areas. More:

According to the opposition Syrian National Council, 20,000 people have been killed in barrel-bomb campaigns since the start of the conflict in 2011. A Turkish official said about 2,000 had been killed since peace talks began in Geneva last month. The Damascus reg­ime has failed to offer an explanation for the bombing, but insists in its official media and during the Geneva talks that it is fighting a war against terrorists [...]

Residents say not a single building in rebel-controlled parts of Aleppo has been spared from damage in the bombing. Pictures from the city show entire districts reduced to ruins. One video shows people digging a toddler from the rubble. The little girl survived.

The President can only count his one remaining blessing: the press is still busy trying to shield itself from understanding the full damage this administration’s painfully inept Syria policy has done. Our Syria response has harmed America’s position, our alliances in the Middle East, and our relationships around the world — to say nothing of the humanitarian disaster we’ve implicated ourselves in.

To bluster heroically about how ‘Assad must go’, then do nothing as he stays; to epically proclaim grandiose red lines and make military threats that fall humiliatingly flat; to grasp with pathetic eagerness an obviously bogus Russian negotiating ploy; to sputter ineffectually as the talks collapse…it is rare that American diplomacy is conducted this poorly for so long a period of time.

To some degree we sympathize with those in the mainstream media who turn their eyes from the sight. It’s not just the decomposing corpse of Obama’s Syria/Russia policy that’s stinking up the joint. The comforting assumptions and diplomatic ideas of a whole generation of ambitious Washington foreign policy wonks are being discredited. They thought to build a new Democratic consensus foreign policy on the tomb of George W. Bush’s failures, but “smart diplomacy” turns out to be deeply flawed. The left is moving toward the kind of meltdown moment that many neocons had as the Bush foreign policy went off the rails.

President Obama is actually a much smarter man than his current foreign policy troubles would lead one to suppose. He remains, however, trapped between two sets of impulses.  On the one hand, he feels a  Wilsonian drive to make the world a better place. On the other, he has a Jeffersonian urge to keep America’s head down, reducing the scope and scale of our international commitments and ambitions. In his Wilsonian moments he dreams of nonproliferation, overthrows dictators in Libya, and ‘speaks out’ against human rights violations. But in his Jeffersonian moments, he backs down and works to build ‘realistic’ relationships with the same people his Wilsonian side periodically insults.

In truth, neither his Wilsonian nor Jeffersonian instincts provide a solid basis for American foreign policy. Moreover, the messy compromises and agonized public hesitations that result when he tries to balance his two sides make things even worse.  This is not just about the use of force.  An aggressive, boots-on-the-ground foreign policy wouldn’t be an improvement over the current mess. The Jeffersonian goals of safeguarding America’s core interests with as little risk and cost as possible are necessary, commendable and sound. But trying to coerce Iran to a nuclear deal while allowing it both to tighten its grip on Syria and to wage a regional sectarian war is about as unrealistic a policy as one can imagine. Begging Russia for help in Syria while spitting ineffectively at its Ukraine policy is a bewildering mix of provocation and appeasement. Both of these approaches betray an immense confusion at the heart of the Washington policy process.

President Obama’s political ascent was rapid and his opponents were ineffectual. He made it to the Oval Office and won a second term against a series of imploding candidates. For readers old enough to remember those halcyon days of 2008, he swept into office on a tide of unearned adulation that would have gone to anyone’s head He was then quickly greeted with an equally unearned rush of global adulation in the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps because of all of this, he doesn’t seem comfortable with the hard-nosed realities around international power.

He isn’t a coward or a weakling. He can kill people, and he can order people to fight in faraway wars well enough. But he doesn’t seem to know how to make choices that over time increase his power and prestige on the international scene. His strategic choices don’t get him closer to where he wants to be, and as time as gone by he doesn’t appear to be getting any better at international strategy.

Bureaucratic inexperience can’t explain this. The President’s foreign policy problems don’t come from his inability to manage a huge and restive bureaucracy. He is sometimes incapable in that way, as we learned when he publicly touted his health care website without knowing it was about to crash and burn. But that inexperience hasn’t been a factor when it comes to foreign policy. Here the president has managed to whip the State Department and the Pentagon into shape, imposing tight White House control over the process in a way that many of his predecessors would envy.

If he were making better strategic choices, he would be able to impose them on the bureaucracy pretty well. His defenders try to shout down criticism by labeling the president’s critics as reflexively hawkish neocons nostalgic for the Cheney days. Some of the critics do indeed fall into that category, and perhaps this kind of defense can delay the erosion of support for the president among Democrats. But it doesn’t do him any good in the long run. President Obama more than anything else needs to get to grips with the reality that his basic strategic choices aren’t working out. This is personal; the memoirs and reportage coming out of the administration make it perfectly clear that some of his most controversial decisions came when he overruled senior advisors and imposed his own stamp on important policy choices.

The President needs to get out of the bubble and take a long hard look at what is going wrong. Jimmy Carter (a man whose basic foreign policy instincts are very close to President Obama’s) had a sudden moment of clarity when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. As his defenders correctly point out, the decisions he made in the last 18 months of his presidency prepared the way for Ronald Reagan’s more confrontational approach. It’s a moment like this that President Obama needs. Perhaps at some point the accumulation of snubs, rebuffs, and failures coming out of his Syria policy will help him push the reset button on a foreign policy approach that’s increasingly corroding his and his country’s standing in the world.

Published on February 15, 2014 10:55 am

 

[CougarKing]

We'll see if the Russian diplomats have any pull/influence on Saudi officials compared to the Saudi imams...

Defense News

Russia Warns Saudis Against Giving Syria Rebels Missiles
Feb. 25, 2014 - 03:45AM  |  By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

MOSCOW — Russia on Tuesday warned Saudi Arabia against supplying Syrian rebels with shoulder-launched missile launchers, saying such a move would endanger security across the Middle East and beyond.

The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” by news reports that Saudi Arabia was planning to buy Pakistani-made shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank systems for armed Syrian rebels based in Jordan.

It said that the aim was to alter the balance of power in a planned spring offensive by rebels on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“If this sensitive weapon falls into the hands of extremists and terrorists who have flooded Syria, there is a great probability that in the end it will be used far from the borders of this Middle Eastern country,” the foreign ministry said.

(...)- EDITED

 

[Kirkhill]

880 tanks in Western Russia....

Pakistan to Saudi to Syria to Ukraine????  >