The Syria Analysis Thread

President Camacho Saturday 4 May 2013

Obama Admin has I think the has made its decision... they've calculated that decapitating the Syrian gov't is the best and possibly only shot to turn the tide decisively since Assad has proven much tougher than anticipated to beat in the field.

But America's hand-picked "opposition government" of plutocrats and professors has proven no match for the Islamist cadres both on the battlefield or in Syrian public opinion, so what exactly is the US strategy if Assad is assassinated and the Ba'ath government disintegrates?

This and the other actions taken in Libya, Egypt, Mali, etc proves Scheuer's recent observation that covert operations have increased dramatically in frequency and scope as the "War on Terror" has progressed. But (as Scheuer hinted at), covert action at the tactical and operational levels can only be effective as a complement to some combination of diplomatic, economic, and military policy at the strategic level. Because America is no longer capable of thinking strategically, all of these supposed inroads made in the "Arab Spring" lead to nowhere.

Fitz Saturday 4 May 2013

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/9RC1Mepk_Sw

Angocachi Saturday 4 May 2013

It really is going to end as a sort of Sunni Arab and Kurd secession from Christian-Druze-Shia-Allawi Syria. Aside from some military bases and majority non-Sunni neighborhoods, the Sunni and Kurdish regions have fallen totally to the FSA, Al Nusra, and KSC. All that's left is to starve out and rout the remaining Assadist military units. What will never fall to the rebels are the coast and Jabal Al Druze. There is consensus in Tel Aviv and in Tehran to end this conflict with an Alawite State. It will be the Syrian Taiwan.

Bob Dylan Roof Sunday 5 May 2013

More evidence that jewish influence in western governments must be eliminated.

JPost: 'Israel may be behind Syrian chemical weapons use'

Vuk Monday 6 May 2013

UN Sources Say Syrian Rebels — Not Assad — Used Sarin Gas

Bob Dylan Roof Monday 6 May 2013

The U.N.-worshiping New York Times seems less than confident in the international body's detective work.

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 11 May 2013

Roland President Camacho SteamshipTime SweetLeftFoot Theo Stubby Angocachi

US Prepares War with Syria as Washington backed Al Qaeda Rebels Lose Ground

Erdogan’s calls for military action were echoed across the American press. The Washington Post ’s editorial board called for “an air campaign as well as arms for the moderate opposition” aimed to “quickly tip the military balance against the Assad regime.” Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens proposed a long list of attacks against Assad, including sending in US ground forces: “disable the runways of Syrian air bases, including the international airport in Damascus…use naval assets to impose a no-fly zone over western Syria…supply the Free Syrian Army with heavy military equipment, including armored personnel carriers and light tanks; and be prepared to seize and remove Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, even if it means putting boots (temporarily) on the ground.”

The calls for war come amid reports of major setbacks in Syria for the US-backed opposition, reflecting its small size and lack of popular support, and growing military assistance from Russia, Iran, and Lebanon for the Assad regime.

After two months of heavy bombardment, government forces have retaken the strategic town of Khirbet Ghazaleh from the “rebels,” re-opening government transport routes to Deraa, the city where initial opposition protests began two years ago. Opposition leaders acknowledged it as a major setback. “Tomorrow, the big tragedy will happen, the regime’s supply route to Deraa will reopen, and the officers will go back and ammunition will be resupplied and the bombardment will resume,” said Abu Yacoub, commander of the Martyrs of Khirbet Ghazaleh brigade.

Yesterday, BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar wrote that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) amounts to little more than “men with guns,” united only by the fact that they “point their guns in the same direction.” He said the FSA is not a “cohesive force” and lacks a “command structure.”

A Jerusalem Post article of May 3rd entitled “Is Assad Winning in Syria?” describes the defeat of opposition militias around Qusayr by Hezbollah forces, as well as the capture of Otaiba by Assad’s forces last week, indicating the growing strength of Assad vis-à-vis the US proxy forces. According to the article, “morale among supporters of the regime has improved markedly in recent weeks.” It concluded, “Assad shows no signs of cracking.”

Under these conditions, Assad’s allies are stepping up military deliveries to Damascus. The Russian government has announced plans to sell S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Syria, in a $900 million deal that would substantially bolster the Syrian regime’s capacity to defend itself against US and Israeli airstrikes.

The ramping up of US military operations against Syria is accompanied by diplomatic efforts to bring about a post-Assad government on terms favorable to US imperialism. Secretary of State John Kerry has sought an agreement with Russia, which would pave the way for a power-sharing arrangement.

This plan also received significant endorsement in US strategic and media circles. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a prominent architect of US imperial policy, issued a strong criticism of proposed US military action against Syria, proposing instead to try to involve Russia and China in US plans to remove Assad through diplomacy.

He said,

“The various schemes that have been proposed for a kind of tiddlywinks intervention from around the edges of the conflict—no-fly zones, bombing Damascus and so forth—would simply make the situation worse. None of the proposals would result in an outcome strategically beneficial for the US On the contrary, they would produce a more complex, undefined slide into the worst-case scenario. The only solution is to seek Russia’s and China’s support for U.N.-sponsored elections in which, with luck, Assad might be ‘persuaded’ not to participate.”

Along these lines, David Ignatius of the Washington Post proposed “a military transition government” that would include “reconcilable elements of Assad’s army,” under the leadership of US-backed General Salim Idriss, a defector who now commands Syrian opposition forces.

Effectively, US officials are hoping that, in the context of negotiations jointly organized by the Russian government, they could persuade Syrian officers to organize a coup to oust Assad, and then make a deal with the US-backed opposition. Their plan involves a new ruling coalition composed of opposition and regime elements, described by Ignatius as a “military transition government that would include reconcilable elements of Assad’s army.” Assad would be removed, though lower-ranking members of his government might remain.

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 11 May 2013

Byssus Angocachi Fitz

Teenage Western recruits are joining Syria’s jihadist movement

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BRUSSELS, BELGIUM—A man looks deep into the camera and pleads, in Arabic: “You, there in Europe, watching this video. I’m calling you.”

With urgency in his voice, he refers to children being murdered and women being raped at the hands of the enemy.

“We really need you here. This is your opportunity for paradise.”

“Paradise” via the distinct possibility of death on a Syrian battlefield, he means.

The man is calling for recruits to join the Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate that makes up part of Syria’s fragmented armed opposition fighting the government forces of Syria President Bashar Assad.

As unappealing as that “opportunity” may sound to the average European, the message has resonated with hundreds of youths here who have disappeared from their schools and homes and turned up in Syria.

Most are lifelong Muslims, while others are recent converts, a shocking number of them just teenagers, reportedly as young as 15.

Teenage Western recruits in Syria’s uprising throw yet another complex layer on the country’s two-year-old civil war, which has killed more than 70,000 and displaced millions more. As it is, Western powers are grappling with how best to aid rebel groups that are fighting alongside extremists to replace Assad’s regime.

London think-tank The International Center for the Study of Radicalization estimates as many as 600 Europeans have made this journey for jihad , with one of the largest contingents coming from Belgium. Belgian authorities estimate the number to be possibly as high as 80 individuals.

Among them is Jejoen Bontinck, an 18-year-old from Antwerp. His father, Dimitri Bontinck, is now in Aleppo in a desperate search for him, posting dramatic updates on Facebook. The father has said his son was “brainwashed” by members of the outlawed Islamist organization Sharia4Belgium who befriended him in a city park.

Brian de Mulder, a 19-year-old also from Antwerp, is known to be there too, also drawn in by the shadowy group.

When family learned he was in Syria earlier this year, they held a joint press conference with the openly anti-Muslim Belgian nationalist party, Vlaams Belang, calling on the government to do more against Sharia4Belgium and its ilk.

After Belgian authorities raided four dozen houses and arrested six on suspicion of supporting terrorism last month, de Mulder, now known as Abu Qasem Brazili, sent the family a message saying he never wanted to see them again.

They weren’t the only ones.

Two 16-year-olds from the Brussels suburb of Schaerbeek went missing for a few hours during their school’s Easter break. They then called their parents from Turkey to say they were headed into the Syrian war zone.

The mother of one of the teens flew to Turkey immediately, coming back to Belgium days later heartbroken, with no information about her son.

With little or no contact with their kids, families are left scouring Al Nusra public relations videos, looking for confirmation their children are still alive.

Such YouTube videos were one of the first signs of proof the Europeans were there fighting with the Islamists, says Hicham El-Mzairh, an Antwerp city councillor with Muslim roots who knows several of the young men who’ve gone.

El-Mzairh points to a video, posted by a group he says is an offshoot of Al Nusra, of a firefight in which two of the young gunmen speak to each other in Dutch with what El-Mzairh describes as an unmistakable Antwerp accent.

Europol, the European police network, has just released its annual threat assessment, showing officials are taking stock of the problem.

The police force has noted “increasing numbers of radicalized (European Union) citizens travelling to regions of conflict to engage in terrorist activities,” Europol Director Rob Wainright wrote in the report.

“There is growing awareness of the threat posed by these people, should they return to the European Union intent on committing acts of terrorism,” he added.

Next door, The Netherlands has already ticked its national security level up a notch specifically because it learned so many Dutch residents had gone to the Syrian battlefields.

El-Mzairh, long active in Antwerp’s large Muslim community, said the alarm is justified. Long before the exodus to Syria raised new concerns, he’d been warning city leaders that Islamic radicals were making use of schools and parks to recruit young Belgians by exploiting a weak sense of community and inadequate guidance from old-fashioned imams in practising tolerant Islam integrated with European norms.

“If we don’t give them answers, they go to the internet,” he says, where they “become hypnotized” by the likes of Al Nusra. “The biggest recruiter is the Internet, it’s YouTube.”

And now, El-Mzairh said, the stringent Islam they’ve embraced to “fill the emptiness,” as he describes it, is “also asking them to kill people that try to stop them. So they’ve got a holy book in one hand and a weapon in the other.”

The Belgian government is at a loss over how they can be stopped. Border controls should be strengthened, most people agree. Another suggestion is to take away identity cards from those deemed vulnerable to extremist influences, so they can’t leave the country.

Schaerbeek Mayor Bernard Clerfayt scoffs at that idea, even after the two teenagers who were schoolmates of his own children ran away to Syria. His town is half Muslim, half Catholic or other religions, and he says there’s no way he’s going to punish the entire Muslim youth population for the acts of relatively few.

What Clerfayt has done, controversially, is to shut down some of the free food distribution services at the local train station. He says he learned there was radical Islamist propaganda being handed out with the meals and believes this connection may have been the link between the young teens and Syria.

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 11 May 2013

Stubby Roland President Camacho Vuk SteamshipTime Angocachi Byssus Thomas777 Fitz

Syria is being destroyed while Assad displays remarkable staying power

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Bashar al-Assad visits an electricity station in Damascus. Significant defections from the Alawite hard core of the army and security forces are still absent. Photograph: Sana Handout/EPA

It is one of the enduring features of the Syrian crisis that Bashar al-Assad has proved far more resilient than many imagined. Journalists and commentators have spent the past two years negotiating a landscape strewn with propaganda, illusions and substantial doses of wishful thinking, finally to grasp that he has real staying power.

The president still has loyal, powerful allies, as Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, made clear on Tuesday. Lebanon's Shia militia, he pledged, would stand by its fellow stalwart of the "axis of resistance". Russia and Iran – "real friends" – would not let Assad fall.

Syria illustrates a sort of Middle Eastern Murphy's law – anything that can make things worse invariably happens: massacres, refugees fleeing to Jordan, tensions in Lebanon and Iraq, the use of chemical weapons, the risk of conflict with Israel. Most days see scores or more dead so that a revision of the UN's estimate of 70,000 fatalities seems long overdue. Diplomacy is non-existent. No one believes in a negotiated solution. Syria is being destroyed.

It would be wrong to describe the mood in Damascus as upbeat – it is a tense and frightened city that resounds constantly to the noise of war. But there is a sense in Syrian government circles that their arguments are starting to hit home.

Assad insisted from the start that he faced not a popular uprising for democracy and freedom – the template of the early days of the Arab spring – but "armed terrorist gangs" financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and supposedly allied with the US, Turkey and Israel.

Like all successful propaganda, some parts of this pitch were true, others blatantly false. Arab enmity is real enough. But the Islamist character of the uprising has been exaggerated. The US has done little more than co-ordinate arms deliveries by the Gulf states – with Barack Obama stamping on more proactive proposals by the CIA and Pentagon.

The fact that Syria's fractured opposition is so scathing about Washington has barely dented the grand conspiracy theory. Israel preferred the devil it knew in Damascus – and a Golan front that had been peaceful for 40 years – to the uncertainties of post-Assad chaos. Weapons supplied to Hezbollah by Iran are far superior to anything yet given to the Syrian rebels.

Now Assad says that the enemy is al-Qaida and that Syria and the west should be on the same side. There is certainly alarm as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) loses ground to the jihadi Jabhat al-Nusra. Thus the vetting of FSA men being trained in Jordan to fight on a new "southern front" centred on Daraa. But Jordan frets too about Syrian threats and the risk of blowback.

Foreign friends apart, regime resilience is still part of the big picture. Military gains have been made in counter-attacks near Idlib and Damascus and rebel supply lines hit hard. Academic Thomas Pierret emphasises the "kin-based/sectarian character of the military" and the absence, still, of significant defections from the Alawite hard core of the army and security forces.

Syrians point out that the Assad family prepared for this crisis for decades, internally and externally. The president and his men talk of fighting to save the country and of elections in May 2014: that's another fearful year away with little prospect of immediate change and a reasonable expectation of still worse yet to come.

Angocachi Sunday 12 May 2013

An article from 'World Socialist Web Site - Published by the International Committee for the Fourth International, posted by 'Global Research' which 'had become a major news source on the New World Order' (from their about page).
It's a joke article from internet Marxists intent on uncovering Council on Foreign Relations conspiracies, a very leftist Alex Jones Prison Planet. They have no professionals on terrorism and so misunderstand many of the topics they cover. Here they conflate American-Turkish-GCC backed rebels with Al Qaeda, as most everyone opposing Assad's downfall has been doing. The entire reason NATO hasn't intervened directly is because it fears an Al Qaeda takeover and is struggling to build a stronger anti-Islamist opposition force that can seize at least the capital and Aleppo should Assad be ousted from them.

Assad has lost entire governorates to the rebels and the overall course of the conflict has been his ouster from Sunni Arab and Kurdish inhabited territories. That is not being reversed, whatever new roads are temporarily reopened or bombardments are commenced.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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