The Syria Analysis Thread

CLAMOR Friday 23 Aug 2013

U.S. preps for possible cruise missile attack on Syrian gov't forces

(CBS News) WASHINGTON - CBS News has learned that the Pentagon is making the initial preparations for a cruise missile attack on Syrian government forces. We say "initial preparations" because such an attack won't happen until the president gives the green light. And it was clear during an interview on CNN Friday that he is not there yet .
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President Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, sent out a Tweet on Friday, calling what happened "an apparent CW (chemical weapons) attack." And the commander of U.S. forces in the Mediterranean has ordered Navy warships to move closer to Syria to be ready for a possible cruise missile strike.

Launching cruise missiles from the sea would not risk any American lives. It would be a punitive strike designed not to topple Syrian dictator Bashir Assad but to convince him he cannot get away with using chemical weapons.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey is expected to present options for a strike at a White House meeting on Saturday.

Apocales Saturday 24 Aug 2013

US forces move closer to Syria as options weighed

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. naval forces are moving closer to Syria as President Barack Obama considers military options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. The president emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war was problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike. The White House said the president would meet Saturday with his national security team to consider possible next steps by the United States. Officials say once the facts are clear, Obama will make a decision about how to proceed. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to discuss any specific force movements while saying that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria. U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria. U.S. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military action, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government. "The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options - whatever options the president might choose," Hagel told reporters traveling with him to Asia. Hagel said the U.S. is coordinating with the international community to determine "what exactly did happen" near Damascus earlier this week. According to reports, a chemical attack in a suburb of the capital killed at least 100 people. It would be the most heinous use of chemical weapons since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988. Hagel left little doubt that he thinks the attack in Syria involved chemical weapons, although he stressed there is not yet a final answer. In discussing the matter, he said, "it appears to be what happened - use of chemical weapons." The United Nations disarmament chief, Angela Kane, arrived in Damascus on Saturday to press the Syrian government to allow U.N. experts to investigate the alleged chemical attacks.

Obama remained cautious about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al-Qaida. He made no mention of the "red line" of chemical weapons use that he marked out for Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago and that U.S. intelligence says has been breached at least on a small scale several times since. "If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it - do we have the coalition to make it work?" Obama said Friday. "Those are considerations that we have to take into account." Obama conceded in an interview on CNN's "New Day" program that the episode is a "big event of grave concern" that requires American attention. He said any large-scale chemical weapons usage would affect "core national interests" of the United States and its allies. But nothing he said signaled a shift toward U.S. action. U.S. defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss ship movements publicly. But if the U.S. wants to send a message to Assad, the most likely military action would be a Tomahawk missile strike, launched from a ship in the Mediterranean. For a year now, Obama has threatened to punish Assad's regime if it resorted to its chemical weapons arsenal, among the world's vastest, saying use or even deployment of such weapons of mass destruction constituted a "red line" for him. A U.S. intelligence assessment concluded in June chemical weapons have been used in Syria's civil war, but Washington has taken no military action against Assad's forces. U.S. officials have instead focused on trying to organize a peace conference between the government and opposition. Obama has authorized weapons deliveries to rebel groups, but none are believed to have been sent so far. In his first comments on Syria since the alleged chemical attack, Obama said the U.S. is still trying to find out what happened. Hagel said Friday that a determination on the chemical attack should be made swiftly because "there may be another attack coming," although he added that "we don't know" whether that will happen. After rebels similarly reported chemical attacks in February, U.S. confirmation took more than four months. In this instance, a U.N. chemical weapons team is already on the ground in Syria. Assad's government, then as now, has rejected the claims as baseless. Obama also cited the need for the U.S. to be part of a coalition in dealing with Syria. America's ability by itself to solve the Arab country's sectarian fighting is "overstated," he said.

source

Longface Sunday 25 Aug 2013

Heroic jihadists killing civilians to advance the cause of Allah.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/2kIuMEcY5B8
Skip to 8:00

Stubby Sunday 25 Aug 2013

Just FYI, while they're "interviewing" the truck drivers, the ISIS people asking if the truck drivers are Shia, and if they aren't, how many times a Sunni kneels at certain prayers. One of the drivers ID cards show he's from Tartus, which is in Alawi territory. This is actually taking place in Iraq, although the drivers are Syrian. The final voice over says "lo and behold the spark has been ignited in Iraq, and it's fire shall get only bigger until it burns the Armies of the Cross in Dabiq", whatever that means.

Reino Gikman Sunday 25 Aug 2013

This is not the point when main actors on either side would want to risk the possible political fallout.

Most likely, it was done by a peripheral/splinter group of rebels or by rogue Syrian intelligence operatives who worked outside of the usual chain of custody.

Maybe Assad is being set up by internal opposition in his government.

Niccolo and Donkey Sunday 25 Aug 2013

First of all, Death to America, Britain, and France.

Nato members could act against Syria without UN mandate

Barack Obama is unlikely to have much trouble mustering a Nato coalition of the willing if Washington opts for military intervention in Syria in response to the alleged chemical weapons atrocities by the Assad regime .

There is, however, no prospect of a UN mandate for international military action over Syria – with the Kremlin, enraged at what it saw as abuse of a UN mandate to topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, certain to keep wielding its veto.

Turkey, which accounts for Nato's second largest army after the US, and which is on the frontline with Syria, bearing the brunt of the massive refugee crisis , is already a key conduit for arms supplies to, and a safe haven for, the sundry groups of fighters at war with Damascus.

It has been the loudest critic of the Assad regime, clamouring for the west to do more. In any international coalition Turkey would be likely to play a key role – with a potential impact on the country's own ethnic balance, especially the relations between the Sunni Muslim majority and the sizeable Alevi minority concentrated in the south near the Syrian border.

Britain and France, the EU's only military powers with the capacity and will to project military muscle abroad, look certain to line up with the US.

Since last week's reports of chemical weapons use, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister , has been among the loudest arguing that "something must be done".

London and Paris were isolated, however, in their calls for a common European position on lifting the arms embargo, and it is likely that a campaign of military strikes aimed at weakening the Assad regime and bolstering the opposition will trigger deep divisions in the EU and at Nato HQ in Brussels where the Americans would push for the broadest consensus supporting intervention if they decided to act militarily.

Germany is unlikely to back intervention, especially in the run-up to next month's general election . That opposition might subside if Angela Merkel, the chancellor, wins a third term, as expected, but she may be forced to make her position clear before the ballot.

Vuk Monday 26 Aug 2013

Just a friendly reminder:

Syrian rebels used Sarin nerve gas, not Assad’s regime: U.N. official

Longface Monday 26 Aug 2013

As Syrian rebels’ losses mount, teenagers begin filling ranks

MAFRAQ, Jordan — Just 16 years old, Mohammed Hamad was heading to war.
The lanky Syrian teenager was joining what United Nations officials warn might be the start of a flood of underage fighters enlisting in rebel ranks. About half of the 200 new recruits who board buses each week to Syria from Jordan’s sprawling Zaatari refugee camp are under 18, U.N. officials at the camp estimate.
Hamad said it was his duty to “fight in the name of God to take back the country’’ from government forces.
“If my generation doesn’t take up arms, the revolution will be lost,’’ he said, shortly before boarding a bus for the border on a three-day journey to join rebel forces on the outskirts of his home village in southern Syria.
The flow of fresh troops has helped the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army replenish ranks rapidly diminished by a series of recent losses .
But it also has prompted unease from U.N. officials, who in an internal report this month warned of growing “recruitment by armed groups, including of under-aged refugees” in Zaatari and across the region, indicating that the rebels may no longer be honoring a pledge to bar fighters younger than 17.
“We are concerned by reports that some groups may be attempting to use Zaatari as a recruitment center, and we are doing everything in our power to make sure it stays a refugee camp and not a military camp,” Andrew Harper, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Jordan, said in an interview.
After more than two years of conflict that has already claimed more than 100,000 lives, some rebel commanders defend the use of teenage fighters as inevitable.
“Many of these young men’s fathers and older brothers have died before them,” said Abu Diyaa al-Hourani, commander of a Free Syrian Army battalion outside the Syrian border town of Sheikh al-Maskin. He said that Syrians as young as 15 serve in his 800-man unit, whose average age has plunged to 19, down from 25 not long ago.
“It is only natural for the next generation to carry on the fight,” he said.
Conscription in the Syrian army is compulsory for all males once they reach the age of 18, according to the military.
At the camp, rebel officials say that theirs remains an all-volunteer force and that prospective recruits are carefully vetted. But the officials acknowledged that verifying birth dates may be all but impossible in camps where few refugees have access to birth documents.
“At the end of the day, if they can carry a gun and are willing to fight, who are we to say they can’t?” said Ayman al-Hariri, a member of the Syrian National Council, an umbrella opposition group, who coordinates repatriation from Zaatari, home to more than 100,000 Syrians.
The families of the young fighters receive monthly benefits from the Free Syrian Army, including salaries and even priority in the distribution of food aid and cash assistance within the camp, refugee officials said. In interviews, several parents — some of whom arrived in Zaatari with little more than the clothes on their backs — said those incentives had influenced their family’s decision.
Um Majed al-Homsawi, 45, said she allowed her 17-year-old son, Ahmed, to return to Syria to fight only after recruiters agreed to provide her family with a fully furnished trailer complete with air conditioning, an upgrade from their standard-issue U.N. canvas tent.
“My daughter has asthma and my husband has had three heart operations — we couldn’t survive in a tent in the desert,” Homsawi said as she placed a kettle atop a propane stove in her recently delivered trailer. “My son decided to join the Free Syrian Army not only to save his country, but to save his family.”
Rebel officials say Zaatari’s proximity to major fighting in southern Syria has transformed the camp into the major supplier of fighters for rebel battalions suffering an average loss of 50 fighters per week.
In the camp, rebel officials said, the Foreign Syrian Army carries out background checks, physical examinations, agility tests and “mental and emotional” evaluations of potential recruits.
On a recent day, Syrian National Coalition and Free Syrian Army representatives in a pair of unmarked prefabricated trailers received a long line of teenage camp residents seeking to enlist with rebel forces.
A group of young men whom the recruiters had rejected for being too young, too weak or otherwise unfit for battle gathered outside. But the young men said they remained determined to join the fight.
“I am going to wait here every day until the Free Syrian Army accepts me, or until Sept. 10,” said Ahmed Saeed, a resident of the city of Daraa whose 17-year-old brother left to fight alongside the Free Syrian Army last week.
“Then I will turn 15.”

Niccolo and Donkey Monday 26 Aug 2013

Syria crisis: warplanes spotted in Cyprus as tensions rise in Damascus

Warplanes and military transporters have begun arriving at Britain's Akrotiri airbase on Cyprus , less than 100 miles from the Syrian coast, in a sign of increasing preparations for a military strike against the Assad regime in Syria .

Two commercial pilots who regularly fly from Larnaca on Monday told the Guardian that they had seen C-130 transport planes from their cockpit windows as well as small formations of fighter jets on their radar screens, which they believe had flown from Europe .

Residents near the British airfield, a sovereign base since 1960, also say activity there has been much higher than normal over the past 48 hours.

If an order to attack targets in Syria is given, Cyprus is likely to be a hub of the air campaign. The arrival of warplanes suggests that advanced readiness – at the very least – has been ordered by Whitehall as David Cameron , Barack Obama and European leaders step up their rhetoric against Bashar al-Assad , whose armed forces they accuse of carrying out the chemical weapons attack last Wednesday that killed many hundreds in eastern Damascus.

Niccolo and Donkey Monday 26 Aug 2013

An interesting analysis by the BBC here which suggests that the buildup is to put pressure on forces within the regime to remove Assad and the inner circle and work together with rebel forces to remove Salafists from the country.

Wishful thinking, of course.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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