The Syria Analysis Thread

Longface Thursday 24 Oct 2013

Foreign jihadists surpass Afghan-Soviet war, storm Syria in record numbers

Foreigners fueled by Islamic fury are rushing to Syria to fight President Bashar Assad at a faster rate than the flow of rebels into Afghanistan in the war against a Soviet-backed regime in the 1980s, analysts say.
An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 foreign fighters have come to Syria since the outbreak of the uprising in March 2011.

“This is probably one of the biggest foreign-fighter mobilizations since it became a phenomenon in the 1980s with the Afghan jihad against the Soviets,” said Aaron Y. Zelin , a Washington Institute researcher who studies al Qaeda and Syria .

The number of foreigners in Syria has not reached the level in Afghanistan three decades ago, but that civil war lasted nine years, while the Syrian rebellion is 2 years old.
Mr. Zelin said the rate of foreign recruits streaming into Syria is “unlike anything else.”
The foreign fighters — called jihadists, or holy warriors — come from at least 60 nations. Most are Arabs from Saudi Arabia , Libya and Tunisia , but a few dozen are from Western Europe, particularly Britain, Belgium , France and the Netherlands , Mr. Zelin said. Ten to 20 fighters have come from the United States, he said.
Analysts say fighters join the rebellion out of a sense of religious duty to help fellow Sunni Muslims, but they become radicalized because the most powerful rebel groups are affiliated with al Qaeda .
More and more opposition groups are peeling away from the Western-backed moderate Syrian National Coalition and its Free Syrian Army military umbrella, and joining with al Qaeda -linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Jabhat al -Nusra , which are better funded, equipped and organized.

Foreigners make up about 80 percent of Jabhat al-Nusra ’s leadership, and as much as 20 percent of its 6,000 to 7,000 fighters are from other nations.
About 40 percent of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ’s 4,000 to 5,000 fighters are foreigners, and its leadership is about 80 percent foreign, according to the Syrian Support Group , which distributes U.S. supplies to opposition rebels.
Several dozen Syrian rebel groups split from the Syrian National Coalition earlier this month, and about a dozen rebel groups formed an Islamist bloc with Jabhat al -Nusra late last month.
Those radicalized fighters will pose a threat to their home countries when they return, said Michael Scheuer , a former CIA analyst.
“It is clearly more serious today than ever before,” he testified at a congressional hearing in Washington last week.
“They return with confidence that victory is possible. They and their colleagues now know that they inflicted humiliating defeats on the United States military in Afghanistan and Iraq , and that knowledge will boost both spirits and recruitment.
“And they come home with a list of contacts among their fellow mujahedeen from whom they can seek advice or more material forms of assistance.”

Longface Saturday 26 Oct 2013

Al-Nusra denies leader’s death reported by Syrian TV

According to Syria state television the leader of al-Nusra Front – an Al-Qaeda affiliated fighting force in Syria – has been killed. The group however has issued a statement denying the report and saying their leader is “in good health.”
According to reports Abu Mohammad al-Golani, was killed in the north-western province of Latakia, Syrian state TV said earlier, providing no further details. The Al-Qaeda affiliate has refuted the report.

“What was claimed by one channel alone, regarding what it claimed was the killing of the emir of Al-Nusra Front, was a lie,” the group said as cited by AFP.

Al-Golani, the leader of al-Nusra, is known for his efforts to overthrow the Syrian government and impose Islamic Sharia law. The armed rebel group has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in Syria that killed hundreds of civilians.

In May, Al-Golani was designated as a global terrorist by the United States for his Al-Qaeda links and responsibility for multiple suicide attacks. According to US State Department, Abu Mohammad al-Golani sought assistance from Al-Qaeda in Iraq to carry out terrorist acts, namely suicide attacks in Syria. He has also publically pledged allegiance to Al- Qaeda leader, Ayman al Zawahiri.

Latakia, largely loyal to government forces, has seen the recent advance of rebel forces. On Friday, however, government forces have conducted operations across the country, reportedly wiping out a terror cell in Latakia among other gains, Al-Golani was not mentioned among those killed by the official state news agency SANA.
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In Latakia, the Syrian army has engaged the rebels killing many alleged members of terrorist groups and destroying weapons and machinery, military sources told SANA. Among the dead identified in al Frulluk were extremists Mustapha Joudi and Ammar al Ali.

In Al Shahroura, village weapons and ammunition were destroyed as well as 12 militants killed.

Another three alleged terrorists were killed in Dwierkeh village. Five more were killed in Al Marounieh village where ammunition caches were destroyed.

According to the source, the army also targeted and destroyed militant hideouts in Idlib, where some sources claimed Al-Golani was spotted on Friday.

Sana also reports that the government forces ambushed more than 50 Al-Nusra linked members of the Al Islam Brigade at a Damascus region lake seizing their weapons, including Israeli-made anti-tank rockets.

The troops also ambushed an Al-Nusra front fighting brigade in eastern Ghouta killing at least 41 fighters and wounding 10 others. According to the army commander some were Saudi, Qatari and Iraqi nationals, SANA reports.

Angocachi Tuesday 29 Oct 2013

niccolo and donkey supplanter @roland Bronze Age Pervert Longface

"Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority, the grand mufti Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, has told young Saudis they should not go to Syria to fight in the civil war.
Saudi Arabia has backed the rebels battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent weapons, and called on world powers to "enable" Syrians to protect themselves.

"This is all wrong, it's not obligatory," the grand mufti said in a lecture, according to a report on Monday in the Saudi newspaper A l-Hayat.

"These are feuding factions and one should not go there. I do not advise one to go there ... Going to a land that you do not know and without experience, you will be a burden to them, what they want from you is your prayer."

The grand mufti, appointed by the Saudi king, also warned preachers against encouraging young men to fight in Syria during their sermons, after delivering what the paper said was a lecture on "Deviation among the youth" at a mosque.

"Muslim should be fearful of God and not deceive young Muslims and exploit their weakness and lack of insight and push them to an abyss," the mufti was quoted by the newspaper.

"I advise them to advise as they would advise their sons."

Saudi Arabia is wary that fighters could return home and use their experiences against the kingdom's rulers.

Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, the creator of al-Qaeda, turned on the Saud family after fighting in Afghanistan against the Russians.

Sunni Muslim al-Qaeda fighters attacked targets inside Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006.
A Gulf Arab source familiar with military movements in the region said in September 2012 that thousands of Saudis travelled to Syria to join the rebels. It is
not known how many succeeded."
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middl...audis-avoid-syria-war-201310282238800365.html

The Saudi government's chief scholar for dollars is telling Arabia's young men that they should not go to Syria and fight Assad in the biggest Shia-Sunni war of their lives. This comes after a Saudi government ban on private donations to Syrian rebels.
Saud is trying to prevent fighters, arms, and funds from reaching Al Qaeda in Syria fully aware that the dissident campaign has long been to encircle the GCC with Shariah statelets swollen with Jihadist camps. When a succession crisis breaks out and the jobless youth are called into the squares, the Salafist opposition will have border safehavens from which to draw armed insurgents against the monarchy and guarantee the success of their coup. The secularist regime can be deposed, foreign policy revised, and shariah law adhered to without undermining by the monarch. They can also lynch all of the disgusting fucks staffing Al Arabiya for once.

Alex Wednesday 30 Oct 2013

Isaiah 17 Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city, And it will be a ruinous heap.

Randall McMurphy Wednesday 30 Oct 2013

Huge explosion reported at Syrian air defense base

Unconfirmed reports suggest a missile strike from Mediterranean Sea; social media explodes with posts blaming Israel

Randall McMurphy Thursday 31 Oct 2013

White House confirms, Israel attacked air base

Schmeisser Tuesday 5 Nov 2013

Some al-Qaeda cartoons.

simulacra Thursday 14 Nov 2013

In Aleppo I only survive by looking Syrian

Since the rise of the Islamist resistance, parts of Syria have become off-limits to journalists – 30 of us are now missing . Today my helmet is a veil, and my flak jacket a hijab. Because the only way to sneak into Aleppo is by looking like a Syrian.

Locals here don't refer any more to "liberated areas", but to east and west Aleppo – they don't show you pictures of their children, or of siblings killed by the regime, but simply the pictures of beautiful Aleppo before the war. Because nobody is fighting the regime any more; rebels now fight against each other. And for many of them, the priority is not ousting Bashar al-Assad's regime, but enforcing sharia law.

Aleppo is nothing but hunger and Islam. Dozens of threadbare children, disfigured by leishmaniasis , walk barefoot in the steps of mothers, covered in black from head to toe – all bowl in hand, seeking a mosque for bread, their skin yellowed by typhus. In the narrowest alleys, to dodge mortar fire, boys are on the right with their toy Kalashnikovs, while the left is for girls, already veiled. Jihadi fathers push with their beards, djellabas and suicide belts. In July, Mohammad Kattaa was executed for misusing the name of the prophet . He was 15.

And so there are only Syrians now to tell us what's happening. They work for the major media, and contribute to articles written from New York, Paris and Rome. They are the famous citizen journalists, glorified by those who probably would never trust a citizen dentist.

And the outcomes are cases similar to that of Elizabeth O'Bagy , the analyst mentioned by John Kerry during the days of the chemical attack. In fact, she had just published through the Wall Street Journal a piece that essentially made you believe that the rebels were all good guys: that hardliners, here, are but a handful – because the problem for the US is that Assad might be replaced by al-Qaida. A few days later, while Human Rights Watch uncovered evidence of rebels responsible for war crimes against the minorities, it was revealed that O'Bagy was on the payroll of a Syrian lobby group whose goal was to pressure the Obama administration towards intervention. In the Twitter and YouTube era, when many newspapers save on correspondents on the ground by raking up somebody who will summarise for them what's going on in his own backyard, it's on the O'Bagys that we then base foreign policy, base our wars: on the accounts of a recent graduate, born in 1987.

It's not that the war has become more dangerous. Early on we were with the rebels, and the rebels were those who were fighting for freedom: and we journalists were those who witnessed for the world the crimes of Assad. But we suddenly realised (especially my generation) what a war means when you are not embedded. Today we are also here to witness the crimes of the rebels: and both the rebels and the regime hunt us. This war isn't more dangerous; it's only truer: a war where nobody is innocent, where nobody is immune; a war where nobody is welcome – we have all run away.

Do we as journalists have any responsibility? Our role is to question. So why are we targeted? Perhaps because many of us were here only for money, only for the single article – here for an award, or a contract, so that for Syrians we became just a matter of business.

Read the rest at the link.

simulacra Thursday 14 Nov 2013

Syria crisis: Saudi Arabia to spend millions to train new rebel force

Saudi Arabia is preparing to spend millions of dollars to arm and train thousands of Syrian fighters in a new national rebel force to help defeat Bashar al-Assad and act as a counterweight to increasingly powerful jihadi organisations.

Syrian, Arab and western sources say the intensifying Saudi effort is focused on Jaysh al- Islam (the Army of Islam or JAI), created in late September by a union of 43 Syrian groups. It is being billed as a significant new player on the fragmented rebel scene.

The force excludes al-Qaida affiliates such as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, but embraces more non-jihadi Islamist and Salafi units.

According to one unconfirmed report the JAI will be trained with Pakistani help, and estimates of its likely strength range from 5,000 to more than 50,000. But diplomats and experts warned on Thursday that there are serious doubts about its prospects as well as fears of "blowback" by extremists returning from Syria .

The Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan , is also pressing the US to drop its objections to supplying anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to the JAI. Jordan is being urged to allow its territory to be used as a supply route into neighbouring Syria.

In return, diplomats say, Riyadh is encouraging the JAI to accept the authority of the US and western-backed Supreme Military Council, led by Salim Idriss, and the Syrian Opposition Coalition.
"There are two wars in Syria," said Mustafa Alani, an analyst for the Saudi-backed Gulf Research Centre. "One against the Syrian regime and one against al-Qaida. Saudi Arabia is fighting both."

Angocachi Thursday 14 Nov 2013

'more non-Jihadi Salafi Jihadist Guerrillas'. What?

Accept the authority of the US.

Bingo. The JAI exists to sabotage AQ in Syria before it can form a Shariah statelet out of which to prepare for conflict in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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