The Syria Analysis Thread

Niccolo and Donkey Tuesday 28 Jul 2015

The Actuality of the Turkish Entry into Syria :

However, there is already deep concern in some circles, particularly from Kurdish groups, that Turkey's recent entry into the US-led coalition against IS provides a convenient cover for it to carry out attacks against its long-time enemy: the PKK and its allies.

They question whether Turkey's recent campaign of air strikes against IS in Syria and Kurdish positions in Iraqi Kurdistan were aimed more at limiting the Kurds' newly won territory in north-eastern Syria than fighting IS.

The YPG, or People's Protection Units, have proved to be one of the most effective forces against IS, providing vital ground troop support for the US-led coalition air strikes against IS militants in Syria. They won the Syrian border town of Kobane from IS and went on to secure another strategic Syrian border town, Tel Abyad, last month, cutting off a key IS supply route for weapons and fighters and expanding the territory under Kurdish control inside Syria.

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People protest in Istanbul against their government's air strikes against Kurdish militants. Photo: AP

"It is not clear yet if or how that ISIS-free zone is going to materialise, how it would be protected or what it would be used for," said Cale Salih, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"There is a lot of fear amongst Kurds that Turkey will use that kind of zone to target the PYD or at least to restrict it in terms of the PYD's quest for more territory that would link Afrin and Kobane, which is one of their main strategic goals in Syria."

The PYD, or Democratic Union Party, along with the YPG is an affiliate of the PKK or Kurdistan Workers Party, which waged a decades-long armed struggle against Turkey. But, Ms Salih points out, the PKK has a new mission in Syria which has very little to do with resistance against Turkey.

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Turkish police raid the homes of IS suspects in Ankara on Monday. Photo: AP

"It is really about establishing an economy in northern Syria, it is about linking the two cantons, fighting jihadists, and that is a real opportunity for the peace process and a chance for the PKK to move away from this identity that it has had for so long which is about resistance in Turkey."

After holding out for almost a year, Turkey entered into an agreement with the US on Friday that will allow US war planes to launch air strikes from Turkey's Incirlik Air Base. Soon after Turkey began bombing IS targets in Syria and on Saturday it also began attacking on Kurdish targets in northern Iraq.

"A lot of people are quite alarmed that Turkey has gone after ISIS and the PKK at the same time because it invites retaliation from both inside Turkey," Ms Salih warned.

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A Turkish Air Force AS-532AL Cougar helicopter takes off from Incirlik airbase in the southern city of Adana, Turkey on Monday. Photo: Reuters

"That could seriously destabilise south-eastern Turkey … and present a genuine national security threat for Turkey in terms of ISIS."

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who was due to chair Tuesday's extraordinary closed-door session, expressed solidarity with Turkey after "recent heinous terrorist attacks", but cautioned against abandoning its peace process with the Kurds.

For years "there has been progress to try to find a peaceful political solution", he told Norwegian state broadcaster NRK. "It is important not to renounce that ... because force will never solve the conflict in the long term."

Syriac-Assyrian Christians in Syria also urged NATO to refrain from allowing Turkey to launch attacks against Kurdish positions in Syria.

"Any Turkish attack … will give ISIS all the space it needs to undo any progress against it," a statement from the group released on Monday reads.

Angocachi Friday 31 Jul 2015

@Antonius Blockhead
Address the Turk-Kurd alliance against IS as explained by Barzani. Also explain why Turkey has been attacking IS directly with the Turkish military and indirectly via the FSA (which is in turn overtly allied to the YPG).

Niccolo and Donkey Sunday 2 Aug 2015

T he War Nerd: Don’t be fooled -- Turkey is attacking the Kurds

Don’t believe it.

It’s not IS the Turkish planes have been bombing. Here’s a breakdown of the actual targets of the Turkish airstrikes:

The attack on IS was a single sortie against limited targets and closer to the Turkish border, while the one against the PKK was much different. The air force dispatched 75 F-16s and F-4E 2020s in three waves during July 24-26. Some 300 smart bombs were dropped in 185 sorties against approximately 400 PKK targets.

The Turkish raids were almost insulting in their bait-and-switch: One little strike on Islamic State, or a nice vacant lot that might once have been visited by IS . . . and then 300 sorties, with the best US air-to-ground ordnance you can buy, killing God knows how many hundreds or thousands of Kurdish socialist fighters.

Oh, and by the way, don’t expect most Western leftists to shed any tears over those dead Socialist fighters. You’d think Western lefties would be happy that a radical-feminist, non-sectarian, aggressively pro-LGBT, egalitarian/socialist militia is taking back ground from the most reactionary, sectarian killers on earth. Nah. The most you can hope for is guarded silence. Kurds make them nervous for reasons I’d rather not think about.

Nobody much likes the Kurds, especially Erdogan’s AK party. In fact, the AKP hates the Kurds so much that this shared hobby of Kurd-killing has been the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the Turkish military and IS. IS fighters have always been able to move easily over the Turkish border, and there are persistent reports that Erdogan’s daughter herself is playing their Florence Nightingale, patching up those rapists’ boo-boos in one of the quasi-secret hospitals along the border.

The AKP’s position is simple: They hate the Kurds, period. Islamic State also hates the Kurds. So Erdogan has to force himself to mouth even the slightest objection to IS, whereas the spittle really flies when he starts ranting against the Kurdish PKK/YPG.

And what makes Erdogan maddest of all is that the young women and men of the YPG/J keep winning. That’s the real reason Turkey has launched every fighter-bomber it’s got, after years of watching indifferently as IS spread over Syria and Iraq: Because the Kurds were coming closer to Raqqa and Jarabulus every day, and had to be stopped.

The Kurds have been gaining ground in Turkey itself too, and that upsets the AKP more than anything the Kurdish militia is doing south of the border. The Turkish/Kurdish party HDP took a huge chance in the 2015 Turkish elections, and won. The gamble was that the party could draw some non-Kurdish voters sick of Erdogan’s quasi-fascist antics to cross the 10% margin it needed to get seats in parliament. The HDP’s best previous showing was 9.77%; if it stayed at that level, it would end up with nothing based on the election rules, and put the AKP back in power.

But the HDP passed the 10% hurdle, winning over many Turks and Alevi, getting more than 13% of the vote, winning 80 seats.

Thanks mostly to the success of the HDP, Erdogan’s AKP lost its majority for the first time in more than ten years. They were seriously pissed off, and they’re not over-delicate people. Erdogan’s demographic is Turkey’s redstaters, inland reactionary hicks, like I said a long time ago.

People like that don’t mind a little blood. Red-staters like a good killer; Lt. “Rusty” Calley was everybody’s friend in the Georgia hinterlands.

Actually, it’s a good exercise, transferring what’s happening in Turkey/Syria to the US. Imagine (and it takes some imagining, I admit) that a truly noble, progressive, socialist movement took over Northern Mexico. It would be a godsend for the people there, but you think the US would stand for it? Nah. The F-16s would be flying day and night to wipe those do-gooders out.

And that’s what the Turkish AF is busy doing right now, while pretending to attack IS. In reality, the Turkish military has stepped in to keep IS in power from total collapse against the Kurdish advance. It was the Kurds’ military victories , combined with the HDP’s electoral success, that finally drove Erdogan’s AKP right over the edge.

You may recall a little town called Kobane kicked up some dust last winter, when the Kurdish kids of the YPG/J stopped the supposedly unstoppable IS forces dead, killing something like 3000 of them in the ruins before the Caliph finally pulled his brain-dead war tourists from Dusseldorf and Marseille back south.

Welp, the Kurds pursued. They pushed out from Kobane, west, south, and east—every direction except north, because that’s Turkey, where the very existence of Kurds was denied until recently.

When Kobane failed to fall on schedule, the Kurds held three “cantons” in northern Syria , separated by hostile turf.

But they kept pushing, and there were signs that the jihadis of IS, always bragging about how eager they were to get their precious deaths, weren’t in such a hurry to die anymore. In fact, they were starting to break.

In mid-June 2015, YPG units pushing east from Kobane and west from Hasakeh took Tal Abyad , uniting two out of the three cantons of Syria in one continuous strip of land along the Turkish border.

This was not supposed to happen, in the smug little world inhabited by Mr. Erdogan and his Islamist buddies. The idea was to sic IS on the Kurds, then mop them up when they’d killed those crazy socialist kids. Now those kids were in charge of a huge stretch of Northern Syria, waving to their Kurdish kin across the border in Turkey, where hating Kurds is a national sport.

After the YPG/J took Tal Abyad, Islamic State was in a hopeless position . . . unless the Turks intervened. No more wave-throughs across the border , no more easy delivery of munitions and medicines to the boys in Raqqa. And the Kurds soon turned south, pushing against Raqqa itself. They took Ayn Issa , the only major town between Kobane and Raqqa, a week after meeting up in Tal Abyad.

Suddenly IS was breaking in every front where it faced the Kurds. Failing on the battlefield, they went back to what they do best—killing 32 young Kurdish socialists in a suicide bombing in Suruc, just across the border from Kobane. Turkish collusion was all over that massacre, but that shit only works on people who haven’t been through the Hell which is Kurdish history. The YPG/J vowed revenge and marched on.

Revenge wasn’t long coming, either; the YPG/J took Sarrin on July 26-27 2015. Sarrin is on the Euphrates, with an important bridge over the river (which is more like a lake around there, thanks to the dam). IS should have been able to hold Sarrin indefinitely, but their scumbag men were running, not fighting :

Some of [the Islamic State fighters in Sarrin] drop their weapons and run away when they see us. They are running away now. We are on top of a hill in Sarrin," said one Kurdish fighter.

Sarrin is perfectly positioned to cut off the town of Jarabulus from all contact with IS HQ in Raqqa. And that matters a lot, because the area between Jarabulus and A’zaz to the west is the last strip of Turkish border still held by Turkish intel’s little friends in IS. Better yet, this strip includes Dabiq, the town IS named its house mag after, the glossy little number that published those famous articles justifying selling Yazidii women and girls as sex slaves.

It wouldn’t do, if you’re one of Erdogan’s generals, to let the Kurdish commies take Dabiq, let alone Jarabulus, which was the site of IS’s first grandiose “emirate” in northern Syria.

If YPG/J had been allowed to advance across the Euphrates, breaking up the “emirate” around Jarabulus, and liberating Dabiq, IS wouldn’t just be defeated, it’d be laughed at. And if there’s one thing slave-selling jihadis don’t enjoy, it’s people laughing at them. Or with them. Or anywhere near them.

So the Turkish Air Force is sending the best planes and munitions the US can send them to wipe out these pesky kids in YPG/J, while making noises about giving their IS clients a good spanking. At the moment, the Turkish generals are claiming they’re only hitting PKK/YPG in northern Iraq, but there are already reports of Turkish strikes on Kurdish targets in Syria .

It’s inevitable that the Turkish military will focus on those targets once it’s done its job of distracting the gullible media with this pantomime strike on IS.

YPJ/G is the most heroic group I’ve seen since I started writing about war. So it makes perfect sense that everybody wants to wipe them out.

Byssus Tuesday 4 Aug 2015

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/3/9089569/syria-rebels-timeline

IF I HAD CONTRAS, THEY WOULD LOOK LIKE ROADKILL

Marcus Wednesday 12 Aug 2015

Syrian Army retreating to new line of defense

A Syrian military source said on Tuesday the army had retreated to new defensive lines in a region of vital strategic importance to President Bashar al-Assad, seeking to avoid losses at the hands of advancing rebels.

The insurgent advance into the Sahl al-Ghab plain in northwestern Syria has brought rebels including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front to the eastern edge of mountains that form the historical heartland of Assad's Alawite people.

The rapid advance so close to an area of such importance to Assad underscores the difficulties facing the army and the manner in which Syria is splintering: Assad said last month the army faced a manpower shortage and had given up some areas in order to defend others of greater significance.

The rebels, well supplied and attacking in large numbers, had seized high ground in Sahl al-Ghab in an attack that began some two weeks ago, increasing the risk posed by rebel artillery and guided anti-tank missiles, the military source said.

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 19 Sep 2015

Syria is starting to get interesting again with Russia now calling America's bluff re: ISIS.

Hopeful signs of US course correction on Syria

Amidst nascent signs that the United States is making a course correction on Syria, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian is scheduled to travel to Moscow on Monday. In remarks on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani had underscored that Iran’s priority will be to put an end to the insecurity and bloodshed in Syria.

Iran Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Amir Abdollahian

“Once this goal is achieved, it will be time to discuss political issues such as democracy and opposition in the Arab country,” he added. Broadly speaking, Iran and Russia’s approaches are similar and the two countries echo the Syrian government’s willingness to hold elections that would pave the way for creating an inclusive, broad-based government in Damascus.

The Supreme Leader’s military advisor Gen. Yahya Rahim-Safavi said on Thursday that the Iranian regime has lined up behind Russia’s proposal to form an international coalition in Syria against the Islamic State. He said Syria and Iraq constitute Iran’s “strategic defence depth… Our material and spiritual support as well as military consultations given to Iraqis and Syrians are based on wisdom and logic”.

Moscow and Tehran are closely coordinating on Syria. The Iranian media widely reported the statement by the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in Moscow on Friday that if Syria sought the help of Russian combat troops, the request will be “discussed and considered”. But then, Tehran also highlighted the remarks by the Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Muallem, which prompted Peskov’s reaction:

But until now, I (Muallem) believe that the Syrian Army is capable and what we frankly need is more ammunition and qualitative weapons to face the qualitative armament of terrorist groups…Up until now there’s no joint fight on the ground with Russian forces, but if we sense the need for it, we will consider and ask.

Muallem went on to acknowledge that Russia has “stepped up the pace” of supplying weapons and ammunition”.

Indeed, the Iranian reports maintain that the Syrian armed forces “in coordination with” Hezbollah are acquitting themselves well enough. The Hezbollah reports also convey similar impression. This is how a Hezbollah report on Friday interpreted the Russian role in Syria:

Russian commentators say that Western analysts need not feel alarmed over the presence of Russian weapon trainers and military advisors in port towns of Tartus, Lattakia and Banias. It should be seen as Russia’s fulfilling its previous contractual obligations.

Alexander Aksenyonok, the most senior Russian diplomat specializing in Syrian affairs, told… that Russian advisers were in Syria to help prevent the country’s breakup, to protect minority groups, and to preserve Russian presence at the Syrian ports.

For Russia “the primary objective is to prevent the collapse of state institutions in Syria. Otherwise a ‘Somalization of Syria’ may take place if militant forces either from ISIL or other organizations take power.”

Aksenyonok said that the technical supply facilities at the port of Tartos should not be described as a military base. He admitted that there has been an increase in the number of Russian advisors who were there to make sure that the Syrian soldiers were able to make efficient use of the supplied weaponry. He pointed out that the Russian advisors were helping the Syrians to organize a line of defense.

Suffice it to say, neither Damascus nor Tehran – or the Hezbollah – visualizes a scenario in terms of a Russian combat role in Syria.

In fact, Reuters reported on Thursday quoting Syrian sources that the government forces have already begun using “new types of air and ground weapons” supplied by Russia and that the weapons are “highly effective and very accurate, and hit targets precisely… We can say they are all types of weapons, be it air, or ground”.

Initially, the Obama administration might have blithely interpreted the stepped-up Russian role in Syria as an attempt to prolong the ‘staying power’ of the Syrian regime. But The interpretation was predicated on a fanciful notion – namely, that the Assad regime is about to be toppled by a non-existent ‘moderate’ Syrian opposition.

Whereas, the Obama administration would know that if Assad faced any danger of ouster, it could only be at the hands of the IS. After all, Washington has disclosed that the number of US-trained Syrian ‘rebels’ who have been inducted into the fighting this year so far runs in single digits – 9 fighters all in all. It is about time to admit that the ‘regime change’ agenda in Syria has reached a dead end.

The Obama administration’s real challenge should be about educating the US public opinion that those who still demand rev-up of the ‘regime change’ in Syria are actually living in a fantasyland.

The good thing is that a rethink seems to have begun in Washington – even if it was prompted by the Kremlin decision to raise the Russian profile on Syria.

The secretary of state John Kerry might have made a small but extremely significant beginning by hinting that President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster is not the immediate priority. He told reporters in London on Friday,

Our focus remains on destroying ISIL (Islamic State militants) and also on a political settlement with respect to Syria, which we believe cannot be achieved with the long-term presence of (President Bashar al-) Assad. We’re looking for ways in which to find a common ground.

Kerry said Washington accepts that holding military talks with Russia on Syria is the immediate step required. (The White House spokesman also said on Thursday that Washington “remains open to tactical, practical discussions” with Russia over the fight against the IS in Syria.)

Indeed, Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter phoned his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu Friday – the first such direct contact since August last year. Kerry hinted that structured military talks between the US and Russia could be expected “very shortly”.

Kerry also stressed that Washington wanted to find “a diplomatic way forward”. In his words,

Everybody is seized by the urgency. We have been all along but the migration levels and continued destruction, the danger of potential augmentation by any unilateral moves puts a high premium on diplomacy at this moment.

Now, these are encouraging signs of a rethink on the part of the Obama administration. Conceivably, Russian-American consultations may take place in New York in the coming days. A meeting between Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov is most certainly on the cards.

However, the big question remains: Will there be a meeting between President Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin? Both leaders are going to be in New York during the week after the next; they are also likely to be in Antalya in Turkey to attend the G20 summit in November. Washington probably is reluctant to be seen as being nudged forward by Moscow – although the latter scrupulously refrains from any ‘triumphalism’.

Of course, a Russian-American engagement per se doesn’t solve the Syrian problem. But, as Kerry estimated, there is indeed a “high premium on diplomacy at this moment”.

One main difference today is that Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which have been singularly responsible for destabilizing Syria, are longer in a position to be ‘proactive’. Turkey’s Kurdish wound has reopened, while Saudi Arabia is unlikely to be able to extricate itself out of Yemen anytime soon.

This provides a rare window of opportunity to push ahead the peace process in Syria while mounting on a parallel track a concerted assault on the IS by an international coalition that draws on the Syrian army’s capabilities directly or indirectly.

It is really immaterial that Washington could be following a Russian lead on Syria. The point is, Moscow took the lead role out of a sense of exasperation that Syria is fast descending into Libya-type chaos and a point of no return may be reaching.

All that matters today is that the IS threat is a shared concern for Washington and Moscow (and the world community at large) and a constructive engagement serves the interests of international security.

There is really no need for the neocons in the US to get worked up that a Russian-American ‘reset’ may follow if the two countries collaborate in the fight against the IS – or that the IS’ defeat may strengthen Assad’s hands. These are imponderables and in the long run we are all dead.

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 19 Sep 2015

Jews are now tacitly admitting that Israel is aiding al-Nusra/al-Qaida in the Syrian Civil War.

link

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 19 Sep 2015

Four in five Syrians says ISIS is an American creation

Would be an alternative and rather more relevant headline versus “ One in five Syrians say Islamic State is a good thing, poll says ,”, which is meant to shock the nativist ill-informed and divert the conversation from the US’ uncompromising and ruinous drive for regime change to the politically safer (for an American audience) topic of the European immigration crisis.

But hey, credit where credit’s due: At least WaPo reported this, which is more than you can say of the rest of the MSM.

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Here are the main highlights from this poll, which impressively managed to cover all 14 governates including those held by the Islamic State ( PDF ):

Only 21% of Syrians prefer life now compared to life under Assad’s full control several years ago.
82% say ISIS was created by the US and allies.
Though 71% of respondents in territories under ISIS control say they support ISIS – surprising it’s not higher, given their… reputation – some 62% of them also agree that ISIS was created by the US and its allies.
Assad (47%) and Iran (43%) are more popular than the Arab Gulf countries (37%), al-Nusra (35%), the FSA (35%), “Syrian Opposition Candidate” (26%), and the Islamic State (21%). Reminder that this is in a majority Sunni country that is being “oppressed” by Shi’ite Alawites.

Overall, pretty depressing reading for those who bought into the US neocon/Likudnik regime change narrative on Syria on moral or political legitimacy reasons.

Above are the detailed results of the ISIS/US connection question.

A Gleaming Leprosy Sunday 20 Sep 2015

ISIS: https://public.isishq.com/public/SitePages/Home.aspx

Fitz Wednesday 23 Sep 2015

US-trained Division 30 rebels 'betray US and hand weapons over to al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria'

Pentagon-trained rebels are reported to have betrayed US and handed weapons over to Jabhat al-Nusra immediately after entering Syria

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Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated to al-Qaeda, took the technicals, guns and ammunition from the US-trained Division 30 in northern Aleppo Photo: Reuters

By Nabih Bulos, Amman

5:22PM BST 22 Sep 2015

Pentagon-trained rebels in Syria are reported to have betrayed their American backers and handed their weapons over to al-Qaeda in Syria immediately after re-entering the country.

Fighters with Division 30, the “moderate” rebel division favoured by the United States, surrendered to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, a raft of sources claimed on Monday night.

Division 30 was the first faction whose fighters graduated from a US-led training programme in Turkey which aims to forge a force on the ground in Syria to fight against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) .

A statement on Twitter by a man calling himself Abu Fahd al-Tunisi, a member of al-Qaeda’s local affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, read: "A strong slap for America... the new group from Division 30 that entered yesterday hands over all of its weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra after being granted safe passage.

"They handed over a very large amount of ammunition and medium weaponry and a number of pick-ups."

Abu Khattab al-Maqdisi, who also purports to be a Jabhat al-Nusra member, added that Division 30's commander, Anas Ibrahim Obaid,had explained to Jabhat al-Nusra's leaders that he had tricked the coalition because he needed weapons .

"He promised to issue a statement... repudiating Division 30, the coalition, and those who trained him," he tweeted. "And he also gave a large amount of weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) , a monitoring group, reported that seventy-five Division 30 fighters had crossed into Syria from Turkey early the day before with “12 four-wheel vehicles equipped with machine guns and ammunition”.

US Central Command confirmed about 70 graduates of the Syria “train and equip” programme had re-entered Syria with their weapons and equipment and were operating as New Syrian Forces alongside Syrian Kurds, Sunni Arab and other anti-Isil forces.

The latest disaster, if true, will be the second to befall the programme. Last month, after the first group of fighters re-entered, the militia was attacked and routed by Jabhat al-Nusra, which stormed its headquarters and kidnapped a number of its members .

At the weekend, the group’s chief of staff also resigned, saying the training programme was “not serious”.

In the statement, Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad al-Dhaher complained of insufficient numbers of trainees and fighters, inadequate supplies, and even “a lack of accuracy and method in the selection of Division 30’s cadres”.

The latest developments have only added to the scorn heaped on the much-criticized $500 million (£320m) program, which aimed to forge a 5,400-strong force of “moderate” rebels to combat Isil.

It has been hampered by problems almost from the outset, with rebels complaining of a laborious vetting process. The biggest point of contention is that they are only allowed to fight Isil, not the Assad regime , which is the principal enemy for most opposition groups.

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General Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that only "four or five" US-trained rebels were still fighting the Islamic State Photo: AP

Last Wednesday, General Lloyd Austin, head of US Central Command, shocked leaders in the US Senate's armed services committee when he said there were only handful of programme graduates still fighting inside Syria. "We're talking four or five," he said.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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