The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

[AlicetheKurious]

Kerry’s Secret War Plan for Syria
March 14, 2016

Hmm. Interesting. Thanks for that, SLAD.

[IanEye]

[tapitsbo]

My roommate has an Omar Souleyman poster up, talk about convergence.

[backtoiam]

Alice how reliable is this source? Not familiar with it.

Fri Mar 18, 2016 3:32
Iraqi Planes Throw Leaflets on Mosul Calling Residents Prepare for Army Operation



TEHRAN (FNA)- A source in Iraq's Ministry of Interior announced that the Iraqi Air Force's planes dropped thousands of leaflets on the city of Mosul (405 km north of Baghdad), calling the residents to be prepared for the liberation operation of the city by the Iraqi army.

The source said in a statement obtained by IraqiNews.com, “Today the Iraqi Air Force planes dropped thousands of leaflets on Tahrir neighborhood, as well as different parts in the left side of Mosul,” Iraqi News reported.

The source, who asked anonymity, added: “The leaflets called the citizens to be prepared for the expulsion of ISIL terrorist members.”
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13941228000276

[backtoiam]

bolds and italics are original to the article

The “Great Game” and the Partitioning Of Syria

Russia’s decision to greatly reduce its military presence in Syria, coming as it did with little warning, has left the world struggling for explanations. Russia is to maintain a military presence at its naval base in Tartous and at the Khmeymim airbase. In fact Russia is “withdrawing without withdrawing”.

The partial withdrawal is seen by many as a message to the Assad government to not take Russia’s military aid for granted, and to be more flexible in the upcoming peace negotiations.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr., attorney and nephew of US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy explains, the major reason for the west’s attempt to overthrow the Assad government was to build a natural gas pipeline from Qatar that traversed Syria, capturing its newly discovered offshore reserves, and continued on through Turkey to the EU, as a major competitor to Russia’s Gazprom.

By re-establishing the Assad government in Syria, and permanently placing its forces at Syrian bases, the Russian’s have placed an impenetrable obstacle to the development of the Qatar gas pipeline. Russia has also placed itself at the nexus point of other new offshore gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Israel, Cyprus, and Greece.


It’s not hard to imagine a new Russian pipeline to Europe serving these new partners. Could easing of sanctions also lead to the implementation of the long-stalled plans of Gazprom for a second pipeline under the Baltic Sea to Germany for Russia and its partners, Royal Dutch Shell, Germany’s E.ON, and Austria’s OMV?

Although the powers involved in Syria are trying to project the partition of Syria as a last resort and a stable political solution that would bring equilibrium, it is not a conclusion reached after all other options were exhausted which has brought many experts to question whether the Partition of Syria was the objective all along?

Below is just one of such options advocated by various geopolitical experts all along, published by Foreign Policy Research Institute in 2013.

The most viable alternative to the violent restoration of Sunni Arab hegemony in Syria is partition – either “hard,” resulting in two or more independent states (e.g. Sudan, 2011), or “soft,” as O’Hanlon proposes, resulting in autonomous centralized cantons under a weak federal government (e.g. Bosnia, 1995).

As in Lebanon during its 1975-1990 civil war, de facto partition is happening every day. The question at hand is whether the international community should encourage a settlement that reifies and institutionalizes this fragmentation, rather than seeking to propel one side or the other to victory.

[Spheres of Influence after Partition in Syria]

Jordan and perhaps Israel would find a friend in a Druze statelet, while a coastal Alawite-dominated statelet would be sure to align with Tehran and Moscow (indeed, partition could be Russia’s best hope of holding onto its naval facility at Tartous long-term). The Kurdish zone would likely form a close relationship with its counterpart in Iraq. The Arab Gulf states would own the center (literally, in many places).

Many of the present conflicts in the world today take place in the former colonial territories that Britain abandoned, exhausted and impoverished, in the years after the Second World War. This disastrous imperial legacy is still highly visible, and it is one of the reasons why the British Empire continues to provoke such harsh debate. If Britain made such a success of its colonies, why are so many in an unholy mess half a century later, major sources of violence and unrest?

British Geostrategy for the Subcontinent

The British policy toward South Asia, and the Middle East as well, is uniformly colonial, and vastly different from that of the United States. Even today, when Washington is powered by people with tunnel vision, at best, the U.S. policy is not to break up nations, but to control the regime, or, as has become more prevalent in recent years, under the influence of the arrogant neocons, to force regime change. While this often creates a messy situation—for example, in Iraq, Lybia, Syria —the U.S. would prefer to avoid such outcomes.

Britain, on the other hand, built its geostrategic vision in the post-colonial days through the creation of a mess, and furthering the mess, to break up a country; exactly on the same lines India was partitioned in 1947. This policy results in a long-drawn process of violent disintegration. That is the process now in display in nations where the British colonial forces had hunted before, and still pull significant strings.

When the British left the Indian subcontinent in 1947, it was divided into India and Pakistan. The British colonial geostrategists, coming out of World War II, realized the importance of controlling the oil and gas fields. If possession could not be maintained, the strategists argued, Britain and its allies must remain at a striking distance, to ensure their control of these raw material reserves, and deny them to others.

Here is where the strategic importance of than British India (India & Pakistan) comes into play which the historians and political analysts have forgotten.

Strategic Importance of India/Pakistan & the Middle East

Germany surrendered on 5th May 1945. The same day, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an appraisal of the ‘long-term policy required to safeguard the strategic interests of the British Empire in India and the Indian Ocean’ by the Post-Hostilities Planning Staff of the War Cabinet. And, on 19th May, this top-secret appraisal report was placed before him. The central point of this report was that Britain must retain its military connection with the subcontinent so as to ward off the Soviet Union’s threat to the area.

The report cited four reasons for the strategic importance of India to Britain:

1. Its value as a base from which forces located there could be suitably placed for deployment both within the Indian Ocean area and in the Middle East and the Far East.

2. A transit point for air and sea communications.

3. A large reserve of manpower of good fighting quality.

4. From the northwest of which British air power could threaten Soviet military installations.

In each and every subsequent appreciation of the British chiefs of staff from then on till India’s independence that is available for examination, the emphasis was on the need to retain the British military connection with the subcontinent, irrespective of the political and constitutional changes there. Equally, they stressed the special importance of the northwest of India in this context. (Top-secret document, PHP (45) 15 (0) final, 19 May 1945, L/W/S/1/983988 (Oriental and Indian Collection, British Library, London).

The achievement of these objectives was collectively called as the Great Game. With the beginning of the eighteenth century the French were also able to figure out India’s importance and actively tried to be part of the process of having India’s resources shared for their political objectives in Europe. This reached the pinnacle with the Napoleonic Era where Napoleon was able to figure out that as long as India was in the hands of British it would be impossible to checkmate British in continental European wars. So the Grande army moved into Russia with a tacit agreement of taking India via land route through Afghanistan. When British sensed this plan, coalition after coalition against French were set up finally ending in a war between France and Russia in which Napoleon was finally weakened.

Later Russians were able to figure out this land route and its benefits and swiftly moved into southern Khanites occupying them one after the other. British sensing the danger of Russian incursion or outright occupation of India did three things.

Created buffer kingdoms post 1857 in the form of Kashmir, Afghanistan and Sikh Federated states.

Trained the British Indian Army in the General Staff techniques as envisioned by German strategists like von Moltke and others.

Meddled with the cultural heritage of India.

The social engineering was in such a way that in 100 years Indians lost everything of their glorious traditions – culture, customs, sciences – thinking that they have nothing to do with them and meekly surrendered to the British and their system of education.

To achieve the total control of India, the British used the Divide and Rule policy in terms of religion, clan, tribe, caste, region and language; the effects of which we are still felling as a continuous descent into mental, emotional and psychological slavery from which Indians were never able to come out. This is exactly what is playing out in the Levant War Zone today. This same strategy continues till today disguised under various names and terms – the New Great Game, Cold War, New Cold War etc.



Just how many countries were divided even after the end of World War II in the name of ‘Balance of Power’ into various ‘Spheres of Influence’? When the borders were drawn the conflicts were drawn with them and it is called a ‘Peace Plan’. Just like Syria now even India was partitioned by the British in 1947; how much peace has that brought to the two countries? Why do India and Pakistan blame each other and interestingly are unaware or never acknowledge the strategic reasons for which it was divided by the British? Most importantly, after more than 6 decades of Independence why should the former colonies accept the British drawn borders which has only brought more destruction?

Report by Shelley Kasli, Founder & Editor of GreatGameIndia, India’s only quarterly journal on Geopolitics and International Affairs.
The original source of this article is Oriental Review
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-great- ... ia/5515378

[conniption]

RT

Before our eyes: Syria’s Battle for Palmyra in latest RT reports (VIDEOS)

Published time: 26 Mar, 2016



Syrian army is close to regaining full control of the ancient city of Palmyra. Check out some of RT’s exclusive footage and battleground reports on how Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) militants are being pushed from the UNESCO heritage site.

Fierce fighting rages on

RT’s agency Ruptly’s latest video footage shows units of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) battling IS militants in and around Palmyra on Friday. The historical ruins of Palmyra are clearly visible from the position of Syrian mortar crews.

Syria: Syrian Army closer to seizing full control of Palmyra - reports

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJGM4PFAm5A

>snip<

Что осталось от Пальмиры: эксклюзивные съемки с коптера

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFHcIm9F41w

more...

[Luther Blissett]

No big news, but mainstream media headline in the Chicago Tribune:

CIA-armed militias are shooting at Pentagon-armed ones in Syria

[NeonLX]

No big news, but mainstream media headline in the Chicago Tribune:

CIA-armed militias are shooting at Pentagon-armed ones in Syria

That's hilarious. How far back in time would we have to go for that headline to be shocking as all hell?

[Nordic]

As long as they're shooting something and using up weapons and ammo, the US is happy.

[Nordic]

A State Department spokesman who cannot admit that defeating ISIS in Palmyra is a good thing. (Because we were supporting ISIS in the hopes they would overthrow Assad.) This is how sleazy our government is.

[Luther Blissett]

Those are the eyes of a man who knows where Academi men have been paid to go.

[tapitsbo]

How much of the "Pentagon vs. CIA" hype is just butthurt about Russian-Kurdish cooperation, etc. ?

It's interesting that PMCs like Academi have not always been successful (recently in Yemen for instance) - certainly I can imagine there are parties that might undercut them price-wise.

[conniption]

Moon of Alabama
(embedded links)

May 06, 2016

Syria: An "Airstrike" That Did Not Happen

There is reasons to believe that this "airstrike" did not happen:

Syrian monitors say at least 28 people have been killed in airstrikes on a makeshift refugee camp close to the border with Turkey. The attack on Sarmada, in Syrian rebel-held territory, follows more deaths in Homs.

Sarmada is in north-west Idleb province, just three miles from the Turkish borders and air defense.

Wounded were rushed across the border for treatment in Turkey, said the Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights, adding that the death toll was likely to rise.

Social media footage showed the charred frames of tents that had been pitched in a muddy field. The Observatory said those killed included women and children.

It was not initially clear who had carried out the raids on Sarmada in rebel-held territory in Syria's northwestern Idlib province and about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of divided Aleppo.

Abu Ibrahim al-Sarmai, an activist, said "two aerial strikes" hit the makeshift camp for displaced people.
...
Nidal Abdul Qader, an opposition civilian aid official who lives about one kilometer (half a mile) from the camp, said around 50 tents and a school had burned down.

Take a look at the video evidence the rebel propaganda put out.

The camp is in a rather wide, flat but stony area. The tents and plastic tarp structures are 15 to 30 yards from each other. Both videos show the skeleton of one larger tent that burned down. There is smoldering school material on the ground. Fire fighters in expensive equipment are dousing some hot spots. These are "White Helmet" rescue workers, part of the large U.S. and UK government financed anti-Syrian propaganda campaign.



The burned down tent is supposed to be the prove of an airstrike. But other tents and flimsy tarp structures just some 10-20 yards away from the fire show no damage or blast effects. None at all. Their thin plastic covers are intact. There is a small mobile phone antenna mast visible in the first video which also shows no damage. There are no people around but the rescue workers. There are no casualties visible, no ambulances, no blood, no civilians looking for next of kin or salvaging damaged property. There is no impact crater visible and no ammunition debris. There is also no potential military target around.



If this was an airstrike the pilot must have dropped some fire crackers from his cockpit. Any bomb or air to ground missile would have created an explosion blast that would have blown off tarps and created damage all around.



So what happened here? It was windy. A local fire burned down some tents. Maybe some people got hurt. A nearby "reporter" and a few well paid "White Helmet" background actors make a show out of it. The media, even with zero real evidence of an airstrike or casualties, takes that as truth and splashes it around.

-UPDATE-

Someone just pointed me to this video which purports to show the alleged second airstrike on the camp. But the sound of the airplane in the video is not original. There is no sound at all of an impact or explosion. Nor is that tiny "explosion" dust cloud the result of an air delivered bomb. Why are there no civilians around? And why is that fireman, just after the "impact" of that second "air strike", so completely unfazed and busy taking pictures of his expensive engine?

-End Update-

This story, like others, is a diversion from the ongoing massive attacks by al-Qaeda and "moderate" rebels, again united under the Jaish al-Fatah label, against positions of the Syrian government south-west of Aleppo city and elsewhere. These attacks continue despite a ceasefire Secretary of State Kerry had agreed to in the name of the "moderate", U.S. financed and equipped opposition.

Posted by b on May 6, 2016

45 comments

[conniption]

greanvillepost

White Helmets: War by way of Deception Part II ~ “If it looks like an executioner..
Author TGP
October 28, 2015

[conniption]

The Duran

Russia Prepares to Bomb the Rebels in Aleppo Again

Alexander Mercouris
3 days ago (June 6?)
As the rebels launch an offensive, truce around Aleppo approaches collapse.

Evidence is mounting that the Russians are cranking up to resume large scale bombing in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo.

The background is an agreement which was concluded by the US and the Russians in February. This called for a “cessation of hostilities” between the various Syrian factions in return for which Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria was to be scaled down.

The “cessation of hostilities” was not a ceasefire and was not intended to be. This was because the two biggest groups fighting the Syrian government – Daesh (“the Islamic State”, also sometimes called ISIS) and Al-Qaeda’s local Syrian franchise – Jabhat Al-Nusra – were expressly excluded from it. The UN Security Council previously declared both organisations terrorist organisations and neither were parties to the “cessation of hostilities” agreement. In fact both denounced it.

A fundamental part of the “cessation of hostilities” agreement was that the US would persuade the various groups it supports in Syria – the so-called “moderates” who form the so-called “Free Syrian Army” – to separate their fighters from these two terrorist groups.

The reason the Russians are now cranking up to resume their bombing in and around Aleppo is because the separation of so-called “moderate fighters” from those of Daesh and Jabhat Al-Nusra in and around Aleppo has never happened. On the contrary the fighters of the various Syrian groups remain intermingled with each other and continue to fight alongside each other.

As for the US, there is little or no evidence that it has ever made any serious attempt to persuade the so-called “moderate fighters” it supports to separate themselves from Daesh or Jabhat Al-Nusra. On the contrary the whole weight of the US’s diplomatic activity over the last few weeks has been to dissuade the Russians from bombing Jabhat Al-Nusra from in and around Aleppo on the grounds that this might hit the so-called “moderate fighters”.

To understand how extraordinary that demand is, just consider that the US has never in all the air campaigns it has waged in the Middle East – whether against the Taliban in Afghanistan or in Iraq or in Libya or Syria – ever sought to distinguish between “militants” and “moderates”.

When the US bombed Afghanistan in 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks its stance was totally straightforward – it bombed the Taliban everywhere and anywhere it could without making any distinction between its supposed militant and moderate factions. It was left to anyone who wanted to avoid getting bombed to get out of the way. This despite the fact that such different factions within the Taliban – actually a loose coalition of different groups – are known to have existed, and despite the fact that Al-Qaeda (the nominal target of the whole campaign) and the Taliban were distinct organisations. The mere fact the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were physically connected with each other sufficed for the US to bomb them both.

The fact the US has been pressuring the Russians to desist from bombing Jabhat Al-Nusra – ie. Al-Qaeda in Syria – has been barely reported in the West or in the US. If the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks – or indeed the US soldiers who fought against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families – were ever to learn that in Syria the US is protecting Al-Qaeda they would surely feel betrayed.

A series of complaints and messages from Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov suggests that the Russians are now close to having enough. Lavrov has made clear that the Russians consider the US in breach of the “cessation of hostilities” agreement the Russians and the US concluded with each other in February.

The Russians also see what is in fact obvious, that Jabhat Al-Nusra make use of any cessation of the bombing to re-equip and redeploy and to launch new attacks against Syrian army positions. Moreover when they do so the US’s so-called “moderate fighters” enthusiastically cooperate with them. A short while ago fighters from Jabhat Al-Nusra in cooperation with fighters of one of the so-called “moderate” groups together stormed an Alawite village and jointly massacred 19 of its civilian inhabitants including children and old people.

Here it is necessary to say something about the true situation in Syria. This is that the so-called “moderate forces” the US and the Western media constantly talk about quite simply don’t exist.

The collapse of the government’s authority over much of Syria meant that various village militias set themselves up to fill the void in different parts of the country. Some of them have claimed to be affiliated with the “Free Syrian Army” in order to get access to Western supplies, and many of them get lumped together by the US as if they were a coherent united fighting force. These militias are however focused on their own districts and are not seriously involved in the war.

As our writer Afra’a Dagher – who is an actual Syrian journalist based in Syria – has written, those fighters who are actually rebels – that is those fighters who actually fight the Syrian army and who seek to overthrow the Syrian government – call themselves at various times by different names but in reality are simply one and the same people.

In order to attract fighters, arms supplies and donations from the Gulf and elsewhere, they say they are Daesh or – if they are fighting around Aleppo – Jabhat Al-Nusra, or by any of various other colourful names that jihadi extremist groups in Syria like to use when it suits them. When they want to prevent the Russian air force bombing them, or when they need to get diplomatic support from the US or from Turkey or the West, they pretend to be “moderates” and call themselves the “Free Syrian Army”.

As Russia’s President Putin himself said in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly, “these people are cruel but they are not dumb”.

Both the US and the Russians know all this perfectly well. Both have for different reasons engaged in the fiction that there are “moderate fighters” in Syria who can be distinguished from the armed jihadis. The US does this because its priority is the overthrow of the Syrian government, not the defeat of violent jihadism in Syria. The Russians do it because they have always sought a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict, which would involve the Syrian rebels’ keep supporters – Saudi Arabia and the US – which they see as the only way to secure an end to the war.

News of a major rebel offensive against Aleppo’s Kurdish districts over the last few days has however brought Russian patience to breaking point. Diplomatic engagement with the US having failed to prevent this offensive, the Russians are all but saying that bombing is about to resume.