Syria Disintegrating: Part 2

[jimmy olsen]

F-15s sent to Turkey to keep an eye on the Russians. I thought we'd phased them out for F-22s?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/03/u-s-brings-dogfighters-to-counter-russians-over-syria.html

[Ed Anger]

What a dorky article. F-15C's can carry bombs.

[Tonitrus]

I thought we'd phased them out for F-22s?

Nope.  Still plenty of Eagle Drivers out there.

[mongers]

Russians say they're now responding to, or working from targeting given to them by Syrian opposition groups.   

[Razgovory]

Russians say they're now responding to, or working from targeting given to them by Syrian opposition groups.   

That doesn't make a lot of sense.

[DGuller]

  It does make sense if the Syrian opposition groups are giving the Russians targeting information inadvertently.

[jimmy olsen]

Assad's army was bled white when the Russians swept into save them. Have they done enough damage that the rebels won't be able to reorganize and go back on the offensive without them there? I doubt it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/putin-announces-russia-will-pull-most-of-its-military-from-syria/2016/03/14/abd2a9d9-5e8c-4521-8b4b-960a8e6c96d4_story.html

The Washington Post

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia will begin pulling most of its military from Syria. (The Washington Post)

By Michael Birnbaum and Hugh Naylor March 14 at 6:23 PM    


MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin announced Monday that Russia would begin withdrawing the "main part" of its military from Syria, a surprise potential end to a six-month intervention that bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and dealt a grave blow to Syrian rebels.

The decision came as U.N.-
brokered peace talks between the Assad government and rebel representatives got underway in Geneva. The planned Tuesday start of the withdrawal coincides with the five-year anniversary of the beginning of street protests in Syria, an initially peaceful movement that was brutally repressed by Assad forces.

Through it all, Russia has backed Assad. But Monday's decision may intensify pressure on the Syrian government to strike a deal with rebel groups in Geneva. Talks resumed there Monday after breaking down a month ago because the rebels were suffering such heavy losses in their surrounded stronghold of Aleppo. A shaky cease-fire has quelled fighting in Syria since late February, but Assad's forces have continued an assault on their rivals.

"I hope that this will considerably increase the level of trust between all parties of the Syrian settlement and will contribute to a peaceful resolution of the Syrian issue," Putin said in a meeting with his top deputies that was broadcast on Russian state television late Monday. In a separate phone call with Assad, Putin said the intervention had "radically changed the situation" on the ground, according to the Kremlin.

[How the Syrian revolt went so horribly, tragically wrong]

Putin said that Russia would keep open the Russian air force and naval bases in Syria but that the task of the Russian intervention had been achieved and diplomacy should take over.

The Obama administration was taken by surprise by the announcement, which the White House said President Obama later "discussed" with Putin in a telephone call that had been previously scheduled to talk about implementation of the cease-fire.

Putin made the decision unilaterally, without any such request from Assad, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. It was a pointed message suggesting that Russia's support for Assad is not unlimited, now that he is unlikely to be deposed by force.

It was not immediately clear whether the announcement meant an end to all Russian airstrikes in Syria. The Kremlin spokesman said that Russia did not believe that issues with "terrorists" — the term Russia generally uses for all opponents of Assad — had been solved and that Russia intends to maintain a presence on the ground. Previous ­Russian announcements about peaceful intentions in Syria have been met with skepticism by Western nations.

After Assad appeared weakened and on the verge of defeat over the summer, the Russian intervention inverted the course of the conflict, paving the way with airstrikes for Assad's ground forces. By February, shortly before the cease-fire went into effect, dozens of Russian bombers and jet fighters were often flying more than 60 sorties a day, according to Russia's Defense Ministry, enabling major territorial gains by regime forces. Although Russian leaders said they were targeting the Islamic State and other "terrorists," U.S. officials and rebels said the bulk of the airstrikes were being conducted against other rebel forces battling Assad, some of which were supported by the United States.

The mission was Russia's first overseas combat deployment since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, a major test for a military that in 2008 seemed stretched to the breaking point by a brief war in neighboring Georgia. Russia has sought to use the increased clout to play a bigger role at the negotiating table and to break through the international isolation that had settled on it after its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

Five years ago, few Syrians would have ever imagined that their uprising against their leader — a peaceful Arab Spring revolt — would turn into a violent proxy war for regional actors.

March 15, 2011, Syrians took to the streets in Damascus for unarmed rallies that would spread like wildfire across the country and would eventually be met with utter brutality by Assad's security apparatus. Most Syrians back then would not have expected that the Islamic State and al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra would hijack their revolt and later provide the pretext for the Russian intervention.

For the first three months of the intervention, analysts and officials reported modest gains, as doubts about the battered Syrian army and militias loyal to Assad persisted. But in January, a Syrian offensive began scoring major victories, cutting off supply lines from Turkey and threatening Aleppo.

After helping broker the late February cease-fire, Russia pledged that it would push Assad forces to adhere to the deal.

[Obama thinks his Syria strategy is right — and folks just don't get it]

The Obama administration had become increasingly frustrated in recent days over what it saw as Russia's inability or unwillingness to press Syrian government forces to adhere to the cease-fire. In his call to Putin, the White House said, Obama welcomed the overall reduction in violence but "stressed that continuing offensive actions by Syrian regime forces risk undermining" both the truce and the political negotiations.

Late last week, the administration decided to publicly accuse Moscow of failing to rein in Assad, leading to a string of comments by officials including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who on Sunday called on Putin to take control of Russia's Syrian ally.

By signing on to the international agreement backing a cease-fire, he said, Russia and Iran "accepted responsibility for the forces that they control or influence. . . . So President Putin, who is invested in supporting Assad . . . should be somewhat concerned" by the actions of Syrian forces.

"We felt it was important, going into these talks, to make it clear that we weren't blind to these violations, that they mattered, and that they really needed to stop," a U.S. official said Monday.

Russian analysts said Putin's announcement may be intended to press Assad at the talks after saving him on the ground.

As Assad representatives take a hard line in the talks, "I think that Russia is really not interested to fully take the responsibility for this behavior," said Fyodor Lukyanov, a well-connected political analyst in Moscow who is the editor of Russia in Global Affairs.

It was unclear what effect the pullout would have on the negotiations. The U.N. envoy charged with the talks, Staffan de Mistura, told journalists ahead of Putin's move that "the only Plan B available is the return to war, and to an even worse war than we had so far."



Syrian opposition leaders on Monday offered cautious praise of the pullout decision.

"For us, it's important to see actions instead of hearing words," said Salem al-Muslet, a spokesman for the main opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee. "If this decision actually removes all Russian troops from Syria, then this will be a positive step."


Naylor reported from Geneva. Karen DeYoung in Washington and Andrew Roth in Moscow contributed to this report.

[viper37]

There's no organized opposition force on the ground, except the Kurds, and the Russians swayed them to their side.
ISIS is seeing recruitment problems, the dozen or so pro-democracy rebels have been anihilated, the other opposition groups have bombed&bombed&bombed by the russians and are not a cohesive force to oppose Assad's army anymore.  Or more accurately, they probably never were, only ISIS was, and so far, Russian + NATO bombings has done a number on them.  Turkey is pissed off at ISIS and the oil convoys don't reach it anymore.  There are lots of desertions, much more than before the russian air strikes, and they are recruiting child soldiers to replenish their ranks.  Not much of a threat to an army that has been resupplied and probably replenished too.

[jimmy olsen]

There's no organized opposition force on the ground, except the Kurds, and the Russians swayed them to their side.
ISIS is seeing recruitment problems, the dozen or so pro-democracy rebels have been anihilated, the other opposition groups have bombed&bombed&bombed by the russians and are not a cohesive force to oppose Assad's army anymore.  Or more accurately, they probably never were, only ISIS was, and so far, Russian + NATO bombings has done a number on them.  Turkey is pissed off at ISIS and the oil convoys don't reach it anymore.  There are lots of desertions, much more than before the russian air strikes, and they are recruiting child soldiers to replenish their ranks.  Not much of a threat to an army that has been resupplied and probably replenished too.

Al Nusra was equally coherent as ISIS.

The manpower problems the Alawites were facing were just as bad, that's not something you can fix in a year.

[jimmy olsen]

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/a-staggering-new-death-toll-for-syrias-war-470000/

More than 1 in 10 Syrians have been wounded or killed since the beginning of the war in 2011, according to a new report that finds a staggering 470,000 deaths have been caused by the conflict, either directly or indirectly.

The grim tally from the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR) represents a dramatic increase from the total of 250,000 fatalities often cited by the United Nations, which stopped independently counting Syria's war dead early in 2014.

In all, 11.5 percent of Syria's population has been wounded or killed since 2011, according to the SCPR analysis. The vast majority of deaths — 400,000 — were caused by violence, while 70,000 came as an indirect result of the war — the collapse of the country's health-care infrastructure, lack of access to medicine, poor sanitation, the spread of communicable diseases, falling vaccination rates, food scarcity and malnutrition. Another 1.88 million Syrians have been injured.

The loss of life was the "most catastrophic visible and direct" impact of the war, according to the report, with life expectancy dropping from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015.

"Hundreds of thousands of people, particularly male breadwinners, have [been] killed, injured, arrested, and kidnapped, enormously endangering their lives and the living conditions of their families," the report said. "The widespread insecurity and unbearable economic conditions and hardship, have forced millions of Syrians to resettle inside or outside the country and to depend completely on local and international humanitarian aids. This loss of security in all its forms has compromised human rights and dignity of the Syrian population."

The report's author, Rabie Nasser, told The Guardian that indirect deaths would only increase in the future. "We are sure of this figure," Nasser said, noting that earlier counts from the U.N. likely "underestimated the casualties due to lack of access to information during the crisis." Research for the SCPR study was carried out on the ground in Syria, according to The Guardian, which first reported the figures.

The SCPR analysis comes as bombing by the Syrian government and Russia of rebel-held Aleppo, the nation's second largest city, has prompted a new exodus of tens of thousands of Syrians. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that the latest fighting has displaced 50,000 Syrians in Aleppo province, with around 30,000 gathering near Syria's border with Turkey, which remains closed. Those who remain in Aleppo face a potential siege as forces allied with President Bashar al Assad slowly encircle the area.

In the meantime, diplomacy has been faltering. Earlier this month, international talks aimed at ending the war barely got off the ground in Geneva before they were suspended. The prospect for further negotiations appear dim despite plans to resume them on Feb. 25.

While not apportioning blame to either side in the conflict, the SCPR noted that fighting has destroyed Syria's health-care infrastructure, while sieges and the restriction of movement have worsened the health of those with chronic illnesses. Physicians for Human Rights, a group that tracks the deaths of health-care workers in Syria, said in separate research released last December that 2015 was one of the worst years on record for strikes on medical facilities in the country, with government forces launching more than 100 attacks. Since March 2011, the human rights group has recorded 336 attacks on medical facilities and the deaths of 697 medical personnel — a vast majority of which it attributes to the government and its allies. In Aleppo, Physicians for Human Rights estimates that 95 percent of doctors have either fled, been detained or killed. Those who are still there struggle with shortages of supplies and equipment, and live under the near-constant threat of bombings.

The SCPR also looked at the economic and social impact of the war, placing Syria's total economic loss by the end of 2015 at an estimated $254.7 billion. More than 85 percent of the country is living in poverty, with close to 7 in 10 Syrians stuck in extreme poverty — unable to afford essentials like food or water. At the start of the war in 2011, joblessness stood at 14.9 percent. By the end of last year, it surged to 52.9 percent.

[Valmy]

I mean yeah. Who would have thought it could drag on this long?

[Tonitrus]

I mean yeah. Who would have thought it could drag on this long?

[PJL]

Never thought I'd say this, but I fear the Russians may have left prematurely. It's quite conceivable that it could still end up like Afghanistan after they left in the late 1980s. I was hoping they would have stayed longer to help Assad to regain control of the rest of the country (or at least with a Kurdish autonomous region).

But the withdrawal will most likely embolden the opposition to Assad, who will likely use the ceasefire to rearm and regroup.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Never thought I'd say this, but I fear the Russians may have left prematurely. It's quite conceivable that it could still end up like Afghanistan after they left in the late 1980s. I was hoping they would have stayed longer to help Assad to regain control of the rest of the country (or at least with a Kurdish autonomous region).

But the withdrawal will most likely embolden the opposition to Assad, who will likely use the ceasefire to rearm and regroup.

the retreat may be a feint. Embolden the rebels, then hit them hard when they show their faces.

[mongers]

Government might be on the verge of retaking Palmyra.