Syria Disintegrating: Part 2

[CountDeMoney]

The Death of Hope in Syria
"I don't think anyone can help us," one of the last doctors in Aleppo says.
The Atlantic

You can calculate the number of people who have died in a conflict, the relative strength of various factions, the amount of territory each holds. Hope is much harder to measure. But it's no less a factor in the arithmetic of war. Hope is a bulwark of humanity. In many cases, hope is all that civilians beset by violence have left.

Consider the Syrian Civil War: Hope—for the most basic international action to ease the suffering of Syrians, let alone efforts to halt hostilities or end the war—is in especially short supply these days. The shortage is evident in the reaction this week to the images and video of a stunned, bloodied five-year-old boy being whisked from a bombed building to an ambulance. The visuals are being widely shared online, but often with dark resignation. There's little expectation that world leaders will be moved to do what's necessary to resolve the humanitarian catastrophe in Aleppo, which for months now has been starved of food, water, and medical supplies as Syrian government and rebel forces battle for control of the city.

"Watch this video from Aleppo tonight. And watch it again," the Australian journalist Sophie McNeill tweeted on Wednesday, in reference to the footage of the Syrian child. "And remind yourself that with ." This is less a call to action than a challenge to stare straight at collective inaction—and not turn away in disgust. McNeill's message has been shared thousands of times.

The shortage of hope is also evident in a letter that 15 of the last doctors in rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo recently sent to Barack Obama. The physicians spoke of horrors that haven't gone viral on the internet: attacks on medical facilities, often by suspected Russian or Syrian government warplanes, occurring roughly every 17 hours; four newborn babies suffocating to death after an explosion cut off oxygen to their incubators. The letter's signatories urged the U.S. president to exert more pressure on the various parties in the conflict to protect civilians and lift the siege on the city. But a number of doctors declined to sign the letter, believing the plea for international support to be futile. And when the BBC asked one of the signatories about that decision by her colleagues, she admitted that she didn't expect the United States to actually help either.

"We just write that letter to the world to know what's happening here. But I don't think that anyone can help us," Farida, the only remaining female OBGYN in eastern Aleppo, told the BBC. (In most media interviews, she's used only her first name for security reasons.) "Everyone is doing nothing. ...  Everyone is watching and we just see sympathy from them. But there's no work. We don't see anyone working for us. They just watch and just talk and do nothing. People here are dying every day with chlorine, and with barrels, with air strikes. The women are dying, and some women are dying when they are pregnant, and some women have miscarriages because of the air strikes. But no one helping. Just watching."

We can't say we didn't know.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/aleppo-doctors-syria-boy/496427/

[CountDeMoney]

Middle East
Russia Sends Bombers to Syria Using Base in Iran

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and DAVID E. SANGERAUG. 16, 2016
New York Times

MOSCOW — Russia launched a fleet of bombers bound for Syria on Tuesday from an Iranian air base, becoming the first foreign military to operate from Iran's soil since at least World War II.

Russian use of the base, with Iran's obvious support, appeared to set back or at least further complicate Russia's troubled relations with the United States, which has been working with Russia over how to end the Syria conflict.

While American officials said they were not surprised by the Russia-Iran military collaboration, it appeared to catch them off guard, with no solid information on the Kremlin's intentions. "I think we're still trying to assess exactly what they're doing," a State Department deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, told reporters in Washington.

The arrangement, permanent or not, enables Russia to bring more firepower to the Syrian conflict, and far greater military flexibility. Analysts said the new arrangement could also expand Moscow's political influence in the Middle East and speed the growing convergence of interests between Moscow and Tehran.

From the air base, in Hamadan, northwest Iran, the Russian bombers destroyed ammunition dumps and a variety of targets linked to the Islamic State and other groups that had been used to support militants battling in Aleppo, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Historians and American officials said Tuesday that the Iranian decision to let Russia base its planes and support operations in Iran — even temporarily — was a historic one.

"This didn't even happen under the shah," said John Limbert, a former American foreign service officer who was stationed in Iran, referring to the reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

In the shah's era, there were American military advisers who moved in and out of Iran, and a series of listening posts in the country's northeast where the military and American intelligence agencies monitored the Soviet Union.

Yet the sense of sovereignty runs so deep in Iranian culture that American efforts to have a bigger presence there were repeatedly rebuffed. Mr. Limbert, who as a young foreign service officer was one of the Americans taken hostage in 1979 at the embassy in Tehran, speculated that Russia was paying handsomely for the privilege. In Iran today, he said, the prospect of gaining revenue "can create a lot of flexibility."

The bombers — too big for the air base Russia established in Syria in September — had been flying missions from Russia, a trip that will now be 1,000 miles shorter, officials said. Because they are based so much closer to the Syrian battlefields, the planes will be able to carry heavier payloads, adding new muscle to the recently faltering Syrian government effort in Aleppo.

Indeed, observers on the ground in Aleppo described a particularly heavy day of bombing, even if they could not identify the bombers. Civilians bore the brunt of the strikes. "The bombing today was intensive and massive," said Mohamed al-Ahmed, a radiologist in an Aleppo hospital reached via the messaging app Viber, who said he had counted 28 victims.

Beyond any tactical advantages, launching Russian bombers from Iran also seemed to be part of a grander plan by President Vladimir V. Putin to cobble together a coalition to fight in Syria with Russia at its center. The use of the Iranian base comes on the heels of Mr. Putin's recent détente with Turkey and amid Russian-American talks on cooperating more in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria.

"I think what Russia is trying to do is put together a broader coalition that goes beyond Russian-Iranian cooperation," said Andrey V. Kortunov, the director general of the Russian International Affairs Council. "They consider this operation as another bargaining chip in their negotiations with the West."

The new level of Russian-Iranian cooperation raises questions about whether the United States made a larger strategic error when, in choosing not to create "safe zones" or conduct major air operations over Syria, it left a window for the Russians to enter the war. President Obama warned in October that Moscow would be sucked into a "quagmire" as it sought to prop up Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad.

Mr. Toner, the State Department deputy spokesman, said the Russian activity could violate a United Nations Security Council resolution that, he said, "prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran unless approved in advance by the U.N. Security Council."

But it is not clear how that resolution would apply to combat aircraft flown by Russian pilots and not "transferred" to Iran. Mr. Toner said. "I just don't have a definitive answer. I know our lawyers are looking at this."

Mr. Assad's position, dire when Russia entered the fray, was greatly strengthened, though his forces have faltered lately — one reason for basing Russia's bombers closer. More important, the Russian entry has greatly limited American options.

Now, any American-led air operation would have to be coordinated with Russia to avoid conflicts over airspace, and the Pentagon has been highly suspicious of such coordination. An effort by Secretary of State John Kerry to work out some kind of enhanced cooperation — to fight the Islamic State and to provide humanitarian access to besieged cities — has failed to produce results.

On Monday, Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, said that Moscow and Washington were coming closer to an agreement on Syria that would let the two sides fight together. Moscow has felt pressure to reach a political settlement as the humanitarian situation has deteriorated in Aleppo and Syrian government forces have had a series of setbacks there and in Latakia.

The new arrangement seems to have brought Tehran and Moscow into greater accord on Mr. Assad, who has not had absolute support from Russia. "The Iranians have been all in on Assad, and I think the Russians have now moved in that direction," said Cliff Kupchan, a specialist on Russia and Iran at the Eurasia Group, a political analysis firm in Washington.

The new flights help solidify Russia's presence in the Middle East, where its roster of allies has dwindled since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia "now views Iran as a powerful ally in the region and a stable source of income for its state industries," said Konstantin von Eggert, a political analyst and commentator on Dozhd, a Russian independent television channel. "Tehran is a rich anti-American regime in a strategic region important to U.S. interests. What could be better for Putin?"

Ostensibly sent to fight terrorist groups, Russian forces in the air, joined by Iran and the Shiite militant group Hezbollah on the ground, have largely concentrated on shoring up government forces and punishing rebel groups, some supported by the United States.

But even with that assistance, the Syrian forces have been losing ground in Aleppo recently, highlighting the limits of an aerial bombing strategy to support a weary government army and its foreign allies. "In military terms, the situation around Aleppo is quite difficult, so there is a need to make the strikes much stronger," said Aleksei Arbatov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. "This decision constitutes a sharp intensification of our operation."

Underscoring the government's weakness, the Islamic State recently swatted away a heavily heralded attack by Syrian forces on Raqqa, the militant group's de facto capital.

The statement from the Russian Defense Ministry said that Tupolev Tu-22MS bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter-bombers took off from the base at Hamadan to strike targets in Syria in the provinces of Aleppo, Idlib and Deir al-Zour. It said the planes bombed Islamic State facilities as well as those controlled by Fath al-Sham, the Qaeda-affiliated group formerly known as the Nusra Front.

The Defense Ministry said the bombers hit arms depots, a training camp and three command-and-control points and killed numerous militants.

Also on Tuesday, Russia held naval drills in the eastern Mediterranean and Caspian Seas with ships equipped with the same type of Kalibr cruise missiles used to strike Syria when the Russian operation began last fall.

Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov, the head of the defense and security committee in Russia's Parliament, said that deploying from the Iranian air base would save on costs, a crucial advantage as Russia drags through a long recession.

"The matter of warfare expenditures is at the top of the agenda today," he was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

It is not clear how the Russian-Iranian agreement was negotiated, but there was no denying the historic, and somewhat ironic, nature of the agreement.

"The irony is that the revolutionaries denounced the shah as a foreign puppet," said Mr. Limbert, now a professor at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. "But these guys have done something that the shah never did."

[jimmy olsen]

Kurds hit for the first time

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/18/syrian-planes-bomb-kurdish-held-area-for-first-time-reports

[Tamas]

This whole Middle East adventure of the US after 9/11 will be remembered as one the dumbest move made by an empire, ever.

If you go into a region, destroy the power structure and create an immense power vacuum then you better do it to move in yourself and conquer stuff for the long term, otherwise others will do it.

First Bush created the whole mess in Iraq with being too active in the region, then Obama did a 180 turn toward inaction thereby handing both Iraq and apparently Syria over to Iran, with the Iran-Russia alliance as the sugar topping.

The mind boggles.

[Valmy]

This whole Middle East adventure of the US after 9/11 will be remembered as one the dumbest move made by an empire, ever.

If you go into a region, destroy the power structure and create an immense power vacuum then you better do it to move in yourself and conquer stuff for the long term, otherwise others will do it.

First Bush created the whole mess in Iraq with being too active in the region, then Obama did a 180 turn toward inaction thereby handing both Iraq and apparently Syria over to Iran, with the Iran-Russia alliance as the sugar topping.

The mind boggles.

Iran and Russia are welcome to them. It was not like the region was headed in an awesome trajectory anyway. The power structures we didn't destroy seemed to fall apart pretty well on their own. I mean what does Tunisia and Libya have to do with Iraq?

[Berkut]

This whole Middle East adventure of the US after 9/11 will be remembered as one the dumbest move made by an empire, ever.

If you go into a region, destroy the power structure and create an immense power vacuum then you better do it to move in yourself and conquer stuff for the long term, otherwise others will do it.

First Bush created the whole mess in Iraq with being too active in the region, then Obama did a 180 turn toward inaction thereby handing both Iraq and apparently Syria over to Iran, with the Iran-Russia alliance as the sugar topping.

The mind boggles.

Region?

We went into Iraq, that is a rather particular nation, not a region.

And while we certainly handled it pretty terribly, this idea that the country was sunshine and roses before we went in and fucked it up is simply idiotic. It was a fucking mess of oppression, and the "stability" that was so vaunted was illusory and temporary.

Iraq was not fundamentally stable and the US screwed it up - it was fundamentally unstable and the US tore off the band-aids. That doesn't absolve us of responsibility for doing so, but this idea that if only the US had simply let Saddam defy the UN and his agreements with the US, the "region" would be great and peaceful is fucking crazy talk.

The fundamental problems there have nothing to do with the US. The rise of Islamic radicalism and sectarian violence was coming one way or another. The war for what "Islam" means has been brewing for a long time, and there are forces involved that have little or nothing to do with the US per se. Of course, the Shrubbery managed to completely mis-read that reality and totally misplay how to handle it (not that I am sure I have any better ideas...nor does anyone else as far as I can tell, but certainly hindsight suggests that the chosen course of action was pretty terrible in execution of nothing else).

[citizen k]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkish-syria-offensive-not-stop-until-threats-removed-090846227.html

A member of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) patrols in the border town of Jarablus, Syria, August 31, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas



By David Dolan

JARABLUS, Syria (Reuters) - Turkey wants to clear Islamic State from a 90-km (56-mile) stretch of territory on the Syrian side of its border, an official said on Wednesday, a week after it launched an incursion that has strained ties with the United States.

Operation "Euphrates Shield", in which Turkish troops and tanks entered Syria in support of rebels for the first time, began on Aug. 24 with the swift capture of Jarablus, a town a few km (miles) inside Syria that was held by the militant group.

Turkish-backed rebels patrolled the town on motorbikes on Wednesday as children played in dusty alleys.

The bulk of Turkish-backed forces have since moved further south into territory held by militias loyal to the Kurdish-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition supported by Washington in its bid to defeat the jihadists.

Turkish clashes with SDF loyalists have alarmed the United States, which has described the Turkish action as "unacceptable" because it hindered the battle against Islamic State.

But Turkey, which is fighting a Kurdish insurgency at home, says that, while it remains intent on clearing Islamist militants from its border region, it also wants to prevent Kurdish militias from seizing territory in their wake.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the goal was to drive Islamic State from a 90-km strip of land along the border with Turkey, which has been buffeted by a spate of bombings, blamed on the group, that have killed scores.

"Starting from Jarablus, the cleansing of this region is our priority," Kalin told a news briefing. "We have already cleansed 400 square km successfully."

Turkey has long said it wants a "buffer zone" in the area, although it has not used the term during this incursion. As well as driving out the ultra-hardline Islamists, it also wants to prevent Kurdish forces taking territory that will let them join up cantons they control in northeast and northwest Syria.

Turkey frets that seizing such a broad swathe of territory could embolden Kurdish PKK insurgents on Turkish soil.

THUD OF EXPLOSIONS

U.S. officials on Tuesday welcomed what appeared to be a pause in fighting between Turkish forces and rival militias, after days when the border area reverberated with Turkish warplanes roaring into Syria and artillery pounded Syrian sites, saying it was hitting Kurdish fighters.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters on Wednesday there had been calm in northern Syria in the past 24 hours.

"We continue to work very closely with our coalition partner and ally Turkey in trying to address their concerns about this situation," spokesman Peter Cook said. "Likewise we continue to work with our partners in Syria to try and keep the focus where it should be," he added.

On Wednesday only the occasional thud of explosions in the distance was audible along the Turkish frontier.

Ankara has denied statements from Kurdish fighters in Syria that a temporary truce had been agreed, saying it would not make any pact with the Kurdish YPG militia, a powerful force in the SDF coalition, as it considers it a terrorist body.

"The Turkish Republic is a sovereign state, a legitimate state. It cannot be equated with a terrorist organization," EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik told state-run Anadolu news agency, adding this meant there could be no "agreement between the two."

Turkey has demanded that the YPG cross the Euphrates river into a Kurdish-controlled canton in Syria's northeast. U.S. officials have threatened to withdraw backing for the YPG if it did not meet that demand, but have said that the Kurdish group has mostly done so.

Turkey's EU affairs minister said some Kurdish fighters were still on the western side and called that "unacceptable."

Eager to avoid more clashes between Turkey and U.S.-backed Syrian fighters, the Pentagon said the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State was establishing communications channels to better coordinate in a "crowded battlespace" in Syria.

As well as battling Islamic State in Syria, Turkey has been rounding up suspected militants at home. Interior Minister Efkan Ala said the authorities had arrested 865 people since the start of 2016, more than half of them foreigners, preventing them crossing through Turkey's long border with Syria and Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Asli Kandemir in Istanbul, Ercan Gurses in Ankara and Idrees Ali in Washington.; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Anna Willard)

[jimmy olsen]

Neo-Ottoman Empire can't be worse then what they have right now.

[DGuller]

Wait, I got a little behind on all the latest Syria goings on.  Is Turkey fighting on the same side as Russia, or has it in effect started a proxy war against Russia in Syria?

[Malicious Intent]

Wait, I got a little behind on all the latest Syria goings on.  Is Turkey fighting on the same side as Russia, or has it in effect started a proxy war against Russia in Syria?

Turkey seems to currently work directly against US interests in Syria by primarily targeting the YPG. According to Spiegel Online, IS has already profited from this by retaking a few villages.

[Tamas]

Wait, I got a little behind on all the latest Syria goings on.  Is Turkey fighting on the same side as Russia, or has it in effect started a proxy war against Russia in Syria?

They are fighting on their own side like the other 35 sides in this conflict. I am guessing their general plan must depend on their overall ambition in the Middle East. If they just want to be left alone to ethnic cleanse the Kurds then they will be looking to strike a sweet deal for abandoning their Syrian opposition allies they are propping up now, once Assad has retaken the rest of the country.

If Erdogan wants to be Da Shit of the region he will probably want to remove Assad and Saudi as well as Iranian influence in Syria, but that seems highly unlikely considering they'd have to go through Russia for that.

[Martinus]

Yeah, Turkey and Russia are now best buddies, after Erdogan paying the oath of fealty to Putin few months ago.

[jimmy olsen]

Yeah, Turkey and Russia are now best buddies, after Erdogan paying the oath of fealty to Putin few months ago.

Edrogan's foreign policy hasn't exactly been consistent though. If he thinks he sees an opportunity to aggrandize himself and Turkey he'll probably take it.

[mongers]

Video of Russia troops on the ground in Syria, nr the Castello road, coming under fire as they give a live briefing to their boss in Moscow:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-37357955

[11B4V]

Anatoly, Anatoly, are you there?