Syria Disintegrating: Part 2

[Crazy_Ivan80]

at which point will this thread be renamed to "syria reintegrating" ?

[Tamas]

Austrian paper Die Presse says Assad's Aleppo strategy seems to be taken out of Russia's playbook for the Chechen war and taking Grozny: surround, siege, starve, bombard, and eventually just roll in as victors.

Well that's really just Siege 101 isn't it? Done since antiquity

[Valmy]

How soon does Austria forget the strategy Kara Mustafa attempted to use in 1683

[CountDeMoney]

Well that's really just Siege 101 isn't it? Done since antiquity

He'd at least hit the wells with carcasses.

[PJL]

Well I'm sure all the protests outside the Russian & Syrian embassies around the world will force them to stop the campaign, like it did with the 2003 Iraq war.

[garbon]

Well I'm sure all the protests outside the Russian & Syrian embassies around the world will force them to stop the campaign, like it did with the 2003 Iraq war.

Your cynicism is really refreshing. It's like...well like something we've never had on offer before.

[CountDeMoney]

on offer

Yeah...you need to come home now.

[garbon]

on offer

Yeah...you need to come home now.

Pfft, with the pound being so worthless how smooth do you think that transition would be? I didn't move here to lose money, boo.

[CountDeMoney]

It did take a wetter shit than usual today, didn't it 

[Syt]

https://www.rt.com/news/356161-china-syria-military-training/

China 'to provide aid, enhance military training' in Syria – top army official

Beijing and Damascus have agreed that the Chinese military will provide humanitarian aid to Syria, a high-ranking People's Liberation Army officer said, adding that the training of Syrian personnel by Chinese instructors has also been discussed.

Director of the Office for International Military Cooperation of China's Central Military Commission, Guan Youfei, arrived in Damascus on Tuesday for talks with Syrian Defense Minister Fahad Jassim al-Freij, Chinese Xinhua news agency reported.

During the negotiation, Guan noted China's consistent diplomatic efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis, adding that Beijing is now seeking closer military ties with Damascus.

"The Chinese and Syrian militaries traditionally have a friendly relationship, and the Chinese military is willing to keep strengthening exchanges and cooperation with the Syrian military," he said.

Guan and al-Freij discussed the enhancement of training and "reached a consensus" on the Chinese military providing humanitarian aid to Syria, Xinhua reported, without providing further details.

According to the agency, Guam also met with a Russian general during his visit to the Syrian capital.

China has been operating in Syria alongside Russia and Iran in a "discreet manner" but now the time has come to "openly" step up anti-terrorist efforts, believes political analyst Roula Talj.

"We will see more involvement of China, of Iran and Russia. They will go [in] stronger after ISIS, especially after Russia-US talks. I do not think the US will have any chance to oppose the interference of these allies. The US president or any candidate will have to answer their own public['s] opinion, so it is good for them that someone else is doing the dirty job," Roula Talj told RT. "In the face of their own public['s] opinion they have to be grateful that somebody else is cleaning the mess they had created, especially as ISIS is getting stronger every day inside of Europe. Of course, they are not extremely happy to see the BRICS countries taking over."

Meanwhile political expert Qin Duo Xu does not foresee any "deep involvement" of the Chinese military in Syria, but says it could be a "significant" first step for China to "get involved in the Syrian situation."

"There are chances that this cooperation will increase a lot," he told RT. "At least China can provide more support or diplomatic cover in terms of cracking down [on] terrorists or some rebel groups that are really extremist in nature."

"If you look at the Chinese media, Chinese public opinion, [you will see] that [the] absolute majority is siding with the Syrian government and support Russian military involvement. China has its own problems with terrorists: At least 100 Chinese citizens are fighting alongside with rebels and Islamic State against the Syrian government," he added. "That is why China does support Russian involvement, does support Syrian government's efforts in [the] fight against terrorists."

It is in China's strategic interests to get involved in the Syrian crisis and "play a larger role" in resolving it, independent China strategist, Andrew Leung said.

"This is really a breakthrough in China's strategies in the Middle East. There appears to be more coordination with countries, like Russia," Leung told RT. “China sees itself as one of the great powers and as befitting a state of great power there is the responsibility to maintain peace and stability in a very important region in the world...as far as the Middle East is concerned it means even more to China because it is a matter of energy security."

Despite being a permanent UN Security Council member and relying on the Middle East for oil, China was previously reluctant to become involved in the Syrian conflict.

Beijing preferred to concentrate on domestic affairs and the territorial dispute with its neighbors in the South China Sea.

It praised Moscow's anti-terrorism efforts in Syria as Russia staged a bombing campaign there in September 2015 to March 2016. Russia still has some of its forces in the country to provide humanitarian and military assistance to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.

Last year, there were reports that China was sending dozens of military advisers to Syria to help the country fight terrorists.

READ MORE: China's military advisers 'heading to Syria to help fight ISIS' – report

Syria has been engulfed in civil war since 2011, with the government fighting a number of rebel groups, in addition to terrorist groups such as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front.

[Admiral Yi]

Eh, maybe meant bold?

[Syt]

Eh, maybe meant bold?

No, apparently they had a "[s]" in the text

[Eddie Teach]

on offer

Yeah...you need to come home now.

Never associated that one with Britain. 

[mongers]

Russians and Syrians building up to something, they've already recovered the Western suburbs of Aleppo that were recently captured in the rebel offensive.

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/23/donald-trump-jr-syria-russia-meeting-randa-kassis

US Syria policy: signs of shift as Trump son meets pro-Russia Damascus figure

The president-elect's son reportedly met with Randa Kassis, a Syrian politician who strongly supports Russian intervention, in Paris last month

A meeting in Paris between Donald Trump's son and a Syrian politician with strong ties to Russia has strengthened expectations that the new US administration will side with Moscow in the conflict.

The meeting Donald Trump Jr attended at the Paris Ritz on 11 October, reported in the Wall Street Journal, was co-hosted by Randa Kassis, who runs a Syrian group portrayed as the "patriotic opposition" by Moscow. Kassis is widely viewed as pro-regime by many dissidents, because she advocates political transition in cooperation with the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, and because of her strong support of Russian intervention.

"Russia intervened to save the country, for the sake of Syria," Kassis said on al-Jazeera programme Opposite Direction on Tuesday. "The problem is that you don't know the Russians, you don't understand the Russians ... you just accuse the Russians of being against the opposition but you need to understand them."

Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat who defected and is now a Washington-based dissident said that Kassis's organisation does not have widespread support. "It is really her and a group of her friends," he said. "No one else in Syria recognises her as an opposition except the regime."

Her husband, Fabien Baussart, is a French businessman who runs a small thinktank in Paris called the Centre for Political and Foreign Affairs, and has strong commercial ties to Kazakhstan and Russia. Baussart introduced Kassis, a former Damascus socialite, to Sergey Lavrov, according to Joseph Bahout, a Syrian expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"She is a good friend of Lavrov, and he invited her and several others to Moscow and they created what is known – with a certain irony – as the 'Moscow opposition',"Bahout said. "The Russians in their cynicism tried to impose these people as an opposition delegation to the peace talks in Geneva. But of course the rest of the opposition all objected."

Kassis recently posted comments on her Facebook page about the meeting, saying: "Syria's opposition got hope that political process will move forward and Russia and the United States will reach accord on the issue of the Syrian crisis, because of Trump's victory. Such hope and belief is the result of my personal meeting with Donald Trump Junior in Paris in October."

"I succeeded to pass [to] Trump, through the talks with his son, the idea of how we can cooperate together to reach the agreement between Russia and the United States on Syria," Kassis said in her Facebook posting.

Throughout his campaign, Trump praised Russia and the Syrian regime for "fighting Isis", although very little of the war effort of either government is focused on the Islamic State movement. It is mostly aimed at areas held by other opposition groups, and their bombing of those areas have been responsible for the great majority of the civilian casualties, according to human rights groups.

Earlier this month, Assad appeared to give the president-elect a cautious endorsement, saying Trump would be a "natural ally" if he fulfills his pledge to fight "terrorists".

In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, Trump said: "I have a different view on Syria than everybody else."

He gave no specifics other than to say his view was opposed to Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, who has proposed tougher action to back some opposition groups, defend civilians and confront Russia and the Syrian regime. He said he had very strong ideas on Syria, but would only discuss them off the record.

In the same New York Times interview, Trump also suggested that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, might serve as an envoy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That suggestion and his son's attendance at the Paris meeting have reinforced earlier impressions that he would rely heavily on personal and business connections in foreign policy, using family members as go-betweens despite their lack of experience.

Members of Trump's entourage also came under fire from a former counter-terrorist official on Wednesday for their lobbying on behalf of an Iranian rebel group, the Mujahidin e-Khalq (MeK), that was on the state department foreign terrorist organisation list from 1997 until 2012.

Daniel Benjamin, the coordinator for counter-terrorism in the state department from 2009 to 2012, accused former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani and former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, both candidates for high office in the new administration, of accepting lavish fees from an organisation that had in the past been responsible for the deaths of American citizens and other civilians.

"You can tell a lot about potential Cabinet nominees by the terrorist group they shill for," Benjamin wrote in Politico on Wednesday. "The MeK has plenty of American blood on its hands, as well as that of thousands of Iranians killed while the group was a strike force serving Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and '90s."