And next, Syria?

[LDC]

dunno where you are, but i'd be driving to Worcester when it finishes, so west mids if its of any use... other than that, the YHA in Bristol is really nice.

Thanks, I'll have a look at my diary.

BTW, it's not on the Hydra website or calendar, anyone have the details please?

 

[rekil]

Yes he was. He was in the late 2011 beardie release designed to kill the revolution. He was sent into then forming FSA. Of course, the lie will come back now that the opposition demanded his/their release - they didn't. They demanded the release of non-islamists caught up under emergency legislation and tortured - often to death. They weren't released - many of those in prison then are still there today, if alive that is. The beardies were. They were released.

Ta, I know people have posted about it several times already but no harm in another mention. If this Peter Neumann LRB piece was posted previously, I didn't see it.

After the Iraq invasion, Syrian intelligence officials offered Islamist inmates at this notorious facility just outside Damascus the chance to receive military training and fight against Coalition forces in Iraq. According to a leaked State Department cable, of those who accepted the offer and subsequently managed to return to Syria, ‘some remained at large … others were sent to Lebanon, and a third group were re-arrested and remanded to Sednaya.

 

[butchersapron]

SDF now formed a political wing the Syrian Democratic Council - early indications that it is not taking a hardline anti-regime position.

Some translations have this as assembly rather than council.

Here is the final resolution of the Democratic Syria Congress - effectively the founding statement of the Council/Assembly.

 

[butchersapron]

This should put the cat among some pigeons on here. CR has claimed - concurrently - that the FSA both doesn't exist (and he took this from that expert Fisk, remember) and is actually made up solely of jihadi head choppers. I wonder what his lordship is up to here then?

Putin says Russia backs Free Syrian Army alongside Assad troops

MOSCOW, Dec 11 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Friday Russia supports the opposition Free Syrian Army, providing it with air support, arms and ammunition in joint operations with Syrian troops against Islamist militants.

His statement appeared to be the first time Moscow said it was actually supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's opponents in the fight against Islamic State forces. Putin said last month the Russian air force had hit several "terrorist" targets provided by the Free Syrian Army.

Western and Arab states carrying out air strikes against Islamic State for more than a year say that Russian jets have mainly hit other rebel forces in the west of Syria.

"The work of our aviation group assists in uniting the efforts of government troops and the Free Syrian Army," Putin told an annual meeting at the defence ministry.

"Now several of its units numbering over 5,000 troops are engaged in offensive actions against terrorists, alongside regular forces, in the provinces of Homs, Hama, Aleppo and Raqqa," he said, referring to the Free Syrian Army.

"We support it from the air, as well as the Syrian army, we assist them with weapons, ammunition and provide material support."

 

[teqniq]

Yeah I've been seeing that on Twitter I will repost your link otherwise he won't see it. What to make of it eh?

Putin says Russia backs Free Syrian Army alongside Assad troops

 

[butchersapron]

This is now disputed - translation issues being suggested. The counter-claim is that he said 5000 FSA (who don't exist at all remember) are fighting with terrorists.

 

[kebabking]

This is now disputed - translation issues being suggested. The counter-claim is that he said 5000 FSA (who don't exist at all remember) are fighting with terrorists.

this might fit rather better within Putins' wider narrative - though, tbh, it would have to be a hell of a translation screw up to have got it wrong, its not just one word or phrase...

 

[butchersapron]

this might fit rather better within Putins' wider narrative - though, tbh, it would have to be a hell of a translation screw up to have got it wrong, its not just one word or phrase...

Well, it's still up in the air. That the original contained supporting claims of what the russian military had offered to groups outside of the regime army only helps the side that says this is what he openly said.

 

[Casually Red]

Yeah I've been seeing that on Twitter I will repost your link otherwise he won't see it. What to make of it eh?

Putin says Russia backs Free Syrian Army alongside Assad troops

If you can point anywhere to 5000 ...or indeed 500 ..insurgents fighting alongside the Syrian Army in a string of provinces then we can make something of it. That would be actual news...massive news.. as opposed to a translation error . The only "irregular " forces fighting alongside the Syrian Army are local militias ...NDF, Ba'ath Brigades, Syrian Resistance, SSNP, Druze and Christian militias, Sunni tribesmen etc and Hezbollah . And occasionally the YPG / PKK...who currently have a localised "FSA" faction in tow. I'm assuming that's who's being referred to . Nobody else fights alongside the SAA .

.NRT English

 

[teqniq]

It does appear to be a translation error or some sort of misunderstanding also Twitter hasn't said anything else about it since this morning.

UPDATE 1830 GMT: Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov appears to have pulled back President Putin’s statement that Moscow has given weapons to the Free Syrian Army, saying that the aid is for regime forces:

We’re talking about military-technical cooperation. We are also [providing] certain supplies of what is called special assets. Deliveries are in strict accordance with international law. We are talking about the army. Russia supplies weapons to the Syrian Arab Republic, the legitimate authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic....

Syria Feature: Putin - We Are Supporting the Free Syrian Army - EA WorldView

from BA's post #4568 above

 

[Casually Red]

[Letter from Washington] | A Special Relationship, by Andrew Cockburn | Harper's Magazine

Good, lengthy article there that should put this Riyadh nonsense into proper perspective

 

[coley]

[Letter from Washington] | A Special Relationship, by Andrew Cockburn | Harper's Magazine

Good, lengthy article there that should put this Riyadh nonsense into proper perspective

Nowt new, but a good condensation.
ETA, And you did warn "lengthy"

 

[butchersapron]

A really angry Yassin Al Haj Saleh here (few months out of date but only just published):

Yassin Al Haj Saleh: I am afraid that it is too late for the leftists in the West to express any solidarity with the Syrians in their extremely hard struggle. What I always found astonishing in this regard is that mainstream Western leftists know almost nothing about Syria, its society, its regime, its people, its political economy, its contemporary history. Rarely have I found a useful piece of information or a genuinely creative idea in their analyses. My impression about this curious situation is that they simply do not see us; it is not about us at all. Syria is only an additional occasion for their old anti-imperialist tirades, never the living subject of the debate. So they do not really need to know about us. For them the country is only a black box about which you do not have to learn its internal structure and dynamics; actually it has no internal structure and dynamics according to their approach, one that is at the same time Western-centered and high-politics centered.

The problem is that their narrow anti-imperialist worldview only sees Obama, Putin, Holland, Erdoğan, Khamenei, Qatari Emir Hamad, Saudi King Abdullah, Hassan Nasrallah, and Bashar al-Assad. Possibly they see also Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. We, rank-and-file Syrians, refugees, women, students, intellectuals, human rights activists, political prisoners … do not exist.

I think this high-politics, Western-centered worldview is better suited for the right and the ultra-right fascists. But honestly I’ve failed to discern who is right and who is left in the West from a leftist Syrian point of view. And I tend to think that these are the poisonous effects of the Soviet experience, fascist in its own way. Many Western leftists are the orphans of the late father, the USSR.

Besides, what prevents them from seeing the victims of Bashar, when they see perfectly well ordinary people in Kobanê? Why wasn’t there the slightest interest in the slaughter of 700 people at the hands of ISIS thugs themselves in Deir Ezzor last August? One is forced to ask: Do victims have different values based on who their murderers are? Why, as the regime is bombing many regions in the country every day, killing dozens of people every day, are the leftists in the West as silent as the rightists? Could the reason be that the public killer Bashar and his elegant wife are symbols of the First World inside Syria, a couple with whom those in the First World identify easily?

...

YHS: To be honest, I have to admit that I do not know what leftists in the West do. I mean they are safer, they have passports, they have more opportunity to learn foreign languages, they can buy the books they want to read or at least they have access to them. So why do so many of them know nothing about Syria, feel nothing, and do almost nothing?

Again, it is not a thing they have to be making their governments do for us; it is something they have to do themselves in their countries for themselves. When they are in good shape in the United States, the UK, Germany, France, and so on, this is very good for us. They are salvaging, by standing with us in our struggle or at least by showing some understanding of our struggle, our chances to resist identity politics and victim politics in our countries. As they are now, they are only helping our local right, whether “modernist” or Islamist, by being very Western-centered and high-politics anti-imperialists.

Saleh posted this on facebook

(his wife and friends are still unaccounted for in the regimes prisons btw):

 

[LDC]

Reports that Iran is to start combat air operations in Central and Northern Syria as well. (Comments about the reliability of this bloke welcome...).



E2A: Friday's Novara was an edition talking about Syria. Not listened to it yet though... What’s Happening In Syria?

 

[Patteran]

Nusra leader Jolani interviewed on tv tonight, discussing the Syrian conflict with particular reference to the Riyadh & Vienna peace talks - to which Nusra weren't invited. Journalist Jenan Mousa sums up the position as -
We want Sharia
We wont break allegiance w/ AlQaeda
There's no FSA
Political deals abroad cant be implemented on ground.

More translation on Hassan Hassan's timeline.

 

[J Ed]

Story about Syriac Christian fighters in the SDF

Christian female fighters take on Islamic State in Syria - The Express Tribune

 

[sihhi]

Obviously Assad leads a brutal national security state, but this ORB survey suggests continuing support for Assad, clear but not overwhelming majority over opposition

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/syriadata.pdf

 

[elbows]

Obviously Assad leads a brutal national security state, but this ORB survey suggests continuing support for Assad, clear but not overwhelming majority over opposition

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/syriadata.pdf

Too hefty a correlation between who controls the area where the respondents live and their opinions of Assad for me to draw conclusions.

eg, table 4, opinion on Bashar al Assad, by region:

Net positive:
Government-controlled 73%
Opposition-controlled 20%
ISIS-controlled 25%
YPG-controlled 26%

Net negative:
Government-controlled 22%
Opposition-controlled 79%
ISIS-controlled 72%
YPG-controlled 73%

 

[sihhi]

Too hefty a correlation between who controls the area where the respondents live and their opinions of Assad for me to draw conclusions.

eg, table 4, opinion on Bashar al Assad, by region:

Net positive:
Government-controlled 73%
Opposition-controlled 20%
ISIS-controlled 25%
YPG-controlled 26%

Net negative:
Government-controlled 22%
Opposition-controlled 79%
ISIS-controlled 72%
YPG-controlled 73%

The poll (small sample 1365 so obviously beware) was done according to the population weight in the regions, so perhaps it's a case of the Syrian Army still controlling the places where a majority of the country still live. I personally was surprised by the numbers still in favour of Assad in opposition areas.

One other point is how unwilling populations in government and opposition control areas seem to be accept any partition or separation of the country:
Both 71% of government and opposition control area populations are opposed to any split in the country, while 48% in YPG territory are in favour.

 

[Teaboy]

I personally was surprised by the numbers still in favour of Assad in opposition areas.

I'm not. He would have had some supporters in all areas and given the destruction that has been wrought on the country its hardly surprising that some people think that whilst he may not have been perfect he is better then the alternative. Pretty natural reaction I would have thought.

 

[sihhi]

given the destruction that has been wrought on the country

But those people who see the opposition as causing the destruction rather than the Syrian army, in opposition areas, is quite high.

 

[sihhi]

Yes he was. He was in the late 2011 beardie release designed to kill the revolution. He was sent into then forming FSA. Of course, the lie will come back now that the opposition demanded his/their release - they didn't. They demanded the release of non-islamists caught up under emergency legislation and tortured - often to death. They weren't released - many of those in prison then are still there today, if alive that is. The beardies were. They were released.

iirc the release of Islamists from prisons was April-May 2011, ie very, very early on and the FSA had not even been formed.
It was a weakness of the opposition efforts that that these monsters wormed their way in rather than being arrested or executed, although if they had been executed the opposition(s) would have been propagandised as bloodthirsty murderers of gentle muslim scholars whom the regime had had pity upon.

Every single thing is frustrating.

 

[Casually Red]

iirc the release of Islamists from prisons was April-May 2011, ie very, very early on and the FSA had not even been formed.
It was a weakness of the opposition efforts that that these monsters wormed their way in rather than being arrested or executed, although if they had been executed the opposition(s) would have been propagandised as bloodthirsty murderers of gentle muslim scholars whom the regime had had pity upon.

Every single thing is frustrating.

They were released under a general amnesty along with Kurds, human rights lawyers, all shades and stripes of people . And it's a complete red herring. Islamists were flooding into Syria from afar afield as Belgium, Burundi and Birmingham in their thousands . From Chechnya to kathmandu .At the behest of the " revolutionaries " who we're openly boasting about it and welcoming them with open arms. That had nothing whatsoever to do with any cunning baathist plot .
Whatever tiny amount came from Syrian prisons is completely negligible compared to the hordes that flooded in from across the globe and the military and financial backing they got from a host of states, including NATO ones . Training camps, TOW missiles, billions in arms and finance, an open door policy in turkey and Jordan staffed by western trainers and arms suppliers . Covert CIA and MI5 programmes. NATO states who encouraged them to believe victory would be in their grasp as soon as the place was bombed for regime change...which almost happened but was thwarted at the 11th hour. That's what created this monster. And once it became much too obvious to hide the apologists turned around afterwards and try to pin the blame elsewhere. On anyone but themselves . It's risible as an excuse, pathetic .

Btw Al baghdadi himself was released from a US jail. I'm sure if someone tries hard enough they can find a way to blame Assad for that too.

 

[Patteran]

Rare mainstream media acknowledgment of the existence of organising forces & potentials beyond Assad/ISIS/NATO/GCC violence.

Syria’s local councils, not Assad, are the answer to Isis | Alexander Starritt

Original/longer version of same piece here -

Out of Syria's chaos: democracy - Apolitical

 

[frogwoman]

MEMRI: Hizbullah Iraq Forces Fighting in Syria: Death to the Sunni Mercenaries of the Jews and Americans

a comrade just sent me this on facebook

butchersapron

 

[butchersapron]

MEMRI: Hizbullah Iraq Forces Fighting in Syria: Death to the Sunni Mercenaries of the Jews and Americans

a comrade just sent me this on facebook

butchersapron

They're the ones who burn people alive over fires.

 

[butchersapron]

Rare mainstream media acknowledgment of the existence of organising forces & potentials beyond Assad/ISIS/NATO/GCC violence.

Syria’s local councils, not Assad, are the answer to Isis | Alexander Starritt

Original/longer version of same piece here -

Out of Syria's chaos: democracy - Apolitical

I think that's the single acknowledgement of this happening i've ever seen in a source like that.

 

[sihhi]

Rare mainstream media acknowledgment of the existence of organising forces & potentials beyond Assad/ISIS/NATO/GCC violence.

Syria’s local councils, not Assad, are the answer to Isis | Alexander Starritt

Original/longer version of same piece here -

Out of Syria's chaos: democracy - Apolitical

There was potential - perhaps there still is. However, the "Local Administration Councils Unit" or wadhat mahalliya idariya is as far as I can tell an organisation that works from Gaziantep in Turkey to train council leaders in management and get goods donated/bought from Turkey to reach opposition-held areas. My guess is that the elections are not much better than those of Assad clan held areas. It is the existing rich or notables of an area doing the leading, and others the dirty work.

Look through its facebook page ‎Local Administration Councils Unit LACU - وحدة المجالس المحليّة‎ and it is all men - not a single woman - in any meeting or standing around. I suspect it's quite a traditional version of democracy parish council democracy that may develop.

The vehicles in some photos are Turkish in origin. I think it was when Turkey funneled some money before ISIS took control of the border and a relationship developed between Turkish secret services and ISIS.

 

[Casually Red]

Rare mainstream media acknowledgment of the existence of organising forces & potentials beyond Assad/ISIS/NATO/GCC violence.

Syria’s local councils, not Assad, are the answer to Isis | Alexander Starritt

Original/longer version of same piece here -

Out of Syria's chaos: democracy - Apolitical

That guardian piece sounds like pure propaganda. Like it was bought and paid for by a PR firm . Anyone not IS appears to be a " moderate " . A term that's become a complete joke by this stage . But emphasised over and over again like a mantra in that article . Despite no specifics as to which military groups actually control these " free areas " . That's completely omitted and the elastic " moderate " term seems to be a catch all instead.

 

[Patteran]

There was potential - perhaps there still is. However, the "Local Administration Councils Unit" or wadhat mahalliya idariya is as far as I can tell an organisation that works from Gaziantep in Turkey to train council leaders in management and get goods donated/bought from Turkey to reach opposition-held areas. My guess is that the elections are not much better than those of Assad clan held areas. It is the existing rich or notables of an area doing the leading, and others the dirty work.

Look through its facebook page ‎Local Administration Councils Unit LACU - وحدة المجالس المحليّة‎ and it is all men - not a single woman - in any meeting or standing around. I suspect it's quite a traditional version of democracy parish council democracy that may develop.

The vehicles in some photos are Turkish in origin. I think it was when Turkey funneled some money before ISIS took control of the border and a relationship developed between Turkish secret services and ISIS.

Am I conflating this with the Local Coordinating Committees incorrectly? I was wondering what/who was behind the disingenuously-titled 'apolitical'.

That guardian piece sounds like pure propaganda. Like it was bought and paid for by a PR firm . Anyone not IS appears to be a " moderate " . A term that's become a complete joke by this stage . But emphasised over and over again like a mantra in that article . Despite no specifics as to which military groups actually control these " free areas " . That's completely omitted and the elastic " moderate " term seems to be a catch all instead.

That might be the wrong mob, but I've no reason to believe that the LCCs covered here don't exist, or are proxies. There's plenty of reported activity of communities self-organising in the vacuum created by four years of war & shifting boundaries within zones of military/paramilitary control.

Edited to add - the Syrian people mentioned in butchersapron post4573 exist, & as mentioned before, are shouting for us to notice them, recognise them, not remove them from history.