And next, Syria?

[CrabbedOne]

In TNI Aleppo Isn't Rwanda

...
The most likely explanation is simply one of visibility. America’s interests in the Middle East are minimal but they’re still there—old alliances with the Gulf States, old enmities with Iran, the present war against jihadist terrorism, refugee flows flummoxing Europe—whereas the United States has little familiarity with Africa. We had no colonies there, unless you count the informal case of Liberia, and even with the recent expansion of ISIS and rise of Boko Haram, Mesopotamia, not Libya or Nigeria, remains the epicenter of the war on terror. Head further south and dense rainforests obscure Africa’s dark heart from both Western attention and moral norms.

None of this should be read as a case for nation building or military intervention in Africa. It’s meant merely to marvel at the most glaring hypocrisy of our foreign policy, a blind spot that blots out an entire continent, which bestows the status of global supervillain on Bashar al-Assad while Salva Kiir remains an unknown. The West has a double standard when it comes to Africa. Perhaps the first step towards remedying it is to acknowledge that Aleppo is not another Rwanda but South Sudan could become one.

Points out there's been more than one Rwanda like genocidal war in Africa since and they've been almost entirely ignored by Western policy makers. Well there was no opportunity to poke the Iranians in the eye there. Syria's slow burning civil war with its burning green buses may be horrible doesn't really resemble what's often a pattern of rapid tribal slaughter in Africa.

The methodically industrial attempt to wipe out mainly Eastern European racial minorities tends to haunt discourse on these things but has very few parallels. It really should not be continually misused to justify self serving interventions that often deepen and lengthen civil wars.

Our own more direct wars since 9-11 have offed a few hundred thousand Muslims while attempting to suppress a relatively slight threat to our civilised normalcy with little evidence of efficacy. As that great burner of civilian crammed cities McNamara said we should be more careful about killing people.

We are also able to ignore our own little war crimey war in Yemen that may turn into a Biafra like catastrophe. Not perhaps a genocide but a pointless cruelty only aiding a incompetent sectarian regime. The British were on the side of the oily makers of famine there as well while we mostly only remember the pious ringing of hands over the resulting piles of corpses.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Syria Comment The Situation in al-Fu’a and Kafariya

...
Overall, it is entirely unsurprising that this kind of polarisation has happened. Regardless of the initial rights and wrongs surrounding the entire rebellion, considering the siege status and being surrounded by rebels led principally by Jaysh al-Fatah, which includes Jabhat Fatah al-Sham that forced the Druze of Idlib to convert to Sunni Islam and would probably have done the same to the Shi’a if al-Fu’a and Kafariya had been taken over, it is clear many if not most in the villages see Hezbollah and Iran as their main protectors intervening from outside. The notion of being the protectors of Shi’a has allowed Iran and Hezbollah to expand their influence strongly among Syrian Shi’a. Rather than Syria becoming the next Islamic Republic, it is apparent the Syrian Shi’a, who constitute only 1-2% of Syria’s population, are most amenable to ideological influence from Iran and Hezbollah. This fits a wider pattern in the region where Iran in particular most successfully builds patron-client relations with fellow Twelver Shi’a in particular. In any case, none of this should be used to minimize the humanitarian impact of the sieges on al-Fu’a and Kafariya. At the same time, one should not forget that the regime sieges of rebel-controlled communities are more numerous and have often been more severe in impact. None of these cases merits being exploited for the purpose of partisan political debate on the Internet.

Strategically it was a really foolish choice for the rebels to go after these little Twelver enclaves. It's the sort of thing that allowed the IRGC to suck young men into its militias in the tens of thousands from a global recruitment base far larger than that the rebels have. And that makes a nonsense of the fairly successful rebel strategy of steady attrition of regime forces.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On War On The Rocks THE COMING OF THE RUSSIAN JIHAD, PART II

...
Such an impact would exacerbate another potentially radicalizing tendency that has affected Western European Muslim communities. Known as the “second generation problem,” the phenomenon has been evident in the demographic characteristics of Western European terrorists, who are overwhelmingly second-generation Muslim immigrants. Children of millions of labor migrants from Central Asia are coming of age or growing up in Russia. For instance, in some St. Petersburg schools, 60 percent of students in early grades are children of Central Asian immigrants. They face many of the same problems, like alienation, low job skills, and unemployment. But they are also likely to experience racial slurs and verbal and, not infrequently, physical abuse at a much higher level in Russia than their counterparts in the West. According to Russian experts, these young men and women tend to “live in ethnic communities [and] practically don’t know the local culture. They don’t have prospects that interest them since they find it hard to get good jobs.” Unlike their parents, the second-generation migrants (who in the largest Central Russian cities are mostly Tajiks and Uzbeks) are no longer used to hard manual labor, yet “cannot find themselves in post-industrial cities.” As a result, a leading Russian expert contends, “the younger generation [of ethnic Muslim migrants] finds refuge in Islam, which helps overcome psychological consequences of ethnic discrimination,” and, at the same time, hides them from the challenges of competition in a global market.

“The Syria virus,” concluded Elena Milashina, “has spread widely throughout Russia. What we have is an epidemic.” Time will tell if this decidedly pessimistic scenario is realized. But if she is right, it will not be just Russia’s problem, it will quickly become ours as well.

Points to the Russian security services slowness in seeing encouraging foreign fighter flows to Syria for domestic advantage might blow back on them. Though I don't think a tough former KGB hood like Putin really sees a little domestic terrorist irritation as more than an base rallying opportunity. Crusading against the dusky infidel hordes is something he's made hay with since the 90s.

The Turks, Jordanians and Saudis all had basically the same Beard export policy. Western countries were rather slow to see the Syrian rebellion as an incubator of future domestic threats as well. Really its only in 2015 folk like ISW started to recognise AQ Syria might develop into a more difficult problem than IS.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Odd reading by there. 48% is a pretty low level of support despite a torrent of BS in jingoistic state media. According to this 28% of Russians think Putin's neo-imperialist adventure in Syria is a bad idea.

You could compare that to the marginally positive UK polling before Tony Blair's Iraqi crusade. A strong political signal not to touch such a venture with a barge pole. In contrast US public support for both the Vietnam war and its intervention in Iraq were robustly in the 70s for several years.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Jund al Aqsa, a really militant splinter faction of AQ Syria.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Long series of Tweets today by this journo chronicling the poor choices of Syrian rebels.

That one pretty much nails it. Bringing the revolt into an area of general regime support like Aleppo was always questionable.

 

[teqniq]

This seven-year-old girl has been risking her life to tell the world about Aleppo. We just found out she's safe

The seven-year-old girl who has been tweeting about the dire situation in Aleppo has been evacuated form the city and is safe, a charity official has said.

Bana Alabed is among the around 3,000 people to have reached relative safety on Monday after a weekend in which the evacuation of thousands of civilians from the last rebel enclaves of the embattled Syrian city was delayed.

Ahmad Tarakji, the president of the Syrian American Medical Society, tweeted that Bana was safe and well in the Aleppo countryside, along with a picture of her smiling in an aid worker's arms.

 

[CrabbedOne]

I can't help thinking AQ Syria's leader made rather a lot of sense here. Euphrates Shield is primarily an anti-PKK Op with secondary goals against the erring fellow Salafis IS. While a good Salafi-Jihadi would always favour battering the Kufr Apo idolators even if they were not in league with the Far Enemy and Assad this is an action in pursuit of Turkish interests carried out while East Aleppo fell. Joining the TSK in it is essentially a flagrant betrayal of the anti-Assad goals of the revolt in the same way as Southern rebels being converted into an anti-Takfiri force by the Jordanian MOC. Splitters!

 

[CrabbedOne]

In The National Al Qaeda and ISIL are still potent forces in Syria

...
Surveying the military map of the Syrian conflict, JFS is currently crammed into Idlib. Nowhere else is the group a dominant force. The organisation appears to be a shadow of its former self. As a force, ISIL appears larger than JFS even if it is defeated in its capitals in Iraq and Syria. Headlines such as the National Interest’s "Forget ISIS: Al Qaeda is Back" in April seem to apply in reverse to the situation in Syria today. But saying the opposite now would also be a mistake.

ISIL’s recapture of Palmyra in four days of fighting last week is an ominous reminder that military defeats do not equal demise. The same applies to Al Qaeda even if it now looks like it is on the back foot in northwestern Syria.

The erosion of ISIL’s legitimacy could have happened had the anti-ISIL campaign addressed the factors that make its project relevant. That has not happened. Just consider the current fight in Mosul, which entered its third month on Saturday. The defeat of ISIL in Mosul was envisioned as a final blow to the group’s claims to legitimacy. Anyone who believes that will be the case, given the extraordinary damage it has inflicted on Iraq’s most elite forces, even though it is outnumbered in the largest ground and air campaign in recent history, is out of touch with reality.
...

This rather misses AQ's more subversive model being in the ascendent but it's undeniable IS is still a much larger conventional military force in command of a lot of population in a way AQ isn't in Syria. But IS being a quasi-state is much easier to target. It's AQ's soft power in Syria with a web of alliances to a scattered but still fairly popular people's revolt that makes it dangerous. Neither's short-term trans-national terrorist capability is going to be much reduced by military conquests.

 

[Casually Red]

This seven-year-old girl has been risking her life to tell the world about Aleppo. We just found out she's safe

No she hasn't been . Wise up .

 

[teqniq]

Possibly the most ill-informed troll on the net

 

[Casually Red]

She doesn't tweet you fuckwit . It's a spoof . They don't even use the Latin fucking alphabet in Syria . It's an Al Jazeera hoax using a 7 year old child as a propaganda sock puppet .

All she wanted for Christmas was world war 3 .

 

[teqniq]

Yes dear, now have a lie down in a darkened room with a nice cup of tea and I'm sure everything will seem better in a while.

 

[rekil]

Trump that Bana bitch! Lock her up! Lock her up! And her mam.

 

[Casually Red]

Yeah . An inability to suspend my disbelief at this kids ability to speak perfect English,..to even work twitter properly first time out.. survive direct bom strikes, resurrect herself from the dead Terminator style ..all that shit. And the happy coincidence her very first follower and retweeter was an AJ journalist..yeah. gorn maaaad .
Santa Claus is more believable . And anyone promoting this pack of lies deserves to get no toys at all this Christmas .

 

[Geri]

This seven-year-old girl has been risking her life to tell the world about Aleppo. We just found out she's safe

I was really pleased to hear this earlier, and this evening I had news that the friend I had been worrying about was also safe. And if anyone remembers the Channel 4 news video of Abu Wad, the "last flower seller of Aleppo" then they might be pleased to know that his son Ibrahim (and siblings) have also made it to safety.

 

[CrabbedOne]

From Syria Deeply The Future of Syria’s Armed Opposition After Aleppo

...
Syria Deeply: A common cry coming out of Eastern Aleppo over the past week was that the opposition was left completely alone in the face of this offensive. Was there a defining moment when foreign backers halted support to opposition forces in Aleppo city?

Lister: Yes. I think the real defining moment was when President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan decided he needed to heal the relationships with Moscow, under his less-enemies-more-friends policy, a few months after the [Turkish] downing of the [Russian] jet in northern Syria.

That was the defining moment – any support that got to Aleppo was, in a sense, strategically dependent on Turkey willing it to get there. It wasn’t so much dependent on specific border crossings but the vast majority of the opposition and armed groups are under Turkey’s iron grip. If Turkey sends support into Idlib it will give specific instructions that some of it should be going into Aleppo city. I think there came a time when it was effectively banning that from taking place.

Turkey also withdrew a bunch of vetted opposition groups out of Aleppo city and deployed them into the Euphrates Shield operation against the YPG and against ISIS. That also signaled to the opposition that Aleppo was becoming less of a focus for Turkey and that Turkey was actually finding itself involved in a much bigger geopolitical calculation with regards to its concerns about the Kurds and its desire to have a better relationship with the Russians.

From what I can see, and it is certainly agreed upon among armed opposition groups, Turkey essentially made a deal with the Russians. They were willing to see Aleppo city eventually fall out of opposition control in exchange for being allowed to establish this kind of zone of control in northern Aleppo.

Turkey’s still sending quite a lot of support to vetted opposition groups, Ahrar al-Sham and maybe Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS) as well in Idlib and Northern Hama. It’s not like Turkey has given up on the opposition by any means but it’s hedging its bets in many areas of northern Syria because of this broader geopolitical calculation it’s having to make.

This upcoming December 27 meeting among Russia, Turkey and Iran purposely excludes the U.S. Russia has discovered that the U.S. has much less leverage on the ground than we all would have thought was the case. Certainly the U.S. is also less willing to impose its own leverage on the ground and as a result the U.S is being excluded from the negotiations. Who’s taking over? That’s the Turks.

Turkey is still determined to see Assad go, but its own assessment of the Kurds is at the top of the list as an existential national security threat and that will continue to define what kind of broader decisions it’s willing to make on Syria. So far, that hasn’t affected all of northern Syria, but it is possible that Idlib becomes the next point of discussion between Moscow and Ankara and the opposition will be very afraid of that and we should all be watching in the next few weeks.
...

Lister on Turkish priorities.

One way to look at this is a grand Turkish betrayal. Rebel East Aleppo as a pawn sacrificed for a band of Turkish security influence. A buffer zone with wrecked Syria potentially extending all the way down from Idlib to the Nineveh Governorate in Iraq. Or it's a sensible cutting of losses similar to Jordan's strategic choices in the South when faced with the new reality of Russian escalation. You also could see the PKK crossing the Euphrates in order to unify Rojava's cantons earlier this year as effectively dooming East Aleppo.

 

[CrabbedOne]

From The Atlantic Council Assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey Could Create Fallout for Washington

...
AS: The Turkish reaction domestically is already going to the theory that this man is an operative of the Fethullah Gulen movement. They’re pointing to where he went for tutoring sessions for a high school entrance exam as proof that he has Gulenist links. They’re going to run with this no matter what, whether he was a Gulenist or not, and this will actually cause friction for US-Turkish relations. Turkey’s attempts to extradite Gulen from the US had faded a little into the background since the July 15 coup, but they will come back.

The Turks like to perpetuate the story that the Turkish pilot that shot down a Russian jet in November 2015 was not acting on orders from the air force, and therefore was not acting on orders from Erdogan. Instead, they say he was acting on orders from Pennsylvania, and so, therefore was under the control of Gulen. This contradicts entirely the official narrative put forward in the Turkish press after the shooting down; nevertheless, it’s something that has been latched on to. So immediately, within hours of the assassination, the narrative is that the assassin is not one of us, he’s a Gulen member, and just like with the November shootdown of the Russian plane, this is a Gulenist plot to try and upset Turkish-Russian relations. This will cause problems for the Turkish-US relationship as well. It depends on how Russia reacts but the actual negative fallout could blow to Washington rather than to Moscow.

The Turks well into the land of convenient fictions but that may suit the Russians.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On ANFNews YPG reports intensified attacks by Turkish military

Attacks on villages around Kobane.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On MEE Why I deserted the Syrian army

...
Fighting two enemies

On 1 February 2013, the rebel group Jaysh al-Islam besieged my regiment. It became clear that it would not last for a day or two, but would go on for a very long time.

Soon we realised that the regime army officers were transferring most of the available food from warehouses to their personal rooms, leaving the crumbs for us while the Jaysh fighters prevented any food from coming through.

I started to feel that we were fighting two enemies at the same time, one outside the walls and another inside, between us.
...

And this guy was quite eager to join up.

 

[CrabbedOne]

In Al Monitor Is Turkey recruiting militants evacuated from Aleppo?

...
To sit at the negotiation table with Damascus over the liberated areas of Idlib and Azaz/al-Bab is another aspect of the issue. A de facto buffer zone will be a trump card in Turkey’s hand to prevent total marginalization of armed groups and to use them as a bargaining chip in a political process. Russia also wants to activate a political negotiation mechanism while expanding its military operations. Russian President Vladimir Putin, parallel to the political solution process in Geneva, also plans joint negotiations with Turkey in Kazakhstan for the opposition groups. Suggesting these negotiations could be held in the Kazakh capital of Astana, Putin said: “The next step [after Aleppo] will be to reach agreement on a complete cease-fire across all of Syria. We are actively negotiating with members of the armed opposition, with the mediation of Turkey."

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced he is ready to host such a process. Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin indicated Turkey's positive reaction to Putin’s proposal.

This shift of the peace initiative from the West to Asia is a totally new development. But realistically, a positive outcome of this initiative depends on the attitudes of the other financial backers of the stronger armed groups. Countermoves by the US, together with regional partners Saudi Arabia and Qatar, could spoil the new Russian-Turkish designs.

Looks rather like the US and UN being marginalised in Syria.

 

[mikey mikey]

Hmm. And shortly after a Turkish policeman shoots a Russian ambassador.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Hmm. And shortly after a Turkish policeman shoots a Russian ambassador.

"Standing up for Putin".

About a third of GOP voters are fans of the jumped up little KGB Colonel as well. How the world has changed.

 

[mikey mikey]

Meanwhile the "moderates" ....

 

[CrabbedOne]

In JPo For the first time since Yom Kippur War, Syria to call up army reserves

 

[Pickman's model]

In JPo For the first time since Yom Kippur War, Syria to call up army reserves

I wonder how many will heed the summons

 

[butchersapron]

Meanwhile the "moderates" ....

Wrong - this is nothing to do with the aleppo solidarity related demo which was held the day before and organised by people utterly opposed to the nutters in this video and who have been fighting the people they support across syria from before you even bothered to take notice of the situation. You would not have seen nothing like the crap in that video. So wrong day, wrong people, wrong demo.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Spectacular enthusiasm for US leadership in the Arab world there. Also an interesting divide over the Pals being the big issue; folk these days have other fish frying.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Lobelog Middle East Perceptions of the Roles Played by Global and Regional Powers

...
Much has changed in the past decade. Iran’s meddlesome regional role has angered many Arabs causing a steep and steady decline in its ratings. The “nail in the coffin” of Iran’s regional standing has been its support for the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad. Just how precipitous this decline has been can be seen by looking at the changes that have occurred in Egypt and Saudi Arabia–dropping from almost nine in ten who had a favorable rating of Iran in 2006 to less than one in ten in 2016. Even Lebanon, which continued to rate Iran favorably throughout the last decade, has now joined the rest of the Arab World is giving that country a net negative rating. It is also worth noting that in no Arab country does a majority see Iran as playing a positive role in the region or view it as important to have good relations with the government in Tehran.

The Arabs’ assessment of Turkey has also taken a hit largely owing to that country’s bungling efforts to claim a regional leadership role and its troubling drift toward authoritarianism. Once held in high esteem in every Arab country, now only Jordan and Lebanon give Turkey a net favorable rating and only Jordan and Saudi Arabia see Turkey playing a constructive regional role.

While attitudes toward Turkey and Iran are in decline across the region, Saudi Arabia continues to receive the highest favorable ratings in all Arab countries and Turkey. Majorities in all the Arab countries also see the Kingdom contributing to peace and stability and view having good relations with Saudi Arabia as important—with a majority of Iranians also favoring good relations with the Kingdom.

Both of the major global powers covered in this survey, the United States and Russia, fare quite poorly. They each receive a net positive rating in only one country—the U.S. in Lebanon and Russia in Iran. Neither the US or Russia are seen as promoting peace and stability, and both receive mixed reviews in response to the question about the importance of having good relations with them—the U.S. scores high in just Lebanon, Jordan, and the UAE, while only Egypt, Lebanon, and Iran want good ties with Russia. Iraq is the one country where the U.S. scores lowest in all areas. Only 6% of Iraqis view the U.S. favorably and see it contributing to peace and stability in the Middle East, and only 16% of Iraqis say that it is important for their country to even have good relations with the U.S.
...

Zogby on that survey. Iran being in the toilet thanks to their support for the ugly Assad regime; not a surprise. KSA battering Yemen under Prince Mo in contrast feeling the Arab Street's love. Both of the imperial interlopers, US and Russia, a big meh.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Full survey. This caught my eye:

So a pretty dramatic drop off in Iranian popular support for propping up Assad. Yemen actually a much more popular cause.