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And next, Syria?


Well Takfiri being hopeless revolutionaries is not news but that's a great excuse. Can't join up with lovable old AQ as the dastardly Septics might bomb us. You'd think after any Syrian with a beard taking a pasting from Russian Air this argument didn't really fly anymore.
 
On NPR Now A Refuge, Syrian Town Of Idlib Faces Increasing Dangers
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MEUSE: In a recent interview with a Russian broadcaster, Assad says Syria and its allies Russia and Iran will decide when to deal with Idlib. Syria analyst Aron Lund says Idlib is still a huge territory able to put up a fight against the regime, but it's not likely to get significant military support from the U.S. or Turkey. And that's because al-Qaida-linked factions dominate the province.

ARON LUND: It's turning too toxic I think. And you know, I've talked to both people on the opposition side and people on the government side. From both of those camps, I've heard the same expression used - that Idlib is turning into Kandahar.

MEUSE: Activist Refaie says those extremist groups are also repressive toward local populations and the displaced. He went to Idlib to escape the regime but says the rebels aren't behaving much different.

REFAIE: (Through interpreter) Any activist who challenges the policies of a given armed faction gets assaulted. Even civilians who demonstrate against an armed faction get assaulted at times or kidnapped. The security branches operated by opposition factions are sometimes just as bad as the regime's security branches.

MEUSE: But Refaie says the armed groups have allowed some demonstrations lately perhaps to show people are allowed to speak out there.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in Arabic).

MEUSE: In activist video, demonstrators can be heard chanting against the divided rebel factions. Refaie says the demonstrators' goal is to show there are still people in Idlib who want dignity and freedom and need support. Alison Meuse, NPR News, Beirut.
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My bold, Levantine Terry country.
 

The overall figures look a little low but these things are by their nature inexact.

Note the Russians account for less than a quarter of the civilians killed despite being a major player in the air war. About seven times the rate of the Coalition but then Coalition targets in Syria are have mostly in far less densely populated areas in a less intense conflict whereas the Russians are certainly bombing active fronts in the cities as well as hitting civilian infrastructure.

It's more often claimed the regime has killed a larger proportion of the dead civilians this is actually a lower rate compared to some accounts. State forces killing most civilians is not unusual in civil conflicts. Israeli forces regular account for 90%+ of civilian dead.

Incidentally this is about the same number of civilians killed in Iraq this year according to Iraqi Body Count; ~16K down from last year. Syria in general has had a rather low rate of civilians killed to combatants ~30%.
 


In Arabic. The post-Russian intervention Jordanian position.

Not much reported as the hype focused on East Aleppo but probably the biggest development in Syria in 2016 and mostly down to Russian diplomacy. This effectively secured Damascus for Assad.
 

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Overall, hundreds of hectares were confiscated in the area on the basis of two laws from 1958 and 1983, which allow the state to seize private property for projects “of public benefit,” such as a school, a university or a military installation. The expropriations took place gradually, with different ministries and state institutions claiming lands through several mechanisms. The army and Ministry of Defense seized most of the lands for different purposes, including a military driving school. North of Wadi Barada and east of the Zabadani plain a large perimeter was declared off-limits in 1989 when a law was issued to protect the recharge area of the Fija spring andsafeguard the water supply for the capital 15 miles downstream. Other expropriated lands to the south of Wadi Barada were planted with pine and cypress forests.

More controversially, large tracts were also sold -- illegally -- to real estate developers and private individuals, who built luxury villas and housing developments. The “new towns” or suburbs of Qura al-Asad and Masakin al-Dimas, situated around four miles south of Wadi Barada, are examples of such residential areas built in the late 1970s on the expropriated lands of farmers from Wadi Barada. The luxury residences in Qura al-Asad house a largely ‘Alawi elite -- members of the extended Asad family, high-ranking officials, army and secret service officers, ministers, rich parliamentarians and other wealthy individuals with close ties to the regime. The adjacent, more modest suburb of Masakin al-Dimas is home to lower-ranking ‘Alawi, Isma‘ili and Druze officers in the army and intelligence branches, as well as regular soldiers. The traditional farming communities in the area from Baludan and Zabadani to Wadi Barada and beyond, by contrast, are inhabited by Sunni Muslims.

According to Syrian law, landowners whose land is expropriated must be compensated within five years with a sum equivalent to the market value of the property at the time of expropriation. If, however, this payment is not disbursed within 15 years, the owner loses the right to any compensation. Most landowners in Wadi Barada were not compensated for their loss -- at least not adequately. “The government compensated people on paper, but not in reality,” said lawyer Zayn al-‘Abidin al-Dalati, a lawyer and former police officer who is originally from Kufayr al-Zayt.

Those who could afford it hired lawyers and went to court, but cases often dragged on for 25 years, by which time the compensation paid out was insignificant given the increase in land prices over a quarter of a century. “No justification was given for the expropriations and people were too scared to stand up for their rights,” said lawyer Dalati. “The country was under martial law since 1963. We were governed by the rule of the sword.”
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Typical Baath behaviour; almost like its calculated to spark revolt. Locals with land stolen left with undrinkable water and no decent roads subsisting by smuggling. Humiliated some protest in the Arab Spring and eventually rise but the rebellion descends into Hobbesian chaos. Despite that here's a pretty typical Syrian opinion:
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“I didn’t have any choice,” ‘Abdallah, a teacher in Kufayr al-Zayt who voted for Asad, said. “I had to vote for him for two reasons: First, I do not want to lose my job. Second, there are many criminal gangs in the area and they can only be defeated by a stable and strong army.” The regime has issued several amnesty decrees since 2011, releasing convicted criminals. “Asad himself said in a speech in June 2011 that one of the main components of the conspiracy against him are 64,000 outlaws and individuals who are wanted for various criminal offenses,” ‘Abdallah said. “Most of the robbery and criminal activity we have witnessed over the last three years is being perpetrated by former prisoners who Asad released after March 2011. He has put us in front a simple choice: ‘Me or terrorism.’ Overall, it has been a successful strategy.”
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Not so much "Assad or we burn the country!" but "That bugger Assad again or the country burns."

And even if Damascus had a model ruler instead of a corrupt despot they'd be facing big problems with water.
 
On Nervana Syria: The New Arab Nakba
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The Arabic media

For the past six years, Arabic news channels, particularly Al-Jazeera Al-Arabiya, and al-Mayadeen have topped the Syrian misery with a hefty dose of nostalgia, spin, and a whitewashing of mistakes. Facts have been intertwined with fiction, sliding objectivity to a record low. Knowing the facts on the ground has become an impossible task. Moreover, social media, once dubbed the voices of the Arab Spring have become tools to compound the war of misinformation and spin. Even the most intellectual Arabs have joined the tribal and misinformation war.

In the end, the Syrian revolution failed because Syria’s Arab patrons were never democrats or patrons of democracy. They only brought to Syria what they had mastered for decades____ disingenuous support and cynical manipulation.

2017 may bring many familiar themes to Syria, such as a “long-term lull,” “aid to refugees,” and even the “right of return.” Yes, for anyone who followed the Palestinian conflict, those slogans are eerily familiar. The Arabs’ handling of their regional crises has been unsurprisingly similar. Arabs excel at compounding their own misery and turning their conflicts into Gordian knots, impossible to disentangle. As a result, their journey into the modern era can be summed up as a trail of “Nakbas” or disasters that have presaged an era of insoluble and chronic political chaos and human destruction. Syria is a living example.
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The Nakba comparison is apt. What's happened in the 21st century is in some ways a far worse disaster for Sunni Arab powers than 48. A small but powerful Jewish state clinging to al Quds at the edge of the Levant while oppressing the not much loved Pals doesn't compare with most of Greater Syria falling to Persian influence. Baghdad to Beirut under their neo-Safavid thumbs. It may be a somewhat hysterical view but its only compounded by their American Mamluks backing away from the ME mess under Obama soon with a much more unpredictable President who may be happy to sell them out entirely.

Identifies a big mistake of the Syrian revolt's Arab backers: an inability to anticipate that the leadership of Revolutionary Iran wasn't about to let Assad fall and HA be isolated. Having been born in a far larger bloody war of attrition was quite prepared to bleed a little in Syria indefinitely. That the IRGC would even resort to welcoming in imperialist Russian air power surprised me a little. There's a more fundamental problem a revolt whose main backers shaped into a vehicle mainly for religiously conservative Sunni Arabs was essentially a rising by a provincial minority in its way as delusional as Iraqi Sunni Arabs assuming their small numbers would inevitably overcome.
 

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In an interview Bashar al-Assad gave to a Russian daily shortly before I met Joudeh, Assad had assured the Russian journalist that Syria had a legitimate political opposition—but couldn’t recall any specific politicians or parties. “Their names aren’t coming to me now, but we have some figures,” Assad said. “You can look for their names. We have political trends and movements.”

“If they were thinking seriously, they would bring someone from the opposition and give him some space,” Joudeh said. “They could at least make a game of it. A good play, a film. People could cry, they could laugh.”

In December, the regime reportedly vetoed Russian attempts to invite exiled politicians to an opposition conference in Damascus, although the conference went forward without them. In an interview, Joudeh said he and his Movement attended but withdrew after the program was abruptly amended and the Iranian ambassador was added to the list of speakers.
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Sums it up rather nicely. He'll probably end up Twittering from exile after a spell in the Gulag if he sticks his head up.

In Putin's Russia they know the theatrical value of tame "opposition" parties to the extent of funding them. Not that they can ever really change anything. Democracy understood as a ritual circus for the plebs like the old hammy business of Czarist Russia. No such fun and games under the Assad clan not even much bread.
 

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SYRIA IS NOT OVER YET

Fourth, Putin’s successes in Syria may well appear less resounding over time. Russia’s exit strategy seems to require some degree of political settlement. But a quick end to the conflict seems unlikely, even if the ceasefire proves more durable than its predecessors. Meanwhile, the recent Islamic State forays into Palmyra highlight the Syrian army’s chronic manpower shortages. Even if Assad can eventually win something approaching a military victory, it will be a pyrrhic one—without a diplomatic settlement bearing the United Nations’ imprimatur it is hard to imagine NATO or its members, the GCC, or international financial institutions contributing to the nearly unfathomable reconstruction costs which would follow. Nor would Russia’s beleaguered citizens be particularly keen to spend tens of billions of rubles reconstructing Syria.
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To Russia one rotting out Baathist state crawling with devious Iranians. While the US has basing all over the ME, the 5th Fleet floating in the Gulf and a fist full of opulently wealthy (but oh so needy) client states that still look to DC to guarantee their security. The faded Kremlin is doing well by its 21st century standards but it's a bit like Uncle Sam discontented in his crumbling but still gracious ME mansion distressed at having found a stubbornly assertive tramp has set up house in the garden privy.
 
US-led airstrike against former Al-Qaeda affiliate SYRIA NEWS | ZAMAN ALWSL

The United States carried out an airstrike in Syria that reportedly killed at least 25 members of former Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, including senior figures, a U.S. military official said Wednesday.
"This was a U.S. strike," said Colonel John Dorrian, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. He gave no toll.
The attack was carried out Tuesday on one of the group's most important bases in Syria, in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.
Among the dead were leading members of the formerly known as the Nusra Front holding a meeting, the observatory said without identifying them.
The front had accused the U.S.-led coalition of being behind the attack and said it killed more than 20 people. Dorrian said it was carried out only by U.S. warplanes....
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On TSG Aleppo Victory Bolsters Iran’s Regional Strategy
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Iran might have more ambitious goals than establishing a secure land route to Lebanon. Sunni regional leaders, including those of Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf states, and Jordan, have long warned that Iran is seeking to assemble a strategic ‘Shi’a belt’—composed of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon—to serve as a strong counterweight to the Sunni-led states. These leaders blame Iran for the region’s growing sectarian rift. Regardless of whether Iran’s intent is as sweeping as Sunni Arab leaders assert, it is clear that the Syria victories have further shifted regional power in Iran’s direction. That shift began 14 years ago with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, which brought Iraq under the leadership of pro-Iranian Shi’a leaders. Since then, Lebanon’s government has become extensively influenced by Hizballah; a Sunni Iran-supported movement, Hamas, has taken control of the Gaza Strip; the pro-Iranian Zaydi Shi’a Houthi rebels in Yemen have taken control of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, and remain there despite military efforts led by Saudi Arabia; and Shi’a led unrest continues to challenge Saudi Arabia’s closest Gulf ally, Bahrain.
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Reading this article you might think the Iranian GLOC to Lebanon wasn't part of the regional status quo until 2013. The Syrian revolt was seen by some as an opportunity to break it and roll back Iran's reach. Notably not so much the Israelis but some GCC powers and some in DC. Tel Aviv appears to have been wise here as backing the Syrian revolt has had pretty much the reverse effect actually making a weakened Assad far more dependent on what increasingly looks like a Persian army of occupation.

It's often not that the Iranians do anything particularly clever. They play a long game from the grassroots and are good at taking advantages of jittery enemies with short attention spans. The dreamy neocon project in Baghdad was gradually subverted by well placed Iranian assets. IS at the head of the second rising in Iraq really facilitated a sudden surge of IRGC influence. After decades of expensive bumbling the KSA appears to have largely given up on trying to compete with Iran via it's soft power in Lebanon. The KSA transitioning to a new set of rulers let itself be distracted by a rather jingoistically sectarian war Yemen just when it might have been a decisive force in Syria. Ironically Iran's influence in Yemen which was relatively slight has probably been enhanced as a result. And now the neo-imperialist Russians have to cope with the Iranians shaping the end game in Syria to suit very different strategic objectives from the Kremlin's.
 

Syria-Energy-580x524.jpg

The impoverished regime's attempt to take back Palmyra from IS always made most sense in energy terms. Assad needs Syria's hydrocarbons or he will be a broken beggar permanently shaking his bowl at the Iranians.

Balanche reckons the regime's allies will help him grab back Eastern resources as they want the US gone but this may take years rather than months. The Turkish priority is mainly to strangle Rojava which may help Assad.

He points out whoever controls the oily East will have lots of leverage over Damascus. The regime's allies seeing IS as an excuse for the US to intrude on Syria. The tribes of the middle Euphrates seem rather pivotal and are often hostile to the PKK. It occurs to me while Trump may only focus on scary IS and his bromance with the very white Russians Erdogan might be interested not just in pursuing the cult of Apo but in making Damascus squirm without much risk of a collision with Russia. Much of the NE is Kurdish turf but Turkey already have their KDP proxies readying for a war a with the PKK in Western Iraq.

Iran would be far less adverse to Turkish than Great Satan influence in NE Syria but might not make that easy. They've both cooperated against the PKK with the Turks in the past and played them against Ankara. There's been rather a lot of Iraqi Hashd commanders posturing about intervening in Eastern Syria after Mosul is dealt with which might make more sense in this respect. Look at where these fields are.

War for oil innit.
 

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“The fighting in the Wadi Barada area is jeopardising the whole ceasefire. The regime and its Iranian supporters seem willing to take this risk to tip the balance of power around Damascus in their favour. The question is how Russia and Turkey, the real guarantors for this deal, will react. … Moscow has adopted the Assad regime's premise that all opponents are terrorists. Now Russia is under obligation to act as guarantor for the truce deal with seven moderate rebel groups designated by the Russian defence ministry itself. And Russia knows that in the end the divides in Syria can't be resolved militarily but only politically, and that this will require dialogue partners. But it can't discredit those partners as 'terrorists' at the same time.”
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The difference with this deal is the Turks unlike the US do actually have considerable sway over a lot of the rebels. I don't know how long it's going to take folk to figure out Russia simply hasn't gained much leverage over Assad and the Iranians. Every Russian peace deal has the latter two disobediently trotting off in very different directions. Air power diplomacy is a very limited tool and the Russians are not about to commit to Syria in the way the Iranians have.
 
On Aymenn Jawad Al-TamimiIt's time for realism in Syria, President-elect Donald Trump
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But prospects for a negotiated political settlement in Syria have long since evaporated. Simply put, the regime will not compromise on Assad's continuation as head of state, while all major political and military opposition groups representing the country's Sunni majority refuse to contemplate a settlement that doesn't end the political dominance of his minority Alawite Sect.

Recent regime successes have sharpened this divide, as the rebellion looks set to become a chronic peripheral rural insurgency – unable to threaten regime control of the most important urban centers but capable of defying Assad's bid to fully reconquer Syria for years to come.

Rather than obsessing over driving the last nails in the coffin of ISIS or modulating its involvement in Syria to advance some chimerical peace plan, the Trump administration must focus its attention on more realistic aims. While it is perhaps too late to challenge Russia's presence in a country Vladimir Putin sees as the cornerstone of his expanding zone of influence in the region, neither should Washington accept it.

Though there have been hints from the incoming administration of ending support for rebel groups. It would make better sense to continue the support and perhaps increase it, not in the belief that one can bring about a political settlement, but rather to bog down the regime and its allies and minimize the future threat they may pose to U.S. interests in the region.
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Well he knows much more about it than I do I'm not sure there's much to be gained by trying to poke the Russians and Iranians in the eye in Syria. It's got an awful lot of Syrians killed to no good effect. The focus relatively slight terrorist threats does precent the danger of ignoring the geopolitically genuinely dangerous.

However it's really a matter of backing Erdogan or not and everything follows from that.
 

Lies, damn lies and CENTCOM statistics.

It is plausible that about twice as many IS fighters have been killed in Iraq. That's their main theatre of operations by their own accounts not Syria.
 

IS terrorism targeting priorities centre on Iraq with large numbers of mass casualty attacks and massacres of civilians.

Damascus really does not threaten IS much in Syria at the moment and hasn't suffered the way Baghdad has yet.

Ankara also once left IS pretty much alone as it was a tactical asset containing the PKK but has become more of a threat. Turkey is vulnerable as a state thanks to its old PKK insurgency with IS often hitting Kurdish targets intending to provoke them. Tension between the secular and religious conservatives also provide ripe targets. IS attacks are a growing irritation but it doesn't compare with Iraq. It's still the PKK that gives the Turkish state most trouble.

What's interesting is Rojova which has given IS most trouble in Syria has suffered relatively little mass casualty IS terrorist attacks compared with Turkey. I recall one serious attack on Kobane and a few others. This isn't for lack of capacity IS has large Kurdish contingents. Rebel Idlib which expelled IS and is a ideological rival has also been largely untroubled.
 
Great interview with Robin Yassin-Kassab.


My co-author Leila al-Shami and I felt that the story of the Syrian revolution and counter-revolutions was being told very badly in the West. Commentators of both left and right were ignoring Syrian voices from the ground in favour of inaccurate and often orientalist grand narratives. They saw the struggle as one between a secular regime and jihadists – although the regime was the main generator of sectarianism in Syria, and the jihadists were of marginal importance until th...e latter half of 2013. (When they did become important, it was largely as a result of sectarian policies pursued by Assad and his Iranian backers.) Or they saw it only as a proxy war. Certainly by now there are several proxy wars being fought in Syria, but the uprising was Syrian, and came in response to Syrian conditions.Big name journalists who spoke no Arabic and went nowhere in Syria without a regime minder were telling a story we couldn’t recognise. We wanted to amplify the voices of the revolutionaries – community activists, intellectuals, fighters, refugees – who were at the heart of events, who were doing remarkable things in the most difficult of circumstances, and who were being ignored. Our book is built around interviews with such people. It also aims to give social, historical, political and cultural context to the story – something which journalistic accounts almost inevitably fail to do
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Our Fates Are Linked
 

The Donald would approve of that interior.

Notional head of the Baggara tribe, a very rentable Arab, turns coat to the regime. Maybe prefiguring an IRGC move on Deir.
 

This is a very odd statement but the Apo worshiping PKK often gets confused with "Kurds". IS would also regard the parties of the KRG as mostly far off Salafi SOP. IS in fact made rather a lot of efforts to reach out to Kurds as mostly fellow Sunni if erring laxly like other Syrians. They are one of the few minority groups that didn't flee from them and are overrepresented in IS recruitment.
 
On The Cipher Brief Syria: A Tactical—Not Strategic—Ceasefire
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The Russian-Turkish agreement has also provoked cleavages within the rebel groups. The powerful Ahrar al-Sham is about to explode: its radical branch wants to merge with Fatah al-Sham, while another faction remains loyal to the group’s Turkish backers. These internal divisions weaken numerous factions and have exacerbated tensions between Fatah al-Sham and the rest of the rebellion. In the province of Idlib, Fatah al-Sham's hegemony has lukewarm support from several rebel groups that might defect if provided with Russian-Turkish protection. The fragmentation of Jaysh al-Fatah (the Conquest Army), the coalition leaded by Fatah al-Sham, is a prerequisite for the offensive that the Syrian army and its allies are preparing to launch against Idlib.

The next offensive is being prepared

The ceasefire has an obvious tactical dimension, just like those that preceded it. After a powerful offensive, Russia has unilaterally declared a truce, allowing the armed ground forces to secure the conquered areas against a rebel counter-offensive. Now, the lull on the western front could be leveraged to retake territory from the Islamic State in eastern Syria, as was the case last March, when following a ceasefire, it retook the city of Palmyra. Before the Palmyra attack, Vladimir Putin promised the withdrawal of "some Russian troops,’’ but ‘’only if the cease-fire is successful." In truth, this probably means that he is proceeding with a simple rotation of troops and equipment, in order to prepare the next major offensive.
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The usual Russian BS in other words.
 
On LWJ Qassem Soleimani credits supreme leader with recent victories
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Soleimani delivered an address today at a martyrs commemoration ceremony, according to Iranian media, during which he discussed “the advances of Islam’s corps and back-to-back defeats of Global Arrogance [West]” in the Middle East.

Soleimani credited the leadership of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who is “assisted with divine approval,” as “the primary factor of power” for important victories. The lack of such leadership is the “enemy’s primary weakness,” according to Soleimani.

“We all wish that our lives are lessened moment by moment and added to the life of the dear leader of the revolution,” he declared.
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Nothing at all to do with Haj Qassem having toddled off to Moscow and invited in the imperialist Russians and their Airpower of course.
 
On Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi's blog Syrian Rebel Mergers: A Harakat Nour Al-Din Al-Zinki Perspective
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An overview of the merger debates here brings us to Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki. Led by one Sheikh Tawfiq Shahab al-Din, who traced the formation of the group to November 2011 in an interview with al-Jazeera, Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki (previously known as Kata'ib Nour al-Din al-Zinki) has gone through a number of alliances over the years, including the establishment of the Jaysh al-Mujahideen ("Army of the Mujahideen") coalition at the turn of 2014 that clearly had an intention in its formation to fight what was then known as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham. Once a vetted faction for the CIA-backed operations room in Turkey, the group lost this support by late 2015. In the popular imagination, Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki has gained notoriety as the archetype 'baddie/not-so-moderate rebels' on account of the beheading of a youth by some members in Aleppo last year. This kind of analysis is simplistic. The reality is that there are a wide variety of human rights abuses by an assortment of rebel groups: the only difference is that this beheading incident happened to make its way onto video. Beheading has become a widespread practice among groups on many different sides of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, including pro-Assad militias in Syria as well as Sunni, Shi'a and Christian militias fighting the Islamic State in Iraq. This trend represents a normalisation of brutality partly on account of the rise of the Islamic State, rather than an instant gateway to determine whether a particular group is 'moderate.'

That said, there are legitimate concerns to be raised over the closeness of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. A series of tweets that I have translated at the bottom of this post come from a member of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki's political office (Turki Abd al-Hameed). These tweets, which were promoted on the Telegram account of the Shari'i office, offer an interesting insight into a line of thinking behind merging with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. Key obstacles for many factions to merge with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham include the fear of losing their identity to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and becoming subordinate to it, as well as becoming a potential target for the U.S., which does not of course accept the idea that Jabhat Fatah al-Sham has really broken with al-Qa'ida (an entirely reasonable position).
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Has al-Zinki's political office promoting a rather naive (well calculated to sugarcoat) line on the AQ fraternity as brother Syrian rebels with no wider ambitions.
 
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