Syrian Crisis...2013

solarz said:

Obama really collapsed on this one, and Putin's performance has been remarkable. Xi needs to take notes.

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Syrian Rebels Say Saudi Arabia Is Stepping Up Weapons Deliveries
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: September 12, 2013

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia, quietly cooperating with American and British intelligence and other Arab governments, has modestly increased deliveries of weapons to rebels fighting in southern Syria, the rebels say.

But the shipments have not been large enough to assuage rebel frustration that they are being abandoned, as the United States shifts its focus to a possible Russian-initiated deal to quarantine the Syrian government’s chemical weapons, or to ease anxieties among the Persian Gulf leaders who have been the rebels’ primary backers.

Publicly, the Saudis expressed patience, with pro-monarchy newspapers saying that the negotiations over Syrian chemical weapons would probably founder and that American military strikes would follow sooner or later. But behind the scenes, analysts say, leaders in Saudi Arabia and allies like Qatar chafed as rebel leaders fumed that their larger need — a way to shift the balance in the two-year-old civil war and end the army’s bombardment of towns and neighborhoods — was being ignored.

The greatest fear of gulf leaders, said Hassan Hassan, who analyzes the gulf role in the Syria conflict at The National, a newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, is that talks over Syria’s chemical weapons will shift the American focus to “talking with the Iranians and the regime and Russia rather than with the gulf.”

The gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have positioned themselves as crucial players in Syria, working closely with the United States.

“Now all of a sudden the limelight has been taken away from them,” Mr. Hassan said. “They are afraid the situation can take another course.”

But the shipments have not been large enough to assuage rebel frustration that they are being abandoned, as the United States shifts its focus to a possible Russian-initiated deal to quarantine the Syrian government’s chemical weapons, or to ease anxieties among the Persian Gulf leaders who have been the rebels’ primary backers.

Publicly, the Saudis expressed patience, with pro-monarchy newspapers saying that the negotiations over Syrian chemical weapons would probably founder and that American military strikes would follow sooner or later. But behind the scenes, analysts say, leaders in Saudi Arabia and allies like Qatar chafed as rebel leaders fumed that their larger need — a way to shift the balance in the two-year-old civil war and end the army’s bombardment of towns and neighborhoods — was being ignored.

The greatest fear of gulf leaders, said Hassan Hassan, who analyzes the gulf role in the Syria conflict at The National, a newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, is that talks over Syria’s chemical weapons will shift the American focus to “talking with the Iranians and the regime and Russia rather than with the gulf.”

The gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have positioned themselves as crucial players in Syria, working closely with the United States.

“Now all of a sudden the limelight has been taken away from them,” Mr. Hassan said. “They are afraid the situation can take another course.”

Since the chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs last month that American officials blame on the Syrian government, rebels and analysts say the Saudis have stepped up deliveries of light weapons and antitank guided missiles. The aim was initially to bolster the rebels’ ability to take advantage of any American strikes by storming damaged or undefended bases, analysts and rebels say — though the Saudis refrained from sending the antiaircraft missiles that the rebels covet most. The Syrian government has denied responsibility for the chemical attack.

Rebels in southern Syria who nominally answer to the loose-knit, Western-backed Free Syrian Army said Thursday that they had received new infusions of arms from Saudi Arabia, delivered through Jordan, and that the weapons had helped them gain ground near the border.

At the same time, Gen. Salim Idris, the nominal commander of the Free Syrian Army, declared on Thursday his “absolute rejection” of the chemical weapons deal offered by the Syrian and Russian governments. He said rebel fighters felt they were being “left alone,” without “direct military support” from the United States.

The developments point to the delicate balance that the United States is trying to maintain. On the one hand, it is exploring a proposed deal that could create common ground with President Bashar al-Assad’s main supporters, Russia and Iran, and might eventually lead to a political settlement of the Syrian civil war. On the other hand, it is keeping up military pressure on Mr. Assad and trying to avoid alienating Saudi Arabia and other gulf allies that the United States has relied on to work with the rebels.

“My sense,” Mr. Hassan said, “is that the Americans are reassuring them behind the scenes.”

The situation points to the many competing interests the United States is trying to balance in the Syria crisis. The Americans’ stated goal in Syria is a political settlement, but that outcome is all but impossible to achieve without talking to Syria’s allies. And the close association among Saudi Arabia, Qatar and rebel groups has been a source of mistrust for government supporters inside Syria and others outside the country who fear the Islamic militants who have risen to prominence on the battlefield on the strength of financing from private donors in the gulf.

While Saudi Arabia has a strong interest in capitalizing on the Syrian crisis to weaken Iran and sever its alliance with Syria, the Saudis also fear the growing power of the many jihadists among the Syrian rebels. So far, analysts and rebels say, it has heeded American requests not to deliver antiaircraft missiles that could fall into the hands of Islamic militants who might use the missiles against other governments, not just Mr. Assad’s.

For months, Saudi Arabia has been quietly funneling arms, including antitank missiles, to Free Syrian Army groups through Jordan, working covertly with American and British intelligence and Arab governments that do not want their support publicly known, according to rebel groups operating in southern Syria.

Ahmed Abu Rishan, a spokesman for a special forces group that belongs to General Idris’s general command in southern Syria, said Thursday that those deliveries had increased in recent days.

The weapons helped rebel groups take over a tank battalion and destroy four tanks in the village of Sheikh Saad near the southern border, he said, providing a video of the attack that appeared to demonstrate the use of antitank guided missiles.

But Mr. Rishan said the groups desperately need antiaircraft weapons to bring down Mr. Assad’s government. “We feel frustrated because Bashar al-Assad is a liar,” he said. “We do not just want to destroy the chemicals, but also want to stop the bloodshed in Syria.”

General Idris told NPR’s “Morning Edition” on Thursday, “We can’t understand why the Russians and the Iranians are supporting the regime so clearly, and our friends are delaying and hesitating.”

He said he told fighters: “Let us wait. We respect the decision of the president, and we know how decisions are taken in the democratic countries. Let us wait, and we hope our friends, at the end of the day, will be with us and will help us.”

C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from the United States, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut.

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US and Russia offer revived hope of Syria peace talks
Pair say wider talks aimed at ending Syrian civil war could take place – but only if they reach agreement on chemical weapons

Dan Roberts in Washington and agencies
theguardian.com, Friday 13 September 2013 15.50 BST

Russia and the US announced efforts to revive a stalled international process to seek a longer term solution to the Syrian civil war on Friday, although wider talks would only take place if their negotiations aimed at securing Syria's chemical weapons prove successful.

Secretary of state John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov met United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on the sidelines of their summit in Geneva and pledged to try to restart a stalled international peace process later this month.

But both sides stressed that any such political progress toward a transitional government could only happen if they first reached agreement on how to ensure the Syrian government handed over its chemical weapons to international control.

Any decision to restart peace negotiations when they next meet at the UN general assembly in New York would "obviously depend on the capacity to have success here in the next day, hours, days, on the subject of the chemical weapons," said Kerry.

"I think we would both agree that we had constructive conversations regarding that, but those conversations are continuing and both of us want to get back to them now," he added during brief comments to reporters on Friday morning.

Lavrov was fractionally more upbeat on the prospects for eventually agreeing a "transitional governing organ" representing all groups of Syrian society, according to a transcript released by the State Department, but also urged all sides to focus on chemical weapons first.

"We are here, basically, to discuss the issue of chemical weapons in Syria," the Russian foreign minister agreed.

"Now that the Assad government joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, we have to engage our professionals together with the Chemical Weapons Prohibition Organisation, as we agreed with the United Nations, to design a road which would make sure that this issue is resolved quickly, professionally, as soon as practical."

Teams of chemical weapons experts from Russia and the US are locked in detailed discussions in Geneva over how to quantify Syria's chemical weapons and, more importantly, arrange for their safe transfer to international supervision and destruction in the midst of a chaotic civil war.

The talks were due to finish on Friday but may now continue for several days.

Russian officials are particularly keen to make sure the weapons do not fall into the hands of extremist rebels, who they blame for recent chemical attacks.

But the talks have also been complicated by fresh Syrian demands that attach conditions to the process, such as the US agreeing not to arm the rebels and ruling out military strikes of its own in return for signing the chemical weapons convention.

When the talks began Thursday, Kerry also bluntly rejected a Syrian pledge to begin a "standard process" by turning over information rather than weapons — and nothing immediately. Kerry said that was not acceptable.

"The words of the Syrian regime, in our judgment, are simply not enough," Kerry declared as he stood beside Lavrov. "This is not a game."

Salem al-Meslet, a senior member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, said he was disappointed in the outcome of the Kerry and Lavrov meeting.

"They are leaving the murderer and concentrating on the weapons he was using," he said of Assad. "It is like stabbing somebody with a knife then they take the knife away and he is free."

He spoke on the sidelines of a two-day opposition conference in Istanbul.

The talks were the latest in a rapidly moving series of events following the 21 August gas attack on suburbs in Damascus. The US blames Bashar al-Assad for the use of chemical weapons, although Assad denies his government was involved and instead points to rebels fighting against his government.

On Thursday, Assad offered to provide details on his country's chemical arsenal beginning 30 days after it signs an international convention banning such weapons. Syria's ambassador to the UN said that as of Thursday his country had become a full member of the treaty, which requires destruction of all chemical weapons.

Lavrov said the initiative must proceed "in strict compliance with the rules that are established by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons."

But Kerry appeared to reject Assad's conditions, saying on Thursday: "We believe there is nothing standard about this process at this moment because of the way the regime has behaved." The turnover of weapons must be complete, verifiable and timely, he said, "and, finally, there ought to be consequences if it doesn't take place."

Lavrov said a military strike would not be necessary. "We proceed from the fact that the solution to this problem will make unnecessary any strike on the Syrian Arab Republic, and I am convinced that our American colleagues, as President Obama stated, are firmly convinced that we should follow a peaceful way of resolution to the conflict in Syria," Lavrov said.

The distrust in US-Russia relations was on display even in an off-hand parting exchange at the opening news conference. Just before it ended, Kerry asked the Russian translator to repeat part of Lavrov's concluding remarks.

When it was clear that Kerry wasn't going to get an immediate retranslation, Lavrov apparently tried to assure him that he hadn't said anything controversial.

"It was OK, John, don't worry," he said. "You want me to take your word for it?" Kerry asked Lavrov. "It's a little early for that."

Shortly after making their opening statements, the two went into a private dinner.

Assad, in an interview with Russia's Rossiya-24 TV, said his government would start submitting data on its chemical weapons stockpile a month after signing the convention. He also said the Russian proposal for securing the weapons could work only if the US halted threats of military action.

At a meeting in Kyrgyzstan of an international security grouping dominated by Russia and China, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Friday that Syria's efforts have demonstrated its good faith. "I would like to voice hope that this will mark a serious step toward the settlement of the Syrian crisis," Putin said.

As the Geneva talks continued, reports emerged that the CIA has been delivering light machine guns and other small arms to Syrian rebels for several weeks, following Obama's statement in June that he would provide lethal aid to the rebels.

White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the administration could not "detail every single type of support that we are providing to the opposition or discuss timelines for delivery, but it's important to note that both the political and the military opposition are and will be receiving this assistance."

Current and former US intelligence officials told the Associated Press that the CIA has arranged for the Syrian opposition to receive anti-tank weaponry such as rocket-propelled grenades through a third party, presumably one of the Gulf countries that have been arming the rebels. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the classified program publicly.

Loay al-Mikdad, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, told the Associated Press that his group expected to receive weapons in the near future.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press in Geneva

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As the Geneva talks continued, reports emerged that the CIA has been delivering light machine guns and other small arms to Syrian rebels for several weeks, following Obama's statement in June that he would provide lethal aid to the rebels.

White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the administration could not "detail every single type of support that we are providing to the opposition or discuss timelines for delivery, but it's important to note that both the political and the military opposition are and will be receiving this assistance."

Current and former US intelligence officials told the Associated Press that the CIA has arranged for the Syrian opposition to receive anti-tank weaponry such as rocket-propelled grenades through a third party, presumably one of the Gulf countries that have been arming the rebels. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the classified program publicly.

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SampanViking said:

I think people should be clear on one basic, fundamental point regarding this business.
The threat of US force did not bring Assad and his Chemical Stockpile to the negotiating table.
The attack on Syria was part of a detailed and long hatched plan to remove opposition governments in the middle east and Asia. The clock was ticking and only total and unconditional surrender would have saved Syria from attack.

It was the US that was forced to the negotiating table and it was forced by the resolve of the Russian Government, its Battle Fleet off the Syrian Coast and because he spoke in representation of the united will of most of Asia and much of the developing world globally.

This is significant as I have little doubt, that we have just witnessed the passing of America's Unipolar moment and the birth of a truly multipolar world. We have also seen the rest of the world tell the US; directly, that there is no exceptionalism for their country.

It has passed with very little mention by the establishment, but I strongly suspect that when dates such as 9/11, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are forgotten, the date of September 14th 2013 will be the one that everyone reads in their history books.

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Syria writer Elizabeth O'Bagy, cited by Kerry, McCain, fired for Ph.D. lie
By Morgan Winsor, CNN
September 12, 2013 -- Updated 1036 GMT (1836 HKT)

(CNN) -- A lie about earning a Ph.D. cost a Syria expert her job as an analyst days after her op-ed in the Wall Street Journal was cited by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain in congressional hearings about possible U.S. military action in the war-torn country.
Elizabeth O'Bagy, who was an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said she had earned a doctorate from Georgetown University when she had not, the organization announced Wednesday.

"The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O'Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O'Bagy's employment, effective immediately," the institute posted in an online statement Wednesday.

The president of the institute, Dr. Kim Kagan, said she was surprised to learn of O'Bagy's lie just before the former senior research analyst admitted it on Tuesday. The decision to terminate O'Bagy's employment at the institute was made later that day, Kagan said.

O'Bagy was hired a year ago as a research analyst, after she had been working as an intern at the institute for a few months. O'Bagy proved to be an exceptional researcher and analyst, and Kagan said she was "pleased and proud to move her forward."

Last week, both Kerry and McCain cited O'Bagy's op-ed piece, which was published in the Wall Street Journal on August 30, titled "On the Front Lines of Syria's Civil War." Part of the debate over authorizing American military action is how many of the rebel groups are extremist and how many are moderate.

According to O'Bagy's op-ed, extremists and moderates exercise control over distinct areas of the country, and checkpoints are often set up to define territory. Also, there are distinct areas where moderate rebels are in control and can keep weapons out of the hands of extremists, O'Bagy told CNN in an interview last week. Kerry and McCain agreed with O'Bagy that Syria is a secular state; McCain even called her op-ed "important."

Initially, the Wall Street Journal only recognized O'Bagy as a "senior analyst" at the institute, but a clarification was later added, stating her affiliation with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a non-profit organization based in Washington that advocates a free and democratic Syria.
O'Bagy responded on Twitter last week to scrutiny over her association with the Syrian rebel advocacy group, writing she never tried to conceal her ties with opposition and rebel commanders and is not being paid to advocate her views on Syria. Rather these connections allow her to travel more safely in Syria, she wrote.

"I'm not trying to trick America here," O'Bagy tweeted on September 7.

Before accepting her position as political director of SETF, O'Bagy had to ask Kagan for approval. Kagan granted her permission because O'Bagy said she would be distributing humanitarian aid to Syrian people.

SETF posted a news release online in May, welcoming "Dr. Elizabeth O'Bagy" to its Washington staff. The news release has since been removed.

It's unclear whether O'Bagy still holds her position at the SETF in light of the revelations about her non-existent doctorate degree. The organization declined to comment Wednesday.

According to Kagan, the institute never had reason to doubt O'Bagy's qualifications, and she could not comprehend any motivation the former employee would have for lying about her education.

O'Bagy was not immediately reached for comment Wednesday.

O'Bagy received a Master of Arts degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University in May and was allegedly working on her dissertation for a Ph.D, which she told Kagan she had completed later that month, Kagan said.

"I hired (O'Bagy) without (a doctorate degree) and would have kept her if she hadn't pursued it. So this is particularly sad," Kagan said.
Despite the lie, Kagan said she is "confident" in the work O'Bagy produced for the institute, because she and other research officials for the institute validate any research and argumentation that is published. Also, O'Bagy never had the administrative power to enter data into the institute's resource database, she said.

"I do trust her work," Kagan said.

O'Bagy has appeared on several television networks, including BBC, CNN, Fox and PBS. Last week, she was a guest on CNN Newsroom and Fox News, speaking about Syria. Because of the revelation about her false doctorate, O'Bagy will not appear again as an analyst on CNN networks.

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delft said:

An important propagandist of US war against Syria has proven to be a fraud:

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Was the 26 year old so good because she was not depending on her own qualities but feeding CIA information and opinion to ISW?

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Turkey says it shot down Syrian helicopter in Turkish airspace
Published September 16, 2013
| Associated Press
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ISTANBUL – A Turkish fighter jet shot down a Syrian military helicopter on Monday after it entered Turkish airspace and ignored repeated warnings to leave, an official said.
The helicopter strayed more than 1 mile into Turkish airspace, but crashed inside Syria after being hit by missiles fired from the jet, Turkey's deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc, told reporters in Ankara.
Arinc said he did not have any information on the fate of the Syrian pilots, but Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said rebel fighters captured one of the pilots, while the fate of the other one was unclear.
The incident is bound to ramp up tension on an already volatile border. Turkey has been at odds with the Syrian government since early in the country's civil war and has backed the Syrian rebels, while advocating international intervention in the conflict.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, speaking in Paris after meetings about Syria with his counterparts from other countries, said Monday's encounter should send a message. "Nobody will dare to violate Turkey's borders in any way again," he said, according to Anatolia, the Turkish state-run news agency. "The necessary measures have been taken."
Arinc noted that the Turkish military had put its forces on a higher state of alert and changed the rules for engaging with the Syrian military along the border because of "`constant harassment fire from the other side."
He also noted that a Turkish jet was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft over the Mediterranean in June 2012. Turkey says it was hit in international airspace, but Syria insisted it was flying low inside Syrian airspace.
Shells from the Syrian conflict have occasionally rained down on the Turkish side of the border, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned Damascus that his country would not tolerate any violation of the border by Syrian forces.


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TerraN_EmpirE said:

was going to happen eventually. If Assad Feels he can, to paraphrase Act 3, Scene 1, line 273 of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar " Cry Havoc let slip the Hawks of War." Eventually they would begin strikes on the supply lines. and that leads to Erdoğan's Garage Sale.

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