Syria: Broken Nation

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

"Tony Badran of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is one of a handful of Syria analysts who has argued that it is supremely unfair to deny that the Obama administration has behaved incompetently over the last five years...

"Obama’s vision for any Syrian endgame always conceded an Iranian protectorate contiguous with Lebanon,” he said. “He has dubbed this ‘respecting Iran’s equities.’ Beyond that, however, his template for Syria is at its core a replica of the template he has applied in Iraq: a U.S.-recognized Iranian zone, which cooperates with a U.S.- and Iranian-backed Kurdish zone (in the case of Syria, unlike Iraq, this zone is entirely hostile to Turkey), and then a third, Sunni Arab, kill zone in between.”

Badran’s case is bolstered by much circumstantial evidence—the failure to uphold an Obama-set “red line” on chemical weapons use by the regime; the anemic and intermittent arming of the FSA units; the acquiescence to Russia’s attempted aerial annihilation of the latter U.S. proxies; the abandonment of the “Assad must go” precondition for politically negotiated transitional government in Damascus. But perhaps the strongest corroboration of Badran’s thesis is that its essence has been articulated in vivid detail as a viable program for “peace” by an influential former member of the Obama administration, and one of the few former members to criticize the president for not being more devoted to accommodating Russian and Iranian equities."

Does Obama Want to Carve Up Syria?

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

I'm starting to feel like I shouldn't mention the US separately and just include it among the regime's allies along with the Kurds the US backs.

Why Solely Backing the PYD Against the Islamic State is a Mistake - What a disastrous foreign policy.

Does Obama Want to Carve Up Syria?

Kerry may well believe his peculiar definition of diplomacy. But what the administration has actually done is to force this definition exclusively on the rebel side. Kerry’s rhetoric, therefore, was cover for deliberately dragging the rebels into a set-up, and then leaving them out in the cold to be brutalized by Vladimir Putin—with the only possible escape route being to join a government with Assad and stop demanding his ouster. Or, to put it in even more concrete terms, the administration is leveraging Putin’s brutal military campaign to extract political concessions from the opposition that are tantamount to an effective surrender. And if they didn’t hurry and sign that surrender now, as Kerry reportedly told them, the Russian bombing is just going to get worse, and in three months, they’ll be decimated; the clock is ticking, folks.

....Aside from perpetuating the horrific slaughter of the Syrian people and overseeing a population displacement on a massive scale, one likely result of this policy will be the complete collapse not only of traditional U.S. alliances in the Middle East, but of post-World War II security structures elsewhere.

What the United States Is Really Doing in Syria - Tag-teaming with Russia and dumping regional allies and NATO, the White House tells the rest of the world to go take a hike

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

"Beyond that, however, his template for Syria is at its core a replica of the template he has applied in Iraq: a U.S.-recognized Iranian zone, which cooperates with a U.S.- and Iranian-backed Kurdish zone (in the case of Syria, unlike Iraq, this zone is entirely hostile to Turkey), and then a third, Sunni Arab, kill zone in between.”
Does Obama Want to Carve Up Syria?

Sykes-Picot 1916; Lavrov-Kerry 2016

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/705702829068050432

A Lebanese Druze politician said the same thing earlier:

"Democratic Gathering" leader, MP Walid Jumblatt, tweeted on Tuesday "Some articles, studies and statements show more than any time before that Syria's destiny is partition; and the two main engineers for this devilish game are John Kerry-- that is U.S.A-- and Sergei Lavrov --that is Russia."
Jumblatt: Syria partition engineers are U.S.A, Russia

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

More terrifying and devastating news (I wonder if people will be rushing to make judgements about European culture/religion and people given this):

Europol’s chief of staff....warned that a sophisticated pan-European “criminal infrastructure” was now targeting refugees.

...the 10,000 figure is likely to be a conservative estimate of the actual number of unaccompanied minors who have disappeared since entering Europe....

Donald confirmed Europol had received evidence some unaccompanied child refugees in Europe had been sexually exploited.....“An entire [criminal] infrastructure has developed over the past 18 months around exploiting the migrant flow. There are prisons in Germany and Hungary where the vast majority of people arrested and placed there are in relation to criminal activity surrounding the migrant crisis,” said Donald.

The police agency has also documented a disturbing crossover between organised gangs helping to smuggle refugees into the EU and human-trafficking gangs exploiting them for sex and slavery. He said that longstanding criminal gangs known to be involved in human trafficking, whose identity had been logged in the agency’s Phoenix database, were now being caught exploiting refugees.

10,000 refugee children are missing, says Europol - The EU’s criminal intelligence agency warns pan-European gangs are targeting minors for sex abuse and slavery

The plight of unaccompanied children is one of the darkest side effects of Europe's refugee crisis.

Around 1.2 million refugees arrived in the European Union last year. Europol estimates a quarter were minors, and 85,000 were unaccompanied - higher than Save the Children's earlier estimate of 26,000. Aid workers deem them be at the biggest risk of abuse and people trafficking.

10,000 refugee children are officially missing in Europe, according to Europol

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

The media are misleading the public on Syria
Stephen Kinzer, Boston Globe

As for the article, what an idiotic, irresponsible piece. And an ironic title given that his article is misleading (though I hope most of the public has the good sense not to fall for it). He's obviously on the wrong side and history will prove that even though it'll be too late for the victims.

Nearly the entire article is a worthy rebuttal though the following is what made me shudder more than the rest:

In November 2011, barely a month after organised armed resistance had broken out, the UN reported that among the tactics the regime was using to suppress the uprising was raping male children in front of their families. Later the regime would cause female captives to bleed to death by inserting rats into their vaginas.

IS burned a pilot alive in a cage; the Iranian-run sectarian militia, the National Defence Force, which has eclipsed the national army, burns whole families alive in their homes. And that is before the regime's methods of warfare - indiscriminate artillery fire, barrel bombs, and air strikes to destroy ancient cities, and chemical weapons of mass destruction and chlorine-laced incendiaries to intimidate - aimed at mass-killing and the displacement of survivors is factored in.

How Western academics help spread Assad's propaganda

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

"The Syrians used military grade chemical weapons and lately have been using materials, chlorine, against civilians, including in these very days, after the supposed ceasefire, dropping barrels of chlorine on civilians," Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a speech to a conference organized by the New Tech military and aviation group in Airport City, near Tel Aviv. He did not provide further details.

Israel says Syrian government used chemical weapons during truce

I do recall seeing videos and pictures of people suffering due to chemical attacks but I think that was shortly before the ceasefire went into effect. In any case, the regime has used chemical weapons so many times already that this isn't hard to believe.

Here is a link that monitors the ceasefire (hint: it has been broken many times by the regime but, according to the UN, it somehow still holds):

Syria Ceasefire Monitor

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Rihab, a woman living in eastern Ghouta near Damascus, which has been besieged by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, was quoted as saying: “Fear has taken control. Children now wait for their turn to be killed. Even adults live only to wait for their turn to die.”

Syrians under siege: 'we have no children any more, only small adults'

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Syrians under siege: 'we have no children any more, only small adults'

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

"The Neil Armstrong of the Arab world has an office in a ramshackle building in Istanbul’s Fatih or “Little Syria”. Muhammed Faris is a refugee, just like the people milling outside, facing up to the hardest challenge in his life; one that has already seen the roles of fighter pilot, spaceman, military advisor to the Assad regime; protester, rebel and defector."

"....He repeatedly refers to the fortitude of the people in his hometown of Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. “The Syrian civilisation is 10,000 years old. It will survive this attempt by the Assads to destroy it. It has survived worse.”

From astronaut to refugee: how the Syrian spaceman fell to Earth

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Tuesday marks the fifth anniversary of the first pro-democracy demonstrations in Syria, part of the Arab Spring. Five years later, the Syrian conflict is one of the most intractable in the world, spawning a massive refugee crisis and aiding ISIS’s rise.

To mark the occasion, the U.N. Children’s Fund (Unicef) has an appropriately depressing statistic to share: An estimated 3.7 million Syrian children — 1 in 3 of all Syrian children — have been born since the conflict began.

More Than 300,000 Syrian Children Have Known Nothing But Life As A Refugee

We're now entering the 6th year and the world is just as incompetent about Syria as it was when Assad's regime first started killing peaceful protesters and committing genocide. Just more inhumane, if anything.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

Russia to withdraw forces from Syria

"Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Monday that he has ordered Russian forces to begin withdrawing from Syria, saying they have achieved their goals in the country.

The pullback will begin Tuesday, the state-run Sputnik news agency reported.

"I think that the task that was assigned to the Ministry of Defense and the armed forces as a whole has achieved its goal, and so I order the defense minister to start tomorrow withdrawing the main part of our military factions from the Syrian Arab Republic," Putin said.

Russia began airstrikes in September in support of the Syrian government in a civil war that is now nearly five years old."

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Russia to withdraw forces from Syria

"Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Monday that he has ordered Russian forces to begin withdrawing from Syria, saying they have achieved their goals in the country.

I'm still left scratching my head at this one. If true with no other secret plans to somehow remain in Syria or to strengthen Assad/allies, it's good news for Syrian civilians who were mainly dying at the hands of Russia these past few months.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

*se*

"The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which controls most of northern Syria is expected to declare a federal system on Wednesday, a spokesman from the group said. The announcement immediately received a rebuke from the United States."

US will not recognize PYD federal region in northern Syria

Poor, opportunistic PKK/PYD/YPG/affiliates. No one is going to let them, groups who are not representative of Kurds as a whole, have their own federal region. The rebels say no, ISIS says no, Assad says no (Russia says maybe), the US says no (will probably waver), Turkey says no.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

A 2 week ceasefire in Syria to begin now (the 27th in Syria). This imposed ceasefire excludes ISIS and Jabhat an-Nusra (and a village). Obviously no one believes this will hold but I guess Kerry has to try to make it appear as if the Obama administration is actually trying to do something about the genocide in Syria that the regime/allies are carrying out.

Five rebel spokesmen, commanders react to 'cessation of hostilities' to take effect Saturday

Amazing how the ceasefire is one-sided. The regime and allies can attack but if the rebels dare respond, then the regime/allies and the US will be against them. I'm starting to feel like I shouldn't mention the US separately and just include it among the regime's allies along with the Kurds the US backs.

Israel says Syrian government used chemical weapons during truce

Here is a link that monitors the ceasefire (hint: it has been broken many times by the regime but, according to the UN, it somehow still holds):

Syria Ceasefire Monitor

lol:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/711925667483492352

and:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/711929285896830976

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Aside from perpetuating the horrific slaughter of the Syrian people and overseeing a population displacement on a massive scale, one likely result of this policy will be the complete collapse not only of traditional U.S. alliances in the Middle East, but of post-World War II security structures elsewhere.
What the United States Is Really Doing in Syria - Tag-teaming with Russia and dumping regional allies and NATO, the White House tells the rest of the world to go take a hike

Excellent article. Wish I could quote it all:

Japanese, South Koreans, Singaporeans and even Indians confided that they were convinced that Obama’s failure to use force against the regime of Bashar al-Assad was directly responsible for China’s subsequent burst of aggression in territorial disputes in the East China Sea and South China Sea.

Poles, Lithuanians and French drew a line between the backdown and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As for the Sunni Arabs, Turks and Israelis, it is an article of faith that Obama’s decision accelerated the catastrophe that Syria, and much of the rest of the Middle East, has become.

The costs of Obama’s Syria policy are apparent to everyone but him

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

We, the people of Palmyra, consider both Isis and Assad to be criminals.....

Palmyra has not been liberated. It has just been transferred from one tyranny to another.

Our message to the West and to the international community is this: don’t act as though you are blind to Assad’s crimes. As you penalise Isis, you must penalise Assad's regime in equal measure. He is the essence of the problem in Syria - and both him and Isis are the enemies of normal Syrian people.

I'm from Palmyra, and can tell you – the Assad regime is no better than Isis

Last May, the Islamic State (Isis) took Palmyra, almost without a fight – as some of the regime's supporters complained – and now a pro-Assad coalition, led on the ground by Shia jihadis controlled by Iran, supported from the air by Russian airstrikes, has conquered the city.

The former development was (rightly) near-universally seen as a negative, but the latter has found itself something of a fan club – despite a ground force of Shia militias consisting of registered terrorist organisations, such as Hezbollah and Iraqi 'Special Groups' that have Western blood on their hands.

....Of the 470,000 Syrians who have been killed in this terrible war, the overwhelming majority have been killed by Assad and his allies, and that's even truer of the civilian casualties. The United Nations in February concluded that the Assad regime had violated the laws of war in six distinct ways and committed systematized atrocities — crimes against humanity — in seven separate categories, including rape and extermination. There is no cruelty IS has committed, from sexual violence to immolation, that the regime has not at least matched and usually exceeded.

We should not celebrate Bashar al-Assad's victory over Isis in Palmyra

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

"...The oddity is that he is not speaking Arabic, but Persian. The man himself is Afghan, a member of a 10-20,000-strong Afghan army recruited in Iran to fight the war in Syria...."

"...In fact, it is now clear it was an eccentric multinational force that took Palmyra. Analysis of photographs, social media posts and Iranian, Russian and even Syrian media has shown that the path was led by the Russians, with much of the “grunt” work done by Afghan Shia and Iraqi militiamen under generals from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard."

Where are the Syrians in Assad's Syrian Arab Army?

Funnily, not much is made of the foreign fighters on the government's side whereas many pro-regime folk (and even "neutral" observers) were aghast about the foreign fighters among the rebels.

More:

....the question is being raised: if Isil is defeated, what takes over?

Diplomats and analysts say it is unclear who will actually be able to control and run liberated areas.

“The danger here is that the various actors, particularly the US and Russia, in their rush to declare immediate results, overlook the long-term components of stability in this area,” said Noah Bonsey, who monitors the conflict for the International Crisis Group.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Bulgarian vigilantes arresting refugees:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/720217260510425088

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

It's why they target hospitals, courts, ambulances, first responders (in double tap strikes), and possibly refugee camps. In the month of October alone, 10 hospitals were hit in Russian airstrikes.

Syrian war: Suspected Russian air strikes destroy two hospitals - despite so-called Syria 'ceasefire'
50 People Killed In Airstrikes On Hospitals In Syria Including Doctors Without Borders Facility
MSF (Doctors Without Borders) stops sharing Syria hospital locations after 'deliberate' attacks
Syria: Statement by Dr Joanne Liu, International President of Médecins Sans Frontières
'Not terrorists, just babies': Video reveals devastation caused by 'deliberate Russian air strikes' on children's hospital

The targeting of medical personnel (or hospitals) continues by the Syrian regime and its allies:

Doctor Hasan Mohammad Al Araj, Hama Free Health Manager, from Kafr Zaita city in Hama governorate, died in regime warplanes missiles fired near Al Maghara Central Hospital in Kafr Zaita city, April 13, 2016.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/720261131856658432

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/720249743205490689

Links if the tweets don't appear: 1, 2

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

"Today, Libyan civilians are much better off than their Syrian counterparts. The Assad regime’s campaign of airstrikes and starvation sieges has decimated cities larger than Benghazi. At least 300,000 civilians have been killed. Over 10,000 were tortured while in the custody of the regime. Twelve million have been internally displaced. Four million have fled Syria, flowing into neighboring countries and Europe, spreading destabilization well beyond Syria’s borders. In Libya, about 1,500 people died as a result of the fighting last year."

"Another difference between Libya and Syria for future U.S. presidents will be America’s influence there. Whatever happens in Libya, there will be some residual goodwill toward the U.S. and a recognition that when civilians were in danger of being slaughtered, America chose to not to look the other way. Not so in Syria, where an entire generation of young people are growing up in a war zone, feeling abandoned by the leading nations of the world."

Obama’s Biggest Mistake Isn’t Libya. It’s Syria.