Category: Syria

Told Ya!

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Last night, I said that Syria was a clusterf%$#, and that the Turkish invasion made it worse.

Tonight, we learn that the Turks gave no warning before launching their invasion:

When Turkish ground forces delivered a lightning strike on Islamic State fighters in Syria last week, the Pentagon hailed what it described as close U.S.-Turkish coordination.

But behind the scenes, cooperation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners broke down at senior levels, according to officials on both sides. The two countries weren’t as aligned on the operation as their public statements indicated.

While the White House was preparing to consider a secret plan to have American special forces join the Turks, Ankara pulled the trigger on the mission unilaterally without giving officials in Washington advance warning. When clashes started between Turkish and Syrian Kurdish fighters—who are directly backed by U.S. Special Forces—the Pentagon issued unusually blunt calls for both to stand down.

U.S. officials say the Turks’ decision undercut a behind-the-scenes effort to clear rival Syrian Kurdish elements out of the conflict zone first and created a prickly, new challenge for the U.S. as two of its most important partners in the campaign fight each other instead of Islamic State. The breakdown in coordination adds a new layer of tensions between Washington and Ankara on top of those sparked by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown since the July coup attempt in Turkey.

Officials in Washington said they warned their Turkish military counterparts Monday that the U.S. won’t provide air support to Turkish forces pushing southward, deeper into Syrian territory. The U.S. will continue to provide air support to Turkish forces moving westward, into the border area threatened by Islamic State. Likewise, U.S. officials told the Kurds that U.S. air support hinged on their forces moving east of the Euphrates River and on advancing south toward Islamic State’s self-declared capital, Raqqa, to ensure they wouldn’t come into conflict with the Turks, according to the officials. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday that the Kurdish forces had begun to move eastward, easing the friction between the two sides.

(emphasis mine)

Just lovely. More clusterf%$#s in the Levant.

You have Jihadis, a Turkish president who makes Charles deGaulle look humble trying to reinstate the Ottoman Caliphate, the antediluvian kleptocratic Persian Gulf monarchies, which are terrified at both the possibility of a successful secular Arab state and any non-Sunni regime, you have the Iranians trying to protect the Shia across the Arab world, the Russians trying to preserve an allied government, and the US both supporting and opposing pretty much all these elements.

All the while, the refugees created by this situation is destabilizing both the EU and NATO,

Like I said, a complete clusterf%$#.

So, We Are Bombing ISIS, and Supporting the Kurds, and a Group That Was Al Qaeda, Which Is Fighting the Kurds………

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And now our NATO “ally” Turkey has invades Syria to fight the Kurds and support ISIS and the group that was al Qaeda.

This is completely f%$#ed up:

In recent years, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered plans drawn up for a Turkish military incursion into Syria. At every turn, though, military commanders, already fighting a war inside Turkey against Kurdish militants, pushed back.

And then last month a rebel faction of the military tried to stage a coup, and that changed everything.

In the aftermath of the coup, which failed but claimed more than 200 lives, Mr. Erdogan purged thousands of officers from the ranks, leaving the military seemingly depleted. It also provoked worry from Western allies, including the United States, that Turkey would either be unwilling or unable to be a reliable partner in the fight against the Islamic State.

Instead, the opposite happened on Wednesday, as Mr. Erdogan ordered Turkish tanks and special forces soldiers into Syria, under cover of American and Turkish warplanes, to assist Syrian rebels in seizing the city of Jarabulus, one of the last border strongholds of the Islamic State.

More Turkish tanks rumbled into northern Syria on Thursday to support rebels there, and the Turkish military seemed to be succeeding in clearing the border area of Islamic State militants, and preventing Kurdish militias from seizing more territory in the region — a primary goal of Turkey in the campaign.

The operation, coming so soon after the failed coup, has highlighted how Mr. Erdogan, even after the purge, secured more operational control of the military. It allowed him to undertake Turkey’s most ambitious role yet in the long Syrian civil war and to bolster the flagging fortunes of rebel groups, of which Turkey has been one of the most consistent supporters.

Other factors holding back Turkey’s ambitions in Syria were also recently resolved. A feud with Russia, which began last year after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the border, ended after Mr. Erdogan expressed regret for the episode. After Ankara’s relations with Moscow deteriorated, a Turkish incursion into Syria could have risked war with Russia, which has been bombing rebels in support of the Syrian government. And the United States, which had previously been opposed to Turkey’s intervention, agreed to support it.

Seriously.  This is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

We are supporting sides at war with each other and our allies are supporting different sides that are fighting each other.

The only foreign powers with a coherent policy are Iran and Russia, they both support Assad, which is truly scary.

Russia Pulls Out of Iranian Air Base

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The airstrike from Iran was was intended to serve a diplomatic purpose, not a military one:

The Russian military said on Monday its aircraft operating from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in Syria had completed their tasks, but left open the possibility of using the Hamadan base again if circumstances warranted.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Russia had stopped using the base for strikes in Syria, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that was criticized both by the White House and by some Iranian lawmakers.

“Russian military aircraft that took part in the operation of conducting air strikes from Iran’s Hamadan air base on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all tasks,” a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement.

“Further use of the Hamadan air base in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Russian Aerospace Forces will be carried out on the basis of mutual agreements to fight terrorism and depending on the prevailing circumstances in Syria,” Konashenkov said.

While the use of the recent use of the Hamedan air base in Iran  might be more convenient than flying from Russian bases, there is very little military utility for a one off deployment like this.

This was a demonstration by Iran and Russia of a changes in the Middle East order, and it certainly has folks at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom sitting up and noticing.

This is Getting Insane

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We are now scrambling jets to defend its allies in Syria against the Assad regime:

U.S. fighter jets scrambled to eastern Syria this week when Syrian bombers attacked in the vicinity of American and coalition Special Operations forces working with Kurdish and Arab opposition fighters, the Pentagon said Friday.

The unprecedented incident, near the Syrian city of Hasakah, did not result in a direct confrontation or any injury to U.S. or coalition forces.

But it illustrated the increasingly tense and ambiguous Syrian battlefield, where aircraft and ground troops from multiple countries — with multiple agendas and loyalties — are fighting overlapping wars.

Following the initial Thursday incident, the coalition began “actively patrolling the airspace nearby,” a Defense Department official said. Early Friday, “two Syrian SU-24 aircraft attempted to transit the area and were met by coalition fighter aircraft,” which “encouraged” the Syrians to depart “without further incident,” said the official, who spoke on a Pentagon-imposed condition of anonymity.

The Syrian military, engaged in a five-year civil conflict, has generally given a wide berth to U.S. aircraft targeting the Islamic State, as have Russian jets aiding their Syrian ally. But local fighters being assisted by U.S. Special Operations forces on the ground are often opposed to both the Islamic State and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

………

Marine Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway said that the Syrian strikes targeted Kurdish forces in Hasakah on Thursday. Social-media reports indicated that several Kurds were killed in the bombing.

U.S. forces initially contacted Russia, using “deconfliction” channels established to ensure that Russian and U.S. planes over Syria avoid each other, but were told that the bombers in question were not Russian. Ground forces received no response to attempts to contact the planes through a recognized radio channel.

The United States then launched a “combat air patrol,” Rankine-Galloway said. It arrived in the area as the Syrian Su-24 ground-attack aircraft were leaving. While he would not specify from where the U.S. aircraft were launched, the United States maintains a contingent of F-15 fighter jets at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

So, now the Syrians are bombing the Kurds.

My guess is that this is a result of the recent Turkish and Russian rapprochement:  The Turks see any form of Kurdish state as an existential threat to their state, and so the Syrian attacks on Kurdish positions are likely an artifact of this.

The US is clearly unamused by this development, since there are reports that fighters sent to intercept the Syrian aircraft was an F-22, probably because they were concerned about Syrian and Russian SAMs.

The US forces are in a bit of a bind though, because the Turks are implacably opposed to any Kurdish autonomous regions.

The only way the US wins this game is not to play.

Well, Our Adventure in Syria is Working So Well

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In addition to flying missions from the Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia, Russia is now flying missions from against Isis from Syria as well:

Russian warplanes on Tuesday flew out from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes against jihadist groups in war-torn Syria, the defense ministry in Moscow said.

The raids are the first Russia has reported carrying out from a base in Iran since the Kremlin launched its Syrian bombing campaign in support of long-time ally Bashar Assad last September.

“On August 16 Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 frontline bombers, flying with a full bomb load from the Hamedan air base (Islamic Republic of Iran), conducted a group air strike against targets of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist groups in the provinces of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Idlib,” the ministry said in a statement.

The strikes resulted in the destruction of “five large warehouses with weapons, ammunition and fuel” and jihadist training camps near Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, the village of Saraqeb in the Idlib region and Al-Bab, an IS-held town in Aleppo province, the statement said.

First, this means that Iran and Russia military ties have become significantly tighter.

What this also means is that Iraq allowed their aircraft to transit their airspace, which also says something about the direction of that nation’s foreign policy.

Yeah, that whole Syrian adventure of ours is bearing such wonderful fruit.

Remember When I Suggested That Some Hillary Supporters Were a Bit ……… Hinky?

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Well, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who wants very much to be the next CIA Director, who recently endorsed Hillary Clinton, is calling for the assassination of Russians and Iranians in Syria:

Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell said in an interview Monday that U.S. policy in Syria should be to make Iran and Russia “pay a price” by arming local groups and instructing them to kill Iranian and Russian personnel in the country.

Morell was appearing on the Charlie Rose show on PBS in the wake of his publicly endorsing Hillary Clinton on the New York Times opinion pages.

Clinton has expressed support for increased military intervention in Syria against Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government. Iran and Russia are backing Assad.

“What they need is to have the Russians and Iranians pay a little price,” Morell said. “When we were in Iraq, the Iranians were giving weapons to the Shia militia, who were killing American soldiers, right? The Iranians were making us pay a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price.”

Morell said the killing of Russians and Iranians should be undertaken “covertly, so you don’t tell the world about it, you don’t stand up at the Pentagon and say ‘we did this.’ But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran.”

Morell also proposed that U.S. forces begin bombing Syrian government installations, including government offices, aircraft and presidential guard positions. The former acting CIA director said that he wanted to “scare Assad.” Morell clarified that he wasn’t actually calling for Assad’s assassination.

………

Morell’s endorsement of Clinton was quickly seen as a sign that he was interested in a role in a possible Clinton administration. He wrote that Clinton would be a “highly qualified commander in chief” and a “strong proponent of a more aggressive approach” to the conflict in Syria.

………

This weekend, Hillary Clinton touted Morell’s endorsement on her Twitter page:

“She will deliver on the most important duty of a president—keeping our nation safe.” —Michael Morell on Hillary https://t.co/zmI3BOCH9Y

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 7, 2016

Anyone can say that they endorse you, but the fact that you are touting the endorsement of this Fruitloop does engender confidence in your judgement.

When Donald F%$#ing Trump can make an argument that he is the peace candidate, you are doing something seriously wrong.

This Fetish with “Freedumb Bomz” Is Becoming Tiresome

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It turns that for much of the State Department, the lesson to be learned from the disaster that is Iraq, where we used violence to institute regime change, and the disaster that is Libya, where we used violence to institute regime change, and the disaster that is Syria, where our support for Saudi and Turkish use of violence to institute regime change, is yet more violence to institute regime change:

Robert S. Ford, a former ambassador to Syria, said, “Many people working on Syria for the State Department have long urged a tougher policy with the Assad government as a means of facilitating arrival at a negotiated political deal to set up a new Syrian government.”

Mr. Ford, who is now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, resigned from the Foreign Service in 2014 out of frustration with the administration’s hands-off policy toward the conflict.

In the memo, the State Department officials wrote that the Assad government’s continuing violations of the partial cease-fire, known as a cessation of hostilities, will doom efforts to broker a political settlement because Mr. Assad will feel no pressure to negotiate with the moderate opposition or other factions fighting him. The government’s barrel bombing of civilians, it said, is the “root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region.”

“The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable,” it said. “The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges.”

The memo acknowledged that military action would have risks, not the least further tensions with Russia, which has intervened in the war on Mr. Assad’s behalf and helped negotiate a cease-fire. Those tensions increased on Thursday when, according to a senior Pentagon official, Russia conducted airstrikes in southern Syria against American-backed forces fighting the Islamic State.

The State Department officials insisted in their memo that they were not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia,” but rather a credible threat of military action to keep Mr. Assad in line.

Because declaring war on the Assad regime, and their Russian allies is clearly the road to peace.

In this case, the memo mainly confirms what has been clear for some time: The State Department’s rank and file have chafed at the White House’s refusal to be drawn into the conflict in Syria.

Because there is something clearly wrong about not going to war in a country with little or no strategic significance because we do not like the guy in charge.

Hey, it doesn’t matter that all the military forces, excepting the Kurds, who oppose Assad are affiliated with either ISIS or al Qaeda, or that the Kurds are being bombed by our “allies” the Turks, who are supporting ISIS, the solution to the problem is clearly more war.

Let’s also be clear that this sort of unilateral action, which absent a security council resolution would be illegal under international law, would likely entail a response from the Syrians with significant Russian aid, which is their right under international law.

The “Moar Bomz” crowd have a 3 decade long record of failure.  Perhaps it is time to tell them to shut the f%$# up and get another job in a different industry.

They need to be asking, “Do you want fries with that,” for a living.

Operation Ridiculous Clusterf%$#

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Speaking of US military, intelligence, and foreign policy failures, it appears that our efforts to overthrow Assad are failing, in part because CIA’s and the Pentagon’s proxies are literally at war with each other:

Two Department of Defense officials told The Daily Beast that they are not eager to support the rebels in the city of Aleppo because they’re seen as being affiliated with al Qaeda in Syria, or Jabhat al Nusra. The CIA, which supports those rebel groups, rejects that claim, saying alliances of convenience in the face of a mounting Russian-led offensive have created marriages of battlefield necessity, not ideology.

“It is a strange thing that DoD hall chatter mimics Russian propaganda,” one U.S. official, who supports the intelligence community position, wryly noted to Pentagon claims that the opposition and Nusra are one in the same.

But even if the rebels were completely separated from Nusra, there would still be something of a strategic conflict with U.S. military goals. The rebels in Aleppo, these Pentagon officials note, are fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime; the American military effort, on the other hand, is primarily about defeating the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

………

The intelligence community, which backed opposition forces in Aleppo, believes ISIS cannot be defeated as long as Assad is in power. The terror group, they say, thrives in unstable territories. And only local forces—like the ones backed by the CIA—can mitigate that threat.

………

“The U.S. has two isolated programs that are not mutually supporting each other and are actually sometimes at odds with each other,” said Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

Following the lead of the House of Saud, and allowing the CIA to engage in its regime change fantasies are no way to run a foreign policy.

That’s Gotta Be Driving the Turks Crazy

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Green Berets assisting the Kurds in Syria are wearing Kurdish militia insignia on their uniforms:

Photos have emerged of American special operations troops in Syria wearing uniform insignia affiliated with a Kurdish rebel group known as the YPG, whose connection to Turkish terrorists could could fuel tension between the U.S. and a key ally in the Islamic State fight.

The images were taken in a village about 40 miles north of the Islamic State group’s self-declared capital of Raqqa, which is the target of a newly announced offensive being led by a disparate group of Kurdish and Arab fighters, and backed by American military advisers and air support. They highlight the complicated network of alliances the U.S. is trying to forge in Syria, and the ethnic and sectarian tensions that could tear apart this fragile coalition.

Speaking Thursday, a top Pentagon official said it’s fairly common for Green Berets and other operators to wear allies’ patches.

This has got to be putting some kinks in Erdogan’s mustache.

Oceania Had Always Been at War with Eastasia

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I don’t know about you, but this sure sounds like boots on the ground:

  • More special forces to Iraq.
  • Troops on the ground in Yemen.
  • The US is running an airfield in Syria:
    The U.S. military has all-but confirmed it’s in control of an airstrip in northern Syria. For months, reports in Arabic have described the base near Rmaylan, Syria, with Americans helping expand the runway as low-flying, unmarked helicopters make daily trips to and from Turkey.

    On May 6, U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, didn’t exactly deny the existence of the airstrip when asked about it. “The soon to be 300 American forces working in Syria need to be resupplied,” Warren wrote. “Aerial resupply only makes good sense.”

Obama ran as a peace candidate.

Hillary Clinton, the next likely president, is about as bellicose as Dick Cheney.

Our policy of military interventions, and followup interventions to fix our first interventions has made us less safe, killed thousands of our soldiers, and around ¼ million civilians.

We have destabilized these societies, and strengthened terrorist organizations and made us far less safe, but our solution is more war.

This is insane.

Getting the Story Wrong

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It appears that back in 2012, the CIA proposed yet another of its regime change ideas to the President, and he decided not to proceed with these plans.

Given our record on deliberate regime change, our best “success” led to the Mullas in Iran, this is a good thing, but this hasn’t stopped the CIA from claiming that Obama stopped a program that could have prevented the rise of ISIS:

The CIA in 2012 proposed a detailed covert action plan designed to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, but President Obama declined to approve it, current and former U.S. officials tell NBC News.

It’s long been known that then-CIA Director David Petraeus recommended a program to secretly arm and train moderate Syrian rebels in 2012 to pressure Assad. But a book to be published Tuesday by a former CIA operative goes further, revealing that senior CIA officials were pushing a multi-tiered plan to engineer the dictator’s ouster. Former American officials involved in the discussions confirmed that to NBC News.

In an exclusive television interview with NBC News, the former officer, Doug Laux, describes spending a year in the Middle East meeting with Syrian rebels and intelligence officers from various partner countries. Laux, who spoke some Arabic, was the eyes and ears on the ground for the CIA’s Syria task force, he says.

Laux, an Indiana native who joined the CIA in 2005 at age 23, says he wrote an “ops plan” that included all the elements he believed were necessary to remove Assad. He was not allowed to describe the plan, but he writes that his program “had gained traction” in Washington. His boss, the head of the Syria task force, regularly briefed members of the Congressional intelligence committees on what Laux was seeing, hearing and suggesting.

A former senior intelligence official said Laux’s ideas—many of them shared by other members of the CIA’s Syrian task force–were heavily represented in the plan that was ultimately presented to Obama.

But the president, who must approve all covert action, never gave the green light. The White House and the CIA declined to comment.

You may have noticed over the past few years that there are no “Moderate Syrian Rebels”, and there never have been.

Also, we know what happens when our quest for regime change hits reality, clusterf%$#s like Libya,

Also, when see that the plan was backed by David Petraeus, who turned the CIA into a drone based Murder, Inc., which served to generate more terrorists than it killed, the fact that Obama did not authorize this is a good thing.

Our moves toward regime change have never turned out well for us, or the citizenry of the nations where they are directed.

This is a Big F%$# You to Turkey

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Russia may be reducing its military presence in Syria, but they have started shipping weapons to the Kurds.

That sound you hear is the sound of Turkish heads exploding:

Russia delivered the first of five planned shipments of anti-aircraft weapons to Kurdish troops in northern Iraq. According to Russian experts, Moscow officially revealed this fact for the first time with the intention to change its Middle East policy and emphasize the importance of the Kurds in the region.

In Iraq arrived first shipment of Russian weapons to Kurdish volunteer movement “Peshmerga”, who fight against the “Islamic state” terrorist organization in the region. Senior officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over anti-aircraft weapons ZU-23-2 (23 mm caliber) to the forces of resistance.

„Shipment of weapons arrived on March 14. It is intended for Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the handover of weapons was held with the presense of Ambassador and Consul General of Russia in Iraq, and Deputy Chief of Staff of “Peshmerga”, RIA Novosti quoted Artjomova Grigorjan, attaché of the Russian general consulate in the Iraqi city of Erbil.

According to him, the parties discuss the further delivery of the weapons. “After the handover of weapons Russian ambassador said that this is not the last delivery. He stressed that Russia hopes “Peshmerga” and the Iraqi armed forces will use this weapon to win against “Islamic state”, said the Russian attaché.

Do not confuse the ZU-23-2 with the ZSU23-4 radar guided self-propelled antiaircraft system.

The ZU is optically guided towed system.

In a modern battlefield, its antiaircraft capabilities are limited, but it is relative mobile and capable in a surface to surface mode.

More importantly, it implies that the Russians might be willing to send more capable surface to air systems, such as the ZSU, or surplus SA-6 or SA-8 systems, which they could  use against Turkish air strikes.

Let the shrieks or outrage from Ankara begin.

Russia Begins Pullout, Declares Syrian Goals Achieved

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When was the last time that the US military declared a victory that actually involved removing troops from a theater>

I’m thinking that it was 1918, because, we are still in Germany, Japan, Korea, etc.

The only place where we’ve actually gotten all the way out in my lifetime is Southeast Asia, and that weren’t no victory.

The Russians had limited goals in Syrian, and the announcement of this move appears to be a part of achieving its goals, maintaining a stable ally in the region, and preventing the return of South Caucuses Jihadis to Russia:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday ordered the withdrawal of the “main part” of Russian forces in Syria, a surprise move that reflected what he called the Kremlin’s achievement of nearly all its objectives in the war-torn country.

The news upended expectations in Western capitals and among ordinary Syrians, setting off fevered speculation about Russia’s intentions, much as Mr. Putin’s unexpected military plunge into the Syrian battlefield five months ago changed the course of the war.

Perhaps the most urgent questions were how the move would affect the war’s outcome and what it meant for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose rule had been increasingly threatened by a string of military losses before Russian forces backed him up.

The Russian decision could signal a new confidence in Mr. Assad’s stability or an effort to pressure him to negotiate with his political adversaries — or both.

Mr. Putin has made his move at a particularly critical moment, as the upheaval in Syria enters its sixth year and a United Nations mediator in Geneva tries to revive peace talks to stop the war, which has displaced millions and created a humanitarian catastrophe.

A Russian military pullback will not leave Mr. Assad’s forces completely alone, because he also has support from Iran and from Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the Kremlin made clear it was keeping its new air base in the coastal Mediterranean province of Latakia, in addition to the naval refueling station it has kept nearby in Tartus since Soviet times.

And we are still hip deep in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and creating more terrorists around the world by our aggressive, and not particularly discriminant, drone war.

How to Deal With Blackmail

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Turkey is (rather successfully) attempting to blackmail Europe over their handling of the refugee crisis:

Shopping in a Turkish bazaar is never wise for the novice.

The EU learned that lesson the hard way when it discovered the carefully crafted refugee deal it believed it had sold to Turkish leaders in the run-up to Monday’s summit turned out to be little more than the beginning of the negotiation.

Turkey made Europe a counter offer early Monday that six months ago would have prompted EU negotiators to get up and walk out. To European eyes, the proposal Ankara put on the table read more like a ransom note: €3 billion in refugee aid in addition to the €3 billion already pledged, full-scale visa liberalization for Turkish citizens in the EU by June, an acceleration of Turkey’s application to join the bloc as well as a pledge to resettle many of the Syrian refugees Turkey takes in.

Turkey’s message to Europe was clear: You need us more than we need you.

That Europe is not just considering the Turkish proposal, but is likely to end up accepting most, if not all of it, is testament to the desperation of the Union and its largest member, Germany, to secure a deal to limit the flow of refugees and end a crisis that is testing EU solidarity like nothing in its history.

Seeing as how Erdogan is trying to turn Turkey into an theocratic dictatorship, you don’t want to do things like speed Turkey’s entry into the EU.

The way I see this, there are two options:

  • Roll over.
  • Start sending large numbers of Turks home to “make space for the refugees”, and  clamp down on remittances, which cripples the Turkish economy.

I recommend that the leaders of Europe choose the 2nd option.

Using Turkish gastarbeiters as human shields is not a particularly laudable thing, but the Turks are using the Syrian refugees as human shields as well, and Turkey continues to support ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates driving the refugee flow in Syria.

The Turks won’t stop fomenting the civil war in Syria, nor trying to exploit and exacerbate the refugee crisis until the cost to them become prohibitive.

I Did Not Expect This from The Boston Globe

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It’s not the editorial board, but they just published an OP/ED calling out our incoherent and contradictory and ineffective policy in Syria:

Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.

This month, people in Aleppo have finally seen glimmers of hope. The Syrian army and its allies have been pushing militants out of the city. Last week they reclaimed the main power plant. Regular electricity may soon be restored. The militants’ hold on the city could be ending.

Militants, true to form, are wreaking havoc as they are pushed out of the city by Russian and Syrian Army forces. “Turkish-Saudi backed ‘moderate rebels’ showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars,” one Aleppo resident wrote on social media. The Beirut-based analyst Marwa Osma asked, “The Syrian Arab Army, which is led by President Bashar Assad, is the only force on the ground, along with their allies, who are fighting ISIS — so you want to weaken the only system that is fighting ISIS?”

This does not fit with Washington’s narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news reports suggest that Aleppo has been a “liberated zone” for three years but is now being pulled back into misery.

………

Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra, is made up of “rebels” or “moderates,” not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise. Saudi Arabia is portrayed as aiding freedom fighters when in fact it is a prime sponsor of ISIS. Turkey has for years been running a “rat line” for foreign fighters wanting to join terror groups in Syria, but because the United States wants to stay on Turkey’s good side, we hear little about it. Nor are we often reminded that although we want to support the secular and battle-hardened Kurds, Turkey wants to kill them. Everything Russia and Iran do in Syria is described as negative and destabilizing, simply because it is they who are doing it — and because that is the official line in Washington.

………

Politicians may be forgiven for distorting their past actions. Governments may also be excused for promoting whatever narrative they believe best suits them. Journalism, however, is supposed to remain apart from the power elite and its inbred mendacity. In this crisis it has failed miserably.

Americans are said to be ignorant of the world. We are, but so are people in other countries. If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. It can do so with popular support because many Americans — and many journalists — are content with the official story. In Syria, it is: “Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran! Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends to support peace!” This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.

This is the sort of thing I would expect to see in the Guardian or the BBC, not in a major US paper with a closet full of Pulitzers.

Our incoherent policies, and our “allies” who work for terrorists are generally terra incognita for our mainstream media.

Have I Said before That Our Policies in Syria Are Completely Incoherent?

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We are now in a situation where our Pentagon supported rebels are at war with out CIA supported rebels:

American proxies are now at war with each other in Syria.

 Officials with Syrian rebel battalions that receive covert backing from one arm of the U.S. government told BuzzFeed News that they recently began fighting rival rebels supported by another arm of the U.S. government.

 The infighting between American proxies is the latest setback for the Obama administration’s Syria policy and lays bare its contradictions as violence in the country gets worse.

 The confusion is playing out on the battlefield — with the U.S. effectively engaged in a proxy war with itself. “It’s very strange, and I cannot understand it,” said Ahmed Othman, the commander of the U.S.-backed rebel battalion Furqa al-Sultan Murad, who said he had come under attack from U.S.-backed Kurdish militants in Aleppo this week.

 Furqa al-Sultan Murad receives weapons from the U.S. and its allies as part of a covert program, overseen by the CIA, that aids rebel groups struggling to overthrow the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, according to rebel officials and analysts tracking the conflict.

 The Kurdish militants, on the other hand, receive weapons and support from the Pentagon as part of U.S. efforts to fight ISIS. Known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, they are the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s strategy against the extremists in Syria and coordinate regularly with U.S. airstrikes.

 Yet as Assad and his Russian allies have routed rebels around Aleppo in recent weeks — rolling back Islamist factions and moderate U.S. allies alike, as aid groups warn of a humanitarian catastrophe — the YPG has seized the opportunity to take ground from these groups, too.

And now we also have the Turks demanding that the US cease aiding the Kurds, who are arguably the most effective opposition to ISIS:

The U.S. said it won’t break off ties to a Kurdish militia that’s fighting Islamic State in Syria, rebuffing the demands of NATO member Turkey, which blames the group for a bombing in the capital Ankara this week.

Turkey says Wednesday’s attack on a military bus, which killed 28 people, was carried out by the PKK and its Syrian affiliates. The U.S. agrees with Turkey that the PKK, which has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s Kurdish regions for three decades, is a terrorist group. But the status of the Kurdish fighters in Syria has been straining ties between the NATO allies, as their interests there diverge after more than five years of war.

The U.S. says defeating Islamic State, also known as Daesh, is the overwhelming priority. Turkey has signed up for that goal, but it’s also trying to prop up rebels in northwest Syria fighting against President Bashar al-Assad, whose Russian-backed army threatens to encircle them. The Syrian Kurds are in position to cut off vital supply lines to Aleppo, where the opposition groups are holed up, and their territorial gains may also set an example for Kurds seeking autonomy inside Turkey.

So, we are fighting ISIS, as are the Kurds, and we are allies with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, who have supported ISIS, and oppose the Kurds.

And now Ankara and Riyadh are looking to mount a ground war to “put down ISIS” but is really intend to create a fundamentalist Sunni regime and put down the Kurds.

Confused enough yet?

This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get out of Control and We’ll Be Lucky to Live through It.

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Syria, looks to be going to be going completely pear shaped.

With advances by the Syrian government and by the Kurdish YPG threatening to cut off Turkey’s Islamist proxies in Syria, Ankara is shelling the Kurds, attacking what are (for now, at least) US Allies:

France’s foreign ministry has urged Turkey to end its assault on Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

 In a statement (in French) it said it was “worried about the continued worsening of the situation”.

 On Saturday, Turkey began shelling the militia, which it says is linked to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

 The fighters, the YPG militia based in Syria, have rejected Turkey’s demand to leave areas it has seized, saying Islamists would return if it left.

 Turkey’s assault is a new thread in an already-complex conflict that has drawn in competing regional powers.

 Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu insisted on Sunday that Turkey “will not permit the [Kurdish militia] to carry out aggressive acts”.

 “Our security forces gave the necessary response and will continue to do so,” Mr Davutoglu said.

 Syria has also condemned the Turkish action as a violation of its sovereignty and asked the UN Security Council to intervene.

What’s more, the Turkey machinations in Syria, along with its heavy handed suppression of the Kurds in south east Anatolia has led to a renewed insurgency inside Turkey:

It was midday on a Thursday at the end of December when Rozerin Çukur left her home, supposedly to pick up class notes from a friend. She never returned.

 Rozerin wandered through the narrow streets of Sur, the tangled old town neighborhood in Diyarbakir, a city of one million in southeastern Turkey. An attractive 17-year-old, Rozerin was wearing her school uniform and carrying a book and a pen in her bag.

 “Just a few hours later,” her father says, “my daughter was inside the war.” She supposedly joined the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), a group supported by the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and which since September has been fighting against the Turkish army in the streets of Diyarbakir, using Kalashnikovs and booby traps.

 Rozerin was killed by a single shot to the head. Since January 8, her dead body has been lying in the sealed-off old town of Diyarbakir. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the city’s ancient heart has also long been the hub of Kurdish resistance. Rozerin’s parents are holding a vigil in a community center in the city together with dozens of other parents whose children have been killed in the most recent civil war in southeastern Turkey. The parents say they only want one thing: to be able to provide a decent burial for their children. But the Turkish state, they say, has made it impossible to recover their children’s bodies.

 State officials view the dead young men and women as terrorists — as violent members of the PKK. Parents say they have been told that they can enter the old town in small groups, but that Turkish officials are demanding that they remove the weapons from the hands of the dead. And the parents do not want to touch the weapons. “The soldiers,” they fear, “would shoot immediately.”

 ………

 The state is using extreme force against the PKK. Indeed, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently announced that he intended to annihilate the fighting force and promised to continue the battle “until the area is cleansed of all terrorists.” There is no “Kurdish question,” he said, just a “terror problem.”

 Bitter house-to-house fighting of the kind seen in Diyarbakir is also taking place in other surrounding cities. The PKK focused its earlier attacks primarily on military targets and police stations. But since the state has laid siege to the cities, the radical Kurdish youth movement YDG-H has taken up the fight there as well.

 Until recently, the YDG-H was seen as a collection of disillusioned youth who defended themselves from state violence with rocks and Molotov cocktails. But now that the government has set its sights on ridding the cities of PKK sympathizers, the group has armed and organized itself with the PKK’s help. They are now fighting on the frontlines while experienced PKK fighters are hiding in the Qandil Mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan.

After nearly 50 years of the “Kurdish problem” Turkey seemed to have come to an accommodation with the Kurds in the late 1990s, and now Erdogan has blown it all up.

And now the Turks and house of Saud are threatening to invade Syria:

The Turkish military has hit Kurdish and Syrian regime targets as Ankara considered a ground assault with Saudi troops, further complicating efforts to end the war just days after the US and Russia agreed on a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria within a week.

………

In an interview with AFP released on Friday, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said he “doesn’t rule out” that Turkey and Saudi Arabia would intervene militarily in Syria, but said his armed forces “will certainly confront it”.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey both staunchly support rebels seeking to oust Assad, and see his overthrow as essential for ending Syria’s five-year civil war that has cost more than 260,000 lives.

They fear the west is losing its appetite to overthrow him on the assumption he is “the lesser of two evils” compared with Isis.

Neither the House of Saud nor Turkey are our allies in Syria.

Riyadh is interesting in extending repressive Sunni hegemony in Syria, and Turkey is interested in reassembling a a sphere of influence in the area of the former Ottoman Empire.

The technical term for the governments in Ankara and Saudi Arabia is f%$#ing nuts.

We should not be on their side in any way shape, or form.

F%$# Me, I Agree with Chuck Hagel

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He was generally clueless as a Senator and as Secretary of Defense, but his statement that the US focus on deposing Bashar al Assad is crippling us diplomatically and militarily is spot on:

The US has backed itself into a corner by insisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be removed from power before the Obama administration will work with Russia and Iran to fight the Islamic State group, former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said.

“We have allowed ourselves to get caught and paralyzed on our Syrian policy by the statement that ‘Assad must go,’” Hagel said at a Wednesday event hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Russia and Iran have said they are willing to join with the US in fighting ISIS, but not at the expense of Assad, a longtime regional ally for both nations. The US continues to insist that no serious discussions on working with those two nations can occur until Assad is removed.

………

The focus on Assad, Hagel indicated, has clouded the situation.

“Assad was never our enemy. A brutal dictator? Yes. There are a lot of brutal dictators out there. I’m not for brutal dictators. But we should have learned from Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi, you can take a brutal dictator out but you better understand what you may get in return,” Hagel said. “Let’s get to this platform of stability.”

Our policy is incoherent.

Arguably it has been as incoherent under Obama as it was under Bush, notwithstanding their claims of having, “Don’t do stupid sh%$,” as a central tenet.

This is not a problem of any particular Presidential administration.  It is a problem with the commonly accepted foreign policy beliefs, a sort of Council of Foreign Relations consensus, that is dysfunctional and delusional.

What it Means to Have Meaningful and Achievable Goals

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Notwithstanding all the reports from western that the Russians are somehow or other are immersing themselves into a quagmire, a military analysis of the Russian campaign in Syria has concluded that their campaign is well conceived and likely to achieve its goals at a relatively low cost:

Three months into his military intervention in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved his central goal of stabilizing the Assad government and, with the costs relatively low, could sustain military operations at this level for years, U.S. officials and military analysts say.

That assessment comes despite public assertions by President Barack Obama and top aides that Putin has embarked on an ill-conceived mission in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that it will struggle to afford and that will likely fail.

“I think it’s indisputable that the Assad regime, with Russian military support, is probably in a safer position than it was,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity. Five other U.S. officials interviewed by Reuters concurred with the view that the Russian mission has been mostly successful so far and is facing relatively low costs.

………

Yet since its campaign began on Sept. 30, Russia has suffered minimal casualties and, despite domestic fiscal woes, is handily covering the operation’s cost, which analysts estimate at $1-2 billion a year. The war is being funded from Russia’s regular annual defense budget of about $54 billion, a U.S. intelligence official said.

………

Putin has said his intervention is aimed at stabilizing the Assad government and helping it fight the Islamic State group, though Western officials and Syrian opposition groups say its air strikes mostly have targeted moderate rebels.

The western response to the Russian intervention, which, BTW, is actually legal under international law because the sovereign government of Syria has requested the aid, is completely incoherent.

Case in point, the absurd and self contradictory statements by the head of Human Rights Watch: On December 25 of this year he said that the killing of Zahran Alloush is an attempt to eliminate any moderate opposition, while on December 30 of this year, he claimed that the initial release of Alloush from prison in 2011 was an attempt to taint the opposition with a jihadist brush.

Note that the Russians are also supporting the Kurds, while the NATO forces are both supporting the Kurds (most of NATO) and bombing them (our NATO “allies”the Turks)

The Russian strategy appears to be effective because their goals are limited, and not self-contradictory:

Rather than pushing back the opposition, Russia may be settling for defending Assad’s grip on key population centers that include the heartland of his minority Alawite sect, said the U.S. intelligence official.

Russia is taking advantage of the operation to test new weapons in battlefield conditions and integrate them into its tactics, the intelligence official said. It is refining its use of unarmed surveillance drones, the official added.

“The Russians didn’t go blindly into this,” said the U.S. intelligence official, adding that they “are getting some benefit out of the cost.”

………

Vasily Kashin, a Moscow-based analyst, said the war is not financially stressing Russia.

“All the available data shows us that the current level of military effort is completely insignificant for the Russian economy and Russian budget,” said Kashin, of the Center for Analyses of Strategies and Technologies.

“It can be carried on at the same level year after year after year,” he said.

Compare this to the US policy:

  • Support regime change in Syria with a goal of a democratic and secular replacement.
  • Support for Saudi and Turkish efforts supporting Sunni Salafist Jihadi forces,which included the creation of ISIS.
  • Opposition to ISIS, the declaration that they are of a significant threat to the US, and supporting a massive air campaign against them.
  • Support of Kurdish forces fighting ISIS.
  • Allowing Turkish attacks against those same Kurdish forces by Turkey.
  • Supporting “moderate” rebels that collapse as soon as they end up in conflict with Jihadi rebels.  (Said support ends up in ISIS hands)
  • Demanding the removal of the Assad regime.
  • Demanding that government remains intact in some form.

This is the stupidest big of mind f%$#ery since Johnson and Kennedy’s “Best and Brightest” believed that they could win the war in Vietnam.

Basically, the Russians are following Barack Obama’s stated policy, “Don’t do stupid sh%$,” and Barack Obama is ignoring ignoring this policy, which is why their strategy appears to be gaining traction, and ours does not.

H/t Moon of Alabama.

I Think that We Just Had an Outbreak of Sanity at Foggy Bottom

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In a major policy shift Secretary of State John Kerry has just specifically stated that regime change in Syria the US is not seeking regime change in Syria:

Secretary of State John Kerry pressed ahead on Tuesday in the effort to organize a new round of talks aimed at ending the Syrian civil war that could also align the United States and Russia more closely in strategies for fighting the Islamic State.

After an extended trip to Paris for climate talks, Mr. Kerry met for nearly four hours on Tuesday evening with President Vladimir V. Putin in the Kremlin, in talks intended to smooth differences over a planned round of Syria negotiations scheduled to take place in New York on Friday.

The United States and Russia have long been at odds over Syria, with Russia standing firmly by President Bashar al-Assad and the United States backing the rebels seeking his ouster. A previous attempt to broker a solution to the conflict failed, and it remains unclear whether the two sides will reach a compromise this time.

Among the issues to be decided in the run-up to the proposed talks is which of the dozens of militias fighting in Syria should speak for the Syrian opposition, and which should be designated as terrorist organizations.

On Tuesday, the diplomats said they had narrowed a gap on defining which Syrian militias belonged on a terrorist list. A final list may be ready Friday, Mr. Kerry said.

………

Mr. Kerry appeared, more carefully than on previous occasions, to couch America’s insistence that Mr. Assad leave office as a recondition of any settlement.

The United States, he said, was not seeking Mr. Assad’s ouster per se, but rather considers it unlikely that he could preside over a successful settlement.

“The United States and our partners are not seeking regime change in Syria,” Mr. Kerry said. Syrian opposition groups arriving for talks Friday in New York should not demand as a condition of sitting down that Mr. Assad depart immediately, Mr. Kerry said, a position Russia calls a nonstarter for negotiations.

“We see Syria fundamentally very similarly,” Mr. Kerry said. “We want the same outcomes, we see the same dangers, we understand the same challenges.” He added that the countries are “honest with differences.”

(Emphasis mine)

It’s nice that the US is finally distancing itself from the destructive and dangerous agenda of the House of Saud and the rest of the petty Persian Gulf monarchs, if only a bit.