Russian involvement in Syrian crisis

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Putin Says US Has ‘Mush for Brains’ for Failing to Cooperate in Syria
It’s good for both but US won’t let Russia help it

NEIL MacFARQUHAR | (The New York Times (Excerpt)) | Russia Insider



Excerpt from an article that originally appeared in The New York Times

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia criticized the United States and others on Tuesday for what he said was their lack of cooperation with the Russian military campaign in Syria, suggesting that they had “mush for brains.”

Mr. Putin was responding to widespread accusations in the West that Russian warplanes were targeting practically every group opposed to the Syrian government except the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. He complained that while the Russian government had asked for the coordinates of the groups that should or should not be attacked, the United States had not responded to either request.

“Recently, we have offered the Americans: ‘Give us objects that we shouldn’t target.’ Again, no answer,” he said. “It seems to me that some of our partners have mush for brains.”

In Washington, defense and military officials have privately described the reluctance to work with Russia as a trust issue. First, they fear that the Russians might use the coordinates to target the groups the Americans do not want attacked. Second, Syrian opposition groups are already suspicious that the United States is coordinating with Russia on the attacks, a perception the Pentagon does not want to feed, the officials said.

Mr. Putin, speaking at a forum for international investors, also said that Washington did not seem interested in a visit he had proposed by a high-level political and military delegation to coordinate actions in Syria. The Russian delegation would be led by the prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, and include senior military and intelligence officials, he said.
_________________________________________
Commentary: The US concerns are reasonable. It is very likely that if the US gives the coordinates of the “moderate terrorists” to Russia, the very next day Russian Sukhois will pound those coordinates. If the US does not give coordinates, then they will have no other option but to allow Russsia the alibi that they bombed the “moderate terrorists” because the US refused to cooperate with Russia to save the “moderate terrorists.”
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Has the Russian Syrian Intervention Forced Obama to Ditch Turkey for Kurds?
Obama is increasing his support of Syria Kurds much to Erdogan’s displeasure

(Moon of Alabama) | Russia Insider



Originally appeared at Moon of Alabama

It's official! The New York Times finally admits that the “CIA rebels” in Syria who received tons of TOW anti-tank missiles are working under the field command of al-Qaeda/Jabhat al Nusra:

Rebel commanders scoffed when asked about reports of the delivery of 500 TOWs from Saudi Arabia, saying it was an insignificant number compared with what is available. Saudi Arabia in 2013 ordered more than 13,000 of them. Given that American weapons contracts require disclosure of the “end user,” insurgents said they were being delivered with Washington’s approval.

But, be assured, because these “CIA rebels” feel bad about it, they are still “moderate” or somewhat “relative moderate.”

Advancing alongside the Islamist groups, and sometimes aiding them, have been several of the relatively secular groups, like the Free Syrian Army, which have gained new prominence and status because of their access to the TOWs.



It is a tactical alliance that Free Syrian Army commanders describe as an uncomfortable marriage of necessity, because they cannot operate without the consent of the larger and stronger Nusra Front. But Mr. Assad and his allies cite the arrangement as proof that there is little difference between insurgent groups, calling them all terrorists that are legitimate targets.
That these “relative secular” al-Qaeda auxiliaries are threatening suicide attacks against Russians only confirms their secularism. Judging from the reader comments to that NYT piece the U.S. people are pretty aghast about this now openly admitted cooperation. They, and a realist op-ed in the NYT, call for cooperation with Russia and the Syrian government.

There may already be more cooperation between Russia and the U.S. than we can see. At least that is what the Turkish President Erdogan perceives.

Yesterday the U.S. dropped 50 tons of small weapons and munition to Kurdish fighters in north east Syria. According the U.S. justification for this those Kurds along with some Arab Syrian tribals are supposed to attack the Islamic State in Raqqa. (Those Arab tribals are by the way just a bunch of worthless thieves. This according to the Voice of America(!).) But the Kurds do not seem to know about those Raqqa plans anyway. They have different aims:

U.S. officials hope the YPG will now turn its attention to Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the defacto capital of the Islamic State, which lies just 60 miles south of Tal Abyad, a border town the YPG seized from the Islamic State in June, with U.S. help.

But PYD spokesman Can said the Kurdish group’s first priority is to link the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, northwest of the Syrian city of Aleppo, with Kobani, the Kurdish enclave northeast of Aleppo. That would mean clearing the Islamic State from villages along 60 miles of the Turkey-Syria border, in particular the border town of Jarablus.

“Our prime and most important goal is to liberate Jarablus and to connect Kobani with Afrin,” Can told McClatchy. Capturing Raqqa, a mostly Arab city, is “not really” a PYD objective, he said. “Not for now,” he said.

That is just as I suspected the Kurds to react. But why did the U.S. officials claim that these Kurds and the collection of thieves would attack Raqqa? Did they not coordinate with them or was that Raqqa story a ruse?

The Turks seem to assume such and they accuse the U.S. as well as Russia of coordinating with the Kurds to seal the border with Turkey: Turkey warns U.S., Russia against backing Kurdish militia in Syria

Turkey has warned the United States and Russia it will not tolerate Kurdish territorial gains by Kurdish militia close to its frontiers in north-western Syria, two senior officials said.

“This is clear cut for us and there is no joking about it,” one official said of the possibility of Syrian Kurdish militia crossing the Euphrates to extend control along Turkish borders from Iraq's Kurdistan region towards the Mediterranean coast.



“The PYD has been getting closer with both the United States and Russia of late. We view the PYD as a terrorist group and we want all countries to consider the consequences of their cooperation,” one of the Turkish officials said.

Turkey suspects Russia, which launched air strikes in Syria two weeks ago, has also been lending support to the YPG and PYD.

“With support from Russia, the PYD is trying to capture land between Jarablus and Azaz, going west of the Euphrates. We will never accept this,” the official said.
Is there now really coordination between Russia and the U.S. to seal the Syrian-Turkish border witch would cut off the Islamic State but also the al-Qaeda “CIA rebels” from their supplies? This would destroy all Turkish plans for Syria: a “safe zone” in Syria under Turkman control, a Sunni ruled pipeline corridor from Qatar to Europe, the Turkish-Ottoman annexation of Aleppo. Turkey would be pushed back into a secondary role.

Do Russia and the U.S. now really make common cause and decided to screw Erdogan? This would make sense if the destruction of the Islamic State and all other terrorists in Syria is the common aim. That would be a change in the Obama administration's policy. Up to now it only helped the “salafist principality” to grow and never seriously attacked it.

And if there is such cooperation why does the U.S still deliver thousands of TOWs to al-Qaeda which only kill more Syrians and prolong the fighting?
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Syria Only Has One Legitimate Army
As Russian airstrikes flush out CIA-backed terrorists Syrians find their ‘conspiracy theories’ about US mercenaries are fact

David Macilwain | Russia Insider


It fights under the pan-Arab tricolor

It was a good week for Syrians. It wasn’t just that Russia finally ‘stumped up’ when their backs were to the wall - defying the doubters within and the tricksters abroad who said Moscow would do a deal with the West and abandon them. What has surely boosted Syrians’ spirits more is to finally have their conspiracy ‘theories’ proven by their enemy’s own admission. For four and a half years they had kept the faith, supporting their President and Army, while the Western world besieged them with every war game and mind game in its repertoire.

But it’s necessary to explain, because as usual our own leaders and their servile media threw up some remarkable deceptions when their double game in Syria was exposed. Taking the West at its word that it was trying to destroy Islamic State terrorists, (though evidently not trying very hard), Russia joined in the fight following Syria’s invitation, and then proudly displayed its successes in destroying multiple terrorist targets with US-style ‘drones-eye’ videos. The American reaction to the strikes was illuminating, though that light wasn’t capable of penetrating the dark forest of Western media. While Syrians discovered that the stories about the CIA training 10,000 ‘rebel fighters’ in Jordan over the last several years were not just some ‘conspiracy theory,’ as Russia’s bombs uncovered them in surprising places, Western audiences barely noticed America’s big lie.

It’s not as though the massive support to insurgent groups by the CIA has been exactly a secret, even being revealed publicly by a loose-tongued Joe Biden, yet all the while the White House ― presumably connected in some way with its own intelligence agency ― has maintained that it is ‘reluctant to supply arms to ‘rebels’ in case they fall into the wrong hands.’ This has then become the only narrative in Western media, and in the minds of its audience. They would never think or suggest, as some might, that these weapons are already in the wrong hands even before they leave the US, nor that selling them to Saudi Arabia constitutes putting US weapons into the wrong hands either. (reportedly Saudi Arabia bought over 13,000 anti-tank missiles from the US in 2013, some of which are now being used by the Saudi-Turkish backed ‘terrorist’ Army of Conquest against the Syrian Arab Army’s new Russian assisted offensive)

It seems bizarre that commentators and authorities in the West can even countenance the idea that such a direct or indirect arming of an insurrection against a sovereign state could be justified or legal. Claims under the newly concocted and expedient doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect’ can surely only justify weapons for self-defence, which can hardly apply to jihadist mercenaries ‘defending themselves’ from the Syrian army, while launching car-bombs and missiles at the communities the army is protecting. Indeed it is ironically that army which could cite ‘responsibility to protect’ Syrian citizens as a justifiable pretext to kill or capture these terrorists.

Sadly, perhaps tragically for Syria, there is little sign that the organisers of the ‘Syrian conspiracy’ (and it is now clear that’s what it is) intend to give up on their goals and give in to Russia’s strategic dominance until they are forced to. Every day sees some new propaganda tactic or military or political development. Within a day of Russia’s cruise missiles striking where it hurt, ‘the West’ came up with a new ruse ― ‘Islamic state forces had advanced towards Aleppo because Russia had bombed the ‘rebel forces’ who had been keeping them at bay!’ This turned out to be a double lie, because those ‘moderate rebels’ have actually been immoderately bombarding Aleppo’s residents and fighting the Syrian army, and reportedly had ‘allowed’ IS to take over some territory to the north. But with this as a pretext, the White House announced that the US would now just be going for the ‘equip’ part of its 'train and equip’ program supplying weapons directly to ‘vetted leaders’ of insurgent groups. (as one of the ‘deflections’ suggested above, the US had made much of the failure of this program, and how ‘only 4 or 5’ or its ‘moderate rebels’ remained on the battlefield, out of the non-covert training program) Although the new assitance to ‘opposition forces’ was nominally about fighting ISIS, the rhetoric was that they would also be fighting ‘Assad,’ ‘because he is a greater threat to Syrians!’

All this is only part of a bigger ‘lie,’ because ‘Islamic State’ is actually present throughout Syria and fighting alongside other terrorist groups against the Syrian army and its allies. ( Witness a missile attack on the Russian consulate in Damascus, claimed by IS today, protesting against Russia’s bombing campaign while Syrians demonstrated in support of it)

As Vladimir Putin observed ― Syria only has one legitimate army, and it’s as simple as that. Why can’t we understand something so simple, and why do we continue to be fooled by our leaders as they ruthlessly advance the Syrian regime change project, regardless of the cost to innocent Syrian lives?

In a second part to this story I’ll look back on the origins of the Syrian armed insurrection, and the signs of its planning long before March 2011.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Another village liberated from CIA backed "moderate" terrorists (Not much gore):
 
Last edited:

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Russia's Real Purpose In Syria
A good commentary on how the Syrian Crisis and Russia's involvement ties out to the Houthi rebellion, Saudis trying to get hold of Pakistani nukes, India being opposed to Saudis getting nukes, and Russia and Iran dominating the Middle East.

 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Here Is What Syria, Russia Are Planning for Jihadis Holding NW Syria
An analysis of how the coming Syrian-Russian push in the direction of the Turkish border may go

(Moon of Alabama) | Russia Insider



Originally appeared at Moon of Alabama

Someone from Texas made this excellent map (below) of the current situation in north-west Syria.

The plain between Hama and Idleb is likely the place of a coming big Syrian attack. The Syrian army and allied positions are in red and the CIA mercenary and Jihadi positions are green.



click for full size

In north Latakia, where there is currently preparatory fighting in Salma (Russian TV video with an interesting comment on Syrian troop moral). The aim is to kick the enemy northward and out of the country and to secure the border with Turkey. The area must be cleaned to prevent any surprises against Latakia and the Russian bases there. The attack should then move further to the north-east where the intermediate target is Jisr a Shugur and then along the M4 highway towards Idleb.

At the same time a two pronged attack is planned in the north Hama plain to follow along the M5 highway northward also in the direction of Idleb (2d map). There have been reports in U.S. media that recent fighting there was costly for the Syrian army as the CIA mercenaries had lots of TOW anti-tank missiles to take out Syrian armor. But the 30 tank kills the opposition reports claimed were not real. Eight TOW impacts have been confirmed and not all of those were kills. The attack by the Syrian side was not very serious yet. It was rather reconnaissance by force to find out where the enemy might have strong or weak points.

The big attack will start only when reinforcements have arrived and the Russian are able to fly more air attacks per day.

Expected reinforcements are:

Al-haydareyeen Iraqis Forces (2000 fighters), the Fatimids Afghan forces (2000 fighters), the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (2,000 fighters) and the elite of Hezbollah (1000 fighter)

The civil airport in Latakia has been closed to civil traffic and will be used by the Russian airforce to support the upcoming attack. This is necessary as the average number of sorties a small airport with one landing strip can handle is only about 100 sorties per day. With a second active airport now available some 200 to 300 sorties/day will be available to support the Syrian army. The Syrian air-force will of course add its own capacity to these numbers.

New artillery arrived too, mostly multiple rocket system, which in typical Russian war fashion will be intensely used against the lines of the TOW handlers.

To get an impression of what is coming here a video of some moderate intense bombing by the Russian airforce and a video, filmed from far away, of an attack by a multiple rocket system with cluster ammunition. Such intense fire inevitably “softens” defensive lines and will lead to huge losses for the defenders.

After the CIA boss Brennan visited Saudi Arabia last week the Saudis delivered at least 500 U.S. made TOW anti-tank weapons to Syria. This in addition to lots of other new supplies and munitions. Al-Qaeda/al-Nusra also sent many of its men to reinforce their defensive line in the north Hama plain.

As usual in Russian influenced war fighting the Syrian army break through that heavily defended line will be enforced by massive fire from artillery and by hundreds of air attacks. Fleeing enemies will be pursued as fast as possible to prevent the build up of new defense lines.

The above is the plan as far as I can read it. But keep in mind that no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy. There will be unexpected losses and unexpected gains and the situation may change fast.

There is also fighting going on in lots of other places in Syria. Yesterday some insurgents in east Ghouta thought it wise to launch two mortars onto the Russian embassy in Damascus. The response came today with an intense bombardment by the Russian airforce followed by a renewed ground attack by Syrian forces. Notice that “western” media always say that east Ghouta is “besieged.” But in reality the area has always had plenty supplies of munitions and fighters which are coming in through the desert from Jordan.

Another fight is currently ongoing in the northeast of Aleppo. Some of the CIA mercenaries have lost positions there to the Islamic State and the Syrian army has used that infighting to make some gains on its own. It is now aiming (see maps) to connect its positions in north-north-east Aleppo with the besieged Shia towns of Fua and Kafraya some 10 kilometers north-west of the Aleppo outskirts. If successful this move would cut off the Syrian enemies who are within Aleppo as their supply route to Turkey would be blocked.

There is also fighting around Rastan between Homs and Hama where a cauldron encloses an unknown number of insurgents who block a major supply route. That bubble needs to be eliminated to clear the route and to allow for wider future operations.

There are several other more static fights around besieged military airports and in the Golan. The southern front around Deraa though is mostly quiet. No new mercenary attacks occurred. It seems that Jordan has joined Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in welcoming the Russian initiative and decided for now to stay out of the conflict. This split with the Wahhabi fraction of the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, will likely widen.

The situation in Syria has cleared in that the former thousands of “rebel” groups using guerrilla tactics are now down to two or three major actors and mostly conventional fighting. This can be countered by conventional means with massive and wide ranging operations. The Russians are one of the few masters of this style (having learned it from the German operations against them). If they take the lead in planning and commanding this I am quite confident that substantial results will be achieved.

Hizbullah cleared the western front of mercenaries and Wahhabis. Russian diplomacy quieted the southern front. Now the push comes to clear the north. It will take a while. Then the east, where the Islamic State rules with few capabilities but propaganda, will be cleaned up with little effort. Syria may become whole again.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Whoever Controls Eurasia Controls the World
The battle over Syria is part of a much larger - and longer-term - struggle for global hegemony

Hans-Christof Kraus | (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) | Russia Insider


There’s far more at stake than just Syria

This article originally appeared in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Translated from German by Nils Hansen

One can only be astounded at the scope of almost criminal naïveté, or even just plain ignorance, shown by many who are judging the Syrian crisis – in particular when it comes to revealing the background motives behind the tough game of tug-of-war in the UN Security Council, between America and the western powers on the one side and China and Russia on the other.

If one were to follow the narrative of the conflict in large parts of the western world, then the heart of the matter would seem to be only the question of whether or not the Syrian people could eventually be freed from a cruel dictator. Particularly in Germany, the lack of awareness seems to be limitless in the current discussion of this contest – up to the point of an alleged (although not confirmed) enquiry to the Russian government as to whether Russia would be ready to grant asylum to Assad should he be overthrown.

However, very different issues are at the core of this matter. The lines of conflict run where most German observers fail to notice them – chiefly because they have forgotten how to think in global-political and geostrategic terms. Viewed from a global-political angle, it is in the first instance irrelevant from the perspective of geostrategic considerations, whether the Syrians will be now, or in the future, ruled either by a dictator of the house of Assad, by a democratic government or at least one pretending to be democratic, or a radical Muslim regime.

A division into ‘World Island’ and ‘Heartland’

Around and after the year 1900, the world, the entire global land surface, was divided and mostly under the political reign of the Europeans and the Americans, the geostrategic thinkers of that time developed a completely new idea for global politics going forward.

The Anglo-Saxons, even though they in particular seemed invulnerable, for the first time had a reason to fear for their position in the world. British geographer and politician Halford Mackinder, shortly before the onset of the First World War, developed his extraordinarily momentous doctrine of the inferiority of the maritime global powers.

Whereas previously the maxim posed by American military historian Alfred T. Mahan had applied, stating the unassailability of globally acting maritime powers, Mackinder asserted the contrary. In his new analysis of the world’s land surface, he assigned the sea powers to the ‘Outer Insular Crescent’, while conceiving of Europe, Asia and Africa collectively as a gigantic supercontinent which he dubbed the ‘World Island’.

The core of this World Island was supposed to be the ‘Pivot Area’, which he found to be in northern and central Asia. According to Mackinder, seven out of eight of the world’s population were situated in the ‘Pivot Area’ and its surroundings, , as well as by far the largest share of globally available raw materials. Thus, the future rulers of the world were bound to be not the Anglo-Saxon maritime powers, so Mackinder argued, but possibly the very power (or group of powers) that would succeed in bringing the ‘Pivot Area’ completely under their control.

The debate about the worlds-politically decisive region on the earth

Not only the strong Anglo-Saxon distrust in the communist Soviet Union in the interwar period, but also the inexorably led war by America and Great Britain, fought to unconditional surrender against the two axis powers Germany and Japan, who were threatening the ‘Pivot Area’ from West and East, can only be understood against the backdrop of this geopolitical conception:

The nightmare of a pivot area jointly controlled by Germany and Japan, or by Germany alone in the worst case, in the heart of Eurasia. This situation had to be averted using all possible means. This was the primary and most important war aim of Roosevelt and Churchill, to which everything else was subordinated.

Still, before the end of the war, Mackinder’s teachings about the meaning of the pivot area were improved upon and slightly altered. Nicholas Spykman, the most significant American geo-politician of his time, had developed during the war the theory that it was not actually the ‘Pivot Area’, but rather its bordering area, the ‘Rim Land’, which was the geopolitically decisive region of the world. This ‘Rim Land’ reaches from Scandinavia across Central Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Arab and Near Eastern countries and India, to Indochina, Korea as well as Eastern and Northern China.

This was to be the truly decisive region of the World Island, of the whole Eurasian continent, and he who would succeed in subjugating the ‘Rim Land’ with its enormous population and undeletable stock of raw materials, would be the ruler of the earth or at least have the ability to force it’s will upon other powers, in particular upon the traditional maritime powers.

A ban on interventions by powers from outside the region?

Based not least of all on the premises of these fundamental analyses by Spykman, who died in 1943, it became the post-war foreign policy of the United States to ultimately abandon its traditional isolationism and henceforth develop into an active driver of world politics.

For the era of the Cold War in any case it can be said that almost all of the main conflict lines between East and West have been located in the regions of this wide ‘Rim Land’ between Finland in the West and Korea in the East. Most wars of the post-WWII period, from the Korean War to the Middle-Eastern and Gulf wars to the Vietnam conflict, have taken place in this very zone.

The counter theory to Mackinder and Spykman in terms of geopolitics and international law dates back perhaps even longer; its core it can be found in the American Monroe Doctrine of 1823; borrowing the title from a well-known oeuvre of the 20th century, it could be called an International Legal Order for Large Regions with a Ban on Interventions by Powers from Outside (the title of a book written by Carl Schmitt).

Admittedly, this model did not work out at the time of its creation; and especially with a view to the importance of the ‘Rim Land’ and the heart land, the Americans have neither recognised, nor accepted, a ban on interventions outside of their own American hemisphere (in any case if it was directed against their own interests).

The primary goal is not to protect the Syrian people

Quite the opposite: after 1945, the Americans have repeatedly intervened in those places where they deemed it necessary to strengthen their own position of power. The oil affluent and strategically crucial region between the eastern Mediterranean and the Arab Sea has made this area in particular, a main field of action for American foreign policy. The recent Iraq war, the occupation of Afghanistan and the opaque actions in north-eastern Pakistan, which are by no means legitimate by International Law, are the result of this policy.

The current conflict about an intervention, or non-intervention into the Syrian civil war is so explosive because this question is the manifestation of the antagonism between two radically different geostrategic and world political concepts.

The Americans and the Western side are not particularly concerned with helping the pitiable Syrian people, but rather with influencing the reshaping of the country after an anticipated overthrow of the current regime. Even though the US and its Western partners have been able to work well with the Syrian government in the past, several long-planned oil and gas pipelines of paramount importance for the West are at stake. These pipelines are designed to connect Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the eastern Mediterranean area and Turkey and therefore are, at least partially, to cross Syrian territory.

The tables have turned

The Russians and Chinese have a different perspective. The Russian Mediterranean military base, situated in the Syrian port of Tartus, is also at stake – just like the general power/political position of Moscow and Beijing in the Middle and Near East. The prospect of a possible military conflict between Israel and Iran makes it inevitable that the two largest Asian powers will be present there.

It cannot yet be foreseen which of the two sides will prevail, as the Americans have oftentimes in the past ignored UN resolutions when they deemed it necessary for the advancement of their own interests. The undeclared war against Iraq, which led to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, was only grudgingly accepted by Moscow and Beijing – in the end only because they did not dare to stand more decisively against the only highly armed world power at the time.

Today, the tables have turned: Due to severe home-made economic problems, themselves connected to a strongly over-expansionist foreign policy and military engagement, the United States finds itself in a considerably weakened position. A military intervention in Syria on their part, for this reason alone, seems hardly probable.

The die is not yet cast

Therefore the government in Washington must interpret the veto by Beijing and Moscow, now voiced three consecutive times, with which a UN resolution against the Syrian regime has been averted, as a serious warning. It appears that China and Russia perceive themselves in a common position of co-dominance over the South Asian realm, and their fierce ‘no’ against an intervention by western powers in Syria can well be seen in the sense of a political-international-legal doctrine of an, at least hinted at, ban on interventions by powers from outside the region, directed chiefly at America.

The government in Washington would hardly be able to accept such a ban if it is meant seriously. Because, as a consequence, it would mean the ultimate surrender of its political-economic influence, possibly even of military intervention, in the regions of the ‘Rim Land’. Washington cannot, simply in their very own interest, afford to leave these Eurasian Rim Land regions to their fate, let alone to the two Asian world powers.

Therefore, one can derive from the scope, the course, and, as can be foreseen, the soon materialising consequences of the Syrian conflict, the current distribution of geopolitical power potentials is like using a concave mirror. The die is not yet cast. Yet the geostrategic global players hold these things in their hands.

-

Hans-Christof Kraus teaches recent and modern history at the University of Passau.
 
Last edited:

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Putin’s Syria Plan Leaves West Humiliated and Confused
With no plan of its own, the West has but two viable options: Join Russia or stand aside

Rachel Polonsky | (Prospect Magazine) | Russia Insider


Finally, a man with a plan

This article originally appeared at Prospect Magazine

As David Cameron prepares the way for a vote on bombing in Syria, Britain faces an ugly choice: whether to back Russia in targeting Islamic State, if that also means propping up President Bashar al-Assad—see James Harkin’s July 2013 cover story and Bronwen Maddox’s piece “Which side is Britain on?” That is clearly Russia’s goal, and its deployment of aircraft and other forces gives it the upper hand. Rachel Polonsky argues here that this is the best course. Many would disagree, and see backing Russia—and Assad, whose military has killed so many Syrians—as a false answer and the fuel for civil war or for the country splitting. But many will agree, too, that the west has to talk to Russia—and that it has no clear plan of its own.

After Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Barack Obama at the United Nations on 28th September, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Maria Zakharova was relayed live from New York to the Moscow studio of Special Correspondent, a popular talk show on Russia-1, the state-owned television channel. The theme was the end of the unipolar world order—of the west’s ability to shape the world as it would like, above all the Middle East. “We would prefer not to have been right,” Zakharova said, with the more-in-sorrow-than-anger tone of an exasperated schoolteacher.

If in the Middle East, she continued, we saw a single example of a developing democratic state with flourishing citizens of the kind that the advocates of the unipolar world promised their methods would bring, perhaps we might trust the west’s proposals. Instead, we see nothing but poverty, ruin and terrorism, and an evil spreading across continents, threatening Europe and our own country. Quoting the most resonant line in President Putin’s speech to the UN General Assembly—“Do you, at least, realise what you’ve done?”—she lamented that there were still actors on the world stage who seemed not to grasp that it was time to collaborate on a logical strategy to defeat Islamic State (IS).

The United States and Britain are still hesitant about that collaboration. But the unpalatable truth is that the west does not have a coherent plan for Syria. In my view, it is time either to join Russia, which does have a coherent plan, or to stay out.

Zakharova embodies the communications strategy that has played an integral part in Russian foreign policy during this new phase of the Syrian civil war. Young and articulate, she is fluent in English and Chinese. Her manner is urgent and sincere. Her appointment in August was part of Russia’s preparation for war, a response to Jennifer Psaki, the former US State Department spokesperson whose briefings became the target of mockery on Russian state television during the Ukraine crisis in 2014. Dmitry Kiselyov, a pundit dubbed the Kremlin’s “propaganda chief,” claimed that a new buzzword had appeared on social media: “psaking,” a metaphor for “low-quality American diplomacy.”

Over the years of Nato expansion and western-backed regime change in the Middle East (and, as most Russians see it, in Ukraine), anti-Americanism in Russian state media has become feverish. Over Syria, in which the west has taken part in a civil war without having decided which side it wants to win, the tone towards America has shifted and become, at times, pitying. Margarita Simonyan, the 35-year-old Editor-in-Chief of the news network RT (formerly Russia Today), summed up the new attitude recently: “The eternal question is: do they have a far-reaching plan, which we don’t understand, or are they just making stupid mistakes because they’re not properly informed?”

The logistical skill and speed of Russia’s intervention in Syria left western leaders humiliated and confused. Over the summer, the State Department and Foreign and Commonwealth Office believed they were collaborating with Russia on a transition plan for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad. If this was a ruse, they should not have been fooled. Perhaps they were just not listening. Regime change in Syria was never on Moscow’s agenda.

Regime change in Syria was never on Moscow’s agenda.

The overt phase of the Russian intervention was timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly. A first sign of Russian matériel on the move was picked up in late August, when a warship from the Black Sea Fleet sailed through Istanbul with armoured personnel carriers on deck. In early September, pictures were leaked on social media of Russian special forces in Syria. The US asked Bulgaria and Greece to block Russian military flights. By the time the General Assembly’s 70th session opened, SU-30 fighter-jets were visible on the runway of al-Assad airport at Latakia.

Putin, meanwhile, was receiving guests. Between late August and late September, the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Israel and Turkey went to Moscow. On 21st September, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, arrived with the Chief of Staff of the Israeli army and his head of military intelligence and left satisfied that Russia would not compromise Israel’s strategic interests. As for Assad, “we are neither for nor against,” Netanyahu said. A day later Putin welcomed Turkish President Recep Tayyip for the opening of a vast new mosque (Moscow is home to at least two million Muslims). Turkey and Russia are at odds over Assad. The news had received about a Russian military build-up was “not pleasant,” he said. Turkey has pressed for a no-fly zone in northern Syria. For Moscow, though, no-fly zones portend a repeat of Libya in October 2011, in which Nato airstrikes led to the capture and killing of Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte, a Mediterranean port now held by IS.

On 25th September US Central Command tweeted: “We urge the Russians to be transparent about their activities in Syria.” Two days later, Putin appeared on US network television with the talkshow host Charlie Rose. “Others say that you’re trying to save the Assad administration because they’ve been losing—ah—ground,” Rose ventured, “and the war has not been going well for them and you’re there to rescue them.” “Yes, that’s right,” Putin replied.

Having ordered the US to leave the airspace over Syria, Russia made its first strikes the day after Putin left New York. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, remained in the company of world leaders and the media. For days, he was photographed with John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, coming in and out of meetings, shaking hands. As Zakharova put it on Russia-1: “Our aim is simple, to defeat [IS] together, not unilaterally.” As soon as the bombing started, an information war flared up over Russia’s targeting of non-IS fighters. Senator John McCain (who, after the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, had tweeted, “Dear Vlad, The #ArabSpring is coming to a neighbourhood near you”) was enraged, calling the Russian targeting of US-trained rebels “the ultimate disrespect.” Whatever the tactical worth of the targets on the ground, Russia was making a point. The US has been training and arming an assortment of groups to fight both IS and Assad. In a press conference broadcast live on CNN, Lavrov quipped: “If it looks like a terrorist, walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?”

In trying to discern what Putin’s government has up its sleeve, western intelligence services would do well to pay closer attention to Russian state television discussion shows, which have become instruments for preparing the public for new policies; in this case, a tough war. They also reveal how attentively Russia observes the west, and how deeply it knows the east.

On 13th September, the anchorman Vladimir Solovyov began his show saying: “Obama has admitted he has no strategy for defeating IS… so why can’t the west lay Cold War ghosts to rest and work with Russia for a solution, instead of seeing Russia as a threat and the cause of all the world’s ills?” The veteran political showman Vladimir Zhirinovsky then declared himself an orientalist by birth (he was born in Central Asia, served in the Caucasus and speaks Arabic). He took off on a high-energy flight of conspiracy theory: Americans are gangsters, IS was created to destroy Russia by lowering the oil price and so on. Andrei Kokoshin, Dean of the Faculty of World Politics at Moscow State University, urged dialogue, explaining that US policy had reached a dead end because it was guided by “a sacred faith in democracy, and the illusion that all democracies will naturally be US allies.”

Solovyov followed up with a radio talk show devoted to the proposition that “Syria is our border, which we must not surrender.” He asked: “Barack Husseinovich Obama is always trying to convince us that if we give up Assad, everything will be ok—let’s say, there’s no Assad, what happens then?”

“Chaos,” replied his guest, Semyon Bagdasarov, a member of the Russian Parliament, and an Uzbek-born Armenian. Bagdasarov argued that in the urban centres still under Assad’s control—Damascus, Latakia and Tartus—with Alawite majorities and many Christians, there would be a massacre. “Genocide?” Solovyov asked. “Yes, genocide,” Bagdasarov replied.

They also criticised Turkey for using its bombing of IS as a cover for its war against the Kurds, who have become allies of Russia. Kobani, a city in northern Syria, was besieged by IS a year ago, and liberated by fighters of the Kurdish YPG with aerial support from the US. The YPG, now allied with Assad’s forces, have continued to defend the city in the face of IS massacres, in which the Kurds and Syria accuse Turkey of colluding. They feel betrayed by the US.

More unexpected allies have appeared in Russian state media broadcasts. One television programme visited northern Afghanistan, near the Tajik border (which is guarded by Russian troops), where Nato and US special forces have joined the fight over the city of Kunduz, while IS runs a recruitment drive among the Taliban. For Russia, the impending US withdrawal from Afghanistan represents a grave threat. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Afghan Vice-President, flanked by dwarf bodyguards, received the Russian reporters with ceremony. An ethnic Uzbek, Dostum was a general in the Afghan army during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, battling US-backed mujahideen from whose ranks Osama bin Laden later emerged. His men speak Russian. In September, Dostum, who has been fighting IS in northern and eastern Afghanistan, appealed to Russia to provide Afghan security forces with military hardware, including aircraft. “The Daesh [IS] plan is the Caucasus Mountains, Russia and Central Asia,” he said. “You are watching Syria and Iraq being destroyed, and they want to destabilise Central Asia.”

One talk show featured a Daily Mirror spread from August, a map of the world as IS would like to see it in 2020. Swathes of Russia appeared in black, renamed “Qoqzaz” and “Khurasan.” Repeatedly, the subject returned to the west’s simulation of a fight against IS and its refusal to become Russia’s ally in a common cause.

Russia’s engagement with IS summons traumatic memories of former wars: the 10-year Afghan war, which precipitated the fall of the USSR’s empire, and the Chechen wars of the 1990s, in which Russian conscripts were beheaded. The intervention in Syria is yet another Chechen war for Russia, but on a vastly expanded front. There are thousands of Russian-speakers in IS, including its toughest commanders, like the red-bearded Tarkhan Batirashvili, also known as Abu Omar al-Shishani. Having excelled in a US training programme for Georgian special forces, he fought in the Russia-Georgia war in South Ossetia in 2008, before leaving for Istanbul in 2010. He has recruited fighters for IS from Chechnya, Dagestan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. A year ago, IS sent a video message to Putin on the internet, announcing its plan to invade the Caucasus and southern Russia.

Judging by the discussions on television and radio, Russia plans to help the Syrian Army retake the city of Palmyra, from where a strategic highway leads north to the IS capital, Raqqa. IS took Palmyra in May. The jihadists made children execute captured Syrian soldiers in the ancient ruins. In August, they beheaded Palmyra’s retired museum director, 82-year-old archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, and hung his body on a post. Then they blew up the Temple of Bel. One of the city’s treasures, the Palmyra Tariff, a five-metre-wide marble slab inscribed in Greek and Aramaic, is preserved in the Hermitage in St Petersburg, a city that has been known since the 18th century as the “Palmyra of the North.” The director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, wrote an obituary of his murdered colleague and spoke on television about the destruction of Palmyra. “When they destroy Palmyra,” he said, “the columns of Petersburg shake; when Christianity is destroyed in the Middle East, where it began, it harms Christianity here.” Palmyra could have been saved, Piotrovsky said: “The Islamists took a long time getting there… They crossed the desert and no one bombed them, because it would have been considered assistance to the Syrian government, to President Assad.”

“Russia’s claim that its forces are only there to target Islamic State should be taken with a large grain of salt.”

“Russia’s claim that its forces are only there to target Islamic State should be taken with a large grain of salt,” Charles Lister wrote on the website of the BBC in late September. Lister is a fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, which is funded by Qatar. “Moscow is well known for viewing Syria’s entire armed opposition as uniformly Islamist and a danger to international security… Such sweeping assessments are patently false.” This is an odd statement, given that Lister made a similar assessment himself in March: “While rarely acknowledged explicitly in public, the vast majority of the Syrian insurgency has coordinated closely with al-Qaeda since mid-2012.” It is time the UK government acknowledged explicitly in public what it knows about the Islamists we have armed and trained to fight Assad and, for that matter, about how much IS funding comes from Qatar.

Russia does not claim that it is in Syria only to target IS. As Putin told Charlie Rose more than once during their interview, Russia is supporting the Syrian government in its fight against all who threaten the survival of the Syrian state. Russia also intends to destroy IS, which is at least as grave a threat to Russian national security as it is to the security of Europe.

David Cameron argues that Assad must be overthrown because he is an Alawite Shia ruling over a Sunni majority, and a recruiting sergeant for Sunni terror groups because of the number of Syrians his military has killed. The argument is also made by Sunni Arab states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia which have a stake in his fall. In fact, notwithstanding support from Iran and Russia, the Assad regime would not have survived years of civil war without the active support of a large section of the Syrian population, including many genuinely moderate Sunnis and Ismailis, who would rather live in a secular state than under the jihadists who will seize power if Syria falls apart.

Though Assad, whose wife is a Sunni, has bombed enemy territory brutally in his fight for survival, until now many more Syrians have fled to the relative safety of regime-held areas than have fled beyond the border. Many former opponents of Assad have become regime supporters, particularly in Aleppo and Damascus. The Ismaili town of Salamieh in Hama, once a place of peaceful anti-Assad protest, is now a bastion of support for the regime, and has come under heavy indiscriminate shelling from western-backed rebels.

Millions more Syrian refugees will flee to Europe if Assad falls. No one can expect a happy ending for this vicious crisis—but there is a way of slowing down the slaughter and the frenzy of Islamist expansion from its Syrian base. The only hope of a way out of this conflict is a negotiated political settlement with the Assad regime. According to Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish President, Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, proposed a plan to the US, Britain and France in 2012, which included an “elegant way for Assad to step aside.” The three powers were so convinced that Assad was about to fall that they walked away. “It was an opportunity lost,” Ahtisaari says. Since then the death toll has risen from 7,500 to almost a quarter of a million.

If we cannot support Russia in its mission now, or even define our own, we should stand aside. No good has come from our policy of regime change. The UK government’s position on Syria is neither logical nor honest.

The most interesting passage in Putin’s UN speech was his reflection on his own country’s mistakes: “We remember…when the Soviet Union exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress.” In his speech, Obama declared that for nations, “the measure of strength is no longer defined by the control of territory,” but rather by “the success of their people-—their knowledge…”

One thing that both IS and Russia understand is that control of territory is everything. Palmyra is territory, and territory has meaning, which it takes knowledge-—of geography, history, languages, religions, cultures and the nature of one’s enemies—to understand. John McCain calls Russia a “gas station masquerading as a country.” He should read War and Peace.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
Russian UAV blew up a tank of ISIS in Syria. War in Syria.
(It is unclear whether the UAV blew the tank up, or just directed a laser illuminator to guide a missile launched from another source, but the video does show a tank being blown up.)
 

Akim

Professional
Joined
Jun 14, 2012
Messages
10,002
Likes
8,503
Country flag
Shot down drone (presumably Russian production)


In Syria Spotted Russian «Tigr» Armoured Personnel Carrier


In Syria spotted Russian «Tigr» Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC). The GAZ Tigr (Russian: Тигр and English: Tiger) is a Russian 4×4, multipurpose, all-terrain infantry mobility vehicle manufactured by GAZ, first delivered to the Russian Army in 2006. Primarily used by the Russian Federation’s armed forces, it is also used by numerous other countries and organizatio


The Russian Navy compelled connect the civilian ships to transport military equipment to Syria


Faced with ever increasing demands on the transport of military supplies to Syria, which is already unable to cope fleet of large amphibious ships of the Russian Navy, the Russian side has made use of the line "Syrian Express" takes on civilian transport vessels enrolled in the lists of auxiliary ships of the Navy to give them military status. The first such ship was the former Turkish cargo ship built in 1985 "Alican Deval"" (capacity of 4638 grt, length 108.7 m), October 14, 2015 for the first time has passed from the Bosporus Strait on the way with a cargo from Novorossiysk in Syria have as a military vehicle of the Russian Navy " Dvinitsa 50 "under the flag of auxiliary ships of the Navy. Acquisition and "conversion" of the vessel took place in the shortest possible time. Already the ship Oct. 10 as "Dvinitsa 50" stood under loading at Novorossiysk. As can easily be seen in the pictures on the board we have seen the old Turkish name.
Altogether, according to the information available to, among Turkish shipowners for the Russian Navy was purchased eight of used transport vessels, and apparently all of them will be delivered in the near future on the line shipments from Novorossiysk to Syria. Russian crews arrive in Novorossiysk from Sevastopol
http://military-informant.com/navy/...transportirovki-voennoy-tehniki-v-siriyu.html

Transport "Yauza" joined "the Syrians Express"

 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
upload_2015-10-18_1-58-48.png



@Akim, looks like Blackwater is there in Kiev, while you see Russian soldiers everywhere. :crazy:
@SajeevJino, look, another guy getting paid by the Kremlin. :rofl:
 

Akim

Professional
Joined
Jun 14, 2012
Messages
10,002
Likes
8,503
Country flag
@ pmaitra Do you believe in the American mercenaries in Ukraine. Although what to expect from you. Do you still believe in ilegendu on Su-25 and MH-17.
SAA has received additional missiles to the complex "Tochka".
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
@Akim, yes, not only do I believe, I have also posted a video of an armed man in Ukraine speaking with an American accent and refusing to speak to reporters and hiding his face. Moreover, I also believe that those holes in the MH-17 could have been caused by a Sukhoi-25's GSh-30-2 cannon as much as it could have been caused by shrapnel from an exploding warhead.
 

Akim

Professional
Joined
Jun 14, 2012
Messages
10,002
Likes
8,503
Country flag
Continues to believe in the "serious" evidence. For the Ukrainian side of the war more than 1,000 foreigners.. There are also about 100 instructors (United States, Israel, Britain, Georgia)
Donetsk (Ukraine) Announcement for recruitment of mercenaries to Syria.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,593
China ready to help Russia in Syria against ISIS

Indian TV news. Lots of dramatization. Footage randomly picked from the internet with no relationship with what is happening in Syria. They talk about Mi-35, but show footage of Mi-35, Mi-28N, Ka-52, along with footage of IAF MiG-23 and Syrian MiG-21, while Russia is not using either of these two planes. They also don't know how to spell "precision." Ignorant and educated. That is how I define Indian journalism.

The starting comments: Baghdadi ke atankiyon par Rus ki agni varsha aka बग़दाडी के आतंकियो पर रूस की अग्निवर्षा aka Russia's rain of fire on al-Baghdadi's terrorists. Agni is fire, varsha is rain, Baghdadi is the ISIS leader, atanki is a terrorist.

 
Last edited:

gadeshi

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 19, 2013
Messages
9,223
Likes
6,634
@ pmaitra Do you believe in the American mercenaries in Ukraine. Although what to expect from you. Do you still believe in ilegendu on Su-25 and MH-17.
SAA has received additional missiles to the complex "Tochka".
@Akim, Su-25, even early production, can climb to 13000m. There is a video of Su-25 returning from Afganistan to USSR. There is 12700m on altimeter, and planes are in heavy ferry configuration - fully fuelled and carrying 4 x PTB-800 (675kg of fuel each).
So...

Отправлено с моего XT1080 через Tapatalk
 

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top