Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[Wyatt]

Its been interesting to watch the american reaction to the report by the UN stating that it may have been the rebels who were responsible for the release of sarin, if it happened at all.

The white house has serious doubts that the rebels could have done this since they are totally just some good down to earth guys

[Bill Moore]

Its been interesting to watch the american reaction to the report by the UN stating that it may have been the rebels who were responsible for the release of sarin, if it happened at all.

The white house has serious doubts that the rebels could have done this since they are totally just some good down to earth guys

It did seem odd that someone apparently pressured the UN to withdraw their accusation. The finding may be ultimately prove to be unfounded, but this administration is starting to show a trend of denial. Islamic terrorism is alive and well and the death of UBL simply means justice for those he murdered not the end of the conflict.

It would benefit both sides of this conflict to convince the world that their adversaries used chemical weapons, so I suspect the truth will be hard to pin down.

[davidbfpo]

An assessment of the Israeli air strike this week on:

Mt. Qasioun, a mountain that overlooks the capital and is at the center of Syria's largest military complex. The very symbol of Assad's control over Damascus was on fire...several important military installations appear to have been the targets of this most recent strike....videos suggest that huge stockpiles of weapons, likely artillery shells and ballistic/artillery rockets, were also destroyed in the airstrike..

Which ends with the 'game changer' passage:

This incident should also permanently put to rest the debate as to whether Assad's air defense is capable of standing up to external threats. Assad is completely vulnerable, and has been dealt a serious blow. As a result, Israel may have completely changed the debate about foreign intervention in a single instant, and may have catalyzed an international drive to remove Bashar al-Assad from power.

So important enough to have a new thread. The main thread 'Syria under Bashir Assad: crumbling now?' remains open:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...228#post146228


Link:http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/...b-and-why.html

An interesting viewpoint, although I am not convinced Israel would prefer Bashar al-Assad being removed from his position. Nor that international action may follow, at a minimum it may enable a 'no fly zone' - rather late - and direct action if the regime uses chemical weapons.

Now what will others say?

[jcustis]

I've read mainstream media reporting that Israel did not breach Syrian airspace to conduct the attack, which seems thoroughly possible when you consider that a high density of aircraft were aloft above Lebanon at the time.

Damascus is barely 15 miles from the border, and although I don't have a grasp of the range of a JDAM delivered by a F-15, I imagine the Israelis could dump a few onto Syrian soil fairly easily and not even break a sweat.

Getting in close, and low and slow, may be a totally different issue.

I imagine the US is going to be surprised with whatever happens in Syria, relative to Assad remaining in power. Since we chose to support the efforts of the various anti-Assad actors and are not taking lead, the hands-off-the-wheel approach is going to leave us scrambling to work through several issues that will crop up very soon:

-Breaching sovereignty to secure chemical weapons. Once we do that, what then?

-Limiting Iran's actions in the region. We know it will seek to play a part, so we really need to think through our range of responses.

-Assad is going to fall eventually, and whether it happens today or next year is really of little importance. It is inevitable and we need to think through our next step, and next year's steps, and what we want the Middle East to look like circa 2020. If we don't have the will to start making those choices now, we need to just pack it up and let Israel become the hegemon in the region (and accept all the instability that will come with it).

-Are we willing to play the FID/COIN game again (true COIN this time) alongside the Hashemite Kingdom when it is besieged?

[davidbfpo]

Moderator's Note

This was a stand-alone thread, but today was merged into the main Syria thread. A caption has been added to each post in case they appear out of sequence (ends).


Today there are a number of reports that chemical weapons (CW) have been used in suburbs of Damascus, by the Bashir regime, known as rebel strongholds, specifically Eastern Ghouta. First a backgrounder, 36 pages, published in June 2013, by an acknowledged British academic expert via a German TV website:http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/sendung.../HSPOP_4_1.pdf

Yes the report has important caveats and takes time to read. It also refers to the external, mainly Western declaration of the use of CW as a political 'red line', which today is very, very blurred. Two passages struck me:

Two tentative conclusions are drawn. One is that the several governments which have explicitly accused the Syrian regime of using sarin nerve-gas against the rebels seem to be withholding evidence that, if disclosed, might make their charges more believable than they are. The gap in disclosure is not so much intelligence from sensitive sources or methods but is instead straightforward description for scientific audiences of the procedures that have been used for analysing physiological and environmental samples. The second conclusion is that, if the allegations are true, Syria is engaged in a form of chemical warfare whose purpose and therefore methods (small scale, pinpoint targeting, disabling) are at variance with concepts underpinning the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention

Much later:

The truth of the matter is nowhere near established yet. The present paper has shown that the reporting leaves far too many questions unanswered, and the possible dependence of at least some of the reporting on misunderstanding or on planted evidence cannot be excluded.

The second is a link to a compilation of ninety-six videos by Brown Moses; which a BBC reporter on Radio 4 says is unprecedented and wonders why CW is used when the UN inspection team is only ten miles away! I have not viewed any of them:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUGrW...CByvYG&index=1

Yes the existing main thread on Syria 'Syria under Bashir Assad: crumbling now?' has covered CW before, but today's reported attack warrants a new thread. Has the previous, small-scale use of CW weakened the declaration of a 'red line' as it is not WMD?

Truly a small, bloody war with new implications today far beyond Syria.

[carl]

I don't know about the rest of the world, but we will do nothing. Nothing at all. We seem to specialize in bluff and clever rationalizations about how we didn't really have our bluff called. Those are double tough guys in Syria. They got us figured and will proceed accordingly.

[davidbfpo]

Carl,

It appears your fears and viewpoint is echoed in Australia, taken from the Lowy Institute's blog:

Three possibilities exist as to why an event such as this may have occurred at precisely this time:

1) The Assad regime is sending a message that it doesn't care about the international community and is deliberately thumbing its nose at the UN inspectors in order illustrate the UN's impotence.

2) A Syrian army local-area commander had conducted an attack without reference to higher command because he doesn't care or in the hope that the opposition will be fingered for blame.

3) The opposition (whichever sub-element) has carried out the strike to coincide with the UN inspection team's presence in order to blame the Assad regime, garner further international support and prod the West into taking more decisive action against Assad or in favour of the opposition.

And of course there is always the possibility that it never happened as described, or that the reports refer to an incident(s) that happened some time ago.

It's terrible to think that we cannot automatically apportion blame for an event of such cruelty and horror, or that the event didn't occur as described and is being used for people's own political purposes. Such are the depths to which the credibility of protagonists in the Syrian civil war have plunged that even a chemical weapons attack is open to interpretation.

Link:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...clear-cut.aspx

[TheCurmudgeon]

So now things should move to the UN where the use of Chemical Weapons is generally considered the kind of thing you do at home behind closed doors but not outside where the kids can see.

Russia is at least willing to support inspectors. China not so much:

On Wednesday, the security council expressed "strong concern" and called for more "clarity" on the use of chemical weapons, but Russia and China insisted on the watering down of a tougher approach backed by the US, UK, France and 32 other governments that called on the UN investigative team already in Damascus to be allowed immediate access to the site of the attack, and to be granted greater latitude by the Syrian government to carry out their enquiries.

Red Lines, they are not just for America anymore ... ?

Meanwhile, the Israeli press is more skeptical.

Steve Johnson, a leading researcher on the effects of hazardous material exposure at England's Cranfield University who has worked with Britain's Ministry of Defense on chemical warfare issues, agrees that "from the details we have seen so far, a large number of casualties over a wide area would mean quite a pervasive dispersal. With that level of chemical agent, you would expect to see a lot of contamination on the casualties coming in ,and it would affect those treating them who are not properly protected. We are not seeing that here."

Additional questions also remain unanswered, especially regarding the timing of the attack, being that it occurred on the exact same day that a team of UN inspectors was in Damascus to investigate earlier claims of chemical weapons use. It is also unclear what tactical goal the Syrian army would have been trying to achieve, when over the last few weeks it has managed to push back the rebels who were encroaching on central areas of the capital. But if this was not a chemical weapons attack, what then caused the deaths of so many people without any external signs of trauma?

"One alternative is that a large concentration of riot control agents were used here, which could have caused suffocation of large numbers of people who were pressed together in a bunker or underground shelter," says Gwyn Winfield, a veteran researcher and editor of CBRNe World, a professional journal the effects of chemical, biological and nuclear warfare. While riot-control substances, mainly various types of tear gas, are usually deployed in small quantities using hand-grenades, they can be used in much larger quantities in artillery shells or even dropped in barrels from aircraft as the U.S. Army did in Vietnam, trying to flush the Vietcong out of its underground bunkers. In large concentrations, these substances can cause suffocation, especially in closed spaces where many of the Syrian families would have been hiding from the bombing.

Of course, now there are lots of casualties. None-the-less there seemed to be an interest on the part of the Israeli Defense Minister to not get involved. Not really sure that much more than prolonged discussion will occur.

[91bravojoe]

This experienced observer thinks not:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/newsmake...9605.html?vp=1

[davidbfpo]

For complex reasons the Syrian civil war has not led - yet - to a war beyond its frontiers, despite multiple, competing regional and external actors. Whether restraint has prevailed is a moot point, as some clearly prefer Syrians to die for their interests.

In a curious way the present crisis is similar to that in the Spanish Civil War, when in a nearly forgotten episode international naval action was taken to enable the free, safe passage of merchant shipping, evacuation of foreign nationals and refugees. The Nationalists being accused of "breaking the rules" by seizing and sinking merchant shipping; with German and Italian "fraternal assistance". The action was limited and as we know it did not alter the end result. See:http://rwhiston.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/1/

[TV-PressPass]

In a curious way the present crisis is similar to that in the Spanish Civil War,

While we're making comparisons I would be delighted if someone could identify the "Ernest Hemingway equivalent" of the Syrian conflict then.

Just don't tell me it's Matthew VanDyke please

[AdamG]

Relax. I'm sure our Drones will be home by Christmas.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/262896172...tcmp=obnetwork

[AdamG]

For complex reasons the Syrian civil war has not led - yet - to a war beyond its frontiers, despite multiple, competing regional and external actors. Whether restraint has prevailed is a moot point, as some clearly prefer Syrians to die for their interests.

Has it occured to you that the "Civil War" in Syria might actually be the war of AQ & Happy Funtime Friends Club spilling into Syria, like from A-stan, Libya, ad nauseum?

[AdamG]

I'll just leave this here, with some reading music -
http://youtu.be/dxkUK3SQlWI

It is not difficult to notice that the rebellion in Syria began to grow two years ago, almost at the same time as the signing of a memorandum in Bushehr on June 25, 2011 regarding the construction of a new Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline… It is to stretch 1500 km from Asaluyeh on the largest gas field in the world, North Dome/South Pars (shared between Qatar and Iran) to Damascus. The length of pipeline on the territory of Iran will be 225 km, in Iraq 500 km, and in Syria 500-700 km. Later it may be extended along the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea to Greece. The possibility of supplying liquefied gas to Europe via Syria’s Mediterranean ports is also under consideration. Investments in this project equal 10 billion dollars. (1)

This pipeline, dubbed the «Islamic pipeline», was supposed to start operation in the period from 2014 to 2016. Its projected capacity is 110 million cubic meters of gas per day (40 billion cubic meters a year). Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have already declared their need for Iranian gas (25-30 million cubic meters per day for Iraq, 20-25 million cubic meters for Syria, and 5-7 million cubic meters until 2020 for Lebanon). Some of the gas will be supplied via the Arab gas transportation system to Jordan. Experts believe that this project could be an alternative to the Nabucco gas pipeline being promoted by the European Union (with a planned capacity of 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year), which doesn’t have sufficient reserves. It was planned to run the Nabucco pipeline from Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan through the territory of Turkey. At first Iran was also considered as a resource base, but later it was excluded from the project. After the signing of the memorandum on the Islamic Pipeline, the head of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), Javad Oji, stated that South Pars, with recoverable reserves of 16 trillion cubic meters of gas, is a «reliable source of gas, which is a prerequisite for the building of a pipeline which Nabucco does not have».It is easy to observe that about 20 billion cubic meters per year will remain from this pipeline for Europe, which would be able to compete with Nabucco’s 30 billion, but not the 63 billion from the South Stream.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-geo...peline/5337452

[davidbfpo]

Has it occured to you that the "Civil War" in Syria might actually be the war of AQ & Happy Funtime Friends Club spilling into Syria, like from A-stan, Libya, ad nauseum?

Yes, it is almost like the Soviet advisers with the Spanish Republicans -v- the far larger Italian military (manpower strong) and German military (with an emphasis on technology) assistance to the Spanish Nationalists.

AQ et al IIRC had little presence, let alone overt support in Syria when the protests began and it took time, with copious amounts of Gulf money, for them to get involved. Civil wars have a history of becoming bloodier and terrible the longer they last - invariably for the non-combatants, not the fighters.

I still consider this is a civil war, fought largely by Syrians.

[davidbfpo]

This post appeared first in the current Iraq thread and is cross=posted here. There have been allegations here that the Assad regime has a "Nelson's eye" to ISIS.

So from Twitter (so maybe a "pinch of salt") just:

Seems Assad's army of terror finally started striking ISIL bases after largely ignoring, rather, aiding them, for more than a year. Assad is certainly not working on his free will. Either Iran ordered the strikes, or he realized if he doesn't strike, someone else/US will.

[JMA]

Sadly it is apparent that the US and the West (may as well tar everyone with the same brush) have once again proved to be hopelessly incompetent when it comes to foreign policy.

In the case of the US it is beyond doubt that the CIA is a Keystone Cops outfit of laughable proportions but surely even they would have presented the White House with the intel on what was likely to develop, then what was developing as the civil war progressed. There is clearly a lethal combination in the WH / CIA mix under this US Administration.

The Brits can't get off scott-free as in their system a similar cock-up has occurred.

Syria civil war: Hundreds of radicalised fighters are already back in the UK, warns former MI6 chief

Mr Barrett is co-author of a new report, released this month, which states that the Syrian war “is likely to be an incubator for a new generation of terrorists” and reveals that more than 12,000 foreign fighters have gone to Syria since the war began. That is more than the 10,000 who went to Afghanistan during the decade-long jihad against Russian occupation. One in four foreign fighters in Syria is from the West – part of a global phenomenon, with fighters from more than 80 countries represented on the battlefield.

(Added by Moderator) The cited report, from the Soufan Group, was posted four days ago on the main thread on foreign fighters and is:http://soufangroup.com/wp-content/up...s-in-Syria.pdf

Just in case some smart guy throws out the Monday morning quarterback line this is what I posted on 09-24-2012:

Same holds with Syria as it did with Libya... arm the opposition at your peril.

And as referred to in the Libya thread on 04-11-2011:

I suggest that the strategy should have been to bring the end to the Gaddafi regime without the population getting militarised and gaining war experience in the process. This apart from the future best interests of Libya itself but also in case a western coalition has to return one day it would be better to face the current stumble-bum Keystone Cops than some switched-on and experienced militia or army.

Don't arm or train the rebels... just concentrate on taking Gaddafi out (within the constraints of the UNSC resolutions of course)

How does one explain the recurring incompetent decision making at the highest level in two of the world's major nations?

[Bill Moore]

JMA,

I don't recall seeing these posts, but they are great insights. I think we put blind faith and too much emphasis on surrogates or using the buzz phrase "through, by and with" approach. This approach certainly has application in some cases, but it is not want we should depend upon for our national security. As you correctly point, militarizing a populace to pursue our goals can have long term negative blow back against our national interests. Perhaps removing Qaddafi unilaterally with U.S. or NATO forces without supporting a rebellion would have been a much better option. This is one reason I argued against providing support to rebels in Syria, we would never provide enough to be decisive, and our aid would simply prolong the conflict resulting a war like society that ultimately makes stabilizing the region much, much harder.

[JMA]

Bill, IMHO there is also a place for the use of surrogates but with the caveat that the potential for a spill over of unintended consequences have been carefully considered.

I have mentioned - in a simplistic manner - the potential for accurately targeted interventions against the individual causing of problems. JMA's 3-Cruise-Missile-Option.

I continue to be amazed how the Gaddafi, Assad etc etc can get away with unspeakable crimes and not be held personally responsible while thousands of their countrymen are killed by them and again later in the process of trying to dislodge them.

So while I have stated way back that the rebels in Syria should not have been armed I did advocate that a personalized strike on Assad himself would be quite acceptable.

It is not that I am so smart but rather that so many in decision making positions are so damn stupid.

JMA,

I don't recall seeing these posts, but they are great insights. I think we put blind faith and too much emphasis on surrogates or using the buzz phrase "through, by and with" approach. This approach certainly has application in some cases, but it is not want we should depend upon for our national security. As you correctly point, militarizing a populace to pursue our goals can have long term negative blow back against our national interests. Perhaps removing Qaddafi unilaterally with U.S. or NATO forces without supporting a rebellion would have been a much better option. This is one reason I argued against providing support to rebels in Syria, we would never provide enough to be decisive, and our aid would simply prolong the conflict resulting a war like society that ultimately makes stabilizing the region much, much harder.

[TheCurmudgeon]

JMA,

I don't recall seeing these posts, but they are great insights. I think we put blind faith and too much emphasis on surrogates or using the buzz phrase "through, by and with" approach. This approach certainly has application in some cases, but it is not want we should depend upon for our national security. As you correctly point, militarizing a populace to pursue our goals can have long term negative blow back against our national interests. Perhaps removing Qaddafi unilaterally with U.S. or NATO forces without supporting a rebellion would have been a much better option. This is one reason I argued against providing support to rebels in Syria, we would never provide enough to be decisive, and our aid would simply prolong the conflict resulting a war like society that ultimately makes stabilizing the region much, much harder.

Bill, by “removing Qaddafi unilaterally with U.S. or NATO Forces..." you mean declare war on a sovereign nation? As impractical as it may be arming the local population and becoming involved only once there is an alternative government body that you can deal with, it is more appropriate response than unilateral invasion. It also does not create a group of foreign fighters – a situation different from Syria.

Syria is drawing in foreign fighters for ideological reasons, but that does not guarantee that any of these fighters will return to their homelands to wreak havoc. A large number of Americans went off to Spain to fight fascism against the wishes of the U.S. government and they did not return en mass to start killing people. There is no guarantee that they will continue the fight once back home.

I understand JMA’s admonitions, but I think that each situation needs to be considered separately. You also need to know who are in the lines of succession - who is the next Devil you will have to deal with? Also, dictatorial leaders dominate a population. Once that leviathan is removed, all the other sectarian conflicts will rise to the surface. With it unlikely that the population has ever dealt with parliamentary politics each group will seek the greatest advantage for themselves while simultaneously trying to seek vengeance for real or perceived injustice. It is rarely as simple as killing Qaddafi.