Syria in 2016: an exchange on what to do

[mwe12]

Moderator's Note

(From Post 18 29th January) I have created this new thread to enable the exchange between Outlaw09 and mwe12 to continue - separate from the main Syria thread.

Both are Americans, one inside the Beltway and the other in Berlin. That does not exclude others from the exchange, as Crowbat too has added a post.(Ends)

Biden calls PKK a terrorist group. Meanwhile, U.S. arms YPG, which is just PKK on the other side of the border

The Kurds hire great lobbyists in DC. They have done a much better job to hide the stink from Western readers, than say the Muslim Brotherhood has.

Not exactly sure how much longer the KSA, Turkey and Pakistan will remain quiet over the unending videos coming out ot the ME depiciting Shia militia torturing, killing and otherwsie committing war crimes on the Sunni populations in both Iraq and Syria.......

The Saudis fund people to lop off heads and put civilians in cages, they like to cluster bomb weddings, and couldn't beat a drum. Pakistan, which has never won a war, isn't much better and can't afford to get bogged down away from the LOC, and Turkey has a PKK problem.

Last time I checked JaN has never uttered a single threat against the US nor carried out any attack agains the West besides in some aspects Russia is a far greater existential threat to the US than JaN will ever be.......

JAN, a terrorist group, is AQ's local franchise; if someone from the US tried to join it they would end up in a federal prison. Franchise of the same outfit which murdered three thousand Americans one morning. Hell if an American tried to join much of the anti-Assad coalition they would get snatched off an airplane and put into the pavement so quick their head would spin. It's an insult to the victims of 9/11 that we aren't drone striking them on a daily basis.

There is the old IR concept that if one country knows exactly what is ongoing in another ie the ongoing genocide in Syria and says and or does nothing then they are as complicit as those that carry out the genocide.

Imaginary concept, which would blame Costa Rica and Cambodia for not sending troops. And this isn't a genocide.

Somehow US foreign policy has forgotten Nuremburg........But hey that is ancient history to the current Obama NSC.....

This isn't the Holocaust.

Interesting response today by the anti Assad front HNC....notice the emphasis is on fulfil what you signed off on at the UN in order for us the NHC to judge your full faith in negotiations....notice it is being sold in the West as "obstacles" and "preconditions" and the HNC says..."no we just want you to implement what you have passed in the UNSC so we do not have to re-negotiate for the same things from Assad and Putin" which is what you are basically telling us to do....

Those are preconditions in the real world.

Obama desperately trying to impose a facade resolution to Syrian conflict before his term ends for another chapter to write in his biography

A chapter few of his supporters will care about anyways. There is no public support to go ride to the rescue of Islamist groups in Syria/the handful of secular pro-democracy people. Come to the US and ask around, or lobby your home country to ride in to the rescue.
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From the analyst who was clearly deluded....

This is not to say that we should not compromise in order to put an end to conflict and human suffering (especially in Syria), but we must structure our compromises so that they contain the path to, or at least, the possibility for future exercise of democratic political and territorial sovereignty.

Democracies like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar... errr.... Egypt...

Specifically, he seeks to inaugurate a new international order that permits human rights abuses by despotic leaders and invasion, occupation and political subversion of sovereign state

Wait, what? Is this where someone rattles of a list of Western nations doing the same when it suited them.

Must be nice to be in a fantasy world; though if that is his best shot it is a shame he cashed a tax payer funded cheque for so long.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/0...131356951.html
He said all parties would be involved in ceasefire efforts, other than the two groups designated as "terrorists" by the UN.

"The condition is that it should be a real ceasefire and not just local," De Mistura said.

"Suspension of fighting regarding ISIL and al-Nusra is not on the table. However [there are] plenty of other suspensions of fighting that can take place."

Khaled Khoja, the President of the Syrian National Coalition, said in a press release that they are ready for the talks despite the delay.

......
Mohamed Alloush, the leader of the Jaysh al-Islam group, which has been chosen as part of the opposition list, told Al Jazeera there were conditions yet to be applied before any talks could take place.

"There is pressure on us to give up the natural and legitimate rights of the Syrian people. These pressures are represented in pushing our delegation to head to the talks without any clear agenda, plus giving up the goodwill measures mainly addressing the humanitarian situation which has nothing to do with politics.

"Therefore, we cannot tell our people who delegated us how we gave up their rights and headed to Geneva without stopping the air raids, lifting the siege, releasing the prisoners, or sending aid."

http://syriadirect.org/news/ahrar-nu...es-in-latakia/

A local dispute between two Victory Army factions Sunday that led to a gun battle is drawing condemnation from both leaderships and citizen journalists for distracting from fighting a rapid regime advance in Latakia province.

Neither Ahrar a-Sham nor Jabhat a-Nusra have commented on the underlying reasons behind Sunday's firefight in the town of Salqin, in northern Idlib province, when Nusra fighters captured an Ahrar “services office.”

The fighting caused one unidentified casualty, reported pro-opposition All4Syria on Sunday.

The groups reportedly reconciled after the incident, with Ahrar spokesman Abu Yazid Teftenaz circulating a copy of the settlement on Twitter. Teftenaz thanked the intervention of unnamed “rational people” for resolving the dispute.

The two factions are the strongest in the Victory Army, formed in early 2015 from a coalition of Islamist rebel groups who managed to capture all of Idlib province that year.

Meanwhile, the Syrian army and its allies are making rapid progress in the northern Latakia countryside, where they captured the village of Rabia Sunday. Rabia is the last rebel stronghold of importance in the province. Its capture will help prevent the southward movement of opposition fighters who periodically fire missiles on Latakia city and other regime-held areas along the coast, reported pan-Arab al-Hayat Monday.

“Their [Jabhat a-Nusra's] banners are in the trash in Selma and Rabia, and they're busy trying to expand their patch of emirate in Idlib,” wrote Mujahid a-Shami, alias of a citizen journalist who focuses on opposition Islamist brigades.