Syria in 2017 (April-December)

[Azor]

Azor...now do you finally realize just how correct I and CrowBat have been? We critiqued Obama ME FP because he did not understand what was actually ongoing inside Syria and Trump has no idea what the heck he is doing for any FP.

This will now drive FSA into the open arms of HTS/AQ and the US will be ground into the dust of Syria, Iraq and ME for the coming decade as Is reverts back to it's basic roots, guerrilla warfare and working with disillusioned Sunni's about US bombs raining on them and the high number of Shia killings of Sunni civilians.

Trump just provided Putin a major win and the question is why?

WINNERS, Assad, Putin and Khamenei.

LOSSERS Trump and DoD and DoS and Us allies

Trump ends CIA arms support for anti-Assad Syria rebels: U.S. officials
http://reut.rs/2uKe9Jx

Outlaw,

This announcement is disappointing to be sure, but it is important not to exaggerate its impact or to ignore the current dynamics of the war:

• As CrowBat concurred, I would suggest that the end of Timber Sycamore may well ease U.S. restrictions on GCC, Turkish and Jordanian support for the Free Syrian Army
• The announcement could be a public relations ploy, as another secret CIA program may replace it
• The FSA elements in the Turkish and Coalition (SDF) salients will continue to receive support as well as protection from pro-Assad forces
• Turkey can independently support FSA elements in northwestern Syria while Jordan can do the same for those in southern Syria
• The rebellion is a melee in northwestern Syria as rebels fight one another and pro-Assad forces
• Timber Sycamore was clearly not enough for the FSA to survive both pro-Assad forces and Islamist units
• In the absence of a full U.S. commitment to regime change and reconstruction in Syria, the operation could only continue to keep Syria ablaze
• Pro-Assad forces will not be able to take the Coalition or Turkish salients

We will have to see how the war develops over the coming weeks, and whether social media can keep us abreast of the FSA's operations.

[Azor]

From Omar Sabbour on Facebook:

1) The end of the CIA "vetting" program of "arming rebels"

For those who have closely followed Syria over the years, they will know of course that the CIA programme has not been dictated by actually providing weapons to the rebels directly (groups which received weapons directly from the US tended to have agreed not to use them against Assad, such as the SDF, New Syrian Army, Mou'tasem Brigade, Hamza Division), but in "co-coordinating" (i.e. controlling) the arms supply to them coming from other parties (i.e. Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and private parties - references for this can be found at the bottom [1]). This control has been exercised via two main "Operation Centres" - the MOC in Jordan and the MOM in Turkey - and has taken the form of determining the quantity and quality of weapons which are allowed to go in (for instance advanced weaponry are either restricted - such as anti-tank missiles - or altogether blockaded - such as anti-aircraft missiles; whilst the flow of regular weaponry and ammunition varies according to events and strategic interests on the ground) and which groups receive them.

Of course the CIA and Jordanian intelligence had already been banning (the already previously restricted [2]) arms going into the South for the purpose of anti-Assad operations for years (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/…/us...n-demand-sou…/), whilst in the North the CIA had restricted allowing arms to rebel operations even against ISIS [3] - though the degree of US control here had been much less than in the south, as the US had been circumvented more by Turkey (whilst Turkey always pressured the US to allow in an effective supply of weaponry to the rebels, by contrast Jordan had an effectively identical position to the US vis a vis Syria: i.e. supporting the survival of the opposition but not empowering it to overthrow Assad).
What this news piece means, in other words, is that the US is going to try and institute a total blockade of any rebel weaponry going into north or south Syria. This essentially means a return to the US policy before the CIA program (i.e. 2011-late 2013), which consisted of "unofficially" (i.e. not through the MOC or MOM) seizing even light weaponry shipments - this CIA policing policy at the time was described as "choking" the Syrian rebel supply [4].

In combination with what appears to be Turkey's selling out of the rebellion, this is essentially merely a "publicisation" of the undeclared US-Russian-Turkish arrangement aimed at ending the armed resistance to Assad which had which begun with the fall of Aleppo (when the US actually bombed rebel areas of the city during the siege, with US officials even justifying the Russian bombardment - whilst Turkey blocked arms supplies going in during the siege [5]). Supporters of Turkey need understand that whilst Turkey did indeed want to empower the rebels militarily to overthrow Assad (unlike Jordan), it has never been brave enough to cross the US red-lines which were explicitly against this policy [6].

2) The capture of Mosul by the Iraqi government

Warning to Syrian groups: With the capture of Mosul it is very likely that you will find the Iraqi government reshifting its full efforts to helping Assad in Syria. Of course, there are already about a dozen or so core Iraqi PMU groups which are part of the Iraqi Military (not Army, which is a noteworthy distincion) and and are salaried by the central government, but have not had so-called official "permission" to fight there by the Prime Minister Abadi (although obviously the permission is very much present by the fact that they're paid and armed by the government) who have been fighting in Syria for a long time. A few weeks ago I read that one of the PMU groups (who hadn't yet intervened in Syria) "asked Abadi" for permission to do so. As so many others have already done so without waiting for "official permission", the fact that this group has "asked" raises the notion that the Iraqi government might "officially" adopt intervention in Syria. As a result you might very well have much more PMU units (and one should know that there are a lot more of those with tens of thousands of more fighters than the ones already in Syria) who've been tied down in Iraq against ISIS coming to fight in Syria - and these units would likely be backed much more directly by the central government, security forces and Army (i.e. even if the regular Army divisions don't actively cross the border into Syria, they will likely provide the PMUs with other forms of support, intelligence, etc.).

With Trump's policy direction of the effective declaration that the US will seek to block any external weapons supplies to the rebels, it seems very likely that there won't be any pretense of US opposition to the central government's "official" acceptance of intervention in Syria. Of course this "official" distinction is largely irrelevant as the Iraqi PMUs are very much backed by the Iraqi government in their Syrian invasion, but the point is that the abandonment of the official pretense will likely be accompanied with a far-escalated and directed support to Assad coming from Iraq.

Footnotes:

[1]
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/…/anti-air...iles-could-be…
http://web.archive.org/…/12/cia-syri...n_3912583.html

[2]
https://eaworldview.com/…/syria-spec...-saudi-confl…/
http://www.nytimes.com/…/citing-us-f...limit-aid-to-…
http://syrianobserver.com/…/The_U_S_...g_Syrian_Oppo…
https://www.pri.org/…/why-are-us-mad...k-missiles-sh…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/russ...ention-in-s_b…

[3]
http://syrianobserver.com/…/The_U_S_...g_Syrian_Oppo…

[4]
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/…/cia-cho...-weapon-suppl…
http://web.archive.org/…/report-cia-...s-groups-eff…/
http://www.upi.com/…/CIA-allegedly-o...3401344880820/

[5]
https://www.facebook.com/SyriaSolida...32620766438901
https://www.facebook.com/SyriaSolida...33937461307236
http://uk.businessinsider.com/defens...nt-nusra-alep…

[6]
http://foreignpolicy.com/…/state-dep...re-never-goi…/

[Azor]

By Faysal Itani at DefenseOne

Introduction:

Where the insurgency is concerned, Trump and Obama have plenty in common.

This week, the Trump administration reportedly cancelled a long-running covert program to support vetted Syrian rebels in the war against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. While this move has provoked a small outcry among Assad’s opponents, the development itself is far from surprising. Furthermore, it is incorrect, as some have insisted, to view the cancellation as a gratuitous concession to Russia—adecision like this, which aligns with years of deliberate U.S. strategy and Trump’sown stated goals, cannot be considered a concession. It is almost certainly true that Trump hopes this decision will make Russia more cooperative on ceasefires between the regime and the insurgency. But if that does not happen or if it fails to pacify Syria—a likely outcome—this would not alter an already-dismal strategic situation for the Syrian opposition, one that may well be acceptable to the United States.

The Trump administration’s decision to end this program represents the logical endpoint of years of evolution in U.S. policy. While the effort was conceived under Barack Obama, it was always at odds with America’s broader goals—a tension that Trump has long recognized and is now acting upon.

[davidbfpo]

The April 2017 Sarin CW attack on Khan Sheikhoun features in sixty posts on the Forum, mainly in the Syrian threads and the Russian Info Ops thread.

Thanks to a "lurker" for the pointer to commentary by Eliot Higgins @ Bellingcat, which starts with:

Following the July 4th, 2017 publication of the OPCW fact-finding mission (FFM) report on the April 4th, 2017 Khan Sheikhoun Sarin attack in Syria, questions were raised about claims made by the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh in his June 25th, 2017 article in Welt, “Trump‘s Red Line“. The OPCW FFM report flatly contradicted claims made in Hersh’s article, namely how a Syrian SU-24 supposedly fired a precision-guided munition at a Jihadi command and control center in the north of Khan Sheikhoun, with the resulting explosion inadvertently releasing toxic gases from “medicines and chlorine-based decontaminants” stored in the basement of the building, along with unspecified weapons and munitions.
Hersh’s claim contradicted the OPCW FFM report, which stated that Sarin had been detected in environmental samples and in tests on the victims of the attack. Not only that, but Hersh’s reporting also contradicted claims made by the US, French, Syrian, and Russian governments.

Link:https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena...ite-know-move/

[Azor]

By: Bassem Mroue, The Associated Press
http://www.militarytimes.com/flashpo...to-government/

BEIRUT — A small number of U.S.-backed rebels have defected and joined government forces south of the country days after the U.S. announced an end to a CIA program that backed opposition fighters, Syrian opposition activists said Saturday.

The defection of at least four rebels came after The Washington Post reported that the White House has decided to halt the CIA supply-and-equip program for Syrian rebels.

U.S. President Donald Trump essentially confirmed the existence of the program and its cancellation Monday night when he lashed out at The Washington Post. The president tweeted that the newspaper “fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting (Syrian President Bashar) Assad.”

The defection also came as Col. Ryan Dillon, the spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group, told CNN this week that “the coalition supports only those forces committed to fighting” the Islamic State group...