August 22, 2014
By Spencer Akerman, Andrew Sparrow and Martin Chulov
Western powers (click here) are coming under mounting pressure to do more to confront Islamic State (Isis) in its stronghold in Syria, as the heavily armed militants edged closer to taking an important air base that would cement their domination over a swath of the country's north.
By Spencer Akerman, Andrew Sparrow and Martin Chulov
Western powers (click here) are coming under mounting pressure to do more to confront Islamic State (Isis) in its stronghold in Syria, as the heavily armed militants edged closer to taking an important air base that would cement their domination over a swath of the country's north.
As US aircraft continued to pound the Islamist militants in northern Iraq, the Obama administration was studying a range of options for pressuring Isis in Syria, primarily through training "moderate" Syrian rebels as a proxy force, with air strikes as a possible backup.
Leaders in Washington and London are adamant they will not collaborate with the regime of Bashar al-Assad in tackling their common enemy, and on Friday the Pentagon insisted that it had yet to decide on whether to expand the US air war into Syria....
The air strip is going to have to be destroyed to prevent any access to ISIS's military domination of the country of Syria. IN THAT, Assad has to allow The West to end ISIS's plans for the country.The West isn't interested in destroying Syria, but, since Assad has no ability to end ISIS attack on the country, he has to at least allow those that can stop the progression of ISIS to continue it's advance. Assad will have nothing left if ISIS takes over the air field anyway.
If Assad believes Russia will come to his aid, he is wrong. If that was going to happen there would be no ISIS to begin with. Russia's politicians are all about Ukraine. I can't imagine Putin would deny the borders of Syria are in question at this point anyway.
ISIS has been taking control of Syria since March of 2013. Raqqa is dominated by ISIS.
March 5, 2013
Syrian rebels (click here) battling troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad overran al-Raqqa after days of fierce fighting, and were now in "near-total control" of the northern city, activists said.
The fall of Raqqa, located on the Euphrates River, on Monday is a significant development in the two-year-old revolt against Assad. The rebels do not claim to hold any other provincial capitals.
Residents in Raqqa destroyed a statue of late President Hafez al-Assad (Bashar's father), according to amateur video footage distributed by activists.
Rebel fighters said loyalist forces were still dug in at the provincial airport 60 km from the city and they remained a threat. A resident said that a Syrian military intelligence compound was not in rebel hands but was surrounded by anti-Assad fighters....
Residents running from what activists say was shelling by forces loyal to President Assad in Raqqa, north-east Syria, where Isis fighters are closing in on a nearby army base
Residents running from what activists say was shelling by forces loyal to President Assad in Raqqa, north-east Syria, where Isis fighters are closing in on a nearby army base
The "John McCain Rebel Alliance" became ISIS. It would come to fight other jihadist organizations such as Nusra Front for control of Raqqa. So, the USA has made quite a mess in Syria and there is no one to clean it up.
One thing you'll never hear on CNN or any other newsey organization is Bashir al Assad speak about the condition of his country and his ability to find off ISIS alone.
What McCain and all the Neocon Congressmen/women didn't count on was the fact the USA armed rebels would actually defeat Assad in a civil war and then turn into the world's greatest threat.
The problem is that once The West bombs the end of ISIS there will be still yet another power vacuum. If Assad doesn't fill the vacuum then who will, USA troops on the ground in another forever war?
August 19, 2014
By Zeina Karam
While Damascus (click here) has until now turned a blind eye to the extremists’ expansion in Syria, their successes in the north and east threaten government troops, who are attacking them from the air...
Assad has been using his air force to target ISIS, the question is can Assad end the militants control of an airport they have in their sites.
Yes, indeed, the Holy Wars of all Holy Wars, "The USA vs. the USA's sponsored Syrian Rebel Forces battling ISIS."
I am not sure Assad will go along with any of The West's ideas, but, it is worth seeking his opinion. Assad isn't completely defeated and by the looks of things it may be that he is actually defeating ISIS at least marginally.
The aftermath of an air strike by government forces on Raqqa (Reuters)
It is a curious thing in Syria. There are rebels, Syria's government and ISSI which has nothing to do with the Assad government. Where is Hezbollah these days?
August 22, 2014
The Daily Star
...Hezbollah and regime forces (click here) retook a number of villages on the Syrian side of the border this spring, including Flita. The regime, backed by Hezbollah, has worked in recent months to clear out the remaining rebel fighters from Qalamoun, which has been used as a transit point for fighters and weapons entering the country from Lebanon.
On Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-aligned group that documents causalities from the more than 3 year old civil war, reported that at least 561 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in Syria since it began openly fighting on the side of the regime early last year.
The resistance party says it is fighting in Syria to prevent Islamist militants from bringing the battle into Lebanon. Syrian rebels have been blamed for a spate of car bombs that rocked Lebanon over the past year, mainly targeting areas with Shiite majorities and Lebanese Army positions.
The West has to get over it's POLITICAL hatred of Assad. It's nonsense already. Bashir al Assad is often accepted as an ally by Saudi Arabia and the Arab League.In the same instance, Assad has to rein in Hezbollah's violence in Lebanon. It is the death of persons such as the Late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri that creates conflict between The West and Assad. Assad has a relationship with Hezbollah and it has served him well until the civil war and the inability of Assad's forces to fight off ISIS.
This gets to be very problematic.
Lebanon has a strong western culture and in order for Assad to prevent such influence in Syria he has relied on Hezbollah to fight the battles within Lebanese borders. There was a time when Beirut was always in ruins because of the frequent jihadist attacks.
BEIRUT- The Hezbollah leader (click here) described the radical Islamist movement that has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria as a growing "monster" that could threaten Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states, according to an interview printed on Friday.
In a separate speech, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Islamic State also posed an existential threat to his own nation, Lebanon, the target of an incursion by Islamist insurgents from Syria this month. He said his heavily armed Shi'ite Muslim group was ready to fight the threat in Lebanon - if required.
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah has been helping Syrian President Bashar Assad fight a Sunni Islamist-dominated insurgency that spilled into the Lebanese border town of Arsal on Aug. 2, triggering five days of battles between the Lebanese army and militants including members of Islamic State....
The collapse of Iraq has created a common enemy for all the powers in the region. I half want to laugh, but, perhaps this provides a place where the region can come together to end the violence of ISIS. They nearly have to if they are to survive the ISIS regime. The only reason I can see a pause in this forward movement of the entire of the region identifying ISIS as a joint problem is that Assad has only begun his bombing of the ISIS stronghold. I think Assad has to be heard from to determine what he sees as a legitimate need for western support within his country to end the domination of ISIS. The UK is mostly rejecting any alliance with Syria to stop ISIS. It may be that the UK sees ISIS as a faux-ally in ending the Assad leadership of Syria. The question is what happens after Assad is gone and ISIS has control of a country?
November 13, 2013
...Tripoli has seen on-off clashes (click here) between Sunni Muslim militants who support a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect, which is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
Ghiyyeh was a Sunni, but supported Hezbollah, and was close to prominent pro-Assad figures in Tripoli. In September, he was wounded when his car exploded moments after he parked it.
On August 23, twin bomb blasts outside a Sunni mosque in Tripoli killed at least 42 people and wounded hundreds in the deadliest bombing there since Lebanon's own 1975-90 civil war.
A week earlier, a huge car bomb killed at least 24 people in a Hezbollah-controlled part of Beirut.
Lebanon's political and sectarian divisions have widened since the Syrian conflict began with peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011 and later descended into full-scale warfare.
August 22, 2014
The Daily Star
TRIPOLI, Lebanon: The judiciary Friday (click here) released a man who had served his sentence over his involvement in Tripoli's clashes earlier this year.
Hasan Khalaf, known as Alliza, was released from Roumieh prison, the second convict this week, prompting his supporters to fire celebratory shots in the Tripoli neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh.
A day earlier, Abou Taymour al-Dandashi, a militia leader also detained for involvement in clashes in Tripoli, was released from prison. He had served the equivalent of his sentence....
One cannot talk about Syria without talking about Lebanon.
This is what the problem is. Bush's invasion into Iraq completely destabilized the Saddam regime and basically left Iraq an abandoned and empty land except for the religious/ethnic communities. The Bush/Blair alliance then arrogantly believed they could run a campaign to win "The Hearts and Minds of the People." Sure that was really going to happen considering both countries are predominantly Christian. But, if you have the bombs, the military budget and the arrogance, why not? After all it bailed out Cheney with Halliburton, right?
Iraq was dominated by a ruthless dictator. Saddam and his sons were horrors, so what could be worse than that?
It all depends through what eyes one looks. I remember a film segment of an Iraqi man stating to American GIs, "What are you still doing here?" the day after the invasion by the USA and the UK. He was absolutely correct. Without Saddam to commit crimes against humanity the region would fall into the order that existed for millenium which fell along religious differences. As far as the people of Iraq were concerned they had their leaders, their clerics and Aytollahs. For some reason, Bush believed Iraq could be 'Americanized' similar to Japan after WWII. It was just pure arrogance, political mind speak and power brokering. There was no reality within Iraq that would subscribe to that outcome. The Shi'ites had been assaulted so many times in profound ways they weren't about to trust anyone beside their Holy Men. The Kurds had suffered, but, not quite as much as the Shea. Both nations of people had developed their own leadership and resolve under the No Fly Zones. For the most part the only entity left to deal with, as far as they were concerned, was Saddam.
With Saddam gone and The West talking about democracy and elections, the Shea dismissed that reality as something from Mars. The Cleric Muqtada al Sadr never recognized the Iraqi Central Government because the concept was completely alien and appeared to be a demon rather than a representative group of people governing the land. Of course, The West wouldn't put up with an autonomous Cleric and the people that followed him, so they attempted to destroy the Shea's leadership by sending the Aytollah to the UK for some sort of heart condition and attacking Sadr within one of the most precious Mosques within the religion.
I asked myself, "What the hell to they think they are doing by destroying the only profound leadership these people had known?" Well, long about the time I was asking myself that, the Grand Ayatollah was asking himself the same thing as he recovered from some heart procedure in the UK and ordered the entire of his people to march along the route to the Imam Ali Mosque. Well, that stopped the USA tanks and attack and the assault against the Shi'ite leadership was over.
One would think if the people of the Shi'ite nation were that well organized under their religious convictions maybe it was time to leave them to their own ideas of governance. Right? But, no that isn't what happened. The Western Bullies of Bush and Blair decided to then appeal to Sadr himself to gain his support. Sadr became interested, but, let's face it he is a Cleric with dead relatives because of a Western instilled government in Saddam. Hello?
In northern Iraq was the already independently governed Kurds. They were perfectly fine with whatever The West wanted to do and came to Baghdad to bring about a new reality.
So, honestly. What chance did the 'country' of Iraq have without a brutal dictator killing off those that opposed him. And Saddam was Sunni anyway.
When ISIS grew as the civil war in Syria proceeded for now it's third year, it was ignored by Assad. Assad was too busy protecting Hezbollah fighters to combat McCain's beloved rebel forces. As ISIS grew due to the youth of it's members and was able obtain weapons with them coming across the Syrian borders like water in a flood from The West, it got the idea it could take over any and all of the munitions left in the care of the Iraqis. And it did. ISIS was able to defeat the 'so called' Iraqi military without hardly any opposition at all. It now had high end military equipment so 'its prayers (five times a day) were answered.' How is ISIS organized? Under extremist religious order.
Before the USA invaded Iraq there was stability. It was a horrible dictatorship, but, it was stable. The region mostly ran according to the dictates of Saddam, Assad, Mobarak, Abdullah II and Kind Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Today, there is no governance in Iraq and the region has fallen into it's more natural elements of Shea, Kurd and Sunni with Baghdad as a gated community where the figure head government lives.
Now, The West wants to move into Syria to chase down ISIS. What will that do to the region? Is Lebanon at least stable with Assad fighting for his sovereign country? Yeah. Lebanon is still there and for the most part stable. What happens to Lebanon, Jordan and the region if the USA military is asking the American people to again be scaredy cats to some political nonsense by the right wing/Republicans, "The ISIS is coming."
There is plenty in this world in the year 2014 to be afraid of and The West's populous frequently gives into fear tactics and hate mongering. Wall Street. It is the idea a company can 'turn on and turn off' the consumerism with it's next best commercial.
It is time The West grew up and realized it cannot have the world exactly as some dreamscape of western domination and the wealth of commercial enterprise the size of billions of untapped human consumers. The USA military cannot continue to be 'the answer' to everyone else's problems as if they are sent from heaven above and the American people simply have to carry the fiscal burden of chronic war with an unending supply of Christian soldiers. That is Cheney. That is the Cheney dreamscape. Western domination of every inch of land and sea on Earth with the fiscal burden on the impoverished American worker and Christian soldiers.
Believe me the opposition by Republicans of the minimum wage is far more than their complaining of the loss of stockholder revenues, it has an expansive definition of which I will not continue to pursue at the moment. Let me put it this way, impoverishment has it's own fiscal benefits with an enforceable lifestyle. It is important the Democrats fight this fight against impoverishment. The Republicans don't care and Ryan is a joke with his 'designer Social Worker' dreamscape. Give me a break, 'designer social workers?' Is that not glamour directly from the best Plutocratic Koch Bros?
But, to decide about The West's invasion into Syria to pursue ISIS? I think Assad has to be given the chance to defend his country against ISIS. Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey are stable and want to remain stable. I think the USA has time to decide what happens with allies and Syria has to come to terms with it's own reality. I would think if Assad wants help from The West it would require a strong treaty before anything else happens to benefit the current Syrian government. Assad joined the Convention on Chemical Weapons in a matter of a week or so; Assad could easily agree to a treaty with The West in that much time or less.
Iraq? What Iraq?
