i disagree about the memo. it came to late to meaningfully change anything on the ground; the russians were firmly in control of syrian affairs by summer 2016(i'd say from ~february 2016 they had the upper hand there) and the memo signatories knew that. its meaning: - it signaled the end of infighting among US agencies (the other side quit trying to convince Obama of anything); - it showcased, wishfully, what would come during H.Clinton era. it being leaked, meant that it was intended for international eyes and ears; - it was a sharp (personal)warning to Obama for when his presidency ends; he has a very good chance of becoming the US president with the least amount of friends come end of his term(Obama's new found love for the CIA and its ideas(it started after the elections ended, after Clinton lost) is an attempt from him to secure his pension(what's left of it) so to speak;
about Obama's vision - it's hard to tell; going in, he probably had some ideas(he made some visits to the Middle East before being elected, during his campaign) but perhaps lacked an overall vision and the allies needed to turn those ideas into realities.
his decision making is foggy at best but i put it on: "parties" wanted US out of the Middle East; i'll wait for history to fill in the blanks here.
On January 04 2017 02:37 xM(Z wrote: i disagree about the memo. it came to late to meaningfully change anything on the ground; the russians were firmly in control of syrian affairs by summer 2016(i'd say from ~february 2016 they had the upper hand there) and the memo signatories knew that. its meaning: - it signaled the end of infighting among US agencies (the other side quit trying to convince Obama of anything); - it showcased, wishfully, what would come during H.Clinton era. it being leaked, meant that it was intended for international eye and ears; - it was a sharp warning to Obama for when his presidency ends; he has a very good chance of becoming the US president with the least amount of friends come end of his term(Obama's new found love for the CIA and its ideas(it started after the elections ended, after Clinton lost) is an attempt from him to secure his pension(what's left of it) so to speak;
about Obama's vision - it's hard to tell; going in, he probably had some ideas(he made some visits to the Middle East before being elected, during his campaign) but perhaps lacked an overall vision and the allies needed to turn those ideas into realities.
his decision making is foggy at best but i put it on: "parties" wanted US out of the Middle East; i'll wait for history to fill in the blanks here.
As I read it, the 2016 memo was not so much a policy protest, as much as an output of the general frustrations that the hard-liners had pent up against the Obama administration since his refusal to act in 2013, when the Russians were not yet on the scene in force. The memo was as much about venting as a kind of engagement in salami tactics whereby a general reversal in direction was sought; and with it the use of military force as a tacit thread in order to restore America's bargaining leverage, eroded since the Russian intervention. In the language of the memo itself, the United States had to mount a credible military threat to Assad in order to "increase American negotiating leverage" with all parties. What was remarkable about the memo was not symptomatic of the situation of 2016, but of the relationship between Obama and the hawks of the State Department for several years running, a badly-kept secret now given some incarnated reality.
In 2013, the Obama administration swallowed the East Ghouta agenda fed to him by the intelligence agencies, and ran a united front for over a week blaming Assad, despite the fact that Obama would really have preferred to do nothing under the circumstances.
P.S. Do you have anything which would lead you to suspect that the leak of the memo was connected to Clinton's presidential campaign?
The leak of the memo coincided with the advocacy of the same military option by a Washington think tank with ties to Hillary Clinton. On 16 June, the very day the New York Times published the story of the leaked memo by State Department officials, the Center for New American Security (CNAS) released a report on a study group on defeating the Islamic State that called for a US policy to “threaten and execute limited strikes against the Assad regime”, to signal to Assad as well Russia and Iran that it is “willing to get more engaged”. The same report called for dispatching “several thousand” US troops to Syria.
The study group was co-chaired by CNAS co-founder Michele Flournoy, formerly third-ranked Defense Department official, although the report was written by lower-level CNAS staff members. Since leaving the Obama administration in 2009, Flournoy has been critical of its defence policy and is now regarded as the most likely choice for defence secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration.
Clinton is clearly sympathetic to the military option the leaked memo. The timing of the appearance of both documents immediately after Clinton had clinched the nomination suggests that the bureaucratic figures behind the push for a new war in Syria are seeking to take advantage of the Clinton presidential run to build public support for that option.
And that is when the conversation reached an impasse, with Ms. Shehwaro, an educator and social media activist, recalling hopes for a more direct American role.
“So you think the only solution is for somebody to come in and get rid of Assad?” Mr. Kerry asked.
“Yes,” Ms. Shehwaro said.
“Who’s that going to be?” he asked. “Who’s going to do that?”
“Three years ago, I would say: You. But right now, I don’t know.”
the nytimes article is the most detailed one i found so far(other articles i've read removed the audio and the names claiming: ex -Editor's note: CNN has taken down the audio recording at the request of some of the participants out of concern for their safety.). nytimes also mentions Mustafa Alsyofi:
One, a civil engineer named Mustafa Alsyofi, said Mr. Kerry had effectively told the Syrian opposition, “You have to fight for us, but we will not fight for you.”
“How can this be accepted by anyone?” Mr. Alsyofi asked. “It’s unbelievable.”
Edit: some articles claim SAMS was also there; from their website
The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) is a non-profit, non-political, professional and medical relief organization that represents Syrian American medical professionals in the United States. SAMS is working on the front lines of crisis relief in Syria and neighboring countries to alleviate suffering and save lives. Through its rich network within the United States and in Syria, SAMS organizes medical missions to the region, provides professional and educational trainings to Syrian physicians, and delivers medicine and medical supplies to hospitals and vulnerable families in Syria.
Strangely, White Helmets says that US doesn't need any monitoring role.
Then when US asks White Helmets for videos of the aircraft doing the strike, does some self-declared "insurgent" respond that the violations are clear and is there any real need to provide video evidence and ask for in-kind support from US on the same level as Russia provided for Assad?
Anyone have any decent news on the progress and difficulties in Mosul/Raqqa? The focus has been on Aleppo and supposed human rights violations but very little has been said about Mosul - and I'm having trouble finding good info about the happenings there.
Iraqi army and security forces are working better together in their battle against Islamic State militants and are gaining momentum in the 11-week campaign to retake Mosul, the commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing them said on Wednesday.
During a helicopter tour over recently recaptured areas, U.S. Army Lieutenant-General Steve Townsend said coordination had been largely absent in the first two months of the campaign, when Iraqi forces made slow progress after breaching the city.
Elite counter-terrorism troops entered Mosul from the east and seized a quarter of the city but troops on other fronts stalled, leading to a military pause last month.
Since resuming the offensive last week, the counter-terrorism service, rapid response division and federal police have retaken several eastern districts - despite fierce resistance - and joined flanks in areas that had been vulnerable to attack.
Townsend said Iraqi commanders, with guidance from the coalition, decided two weeks ago that the various pro-government forces would have to coordinate much more closely.
"For about two months ... what we saw is that there wasn't enough synchronization between each of the different attacking axes and forces," he told Reuters after visiting U.S. troops and talking to Iraqi commanders at a coalition outpost north of Mosul.
"Right before Christmas was a decision to huddle a lot more frequently, so they're doing that more."
Townsend said the top Iraqi commanders now all come together every few days - something the U.S. military does daily wherever it operates.
"Before... we were seeing progress mostly on one main axis and halting progress on the others. Now we're actually seeing forward movement on all of the axes in eastern Mosul," he said.
Townsend heads Operation Inherent Resolve, a coalition of military forces from Western and Arab countries that has been bombing Islamic State positions in Iraq and neighbouring Syria since 2014.
It is now providing air support and some ground assistance to the Iraqi assault on Mosul, and has embedded officers with Iraqi commanders to help plan each step of the offensive.
The Mosul assault, involving a 100,000-strong ground force of Iraqi government troops, members of the autonomous Kurdish security forces and mainly Shi'ite militiamen, is the most complex battle in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
www.reuters.com This is from 7 hours ago and the most up to date I could find
Airstrikes by the United States and its allies against two Syrian army positions Sept. 17 killed at least 62 Syrian troops and wounded dozens more. The attack was quickly treated as a non-story by the U.S. news media; U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed the strikes were carried out in the mistaken belief that Islamic State forces were being targeted, and the story disappeared.
The circumstances surrounding the attack, however, suggested it may have been deliberate, its purpose being to sabotage President Obama’s policy of coordinating with Russia against Islamic State and Nusra Front forces in Syria as part of a U.S.-Russian cease-fire agreement.
Normally the U.S. military can cover up illegal operations and mistakes with a pro forma military investigation that publicly clears those responsible. But the air attack on Syrian troops also involved three foreign allies in the anti-Islamic State campaign named Operation Inherent Resolve: the United Kingdom, Denmark and Australia. So, the Pentagon had to agree to bring a general from one of those allies into the investigation as a co-author of the report. Consequently, the summary of the investigation released by CENTCOM on Nov. 29 reveals far more than the Pentagon and CENTCOM brass would have desired.
Thanks to that heavily redacted report, we now have detailed evidence that the commander of CENTCOM’s Air Force component attacked the Syrian army deliberately.
The Motives Behind a Pentagon Scheme
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and the military establishment had a compelling motive in the attack of Sept. 17—namely, interest in maintaining the narrative of a “new Cold War” with Russia, which is crucial to supporting and expanding the budgets of their institutions. When negotiations on a comprehensive cease-fire agreement with Russia, including provisions for U.S.-Russian cooperation on air operations against Islamic State and Nusra Front, appeared to gain traction last spring, the Pentagon began making leaks to the news media about its opposition to the Obama policy. Those receiving the leaks included neoconservative hawk Josh Rogin, who had just become a columnist at The Washington Post.
After Secretary of State John Kerry struck an agreement Sept. 9 that contained a provision to set up a “Joint Integration Center” (JIC) for U.S.-Russian cooperation in targeting, the Pentagon sought to reverse it. Carter grilled Kerry for hours in an effort to force him to retreat from that provision, according to The New York Times.
Lobbying against the JIC continued the following week after Obama approved the full agreement. When the commander of the Central Command’s Air Force component, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigan, was asked about the JIC at a press briefing Sept. 13, he seemed to suggest that opponents of the provision were still hoping to avoid cooperating with the Russians on targeting. He told reporters that his readiness to join such a joint operation was “going to depend on what the plan ends up being.”
But the Pentagon also had another motive for hitting Syrian troops in Deir Ezzor. On June 16, Russian planes attacked a remote outpost of a CIA-supported armed group, called the New Syrian Army, in Deir Ezzor province near the confluence of Iraq, Syria and Jordan. The Pentagon demanded an explanation for the attack but never got it.
For senior leaders of the Pentagon and others in the military, a strike against Syrian army positions in Deir Ezzor would not only offer the prospect of avoiding the threat of cooperating with Russia militarily, it would also be payback for what many believed was a Russian poke in the U.S. eye.
The Evidence in the Investigation Report
On Sept. 16, Gen. Harrigan, who also headed the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, set in motion the planning for the attack on the two Syrian army positions. The process began, according to the investigation report, on Sept. 16, when Harrigan’s command identified two fighting positions near the Deir Ezzor airport as belonging to Islamic State, based on drone images showing that the personnel there were not wearing uniform military garb and, supposedly, displayed no flags.
But, as a former intelligence analyst told me, that was not a legitimate basis for a positive identification of the sites as Islamic State-controlled because Syrian army troops in the field frequently wear a wide range of uniforms and civilian clothing.
The report contains the incriminating revelation that the authorities at CAOC had plenty of intelligence warning that its identification was flat wrong. Before the strike, the regional station of the Distributed Common Ground System, which is the Air Force’s primary intelligence organ for interpreting data from aerial surveillance, contested the original identification of the units, sending its own assessment that they could not possibly be Islamic State. Another pre-strike intelligence report, moreover, pointed to what appeared to be a flag at one of the two sites. And a map of the area that was available to intelligence analysts at CAOC clearly showed that the sites were occupied by the Syrian army. Harrigan and his command apparently claimed, implausibly, that they were unaware of any of this information.
Further evidence that Harrigan meant to strike Syrian army targets was the haste with which the strike was carried out, the day after the initial intelligence assessment was made. The investigation summary acknowledges that the decision to go ahead with a strike so soon after the target had been initially assessed was a violation of Air Force regulations.
It had started out as a “deliberate target development” process—one that did not require an immediate decision and could therefore allow for a more careful analysis of intelligence. That was because the targets were clearly fixed ground positions, so there was no need for an immediate strike. Nevertheless, the decision was made to change it to a “dynamic targeting process,” normally reserved for situations in which the target is moving, to justify an immediate strike on Sept. 17.
No one in Harrigan’s command, including the commander himself, would acknowledge having made that decision. That would have been a tacit admission that the attack was far more than an innocent mistake.
The Deir Ezzor strike appears to have been timed to provoke a breakdown of the cease-fire before the JIC could be formed, which was originally to be after seven days of effective truce—meaning Sept. 19. Obama added a requirement for the completion of humanitarian shipments from the Turkish border, but the opponents of the JIC could not count on the Syrian government continuing to hold up the truck convoys. That meant that Harrigan would need to move urgently to carry out the strike.
Perhaps the single most damaging piece of evidence that the strike was knowingly targeting Syrian army bases is the fact that Harrigan’s command sent the Russians very specific misleading information on the targets of the operation. It informed its Russian contact under the deconfliction agreement that the two targets were nine kilometers south of Deir Ezzor airfield, but in fact they were only three and six kilometers away, respectively, according to the summary. Accurate information about the locations would have set off alarm bells among the Russians, because they would have known immediately that Syrian army bases were being targeted, as the U.S. co-author of the investigation report, Gen. Richard Coe, acknowledged to reporters.
“Who is in charge in Washington?”
Gen. Harrigan’s strike worked like a charm in terms of the interests of those behind it. The hope of provoking a Syrian-Russian decision to end the cease-fire and thus the plan for the JIC was apparently based on the assumption that it would be perceived by both Russians and Syrians as evidence that Obama was not in control of U.S. policy and therefore could not be trusted as a partner in managing the conflict. That assumption proved correct. When Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, spoke to reporters at a press briefing outside a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting on the U.S. attack on Syrian troops, he asked rhetorically, “Who is in charge in Washington? The White House or the Pentagon?”
Seemingly no longer convinced that Obama was in control of his own military in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled the plug on his U.S. strategy. Two days after the attacks, Syria announced, with obvious Russian support, that the cease-fire was no longer in effect.
The political-diplomatic consequences for Syrians and for the United States, however, were severe. The Russian and Syrian air forces began a campaign of heavy airstrikes in Aleppo that became the single focus of media attention on Syria. In mid-December, Secretary of State Kerry recalled in an interview with The Boston Globe that he had had an agreement with the Russians that would have given the United States “a veto over their flights. …” He lamented that “you’d have a different situation there now if we’d been able to do that.”
But it didn’t happen, Kerry noted, because “we had people in our government who were bitterly opposed to doing that.” What he didn’t say was that those people had the power and the audacity to frustrate the will of the president of the United States.
if one(me) is to go about the dates pre <-> after H.C. was nominated by the dems, it'll start to notice the escalation. in pre times you had words(condemnations, strong statements, decisions being questioned) but after it you had facts(signed memos, bombings, CIA letters). i'd argue that Obama single handed and purposely stabbed Clinton with that last CIA letter and said: "i'd rather take my chances with Trump". after the many talks at the White House between Obama and Trump, the former realized that Trump will scrap his progress and is now trying to undermine the Trump-Putin love affair by inducing a cold war mentality in americans that will have them revolt whenever Trump will do or say something perceived as pro-russian.
Barack Obama’s plan for military intervention in Syria was abruptly derailed by David Cameron and British members of parliament, US secretary of state John Kerry claimed on Thursday.
... Asked by reporters at a farewell press conference in Washington if the “red line” episode was a nadir of the modern presidency, Kerry argued that the media had not properly analysed, assessed or reported exactly what took place.
“The president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, did decide to use force and he announced his decision publicly and he said we’re going to act, we’re going to do what we need to do to respond to this blatant violation of international law and of warnings and of the red line he had chosen,” he said.
“Now, we were marching towards that time when, lo and behold … Prime Minister David Cameron went to the parliament … and he sought a vote for approval for him to join in the action that we were going to engage in. And guess what, the parliament voted no, they shot him down.”
MPs voted by 285-272 to rule out joining US-led strikes, triggering diplomatic shockwaves across the Atlantic.
In his unusually frank account, Kerry recalled: “So as we were briefing Congress – and I was on one of those briefing calls with maybe a hundred members of Congress on the call – many of them were saying, ‘Well, you’ve got to come to us. You’ve got to go through the constitutional process, get permission from us to do something.’
“And the president had already decided to use force but then the question became, ‘Do I need to go to Congress to get that permission?’
“It was a big debate in the security group. I was part of that, I remember the debate. And we felt that we’d quickly get Congress’s approval because this was such a blatant violation.
“I got a call Friday night, we met Saturday morning and the president decided that he needed to go to Congress because of what had happened in Great Britain and because he needed the approval and that was the way we’d do something like that.”
In the meantime, Kerry said, he held a press conference in London and was asked if there was anything Assad could do to avoid being bombed. He replied yes, he could agree to get rid of his weapons, and within an hour and a half Kerry received a phone call from Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov suggesting they cooperate on such a deal – something Obama and Vladimir Putin had previously discussed.
“All of a sudden Lavrov and I were thrown together by our presidents,” Kerry said, “in an effort to try and achieve that and guess what, we did achieve it, before Congress voted.
“The president never said, ‘I won’t drop a bomb.’ What happened was people interpreted it. The perception was that he was trying to find a different road. And I will acknowledge to you, absolutely, I heard it all over the place. The perception hurt, yes.”
He added: “The perception came about despite the fact that we actually got a far better result of getting all of the weapons of mass destruction out of Syria without dropping a bomb. If we had dropped a bomb, there is no guarantee we would have got any of them out.”
Edit: @RvB -the east(in Mosul) is being pushed by the PMF; from wiki:
The People's Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) (Arabic: الحشد الشعبي Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi),[8] is an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization composed of some 40 militias, which are mainly Shia Muslim groups, but there are Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Yazidi individuals as well.[9] The People's Mobilization was formed for deployment against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The organization was formed by uniting existing militias under the "People's Mobilization Committee" of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior in June 2014. The Popular Mobilization Units has been accused of human rights violations against Sunni civilians and sectarian bloodletting.
On January 13 2017 16:07 LegalLord wrote: Any thoughts on motivations? Doesn't seem like a very sensical thing to do at all.
In the past Israeli strikes against Syria have mainly been aimed at stopping weapon shipments to Hezbollah, especially missiles. Without further info pretty much impossible to know what was going on here.
Syria's army accused Israel of carrying out missile strikes early Friday on an airbase near Damascus -- the latest in a series of attacks in recent years.
Israel often targets positions linked to Lebanon's Hizbullah, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Here is a recap of notable strikes:
-- 2013 –
- January 30: Israeli planes hit a surface-to-air missile site and military complex near Damascus suspected of holding chemical agents. A U.S. official says Israel feared the transfer of weapons from Syria to Hizbullah.
- May 3: A raid near Damascus targets Iranian weapons destined for Hizbullah, a senior Israeli official says.
- May 5: A raid hits a scientific research center in Damascus, a weapons depot and an aircraft unit, according to a diplomat in Beirut. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 42 soldiers are killed.
– 2014 --
- February 25: A Lebanese security source says two Israeli raids hit a Hizbullah target on the Lebanon-Syria border. The Observatory calls the target a Hizbullah "missile base."
- June 23: Israel stages retaliatory air raids on Syrian army positions following an attack from Syria.
- September 23: Israel downs a Syrian fighter jet as it tries to cross the Golan ceasefire line.
- December 7: Syria's army accuses Israel of striking two regime-held areas in Damascus province.
-- 2015 –
- January 18: Six Hizbullah fighters and an Iranian general are killed in an Israeli strike on the Syrian side of the Golan. Hizbullah retaliates several days later by killing two Israeli soldiers.
- July 29: An air strike on a government-held village on the Syrian side of the Golan kills two Hizbullah militants and three pro-regime fighters, the Observatory says.
- August 20: Israel launches strikes on 14 Syrian army positions on the Golan in response to rockets fired on Israel's northern Galilee region. One person is killed, the Syrian military says.
- August 21: An Israeli strike on the Syrian side of the Golan kills five, Syrian state television says.
- December 19: Hizbullah figure Samir al-Quntar dies in an Israeli raid near Damascus, the group says later. Quntar had spent almost 30 years in Israeli prisons.
-- 2016 –
- April 11: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admits that Israel has attacked dozens of weapons convoys in Syria that were destined for Hizbullah.
- September 13: Israeli aircraft strike Syrian army positions for the fourth time in nine days after a projectile fired from Syria hits the Israeli-held zone of the Golan. Israel denies a Syrian claim to have downed an Israeli warplane and a drone.
- December 7: Several Israeli missiles smash targets near the Mazzeh airbase outside Damascus, a week after a similar attack in the Sabbura area west of the capital.
-- 2017 –
- January 13: The Syrian army says Israeli missile strikes have again targeted the Mazzeh base. The Observatory says they hit ammunition depots.
Peace talks in Astana. Not really a huge breakthrough but it does look like cooperation; the rebels seem to want Russia to mediate a reasonable transition moving forward, along with Iran and Turkey. Decent summary: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38728903
I guess things go more smoothly when the US isn't party to the talks.
Beirut (AFP) - Several Syrian rebel factions merged with the Fateh al-Sham Front on Saturday after days of clashes between armed opposition groups and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, they said.
The jihadist group and four rebel factions -- including the influential Nureddin al-Zinki faction -- labelled the new alliance Tahrir al-Sham.
"In view of the plots shaking the Syrian revolution... we announce the dissolution of all groups mentioned below and their total merger into a new entity named 'Tahrir al-Sham'," they said in a statement.
Islamist factions Liwa al-Haq, the Ansar al-Din Front and Jaish al-Sunna also signed the declaration.
The new alliance, whose name means "Liberation of Syria", emerged days after other rebel factions joined the powerful Ahrar al-Sham group.
Fateh al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham have for years battled side by side against President Bashar al-Assad's forces in the northern province of Idlib, the last major bastion of the armed opposition.
But the former Al-Qaeda affiliate -- which is listed as a "terrorist" group by the United Nations and Western governments -- has clashed with its erstwhile allies in recent days across Idlib and the neighbouring Aleppo province.