Meanwhile, in Syria

[Thanas]

Russia is busy bombing civilians everywhere in Syria, with their main focus having shifted from IS to Anti-Assad rebels. They won't raise a stink on this.

[The Romulan Republic]

Another nasty possibility that occurs to me is that one of the other coalition partners (some of whom really hate Assad) did this without consulting with the US. No, I have no evidence for that. Just adding it to the list of hypotheticals based on the limited information I have.

[jwl]

Assad has no reason to lie here, he doesn't want a confrontation with the west. Either it's real or a case of mistaken identity.

[Omega18]

For the record US military officials have now confirmed they are sure they didn't hit the target in question.

A U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said later in the day that the Pentagon is “certain” that a Russian warplane carried out the attack. There was no response to the charge from either Syria or Russia...

U.S. warplanes did conduct overnight strikes in the province of Deir al-Zour on Sunday, but the targets were oil wells at least 34 miles from Ayyash, the location the Syrian government said was hit, according to Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mi ... story.html

With modern GPS and navigation technology the US is not going to miss by at least 34 miles. While its true this could theoretically be part of a cover-up with the US lying its ass off about it, I certainly view Russia hitting the target by mistake as the vastly more plausible explanation.

[Simon_Jester]

Assad has no reason to lie here, he doesn't want a confrontation with the west. Either it's real or a case of mistaken identity.

No, you've got it backwards. Assad doesn't want a confrontation with Putin, because Putin is his only ally of any consequence. He depends on Putin to restore his fortunes. Putin is his friend, and a friend with a history of abandoning or punishing those who criticize him.

Meanwhile, the 'western' coalition fighting Da'esh is not his friend. We've spent about four years making it very explicit we hate him so much that we aren't even willing to directly support him against Da'esh, who are just about the nastiest customers in the Middle East since Tamerlane. Our stated foreign policy is that Assad is so bad it's not worth helping him.

And not only are we not helping, we have no credible ability to threaten him, because we've been blustering about how 'unacceptable' his regime is for years while not actually doing anything significant to hurt him even when he launched barrages of nerve gas into his own cities. Realistically, we're not going to hurt him worse because he blames us for an airstrike than we did for the nerve gas.

So... we're not helping him. We're not going to do anything to him worse than what's already happened to him. So why should he help us, or do anything to limit the public relations fallout that might land on us? As far as he's concerned, "the West" can go play hopscotch in a minefield for all he cares.

I mean...

The Russians could probably order a team of Spetznaz to machine-gun a bunch of conscripts while shouting in Russian, waving conspicuously Russian-made weapons, leaving empty bottles of vodka all over the place, and posting the footage to Youtube.ru...

And Assad would still have every reason to blame the Western coalition. Or at least try.

[The Romulan Republic]

The US counter-accusation, blaming Russia:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/ ... -base-html

BEIRUT—The U.S. military alleged Monday that Russian warplanes were responsible for an attack on a Syrian army position in eastern Syria, an airstrike that Syria blamed on the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State group in the country.
The Syrian government issued an angry statement earlier in the day accusing coalition aircraft of carrying out the overnight attack in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour.
The government said three Syrian army soldiers were killed and 13 others injured in the strike.
It was the first such allegation by Syria since the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State was launched in Syria 14 months ago, and it sent tensions soaring in Syria’s crowded skies.
The U.S.-led coalition said it’s also reviewing reports that its airstrikes against Islamic State militants Monday killed at least 36 civilians, including 20 children, in a village in eastern Syria.
The attack occurred on the mud-brick village of Al Khan in Hasakah province, which has fewer than 100 residents and is at the front line of a U.S.-backed offensive conducted by mainly Kurdish forces. It’s near the town of Al Hawl, which fell to Kurdish forces Nov. 13.
The U.S. Central Command said its aircraft had been in the area, and it was looking into the report.

A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, later said the Pentagon is “certain” that a Russian warplane was responsible for the Deir al-Zour attack. There was no immediate response to the charge from either Syria or Russia.
The finger-pointing illustrated the danger that a misunderstanding, mistake or misinformation could trigger a wider conflict as Russia and the United States lead separate, rival air campaigns to combat the threat posed by the Islamic State.
U.S. warplanes did conduct strikes in the province of Deir al-Zour overnight Sunday, but the targets were oil wells at least 55 kilometres from Ayyash, the location the Syrian government said was hit, according to Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
At the same time, the Syrian opposition charged that a separate air raid carried out by Syrian government forces struck civilians in the Sukkari neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry called the alleged attack on the Syrian army post an act of “heinous aggression.”
It said it sent letters of complaint to the U.N. secretary general and the U.N. Security Council, urging the United Nations to take “urgent measures” to prevent a recurrence of such an incident.
“The aggression on the military post hinders the efforts aiming to fight terrorism and reiterates that the U.S.-led coalition lacks seriousness and credibility in the fight against terrorism,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry statement said.
It said four coalition warplanes struck a Syrian army post with nine rockets late Sunday, killing three soldiers and injuring 13. The strike also destroyed three armoured vehicles, four military vehicles, two heavy machine guns and a depot of arms and ammunition, the ministry added.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not confirm the information provided by the Syrian government.
Most of the province of Deir al-Zour is controlled by the Islamic State, but the Syrian government has held onto a portion of the city of Deir al-Zour throughout the four-year-old war.
British warplanes last week joined French and American aircraft in conducting strikes against the Islamic State in eastern Syria under the umbrella of the U.S.-led coalition.
Russian warplanes, meanwhile, have been striking targets across Syria since late September, alongside the Syrian air force, although the U.S. military says the Russian strikes mostly target opposition rebels, not the Islamic State.
Israel also occasionally carries out strikes against Syrian military facilities to prevent the transfer of weaponry to the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia, and Turkey has also conducted a handful of strikes against the militants.
So busy are the skies in some parts of the country that Syrians often do not know who is bombing them.
An airstrike that killed 15 civilians over the weekend in Raqqa, the north-central Syrian city where the Islamic State is headquartered, was attributed to the U.S.-led coalition by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
But another activist group, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, said the strike was carried out by Russian warplanes.
“It’s very confusing and hard to know” which airstrike is being carried out by which country “with all [these] warplanes and airstrikes above our heads,” the group said on its Twitter account.

[ArmorPierce]

The US counter-accusation, blaming Russia:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/ ... -base-html

BEIRUT—The U.S. military alleged Monday that Russian warplanes were responsible for an attack on a Syrian army position in eastern Syria, an airstrike that Syria blamed on the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State group in the country.
The Syrian government issued an angry statement earlier in the day accusing coalition aircraft of carrying out the overnight attack in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour.
The government said three Syrian army soldiers were killed and 13 others injured in the strike.
It was the first such allegation by Syria since the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State was launched in Syria 14 months ago, and it sent tensions soaring in Syria’s crowded skies.
The U.S.-led coalition said it’s also reviewing reports that its airstrikes against Islamic State militants Monday killed at least 36 civilians, including 20 children, in a village in eastern Syria.
The attack occurred on the mud-brick village of Al Khan in Hasakah province, which has fewer than 100 residents and is at the front line of a U.S.-backed offensive conducted by mainly Kurdish forces. It’s near the town of Al Hawl, which fell to Kurdish forces Nov. 13.
The U.S. Central Command said its aircraft had been in the area, and it was looking into the report.

A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, later said the Pentagon is “certain” that a Russian warplane was responsible for the Deir al-Zour attack. There was no immediate response to the charge from either Syria or Russia.
The finger-pointing illustrated the danger that a misunderstanding, mistake or misinformation could trigger a wider conflict as Russia and the United States lead separate, rival air campaigns to combat the threat posed by the Islamic State.
U.S. warplanes did conduct strikes in the province of Deir al-Zour overnight Sunday, but the targets were oil wells at least 55 kilometres from Ayyash, the location the Syrian government said was hit, according to Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
At the same time, the Syrian opposition charged that a separate air raid carried out by Syrian government forces struck civilians in the Sukkari neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry called the alleged attack on the Syrian army post an act of “heinous aggression.”
It said it sent letters of complaint to the U.N. secretary general and the U.N. Security Council, urging the United Nations to take “urgent measures” to prevent a recurrence of such an incident.
“The aggression on the military post hinders the efforts aiming to fight terrorism and reiterates that the U.S.-led coalition lacks seriousness and credibility in the fight against terrorism,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry statement said.
It said four coalition warplanes struck a Syrian army post with nine rockets late Sunday, killing three soldiers and injuring 13. The strike also destroyed three armoured vehicles, four military vehicles, two heavy machine guns and a depot of arms and ammunition, the ministry added.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not confirm the information provided by the Syrian government.
Most of the province of Deir al-Zour is controlled by the Islamic State, but the Syrian government has held onto a portion of the city of Deir al-Zour throughout the four-year-old war.
British warplanes last week joined French and American aircraft in conducting strikes against the Islamic State in eastern Syria under the umbrella of the U.S.-led coalition.
Russian warplanes, meanwhile, have been striking targets across Syria since late September, alongside the Syrian air force, although the U.S. military says the Russian strikes mostly target opposition rebels, not the Islamic State.
Israel also occasionally carries out strikes against Syrian military facilities to prevent the transfer of weaponry to the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia, and Turkey has also conducted a handful of strikes against the militants.
So busy are the skies in some parts of the country that Syrians often do not know who is bombing them.
An airstrike that killed 15 civilians over the weekend in Raqqa, the north-central Syrian city where the Islamic State is headquartered, was attributed to the U.S.-led coalition by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
But another activist group, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, said the strike was carried out by Russian warplanes.
“It’s very confusing and hard to know” which airstrike is being carried out by which country “with all [these] warplanes and airstrikes above our heads,” the group said on its Twitter account.

Pretty much exact potential incident I provided as reason for Turkey not allowing foreign unidentified warplanes to enter and cross their border.

[Patroklos]

Except for the difference that none of the planes were there to bomb anything, so there was no threat of them bombing the wrong thing. There is of course now the threat that Russia or Syria will shoot down anything Turkish that looks funny and ask questions later. If they even ask questions.

[jwl]

Assad has no reason to lie here, he doesn't want a confrontation with the west. Either it's real or a case of mistaken identity.

No, you've got it backwards. Assad doesn't want a confrontation with Putin, because Putin is his only ally of any consequence. He depends on Putin to restore his fortunes. Putin is his friend, and a friend with a history of abandoning or punishing those who criticize him.

Meanwhile, the 'western' coalition fighting Da'esh is not his friend. We've spent about four years making it very explicit we hate him so much that we aren't even willing to directly support him against Da'esh, who are just about the nastiest customers in the Middle East since Tamerlane. Our stated foreign policy is that Assad is so bad it's not worth helping him.

And not only are we not helping, we have no credible ability to threaten him, because we've been blustering about how 'unacceptable' his regime is for years while not actually doing anything significant to hurt him even when he launched barrages of nerve gas into his own cities. Realistically, we're not going to hurt him worse because he blames us for an airstrike than we did for the nerve gas.

So... we're not helping him. We're not going to do anything to him worse than what's already happened to him. So why should he help us, or do anything to limit the public relations fallout that might land on us? As far as he's concerned, "the West" can go play hopscotch in a minefield for all he cares.

I mean...

The Russians could probably order a team of Spetznaz to machine-gun a bunch of conscripts while shouting in Russian, waving conspicuously Russian-made weapons, leaving empty bottles of vodka all over the place, and posting the footage to Youtube.ru...

And Assad would still have every reason to blame the Western coalition. Or at least try.

Sorry, what I meant was, if the attack never existed, Assad would have no incentive to say it did. If the attack existed but was actually Russia, he does have the incentive to remove blame from Russia if he can. He's probably be better off pretending the attack never happened, but there may be difficulties in doing that.

[Simon_Jester]

Except for the difference that none of the planes were there to bomb anything, so there was no threat of them bombing the wrong thing. There is of course now the threat that Russia or Syria will shoot down anything Turkish that looks funny and ask questions later. If they even ask questions.

True. On the other hand, this is a serious problem for neutrals in a war zone; the sheer volume of explosives being thrown around and the number of combatants operating on foot creates the risk of the war spilling across borders just because of a navigational error or the like.

While I don't think the Turks reacted correctly in the incident, it remains a fact that Russian planes can pose a threat to lives and property in Turkey, if they penetrate into Turkish airspace. If the Turks got into the habit of tolerating such intrusions, this threat would likely become a reality one day.

In all things there are costs and tradeoffs, and I think here the Turks should have accepted the (small) risk rather than committing a provocative act of violence against the Russian military. But it's not as simple an issue as it might seen.

[Thanas]

Wonder how every other nation on earth manages to tolerate such 17 second incursions then without shooting them down....You are claiming that this is some huge choice to be made but honestly, I do not see it. Heck, not even when Israeli planes buzzed a German frigate while actually being in an attack profile were they shot down because people had the sense to think of the context before firing.

[ArmorPierce]

Wonder how every other nation on earth manages to tolerate such 17 second incursions then without shooting them down....You are claiming that this is some huge choice to be made but honestly, I do not see it. Heck, not even when Israeli planes buzzed a German frigate while actually being in an attack profile were they shot down because people had the sense to think of the context before firing.

Maybe they should have shot down the planes. After all, it has happened before. If course it depends on the exact context in the given situation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

[Simon_Jester]

Wonder how every other nation on earth manages to tolerate such 17 second incursions then without shooting them down...

I said the Turks made a mistake. I literally came out and said it, they handled this wrong. To make it more explicit, they should not have shot down the Russian plane.

However, the issue is not as perfectly, purely simple as "Turks murdered Russian pilots!"

The Turks are in fact bordering a war zone. Planes flying around on their southern border are likely to be armed. If a reconnaissance flight makes a navigational error no harm is done, but if a bombing mission does so, people could get killed.

You are claiming that this is some huge choice to be made but honestly, I do not see it. Heck, not even when Israeli planes buzzed a German frigate while actually being in an attack profile were they shot down because people had the sense to think of the context before firing.

Honestly, I wouldn't have blamed the Germans for opening fire; I remember the USS Liberty incident too. The Israelis have a history of being trigger-happy themselves.

[Patroklos]

Dudes, that happened in 1967. You shouldn't be using that to inform your decision making in any way.

[Thanas]

Maybe they should have shot down the planes. After all, it has happened before. If course it depends on the exact context in the given situation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

Again - context. And history. Does Russia have a history of bombing Turkish people, even by mistake? No.
Has this happened before with no threat being presented? Yes.

There was no justification for the Turks acting this way.

[Simon_Jester]

Dudes, that happened in 1967. You shouldn't be using that to inform your decision making in any way.

Let me simply note that I have heard enough that I feel there is cause to doubt the professionalism of the Israeli Defense Forces. I would be seriously concerned about their restraint and discipline in avoiding an international incident, and if it looked like the IDF was about to do a strafing run of a warship, I would sympathize with the warship crew if they fired on the IDF planes in perceived self-defense.

Maybe they should have shot down the planes. After all, it has happened before. If course it depends on the exact context in the given situation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

Again - context. And history. Does Russia have a history of bombing Turkish people, even by mistake? No.
Has this happened before with no threat being presented? Yes.

There was no justification for the Turks acting this way.

Russians and Turks were at war repeatedly for several centuries, and while peace has largely reigned since World War One, there is still tension between the two nations. They are not at war and neither nation has a recent history of killing people from the other, but it is far from an easy peace, especially in areas where Russian and Turkish armed forces are operating in close proximity.

The Turks' firing at the Russian jets was stupid, and wrong, and all sorts of other bad adjectives.

However, there is a legitimate point that should be made about the rights of neutrals bordering on a war zone. While shooting down planes of the belligerents without giving them time to react or comply with instructions is very far over the line... It is still a fact that being a neutral country bordering a war zone can result in property damage and death on your neutral side of the border.

While randomly lobbing missiles at every plane that so much as pokes a wingtip over the border is wrong and dumb... an elevated level of readiness and willingness to open fire on actually threatening intruders would have been reasonable. I repeat, just in case I haven't made this utterly obvious to everyone yet, that the Russian jets the Turks just shot down were NOT 'threatening' by any reasonable standard.

[Adam Reynolds]

I met an interesting young woman today who was a Syrian Christian, with dual citizenship in America. She and her immediate family obviously live here, though she still has had close family members killed in Syria(a first cousin was killed by rebels).

Anyway, she still seemed largely supportive of the Syrian government under Assad, seeming to take the position that it was better than the alternative, which i suppose it is. It was something of a large group and the conversation went a different direction, but I found it interesting.

[Thanas]

Russia and Assad are not fighting ISIS - here's why not:

The West's Dilemma: Why Assad Is Uninterested in Defeating Islamic State

In the fight against Islamic State, the West is considering cooperating with the Syrian army. There's a hitch though: Assad's troops aren't just too weak to defeat IS -- they also have no interest in doing so.

Sunday, Nov. 29, was market day in Ariha, a small city located in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. In May, various rebel groups had taken control of the town, which is legendary for its deep-red cherries. Ariha is located far from the front, and even further away from areas under the control of Islamic State (IS). But the Russian air force bombed it anyway.

The people shopping at the market didn't stand a chance. Just seconds after the roar of the approaching Russian Sukhoi fighter jet first became audible, the first bombs struck. They killed passersby, vegetable sellers and entire families. "I saw torn up bodies flying around and children calling for their parents," said a civil defense rescuer hours after the attack.

One day prior, just before 10 a.m., it was the turn of Safarana, a small city northeast of Homs. A first barrel bomb, dropped out of a Syrian regime helicopter, killed a man and a young girl and injured more than a dozen others. The victims had hardly been delivered to the clinic when two more barrel bombs exploded in front of the hospital, operated by Doctors without Borders, killing patients and paramedics who were caring for those who had just arrived.

Such attacks are nothing new in Syria. Jets from both Syria and Russia continue unhindered to bomb markets, hospitals, bakeries and pretty much any other place where people gather in the provinces that are under rebel control. Two years ago, Russia voted in favor of United Nations Resolution 2139, which was supposed to bring an end to attacks on Syrian civilians. But that hasn't prevented Russia from flying hundreds of exactly those kinds of bombing raids itself since the end of September. And that, in turn, hasn't prevented France from talking to Russia about the possibility of conducting coordinated air strikes and joining together in the fight against Islamic State.

Just three weeks after the terror attacks in Paris, Europe has prepared itself for entry into this war against Islamic State. But it is a war that unites many radically divergent elements -- and one for which there is no strategy. French jets, joined recently by British warplanes, are now flying sorties against IS in Syria. And Germany will soon join them. German Tornado jets, equipped with high-resolution imaging technology, are to help identify targets while A-310 aircraft will refuel warplanes in the air. In addition, a German frigate is to provide protection to a French aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.

Partnership with the Dictator

But beyond Germany's limited contribution to the air war, Berlin and Paris are discussing a vastly more sensitive and extremely uncertain engagement on the ground. Meanwhile, the French government -- which had long been a vocal opponent of Syrian President Bashar Assad -- recently introduced the idea of a possible partnership with the dictator and his troops in a joint alliance to fight IS.

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen recently said somewhat awkwardly of Syria: "There are parts of the troops, that one could very well -- like in the Iraq example, where the training of local troops was very successful -- emulate here too." Her spokesperson quickly made it clear that such a concept doesn't apply to troops under Assad's command. But the idea of cooperating with Assad is one under discussion: Islamic State terror in Europe would seem to have partially rehabilitated the dictator.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even proposed that fighting between the Syrian opposition and regime troops could be "discontinued, for a start." Steinmeier's words reveal his frustration at the fact that the two sides are engaging each other in a war of attrition instead of joining forces against IS. But the reality on the ground refuses to conform to his aspirations.



Indeed, it is increasingly difficult to identify such a potential partner for Europe on the Syrian battlegrounds. Assad's official army is now just one of many fighting forces on the side of the regime -- and is also suffering from poor morale and a lack of soldiers. For many young Syrians from areas under government control, forced conscription has become the most significant motivator for embarking on the refugee trail to Europe.

This is also one reason why Russia's initial strategy for Syria is not finding success. Moscow had been hoping that massive air strikes would force rebel fighters in opposition-held areas to abandon the fight. That would then pave the way for Assad's ground forces to advance and take back those regions. But in October, when Assad's tank units rolled into those areas that Russian jets had previously bombed, they didn't get very far. Instead of fleeing, rebels there had dug in instead.

Syrian Fighting Force?

Using TOW anti-tank missiles supplied by the US, in addition to Russian anti-tank weapons that had been captured or acquired from corrupt officers, the rebels struck some 20 tanks before the others turned back. The army's ground offensive south of Aleppo likewise quickly ground to a halt. Meanwhile, rebels near Hama were able to finally take control of a long-contested city.

Assad's army isn't just vulnerable, it also isn't strictly a Syrian force anymore. For the last two years, the forces on his side have increasingly been made up of foreigners, including Revolutionary Guards from Iran, members of Iraqi militias and Hezbollah units from Lebanon. They are joined at the front by Shiite Afghans from the Hazara people, up to 2 million of whom live in Iran, mostly as illegal immigrants. They are forcibly conscripted in Iranian prisons and sent to Syria -- according to internal Iranian estimates, there are between 10,000 and 20,000 of them fighting in the country. The situation leads to absurd scenes: In the southern Syrian town of Daraa, rebels began desperately searching for Persian interpreters after an offensive of 2,500 Afghans suddenly began approaching.

It is the first international Shiite jihad in history, one which has been compensating for the demographic inferiority of Assad's troops since 2012. The alliance has prevented Assad's defeat, but it hasn't been enough for victory either. Furthermore, the orders are no longer coming exclusively from the Syrian officer corps. Iranian officers control their own troops in addition to the Afghan units, and they plan offensives that also involve Syrian soldiers. Hezbollah commanders coordinate small elite units under their control. Iraqis give orders to Iraqi and Pakistani militia groups. And the Russians don't let anyone tell them what to do.

The odd alliances aren't just limited to the Shiite fighters. Anti-Assad rebels were recently surprised to see American Humvees -- a vehicle that quickly became a symbol of IS attacks after the Islamists captured hundreds of them in Iraq in summer 2014 -- rolling towards them from government-controlled territory. "We thought only IS had captured Humvees, but the Shiite militias fighting alongside Assad use them too," said Osama Abu Zaid, a local legal advisor to various groups belonging to the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Elsewhere, attacks by Assad supporters and by Islamic State have likewise taken place with astonishing temporal and geographic proximity to each other. Near the northern Syrian city of Tal Rifaat in early November, for example, an IS suicide attacker detonated his car bomb at an FSA base, though without causing much damage. Just half an hour later, two witnesses say, Russian jets attacked the same base for the first time.

Unsurprising Cooperation

Was it a coincidence? Likely not. There have been dozens of cases since 2014 in which Assad's troops and IS have apparently been coordinating attacks on rebel groups, with the air force bombing them from above and IS firing at them from the ground. In early June, the US State Department announced that the regime wasn't just avoiding IS positions, but was actively reinforcing them.

Such cooperation isn't surprising. The rebels -- in all their variety, from nationalists to radical Islamists -- represent the greatest danger to both Assad and IS. And if the two sides want to survive in the long term, the Syrian dictator and the jihadists are useful to each other. From Assad's perspective, if the rebels were to be vanquished, the world would no longer see an alternative to the Syrian dictator. But the rebels are also primarily Sunni, as are two-thirds of the Syrian populace -- meaning that, from the IS perspective, once the rebels were defeated, the populace would be faced either with submission and exile, or they would join IS.

In short, a Syria free of rebels would put both Assad and Islamic State in powerful positions, though not powerful enough to defeat the other. Still, such a situation would be vastly preferable to the alternatives: Being toppled from power (Assad), or being destroyed (IS).

Relative to those two camps, the Syrian opposition in the West is hardly being paid attention to anymore. That is in part a function of their confusing structure: There are dozens of larger rebel groups and hundreds of smaller units, mostly at a local level. They cooperate, but alliances often crumble due to the ideological differences of their foreign supporters.

British Prime Minister David Cameron presented numbers last week indicating the existence of some 70,000 moderate rebels. In addition, he said, there were two large Islamist groups: Ahrar al-Sham in the north, with 15,000 fighters; and Jaish al-Islam north of Damascus, with 12,500 militiamen -- and the al-Qaida-allied group Nusra Front, with its 6,000 to 10,000 men. Cameron had hardly finished reciting the numbers before questions were raised as to whether the 70,000 he cited were prepared to partner with the West in the battle against Islamic State. They have, though, been fighting against Islamic State since January 2014 -- but have primarily focused their fight on Assad.

Significant Moral Question

Sending ground troops into such a situation, or even lending legitimacy to the Russian-Syrian offensive, would unwittingly transform Europe into Assad's vassals. Beyond that, the dictator would have to be given troop reinforcements so that he could halfway successfully advance against the enemy.

Even if one were to ignore all of the military problems, there is also a significant moral question: Would the West really want to go into battle with a regime that has used, aside from nuclear weapons, pretty much every weapon imaginable against its own populace in an effort to cling to power? And once Islamic State is defeated and driven away, what should happen with the cities -- such as Raqqa, Deir el-Zour, al-Bab, Manbij and Abu Kamal -- that they now hold? All those cities had been take over by local rebels long before Islamic State moved in. Who should such areas be given to?

Certainly not to Assad. That would merely turn the clock back on this war by three years. Rebel groups would once again try to throw out Assad's troops -- and ultimately Islamic State would strike again.

Making matters even more complicated is the fact that IS, the declared enemy-number-one of international efforts, is receding from the focus of two major foreign actors in Syria. Ever since Turkey shot down the Russian jet, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Vladimir Putin have been engaged in a proxy war in the Aleppo province, a conflict which has seen Kurdish IS-opponents exchanging fire with Sunni IS-opponents in recent days. Furthermore, Russian jets have stepped up their bombing campaign against Syrian settlements along the border with Turkey while the Turkish secret service is sending weapons and ammunition into the fight against the Kurds. Both presidents have fragile egos, and Syria has emerged as the perfect playing field for them to get Kurdish YPG units and rebel groups -- both of which had thus far focused their efforts on Islamic State -- to fight against each other.

And Islamic State? The jihadists had been facing significant pressure in recent months from ongoing air strikes launched by the US-led coalition. Not because it had lost ground, but because it had been unable to continue its advance. The group's exploitative economy and its propaganda image both make a steady stream of victories necessary. The "caliphate" is facing financial difficulties and is also having trouble recruiting more foreign fighters. An expansion of allied air strikes could likely increase the pressure, while cooperation with Assad would put Islamic State in a perfect strategic position.

But for as long as Islamic State's enemies are busy fighting each other, the Islamists can carry on as before. Like last Wednesday, when the jihadists took over the small city of Kafra north of Aleppo -- not long after it had been bombed by Russian jets.

[Thanas]

An update: Turkey is now blocking the reconstruction of Kobane. German report here, no english sources as of now. The gist of it is that Turkey is refusing entry to Kurds and also blocks delivery of construction material.

[Sea Skimmer]

That isn't new. Not even remotely. The earliest English article I see in ten seconds of checking my memory via google referring to the Turk blockade on construction material is from June 2015.

[cosmicalstorm]

Surface to surface missiles strikes a city-block somewhere.
https://twitter.com/Ibra_Joudeh/status/ ... 1441092608

[cosmicalstorm]

Key points:
Aleppos clusterbombed ruins is soon in Assad hands.
Turkey and Saudi are caught between a rock and hard place.
Obama is a bit of a wuss regarding Syria.
Refugee crisis is intentional part of the plan by Russia to destabilize Europe.

ARGUMENT

Obama’s Disastrous Betrayal of the Syrian Rebels

How the White House is handing victory to Bashar al-Assad, Russia, and Iran.

BY EMILE HOKAYEMFEBRUARY 5, 2016

What a difference a year makes in Syria. And the introduction of massive Russian airpower.

Last February, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its Shiite auxiliaries mounted a large-scale attempt to encircle Aleppo, the northern city divided between regime and rebels since 2012 and battered by the dictator’s barrel bombs. Islamist and non-Islamist mainstream rebels — to the surprise of those who have derided their performance, let alone their existence — repelled the offensive at the time. What followed was a string of rebel advances across the country, which weakened Assad so much that they triggered Moscow’s direct intervention in September, in concert with an Iranian surge of forces, to secure his survival.

Fast-forward a year. After a slow start — and despitewishful Western assessments that Moscow could not sustain a meaningful military effort abroad — the Russian campaign is finally delivering results for the Assad regime. This week, Russian airpower allowed Assad and his allied paramilitary forces to finally cut off the narrow, rebel-held “Azaz corridor” that links the Turkish border to the city of Aleppo. The city’s full encirclement is now a distinct possibility, with regime troops and Shiite fighters moving from the south, the west, and the north. Should the rebel-held parts of the city ultimately fall, it will be a dramatic victory for Assad and the greatest setback to the rebellion since the start of the uprising in 2011.

In parallel, Russia has put Syria’s neighbors on notice of the new rules of the game. Jordan was spooked into downgrading its help for the Southern Front, the main non-Islamist alliance in the south of the country, which has so far prevented extremist presence along its border. Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian military aircraft that crossed its airspace in November backfired: Moscow vengefully directed its firepower on Turkey’s rebel friends across Idlib and Aleppo provinces. Moscow also courted Syria’s Kurds, who found a new partner to play off the United States in their complex relations with Washington. And Russia has agreed to a temporary accommodation of Israel’s interests in southern Syria.

Inside Syria, and despite the polite wishes of Secretary of State John Kerry, the overwhelming majority of Russian strikes have hit non-Islamic State (IS) fighters. Indeed, Moscow and the Syrian regime are content to see the United States bear the lion’s share of the effort against the jihadi monster in the east, instead concentrating on mowing through the mainstream rebellion in western Syria. Their ultimate objective is to force the world to make an unconscionable choice between Assad and IS.

The regime is everywhere on the march. Early on, the rebels mounted a vigorous resistance, but the much-touted increase in anti-tank weaponry could only delay their losses as their weapons storages, command posts and fall-back positions were being pounded. Around Damascus, the unrelenting Russian pounding has bloodied rebel-held neighborhoods; in December, the strikes killed Zahran Alloush, the commander of the main Islamist militia there. In the south, Russia has fully backed the regime’s offensive in the region of Daraa, possibly debilitating the Southern Front. Rebel groups in Hama and Homs provinces have faced a vicious pounding that has largely neutralized them. Further north, a combination of Assad troops, Iranian Shiite militias, and Russian firepower dislodged the powerful Islamist rebel coalition Jaish Al-Fatah from Latakia province.

But it is the gains around Aleppo that represent the direst threat to the rebellion. One perverse consequence of cutting the Azaz corridor is that it plays into the hands of the al Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra, since weapons supplies from Turkey would have to go through Idlib, where the jihadist movement is powerful. Idlib may well become the regime’s next target. The now-plausible rebel collapse in the Aleppo region could also send thousands of fighters dejected by their apparent abandonment into the arms of Nusra or IS.

The encirclement of Aleppo would also create a humanitarian disaster of such magnitude that it would eclipse the horrific sieges of Madaya and other stricken regions that have received the world’s (short-lived) attention. Tens of thousands of Aleppo residents are already fleeing toward Kilis, the Turkish town that sits across the border from Azaz. The humanitarian crisis, lest anyone still had any doubt, is a deliberate regime and Russian strategy to clear important areas of problematic residents — while paralyzing rebels, neighboring countries, Western states, and the United Nations.

Assad all along pursued a strategy of gradual escalation and desensitization that, sadly, worked well. Syrians already compare the international outcry and response to the IS’ siege of Kobane in 2014 to the world’s indifference to the current tragedy.

To complicate the situation even more, the regime’s advances could allow the Kurdish-dominated, American-favored Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to conquer the area currently held by the Free Syrian Army and Islamist militias between the Turkish border and the new regime front line north of the Shiite towns of Nubl and Zahra. This would pit the SDF against IS on two fronts: from the west, if the Kurds of Afrin canton seize Tal Rifaat, Azaz and surrounding areas, and from the east, where the YPG is toying with the idea of crossing the Euphrates River. An IS defeat there would seal the border with Turkey, meeting an important American objective.

The prospect of further Kurdish expansion has already alarmed Turkey. Over the summer, Ankara was hoping to establish a safe zone in this very area. It pressured Jabhat al-Nusra to withdraw and anointed its allies in Syria, including the prominent Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, as its enforcers. True to its record of calculated dithering, President Barack Obama’s administration let the Turkish proposal hang until it could no longer be implemented. Turkey faces now an agonizing dilemma: watch and do nothing as a storm gathers on its border, or mount a direct intervention into Syria that would inevitably inflame its own Kurdish problem and pit it against both IS and an array of Assad-allied forces, including Russia.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the rebellion’s main supporters, are now bereft of options. No amount of weaponry is likely to change the balance of power. The introduction of anti-aircraft missiles was once a viable response against Assad’s air force, but neither country — suspecting that the United States is essentially quiescent to Moscow’s approach — is willing to escalate against President Vladimir Putin without cover.

Ironically, this momentous change in battlefield dynamics is occurring just as U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura yet again pushes a diplomatic track in Geneva. But the developments on the ground threaten to derail the dapper diplomat’s peace scheme. Fairly or not, de Mistura is tainted by the fact that the United Nations is discredited in the eyes of many Syrians for theproblematic entanglements of its Damascus humanitarian arm with the regime. Despite U.N. resolutions, international assistance still does not reach those who need it most; in fact, aid has become yet another instrument of Assad’s warfare. Neither Kerry nor de Mistura are willing to seriously pressure Russia and Assad for fear of jeopardizing the stillborn Geneva talks.

Seemingly unfazed by this controversy, de Mistura’s top-down approach relies this time on an apparent U.S.-Russian convergence. At the heart of this exercise is Washington’s ever-lasting hope that Russian frustration with Assad would somehow translate into a willingness to push him out. However, whether Putin likes his Syrian counterpart has always been immaterial. The Russian president certainly has reservations about Assad, but judging by the conduct of his forces in Chechnya and now in Syria, these are about performance– not humanitarian principles or Assad’s legitimacy. For the time being, Moscow understands that without Assad, there is no regime in Damascus that can legitimize its intervention.

Ever since 2011, the United States has hidden behind the hope of a Russian shift and closed its eyes to Putin’s mischief to avoid the hard choices on Syria. When the Russian onslaught started, U.S. officials like Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken predicted a quagmire to justify Washington’s passivity. If Russia’s intervention was doomed to failure, after all, the United States was not on the hook to act.

Russia, however, has been not only been able to increase the tempo of its military operations, but also to justify the mounting cost. And contrary to some pundits, whohailed the Russian intervention as the best chance to check the expansion of IS, Washington knows all too well that the result of the Russian campaign is thestrengthening of the jihadist group in central Syria in the short term. This is a price Washington seems willing to pay for the sake of keeping the Geneva process alive.

The bankruptcy of U.S. policy goes deeper. The United States has already conceded key points about Assad’s future — concessions that Russia and the regime have been quick to pocket, while giving nothing in return. In the lead-up to and during the first days of the Geneva talks, it became clear that the United States is putting a lot more pressure on the opposition than it does on Russia, let alone Assad. Just as Russia escalates politically and militarily, the Obama administration is cynically de-escalating, and asking its allies to do so as well. This is weakening rebel groups that rely on supply networks that the U.S. oversees: In the south, the United States has demanded a decrease in weapons deliveries to the Southern Front, while in the north, the Turkey-based operations room is reportedly dormant.

The result is a widespread and understandable feeling of betrayal in the rebellion, whose U.S.-friendly elements are increasingly losing face within opposition circles. This could have the ironic effect of fragmenting the rebellion — after years of Western governments bemoaning the divisions between these very same groups.

It’s understandable for the United States to bank on a political process and urge the Syrian opposition to join this dialogue in good faith. But to do so while exposing the rebellion to the joint Assad-Russia-Iran onslaught and without contingency planning is simply nefarious. Washington seems oblivious to the simple truth that diplomacy has a cost, as does its failure — probably because this cost would carried by the rebellion, for which the United States has little respect or care anyway, and would be inherited by Obama’s successor.

The conditions are in place for a disastrous collapse of the Geneva talks — now delayed until late February — and a painful, bloody year in Syria. All actors understand that Obama, who has resisted any serious engagement in the country, is unlikely to change course now. And they all assume, probably rightly, that he is more interested in the appearance of a process than in spending any political capital over it. As a result, all the parties with a stake in Syria’s future are eyeing 2017, trying to position themselves for the new White House occupant. This guarantees brinksmanship, escalation, and more misery. 2016 is shaping up as the year during which Assad will lock in significant political and military gains.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/05/ob ... an-rebels/

[Broomstick]

Obama is a bit of a wuss regarding Syria.

Obama is now what is known as a "lame duck" president - if you think he's done too little up until now expect nothing more from now to the end of his term. The last few months of a 2nd term PotUS gets little done.

[bobalot]

Obama is a bit of a wuss regarding Syria.

Obama is now what is known as a "lame duck" president - if you think he's done too little up until now expect nothing more from now to the end of his term. The last few months of a 2nd term PotUS gets little done.

I wonder what all the armchair warriors like comicalstorm have as an alternate course of action?

Arm the Rebels earlier (the majority of whom are not "moderate" in any sense of the word) and bomb Assad? ...and then what? Go to war with Russia and Iran?

Even if they toppled Assad. Then what? Watch on as the Islamist rebels commit genocide against all the minorities and secular Sunnis who lined up behind Assad?

This is the same macho-bullshit from Conservatives I heard in the run up to the Iraq war. All bluster and no thought to what happens after.

[Grumman]

I wonder what all the armchair warriors like comicalstorm have as an alternate course of action?

Coming to an agreement with Russia is the first thing I would have done: "We won't bomb the people you like if you don't bomb the people we like, so let's just kill ISIL together and then all sit down to discuss postwar Syria after ISIL is ash."