http://www.debka.com/article/23073/Russia-evacuates-Tartus-also-military-diplomatic-personnel-from-Syria-High-war-alert-in-Israel
1. A five-month bloodbath centering on the battle for Aleppo, a city of 2.2 million inhabitants.
The Russian president is meanwhile deliberately goading Washington and raising temperatures by playing hide-and-seek over the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, charged with espionage for stealing and leaking classified intelligence. At home, he is considered variously as a traitor and a brave whistleblower.
It could scuttle the secret US-Iranian negotiating track on its nuclear program, which was buoyed up by the election of the pragmatic Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/25/is-obama-arming-al-qaeda-to-topple-assad/
Shortly after the DEBKA aired a special video on the Syrian war’s widening circle, Moscow announced Wednesday June 26, that the evacuation which had begun Friday of all military and diplomatic personnel from Syria was now complete, including the Russian naval base at Tartus.
“Russia decided to withdraw its personnel because of the risks from the conflict in Syria, as well as the fear of an incident involving the Russian military that could have larger consequences,” said a defense ministry official in Moscow. He stressed that a 16-ship naval task force in the eastern Mediterranean remains on post and arms shipments, including anti-air weapons, would continue to the Syrian government in keeping with former contracts.
In another sign of an impending escalation in Syria, the Israeli Golan brigade staged Wednesday an unannounced war maneuver on the Golan, attended by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and top army chiefs. In London, Prime Minister David Cameron called the government’s National Security Council into session in Downing Street on Syria. Opposition leader Ed Milliband was invited to attend the meeting, a custom observed only when issues of the highest security importance are discussed.
Earlier Wednesday, DEBKAfile carried the following report in its special video presentation under the heading: Putin and Obama cross swords on Syrian. What Next?
The sullen confrontation between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland last week condemned Syria to five months of escalating, unresolved vicious warfare – that is until the two leaders meet again in September.
For now, tempers are heating up between Washington and Moscow on Syria and other things too, notably the elusive American fugitive Edward Snowden.
US and Israeli intelligence watchers see the Syrian crisis entering seven ominous phases:
US and Israeli intelligence watchers see the Syrian crisis entering seven ominous phases:
1. A five-month bloodbath centering on the battle for Aleppo, a city of 2.2 million inhabitants.
The Syrian army plus allies and the fully-mobilized opposition will hurl all their manpower and weapons into winning the city.
Military experts don’t expect the rebels to hold out against Assad’s forces beyond late August.
2. Neither side has enough manpower or game-changing weaponry for winning the war outright.
That is, unless Presidents Obama or Putin steps in to retilt the balance.
3. The US and Russia are poised for more military intervention in the conflict up until a point just short of a military clash on Syrian soil – or elsewhere in the Middle East. US intelligence analysts have judged Putin ready to go all the way on Syria against the US - no holds barred.
The Russian president is meanwhile deliberately goading Washington and raising temperatures by playing hide-and-seek over the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, charged with espionage for stealing and leaking classified intelligence. At home, he is considered variously as a traitor and a brave whistleblower.
For several hours Snowden vanished between Hong Kong and Moscow – until the Russian president admitted he was holed up in the transit area of Moscow airport and would not be extradited by Russia to the United States.
4. Iran, Hizballah and Iraq will likewise ratchet up their battlefield presence.
5. A violent encounter is building up between Middle East Shiites flocking to Syria to save the Assad regime alongside Russia, and the US-backed Sunni-dominated rebel forces.
It could scuttle the secret US-Iranian negotiating track on its nuclear program, which was buoyed up by the election of the pragmatic Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran.
6. The Geneva-2 Conference for a political solution for the Syrian crisis is dead in the water. Moscow and the US are divided by unbridgeable issues of principle, such whether Bashar Assad should stay or go and Iranian representation.
7. So long as the diplomatic remains stuck in the mud, the prospects of a regional war spreading out of the Syrian conflict are rising. Iran, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon may be dragged in at any moment – if they have not already, like Lebanon.
A small mistake by one of the Syrian warring parties in Syria could, for example, touch off Israeli retaliation and a wholesale spillover of violence.
All personnel withdrawn from Russian navy base in Syria - diplomat
Published time: June 26, 2013 09:43
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister says all personnel had been evacuated from the navy resupply base in Tartus, Syria, adding that not a single Russian military serviceman remained in the country.
Mikhail Bogdanov made the announcement in an interview with the Al-Hayat newspaper. “Presently, the Russian Defense Ministry has not a single person stationed in Syria. The base does not have any strategic military importance,” the newspaper quoted the Russian official as saying.
Russian media have verified the statement and the business daily Vedomosti quoted an unnamed source in the Defense Ministry as saying that this was true as all military and civilian personnel had been evacuated from the Tartus base and there were no Russian military instructors working with the Syrian military forces. The source added that the withdrawal was prompted not only by the increased risks caused by the ongoing military conflict, but also by the fact that in the current conditions any incident involving Russian servicemen would likely have some unfavorable reaction from the international community.
Russia currently has a 16-ship flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea but none of them has called at the port of Tartus in recent months and there were no reports of such plans.
Mikhail Bogdanov is also Russian President’s plenipotentiary for Middle East issues and he headed the Russian delegation at this week’s talks between Russia, US and UN on preparations of the major international conference on Syria, dubbed Geneva-2.
Following the Tuesday round of talks another Russian diplomat – Deputy Foreign Minister Gennadiy Gatilov – told reporters that the sides failed to agree on a number of questions and the terms of the future conference were not yet agreed. In particular, the participants of the talks varied on Iran’s possible role in the future conference.
Moscow supports Tehran’s participation in talks as it would make a positive contribution to the possible political settlement in Syria, the Russian official noted.
Besides, the participation of some of the Syrian opposition groups remains under question though the US side said they were working on this, Gatilov added.
The Russian diplomat said that the supplies of weapons to the Syrian opposition were not discussed at Tuesday's talks, though he noted that this issue “was not creating positive political environment for the start of the political process.”
Gatilov said that Russia still hoped the plan to call the international conference would end in success. In particular, the issue will be discussed at the forthcoming meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US State Secretary John Kerry, due soon within the framework of the ASEAN conference in Brunei.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-04-260613.html
Gulf monarchies fuel Syrian storm
By Conn Hallinan
The Barack Obama administration's decision to directly supply weapons to the Syrian opposition may end up torpedoing the possibility of a political settlement. It will almost certainly accelerate the chaos spreading from the almost three-year old civil war. It will also align Washington with one of the most undemocratic alliances on the planet, and one that looks increasingly unstable.
In short, we are headed into a perfect political storm.
While the rationale behind the White House's decision to send light arms and ammunition to the rebels is that it will level the playing field and force the Assad regime to the bargaining table, it much more likely to do exactly the opposite. The United States is now a direct participant in the war to bring down the Damascus
By Conn Hallinan
The Barack Obama administration's decision to directly supply weapons to the Syrian opposition may end up torpedoing the possibility of a political settlement. It will almost certainly accelerate the chaos spreading from the almost three-year old civil war. It will also align Washington with one of the most undemocratic alliances on the planet, and one that looks increasingly unstable.
In short, we are headed into a perfect political storm.
While the rationale behind the White House's decision to send light arms and ammunition to the rebels is that it will level the playing field and force the Assad regime to the bargaining table, it much more likely to do exactly the opposite. The United States is now a direct participant in the war to bring down the Damascus
| regime, thus shedding any possibility that, along with Russia, it could act as a neutral force to bring the parties together. Of course Washington has hardly been a disinterested bystander in the Syrian civil war. For more than two years it has helped facilitate the flow of arms from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates across the Jordanian and Turkish borders, and the CIA is training insurgents in Jordan. But the White House has always given lip service to a "diplomatic solution", albeit one whose outcome was preordained: "Assad must go," President Obama said in August 2011, a precondition that early on turned this into a fight to the death. As Ramzy Mardini, a former US State Department official for Near Eastern affairs, recently wrote in the New York Times, "What's the point of negotiating a political settlement if the outcome is already predetermined?" A regional scourge It is hard to tell if the administration's policies around Syria are Machiavellian or just stunningly inept. Take President Obama's famous "red line" speech warning the Assad regime that the use of chemical weapons would trigger US military intervention. Didn't the president realize that his comment was a roadmap for the insurgency: show that chemical weapons were used and in come the Marines? As if on cue, the insurgents began claiming poison gas was used on them, a charge the Damascus regime has denied. Whether there is any truth to the charge is hard to tell since neither the British, the French, nor the Americans have released any findings. "If you are the opposition and you hear" that the White House has drawn a red line on the use of nerve agents, then "you have an interest in giving the impression that some chemical weapons have been used," says Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish scientist who headed up the UN weapons inspections in Iraq. Carla Del Ponte, of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, says it was the insurgents who used poison gas, not the Syrian government. The French and the British are hardly neutral bystanders, with long and sordid track records in the region. It was Paris and London that secretly divvied up the Middle East in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, and who used divisions between Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Christians to keep their subject populations at one another's throats. Both countries just successfully lobbied the European Union to end its arms embargo on the Syrian combatants and are considering supplying weapons to the insurgents. Besides the growing butcher bill in Syria - according to the UN the death toll is now over 93,000, with a million and a half refugees - the war is going regional, particularly in Iraq and Lebanon. Turkey and Jordan are also being pulled into the maelstrom. Fighting between Shi'ites and Saudi-sponsored Sunni extremists in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli is drawing in the Lebanese Army, which recently issued a warning that sectarian violence was getting out of control. There is fighting between Assad loyalists, Sunni insurgents, and the Shiite-based organization Hezbollah on both sides of Lebanon's border with Syria. In the meantime, Sunni extremists are waging a car-bombing offensive against the central government in Iraq. According to the UN, 1,000 Iraqis were killed in May, and the toll continues to mount. A recent bombing in a Turkish border town killed 51 people and local Turks blamed the insurgents, not the Assad regime. The war has put economically fragile Jordan on the front lines. Some 8,000 troops from 19 countries just completed war games entitled "Eager Lion" in that country. The 12-day exercise was aimed, according the Independent newspaper in the UK, at preparing "for possible fighting in Syria". The United States has deployed Patriot missiles, troops, and F-16 fighter-bombers in Jordan. While the Syrian civil war started over the Assad regime's brutal response to demonstrators, it has morphed into a proxy war between Syria, Iran, Russia, and Iraq on one side, and the United States, France, Britain, Israel, Turkey, and the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on the other. The Council includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and new members Morocco and Jordan. The GCC is playing banker and arms supplier to the insurgency, much the same role it played in Libya's civil war. Qatar has poured more than US$3 billion into the effort to upend Assad, and, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States, helped shift Egypt from its initial support for a diplomatic solution to backing a military overthrow of the Damascus regime. Egypt is in the midst of a major financial crisis, and Qatar has agreed to invest billions in its economy. Such investments come with strings, however, and Qatar and its Gulf allies are not shy about using their cash to get countries on board with their foreign policy goals. Ahram Online said a major reason for Egypt's diplomatic shift was "the hope of soliciting desperately need financial and fuel aid" from Saudi Arabia. According to Ahram, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi bucked the advice of his top aides to switch positions. The April 6 Democratic Front Movement accused Morsi of caving in to "Washington" and extremist "Salafist Sheikhs." Egypt is also trying to land a loan from the International Monetary Fund, over which the United States wields considerable influence. It is hard to see Egypt's shift as anything but a quid-pro-quo for a bailout. Houses divided The Gulf Council has almost unlimited amounts of cash at its disposal, but how stable are the monarchies that make it up? Last year Bahrain was forced to use Saudi Arabian troops to quash protests by its Shia majority demanding democratic rights. The United Arab Emirates charged 94 people with conspiracy because they asked for democratic rights. They face 15 years in prison. Qatar recently sentenced a poet to 15 years for writing a "subversive" poem. The monarchs' bitter opposition to anything that smacks of democracy or representative government suggests that their crowns do not sit all that firmly on their heads. Saudi Arabia is a case in point. While it is the world's biggest oil exporter, it has a growing population - at 30 million, larger than the other Gulf members of the GCC put together - and unemployment among Saudis aged 20 to 24 is around 40%. The kingdom is also facing a restive Shia population in its eastern provinces. The Saudi monarchy has dealt with opposition through a combination of stepped-up repression and a $130-billion spending program. But as Karen House points out in her book On Saudi Arabia, the country's "High birthrate, poor education ... and deep structural rigidities in the economy, compounded by pervasive corruption, all have led to a decline in living standards ... Many of [the] young feel their future is being stolen from them." The other Gulf monarchies are rich - Jordan is the exception - but lack population and rely on imported workers to meet their labor needs. Because there is essentially no public oversight, the monarchies tend to breed corruption. The Saud family has some 7,000 princes, all of whom have special access to the vast wealth of the country. A generation ago that corruption could be easily covered up, but the Internet makes that increasingly difficult. Twitter and YouTube have a huge following in Saudi Arabia. Yet it is with these monarchies - the world's last bastions of feudal power - that the United States and its NATO allies have made common cause. Reliance on the GCC also means that Washington is essentially part of the Sunni jihad against Shi'ites in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. However, while the Shi'ite-Sunni conflict is important and long-standing, the fact that Iran, Syria, and Iraq have very different foreign policies from the GCC has more to do with the Council's hostility to Tehran than religious differences. It was Jordan's King Abdullah who first warned that a "Shi'ite Crescent" - Hezbollah, Syria, Iraq, and Iran - was a threat to the Middle East, a "warning" that conveniently fit into the Washington's drive to build an alliance against Iran. But elevating sectarian divisions in Islam into an alliance not only helped unleash Sunni extremists - including the al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria that reportedly worry Washington - it opened a Pandora's Box of ethnic divisions that the United States and the Gulf monarchies may yet come to regret. There is still time to halt this looming train wreck. United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said the US move to arm the rebels was "not helpful", and reiterated, "There can be no military solution to this conflict, even if the [Syrian] government and the opposition, and their supporters, think there can be." The Obama administration could use that admonition to call for a ceasefire, hold off sending arms, and instead concentrate-along with Russia-on building a peace conference. The conference would have to involve all the parties, including the countries currently being destabilized by the ongoing fighting. The United States will also have to step back from its "Assad must go" position and instead seek a way to integrate Syria's 2014 presidential elections into a formula for peace. But more arms and a tighter embrace of the backward Gulf Council will ensure the war will continue to kill Syrians and destabilize the region. Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus. (Used with permission Foreign Policy in Focus.) |
Is Obama Arming Al Qaeda to Topple Assad?
Is Obama arming Al Qaeda to topple Assad?
By F. William Engdahl *
After two years of hesitating, US President Barack Obama announced he will deliver arms to the Syrian rebels, citing unverified “proof” that the troops of the Syrian Bashar Al-Assad government used Sarin gas against so-called opposition rebels. The Obama flip-flop is bizarre and reveals a President under enormous pressure to detonate a war whose consequences may well bring the world into a Third World War.
Clinton and Netanyahu allied
According to a report in the New York Times, it was nasty pressure from former US President Bill Clinton, along with a series of nasty initiatives from Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, Republican warhawks like John McCain, who tipped Obama to active intervention.[1] Even former Presidential national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, by no means a peace dove, went on US national TV to deride the Obama decision: “I think our posture is baffling, there no strategic design, we’re using slogans,” stated Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday. “It’s a tragedy and it’s a mess in the making. I do not see what the United States right now is trying to accomplish.” [2]
He added, “we are running the risk of getting into another war in the region which may last for years and I don’t see any real strategic guidance to what we are doing. I see a lot of rhetoric, a lot emotion, a lot of propaganda in fact.” [3]
The same Brzezinski in an interview with a Paris daily, boasted it had been his policy to arm the Mujihadeen Muslim Salafists, including a then-young Saudi named Osama bin-Laden, to actually provoke a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.[4]
Also according to reliable sources close to the Pentagon, the US military is opposed to another war in the Islamic world after suffering the debacles of Afghanistan and Iraq.
That all begs the question, why now after two years of only minimal support is Obama moving to arm Syrian opposition rebels? One answer is that with major military successes in the past two months, the Assad government, allied with unprecedented support from several thousand experienced Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, the only force to deliver Israel’s IDF a major defeat in combat, and with military advisers from Russia and Iran, have been rolling back the gains of the rag-tag gaggle of assorted mercenaries, terrorists, Jihadists from Libya, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and beyond.
Some say that were the US to stand by and do nothing in Syria, it would mark a devastating blow to America’s image as the world’s unbeatable military power. That in turn would trigger a series of other nations moving to defy American demands.
The irony is, however, that at this stage, the strongest and best organized of the “opposition” within Syria are not the Washington-backed Free Syrian Army but a branch organization of Al Qaeda. That’s right, the same Al Qaeda that declared a Jihad against America and was accused, rightly or wrongly, of the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade towers and attack on the Pentagon. [5]
The US will now supply weapons and ammunition to Syrian rebels. That means, as Obama well knows, weapons will go to Al Qaeda. Syria’s Al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front has emerged, with aid of large Saudi funds, as the strongest and best-organized “opposition” groups fighting the Damascus government.[6]
The Al Qaeda Syrian al-Nusra Front is united with another Al Qaeda franchise in Iraq that is working to destabilize and “Balkanize” Iraq as well. “In an audio message posted online, the speaker identified as Baghdadi insists that a merger he announced in April with Syria’s al-Nusra Front, also known as Jabhat al-Nusra, to create a cross-border movement known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant will go on. Al-Nusra is an al-Qaeda affiliate that has emerged as one of the most effective rebel factions in Syria.” [7]
Washington now clearly backs an internal Islamic war of Sunni (yellow) against Shiite (red) which will plunge all Eurasia into chaos
With the decision of the US President to openly provide arms and support to Syrian rebels, Washington now clearly sides with a Jihadist Sunni muslim front consisting of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and now Morsi’s Egypt, against the Shiite-friendly or Shia-controlled Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Iraq, backed directly or indirectly by Russia and China. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam. A look at the map shows the extent that this Islamic “civil war” conflict would spread, a conflict likely to last decades and bring the world economy into disorder and chaos.
Obama’s Chief White House Islam adviser is Dalia Mogahed, an Egyptian-born backer of the Turkish Sunni Fetullah Gülen movement,which wants to restore the Ottoman Empire and to establish a universal caliphate. Mogahed is on record stating, “I think the Gülen movement offers people a model of what is possible if a dedicated group of people work together for the good of the society. I also think that it is an inspiration for other people and Muslims for what they can accomplish.” [8] Mogahed is tied to the secret Muslim Brotherhood of Egyptian President Morsi through her ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Both of these US groups are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama appears to be backing Mogahed’s side, at least at present.[9]
Several days ago, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked president, Mohammed Morsi, a man who owes his job to the Obama Administration, broke Egyptian diplomatic relations with Damascus and reportedly called for a jihad or holy war on Islam’s Shi’ite sect, which makes up nearly 40% of the Muslim population of the Middle East. Morsi called Shia Muslims “unclean” and de facto called for extermination of the majority of the population of Iraq, Iran, large portions of Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Nigeria, Ghana, Lebanon, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and a numerous other nations. (see map). [10]
Obama’s decision now to arm the Syrian opposition, backed by six of the G8 nations at their recent meeting, with only Putin firmly objecting, provoked Russia to announce delivery of advanced defensive weaponry to Assad’s Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Russia has already delivered part of its advanced S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system and will complete final deliveries. [11]
In addition, two Russian warships reportedly, according to Israeli military sources, carrying 600 Russian marines, 20 tanks and 15 armored troop carriers or military trucks, are heading for Syria “to protect the Russian citizens there” along with air force cover as needed. There are presently some 20,000 Russian nationals in Syria.
Lavrov told Russian TV: “We respect all our contracts and are honoring all our contractual obligations.” Both Russia and the United States are pumping more arms into Syria for the decisive battle for Aleppo between the Hezbollah-backed Syrian army and heavily mobilized rebel forces.[12]
New reports, unconfirmed, indicate that the even more advanced S-400 system is being sent to Assad’s Syria in response to the decision by Saudi Arabia to send vehicle mounted anti-tank systems into Syria’s opposition. The S-400 system has a range of over 400 miles and is considered more than a decade ahead of the most advanced US counterpart, as well as itsstate-of –the-art 24-Barrel rocket launchers which have a range of 6 km, ranked as the most developed artillery weapon of its kind. As well, Russia has announced it will supply 400 “Buratino” Russian TOS-1 24-barrel multiple rocket launchers with thermobaric weapons mounted on a T-72 tank chassis that can defeat enemy personnel in fortifications, open country, in lightly armored vehicles and transports within a range of six kilometers. [13]
Further complicating the already tangled war over the future of Syria, on June 22, DEBKAfile, an online service with close ties to the Israeli intelligence community, reported that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told Obama on June 19 that he would no longer permit transfer of US and NATO arms from Turkey across into Syria. Reportedly Erdogan made the dramatic u-turn after pressure from Russia’s Putin. Turkish industry gets some 40% of its natural gas from Russia. [14]
From 1936 through 1939 Spain was devastated by a civil war which pitted Republicans loyal to the established Spanish Republic against rebel Nationalists led by ultra-conservative General Francisco Franco. Franco’s rebels received support from Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Portugal, while the Soviet Union and Mexico intervened in support of the “loyalist,” or Republican, side. In effect it was the starting battle of what became World War II.
Syria today is looking ominously like a grotesque remake of that Spanish Civil War, with the US, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Qatar potentially pitted against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Iraq, Russia and China.
*F. William Engdahl, geopolitical analyst and economist, is author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. He may be reached through www.williamengdahl.com
Endnotes:
[1] Maureen Dowd, Bill Schools Barry on Syria, The New York Times, June 15, 2013, accessed inhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/dowd-bill-schools-barry-on-syria.html?hp&_r=1&
[2] Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets–Zbig: Obama Syria plan is ‘chaos, baffling, a mess, tragedy,‘ June 14, 2013, Washington examiner, accessed in http://washingtonexaminer.com/zbig-obama-syria-plan-is-chaos-baffling-a-mess-tragedy/article/2531924
[3] Ibid.
[4] Zbigniew Brzezinski, How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), January 15-21, 1998, p. 76*, accessed in http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html.
[5] Oliver Holmes and Alexander Dziadosz , Syria’s Islamists seize control as moderates dither, June 19, 2013, accessed in http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-syria-rebels-islamists-specialreport-idUSBRE95I0BC20130619.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Gordon Duff, Obama, Morsi plunge Middle East into chaos, PressTV, June 16, 2013, accessed in
[8] Paul L. Williams, White House Muslim Advisor Supports Islamist Gülen Movement, June 15, 2010, accessed in http://www.aim.org/guest-column/white-house-muslim-advisor-supports-islamist-gulen-movement/
[9] An article in an Egyptian magazine, Rose El-Youssef, identified six American Islamist activists connected to the Obama Administration as Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operatives who enjoy strong influence over US policy, claiming their influence on the Obama Administration was “tantamount to a turning point for the Obama administration from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood in the world as well.” See Bob Beauprez, Muslim Brotherhood in the White House, January 17, 2013, accessed inhttp://finance.townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2013/01/17/muslim-brotherhood-in-the-white-house-n1490354/page/full
[10] AP, Morsi’s new tough tone on Syria raises concerns of a nod to jihadi fighters, Associated Press, June 16, 2013, accessed in http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-16/world/40013153_1_morsi-syria-president-bashar-assad-s; Gihan Shahine, Morsi ups the ante, Al-Ahram, 19 June, 2013, accessed inhttp://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/3069/17/Morsi-ups-the-ante.aspx
[11] PressTV, Russia to fulfill S 300 systems contract with Syria: Lavrov, June 20, 2013, accessed inhttp://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/06/20/309999/russia-to-honor-s300-deal-with-syria/
[12] Debka.file, Lavrov: Russia will honor its S-300 missile contract with Damascus. Two Russian warships head for Syria, June 21, 2013, accessed in http://www.debka.com/article/23058/
[13] Dam-press, Russian Advanced Weapons for Syria: Unrevealed Secrets of Vladimir Putin’s Recent Visit to London, Global Research, June 18, 2013, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/russian-advanced-weapons-for-syria-unrevealed-secrets-of-vladimir-putins-recent-visit-to-london/5339559
[14] DEBKAfile Special Report, US troop buildup in Jordan after Turkey shuts US NATO arms corridor to Syrian rebels, June 22, 2013, accessed in http://www.debka.com/article/23066/US-troop-buildup-in-Jordan-after-Turkey-shuts-US-NATO-arms-corridor-to-Syrian-rebels-.
That’s the complaint coming out of Congress, which is expected to sign off on the scheme but hasquestions on how it actually is going to work, and how the administration plans to not arm al-Qaeda when they are the rebels’ frontline fighters.
Congress Wants More Details Before Funding Syria Rebels
Secret Briefings Lack Specifics on Plan
by Jason Ditz, June 26, 2013
Though plenty of “closed-door” meetings have taken place on arming the Syrian rebels since President Obama announced that he will, in fact, be arming the Syrian rebels, the administration still doesn’t seem to have a clear plan on how it will work.
That’s the complaint coming out of Congress, which is expected to sign off on the scheme but hasquestions on how it actually is going to work, and how the administration plans to not arm al-Qaeda when they are the rebels’ frontline fighters.
The “endgame” is also a big question here, as arming the rebels seems to be the beginning and the end of the plan, such as it is. That’ll satisfy Congressmen who want escalation at all costs, but others are concerns that this is just going to drag the US into an open-ended commitment.
The rebels are pushing the US to hurry up with the weapons, but the lack of serious planning on how the arms would be sent, or to what end, is likely to stall it for quite some time.
http://connecticut.news12.com/news/nation-world/power-struggle-underway-in-rebel-held-syrian-town-1.5574008
Power struggle underway in rebel-held Syrian town
Photo credit: AP | FILE - In this Tuesday, March 5, 2013 file photo, citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Syrian man sitting on a fallen statue of former Syrian President Hafez Assad in a central square in Raqqa, Syria. The Arabic words on the fallen statue read: "tomorrow will be better." A quiet power struggle in taking place in the eastern city between Islamic extremist rebels, who control the city after capturing it four months ago from the regime, and moderates trying to curtail their influence, making it a test case for the opposition.(AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center AMC, File)
BEIRUT - (AP) -- A slogan painted in small letters on a school wall reads, "We the people want Syria to be a civil, democratic state." Scrawled next to it in bigger letters is the response from an unknown Islamic hard-liner: "The laws of the civil state contradict the Islamic caliphate."
A quiet power struggle is taking place in the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa ever since a Muslim extremist faction of the rebels swept in and wrested the town from the regime nearly four months ago.
Armed men wearing Afghan-style outfits patrol the streets, raising black Islamic banners at checkpoints instead of the rebellion's three-star flags. But moderates are trying to counter the extremists' tight grip, establishing dozens of newspapers, magazines and civil society forums in an effort to educate the roughly 500,000 residents about democracy and their right to vote.
Raqqa, the first and only provincial capital to fall into rebel hands, is now a test case for the opposition, which has wrestled with how to govern territories it has captured amid Western concerns that Islamic groups will hijack power if President Bashar Assad is ousted.
The tensions reflect a wider struggle going on in the rebel movement across Syria, where alliances of Islamic extremist brigades have filled the void left behind whenever Assad's forces retreat, while moderate and secular rebels have failed to coalesce into effective fighters and the opposition's political leadership has failed to unify its ranks.
The rebel capture of Raqqa on March 5 consolidated opposition gains in a string of towns along the Euphrates River, which runs across the desert from the Turkish border in the north to the Iraqi border in the southeast.
Even so, the momentum on the battlefield over the past few months has been with regime, aided by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. More than 93,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011, according to the U.N. -- though a count by activists puts the death toll at over 100,000.
Two extremist factions, Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, led the push into Raqqa, which fell relatively quickly after a campaign that lasted less than a month. Most of the Jabhat al-Nusra fighters in the city are foreign jihadis, while the Ahrar al-Sham fighters are Syrians with a jihadist ideology.
Other opponents of the Assad regime in the city have been put off by what they see as the extremists' unnecessary brutality. In the days after seizing the city, the Muslim brigades brought captured security forces into public squares, killed them and drove their bodies through the streets.
Then in May, fighters affiliated with al-Qaida killed three men described as Shiite Muslims in the city's main Clock Square, shooting them in the back of the head. In a speech to a crowd that had gathered, a fighter said the killing was in retaliation for the massacres of Sunni Muslims in the town of Banias and the city of Homs, both in western Syria, according to online video of the scene. The statement was made in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a merger of Jabhat al-Nusra and Iraq's al-Qaida arm announced in April.
Armed gunmen with their faces covered in masks shot pistols and rifles wildly in the air in celebration after the three men were killed. They wore clothing favored by Afghanistan's Taliban and Arab mujahedeen who fought in that country -- a sign that they belonged to Jabhat al-Nusra.
The Shiites "were executed in front of everyone, young and old," said Mohammad Shoeib, an activist, recalling how for several hours, nobody dared approach the bodies to take them for burial until a nurse did. The nurse, Mohammad Saado, was assassinated by unknown gunmen the next day, Shoeib said. Other activists corroborated his account.
"Executing people in this manner in a public square and killing Saado was unacceptable and turned many people against them," Shoeib said. "Our revolution was against oppression and we don't accept such actions under any circumstance."
Activists set up a mourning tent in the same spot where the three were executed, receiving mourners for three days in a sign of their anger. "They didn't like it," he said of Jabhat al-Nusra, "but people demonstrated their right to an opinion and they should respect that."
Shoeib, 28, is one of the directors of "Haqquna," Arabic for "It's Our Right," an organization founded about three weeks after Raqqa fell that aims to educate people about democracy. The group's logo is a victory sign with the index finger bearing an ink mark, signifying the right to vote. The logo can be seen on walls in the city and on leaflets distributed by the group.
More than 40 publications have popped up in Raqqa, including newspapers and magazines as well as online publications, many of them run by young activists.
Many recall with pride the day rebels overran their city, about 120 miles (195 kilometers) east of the commercial capital of Aleppo, after capturing the country's largest dam and storming its central prison.
On March 5, cheering rebels and Raqqa residents brought down the bronze statue of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad after tying a rope around its neck. Others tore down a huge portrait of his son, the current president.
It was a striking scene in a city once considered so loyal to the regime that in November 2011 -- early in the 2-year-old uprising -- Assad prayed at Raqqa's al-Nour mosque for the Muslim holiday of Eid in an apparent attempt to show that the regime was fully in control there.
Activists like to compare Raqqa with Benghazi, the first major city in Libya to revolt against Moammar Gadhafi and fall into rebel hands.
But unlike Benghazi, which then became the rebel capital and the heartland for the militias of the months-long civil war in Libya, Raqqa feels sequestered and insecure. Regime warplanes still swoop down at random, shattering the calm with punishing airstrikes on opposition-held buildings.
Schools have closed and government employees have not been paid their salaries in months as a form of punishment.
Residents complain that the main Western-backed Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, has paid no attention to the needs of Raqqa.
"The opposition groups are too busy fighting each other," said one owner of a sweets shop in the center of Raqqa. "They have not sent anyone to ask about our needs, nor is there any contact with any of them."
In March, the Coalition elected an interim prime minister, Ghassan Hitto, tasked with forming an interim government that would help administer rebel-held territories in northern and eastern Syria. But the opposition has been plagued with infighting, and Hitto has been effectively sidelined.
Khalid Salah, spokesman for the Coalition, insisted the opposition was trying to support Raqqa despite a lack of funds and other resources. He said the city was receiving aid from the Coalition but that it was unmarked so many people are unaware of its origin.
"We are trying to step up aid and make up for some shortcomings in the next weeks," he said, adding that regime airstrikes around the city made the work more difficult.
Rebel groups, particularly Ahrar al-Sham, administer daily life in Raqqa, setting up bakeries, keeping electricity and water going as much as possible and distributing aid they receive from international supporters. They have set up courts that impose Islamic law, mostly dealing with financial disputes and criminal cases such as kidnappings and theft.
Many residents are grateful, saying the Islamic brigades are simply making up for the shortcomings of the opposition in exile.
Mouaz al-Howeidi, a 40-year-old programmer and Web designer-turned activist, said it's promising that the power struggle has itself not turned violent.
But he said civil groups were at a disadvantage because the rebels have more means at their disposal to get their message across, through mosques and by controlling the city's resources.
"They control everything in Raqqa," he said. "And they have weapons and money -- this makes everything easier."
The owner of the sweets shop, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, said Islamic groups were the flip side of the regime.
"Raqqa has not been liberated. It has been re-occupied by the Islamists."
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