http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/06/15/oh-thank-god-finally-war-with-syria/

Oh Thank God—Finally, War With Syria

By Russ Baker on Jun 15, 2013

Don’t you hate it when someone says, “I told you so?”

We do. That’s why we’ll revise the common statement.

We told you so.

We first told you, 18 months ago and again here and here and here and here and here and here and hereand here and here and here andhere and here and here, that you couldn’t trust the Obama Administration when it began making noises about pushing out Syria’s President Bashar Assad for strictly “humanitarian reasons.” In fact, before that, we told you again and again and again (ok—we’ll stop) not to trust the Obama Administration when it urged intervention in Libyafor the very same reasons.

Now, the Obama administration is preparing for war, in an astonishing echo of the George W. Bush administration’s misleading justifications for invading Iraq.

We saw the first little dribble to prepare us in a CNN Breaking News email Thursday, sent out at 5:14pm EST as most Americans were heading home.

Congress has been notified that the United States will acknowledge that Syria has used chemical weapons on a small scale multiple times and a “red line” has been crossed, according to congressional sources.

Friday, when it was clear that this trial balloon had met largely with silence — and certainly with no hail of outrage or skepticism—came the next salvo. Here, again, CNN Breaking News via email (this time, 4:53pm as most folks’s attention was fixed on the weekend):

United States military support for Syrian rebels will include small arms, ammunition and possibly anti-tank weapons, according to two officials familiar with the matter. The weapons will be provided by the CIA, the officials said.

Oh, and Obama is “considering” a no-fly zone. Where have we heard that before?
Expect the announcement that your son or daughter in uniform will not be home for Christmas to be sent out at 3am Sunday.
No one is likely to demand good hard evidence for the use of chemical weapons. After all, the Bush administration and its lies for war was so…very long ago.

War—What a Gas

None of these military adventures were ever about anything remotely honorable. So, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, you just have to get over it. You may feel better believing the system of which you are part has noble intentions, or that the party you prefer is somehow more principled.
The truth is actually pretty simple: no matter which party is running things, globally dominant governments do not make decisions based on humane do-goodism. In the halls of power, decisions are based on a consensus of hard-headed “realists,” whose concerns do not extend to human rights, the safety of women and children and other civilians, or the “self-determination” of non-Americans. “Spreading democracy around world”? Um, no.

In Top Secret National Security Council sessions, no one is foolish enough to raise noble and humanistic objectives. He (or occasionally she) would be laughed right out of the place. No, the talk is all about “national security.” And national security equates with national interest. So when we look for the motives behind the Obama administration’s announcement that it has determined Syria used chemical weapons and therefore crossed an imaginary “red line” which will trigger active involvement in a war against the Assad regime, we must focus on self interest.

Probable factors, almost none of which have been reported by the major media, include

1) the desire to create new bases in the Middle East to watch over the Iraqi oilfields without taking flak for maintaining a permanent presence in Iraq;

2) eliminating one of the last non-Western-dependent pan-Arabists left;

3) getting rid of a regime that works closely with China and Russia; and especially

4) weakening one of Iran’s few and most important allies.

Also, not long before the “spontaneous uprising” in his country, Assad was reaching out to pariah states like Venezuela and Cuba to foster cooperation, including a joint investment with Venezuela in an oil refinery in Syria.

Plus, like Saddam and Qaddafi, Assad had moved away from dependency on the US dollar.
But increasingly, it seems that the primary reason for wanting Assad out is not oil, butgas. In 2011, while Arab Spring was going down, Iran, Iraq and Syria signed a gas pipeline deal. Iranian gas would end up at Lebanese ports before making its way to EU markets. This would substantially relieve Iran of the economic pressure designed to topple its regime.

But it all gets really interesting when you consider the South Pars gas field—the largest in the world —which lies underneath the Persian Gulf and is divided between Iran and a country facing it across the water, Qatar. The latter, a highly reliable western beachhead in a hostile region and a major US military hub, is run by Sunnis, who are of course at the throats of the Shiites who run Iran. If Iran gets a pipeline, it trumps Qatar and the West. On the other hand, if Qatar alone can benefit from the field, it becomes a significant player in regional and even global power.

Qatar has been a great favorite of NATO, contributing its troops in places like Libya to mask what are essentially Western invasions of Arab soil. And of course Qatar runs Al Jazeera, which has not exactly been at the forefront of independent investigative journalism in any of these situations. Israel, with its own agenda on Iran, its own formidable gas discovery—turning it from an energy importer to an exporter—and an alliance with NATO and Qatar, also stands to benefit from blocking the Iranian pipeline.

Human Rights Indeed

Last summer, on the porch of a country store on Martha’s Vineyard, a favorite of Obama and his fans, a “liberal” became enraged when I tried to explain a few nuances about Syria. “You are apologizing for a butcher,” he yelled at me, moving away to emphasize his revulsion.

If Assad is a butcher, he’s long been our butcher. Just as Muammar Qaddafi did the US a favor and tortured people after 9/11, so did Assad. Just as, for a long time, Saddam Hussein was only too glad to do the CIA’s bidding.

This is all forgotten (if it was ever known) by Americans guilty of unspeakable indifference, of having learned nothing at all from a century of nearly constant war.

Poor Obama

The war for the hearts and mind of impressionable members of the public goes on. Notethe latest dribble (posted late Friday by the New York Times): Obama didn’t want to push the button on Syria, but he succumbed to tremendous pressure:

For two years, President Obama has resisted being drawn deeper into the civil war in Syria. It was a miserable problem, he told aides, and not one he thought he could solve. At most, it could be managed. And besides, he wanted to be remembered for getting out of Middle East wars, not embarking on new ones.

So when Mr. Obama agreed this week for the first time to send small arms and ammunition to Syrian rebel forces, he had to be almost dragged into the decision at a time when critics, some advisers and even Bill Clinton were pressing for more action. Coming so late into the conflict, Mr. Obama expressed no confidence it would change the outcome, but privately expressed hope it might buy time to bring about a negotiated settlement.

His ambivalence about the decision seemed evident even in the way it was announced. Mr. Obama left it to a deputy national security adviser, Benjamin J. Rhodes, to declare Thursday evening that the president’s “red line” on chemical weapons had been crossed and that support to the opposition would be increased. At the time, Mr. Obama was addressing a gay pride event in the East Room. On Friday, as Mr. Rhodes was again dispatched to defend the move at a briefing, the president was hosting a Father’s Day luncheon in the State Dining Room.

This raises lots of questions about Obama, and whether this is a sign of his own weakness, a deliberate leaked sop to his peace-oriented donors and supporters or, in line with something we wrote recently, that the decisions facing the modern American presidency are just too consequential for the establishment to leave them to an ephemeral figure like Obama.

Further raising doubts about the extent to which Obama is “in charge” and operating on behalf of the electorate is the Rhodes factor. As we previously pointed out, the rapid rise of the young, obscure and seemingly unqualified Rhodes from a coffee shop novelist to virtually managing foreign policy for the United States is a strange and disturbing event on its own. The particulars deserve much more scrutiny.

***

Although admittedly it all is hair-raising, few people here in the USA seem too terribly bothered. Almost all of the media, from rightist outfits like Fox through the great commercial middle to the liberal left opinion media, have been loudly silent on Obama’s decisions on Libya, and now on Syria.
You can bet they’ll be silent on Iran when its time comes. Which it will. Even if—once again— the reasons are fake.

Yeah. We told you so.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10123318/Nick-Clegg-Arming-Syrian-rebels-is-currently-the-wrong-thing-to-do.html

( While the US says it will provide arms to the rebels ( but to whom ) , note UK , Germany, Italy want no part of that and France is cool to the concept of the no fly zone trial balloon .. )

The Deputy Prime Minister said he does not want Britain to “get embroiled in a military conflict”.

His comments come amid growing suggestions that David Cameron is increasingly in favour of helping to arm the Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

The Obama administration has said that it wants to step up aid for the rebels because it has “high confidence” that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons to kill an estimated 100-150 people.

America now plans to channel small arms to the rebels but has no immediate intention of seeking international agreement to impose a no-fly zone.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme Mr Clegg said: “We’ve taken no decision to provide lethal assistance so we clearly don’t think it is the right thing to do now otherwise we would have decided to do it.

“What we are doing is providing significant amounts of non-lethal assistance…that is the strategy we are pursuing at the moment.”

The Deputy Prime Minister added: “At this point we’re not provided arms. If we wanted to we would do it. We’re not doing it.”

Mr Clegg said Britain's current contributions - items like armoured 4x4s, body armour and communications equipment - offered a "great deal of assistance" to the official opposition.

He said discussions with Mr Cameron continued on an "on-going basis", and added: "We both understand we are trying to strike the right balance between playing a part with other allies to provide support to the opposition who we think deserve support so they can play a leading role in forging a new Syria.

"But not at the same time embroiling this country in another conflict in a way I don't think would be acceptable to the British people."

Mr Cameron has been warned that he could be defeated in the Commons if he tries to win a parliamentary agreement for Britain to arm the rebels.

Tory whips are understood to have told him that up to two-thirds of backbenchers oppose deeper British involvement in the conflict and that Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs are likely to vote against.

Mr Cameron told Murnaghan on Sky News that Britain wanted to help the Syrian opposition.

He said: " I want to help the Syrian opposition to succeed and my argument is this: yes there are elements of the Syrian opposition that are deeply unsavoury, that are very dangerous, very extremist and I want nothing to do with them.

"I’d like them driven out of Syria. They’re linked to Al Qaeda. But there are elements of the Syrian opposition who want to see a free democratic pluralistic Syria that respects the rights of minorities including Christians and we should working with them.

"We are working with them and my point is this: that if we don’t work with those elements of the Syrian opposition then we can’t be surprised if the only elements of the Syrian opposition that are getting that are actually making any progress in Syria are the ones that we don’t approve of.

"So what is Britain doing today, so people at home can understand, with Americans, French, with other allies in the Gulf, we’re training, we’re assisting, we’re giving non-lethal support.

"Things like vehicles to the genuine Syrian opposition and trying to help them because after all they are trying to defend their communities against appalling attacks including, let’s be clear, chemical weapon attacks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10121921/Syria-Britain-US-and-France-in-urgent-talks-on-arming-rebels.html

* * *

Europe remains divided over how best to assist the rebels, with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, calling for “urgent discussions” at the UN Security Council over how to bring all sides to the so-called Geneva II peace process announced in Moscow in May.

Sweden opposed the US move to provide greater military support. Carl Bildt, the foreign minister, warned that the US decision could set off an arms race with Russia, which is already considering whether to supply its advanced S300 air defence systems. “I don’t think the way forward is to get an arms race going in Syria,” he said, “There’s a risk that that would undermine the conditions for a political process.”

Gen Salim Idris, the commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, welcomed the US pledge of further support. “We hope to have the weapons and ammunition that we need in the near future,” he told Al-Arabiya TV. “This will surely reflect positively on the rebels’ morale.”

Downing Street said “no decision had been taken” on whether Britain – which pushed for the ending of an EU arms embargo last month – should join the US in arming the opposition fighters.

The option of enforcing a limited no-fly zone to protect rebel training bases in Jordan, is also being considered, according to US officials. However, the French government indicated that it would be almost impossible to secure the necessary international agreements.

* * *

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-to-send-4000-troops-to-aid-president-assad-forces-in-syria-8660358.html

Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.

For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.

The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.

In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.

America’s alliance now includes the wealthiest states of the Arab Gulf, the vast Sunni territories between Egypt and Morocco, as well as Turkey and the fragile British-created monarchy in Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan – flooded, like so many neighbouring nations, by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees – may also now find himself at the fulcrum of the Syrian battle. Up to 3,000 American ‘advisers’ are now believed to be in Jordan, and the creation of a southern Syria ‘no-fly zone’ – opposed by Syrian-controlled anti-aircraft batteries – will turn a crisis into a ‘hot’ war. So much for America’s ‘friends’.

Its enemies include the Lebanese Hizballah, the Alawite Shiite regime in Damascus and, of course, Iran. And Iraq, a largely Shiite nation which America ‘liberated’ from Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority in the hope of balancing the Shiite power of Iran, has – against all US predictions – itself now largely fallen under Tehran’s influence and power. Iraqi Shiites as well as Hizballah members, have both fought alongside Assad’s forces.

Washington’s excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm Assad’s enemies because the Damascus regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East. Final proof of the use of gas by either side in Syria remains almost as nebulous as President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

For the real reason why America has thrown its military power behind Syria’s Sunni rebels is because those same rebels are now losing their war against Assad. The Damascus regime’s victory this month in the central Syrian town of Qusayr, at the cost of Hizballah lives as well as those of government forces, has thrown the Syrian revolution into turmoil, threatening to humiliate American and EU demands for Assad to abandon power. Arab dictators are supposed to be deposed – unless they are the friendly kings or emirs of the Gulf – not to be sustained. Yet Russia has given its total support to Assad, three times vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that might have allowed the West to intervene directly in the civil war.

In the Middle East, there is cynical disbelief at the American contention that it can distribute arms – almost certainly including anti-aircraft missiles – only to secular Sunni rebel forces in Syria represented by the so-called Free Syria Army. The more powerful al-Nusrah Front, allied to al-Qaeda, dominates the battlefield on the rebel side and has been blamed for atrocities including the execution of Syrian government prisoners of war and the murder of a 14-year old boy for blasphemy. They will be able to take new American weapons from their Free Syria Army comrades with little effort.

From now on, therefore, every suicide bombing in Damascus - every war crime committed by the rebels - will be regarded in the region as Washington’s responsibility. The very Sunni-Wahabi Islamists who killed thousands of Americans on 11th September, 2011 – who are America’s greatest enemies as well as Russia’s – are going to be proxy allies of the Obama administration. This terrible irony can only be exacerbated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adament refusal to tolerate any form of Sunni extremism. His experience in Chechenya, his anti-Muslim rhetoric – he has made obscene remarks about Muslim extremists in a press conference in Russian – and his belief that Russia’s old ally in Syria is facing the same threat as Moscow fought in Chechenya, plays a far greater part in his policy towards Bashar al-Assad than the continued existence of Russia’s naval port at the Syrian Mediterranean city of Tartous.

For the Russians, of course, the ‘Middle East’ is not in the ‘east’ at all, but to the south of Moscow; and statistics are all-important. The Chechen capital of Grozny is scarcely 500 miles from the Syrian frontier. Fifteen per cent of Russians are Muslim. Six of the Soviet Union’s communist republics had a Muslim majority, 90 per cent of whom were Sunni. And Sunnis around the world make up perhaps 85 per cent of all Muslims. For a Russia intent on repositioning itself across a land mass that includes most of the former Soviet Union, Sunni Islamists of the kind now fighting the Assad regime are its principal antagonists.

Iranian sources say they liaise constantly with Moscow, and that while Hizballah’s overall withdrawal from Syria is likely to be completed soon – with the maintenance of the militia’s ‘intelligence’ teams inside Syria – Iran’s support for Damascus will grow rather than wither. They point out that the Taliban recently sent a formal delegation for talks in Tehran and that America will need Iran’s help in withdrawing from Afghanistan. The US, the Iranians say, will not be able to take its armour and equipment out of the country during its continuing war against the Taliban without Iran’s active assistance. One of the sources claimed – not without some mirth -- that the French were forced to leave 50 tanks behind when they left because they did not have Tehran’s help.

It is a sign of the changing historical template in the Middle East that within the framework of old Cold War rivalries between Washington and Moscow, Israel’s security has taken second place to the conflict in Syria. Indeed, Israel’s policies in the region have been knocked askew by the Arab revolutions, leaving its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hopelessly adrift amid the historic changes.

Only once over the past two years has Israel fully condemned atrocities committed by the Assad regime, and while it has given medical help to wounded rebels on the Israeli-Syrian border, it fears an Islamist caliphate in Damascus far more than a continuation of Assad’s rule. One former Israel intelligence commander recently described Assad as “Israel’s man in Damascus”. Only days before President Mubarak was overthrown, both Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called Washington to ask Obama to save the Egyptian dictator. In vain.

If the Arab world has itself been overwhelmed by the two years of revolutions, none will have suffered from the Syrian war in the long term more than the Palestinians. The land they wish to call their future state has been so populated with Jewish Israeli colonists that it can no longer be either secure or ‘viable’. ‘Peace’ envoy Tony Blair’s attempts to create such a state have been laughable. A future ‘Palestine’ would be a Sunni nation. But today, Washington scarcely mentions the Palestinians.

Another of the region’s supreme ironies is that Hamas, supposedly the ‘super-terrorists’ of Gaza, have abandoned Damascus and now support the Gulf Arabs’ desire to crush Assad. Syrian government forces claim that Hamas has even trained Syrian rebels in the manufacture and use of home-made rockets.

In Arab eyes, Israel’s 2006 war against the Shia Hizballah was an attempt to strike at the heart of Iran. The West’s support for Syrian rebels is a strategic attempt to crush Iran. But Iran is going to take the offensive. Even for the Middle East, these are high stakes. Against this fearful background, the Palestinian tragedy continues.

http://www.juancole.com/2013/06/isolated-syrian-rebels.html

Obama Isolated at G8 on Arms for Syrian Rebels

Posted on 06/16/2013 by Juan Cole

President Obama met with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday in advance of Monday’s G8 summit. The 8 leaders meeting at a golf course near Dublin, Ireland, will likely focus in a big way on the Syria crisis.

Obama’s recent decision to become more active in Syria, at least sending light weaponry to the rebels, will have a mixed reception, perhaps an explosively mixed one.

Russia, of course, is strongly backing the ruling Baath regime and has strenuously objected to Obama’s announcement. In essence, the two superpowers are back to a Cold War footing over Syria.

In the recent discussions at the European Union, Italy and Germany opposed lifting an arms embargo on Syria. That is, those two countries did not want Europeans sending arms to either side. Because the ban had a sunset clause and because the EU could not come to a consensus, the embargo was effectively lifted.

Japan is unlikely to join in sending weapons, given its pacifist constitution, but it is somewhat stepping up its humanitarian aid to the rebels and to Jordan and Lebanon, hosts of large Syrian refugee populations. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a man of the right and is unlikely to oppose Obama’s plan, but he will likely be constrained constitutionally and by domestic public opinion from getting too involved in Syria.

The US can expect active support from the other three members, the UK, France and
Canada, who may well join in the effort of better arming the rebels.

As for the trial balloon floated by an Obama official as to a ‘no-fly zone,’ that step is likely to be rejected at the G8. France insists that the use of force be authorized by the UN Security Council. Everyone knows that there will be no such UNSC resolution because of the Russian and Chinese veto.

So, fierce opposition from Vladimir Putin, and just plain opposition from Angela Merkel and Enrico Letta. Neutrality from Japan. And support for small arms exports to the rebels but little more from France. Likely the UK and Canada will support whatever Obama decides to do.

Thus, the world’s wealthiest nations, excluding China, will likely split down the middle on Obama’s plan, with Russia seeing it as virtually an act of enmity.

There is some thinking of expanding the G8 to include, e.g., China and Brazil among others. Note that both of these countries are dead set against Western intervention in Syria. The US, with its hawkish ways, is increasingly isolated

http://www.france24.com/en/20130615-syrian-warplanes-bomb-rebels-damascus-ngo

Syrian warplanes bomb rebels in Damascus: NGO

Rebels prepare to launch mortar rounds towards government forces in southern Damascus on June 10, 2013. Syrian regime forces bombarded rebel positions in Damascus and its surroundings on Saturday with air raids and artillery fire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

AFP - Syrian regime forces bombarded rebel positions in Damascus and its surroundings on Saturday with air raids and artillery fire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
"Air raids targeted parts of Juba," a neighbourhood on the eastern outskirts of the Syrian capital where rebel fighters and regime troops have battled for months.
Fighting was also reported around dawn on the outskirts of the Palestinian Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus, which also came under regime fire.
Outside of the capital, regime troops fired mortar shells at several areas including western Moadamiyat al-Sham, southern Sbeineh and the region of Wadi Barada, north-west of Damascus.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers on the ground, said the shelling caused injuries and damage.
Elsewhere in the country, regime forces were shelling parts of the central Homs region, Aleppo in the north and southern Daraa.
The Syrian regime has pledged to launch an assault to retake the northern city of Aleppo and its surroundings, large swathes of which are under rebel control, in the wake of its capture of the town of Qusayr in Homs.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-says-it-will-not-provide-arms-to-syrian-rebels-a-905830.html

Washington has said it may soon move to supply weapons to Syrian rebels, a move that has been met with reserve by the international community. Western diplomats also told the news agency Reuters that the US government is considering a no-fly zone in Syria.

But despite reports that the regime of dictator Bashar Assad may have used chemical weapons, Germany says it has no plans to deliver arms to the rebels, a government spokesman said on Friday.

Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of the conservative Christian Democrats, said Germany would stick with its position of not providing weapons to a country engaged in a civil war for "legal reasons". The opposition had made the same demand. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry said it had no information of its own about the use of deadly poison gas by the regime in Damascus.
Although Germany doesn't intend to provide weapons aid, the country has been providing "non lethal support" since the beginning of June in the form of bullet-proof vests and first-aid kit deliveries to the Free Syrian Army.

On Thursday, the United States officially declared it has proof that Assad's forces used chemical weapons, based on blood, urine and hair samples from two rebel fighters. A White House spokesman said that the use of these weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, crosses the "red line" President Obama established early on in the conflict for determining the necessity of Western intervention in Syria's civil war.

Speaking in the Bundestag, Germany's federal parliament, on Friday, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called for a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. "We take the indication of the deployment of chemical weapons very seriously," he said. "We are urging a consultation at the Security Council of the United Nations with the aim of coming to a common position." He also confirmed Germany would not deliver weapons to Syria, a line that Berlin has stuck to for some time now despite the expiration at the end of May of a European Union arms embargo against the country. German law prohibits weapons from the country's companies to be supplied to crisis zones.

Syria Describes Allegations as 'Caravan of Lies'

A representative of the Foreign Ministry in Damascus denied the allegations coming from Washington, saying the US statement on Thursday was a "caravan of lies" and that rebels had deployed the chemical weapons themselves.

Moscow also sharply criticized the claims. "I will say frankly that what was presented to us by the Americans does not look convincing," said Yuri Ushakov, foreign policy adviser to President Vladimir Putin. He warned that a US move to arm Syrian rebels would jeopardize joint efforts to convene a peace conference. Earlier, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian lower house of parliament's international affairs committee, wrote on Twitter: "Information about the usage of chemical weapons by Assad is fabricated in the same way as the lie about (Saddam) Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq)."

In Britain, however, where preparations are underway for next week's G8 summit, the government is pleased that Obama now shares the government's position. Prime Minister David Cameron told the Guardian newspaper that Britain shares the "candid assessment" by the US. "I think it, rightly, puts back center stage the question, the very difficult question to answer but nonetheless one we have got to address: What are we going to do about the fact that in our world today there is a dictatorial and brutal leader who is using chemical weapons under our noses against his own people," he said.

'Urgent Discussions with International Partners'

The British position has been clear for months. Cameron was the first leader of a major country to speak publicly in favor of supplying arms to the Syrian rebels. On Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague met with US Secretary of State John Kerry in an effort to convince the US to take action. However, a decision on the weapons deliveries envisioned by Washington still hasn't been made in London. "We are in urgent discussions with our international partners," a spokesman for Cameron told reporters on Friday.

The delay may be the product of considerable resistance in the House of Commons, where there is opposition to arming the rebels. The House would have to approve any such move, and Cameron's opposition in the Labor Party are opposed. Even within his own liberal-conservative coalition, there are plenty who would prefer that Britain not get involved. "We in the UK do not have to follow the US," John Baron, a member of the foreign affairs committee told the BBC. "Good friends sometimes say to each other, look, you're making a mistake." He warned it could be an error of historic proportions and compared it to the disastrous outcome of arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

dsl -- with wires

http://www.debka.com/article/23047/Hizballah-units-near-Golan-Some-receive-%E2%80%9Climited-use%E2%80%9D-chemical-arms

( Haze of chemical weapon claims bubbling up ....)

American sources claimed Saturday, June 15, that the “military support” the Obama administration promised the Syrian opposition Friday consisted of automatic weapons, mortars and recoilless rocket grenades (RPGs) for delivery within three weeks through Turkey.

Those items, say DEBKAfile’s military sources, are no more than a mockery of the rebels’ needs. Any Middle East arms trafficker can quickly lay hands on advanced anti-air and anti-tank missiles for a price running into tens of thousands of dollars – whether in Lebanon, Egyptian Sinai, the Palestinian Authority - or even in trading among the Syrian rebel militias themselves. The going prices, according to our sources, are for instance, up to $50,000 for a shoulder-borne Grail SA-7 anti-air missile and $40,000 for a T-55 tank in poor technical condition plus 40 shells.

After the US weapons arrive, the huge imbalance between the rebels’ and Syrian army’s arsenals will be as stark as ever. It widens constantly with the landing almost every few hours of Russian and Iranian air transports delivering military equipment to cover the ongoing war requirements of the Syrian army and Hizballah.

Friday, as Iranians elected a new president, their supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: “To the Americans, I say, OK, to hell with you. Any one who listens to you is a loser. The Iranian people have never attached any value to their enemies.”

And in Beirut, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah said: “Where we need to be, we will be. Where we began assuming responsibilities, we will continue to assume responsibilities” and, he added, no one in Lebanon will be allowed to interfere with this.

Nasrallah, half of whose military strength is fighting for Bashar Assad in Syria, was warning Hizballah’s foes at home that he is still strong enough to deal with any opponents of his Syrian venture as well.

On the heels of the bravado from Tehran and Beirut, a statement heard Friday from Damascus strongly pointed to the three allies’ forthcoming direction. Syrian President Bashar Assad said: “We have plans to open a resistance front on the Golan Heights,” adding that “such a move could unify the various factions in Syria.” This was the first time Assad had disclosed his plans to join “the resistance” against Israel as a diversion for breaking up the rebel front against his regime.

He spoke after ordering the Syrian and Hizballah troops to peel off into two heads and advance simultaneously on two fronts – one, for their major offensive to recapture Aleppo, and two, the Golan, which is divided between Syria and Israel.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Thursday night, the first movements were detected heading toward the Syrian side of the Golan and the Jordanian border, from the Syrian and Hizballah military concentrations piling up in the last two weeks around the southwestern town of Deraa.

Senior officers in the IDF’s Northern command have no doubt that Assad plans to deploy Hizballah units on the border of Israeli Golan while a Syrian back-up force will take up position on the Jordanian border. According to some intelligence sources, rudimentary “limited-use” chemical weapons have been handed out to some of the Hizballah units operating in Syria. They come in the form of plastic canisters, roughly the size of a tin of canned food, which can be fired or simply lobbed by hand. Poisonous sarin nerve gas escapes through two holes upon impact.

This device was developed by Iran for the Syrian army to use on a small scale to save Assad from being accused of using a “weapon of mass destruction.”

In Washington, US and Israeli officials took turns Friday night in junking their red lines for Syria. The Obama administration confirmed that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against the opposition on multiple occasions was “on a small scale.”

Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said in a lecture that Israel had set the Assad regime three red lines against supplying advanced weapons to Hizballah or any other terrorist group; letting them have chemical weapons or allowing Israel to be attacked from the Golan.

Both the US administration and Israel have been overtaken by events. By downplaying the scale of Syrian chemical warfare and providing the rebels with nothing more than light weapons, Washington is in effect granting Assad a license to continue his “small scale” use of chemical weapons. And the Israeli defense minister chose to ignore the fact that the Syrian ruler is past trampling over Israel’s red lines, safe thus far from evoking an effective response.

The sense of the rest of his remarks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Friday are equally abstruse: “Israel will not intervene in Syrian in part because any such intervention would harm the side Israel favors,” said Ya’alon. But he did not address the reverse situation which is more realistic, whereby Syria and Hizballah are preparing to “intervene” in Israel.

The impression gained from his remarks was that, just as the Obama administration has chosen to hold back from a pointed response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons, so too Israel is backing away from coming to grips with the offensive build-up targeting its borders.

Is Moshe Ya’alon simply toeing the line of Obama’s non-intervention policy for Syria?

At all events, he never mentioned by a single word the fact that Hizballah has been armed with “limited-use chemical weapons” - either before or after his meeting with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel early Saturday.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamas-syria-policy-mess_735325.html

( The fog of foreign policy ? )

8:01 AM, JUN 15, 2013 • BY LEE SMITH

Thursday the White House announced that the American intelligence community assesses, with a level of high confidence, that the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against the opposition multiple times, in a limited fashion. Now that it is clear Assad has crossed the Obama red line by using chemical weapons, the question is, has this changed the president’s “calculus,” as he said it might? The media is reporting that it has. According to the press, Obama has decided to arm the opposition.

Barack Obama delivers inaugural address 1-20-09 090120-A-8725H-285

The White House, writes the New York Times, will “begin supplying the rebels for the first time with small arms and ammunition, according to American officials.” USA Todayconcurs, quoting an unnamed official “knowledgeable about the plans” who “confirmed to USA TODAY that the new assistance would include arming the rebels.” TheWall Street Journal explains that “Obama issued a “classified order directing the Central Intelligence Agency to coordinate arming the rebels in concert with its allies.”

However, there are other administration officials who tell the press that the White House is not going to send weapons to the opposition. Josh Rogin at the Daily Beast writes that his source “says that lethal arms are not part of the new items Obama has now authorized.” “The president,” says this official, “has made a decision to provide the Syrian opposition with military items that can increase their effectiveness on the ground, but at this point it does not include things like guns and bullets.”

So is the White House arming the rebels or not? There’s been confusion since Thursday afternoon when Sen. John McCain said on the Senate floor that Obama “will announce that we will be assisting the Syrian rebels by providing them with weapons and other assistance. I applaud the president’s decision.” Shortly after, McCain retracted his remarks, explaining that “the president has not made the final decision on arming.” Afterward, McCain’s spokesman, Josh Rogin reported, said the senator had been told by reliable sources that Obama was planning to arm the rebels.

A White House conference call with reporters Thursday afternoon hardly clarified matters. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes was asked several times whether the White House intended to arm the rebels, or if it was just going to provide more of the direct non-lethal military assistance (like vehicles and night-vision goggles) that was promised in April but still hasn’t reached the Syrian Military Council. “I can’t go through an inventory of the type of assistance that we’re going to provide,” said Rhodes. “But suffice it to say it’s going to be substantively different from what we were providing certainly before our initial [chemical weapons] assessment in April.” Responding to another request for details, Rhodes said, “I’m not going to be able to inventory the types of support that we’re going to provide to the SMC.” Later there was more of the same: “We’re just not going to be able to lay out an inventory,” said Rhodes, “of what exactly falls under the scope of that assistance other than to communicate that we have made that decision.”

What we know then from the administration’s public and on the record statements is this: the White House is going to do more than what it was doing before. But we don’t know if that includes weapons or just more non-lethal aid and equipment because the White House’s point man for strategic communications won’t say—he can’t inventory—what’s being sent. All of the reporting asserting that the administration is sending arms was sourced not to Rhodes’s public remarks but to officials who because they are unnamed have no reason to fear that their credibility is on the line should their information prove inaccurate or false.

In other words, we still don’t know whether the White House is going to arm the Syrian opposition, or if Obama just means to create the impression that he is indeed enforcing his red lines. In either case, it’s a mess.

If the administration really is sending weapons then this constitutes a major policy shift. You’d think Obama might want to announce that policy himself since it was his red line Assad crossed—or if not the president then at least the national security advisor or some other senior official responsible for policy decisions. Instead, it’s handed off to a deputy in charge of strategic communications who either cannot or will not communicate what the policy is—which, depending on whether or not Obama has decided to arm the rebels, may or may not have been leaked to the press by anonymous sources, presumably sources at least as reliable as those who told McCain the president was arming the rebels, until a more reliable source told McCain that the president has not made that decision. Did someone actually choose to roll out the policy in this fashion, or does it simply reflect the incoherence of the White House’s Syria policy and the incompetence of administration policymakers?

At least Rhodes was clear on one thing regarding Syria policy: “a political settlement,” he said in the conference call Thursday, “is still the preferable outcome.” Why is that? Because without a political settlement, explained Rhodes, “you’re going to have [the Syrian] conflict continue until somebody prevails in that conflict.” What Rhodes seems to be saying here is that the United States has an interest in stopping the fighting, but no interest in seeing the side the White House is assisting, and perhaps arming, defeat Assad and his allies, Iran and Hezbollah. Therefore, if the administration is arming the rebels the purpose is only to even the sides, somewhat, to compel Assad to negotiate.

The problem with this idea is that Assad is more than happy to deal under such circumstances. If the administration says it has no interest in seeing one side prevail, then it has no will, or ability, to force Assad from power. Of course the administration believes, as Rhodes said, that “Bashar al-Assad can’t be a part of the future of Syria,” but this is just rhetoric. The reality is that without the weapons to drive Assad from power, the White House, as John Kerry has said, finally has no say in the matter. It’s up to Syrians to decide if Assad stays—or more particularly those Syrians with more guns, supplied by the Russians, and allies like Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah.

Thankfully, there is little likelihood of a political settlement between the two sides, a settlement that would inevitably benefit American adversaries, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran. Due to the nature and magnitude of the support that Iran has leveraged in Syria—weapons as well as troops, its own in addition to Hezbollah’s and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—Assad’s ruling clique in Damascus is effectively little more at this point than an Iranian vassal. A negotiated settlement then would be nothing but a recognition of Iranian sway over Syria, which would spell disaster for the United States and its allies in the region, especially those bordering Syria, like Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. However, the Syrian rebels will make an agreement all but impossible.

As Michael Doran explained, a deal between the opposition and the regime “is utterly fanciful.” Assad, Doran wrote, “will never negotiate himself out of a job. Even if he was inclined to do so—and he is not—a deal is a practical impossibility, due to the fractiousness of the opposition. Rebel leaders speak only for their own groups. An agreement by one leader would never be binding on the others. The war will go on no matter what.”

The administration has long complained of the opposition’s fragmentation, seeking leaders and institutions to make it cohere, while sidelining other rebel outfits it found problematic. In December, the White House designated Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate, a foreign terrorist organization in an effort to isolate it and emphasize American concerns of a growing extremist current in the opposition. Indeed, one of the reasons the administration has offered for not arming the rebels is that it doesn’t want American weapons in the hands of al Qaeda. That’s sensible enough, and it also explains why the administration has made no place for Jabhat al-Nusra at the negotiating table. However, the reality is that without these groups, which are among the opposition’s most effective fighting units, buying into a deal there can be no negotiated settlement that saves Assad and enhances Iran and Russia’s position in the eastern Mediterranean at the expense of American interests. In other words, Obama’s Syria policy is so incoherent that it is only the opposition’s fractiousness and al Qaeda’s deadly fanatacism that is preventing the White House from shooting itself in the foot.

http://rt.com/news/lavrov-syria-chemical-weapons-753/

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has insisted there is no sense in the Syrian regime using chemical weapons against the rebels, an accusation thrown at the leadership by the international community.

"The government, as the opposition is saying openly, is enjoying military success on the ground," Lavrov indicated to reporters during a joint press conference with his Italian counterpart Emma Bonino.

"The regime isn’t driven to the wall. What sense is there for the regime to use chemical arms – especially in such small amounts?" Lavrov asked adding that the data provided by the US showed that 100 to 150 people suffered from the alleged chemical attacks.

Lavrov underlined that any rumors of chemical weapons deployment concern Russia, and Moscow always seeks to check and recheck them.

On June 13, the US stated it assessed that chemical weapons, most likely the nerve gas sarin, were used in battle against the Syrian rebels. The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed Friday the assessment results had been handed over to them, but it found them “fabricated” and “unconvincing”.

Following the chemical weapons statement the US decided to directly arm the rebels "to strengthen their effectiveness," the White House said. The new aid will be "military" in nature, but was not detailed.

In this image made available by the Syrian News Agency (SANA) on March 19, 2013, medics and other masked people attend to a man at a hospital in Khan al-Assal in the northern Aleppo province, as Syria's government accused rebel forces of using chemical weapons for the first time. (AFP/SANA)

Commenting on that on Saturday, Lavrov pointed out it would be wrong for the US administration "to be sending wrong signals" to the opposition and “focus them on escalating the fight instead of starting a dialogue.”

US diplomats have also told media that Washington is now considering a no-fly zone “to help Assad's opponents.” The speculation was fuelled by the US earlier reportedly sanctioning their F-16 fighter jets and Patriot anti-missile system to stay in Jordan past the expiration of the 12-day Eager Lion exercise currently underway.

Lavrov stressed that any attempt to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria using the F-16s and Patriots from neighboring Jordan would break international law.

"There have been leaks from Western media regarding the serious consideration to create a no-fly zone over Syria through the deployment of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles and F-16 jets in Jordan," Lavrov said.

"You don't have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law," he noted.

Jordanian officials confirmed earlier this month that the US would be deploying the weaponry during the exercises, but a source speaking to AFP now says those items will stay overseas indefinitely.

The latest rhetoric comes ahead of the so-called Geneva 2 talks aimed at getting the two warring sides at the negotiating table for the first time.

The Syrian civil conflict has lasted for over two years, and left over 80,000 people dead, according to UN estimates.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-140613.html

Obama's Monica moment
By M K Bhadrakumar

The United States may have administered one of the biggest-ever snubs to the Kremlin in the post-Cold War era with the White House announcement on Thursday that it will provide military support to the Syrian rebels.

The announcement in Washington said:

Following a deliberative review, our [US] intelligence community assesses that the [Bashar al-] Assad regime has used chemical weapons ... Following on the credible evidence that the regime has used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, the President has augmented the provision of non-lethal assistance to the civilian opposition, and also authorized the expansion of our assistance to the Supreme Military Council (SMC) ...

The United States and the international community have a number of other legal, financial, diplomatic, and military responses available. We are prepared for all contingencies, and we will make decisions on our own timeline. Any future action we take will be consistent with our national interest, and must advance our objectives.

Russia House in disrepair
The US President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit scheduled to begin in Northern Ireland this coming Monday. This was to have been the first meeting for the two presidents after their respective re-election to the high office.

As a token courtesy to Putin at a personal and public level, Obama should have deferred the announcement until after meeting Putin. Syria was expected to figure on top of their agenda and Obama and Putin have been closely in touch over Syria.

Geneva 2, the proposed conference on Syria, is a joint Russian-American initiative. By delaying the announcement to next week, the US wouldn't have "lost" Syria. Quite obviously, Obama has made a cool assessment that Putin's friendship is expendable. After all, the discord over missile defense sticks out like a sore thumb in the US-Russia relations and there is no remedy in view.

A senior state department official, Frank Rose, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, gave the bottom line on Wednesday that Obama has nothing to offer Putin on missile defense. Rose said,

United States and NATO cannot agree to Russian proposals for "sectoral" or "joint" missile defense architectures. ... Russia continues to request legal guarantees that could create limitations on our ability to develop and deploy future missile defense systems. ... We have made clear we cannot and will not accept limitations on our ability to defend ourselves, our allies, and our partners, including where we deploy our BMD [ballistic missile defense] capable Aegis ships. ... the United States must have the flexibility, without legal limitations, to respond to evolving missile threats.

On the other hand, the Syrian opposition's morale has touched rock bottom after the crushing military defeat in Qusayr. The government forces are now preparing for their "liberation" of Aleppo. If the fall of Qusayr meant that the clandestine arms flow from Lebanon would taper off, a defeat in Aleppo could disrupt the opposition's supply lines from Turkey.

Meanwhile, the proposed Geneva 2 is becoming a non-starter, too. The Syrian opposition is far too divided and fragmented to nominate a unified delegation. The US' regional allies - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar - are up in arms that the US is selling the regime-change project down the drain Also, back at home in Washington, congressmen, media and the think tankers, many of whom come under the influence of the Israeli Lobby, are clamoring for some "action" on Syria.

Sour grapes, California wine
But, most important, the White House decision could be a brainwave that occurred to Obama as he travelled back home in Air Force One from the summit meeting in California with Chinese President Xi Jinping, from which he emerged second best amid the shattering disclosures by the secrets whistleblower Edward Snowden, formerly of the CIA.

All in all, Obama's momentous decision on military intervention in Syria, which could well launch a new Cold War, is a desperate diversionary move when his administration is caught up deep in the cesspool over the Snowden controversy.

The entire moral edifice on which Obama built up his presidency and the values he espoused at the core of his "audacity of hope" when he began his long march to the White House five years ago - transparency, accountability, legitimacy, multilateralism, consensus - lie exposed today as a pack of lies.

The heart of the matter is that Obama is on the horns of the same dilemma as Bill Clinton found himself when, in a desperate ploy to deflect world attention from his strong libido, he fired cruise missiles at Kandahar in August 1998.

Obama, too, badly needs a diversion because these are early days and China's government-owned media has already begun commenting on Snowden. In a report titled "Surveillance program a test of Sino-US ties", China Daily on Thursday broke its silence and taunted the Obama administration by proposing that cyber-security could indeed be a "new realm of cooperation" between Beijing and Washington. China Daily pondered,

How the case is handled could pose a challenge to the burgeoning goodwill between Beijing and Washington given that Snowden is in Chinese territory [Hong Kong] and the Sino-US relationship is constantly soured on cyber-security.

Interestingly, the report noted that Snowden is "staying in Hong Kong away from Washington pursuit" and went on to highlight that Moscow is offering asylum to the fugitive. It ended by quoting a well-known Chinese scholar:

The successful handling of the case would be referred to as an influential precedent between the two countries, since there has been a lack of international regulations in the areas of global internet security.

On Friday, Global Times hit out with the editorial that "China deserves explanation" from the Obama administration. Excerpts:

Snowden's revelation about US cyber attacks on Hong Kong and mainland networks is closely related to Chinese national interests. The Chinese government should acquire more solid information from Snowden if he has it, and use it as evidence to negotiate with the US. ... Public opinion will turn against China's central government and the Hong Kong SAR government if they choose to send him back. ... Snowden is a "card" that China never expected.

Impacting the power dynamic
China Daily and People's Daily carried yet another report today demanding that the US "owes China an explanation about its hacking activities and should show more sincerity in the future when engaging in cyber-security cooperation." The report estimates, "Washington is now in an awkward position regarding its cyber-security dispute with Beijing."

The tongue-in-cheek observations make it clear that Beijing has the upper hand - and Beijing knows Washington knows it does have the upper hand - any whichever way the Snowden saga unfolds through coming months (or years).

Bill Clinton's diversionary tactic in August 1998 had disastrous consequences, triggering a sequence of events culminating in the 9/11 attacks and the US intervention in Afghanistan (which, ironically, Obama is struggling hard to wind up.)

Now, what train of events Obama's fateful decision on June 13, 2013, to push for regime change in Syria would have on Middle Eastern politics and history - and on the post-Cold War era itself - lies in the womb of time.

Former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld would have said, there is the "unknown unknown". First and foremost, how will Putin react? He is already reeling under the pressure from the US administration pushing for a regime change in Russia. Putin lamented on Wednesday,

Our [Russian] diplomatic service is not cooperating with the Occupy Wall Street movement, but your [US] diplomatic service is and directly supports the [Russian] opposition. To my mind, it is wrong because diplomatic services are designed to build relations between states but not to meddle with internal political affairs.

Certainly, throwing in the towel at this point on Syria becomes a ticklish decision for Moscow to take. What are the options? The best minds in the Kremlin will be debating.

In the Middle East itself, the White House decision dramatically impacts the power dynamic. Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan is at loggerheads with the Obama administration over his authoritarian tendencies. Yet, the White House decision catapults Turkey as a "frontline state". On the other hand, Turkish opinion militates against intervention in Syria.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Iran, Hezbollah, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon - they are all involved in the Syrian question one way or another. Shepherding them, sequestering then, serenading them toward an agreeable end result is going to be virtually impossible. That is, assuming Syria survives as an entity on the Middle Eastern map.

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/06/14/vetting-syrias-rebels-for-us-arms-transfers-a-daunting-task/

Vetting Syria’s Rebels for US Arms Transfers a Daunting Task

US Arms Won't Make Syria's Rebels Any More Organized

by Jason Ditz, June 14, 2013

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Now that the Obama Administration has decided to start providing US arms to the Syrian rebels, the logistics are already worked out. They’ve been funneling arms from other nations to the rebels for over a year now. The big change will just be where the arms came from.

That and the vetting process: the US mostly looked the other way as arms from the GCC nations and others got shared around the Syrian rebel factions, starting with more palatable groups and ending up with everyone else, including the al-Qaeda allied Jabhat al-Nusra.

Having US arms show up in the hands of al-Qaeda fighters is an embarrassment the administration would prefer to avoid, and that’s going to mean creating some much more stringent vetting strategies.

That’s going to complicate things, with large swathes of the rebellion at least nominally al-Qaeda-linked. The decision to arm the rebels was primarily about keeping the civil war going in the face of recent gains by government forces, and that means providing aid to a trivially small faction in the rebellion that can realistically be “trusted” will run counter to that, meaning there is going to be intense debate on the standards to be used.

Even when they settle on this, the problem of organization is going to be huge. The US has been struggling with pledged cash transfers to the rebels because they are so disorganized, and can’t tell who the “leadership” realistically is. Those problems aren’t going to go away with the introduction of US arms, and in many ways that may complicate the matter, as different factions try to create the illusion of being in charge in the hopes of securing advanced US armaments.

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-318389-turkish-police-disperse-protesters-in-gezi-park-after-pms-ultimatum.html

Turkish police disperse protesters in Gezi Park after PM's ultimatum

People run as riot police fires a water cannon on gezi park protesters at Taksim Square in İstanbul on June 15, 2013. (Photo: Reuters, Osman Orsal)

Doctors in firing line

The Turkish Health Ministry has launched a probe into those doctors who provided medical aid to some of the 7,500 injured in the protests. The government body has called on the Turkish Medical Association (TBB) to hand over the names of the doctors and their patients.

“Recently we were inspected by the Ministry of Health, they said what we were doing here is wrong. But there could be no punishment for those who are helping people. There is no such religion or law that could discriminate against us,” Abtullah Cengiz, spokesman for the Gezi Park doctors told RT.

He added that the government “made a big mistake by dispersing the crowds and now they should think twice before making any decisions.”

In addition to health care professionals, lawyers have also fallen foul of the Turkish government. On Monday around 50 lawyers were arrested for denouncing the heavy-handed police tactics used against the Gezi Park activists. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights denounced the move and expressed their “deepest” concern over the situation in Turkey.

CIA Preparing to Deliver Rebels Arms Through Turkey and Jordan

Reaction Cool to US Arms Plan for Syrian Rebels

Britain Holds Off Arming Syrian Rebels Despite US Decision

France Says UN Decision on Syria No-Fly Zone 'Unlikely'

Don't Repeat Iraq Mistake in Syria, Russia Warns America

Afghanistan - Pakistan .......

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-105229-Is-Afghanistan-destined-to-be-run-by-a-drug-mafia?

Is Afghanistan destined to be run by a drug mafia?

June 14, 2013 - Updated 1412 PKT
From Web Edition

101 11 18 6

Is Afghanistan destined to be run by a drug mafia?

QUETTA: Pashtunabad—a poor, wind- and flyblown suburb of Quetta—is the type of Pakistani town where commanders in the Afghan Taliban generally lived after being kicked out of their home country in 2001, says a report published in The Newsweek.

Modest cement-block and mud-brick, one- and two-story homes sit cheek by jowl along the narrow, largely unpaved streets and open sewers. Graffiti such as “Long Live Mullah Omar” and “Long Live the Jihad” are scrawled on walls; the black-and-white flag of a pro-Taliban political party flies over many homes.

Living in a town like Pashtunabad carried advantages for the Afghan Taliban’s leadership: it allowed them to fly under the radar and cultivate an image as average Joes, even as they were directing an insurgency against U.S. troops across the border. But in recent years, some Taliban commanders have begun moving out of places like Pashtunabad—and into new neighborhoods that could not be more different. They have transformed rural districts of mud-brick homes in places like Kuchlak—a stretch of poor and arid land populated largely by fruit and vegetable farmers, located on the road from Quetta to the Afghan border—into little boomtowns.

Farther to the south, they have abandoned Karachi’s poor Sohrab Goth neighborhood for wealthier developments like Clifton, where they live in the vicinity of the Pakistani elite, including businessmen, entertainers, artists, and politicians. (The Bhutto family has a sprawling compound in the area, and Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, often stays there.) Many Clifton residents live in such a heavy security bubble, they probably don’t even know the Taliban are in town.

In these wealthier neighborhoods, Taliban members are building and buying flashy mansions featuring faux Grecian columns, silver-tinted blastproof windows, and 10-foot-high walls topped with concertina wire. Once, the stereotype of a Taliban leader was that he drove around in an old, secondhand, beaten-up Toyota Corolla; these men, by contrast, drive new Toyota Land Cruisers or other luxury cars.

Taliban leaders, in other words, are a lot richer than they used to be just a few years ago—and the source of their sudden influx of wealth is no secret in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The Taliban are more involved than ever in systematically promoting, financing, organizing, and protecting the drug trade,” Ahmad Woror, the director of narcotics control in Helmand province, tells Newsweek. “Drugs are ultimately providing the money, food, weapons, and suicide bombers to the insurgency and the good life to Taliban leaders in Quetta, Karachi, and across Afghanistan.”

The drug trade, of course, has been an important part of Afghanistan’s economy for a long time—exploited by former Northern Alliance warlords, corrupt government officials, and other major traffickers. Local Taliban leaders have long benefited as well. But now the Taliban’s central leadership has decided it wants in. And drug trafficking has become such a pervasive part of the organization’s mission that it raises an alarming prospect: should the Taliban’s influence grow following the U.S. withdrawal, is Afghanistan in danger of becoming the world’s first true narcostate?

HISTORICALLY, THE Taliban has had a complicated relationship with the drug trade. In some respects, the deep involvement of Taliban commanders in drug trafficking is nothing new, says Muhammad Abdali, speaking in his role as head of the Afghan government’s anti-drug task force in Helmand province. (Helmand is the country’s largest opium producer; according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, farmers are expected this year to sow more than the 185,000 acres of opium poppies they planted in 2012.) Abdali notes that Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, who today is arguably the Taliban’s most powerful commander, and the late brutal Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah Akhund were already thriving drug dealers back in 1994, just as the Taliban movement was launching. They quickly joined the Taliban soon after it gained traction in the mid-1990s.

Mullah Mohammed Omar—who led the Taliban and ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 before going into hiding following the U.S. invasion—outlawed opium production and trafficking in the late 1990s as being haram, against Islam. Yet many local Taliban commanders in opium-producing areas, particularly in Helmand and Kandahar, have been using the opium industry to fund their local insurgent operations since the early 2000s, and the Taliban has long collected a 10 percent Islamic usher tax on farmers’ opium crops. According to a 2009 UNODC report on opium production, this tax is believed to have netted the insurgency some $22 million to $44 million a year—and the Taliban may have earned another $70 million by providing protection to drug-laden convoys traveling through their territory.

But something changed in the last two years: the Taliban’s central leadership now seems to be playing a much more pivotal role in the Afghan narcotics industry. They appear to be increasingly engrossed in both the upstream and downstream sides of the heroin and opium trade—encouraging farmers to plant poppies, lending them seed money, buying the crop of sticky opium paste in the field, refining it into exportable opium and heroin, and finally transporting it to Pakistan and Iran, often in old Toyotas to avoid detection.

“In the past the Taliban were only going after the 10 percent usher tax and protection money, but now they are running the business from top to bottom,” says an insurgent subcommander in the Sangin district of Helmand province who declined to be named. He knows the details: both he and his family are involved in the expanding trade. “Taliban leaders have systematically divided the areas they control into drug zones and assigned them to the most powerful and favored local commanders,” he says. “They are not only encouraging farmers to produce, they are giving local Taliban leaders in each zone a free hand to get actively involved in the business.” Today the insurgency is earning upward of $200 million or more annually from the drug trade, according to the UNODC.

Why the shift? For years, the Taliban relied partly on donations from sympathetic citizens in the Gulf states to fund their military operations. Recently a lot of that Gulf money has dried up, as rich residents have turned their attention to other Sunni Islamic causes such as Palestine, Egypt, and Syria. This may have spurred the Taliban to look for other sources of funding.

But the biggest factor in the rise of the Taliban’s drug involvement may simply be that the group’s central leadership decided it wanted a slice of what its local commanders had. Already most of the country’s opium was being produced in the largely Taliban-controlled areas of the south and southwest—98 percent, according to a 2008 UNODC report. “The insurgency would be weaker without the drug money that has helped to fund the movement at the local level for years,” says a senior Taliban officer who declined to be quoted by name. “The leadership realized that since it couldn’t stop it, then why not get involved and seize control of the trade systematically.”

As in real estate, it’s all about location. Consider the case of Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor and Abdul Qayyum Zakir. When Mullah Omar’s deputy and brother-in-law were arrested by U.S. and Pakistani forces in Karachi in 2010, his two top deputies, Mansoor and Zakir, began vying for power. Both come from historically competing southern tribes—the Ishaqzai and Alizai, respectively—that are located in the most fertile opium-producing areas of Helmand and Kandahar provinces as well as along the most lucrative drug-smuggling routes. Both live in luxurious new homes. According to Abdali and other sources, both men are heavily involved in the drug trade. “Mansoor is the top Taliban leader because of his and his tribe’s drug connections and the resulting money,” Abdali says. “He controls the major drug and transit zones.”

The Taliban’s concentration on their drug interests begins each year during the fall planting season. At that time, commanders often provide seeds, fertilizers, and advance payments and are always ready with promises of protection. “In most districts, the Taliban are encouraging villagers to plant as many poppy seeds as possible and are assuring the farmers that the insurgency will shield their cultivation from government eradication efforts,” Abdali explains. (Despite a big push, government eradication efforts have been largely ineffective, with just 6 percent of the some 380,000 acres of poppies planted last year having been destroyed, according to the UNODC.)

Insurgents have also found business success turning blocks of opium into heroin powder. The UNODC estimates that three years ago there were upward of 500 heroin labs operating in the country, and there are doubtlessly scores more now. Most of the insurgency’s labs are in the remote, no-go, Taliban-controlled areas of Nowzad and Baghran districts in northern Helmand province, Abdali says. “Neither we nor U.S. forces can access those areas,” he explains. “Only U.S. Special Operations Forces could go in. But drug control is not their priority.” Indeed, there has long been a debate as to whether the United States should devote more resources to drug control in Afghanistan. But the already-overstretched U.S. forces have had their hands full simply trying to secure the country and train the Afghan Army. And so they never really focused on eradicating the drug trade.

NEEDLESS TO say, the insurgents do not tolerate competition when it comes to drugs, and Taliban threats have driven out smaller traffickers. “Most small smugglers have quit the business, fearing the Taliban,” says Woror, Helmand’s director of narcotics control. Bigger traffickers are tolerated if they cooperate with the insurgency on the Taliban’s terms. “Sometimes they depend on each other like twin brothers,” says Abdali.

In fact, part of the Taliban’s success in the drug trade has been fueled by a rapprochement of convenience with their longtime mortal enemies: former members of the Northern Alliance. This militia was the big winner in the U.S. invasion of late 2001. With U.S. support on the ground and in the air, the Northern Alliance steamrolled the Taliban and became the core of Hamid Karzai’s new government, especially in its police and security forces. Today, while some of these former Northern Alliance officials are fighting the drug trade, others are abetting and profiting from it. And gradually over the past few years, despite the bad blood between them, the Taliban and former Northern Alliance members have realized that if they put aside their political differences and work together, they can dramatically ramp up their drug profits.

Leading members of the Northern Alliance had long produced opium and refined heroin in northern provinces like Badakhshan—exporting both products north through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan and then on to Russia and Europe. Now they are also able to ship this harvest through Taliban-controlled areas in the south and into Iran and Pakistan. “The northern warlords, government officials, the police, and the Taliban are in an unwritten economic understanding that they are both part of one cooperative drug chain,” says the Helmand subcommander.

“Before the drugs reach Taliban areas, the shipments have been escorted from the north by the warlords, Karzai government officials, and Afghan police.” Both sides then share the profits when Taliban couriers deliver the top-grade northern shipments to buyers across the border in Iran and Pakistan. “Today there is more of the highest-quality heroin coming from the north and being exported by our forces,” says the subcommander. (Although the north produces only a fraction of the drugs that come from the south, the opium is of better quality because of the cooler climate and more abundant rains.)

An alliance with their onetime enemies wasn’t the only big change for the Taliban in the last few years. Given the newfound drug wealth and seemingly endless possibilities to make even more money, the Quetta Shura—the Taliban’s governing body—decided it had to set up a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the windfall of narcotics revenues is shared from top to bottom. As a result, the council established an economic commission last year to scrutinize the surge of wealth. According to several Taliban leaders, 70 percent of the drug profits are now supposed to be given to the commission to spend on food, weapons, explosives, and medical care for the insurgency, while 30 percent is supposed to go directly to commanders and fighters in the field.

To many Taliban in the field, that does not seem like a fair split, as the frontline guerrillas are doing most of the work, taking the biggest risks, and bearing the brunt of casualties and suffering. Not surprisingly, local commanders complain that they are being shortchanged and that the leadership is ripping off most of the money. “Top leaders collect and pocket about 80 percent of the drug revenues from five southern provinces,” gripes the Helmand subcommander. “This is holy money for the jihad, so no one should take more than their fair share,” adds a Taliban operative who is critical of the inequitable split of the drug profits.

‘Fighting the enemy with drug and kidnapping money is the same as fighting with infidel American money.’

Predictably, given that their movement is supposedly based on ultra-orthodox Islam, some Taliban supporters freely express doubts about the insurgency’s heavy involvement in narcotics. “It is a great pity the Taliban are dealing with drugs that are expressly prohibited in Islam,” pro-Taliban cleric Maulvi Jan Mohammad Haqqani tells Newsweek. “Fighting the enemy with drug and kidnapping money is the same as fighting with infidel American money.” Others agree. “The Taliban should not be involved in drugs, as it is hurting the positive image we are building,” says the senior officer.

But these are rather lonely voices. The Taliban now seem more focused on the drug trade than on fighting the enemy. “The Taliban’s new definition of jihad is making money from the drug trade,” says Abdali. The Helmand subcommander puts it this way: “We are using all of our energy protecting poppy fields, our drug interests, and convoys from government forces.” Woror says he has never seen the Taliban fight so hard to protect their turf. “This year more than ever the Taliban are constantly fighting our poppy-eradication teams,” he says. “And when not fighting us, they are spending most of their time supervising and protecting their drug business.”

What all this means for Afghanistan’s future is grim. With corrupt government officials, police, former Northern Alliance warlords, and now the Taliban all coordinating their efforts, the country could, after the U.S. withdrawal, end up being effectively ruled by a drug mafia. If that happens, the world will become even more deeply awash in Afghanistan’s opium and heroin. And while that will be good news for the nouveaux riches drug lords of Quetta and Karachi, it will be terrible news for just about everyone else.

and.....

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-105239-Afghan-President-supports-Nawaz-Sharifs-stand-on-drones

Afghan President supports Nawaz Sharif's stand on drones

June 14, 2013 - Updated 1432 PKT
From Web Edition

36 1 4 0

Afghan President supports Nawaz Sharif's stand on drones

KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is against drones and agrees with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s stand against drone strikes.

The Afghan president was speaking to the host of Geo News’ program Jirga in Kabul, where Karzai stated that the issue of drone strikes is between Pakistan and the United States, however he is not in favor of this practice and is against it.

The Afghan President further revealed, that the Taliban commander for Bajaur agency Faqir Muhammed is in Afghan custody, and admitted that Swat Taliban commander Fazlullah and others are in Kunar province.

British Defense Secretary: Afghanistan War Is Our Vietnam

Gunmen occupy Quetta hospital after bomb blasts kill at least 23

Police chiefs say at least 12 dead after hospital blast following bus bomb as commandos engage armed men

Associated Press in Quetta
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 15 June 2013 09.40 EDT

Pakistani volunteers survey the wreckage of a bus in Quetta, Pakistan. Photograph: Arshad Butt/AP

Gunmen have taken over parts of a hospital in Quetta, in southwesternPakistan, after two bomb blasts in the city on Saturday. According to officials, one bomb went off inside the hospital's emergency room, killing at least 12 people.

Armed men captured different sections of the hospital complex and were positioned on rooftops, said the head of police operations in Quetta, Fayaz Sumbal. Frontier Corps troops and police commandos have been called in and security officials were trying to clear the hospital as quickly as possible, Sumbal said. An Associated Press reporter on the scene could hear intermittent gunfire as troops took up positions around the building.

The violence in Baluchistan, a vast province in southwestern Pakistan, started when a blast ripped through a bus carrying female university students. At least 11 people died in the incident and another 19 were wounded, said police chief Mir Zubair Mahmood. As family, friends and rescuers crowded the emergency room where the dead and wounded were taken, another blast went off in the corridor. A top government official was killed in the blast and two other people wounded, said Sumbal.

It was not immediately clear if the two events were related and there was no immediate claim of responsibility but militants often stage such coordinated attacks in order to target rescuers and others as they flood to the hospital. The militants appeared to use the blast in the hospital as cover to disperse around the building.

Footage on Pakistani television of the crisis showed people fleeing from the hospital after the explosion and hiding behind ambulances in the parking lot.

Catharsis Ours

Saturday, June 15, 2013

War watch - June 15, 2013 .. Focus on Syria ( including blow back elsewhere ) and Afghanistan - Pakistan .....

Oh Thank God—Finally, War With Syria

Iran to send 4,000 troops to aid President Assad forces in Syria

World Exclusive: US urges UK and France to join in supplying arms to Syrian rebels as MPs fear that UK will be drawn into growing conflict