Last Update: Sunday, 22 September 2013 KSA 21:49 - GMT 18:49
Leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria has been killed
Al Arabiya
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of al-Qaeda front group The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has been killed on Sunday in Idlib in northwestern Syria, according to the Free Syrian Army.
The FSA denied any responsibility to the leader's death.
The al-Qaeda front group’s leader was believed to be taking refuge in Syria.
In August, the group had claimed a wave of attacks that reportedly killed 74 people and injured hundreds in Iraq during the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-22/mortar-shell-hits-russian-embassy-damascus-three-diplomats-wounded
( Syrian rebels messing with the Bear ? )
Mortar Shell Hits Russian Embassy In Damascus, Three Diplomats Wounded
Let's see here: the party attacking the embassy of Assad-supporting Russia in Damascus is a) the Syrian government or b) the local Al Qaeda-funded Islamist fanatics and Qatari mercenaries, aka "rebels"? Surely a YouTube clip will promptly emerge, confirming it was a).
From AFP:
A mortar round hit the compound of the Russian embassy in the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday, a source at the embassy and an NGO said.The source, speaking to Syrian state news agency SANA, confirmed that "a mortar round fell inside the embassy compound without injuring anyone.""The embassy is functioning as normal," the source added.The attack was also reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said it was the first time the compound had been hit. It confirmed that there were no injuries in the attack, which struck inside the compound but did not appear to hit the embassy's main building.Rebel forces arrayed in parts of the outskirts of the capital regularly fire rockets and mortar rounds into Damascus, including the area around the embassy in the centre of the city.
And moments ago, the initial story of no injuries was revised, when Interfax reported that three Russian diplomats had been wounded. Somebody really wants this war to proceed.
http://rt.com/news/us-russia-syria-resolution-pressure-202/
The US is pushing Russia into approving a UN resolution that would allow for military intervention in Syria, in exchange for American support of Syria’s accession to OPCW, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
“Our American partners are starting to blackmail us: ‘If Russia does not support a resolution under Chapter 7, then we will withdraw our support for Syria’s entry into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This is a complete departure from what I agreed with Secretary of State John Kerry',” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Channel 1's Sunday Time program.
Chapter 7 of the UN charter would allow for potential military intervention in Syria.
Western countries blinded by 'Assad must go' attitude
The head of Russia’s Foreign Ministry went on to say he was surprised by the West’s “negligent”approach to the conflict.
“Our partners are blinded by an ideological mission for regime change,” said Lavrov. “They cannot admit they have made another mistake.”
Slamming the West’s intervention in Libya and Iraq, the foreign minister stated that military intervention could only lead to a catastrophe in the region. Moreover, he stressed that if the West really was interested in a peaceful solution to the conflict that has raged for over two years, they would now be pushing for Syria’s entry into the OPCW in the first place, not for the ouster of President Bashar Assad.
“I am convinced that the West is doing this to demonstrate that they call the shots in the Middle East. This is a totally politicized approach,” said Lavrov.
The Russian foreign minister pointed out that in the case of a military scenario, militants would come to power and Syria would no longer be a secular state. Up to three quarters “of these guys are Jihadists,” including the most radical groups such as Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, who want to create an Islamic Caliphate in Syria and in neighboring territories, Lavrov said.
“If our western partners think at least two steps ahead, they cannot but understand it,” Lavrov noted.
As to why the West would want that, Moscow has so far received no clear answer, but hears “mantras” on the necessity to promote democracy and protect human rights, said the minister. That is important, but “responsible politicians should be guided not only by that. Not to care about stability in a key world region is absolutely irresponsible,” he added.
According to Lavrov, some experts alleged that “someone is attempting to create a guided chaos” in the region for their own benefits. However, the foreign minister said he personally sees no possible advantages that Western countries would gain if they were behind moves to stir up instability.
“There’s only an attempt to grasp a straw, and turn a blind eye to the fact that the world is changing and becoming multipolar,” Lavrov concluded.
'A repeat of Geneva 2012'
Lavrov harked back to last year’s Geneva accord which was agreed upon by the international community, including Russia and the US. However, when the resolution went to the Security Council the US demanded that Chapter 7 be included.
“History is repeating itself. Once again in Geneva an agreement has been reached which does not contain any mention of Chapter 7. But the Security Council wants to redo the document in their own way to include it.”
He called on the West to observe international law and stop writing resolutions motivated by their“geopolitical ambitions.”
‘Both sides must hand over chemical weapons’
Sergey Lavrov has also insisted that opposition forces take part in the decommissioning of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.
“The solutions currently being worked out at the OPCW suggest that all stocks of Syrian chemical weapons must be brought under control and ultimately destroyed.”
Lavrov further charged that the West was “not telling the whole story” by asserting that chemical weapons are only possessed by the regime, and not the opposition.
He added that the available information provided by the Israelis confirmed that on at least two occasions, the rebels had seized areas in which chemical weapons were stored and those arms might have fallen into their hands.
"According to our estimates, there is a strong probability that in addition to home-grown labs in which militants are trying to cook up harmful and deadly concoctions, the data provided by the Israelis is true,”the Russian FM said.
“Preparatory work for OPCW inspectors to assume control of chemical weapons storage sites requires that those who fund and sponsor opposition groups – including extremists – demand that they hand over the [arms] which have been seized so that they can be destroyed, pursuant to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”
Lavrov added that Russia was not a guarantor for the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons, as Syria’s commitments fell under the auspices of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which is internationally administered by the OPCW.
Lavrov said Russia and the US were working out a draft resolution to be submitted to the OPCW, although several points were yet to be agreed upon.
Earlier in September, Moscow said it would submit data to the UNSC proving that the chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb were used by the rebels. These “purely technical” documents were handed over to Russia by the Bashar Assad government and are being examined by Russian specialists. This data “is an addition to what we already know and to what is known to…independent experts who give their assessments and confirm that the opposition regularly resort to provocations, attempting to accuse the regime of using chemical weapons” and this way get foreign military support, Lavrov said.
A UN experts team, who investigated the August 21 attack in Syria, presented a report on their findings, in which they described the ammunition and substances they discovered on the scene, but made no conclusions regarding who was behind the incident.
However, the US, along with Britain and France, moved quickly to repeat their accusations against the Syrian government. “Such an approach is neither scientific, nor professional but rather politicized and ideology-driven,” the Russian foreign minister stressed.
According to Lavrov, it was no secret that they did not need any report. Long before the document was prepared, they stated that they already knew everything from their intelligence findings – which have never been presented to the public in full, the Russian minister noted.
“What they did show to us does not convince that the [Syrian] regime is linked to the episode with the use of chemical weapons,” Lavrov said.
He reiterated that there is also evidence by eyewitnesses, including nuns from the Christian monastery close to the scene of the deadly attack, and journalists who visited the area. Reporters, Lavrov said, talked to militants who told them that they “received from abroad munitions that they had never seen before and did not know how to use them, but they used them in the end.” There was also an open letter by the Pentagon and CIA veterans to President Obama, where they say that the rebels could have used chemical weapons.
Moscow expects the UN experts to go back to Syria to finish their investigation there, which should include three other incidents - on August 22, 24 and 25 – when the Syrian army was attacked with poisonous gas, Lavrov said.
Logistics of destruction
Sergey Lavrov said that the time frame for the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons was not unrealistic.
"The overwhelming majority of the figures as per timing, term, beginning, finishing of the mission have been suggested by the American side," he added.
Even if the time frame is feasible, there remains disagreement on the cost of the venture.
Earlier this week, President Assad said the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal would be a costly venture.
“It needs a lot of money, it needs about one billion [US dollars]. It’s very detrimental to the environment. If the American administration is ready to pay the money, and to take responsibility of bringing toxic materials to the United States, why don’t they do it?” Assad told Fox News
Lavrov said he had heard of the cost estimate, although during his negotiations with his US counterpart in Geneva last week, the figure was much lower. Lavrov said the discrepancy stemmed from the fact that a professional estimate was in order.
“When OPCW experts visit Syria and view the storage sites for chemical weapons, they will understand what can be destroyed on the spot (and this is also possible) with the use of mobile equipment which a number of states have, and those where special factories need to be built, as we did when destroying Soviet chemical weapons stockpiles. But for those which need to be taken out of the country – toxic substances – will require a special decision, because the convention considers it essential that the destruction takes place on the territory of that country which possesses the chemical weapons,” he said.
Lavrov said legal grounds would need to be found to move forward in this case, but if all sides could agree in principle, then drawing up a legally binding document will not be hard.
He further noted the difficulties that would be faced in assuring the security of both the Syrian and international experts tasked with bringing the chemical weapons under control and laying the groundwork for their ultimate destruction.
“We’ve considered that an international presence will be demanded in those areas where experts are working. We are prepared to allocate our own servicemen or military police to take part in those efforts. I do not believe it is necessary to send in a strong [military] contingency.] It seems to me that it will be sufficient to send in military observers. It will be necessary to do it in such a way that the observers will come from all permanent members of the UN Security Council, Arab states and Turkey, so that all conflicting sides in Syria understand that this contingent represents all external forces who are collaborating with one or the other conflicting sides in Syria…so that they don’t resort to provocations,” he said.
Lavrov reiterated previous statements made during his negotiations with Secretary of State John Kerry following their talks in Geneva last week that the opposition was equally responsible for providing for the safety of OPCW and UN experts in the country and not allowing for any “provocations.”
Syria Delivers List of Chemical Arsenal to Watchdog
Meets US-Imposed Deadline on List
by Jason Ditz, September 20, 2013
US officials had been gearing up for Syria to miss the artificially early deadline they imposed for Syria to deliver its chemical arsenal list to the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Syria has turned over the list today, however, beating the deadline.
Under the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) Syria was obliged to turn over the list within 30 days of ratification, though the US insisted that Syria had only seven days to meet their deadline. Syria did it in six.
The OPCW confirmed receipt of the initial declaration, and says that it is under review now, though the details will not be released publicly. Syria wasestimated to have some 1,000 tons of chemical weapons.
US officials downplayed the release, saying that they will continue to press the UN Security Council for a resolution that threatens “consequences” against Syria and warning that such a resolution must be passed soon.
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/20/is-america-helping-al-qaeda-take-over-syria/
Is America Helping Al Qaeda Take Over Syria?
By Joe Giambrone on Sep 20, 2013
Syrian opposition troops
“I saw the militants grabbing five villagers and threatening them and saying, “Either you convert to Islam, or you will be beheaded.’”
Christian villager in Maaloula,Syria
By: Joe Giambrone. Edited by Dave Lindorff. Christian villager in Maaloula,Syria
The US decision to hold off on directly bombing Syria and to agree to Russia’s proposal to have Syria relinquish control of its chemical arms is just one part of a much larger story. And with the US government still treating Syria like a part of the “Axis of Evil” it was declared to be back in 2001 by President George W. Bush, it may not be the end of that story, either.
Rather, the Russian-originated proposal to have UN-authorized international authorities destroy the Syrian government’s stocks of chemical weapons may more properly be seen as just one more bump on the road toward achieving Washington’s long-held objective of establishing a more friendly government in Damascus. This raises a rather crucial question:
What is the true nature of the rebel forces that the US and its allies are backing in Syria with money, increasingly heavy arms, and threats of direct military support?
The Assad government stands accused by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of committing “crimes against humanity.” But what about the Syrian rebel forces?
John Kerry claims the rebel opposition has “increasingly become more defined by its moderation, more defined by the breadth of its membership, and more defined by its adherence to some, you know, democratic process…” But numerous experts say otherwise. A new study by defense consultant IHS Jane’s counts nearly half of the Syrian insurgent forces as hard-line Islamists. That’s an assessment that’s challenged in other quarters, but only in degree, with the Christian Science Monitor suggesting radical islamist groups may comprise only 10% of rebel fighting forces. But then, numbers aren’t the only measure of influence.
And as Reuters wrote:
“Secretary of State John Kerry’s public assertions that moderate Syrian opposition groups are growing in influence appear to be at odds with estimates by U.S. and European intelligence sources and nongovernmental experts, who say Islamic extremists remain by far the fiercest and best-organized rebel elements.”
What is known is that the Syrian rebel forces have been accused by the UN Human Rights Council in their report of June 4, 2013, as having committed “war crimes, including murder, sentencing and execution without due process, torture, hostage-taking and pillage.” They are also blamed for terror bombings with no clear military objectives, seemingly designed to frighten the population and with “sporadic shelling of pro-Government areas.”Perhaps even more troubling is the rebels’ alleged use of sarin nerve gas — the very chemical weapon that President Obama cited in his failed bid to win public and Congressional support for a punitive US bombing blitz on Syrian government targets. One of the UN’s leading human rights investigators, Carla del Ponte, said, “I was a bit stupefied that the first indication we got, they were about the use of nerving gas by the opponents.” She added that there was “strong, concrete suspicion but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated.” The United Nations itself, heavily influenced by the US, was predictably more cautious and the UN’s Human Rights June report did not provide a definitive statement on the matter of guilt, either government forces or the opposition rebels.
The rebel group considered the most experienced, most effective, best supplied and best armed is the Jabhat Al Nusra. Composed primarily of veterans of the Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Chechnya conflicts who have flocked to Syria’s front lines, these fundamentalist jihadis have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. Estimates of their numbers range from 2,000 to 10,000.
After Al Nusra’s ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq became known, support for the group actually increased in terms of recruits and equipment, according to the UN report. Left unsaid in the UN report is the source of the arms and money going to these Al Qaeda groups. Turkey has hosted the opposition rebels on its soil for several years, while Qatar and Saudi Arabia, like Turkey closely linked to the US, joined in with massive infusions of cash in 2012.
The Saudi monarchy denies that it provides support for terrorism and pledges to uphold international standards and laws, but the historical evidence suggests otherwise. The 9/11 Commission Report, for example, which avoided directly blaming the Saudi state, did state that:
“’charities with significant Saudi government Sponsorship’ may have diverted funding to Al Qaeda. U.S. officials remain concerned that Saudis continue to fund Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.”
And CNN reported in May of 2011:
Then there are the Saudis, who funded al Qaeda from the beginning. WikiLeaks reported November 28 that a cable from the State Department in December 2009 complained that Saudi donors remain the primary financiers of Sunni militant groups like al Qaeda. The cable confirmed that very little has changed since former Undersecretary of the Treasury for Financial and Terrorism Intelligence Stuart Levey’s testimony before Congress in 2006. “On terrorist financing … there has been a real lag between what (the Saudis) say they were going to do and what they do,” he said.
It is also known that the Saudis’ point man, as in prior insurgencies in the Middle East, has been Prince Bandar bin Sultan, sometimes known as “Bandar Bush,” for his tight relationship with both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Bandar has a reputation as a major Mideast player, a financier with deep pockets and a track record of sponsoring international insurgencies.It was Bandar who, in coordination with the CIA, provided arms and money to Osama bin Laden, among others, for operations in Afghanistan during the resistance to the Soviet occupation of that country in the 1980s. It was also Bandar who helped move arms to the Contras in Central America, again with the CIA, in the Iran/Contra affair.
Bandar bin Sultan was recently named, by Al Nusra fighters in the Ghouta area of Syria, as a supplier of sarin nerve gas. If true, these allegations make a mockery of the official US justification for attacking the Assad regime. A key argument of the Obama administration is that the regime—and the regime alone—has been responsible for chemical weapons attacks. A statement on the White House website, which clearly ignores the testimony of UN investigator del Ponte, claims: “We assess that the [Syrian] opposition has not used chemical weapons.”
Bandar bin Sultan is also alleged, astonishingly enough, to have recently threatened Russia (more or less overtly) with terrorism at the upcoming Olympics in Sochi. In an effort to strong-arm the Russians, Bandar, according to this account, traveled to Moscow to demand that President Putin abandon Assad in Syria. Oil incentives and arms sales were reportedly offered to Russia as an inducement to give up Syria. Bandar’s reported exchange with Putin is both chilling and damning. Sultan:
“As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.”
The UK-based Telegraph reported the conversation as well, and many now wonder if Bandar bin Sultan has outed himself as one of the leading terrorists in the world today.Particularly striking is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s matter-of-fact response in this purported exchange:
“We know that you have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade. And that support, which you have frankly talked about just now, is completely incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism that you mentioned. We are interested in developing friendly relations according to clear and strong principles.”
Whatever Bandar may have proposed has seemingly failed, since Russia has stood unflinchingly by Assad.The Saudi-al-Qaeda-in-Iraq-Syria Axis
There are more rebel links to Al Qaeda in Syria too. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq, a second Qaeda-linked fighting group, announced a merger with the Syrian Al Nusra rebels. In April of 2013, Al Jazeera reported al-Baghdadi’s speech:
“It is time to announce to the Levantine people and the whole world that Jabhat al-Nusra is merely an extension and part of the Islamic State of Iraq.”
The merger was confirmed by an Al Nusra website.The Islamic State of Iraq has repeatedly been linked to Saudi funding, often through charities and individuals. The Congressional Research Service notes:
“According to the U.S. State Department 2007 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, “Saudi donors and unregulated charities have been a major source of financing to extremist and terrorist groups over the past 25 years.”
Al Qaeda Rises Again, in SyriaOft-quoted terrorism expert Peter Bergen suggested that conditions in Syria are reviving the Al Qaeda jihad. “Al Qaeda’s future rises and falls in Syria to some extent . . . We can look around the world–there are actually a lot of places they’re not doing well. But clearly they’re doing very well in Syria.”
As with 9/11 and other recent events, this resurgence of Al Qaeda activity in the Syrian civil war could have long-term repercussions, including blow-back, as Putin has warned and as US experience in backing Afghanistan’s mujahadeen demonstrated. US and European citizens are traveling to Syria to fight in the jihad, and they could return to put their training and experience to use later in their home countries.
Like Afghanistan and Iraq before it, Syria should be seen now as a jihadist training ground, an engine of radicalization and a place to learn sabotage and other terrorism techniques.
The Big Picture
Clearly, US policymakers and military strategists know about the Al Qaeda links to rebel forces it is either directly or indirectly supporting in Syria’s civil war. So why is the US doing this, even to the point of seeking to bomb the Assad government? The best answer may be geopolitics and the politics of oil.
Because of its central location at the crossroads of Africa, Europe and the oil-rich Middle East, Syria, though not a big oil producer itself, has always held strategic significance. As early as 2005 the Bush administration was secretly jockeying for influence there, according to government documents released by WikiLeaks, via the Washington Post:
“State Department has funneled as much as $6 million to the [Syrian opposition] group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other [unspecified] activities inside Syria… The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005…”
Seymour Hersh reported in 2007 about a “Redirection” toward destabilizing Iraq’s neighbors, with a new focus on backing Sunni groups to counter the influence of Shi’ite Iran and Hezbollah. Bashar al Assad’s Alawite sect is also Shi’ite. Saudi Arabia, conversely, is a bastion of Sunni Islam.Hersh’s New Yorker piece indicated that Bandar bin Sultan was already deeply involved as of March, 2007, and that the US regional strategy indicated:
“…the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad [sic], of Syria.”
And then there’s this. Just two months after the September 11th 2001 attacks, General Wesley Clark, former commander of NATO forces and a one-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, reports that he learned from an officer in the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Bush White House planned to attack 7 countries, including Syria, over the following 5 years.
“We’re gonna start with Iraq, and then we’re gonna move on to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”
General Clark has for years been vocally denouncing this “policy coup”. He said that in each case the publicly announced war pretexts were not important: this was grand-scale global strategy and nothing more. And on the evidence, it may still be a long-term US strategy.Where this is Headed—Or Beheaded
The Alawites in Syria, who count the Assad clan among their number, make up only 12 percent of the country’s population, and as the ruling group are noted for having permitted an unusual religious and ethnic diversity. For this reason, Bashar al Assad, who like his father has run a secular (if authoritarian) government, has retained wide support within Syria for defending the state from outside religious extremists. Without such support by a sizable portion of the population, the regime could not have held out against the nearly 100,000 foreign-backed insurgents now reported operating inside Syria. AsReuters reported in May of 2011:
“Sunni Muslims form a majority in Syria, but under four decades of rule by Assad’s minority Alawites the country’s varied religious groups have enjoyed the right to practice their faith. Calls for Muslim prayers ring out alongside church bells in Damascus, where the apostle Paul started his ministry and Christians have worshipped for two millennia.”
Lately,al Nusra has sought to soften its public image, by following Hezbollah’s lead in offering social assistance, But even the toned-down Al Nusra is not to be underestimated in its ultimate ambitions. Last April, an al-Nusra leadertold CNN:
“In the period after the regime falls, our main goal is to create an Islamic state that is ruled by the Koran. It can have civilian institutions, but not democracy. We look at the other Free Syrian Army rebels as one of many groups defending religion, so we support them. In the future, we will handle this differently.” (emphasis added)
For a sampling of what Syrian Christians, Jews, Shi’ites and secularists can expect, we look to the case of the city of Homs, in March of 2012:
“Anti-government militants have expelled 90% of Christians in Homs and confiscated their residences by force, said Fides, citing a note sent to the agency by the Syrian Orthodox Church. The Vatican [news] agency cited sources saying militants went door to door in the Homs neighborhoods of Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan, “forcing Christians to flee, without giving them the chance to take their belongings.” -LA Times
The death toll in Syria’s civil war stands at 110,000 and rising — from all sides and from all kinds of weapons, not just chemical ones — and over 2 million refugees have now fled the country to camps in neighboring states. This state of affairs calls for a candid discussion of the motives of the various players. For starters, instead of pushing for a negotiated resolution of the Syrian conflict, why is the US sending more and heavier arms to rebels whose goals may be inimical to long-range US interests?http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/09/20/325092/envoy/
Britain’s ex-envoy explains how Israel fabricated Syria intelligence
Craig John Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan
Fri Sep 20, 2013 6:36PM GMT
9
A former British ambassador to Uzbekistan says the U.S. government has been deceived by the Israeli regime through fabricated evidence into believing that the Syrian government forces used chemical weapons in an attack on the suburbs of Damascus on August 21.
Craig John Murray, now a political activist, has written in his official website that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s claims about having access to communication intercepts of Syrian military and officials organizing chemical weapons attacks are sheer lies.
Murray says the British intelligence has no idea of such radio and communication intercepts between the Syrians despite having the most modern and advanced electronic tapping post on the Mountainous Troodos region of Cyprus. The tapping post monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, he says.
According to Murray, “The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation. The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6). Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA. It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos”.
This is while that, as Murray states, the U.S. does not have its own comparable facility for the Middle East.
“Troodos is highly effective - the jewel in the crown of British intelligence. Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering. I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s. This is fact, not speculation”, wrote Murray in a web post.
Murray disputes John Kerry’s allegations saying that “It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee”.
The intercept evidence provided to the U.S. government has been prepared by the Israeli regime’s spying apparatus Mossad, Murray explains, adding that Mossad have nothing comparable to the UK’s Troodos facility in Cyprus.
Now the question is: “How can Troodos have missed this (communication intercepts between the Syrians) if Mossad got it?”
The Israeli regime has been responsible for several illegal bombings and missile strikes in Syria, which have killed hundreds if not thousands of civilians, including women and children. The regime’s direct involvement in the Syrian civil war has not received just one case of condemnation from the West. Subsequent to its involvement, it has also fabricated “intelligence” and provided the U.S. with the fabrications to spark the U.S. military’s invasion of the Arab country.
“The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple. Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist. Mossad fabricated them. John Kerry’s “evidence” is the shabbiest of tricks”, Murray concludes.
Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire in a video interview posted on the web spoke of her personal visit to Syria, where she says people organized and supported by Washington are violent groups, which have no mercy for the innocents and are not after peace in Syria.
Mairead Maguire believes that Syria is being used as a proxy war by Britain, the U.S. and their regional allies both totalitarian dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
“Both Arab regimes in Qatar and Saudi Arabia will pay for a possible US-led military invasion of Syria with their petrodollars. The two do not only meddle in the internal affairs of Syria and in the conflict in the Arab country, but they are also responsible for a lot of violence and bloodshed that has taken place and is still happening in Syria since [more than] two years”, Mairead states.
Do Syrian Rebels Have Sarin?
Exclusive: A U.S.-Russian agreement calls for the Syrian government to disclose and dispose of its chemical weapons, but that doesn’t resolve the mystery of who was behind the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus – or the question of whether Syrian rebels have their own stores of CW, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
As the Syrian government agrees to relinquish its chemical weapons, questions remain about whether some elements of the fractious Syrian rebel forces have obtained their own CW. There have been scattered news reports to that effect although rebel leaders deny the accounts.
Yet, one of the many questions left unanswered by the sketchy U.S. “Government Assessment” on the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus is whether U.S. intelligence analysts are among those who believe the rebels possess some stockpiles of chemical weapons.
The four-page white paper, issued on Aug. 30, danced around the question of whether the rebels possess CW by focusing only on whether the rebels were responsible for the attack. “We assess that the scenario in which the opposition executed the attack on August 21 is highly unlikely,” the white paper said. “Our intelligence sources in the Damascus area did not detect any indications in the days prior to the attack that opposition affiliates were planning to use chemical weapons.”
The dog-not-barking in that phrasing is the U.S. government’s silence on whether some rebels have these weapons. After all, why would the U.S. intelligence agencies employ this narrow phrasing discounting the likelihood of a rebel attack on this one occasion if they could simply assert that the rebel forces could not have been responsible because they have no chemical weapons, period?
The likely explanation is that U.S. intelligence agencies have indications that at least some rebel groups possess CW and may have used it in the past. That is a view that was expressed last May by Carla Del Ponte, a senior United Nations official responsible for Syrian investigations.
Del Ponte told a Swiss-Italian TV station, “Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report … which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated.”
Del Ponte added, “This was used on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”
Though other UN officials distanced themselves from Del Ponte’s comments, he was not alone in raising the possibility of Syrian rebels with chemical weapons. Former Defense Department official F. Michael Maloof wroteon Sept. 11 for the right-wing World Net Daily’s web site that WND had obtained a classified U.S. document in which “the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria.”
Though Maloof has a checkered reputation for accuracy – having been part of President George W. Bush’s propaganda campaign for invading Iraq – he cites specific information from what he describes as a document classified “Secret/Noforn” produced by the U.S. intelligence community’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC.
According to Maloof, “The document says sarin from al-Qaida in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some was seized, more could have been used in an attack last March on civilians and Syrian military soldiers in Aleppo. … It revealed that AQI had produced a ‘bench-scale’ form of sarin in Iraq and then transferred it to Turkey.”
Quoting from the NGIC’s report, Maloof wrote that it “depicts our assessment of the status of effort at its peak – primarily research and procurement activities – when disrupted in late May 2013 with the arrest of several key individuals in Iraq and Turkey. … Future reporting of indicators not previously observed would suggest that the effort continues to advance despite the arrests.”
Maloof further reported that a 100-page report sent by the Russian government to the UN claims that rebel sarin gas was “manufactured in a Sunni-controlled region of Iraq and then transported to Turkey for use by the Syrian opposition, whose ranks have swelled with members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups.”
Last week, prosecutors in southern Turkey obtained an indictment alleging that two Syrian rebel groups were seeking to buy precursor chemicals for the production of sarin gas, Turkish media reported. The indictment named six defendants, including Syrian national Hytham Qassap, and accused them of seeking the chemicals for Islamist rebels in Al Nusra Front and the Ahrar al-Sham Brigades.
The Turkish prosecutors said they found no actual sarin during the May arrests that led to the indictment, but the case provided further evidence that some Syrian rebel groups have tried to arm themselves with chemical weapons. The Syrian government has blamed rebels for several apparent chemical attacks, including the one on Aug. 21, but the United States and its allies have fingered the Syrian army instead.
In the case of the Aug. 21 attack, which led to threatened U.S. military retaliation against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the Obama administration has asserted with “high confidence” that the Syrian government was responsible, but the U.S. “Government Assessment” presented no verifiable evidence pointing to Assad’s guilt.
Meanwhile, an Italian journalist and a Belgian teacher who were just freed after months of captivity at the hands of Syrian rebels reported that they overheard the rebels claiming responsibility for the Aug. 21 chemical attack. Domenico Quirico, the journalist, and Pierre Piccinin, the teacher, reported that they overheard their captors discussing the Aug. 21 attack on Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, and saying that Assad’s forces were not behind it.
“It wasn’t the government of Bashar al-Assad that used sarin gas or any other gas in Ghouta,” Piccinin said on Belgian RTL radio. “We are sure about this because we overheard a conversation between rebels. It pains me to say it because I’ve been a fierce supporter of the Free Syrian Army in its rightful fight for democracy since 2012.”
Other on-scene reports have raised doubts about the certainty of the U.S. “Government Assessment” blaming the Syrian government. For instance, an article by MintPress News – based on interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta – presented evidence that “the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit. …
“[F]rom numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, … many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the … gas attack.”
The article also cited comments by rebel-connected Ghouta residents indicating that the release of the poison gas may have resulted from a conventional artillery strike by government forces accidentally hitting a rebel storage site for chemical weapons or from careless rebel handling of the dangerous material.
One intelligence source following the Syrian conflict told me that some U.S. analysts believe that the Syrian rebels do possess chemical weapons, possibly obtained with the help of Saudi intelligence which has been providing much of the military equipment and money for the rebels, including some of the most radical Islamist elements.
Given these various accounts – and the Syrian government’s acceptance of Russian demands that it surrender its chemical weapons – the United States may want to make a similar demand of the rebels. At least, the Obama administration might clarify what its own intelligence files contain about rebel possession of chemical weapons.
By Robert Parry
As the Syrian government agrees to relinquish its chemical weapons, questions remain about whether some elements of the fractious Syrian rebel forces have obtained their own CW. There have been scattered news reports to that effect although rebel leaders deny the accounts.
Yet, one of the many questions left unanswered by the sketchy U.S. “Government Assessment” on the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus is whether U.S. intelligence analysts are among those who believe the rebels possess some stockpiles of chemical weapons.
President Barack Obama talks with Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, following a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Sept. 12, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
The dog-not-barking in that phrasing is the U.S. government’s silence on whether some rebels have these weapons. After all, why would the U.S. intelligence agencies employ this narrow phrasing discounting the likelihood of a rebel attack on this one occasion if they could simply assert that the rebel forces could not have been responsible because they have no chemical weapons, period?
The likely explanation is that U.S. intelligence agencies have indications that at least some rebel groups possess CW and may have used it in the past. That is a view that was expressed last May by Carla Del Ponte, a senior United Nations official responsible for Syrian investigations.
Del Ponte told a Swiss-Italian TV station, “Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report … which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated.”
Del Ponte added, “This was used on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”
Though other UN officials distanced themselves from Del Ponte’s comments, he was not alone in raising the possibility of Syrian rebels with chemical weapons. Former Defense Department official F. Michael Maloof wroteon Sept. 11 for the right-wing World Net Daily’s web site that WND had obtained a classified U.S. document in which “the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria.”
Though Maloof has a checkered reputation for accuracy – having been part of President George W. Bush’s propaganda campaign for invading Iraq – he cites specific information from what he describes as a document classified “Secret/Noforn” produced by the U.S. intelligence community’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC.
According to Maloof, “The document says sarin from al-Qaida in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some was seized, more could have been used in an attack last March on civilians and Syrian military soldiers in Aleppo. … It revealed that AQI had produced a ‘bench-scale’ form of sarin in Iraq and then transferred it to Turkey.”
Quoting from the NGIC’s report, Maloof wrote that it “depicts our assessment of the status of effort at its peak – primarily research and procurement activities – when disrupted in late May 2013 with the arrest of several key individuals in Iraq and Turkey. … Future reporting of indicators not previously observed would suggest that the effort continues to advance despite the arrests.”
Maloof further reported that a 100-page report sent by the Russian government to the UN claims that rebel sarin gas was “manufactured in a Sunni-controlled region of Iraq and then transported to Turkey for use by the Syrian opposition, whose ranks have swelled with members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups.”
Last week, prosecutors in southern Turkey obtained an indictment alleging that two Syrian rebel groups were seeking to buy precursor chemicals for the production of sarin gas, Turkish media reported. The indictment named six defendants, including Syrian national Hytham Qassap, and accused them of seeking the chemicals for Islamist rebels in Al Nusra Front and the Ahrar al-Sham Brigades.
The Turkish prosecutors said they found no actual sarin during the May arrests that led to the indictment, but the case provided further evidence that some Syrian rebel groups have tried to arm themselves with chemical weapons. The Syrian government has blamed rebels for several apparent chemical attacks, including the one on Aug. 21, but the United States and its allies have fingered the Syrian army instead.
In the case of the Aug. 21 attack, which led to threatened U.S. military retaliation against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the Obama administration has asserted with “high confidence” that the Syrian government was responsible, but the U.S. “Government Assessment” presented no verifiable evidence pointing to Assad’s guilt.
Meanwhile, an Italian journalist and a Belgian teacher who were just freed after months of captivity at the hands of Syrian rebels reported that they overheard the rebels claiming responsibility for the Aug. 21 chemical attack. Domenico Quirico, the journalist, and Pierre Piccinin, the teacher, reported that they overheard their captors discussing the Aug. 21 attack on Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, and saying that Assad’s forces were not behind it.
“It wasn’t the government of Bashar al-Assad that used sarin gas or any other gas in Ghouta,” Piccinin said on Belgian RTL radio. “We are sure about this because we overheard a conversation between rebels. It pains me to say it because I’ve been a fierce supporter of the Free Syrian Army in its rightful fight for democracy since 2012.”
Other on-scene reports have raised doubts about the certainty of the U.S. “Government Assessment” blaming the Syrian government. For instance, an article by MintPress News – based on interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta – presented evidence that “the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit. …
“[F]rom numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, … many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the … gas attack.”
The article also cited comments by rebel-connected Ghouta residents indicating that the release of the poison gas may have resulted from a conventional artillery strike by government forces accidentally hitting a rebel storage site for chemical weapons or from careless rebel handling of the dangerous material.
One intelligence source following the Syrian conflict told me that some U.S. analysts believe that the Syrian rebels do possess chemical weapons, possibly obtained with the help of Saudi intelligence which has been providing much of the military equipment and money for the rebels, including some of the most radical Islamist elements.
Given these various accounts – and the Syrian government’s acceptance of Russian demands that it surrender its chemical weapons – the United States may want to make a similar demand of the rebels. At least, the Obama administration might clarify what its own intelligence files contain about rebel possession of chemical weapons.
and....
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu behind Putin's shoulder
DEBKAfile Special Report Sep 20, 2013, 9:20 AM (IDT)
Russian leaders have picked apart the Kerry-Lavrov understanding for Syria’s chemical disarmament - less than a week after it was unveiled in Geneva. Thursday, Sept. 19, Vladimir Putin said he was not 100 percent certain the plan would succeed. His Defense minister Sergey Shoigu denied Russian plans to destroy Syria’s chemical stockpiles on its territory, while Bashar Assad mocked the option of their destruction in America. At the Security Council, Russia’s UN delegate blocked the measure for underpinning the deal, as Secretary of State John Kerry fought to retrieve it.
More>Syria Calls for a Ceasefire With Rebels
Deputy PM: War Has Reached a Stalemate
by Jason Ditz, September 19, 2013
In comments today, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said that his country is now “ready” for a ceasefire with the rebels, and will advocate for one at the Geneva II peace conference assuming it ever actually takes place.
“Neither the armed opposition nor the regime is capable of defeating the other side,” Jamil confirmed, saying that there was no expectation that either side was going to be able to get out of the stalemate for quite some time.
Jamil also said his government was supportive of the idea of UN ceasefire monitors being deployed to Syria to keep the rebels and military from fighting, so long as the troops were from “neutral or friendly countries.”
Incredibly, Jamil also confirmed that “for all practical purposes the regime in its previous form has ended,” and that the government is resigned to dramatic reforms and thinks it would be easier if the West would stop threatening them.
The Geneva II conference, agreed to by US and Russian officials and to be organized with the help of UN official Lakhdar Brahimi, was supposed to take place in June, then got bumped back to July.
Here we are in mid-September, and there’s still been no agreement on a date for the conference, though officials have expressed hope that it will be revived with the disarmament deal. A big problem is that none of the major rebel factions has agreed to take part yet, and there are such broad differences among secular and jihadist factions it’s hard to imagine them being able to provide a unified negotiation position to talk with the government.
NATO Chief: Option of Attacking Syria Must Stay Open
Diplomatic Momentum Depends on Threats, Insists Rasmussen
by Jason Ditz, September 19, 2013
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen today ruled out ending military threats against Syria, insisting that diplomatic progress depended entirely on continued threats of imminent attack.
“Irrespective of the outcome of the deliberations in the UN Security Council, the military option will still be on the table,” Rasmussen added, during comments made at the conference.
Efforts by the US, Britain and France to get NATO to authorize a war against Syria have so far failed, and despite Rasmussen’s determination to keep the threat “open” the reality is that there is strong opposition to the war among NATO members and that will make an aggressive war by the alliance virtually impossible.
Rasmussen’s comments reflect a popular narrative among Western officials which attempts to attribute the Syrian disarmament deal to their threats to attack, despite the US simultaneously claiming that the proposal was something they’d secretly been working on since the 2012 G20.
Syria opposition condemns jihadist attacks on rebels
Al Arabiya
Syria’s opposition National Coalition on Friday condemned attacks by al-Qaeda affiliates on rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
The coalition said recent violence carried out by loyalists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) on the FSA was entirely reprehensible.
“The Coalition condemns the aggressions against the forces of the Syrian revolution and the repeated disregard for the lives of Syrians, and considers that this behavior runs contrary to the Syrian revolution and the principles it is striving to achieve,” a statement said.
Moreover, the group highlighted the recent ISIS seizure of the town of Azaz on the border with Turkey on Wednesday as an example of such attacks and denounced an hours-long firefight with FSA fighters and its attempt to take control of the Bab as-Salameh border crossing.
Moreover, the group highlighted the recent ISIS seizure of the town of Azaz on the border with Turkey on Wednesday as an example of such attacks and denounced an hours-long firefight with FSA fighters and its attempt to take control of the Bab as-Salameh border crossing.
Azaz was one of the first towns to be overrun, in July 2012, by FSA rebels, who set up their own administration.
Tensions between some opposition groups and ISIS have spiraled in recent months, especially in northern Syria, where the opposition controls vast swathes of territory.
Tensions between some opposition groups and ISIS have spiraled in recent months, especially in northern Syria, where the opposition controls vast swathes of territory.
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