A theory that might have legs - something to keep an eye on ....FSA in secret talks with Assad ? As in -fighting between Rebels continue and Jihadist atrocities appall not just Syria Government but also FSA and the West , there might be motivation to put the ax to the outsiders !
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iTdvGWbuuRw7SA_BOXgHOAIr3pbA?docId=a5b52d87-b8b6-4b45-942a-9bc483905365
Qaeda in Syria bids to control Iraq, Turkey borders
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/10/04/syrian-rebels-fight-each-other-along-turkish-border/
Azaz has been a key border crossing, and fighting has been growing for days after al-Qaeda seized the town from secular rivals. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is now demanding that al-Qaeda cede the town to them.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/09/syria-new-constellations-emerge-.html
Evidently, Moscow didn't factor in the possibility that domestic political preoccupations might prompt Obama to call of his trip to Indonesia, which he has done.
War changes course
Meanwhile, the tectonic shift in the Syrian war has been laid bare in an exclusive report on Monday by the Independent newspaper's veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk.
Fisk reported that contacts have been made by elements of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) from Aleppo with the Syrian government and a two-member rebel delegation travelled to Damascus under a guarantee of safety from the regime to meet a senior official on the staff of President Bashar al-Assad.
FSA will now allow government offices and institutions such as schools to reopen in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, and fighting between the FSA and the army has ceased in certain areas of the strategic Homs province.
Fisk estimates that the growing defection from the FSA ranks to the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and the steady ascendancy of the hardline Islamist groups has disillusioned the "moderate" rebels.
After me, the deluge
Buying into this trend, the massive attack recently on Christian churches in Raaqqa and the brutal assault on the ancient Christian village of Maaloula by the al-Nusra group, serves as a rude wake-up call for Western capitals. Bishops and patriarchs from across the region met in Beirut last Friday to lament that the Arab Spring has "turned to winter, to iron and fire" for the Christians of the Middle East.
In political terms, what emerges is that:
Democracy on donkey's back
The prominent Turkish columnist for Hurriyet newspaper Semih Idiz summed up:
The Obama administration hopes to revisit the Syrian problem only after gaining greater clarity on the Iranian front.
However, Obama's problem lies elsewhere, namely, how to sell this intriguing Russian idea of an "Afghan solution" to the Syrian question to his regional allies - Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar principally - who never expected things to come to this extraordinary pass.
Fortunately, if it is Saudi Arabia that poses a headache for Obama, here too Russian diplomacy can help. On Monday, Moscow had an important visitor from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.
Now, the OIC bears the imprimatur of the Saud regime. During Ihasanoglu's visit, Russia signed a framework agreement with the OIC, which provides for bilateral consultations on key issues on the international agenda, "including the issues of regulating conflicts in which OIC member countries are involved".
Casting the net wide
On a broader plane, the Russian expectation is to quickly build on what Putin noted in a speech on Tuesday as "common achievement" of Russia and the US regarding the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons. Moscow's expectation was to put Syria peace talks on focus at the Bali meeting talks between Putin and Obama. The meeting would have shown how far Obama is prepared to follow the Russian lead on Syria.
Of course, Obama would know that Russia is casting the net wide for a full spectrum Russian-American engagement starting with Syria. In fact, in the past 10 days there have been two high-level meetings between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to exchange views regarding the change of US missile defense plans announced by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in March 2013.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iTdvGWbuuRw7SA_BOXgHOAIr3pbA?docId=a5b52d87-b8b6-4b45-942a-9bc483905365
Qaeda in Syria bids to control Iraq, Turkey borders
By Serene ASSIR (AFP) – 18 hours ago
Beirut — Al-Qaeda in Syria is fighting to drive rivals out of areas bordering Turkey and Iraq in a bid to control territory stretching from Iraq into northern Syria, various sources say.
Across the north and east, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has set up checkpoints on roads to border crossings, and opened fronts to crush other rebel groups fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
Residents have told AFP of a strategy that involves ISIL taking over resources and routes using brutal methods aimed at forcing the population into submission.
Analysts and activists on the ground have also noted the tactic.
"ISIL has been acting in such a way as to aggressively assert itself within the complex multi-dimensional insurgent theatres in northern and eastern Syria," said Charles Lister of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre.
Jihadists have even sought to justify the strategy on Internet forums by accusing Western-backed groups, including Ahfad al-Rasul and the Northern Storm brigade, of acting like the US-funded "Sahwa" who fought Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But Lister said ISIL had adopted a "perceivable strategy of acquiring and consolidating control of areas on Syria's borders with both Iraq and Turkey", ever since it came on the scene in the late spring.
"This allows the group easy access to new recruits, sources of funding and supplies," he told AFP.
"It's by no means impossible that it intends to put a stranglehold on the ability of moderates (rebels) to secure sustainable levels of supplies from across the borders," Lister added.
Havidar, a Kurdish-Syrian activist and citizen journalist who has covered fighting between ISIL and Kurds, said ISIL's endgame was to establish an Islamic state.
"ISIL doesn't have an ideological problem with the Kurds or with anyone else. It just wants no other group to have any arms or self-sufficiency, to create a state that extends from northern Syria into Iraq," he told AFP.
Another activist in Raqa, near the Turkish border, said it was now virtually impossible to leave Syria without crossing through one of their checkpoints.
ISIL has a grip on Raqa, the only provincial capital in Syria that is completely out of Assad's control.
Simmering tension boils over
Though tensions between it and other rebel groups -- even Islamists -- have simmered for months, the opposition has sought to keep that antagonism buried.
But ISIL's takeover of the border town of Azaz in mid-September, at the expense of the area's Northern Storm brigade, brought tensions to a head.
This week, six Islamist groups with a nationwide presence, including Liwa al-Tawhid, Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, urged ISIL to withdraw from Azaz.
A fighter with one of these groups said: "ISIL has succeeded... in making enemies with all the factions, including the Islamist groups."
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said ISIL aimed to "take control, but that is not going to happen, because the factions... are aware of what that means, especially after the Iraqi experience".
Some Sunnis who opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq were supportive of insurgents including those linked to Al-Qaeda, but tribesmen, some militants and civilians later turned against the group over killings and other abuses it carried out.
A humanitarian aid worker based on the Turkish border with Syria warned that ISIL's strategy threatens the entire population.
The ongoing closure of the Bab al-Salameh border area near Azaz by the Turks after ISIL-rebel clashes there "has and will affect the movement of people and goods", she said on condition of anonymity.
"This ISIL takeover of checkpoints near the border will severely effect not just Azaz and the neighbouring towns, but the governorate of Aleppo as a whole."
But so far, despite antagonism from an array of rebel and Kurdish groups against ISIL, it is unclear how and when they will act to stop it.
A high-level security source in Damascus said the Assad regime hopes the rebels will "eventually ask the army for help to fight ISIL".
Havidar said many were "terrified to speak out" against the group.
"But they will eventually," he said.
"The problem is Assad's regime is still standing, and it is fighting everyone but ISIL, because it is doing exactly what it wants."
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/10/04/syrian-rebels-fight-each-other-along-turkish-border/
Syrian Rebels Fight Each Other Along Turkish Border
Free Syrian Army Demands al-Qaeda Abandon Azaz to Them
by Jason Ditz, October 04, 2013
Another round of fighting has erupted today in the northwestern Syrian border town of Azaz, as well as in the northeastern Kurdish portion of the country, both along the Turkish border.
Azaz has been a key border crossing, and fighting has been growing for days after al-Qaeda seized the town from secular rivals. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is now demanding that al-Qaeda cede the town to them.
That’s of course unlikely, an al-Qaeda has been working on disarming the other factions around Azaz with a threat of military operations against them.Turkey has closed the Azaz crossing for weeks over the fighting.
Between the latest Azaz clashes and the fighting in Western Kurdistan, the death toll for Friday was at least 19 in rebel-on-rebel violence, and these wars within a war are becoming more and more active.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/09/syria-new-constellations-emerge-.html
Syria: New Constellations Emerge
It is by Fisk and the guy is not always as sober as one would like but his story rings true:Six weeks ago, a two-man delegation arrived in secret in Damascus: civilians from Aleppo who represented elements of the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group largely composed of fighters who deserted the regime’s army in the first year of the war. They came under a guarantee of safety, and met, so I am told, a senior official on the staff of President Bashar al-Assad. And they carried with them an extraordinary initiative – that there might be talks between the government and FSA officers who “believed in a Syrian solution” to the war.It makes sense for nationalist minded insurgents to stop the fight against the government as other parts of the armed opposition are now aligning themselves with Al-Qaeda and thereby against any nationalist form of Syria.
Last week some 10 to 14 groups in northern Syria, including the hardline Jabhat al-Nusra, united under an Islamic flag. Yesterday 43 groups south of Damascus united as a new Army of Islam under the command of the head of the Liwa al-Islam brigade. While the numbers seem impressive at least some of these "new" associations are fake and one has to keep in mind that there are some 1,200+ insurgency groups in Syria, most of those just local gangs or thieves. Many of those will not be happy with the ascent of a rigid Islamic system and will prefer an amnesty or some other arrangement with the Syrian government.
We may thereby now see a new configuration of the parties in the Syrian conflict. Insurgent groups with Islamic tendencies will unite under ever more radical banners and will depend on "private" money from the Gulf states. The more secular groups, who will no longer receive money or weapons from the defunct FSA command and the useless exile Syrian National Council, will now turn to the government to gain amnesty or some other understanding. They may well join the Syrian Arab Army in the fight against the radical groups. The Kurds have defended their areas against Jihadis as well as the Syrian government but the leftist PYD group leading them does not have good relation with the Barzani clan that leads in the Iraqi Kurd territories. The Syrian Kurds will therefore stay in the national Syrian realm but will demand some local and language autonomy which will be granted.
The precautious U.S. government move to detente with Iran, widely supported by the U.S. population, will put pressure on the Gulf regimes. They are financially bound to the "west" and can not stand against the U.S. will. When Obama will finally throw away the regime change platitudes and decide to shut down the supply lines to the Jihadis in Syria, the Gulf states, as well as Turkey, will have to comply. Iran and Russia put out some feelers that might make it it easier, especially for the Saudis, to dismount from the sectarian horse they have been riding in the wake of Shia ascendency. The only stumbling block for these new arrangements are the hardliners in Israel. But Netanyahoo's star is already sinking with other hawksarguing against his stand and any resistance to these developments will only accelerate its demise.
It will take time for the Syrian government to eliminate the terrorists from Syrian territory. But the now emerging new constellations of the war are much clearer and much more to the advantage of the government then they have been in the previous two years.
Posted by b on September 30, 2013 at 09:11 AM | Permalink
and....
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-02-041013.html
Moscow seeks full-spectrum US engagement
By M K Bhadrakumar
The high drama of the US-Iran thaw and the diplomatic wrangle over Syria's chemical weapons cannot hide the ground reality that the nature of the war in Syria is dramatically changing. Moscow grasps this and it may have prompted President Vladimir Putin's remark earlier in the week that things are moving in the right direction.
Moscow hopes that building on the recent US-Russia initiative on Syria's chemical weapons, the Russian-American relationship could move on to a higher trajectory.
On Thursday, Putin's aide, Yury Ushakov, disclosed that there could be a meeting between Putin and President Barack Obamaat the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Tuesday at Bali, Indonesia. The initiative came from the Russian side, which was "immediately taken up by the American side" and while confirmation was awaited, "we think this meeting will go ahead," Ushakov said.
By M K Bhadrakumar
The high drama of the US-Iran thaw and the diplomatic wrangle over Syria's chemical weapons cannot hide the ground reality that the nature of the war in Syria is dramatically changing. Moscow grasps this and it may have prompted President Vladimir Putin's remark earlier in the week that things are moving in the right direction.
Moscow hopes that building on the recent US-Russia initiative on Syria's chemical weapons, the Russian-American relationship could move on to a higher trajectory.
On Thursday, Putin's aide, Yury Ushakov, disclosed that there could be a meeting between Putin and President Barack Obamaat the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Tuesday at Bali, Indonesia. The initiative came from the Russian side, which was "immediately taken up by the American side" and while confirmation was awaited, "we think this meeting will go ahead," Ushakov said.
Evidently, Moscow didn't factor in the possibility that domestic political preoccupations might prompt Obama to call of his trip to Indonesia, which he has done.
War changes course
Meanwhile, the tectonic shift in the Syrian war has been laid bare in an exclusive report on Monday by the Independent newspaper's veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk.
Fisk reported that contacts have been made by elements of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) from Aleppo with the Syrian government and a two-member rebel delegation travelled to Damascus under a guarantee of safety from the regime to meet a senior official on the staff of President Bashar al-Assad.
FSA will now allow government offices and institutions such as schools to reopen in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, and fighting between the FSA and the army has ceased in certain areas of the strategic Homs province.
Fisk estimates that the growing defection from the FSA ranks to the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and the steady ascendancy of the hardline Islamist groups has disillusioned the "moderate" rebels.
After me, the deluge
Buying into this trend, the massive attack recently on Christian churches in Raaqqa and the brutal assault on the ancient Christian village of Maaloula by the al-Nusra group, serves as a rude wake-up call for Western capitals. Bishops and patriarchs from across the region met in Beirut last Friday to lament that the Arab Spring has "turned to winter, to iron and fire" for the Christians of the Middle East.
In political terms, what emerges is that:
- The growing dominance of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria brings the US, Russia and Iran on the same page in terms of shared hostility toward al-Qaeda;
- Collectively or individually, these countries can be expected to ensure that Syria does not become an al-Qaeda base camp;
- The US and its Western allies may even consider altogether mothballing the idea of sending sophisticated weapons to the FSA for fear they may end up with the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups;
- The recent announcement of the formation of an "Islamic Alliance" of the extremist groups is triggering a new polarization in which the moderate and secular elements would have more in common with the regime than with the jihadi groups. Fisk reported that some FSA members have formed a so-called National Union for Saving Syria with the intent to hold talks with the regime.
- When the tussle between the jihadis and Islamists sharpens - and there are reports of violent clashes - Islamism as a whole takes a beating as beacon for Syria's future;
- Equally, the regional states supporting the Islamist rebel groups in Syria will be forced to rethink. Saudi King Abdullah has invited Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to go on Haj pilgrimage.
- President Assad rises in stature on the political chessboard. On top of the staying power he has shown so far, he is also assuming a new role as the UN's interlocutor ensuring the success of the mission undertaken by the experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Assad now emerges as the only figure capable of rolling back the al-Qaeda deluge in Syria.
Democracy on donkey's back
The prominent Turkish columnist for Hurriyet newspaper Semih Idiz summed up:
Let's face it, the war in Syria is no longer about fighting against a brutal dictator for the sake of democracy. It hasn't been for some time. The war is now over whether Syria will be run according to the Sunni Shariah or remain a secular country even if not a democratic one.Curiously, Sergei Ivanov, the powerful presidential chief of staff in the Kremlin, put it all other in a candid media talk on Monday. He said, "The war between the government and the opposition stopped [in Syria] a long time ago." Ivanov noted. He went on:
The West is beginning to understand that maybe the [Syrian] opposition should be divided, that it is necessary to stop trying to persuade al-Qaeda and other extremist groups to speak about Geneva-2, and that weapons deliveries to then should be preferably stopped ... first we could split the opposition into two parts and invite both Assad's representatives and what we can describe as a reasonable opposition to the Geneva-2 where dialogue may be launched.Then, Ivanov looked a little bit further ahead and tossed around an absolutely audacious thought:
Certainly, it would be naive and ridiculous to speak about any free expression of will in Syria, but if we agree to recognize the foundations of democracy, let's try to organize fair elections, similar to how it was done in Afghanistan. If you remember, during the last elections [in Afghanistan], ballot papers were delivered by donkeys for half a year, and the vote counting process took quite long as well. But we are ready to accept even this. However, first they will have to agree on the rules of the game.Ironically, it is Russia that is pressing for Syria to have a crack at liberal democracy at the soonest, as early as by the presidential election due in May 2014. Whereas, the US remains mum.
The Obama administration hopes to revisit the Syrian problem only after gaining greater clarity on the Iranian front.
However, Obama's problem lies elsewhere, namely, how to sell this intriguing Russian idea of an "Afghan solution" to the Syrian question to his regional allies - Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar principally - who never expected things to come to this extraordinary pass.
Fortunately, if it is Saudi Arabia that poses a headache for Obama, here too Russian diplomacy can help. On Monday, Moscow had an important visitor from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.
Now, the OIC bears the imprimatur of the Saud regime. During Ihasanoglu's visit, Russia signed a framework agreement with the OIC, which provides for bilateral consultations on key issues on the international agenda, "including the issues of regulating conflicts in which OIC member countries are involved".
Casting the net wide
On a broader plane, the Russian expectation is to quickly build on what Putin noted in a speech on Tuesday as "common achievement" of Russia and the US regarding the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons. Moscow's expectation was to put Syria peace talks on focus at the Bali meeting talks between Putin and Obama. The meeting would have shown how far Obama is prepared to follow the Russian lead on Syria.
Of course, Obama would know that Russia is casting the net wide for a full spectrum Russian-American engagement starting with Syria. In fact, in the past 10 days there have been two high-level meetings between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to exchange views regarding the change of US missile defense plans announced by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in March 2013.
and.....
http://www.moonofalabama.org/
Syria: Your Moderate Cuddly Homegrown Al-Qaeda
There seems to be a media campaign designed to differentiate between the "really bad Al-Qaeda terrorists" in Syria and the "maybe good moderate Al-Qaeda rebels".The bad Al-Qaeda is the Saudi financed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) while the good Al-Qaeda are those Salafi jihadist groups other than ISIS that are paid by the Saudi state:“We want to keep Syria together as a country of freedom and equality,” a leader in an Islamist rebel group opposed to ISIS, called Suqour al-Sham, who gave his name as Abu Bashir, said via Skype. “They want to form an Islamic state that comes together with Iraq.”It is well known that ISIS has sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri. But Jabhat al-Nusra has also sworn allegiance to Zwahiri. That is of course not mentioned in the above NYT piece. What is the supposed meaning of this differentiation when both groups accept the same leader and the Al-Qaeda organization's ideology and aims?The Washington Post is on the same day (really by chance?) running a similar toned piece that also emphazises the alleged difference between JaN and ISIS:
...
Although the group sometimes cooperates in battle, ISIS is separate from the first Qaeda group to emerge in Syria, the Nusra Front, whose leader rejected a proposed merger this year.Since then, foreign fighters have flocked to ISIS, while the Nusra Front has been more clearly accepted by mainline rebels for keeping its focus on the fight against Mr. Assad.
Rifts have also emerged between the more radical Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, the original Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate that has since sought to cast itself as the more moderate — and Syrian — of the two. But although an alliance announced last week between Jabhat al-Nusra and more-secular rebel groups was cast by some as an attempt to create a front against the ISIS, an organized effort would need a far greater influx of money, support and enthusiasm from fighters on the ground, most observers say.In Foreign Policy, part of the Washington Post company, an apologist for the Saudis claims that this is all well and good:
The rise of Salafi-leaning rebel groups offers an opportunity to combat the real extremists -- al Qaeda-linked groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which have recently started wreaking havoc in Syria's north and east by fighting among themselves and against more moderate groups. Syria is no longer witnessing a struggle of moderates versus extremists, but of extremists versus both moderates and religious moderates. While recent developments are a setback for the FSA, they also have marginalized the truly radical factions.This, again, neglects to mention that the newly united groups, especially in north Syria, include Jabhat al-Nusra. And what please is the difference between "moderates and religious moderates"? The first are those psychopaths who eat their dead enemies lungs and the second are those cuddly homegrown Salafis who hack off any Christian's head?This campaign is supporting the alleged "uniting" of Saudi paid Salafist bands in the northern Idlib and south of Damascus. The Saudis are said to do this to prevent the bad ISIS Al-Qaeda to gain more power in Syria. It is unlikely that any such risky scheme will ever work:
If Riyadh's aim is to thwart al Qaeda enemies by rallying local Syrian Islamists in the way Washington did with Iraq's Sunni tribal Sahwa, it may be miscalculating, said commentator Hazem Amin. Unlike the Iraqi fighters, he said, Syrian Salafists were increasingly embracing radical views close to al Qaeda."Syria is different," Amin wrote in al-Hayat newspaper. "The social fabric is less cohesive ... At its core, the new Syrian Salafism is jihadist in nature. It is moving towards extremism."And lets not forget that even those Free Syrian Army gangs that are not officially endorsing religious extremism are quite beyond the pale. The Guardianfinally reports, two month after it happened, on the massacres these terrorists perpetrated in Alawite villages in the north Latakia province:
Shadi, a 32-year-old officer in a local defence unit that is separate from the Syrian army, was lightly wounded during the government's counter-attack. "When we got into the village of Balouta I saw a baby's head hanging from a tree. There was a woman's body which had been sliced in half from head to toe and each half was hanging from separate apple trees. "There are not many differences between any of the the insurgency groups in Syria. The Syrian insurgency was, from its very beginning, a brutal religiously motivated one that was run out of Sunni mosques and financed with money from the Wahabbi Gulf states. As this insurgency can no longer be sold in "western" media as "peaceful protesters" it is now depicted as somewhat moderate if only compared to the real savages of ISIS Al-Qaeda. But such differentiation makes no sense at all. Hanging baby heads from apple trees is psychopathic no matter what shade of religious extremism is used to justify it.
...
[T]he Guardian has obtained lists, compiled by local activists, with the names of victims from Hambushiya, Balouta, and five other villages. They include 62 people listed as killed, 60 kidnapped and 139 people who are missing. The dead range in age from a toddler of two to a man of 90. The vast majority are women, children and the elderly since most men in the villages were away on duty as part of the volunteer defence forces elsewhere in the region.
Posted by b at 09:32 AM | Comments (67)
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