Afghanistan....
Spokesman Aimal Faizi says that the text will be presented to the Loya Jirga along with an explanation of the outstanding issues, but that it is not a “finalized” text and they’re not seeking the jirga’s approval for it.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/23/exclusive_kerry_and_top_state_officials_split_over_syria_talks
Posted By Yochi Dreazen
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
The United States has cut off northern Syrian moderate rebel groups from non-lethal aid, with an al-Qaeda advance in northern Syria physically blocking the aid’s dispersal, as the Obama administration continues to ‘disengage’ itself from Syria.
Daily Hürriyet’s Washington representative, Tolga Tanış, reported that the Obama administration commenced its ‘disengagement’ from Syria on Oct. 2, laying out three conditions to the moderate rebels, should they wish for the resumption of aid.
A joint U.S.-Russia plan on the chemical disarmament of Syria and clashes between the Western-Arab-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda-linked rebels known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) factored into the halting of aid to the rebels. Turkey closed its Öncüpınar border gate on Sept. 18 amid an al-Qaeda advance and the U.S. stopped a batch of non-lethal aid to moderate rebels.
At the same time a group of Syria’s most powerful rebel brigades have rejected the Western-Arab-backed opposition group, Syrian National Coalition (SNC), which announced the creation of an interim government in exile. The 13 rebel groups, led by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, called on supporters of the Syrian opposition to embrace Sharia law.
On Oct. 2, U.S. State Department officials conferred and decided on sending three messages to the moderate rebels. Citing an unnamed source who attended meetings, Tanış said the first one was that the U.S. would not repeat the same mistake in Afghanistan where supported groups were radicalized; instead, Washington would wait for moderate groups to distance themselves from radicals. The second one was that the U.S. would not resume its provision of aid until Turkey reopens its border gate and the moderate rebels took control of the northern Syrian town of Azaz. The third and final one was that the U.S. would not allow for any further developments until positive indications were observed from the rebels.
High-ranking CIA official resigns
The opposition tried to solve the deadlock and even pushed al-Nusra Front out of the Saudi Arabian-backed Islamic Army, but could not convince Washington to ‘disengage’ from Syria at the time.
A U.S. official advised yesterday that the aid to rebels had officially ceased. “ISIS has blocked the dispersal of part of the aid. The border gate is closed and we cannot distribute necessary supplies,” he said. Another source familiar with the matter commented on the new U.S. policy, saying it has caused quite the stir within the CIA, including the resignation of a high-ranking official in September.
That’s looking increasingly unlikely, as several factions in the SNC have ruled out involvement, and one of the bigger factions has even threatened to withdraw its backing if anyone else attends. So far no rebel faction has agreed to attend.
Afghan Govt: Differences Remain on US Pact
Disputes State Dept Claim Pact Is Going to Loya Jirga for Vote
by Jason Ditz, October 21, 2013
US State Department claims that the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with Afghanistan is essentially complete and will be submitted to the Loya Jirga for ratification are untrue, according to a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, who insists that significant “differences” remains.
Spokesman Aimal Faizi says that the text will be presented to the Loya Jirga along with an explanation of the outstanding issues, but that it is not a “finalized” text and they’re not seeking the jirga’s approval for it.
The Obama Administration has demanded that the deal be finalized by the end of October, threatening to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan if the Karzai government didn’t give in by then. The US claims that the deal was virtually “done” seems to have been wishful thinking based on that goal.
The reality, however, is that with President Karzai leaving office in early 2014, the threat of a US withdrawal in late 2014 simply doesn’t carry a lot of weight, and the Afghans seem determined to continue to seek better terms than the US is willing to offer.
The remaining dispute remains the US demand for full immunity for troops from the Afghan legal system. Though Secretary of State John Kerry insists all such deals are “standard,” the US actually does allow some nations to prosecute US troops for crimes committed on their soil, and remains adamant that they won’t allow any such deal with the Afghans.
Syria......
Posted By Yochi Dreazen 
Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - 11:09 PM 
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Secretary of State John Kerry is at odds with several senior State Department officials over whether to press ahead with plans for a high-profile peace conference next month that is designed to put negotiators from Syria’s main opposition groups and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into the same room for the first time.
Kerry is strongly committed to holding the talks and has spent the past several days prodding key Syrian opposition figures to take part in the negotiations. But according to several senior State Department officials, some of Kerry's top advisors believe that the conference should be called off because the most important of those opposition leaders are unlikely to come.
“The only person who wants the Geneva conference to happen is the secretary,” a senior U.S. official told The Cable. “Who’s going to show up? Will they actually represent anyone? If not, why take the risk?”
The Geneva conference has been in the planning stages for months, and Western officials have long expressed hopes that it could help pave the way for a negotiated solution to the Syria crisis.
The Obama administration and its top allies believe that the fighting in Syria is largely at a stalemate, with forces loyal to Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad unable to fully vanquish the country’s insurgents and the rebels looking to unseat Assad unable to conquer Damascus or oust him by force. Peace talks, Kerry argues , offer the only realistic chance of ending a civil war that has already claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Syrians and forced millions of others from their homes.
There’s just one catch: a growing number of key Syrian opposition leaders say they won’t attend the conference unless Assad promises to transfer power to a transitional government and then step aside. Assad has rejected both of those demands, and Kerry’s critics within the State Department believe that there is a good chance that the main opposition groups will either boycott the conference entirely or send a delegation that has little to no influence over the rebels who are actually fighting Assad’s forces. Some of the officials said the conference should be postponed or canceled to avoid an embarrassing public failure for the U.S.
Top State Department officials, including U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, have told Kerry that it would be hard to cobble together a broad coalition of Syrians by mid-November, the scheduled start date for the talks, and cautioned that many prominent opposition figures were virtually certain to sit out the negotiations altogether.
“It’s possible we can get a delegation there,” a senior State Department official told The Cable. “It’s not impossible, but it will certainly require some work.”
The divisions within the State Department come at a delicate moment in the long U.S.-led effort to bring Assad and his enemies to the negotiating table. The leadership of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, or SOC, the umbrella group working most closely with the West, will gather in Istanbul on November 1 and 2 to vote on whether to send a delegation to the Geneva talks. The Syrian National Council, the largest bloc in the SOC, has already said it will boycott the negotiations, and the president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition has set such stringent preconditions for participation in the talks that it appears his group is prepared to sit out the negotiations as well.
The senior State Department official told The Cable that Washington believed there was still a chance of persuading the Syrian National Council to participate in the Geneva talks. The official was far less optimistic about the prospects of winning over the larger Syrian Opposition Coalition.
“Right now the participation of the SOC in Geneva is not assured, but it is still possible,” the official said.
Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, is in Istanbul this week as part of a last-ditch effort to convince the opposition leaders to change their minds and participate in the Geneva talks. Even if he succeeds, however, it’s far from clear that they will be speaking for the rebels fighting on the ground in Syria. Last week, 65 of the rebel militias, including several linked to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, said they no longer recognized the Syrian National Council and wouldn’t feel bound by any deals it struck.
The disarray among the Syrian opposition leaves Kerry in a bind. The Obama administration has decided not to intervene militarily in Syria or make much of an effort to train or equip the rebels. U.S. backing in the peace talks is about all Washington is willing to provide. The rebel groups have to decide whether that’s enough. Kerry will have to decide if he’s willing to gamble that they will say yes.
Last Update: Tuesday, 22 October 2013 KSA 15:31 - GMT 12:31
Report: Al-Qaeda seeks Qaddafi’s leftover uranium and missiles
Al Arabiya
An unstable country on the brink of civil war is not all former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi left behind after his death last year. A vast collection of weapons remains in an abandoned desert warehouse in southern Libya, The Times reported on Tuesday.
The arsenal reportedly includes 4,000 surface-to-air missiles, each capable of downing a passenger jet, and thousands of barrels of uranium yellowcake. An inventory collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) accounted for 6,400 yellowcake barrels.
Bharuddin Midhoun Arifi, a former human trafficker and now commander of 2,000 fighters in the city of Sabha, was one of the main inheritors of the regime’s abandoned weapon reserves.
“Sometimes I’m afraid that al-Qaeda will get me. Other times I fear that the Americans or French or British will fire missiles from the sea to destroy all I control.” Arifi told the Times. He claims that al-Qaeda had most recently offered 1 million dollars for some of the weapons, an offer which Arifi says he turned down. “I told them…this belonged to my government.”
Rows of the mortars and rockets stacked in crates, however, suggest some of the weapons have been shipped to Syria, along with hundreds of Libyan’s who have joined the rebel forces fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
No actions were taken to remove the uranium, which after intensive processing could become weapons grade, despite the U.N. mission in Libya suggesting its removal. Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammad Abdul Aziz echoed similar sentiments but with no avail.
The most pressing matter to Western officials, however, is the surface-to-air missile getting into the hands of al-Qaeda, an unchecked power in the region enjoying its new freedom in a post-Qaddafi Libya.
“Al-Qaeda was terrified of Qaddafi,” says Colonel Faraj Adem, a senior army officer. “None would dare try to enter Libya’s borders. But now Qaddafi has gone, and with him our border security, al-Qaeda is free to come and go as they please. They are choosing this area to rebuild their weapon stocks and become strong once more. There is no control of weapons stocks here. You want to buy a MANPADS? It’s easy.”
The weapon cache sits in an unguarded complex. Checkpoints between Sabha and northern cities are scarce and poorly manned by informal groups of youth.
If the desert marketplace in Libya is open for business , is the US needed as a weapon source ?
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
The United States has cut off northern Syrian moderate rebel groups from non-lethal aid, with an al-Qaeda advance in northern Syria physically blocking the aid’s dispersal, as the Obama administration continues to ‘disengage’ itself from Syria.
Daily Hürriyet’s Washington representative, Tolga Tanış, reported that the Obama administration commenced its ‘disengagement’ from Syria on Oct. 2, laying out three conditions to the moderate rebels, should they wish for the resumption of aid.
A joint U.S.-Russia plan on the chemical disarmament of Syria and clashes between the Western-Arab-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda-linked rebels known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) factored into the halting of aid to the rebels. Turkey closed its Öncüpınar border gate on Sept. 18 amid an al-Qaeda advance and the U.S. stopped a batch of non-lethal aid to moderate rebels.
At the same time a group of Syria’s most powerful rebel brigades have rejected the Western-Arab-backed opposition group, Syrian National Coalition (SNC), which announced the creation of an interim government in exile. The 13 rebel groups, led by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, called on supporters of the Syrian opposition to embrace Sharia law.
On Oct. 2, U.S. State Department officials conferred and decided on sending three messages to the moderate rebels. Citing an unnamed source who attended meetings, Tanış said the first one was that the U.S. would not repeat the same mistake in Afghanistan where supported groups were radicalized; instead, Washington would wait for moderate groups to distance themselves from radicals. The second one was that the U.S. would not resume its provision of aid until Turkey reopens its border gate and the moderate rebels took control of the northern Syrian town of Azaz. The third and final one was that the U.S. would not allow for any further developments until positive indications were observed from the rebels.
High-ranking CIA official resigns
The opposition tried to solve the deadlock and even pushed al-Nusra Front out of the Saudi Arabian-backed Islamic Army, but could not convince Washington to ‘disengage’ from Syria at the time.
A U.S. official advised yesterday that the aid to rebels had officially ceased. “ISIS has blocked the dispersal of part of the aid. The border gate is closed and we cannot distribute necessary supplies,” he said. Another source familiar with the matter commented on the new U.S. policy, saying it has caused quite the stir within the CIA, including the resignation of a high-ranking official in September.
This Lack Of Syrian Aggression Will Not Stand, Man: Saudi’s Bandar Bin Sultan Furious At US
October 22, 2013
Source: Zero Hedge
That Saudi Arabia has been furious at the US for refusing to be the monarchy’s puppet Globocop, and in the last minute declining to bomb Syria following Putin’s gambit in which World War III seemed a distinctly possible consequence of John Kerry’s hamheaded “YouTube-substantiated” false flag campaign, is no secret. However, while the US has largely forgotten this latest foreign policy debacle and the humiliation it brought upon the Department of State, Saudi Arabia is nowhere close to forgetting. Or forgiving. And this time the anger comes from the one man who truly matters, and whom we dubbed several months ago as the puppetmaster behind the Syrian campaign: the man in charge of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan.
The WSJ reports overnight, that Prince Bandar told European diplomats this weekend that he plans to scale back cooperating with the U.S. to arm and train Syrian rebels in protest of Washington’s policy in the region, participants in the meeting said. This demonstratively framed announcement follows Saudi Arabia’s surprise decision on Friday to renounce a seat on the United Nations Security Council. “The Saudi government, after preparing and campaigning for the seat for a year, cited what it said was the council’s ineffectiveness in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian and Syrian conflicts.”
In short: Bin Sultan has decided to take the stage and make it quite clear that this lack of aggression by the US will not stand. The question is: what can or will he do?
The WSJ reports overnight, that Prince Bandar told European diplomats this weekend that he plans to scale back cooperating with the U.S. to arm and train Syrian rebels in protest of Washington’s policy in the region, participants in the meeting said. This demonstratively framed announcement follows Saudi Arabia’s surprise decision on Friday to renounce a seat on the United Nations Security Council. “The Saudi government, after preparing and campaigning for the seat for a year, cited what it said was the council’s ineffectiveness in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian and Syrian conflicts.”
In short: Bin Sultan has decided to take the stage and make it quite clear that this lack of aggression by the US will not stand. The question is: what can or will he do?
Obviously. What is odd is that the “proxy” intelligence chief appears to have usurped foreign policy decision-making from the Saudi king himself.Diplomats here said Prince Bandar, who is leading the kingdom’s efforts to fund, train and arm rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, invited a Western diplomat to the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah over the weekend to voice Riyadh’s frustration with the Obama administration and its regional policies, including the decision not to bomb Syria in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons in August.“This was a message for the U.S., not the U.N.,” Prince Bandar was quoted by diplomats as specifying of Saudi Arabia’s decision to walk away from the Security Council membership.
…
U.S. officials said they interpreted Prince Bandar’s message to the Western diplomat as an expression of discontent designed to push the U.S. in a different direction. “Obviously he wants us to do more,” said a senior U.S. official.
Full article hereTop decisions in Saudi Arabia come from the king, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud, and it isn’t known if Prince Bandar’s reported remarks reflected a decision by the monarch, or an effort by Prince Bandar to influence the king. However, the diplomats said, Prince Bandar told them he intends to roll back a partnership with the U.S. in which the Central Intelligence Agency and other nations’ security bodies have covertly helped train Syrian rebels to fight Mr. Assad, Prince Bandar said, according to the diplomats. Saudi Arabia would work with other allies instead in that effort, including Jordan and France, the prince was quoted as saying.
and peace talks or lack thereof ...
Last Update: Tuesday, 22 October 2013 KSA 19:58 - GMT 16:58
Syrian opposition calls for Assad’s exit as basis for peace talks
Al Arabiya
The opposition Syrian National Coalition will not take part in a planned Geneva II peace conference unless the objective is President Bashar al-Assad’s removal from power, the coalition president Ahmad al-Jarba said on Tuesday.
“Geneva cannot succeed and we cannot take part if it allows Assad to gain more time to spill the blood of our people while the world looks on,” Jarba said.
A final decision on the SNC’s participation will be made within 10 days, Jarba said, noting that there will be “no negotiations or reconciliation with the Syrian regime.”
Jarba said that the regime of President Assad is supported by more than 60,000 fighters from Iran and that without the Iranian backing, Assad would’ve lost. “Iranian fighters are wreaking havoc in Syria,” he said.
While Washington has said it is open to the possibility of Iran coming to a Geneva conference, Secretary of State John Kerry said it was hard to see Tehran playing a constructive role unless it backs the idea of a transitional government.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague, meanwhile, said Iran must support a proposed interim government in Syria including figures from Assad's administration and the opposition as the way to political dialogue and free elections.
“If Iran could start from that position as well as the rest of us, then Iran would be more easily included in international discussions on the subject,” he said.
“If Iran could start from that position as well as the rest of us, then Iran would be more easily included in international discussions on the subject,” he said.
Kerry said the Syrian opposition coalition would decide within the week whether it was ready to meet with Assad's government on ways to move forward after 2 1/2 years of war that has killed more than 100,000, Associated Press reported.
Both Kerry and Jarba were in London meeting with diplomats from 11 Western and Mideast nations who are trying to reach a settlement.
British Foreign Secretary Hague said it was vital that the Western-backed Syrian opposition join the talks.
“We urge the National Coalition to commit itself fully and to lead and form the heart of any opposition delegation to Geneva,” he told a news conference.
But many of the mostly Islamist rebels fighting in Syria refuse to recognize the exiled opposition favored by the West.
Both Kerry and Jarba were in London meeting with diplomats from 11 Western and Mideast nations who are trying to reach a settlement.
British Foreign Secretary Hague said it was vital that the Western-backed Syrian opposition join the talks.
“We urge the National Coalition to commit itself fully and to lead and form the heart of any opposition delegation to Geneva,” he told a news conference.
But many of the mostly Islamist rebels fighting in Syria refuse to recognize the exiled opposition favored by the West.
Without Rebel Support Syria Peace Talks Unlikely
Assad Echoes US, Russia: Peace Talk Date Not Finalized
by Jason Ditz, October 21, 2013
Rebels from the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) today met with backers in London,the latest in a long line of meetings that have mostly focused on promising funding to the opposition factions, but this time appears aimed at convincing someone of at least a little credibility to attend the Geneva 2 peace conference.
That’s looking increasingly unlikely, as several factions in the SNC have ruled out involvement, and one of the bigger factions has even threatened to withdraw its backing if anyone else attends. So far no rebel faction has agreed to attend.
That’s a big problem with the talks tentatively set for November 23, though US and Russian officials have insisted the date isn’t finalized, and Syrian President Bashar Assad echoed those comments today, saying he doesn’t hold out much hope for the talks.
Assad’s comments were immediately spun as harming the peace process, but seem entirely accurate, as even if the US does manage to get a rebel faction or two on board, al-Qaeda and others clearly won’t be, and thus anyone who does attend won’t credibly be able to offer to end the fighting.
The US and Russia have admitted as much repeatedly, and the Obama Administrationseems more focused on arguing that Iran shouldn’t be involved than in getting people involved who might be able to stop the fighting.
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