Tag: Free Syrian Army

Syria: Will Cooperation Succeed?

Just what does a successful conclusion to the Syrian situation look like?  Is it the defeat of ISIS?  Maybe it is a political solution?  Whatever the solution is it will…no must….include the wishes of the Syrian people.

The next question is…..who fights for the Syrian people?  FSA?  The Coalition?  Assad?  Who?

That question is begging for an answer……..there is an attempt….

Source: FSA: Syrian rebel groups must unite to defeat Assad | Middle East Eye

This is a valiant attempt for some sort of cooperation…..the big question after this is…..can common ground be found on which to build cooperation?

Source: Can the Syria meeting in Saudi Arabia bring unity? – Al Jazeera English

Personal opinion is that there will be little cooperation because there are too many players with diverse agendas……all that is well and good but….why are the options for Syria so bad?

Source: Why Syria’s Options Are So Bad – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

I realize this is a lot to take in but I feel that we should try to help this cause…..the cooperation cause……for one good reason……to keep American troops off Syrian soil…..that battle will be bloody and messy and I would prefer that Americans not become sand fertilizer……there have been too many senseless wars that accomplish very little other than the loss of American lives and massive profits for the M-IC……..

Is it time for a surge in Syria?

If you have been watching the Iraq situation from the beginning in 2003 then you ought to remember the “Surge” as it was called by the media and the Bush Admin……it was that influx of extra American troops and the bought cooperation of some of the Sunni tribes….the whole affair catapulted Gen. Pratraeus into the limelight as a genius….military that is…..yes it was successful…as successful as it was ever going to be……

And now there are those that are clamoring for some sort of “Surge” to be used in Syria…….

A group of current and former US officials concludes that current US policy toward the Islamic State is not working, and that more needs to be done in both the diplomatic and military spheres to end the Syrian civil war.

Source: Is it time for a surge in Syria? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Don’t Underestimate Free Syrian Army

Well I awoke breathing so that “end of days” prediction was about as worthless as the morons that predicted it……

Shall we move on to real news and real situations?

We all have heard of the Free Syrian Army (FSA)…..in the beginning of the US interests on the Syrian situation the FSA was what would become known as the “moderate” rebels…….that was in the beginning…..then it morphed into some moronic debate on who was the purist of intentions……and that dialog was load by the war hawks and their constant barrage of “moderate” rebel BS.

There then was a massive debate on just who were we going to suppoprt in this fight….but first the confusion of who to fight was it Assad, AQ, ISIS or a whole wealth of random entities….just who was the true enemy?

There is a story in the HuffPo that sorta covers this big foreign policy mystery….the true moderate rebels……read on…..

Source: Syria, the Times and the Mystery of the “Moderate Rebels” | David Bromwich

My regular readers will know that I follow war, almost ALL wars very closely…..and that the western media seldom covers the conflicts properly….they give the American people just enough information to call it news…..details are seldom part of the report……

In other words the media is used as a tool to tamp down any information that could lead to a strong anti-war movement….without information the protesters have very little to go on to tailor their protests…..it is a brilliant piece of propaganda……apparently the government learned a valuable lesson from Vietnam and the free access to the war…….

Any way with that little rant out of the way I can get back to the main thought of this post……

I spend a lot of time reading Middle East news sources and getting information we seldom hear or read in this country……and the story I am getting is that the FSA is not the bumbling pack of incompetents they they have been portrayed as here in the US………

This is a report written by Al-Monitor, a Middle East news site……

What is more, the state-owned media have ignored the revolution throughout its four years, and have failed to acknowledge that army soldiers are defecting. These soldiers have become the pillars of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the revolution’s military wing. The regime says only that it is fighting against extremist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and IS. It is as though these groups control all Syrian territories, and the Syrian army is battling against them day and night.

However, the reality is much different. Anyone who follows what is actually happening on the ground knows that there are no battles between the Syrian army and IS. The areas IS controls were won through short battles for wide spaces and large warehouses. This was the case in Palmyra, where IS confiscated the second-largest ammunition warehouse in Syria.

Meanwhile, the FSA is completely dismissed when it comes to media coverage. It was formed early in the revolution and developed into an army defending civilians in regions outside the regime’s control. From a defense group, it grew to become an attack force and took over areas previously controlled by the regime.

Source: Don’t underestimate Free Syrian Army – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

The FSA will be playing a roll in any settlement of the Syrian conflict….to ignore them and dismiss them outright is doing a grave injustice to the Syrian opposition and the Syrian people.

You now have information at your finger tips….do with it as you see fit……and I fear as usual NOTHING will be done with the information.

The readers of IST are the best informed people in the blogosphere….if it is international you will find it here!

Turn The Page!

What The Hell Are We Doing In Syria?

A question I keep asking and so far I got squat for a good answer.

Our plan was to soften up ISIS with airstrikes then train the moderate rebels to fight on our behalf……well that plan sucks!

The airstrikes are truly killing a lot of people but how many are ISIS combatants and how many are civilians?  Our big strategy of training the rebels to fight has had …..what shall I call it?…..a disastrous beginning…..

Gen. Patraeus, you remember him right?  The hero of the Iraqi Surge that all the neocons like to point to as a success……anyway.his testimony is anything but bright…….

Former CIA Director and retired four-star Army Gen. David Petraeus on Tuesday described progress in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as “inadequate.”

“An impressive coalition has been assembled, key ISIS leaders have been killed or captured, and support for local forces in Iraq and Syria has helped roll back ISIS in certain areas,” he testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

But, he added, “Some elements of the right strategy are in place, but several are under-resourced, while others are missing. We are not where we should be at this point.”

His analysis is a bit optimistic but that is what I would expect from a loyal team player…..he should have said our proxies on the ground are acting like 4th graders and their petty arguments…..or just come out and said……”the US plan is inadequate” for the result everyone wants……but those words will not come from his mouth……maybe he should have said something more substantial about our big plan of training rebels and sending them to fight…..

For instance……..

It’s already been heavily reported how badly the first class of New Syrian Forces (NSF), also known as Division 30, did after being trained by the US and sent into Syria. There were 54 of them to start, and last week Centcom conceded there were only “four or five left.” This may still look like a runaway success compared to the second class.

The second class entered Syria by way of Turkey on Friday, and according to reports there were between 70 and 75 of them in total. Today, reports out of Syria suggest that the group immediately took its weapons and vehicles to al-Qaeda territory and turned them all over to them.

Of course the Pentagon does not see the situation as it may be…..

The Pentagon is firmly denying social media reports that a new group of U.S.-trained Syrian fighters who recently reentered their country to combat the Islamic State have defected to the Nusra Front, al Qaida’s main affiliate in Syria.

“It’s patently false that there have been defections or weapons turned over by them, and we believe the claims to those effect to be untrue,” Davis said. “The folks that are part of the New Syrian Force are accounted for, as are their weapons.”

I would expect no less from the Pentagon.  Who in their right mind would admit to a failure?

I guess we could look on the bright side…..after all Nusrah is fighting ISIS for control and the could win with all the help they are getting from America’s big plan.

Personally, I would fire everyone involved in this plan and find someone who will tell the truth and find a workable plan….God knows these twats cannot do it.

Syria: Death Of A Cluster F*ck?

My daughter was amazed that I did not post on this story the day it came to light…..I told her I had a good reason for my delay…..

I waited a couple of days before I posted my piece on the information Gen. Austin gave about our dynamite program of rebel training.  I wanted to see if they would do what I thought and as usual they are very predictable.

I thought they they would tie this horrible news to Obama alone….most did exactly that.  Do not mistake my post as a defense of Obama….I think he has failed at international relations….but the situation is not all his to claim.

Before I go further I need to let my reader know what the Hell I am going on about, right?

Testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee today, Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of Centcom, admitted that the pro-US Syrian rebel faction, dubbed the New Syrian Force (NSF) in most official contexts, is virtually gone now, with virtually everybody either killed or having fled.

What was initially envisioned as a force of tens of thousands of anti-ISIS fighters amounted to only 54 to start with, and Gen. Austin told Congress today that they are down to “four or five” fighters still active in the field. Needless to say, it’s not going well.

Austin went on to say that the next two classes of NSF fighters are still being trained, though that training too is falling behind schedule. The indications are that these classes aren’t much bigger, 100-120 fighters all told. The pared-back goal of 5,000 fighters is likely still years off.

There you have it……..the colossal waste of time, energy and money training the Right’s favorite cause…training the “moderate” Syrian rebels……

 

If anyone has been paying attention I have warned you that this stupid plan would be just what it is…….a waste of time!

I also was hoping to hear from the two GOP masterminds of this plan….McCain and Graham…..but so far they are busy trying to ignore the information and mouth off about other stuff.

There are other complaints about the program other than the minuscule amount of actually trained rebels…….arming the “good guys”….there are some pretty serious complaints….

Source: Pentagon criticised for ‘failing’ to arm Syria rebels – Al Jazeera English

I will agree with my Right wing brethren……Obama’s plan sucks!  But it is the GOP’s plan also…the plan, the only plan they would endorse just before an election, also…..

This stupid plan has many cheerleaders……and now it will have many critics.

But with all the defense of this plan there seems to be some sort of intelligent thinking go on is DC…….

In his testimony to Congress yesterday, Gen. Lloyd Austin, the commander of Centcom, admitted that the US-trained New Syrian Force (NSF) rebels amount to only four or five existing fighters in Syria. While it’s been no secret the “create a new rebel faction” strategy failed, and officials are confirming planned changes.

According to those officials, they intend to totally abandon the “rebel” conceit and stop having the NSF fight against ISIS as a distinct force, and will instead load them down with US communications equipment and have them gather intelligence and pick targets for US airstrikes.

To that end, the intention is to get these people “embedded” into various other fighting forces, both secular rebels and the Kurdish YPG. The Kurds, a much bigger faction, will probably be the bulk of this embedding, though they aren’t really “rebels” and are fighting alongside the Syrian military in Hasakeh to defend the city from ISIS.

To abandon a failed strategy seems the prudent thing to do when the program is a dismal failure……however the new plan is about to open a whole new set of variables……especially with Turkey now part of the coalition and involved in the fighting.

Syria: Blinded By The Light

My regular readers will know that I have been a very vocal opponent of the plan for Syria…..the neocon idea of training rebels to fight was moronic at best but it won approval of the Obama people and it has been nothing but a problem……a problem that people like myself told them about a year or more ago…..but did they listen?  Hell NO!  They were smarter than that……and we see where that smartness has gotten them, huh?

For a couple of years the US and its friends have been involved in the battle against ISIS…..there have been plans within plans…..schemes within schemes….and so far nothing has stopped the ISIS machine from killing, destroying and moving on……..the final plan was to train vetted moderate rebels arm and supplied by the US to take the battle to Assad and onward ISIS……

It was a sad plan at best…..first they could not vet enough rebels to relly make a difference and then the ones they did train and turn loose to raise Hell within Syria were captured moments after entering Syria…….

So since that was a bust what now?

The Pentagon plans a total revamp of its plan to train an army of moderate Syrian rebels after a disastrous start to the program. Officials had aimed to train thousands of fighters in the first year, but only a few dozen made it through the vetting process, and many of those first 54 graduates were killed and captured by the al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front within weeks of graduating the US program in July and joining the American-backed Division 30 group in Syria. In classified assessments, the military admits that the debacle showed that the rebels didn’t receive enough training and support and were not sent to Syria in numbers big enough to make a difference, the New York Times reports.

Division 30 commanders tell the Times that the group’s leader, Nadim Hassan, was seized by the Nusra Front along with seven others other soon after entering Syria to negotiate the release of kidnapped recruits. They are apparently still being held. US air support defeated the Nusra Front fighters when they attacked a Division 30 base the next day, but the surviving US-trained fighters are now scattered across the country. “As with any difficult endeavor, we expected setbacks and successes, and we must be realistic with those expectations,” a spokesman for the US training task force tells the Times. “We knew this mission was going to be difficult from the very beginning.” France, meanwhile, has launched reconnaissance flights over Syria and is considering its first airstrikes against ISIS in the country, the AP reports.

Finally a light bulb went on in the command center……after months even years of an unsuccessful program maybe it is time to rethink the whole war strategy……counterinsurgency may not be the way to “degrade and defeat” ISIS……

OH!  By The Way……..TOLD YOU SO!

Can you hear Homer Simpson about now?

NBC’s Conduct in Engel Kidnapping Story is More Troubling than the Brian Williams Scandal – The Intercept

As one who spends a lot of time with the Middle East and events that occur I like Richard Engel….he knows the region and he speaks Arabic so he can interview people without using a go between….

I heard some rumblings about his kidnapping last summer…..some of them were disturbing……….

I recall when I saw the news that he and his team had been kidnapped in Syria I was concerned….journalist have not been too fortunate in Syria and Iraq…..and then he was “rescued”……

Now a story has come out about that kidnapping and NBC…..it is a disturbing story at that……..while Engel still has my respect and confidence I cannot say the same for NBC……..they are starting to show the same lack of professional journalism as CNN has shown…….

 

NBC’s Conduct in Engel Kidnapping Story is More Troubling than the Brian Williams Scandal – The Intercept.