Tag: Rebels

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?

Who’s Fighting ISIL in Northern Syria | Al Jazeera America

Syria is a mess…..there are more plot twists than a Guy Ritchie movie……..there are so many players and fighters that few can keep them all straight.

Just who are the players in the fight in Northern Syria…..keep in mind that these may not be the same ones as fighting in the South…….

Now you have a scorecard to keep the players straight…………..This may confuse my reader even more……but at least you will have a better idea than you have now……good luck.

 

Who’s Fighting ISIL in Northern Syria | Al Jazeera America.

Training Day

Nope not that movie that was popular about a decade ago…..this is about the plan to train “moderate” rebels to fight in Syria against ISIS and Assad……

The original plan was to train about 5000 rebels to act as the hammer against our enemies in the Middle East……..everybody in Washington is on board with this plan of the grand strategy……..training began in May of this year and is not the answer to our problem in Syria…….

The United States has only trained approximately 60 Syrian rebel fighters as of July 3, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, saying the number is “much smaller” than the administration hoped to train at this point.

The low numbers are blamed on a strict vetting process that includes ensuring the fighters are committed to combat ISIS, as opposed to the Assad regime, and passing a counter-intelligence screening.

“We make sure that they, for example, aren’t going to pose a green-on-blue threat to their trainers; that they don’t have any history of atrocities,” Carter said.

The military is currently vetting 7,000 volunteers. The goal of the program is to train 3,000 to 5,000 fighters per year, a far cry away from 60 being trained now.

At this rate my 12 year old granddaughter will be having to deal with this war when she is grown……..my have said that this is not the best idea to “defeat” ISIS……

The problem is there seems to be NO good idea to defeat ISIS……everything proposed has built in a degree of failure……

While I was putting the finishing touches on this post I got word about the rebels that we have been training in Turkey to fight in Syria……..

New reports out of Turkey are that the struggling US training mission, aimed at creating a new Syrian rebel faction, has borne its first fruit, and the first US-trained rebels have entered Syria, awash in US weapons.

A convoy of vehicles crossed into Syria from neighboring Turkey, and are being called the “New Syrian Force” by Pentagon officials. 30 vehicles strong, the force amounts to 54 fighters with some rudimentary training and some pricey US aid.

Glad to see the program is starting to show some results…..but…..54 rebels?  I do not think that 54 fighters will make much difference against ISIS and/or Assad

Our “plan” to fight in Syria gets more pathetic as the weeks pass…….if we are to do what Obama has promised….that is to “degrade and defeat ISIS”……I believe that 54 fighters may not be the best way to do that…….

Thoughts?

Middle East – Are there any ‘moderate’ rebel groups left in Syria? – France 24

It is the beginning of another election cycle and because of that we will hear hour upon hour of GOP chest thumping about ISIS and the defeat of extremism……none of which will be accurate but it does make for some wonderful applause moments……

Of course their answer is that we, the US, must support the “moderate” rebels in their fight against Assad and ISIS…..the problem with their argument is just which rebel faction is the “moderates” that we need to support…….

This article may have the answer we all are searching for in our research to find an answer to the ISIS problem…….

 

Middle East – Are there any ‘moderate’ rebel groups left in Syria? – France 24.

Syria: Bad Guy Vs Bad Guy

Opinion from the tortured fingers of Chuq

Does anyone remember reading MAD Magazine in their youth……especially the cartoon panels entitled “Spy Vs Spy”….one white one black and no one knows who was good or bad……

That cartoon made me think of a situation brewing in Syria as I write this…..Everybody is at war with everybody else and in between are the civilians that NO one, mostly notably the US, cares about….but that is a post for another day.

Let’s look at that war….we have Assad fighting anyone that is not in his army……we have rebels fighting rebels……we have the Coalition fighting ISIS…….and ISIS fighting anyone that gets in their way to gain total control of the region……about here is where I pick up on the post……..

There are many units fighting in Syria on various sides of the conflict….there is of course ISIS and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the AQ affiliate, Nusra Front which is fighting mostly in the Southern part of Syria……..this is where it becomes most interesting……

Both ISIS and Nusra are considered to be extreme fundamentalist which adhere to a very strict interpretation of Islam…..on the surface it would appear that these two entities should be allies…..but that ain’t happening.

The Nusra Front has launched an assault on rival Islamic State positions in the Qalamoun mountains on the Lebanon-Syria border, al-Qaeda’s official representative in Syria said.

According to social media accounts belonging to Nusra, its militants began attacking IS positions on Tuesday and now plan to “eradicate” IS in the region because it has exploited “the vision of an Islamic state”.

While the two groups have clashed throughout much of Syria, they had, until recently, fostered relatively good relations in Qalamoun, a mountain range key to securing supply routes into Syria.

– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nusra-plans-eradicate-syria-lebanon-border-700200023#sthash.K4A7iceb.dpuf

“Eradicate” ISIS?  Now that should be good news to the ears of our guys in the State department…..but wait!  Nusra is an AQ affiliate how does that fit into the equation?

Now with this break between the two….will the US arm and train an AQ affiliate?  Where does this situation fit into the grand scheme of things (if there is a grand scheme)?
As with everything about the conflict in Syria…….there are questions……..so many questions and so little answers.
Well is this good news or not?

Train The Syrian Rebels……Then What?

All the canker sores in the Congress think that the answer to the problems in Syrian is the training of the rebels so they can effectively take on Assad and his troops…….they have the problem of trying to sort out which group of rebels will be the best and most effective…….(be honest….they have NO idea which ones to train)……but let’s say that they come up with a proper algorithm to pick the most deserving of the rebellious Syrians and we set about train them in the proper use of weapons and military tactics……eventually we turn them lose on the Syrian countryside to do battle with the Assad forces……what is the US position once the training is over and we have a full blown war going on?

I am so glad that you asked that one simple question..,……

During a Senate hearing when asked but the Syrian situation…..Gen. Austin let the truth be known…….

Testifying at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today, Centcom commander Gen. Lloyd Austin warned that while the US had decided to go ahead with creating and training a new rebel force in Syria, they as yet have no plans to actually support those rebels after they’re trained and returned to Syria.

Gen. Austin said it was expected the rebels would need help with logistics, intelligence and air support, but that there was no policy in place to provide any of those things yet.

So basically the US will do what it did in Afghanistan in the 80’s…….we will train you but then you are on your own…….

It is a constant amazement to me the depth of the stupidity of our foreign policy…..I cannot blame it all on Obama…..we have been international morons for decades…..only it has gotten much worse in the last 20 years…….and Americans keep show surprise when our foreign policy blows up in our faces……spend less time on Reality TV and more learning about the world and your surprises will be lessened.

Syria: Land Of Ups And Downs

The war in Syria is not nearly as popular as it was 6 months ago….but we still have as a plan that we should arm the ‘moderate’ rebel groups fight Assad and of course our arch enemy, ISIS.

As I have said we have a plan….but a plan is NO good when events do not cooperate……..and recently few events are cooperating with the US plan….for instance……

Reuters) – The Hazzm movement was once central to a covert CIA operation to arm Syrian rebels, but the group’s collapse last week underlines the failure of efforts to unify Arab and Western support for mainstream insurgents fighting the Syrian military.

A blow to U.S. moves to aid rebels, the dissolution of Hazzm also highlights the risks that a new Department of Defense program could face in training and equipping fighters in Jordan, Turkey and Qatar.

Hazzm’s collapse has shown how such efforts will prove difficult in a country where insurgents often battle each other and arms have fallen into the hands of hardline groups.

An onslaught by al Qaeda’s Syria wing, the Nusra Front, last week forced Hazzm into dissolution, its members swallowed by Jabhat al-Shamiyya, a mainly Islamist alliance. It was the second time in four months that Nusra had crushed a Western-backed rebel group.

 

How much of a set back this situation will be to the overall plan is yet to be seen….but it should delay any “arming” of rebels….

It appears that there is a quiet plan for the use of military force in Syria…….

With the war against ISIS still in the process of being built up, administration officials are already planning for the post-ISIS war in Syria, and they intend to play a role in that as well.

Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that right now there is “no higher priority” than disrupting ISIS, but said after that ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad would be “needed.”

“When” ISIS is defeated then the use of force against Assad is part of the plan?

The Coalition plan still is to do as little as possible and pray for success…..that is not a plan…..and using US troops in yet another Middle East country should not be part of any plan…….

“We Will Arm And Train Syrian Rebels”

Just a thought here…..which group would that be?

I have said many times what a moronic statement that is about the arming……..which rebel group?  Keep in mind that AQ was born out of a rebel group fighting in Afghanistan…..a fact the people like McCain seem to not remember…..

I got this ‘toon in my reader on WordPress…….which would you arm?

 

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Let The Training Begin!

Flash!  Turkey has finally agreed to start training Syrian rebels for their program in opposition to Assad.  The problem is that Turkey is going to be picky on who they train…..why?  They still have a massive amount of angst with the Kurds, who are fighting for a homeland and in opposition to the Turkish government.

Now word has come down that the training will begin of about 1200 rebels…….

Pentagon officials updated the press on their vetting process for training the “new” Syria rebel faction that they’re planning to create, saying they’ve identified “about 1,200″ fighters for it.

1200?  Seriously?  First of all as a Viet vet….1200 trained soldiers will be about as worthless as tits on a bull….okay 1200 well trained troops can make a small difference but who will their enemies be?

Politicians like McCain have been pushing for this from the beginning……it is an excellent talking point or placing blame but there is NOTHING said that points to a successful program.  Another problem is that too many are trying to be well versed in the Middle East, they even visit the area, but a visit does not constitute knowledge….US ambassador to Syria Ford does not see this new program as successful…….

It’s also well short of what former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, once an outspoken support of the program, envisioned. He’s now very critical of the plan, and says too many of the moderate rebels are willing to work with al-Qaeda.

Ford says that the new rebel faction is going to be too small to be relevant, saying that even if they got 10,000 new fighters a year, it wasn’t clear they’d be able to accomplish anything.

Enough said?