Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 361

A US intelligence consultant told me that a few weeks before 21 August he saw a highly classified briefing prepared for [Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin] Dempsey and the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, which described ‘the acute anxiety’ of the [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan administration about the [U.S.-Turkey-Saudi-Qatari-backed] rebels’ dwindling prospects. The analysis warned that the Turkish leadership had expressed ‘the need to do something that would precipitate a US military response’. [In other words: Turkey’s leader, Erdoğan, ‘expressed’ to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that they needed to do something that would ‘precipitate a US military response’ against the man Erdoğan wanted to bring down, Assad. He was advising what’s called by the intelligence-services a ‘false-flag attack.’ Erdoğan wanted a false-flag attack, so as to enable U.S.

President Barack Obama to have a publicly believable excuse for invading Syria and doing what Erdoğan wanted done.]… In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently «painful» to the Assad regime.’ [I.e.: The Joint Chiefs had underestimated the President’s determination to bring down Assad… Obama’s change of mind [weakening his ardor against Assad] had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff.

The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack… Obama’s premise [‘premise’ here might instead have been just the tactful way for Hersh to say ‘excuse,’ which would have been even more unpublishable to apply to the President inside the U.S.; Hersh here avoids saying that the President was simply lying] – that only the Syrian army was capable of deploying sarin – was unravelling. Within a few days of the 21 August attack, the former intelligence official told me, Russian military intelligence operatives had recovered samples of the chemical agent from Ghouta. They analysed it and passed it on to British military intelligence; this was the material sent to Porton Down [the testing lab for Britain’s CIA-equivalent, MI6].

…The Porton Down report caused the joint chiefs to go to the president with a... serious worry: that the attack sought by the White House would be an unjustified act of aggression.[In other words: if he were to invade on that basis, the fakery of his excuse might become publicly known.] It was the joint chiefs who led Obama to change course. The official White House explanation for the turnabout – the story the press corps told [and Hersh is here pouring contempt upon America’s ‘press corps,’ as being nothing but stenographers for the White House] – was that the president, during a walk in the Rose Garden with Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, suddenly decided to seek approval for the strike from a bitterly divided Congress with which he’d been in conflict for years. …

Al-Marsad - Arab Centre for Human Rights in the Golan Heights sent an urgent letter to the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructures, Energy and Water Resources, demanding the cancellation of permits issued at the start of February allowing drilling for oil in 11 different locations in the occupied Syrian lands.

The letter, sent by the organisation’s attorney Karama Abu Saleh and Palestinian legal centre Adalah’s lawyer Suhad Bishara, said: “The Golan Heights is occupied territory and its people are under occupation, and the Fourth Geneva Convention considers them protected civilians.”

It stressed that the “Israeli excavation violates the principle of sovereignty over natural resources and the collective right to the use of these resources, as expressed in the United Nations Resolution of 1962, which ensures peoples’ control over their natural resources, as well as the United Nations General Assembly resolution in 2006, which emphasises the exclusive right for the people of the Golan to use these resources.”

“The Golan is an occupied area and therefore it is subjected to the principle of the status quo embodied in international law. This means that it is prohibited to tamper with, transfer or confiscate public property; in addition, international law forbids looting,” the letter said.

Israeli permits which allow drilling for oil in the occupied Golan are a flagrant violation of the principles of international humanitarian law, the letter explained.

According to international humanitarian law, “the crude oil is a fixed asset and exploiting it is prevented.” This, the letter explained, exploitation is considered a war crime according to the Rome Statute, based on which the international Criminal Court was established, therefore Israel must cancel all permits immediately.

Beirut (dpa) - A ceasefire went into effect across large parts of Syria at midnight (2200 GMT Friday) after major rebel factions, President Bashar al-Assad's government and the largest Kurdish militia agreed to adhere to a "cessation of hostilities."

The deal was brokered by the United States and Russia and excludes Islamic State, al-Qaeda's affiliate al-Nusra Front and other UN-designated terrorist groups. Both Washington and Moscow have been launching airstrikes in the country.

The opposition, which has expressed doubts about whether the government would "exploit" the deal to advance its positions, said 97 rebel groups signed up and they would abide by the deal for up to two weeks.

Al-Nusra's leader rejected the truce and called for new attacks against the government

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed in Turkey near the country’s border with Syria, the Turkish DHA news agency reported Feb. 26.

The drone crashed on the territory of the Hatay province.

There are no reports so far clarifying which country owns the UAV.

Reportedly, Turkish servicemen arrived at the crash site and further details of the incident are being clarified.

The report found that most of the components are gained by exploiting legal agricultural and mining sectors where the necessary chemicals and parts are freely available.

It identified 51 companies in 20 countries involved in the deadly supply chain, including Nokia, which is now owned by Microsoft, and firms headquartered in Europe and the US.

Although CAR concluded that issues stretched far beyond the nations surrounding Iraq and Syria, Turkey was found to be the main “choke point” in the enterprise.
...
“If you are in YPG-controlled territory, the border is virtually hermetically sealed, whereas if the border is with Isis-controlled areas it was and still is virtually open,” Mr Bevan added.

The Turkish government failed to respond to CAR’s requests for information but other mentioned parties, including Nokia, aided the non-governmental organisation with documents and invoices.

The report’s key findings:

Turkey: 13 companies - components including chemical precursors, containers, detonating cord, cables, and wires, which Turkish companies either manufactured or sold in Turkey before Isis forces acquired them in Iraq and Syria.
India: Seven companies - manufactured most of the detonators, detonating cord, and safety fuses documented by CAR’s field investigation teams. Under Indian law, transfer of this material requires a licence and all components documented by CAR were legally exported to entities in Lebanon and Turkey.
Japan, Switzerland, and the United States: Same electronic components consistently used in the construction of one type of remote-controlled IED used in Iraq. Companies headquartered in Japan, Switzerland, and the United States manufactured the microcontrollers and transistors used in the devices.
United Arab Emirates and Iraqi Kurdistan: Isis in Iraq uses 105 Type RM-908 Nokia phones to manufacture of a specific type of remote-controlled IED. Of 10 such telephones documented by CAR, eight had been supplied to intermediaries in the United Arab Emirates and two had been sent to distributors in the city of Irbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.

The U.S. military has requested permission from the administration to restart a halted program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels, the top commander in the Middle East said Tuesday.

"I've asked for permission to restart the effort by using a different approach," Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing.

The $500 million-a-year program meant to train a moderate force to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was effectively canceled in October after fielding only 150 rebels at a cost of $384 million — far from its goal of 3,000 by December.

On March 09 2016 07:01 LegalLord wrote:
I sure wish people would stop pretending that there is such a thing as a "moderate rebel." There is no such thing.

On March 10 2016 04:11 LegalLord wrote:
Sure, if you evaluate Assad by Western standards you will find him to be a brutal tyrant that should not exist.

By MidEast standards, however, he is a dictator that is not great but that brings stability.