Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 59

On June 23 2013 07:43 xDaunt wrote:

All this is going to do is turn the Syrian civil war into an endless proxy war. As sick as it sounds, that's not a bad deal for the US and its allies.

On June 23 2013 07:59 nunez wrote:


providing more arms for the opposition will shorten or lengthen the civil war depending on the power balance, which you don't have enough information about to make an accurate assessment. it doesn't sound sick, it sounds dumb.

didn't seem like there was much progress in any direction reading the article though, more like status quo.

On June 23 2013 08:19 xDaunt wrote:

What are you talking about? Assad is winning the war right now. Providing arms to the rebels is only going to drag it out longer.

On June 23 2013 08:36 nunez wrote:


in that case you should probably let the opposition know and the people providing supporting to is as well. if they only had pm'd you for your opinion before they started this.

assad might be pushing the rebels out of cities, but the civil war will not end with that.

On June 23 2013 13:51 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Yes because the US has been the loudest voice of wanting Assad out of power and that the rebels need to be supported. In reality it's quite the opposite with Europe and Middle Eastern countries calling for Rebels to be supported including finding loopholes for weapons to be sent. But jump on the US hate bandwagon while it's fresh I guess.

On June 23 2013 13:41 imperator-xy wrote:

You beat your opponent by pushing him out of his territory. During the last months, the Syrian army kept pushing the rebels back North. If outside countries didn't decide to supply stronger weapons, the Syrian army would probably have started sieging Aleppo and other important places during the next weeks.

The regime will not achieve a total military victory, but it can consolidate its grip on Syria’s cities, stabilize its economic situation, and hold the rebels at bay in peripheral parts of the country.

Syrian rebels have captured a major army post in the southern city of Deraa after nearly two weeks of intense fighting, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists around the country, said rebel forces led by members of the the Nusra Front, captured the checkpoint on Friday after a two-week siege.

Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Observatory, said the fall of the army post was strategically significant for Deraa, where protesters first marched against four decades of Assad family rule from the city's Omari mosque in March 2011.

"Now the army is under threat there. The rebels haven't liberated all of the old city. There are still two neighbourhoods with soldiers, but this could change the balance of power there," Abdulrahman told Reuters.

The Syrian conflict began in Deraa as a peaceful protest movement against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, but has spread across the country and degenerated into civil war.

He added that the capture opens the way for rebels to take the southern neighbourhood of Manshiyeh that is close to the Jordanian border.

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei—A proposed peace conference on Syria will likely not happen until at least September, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday after meeting here with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Kerry spoke privately with Lavrov for nearly two hours outside an Asian security meeting that both diplomats are attending. He said in a statement that he concluded from the conversation that both the United States and Russia are “serious, more than serious, [and] committed” to ending the bloody civil conflict in Syria and working toward a negotiated peace.

“We both agreed that our countries have an ability to make a difference if we can pull together in that effort,” Kerry said. He declined to take questions from reporters.

Lavrov put a somewhat different spin on the meeting, telling the Russian media that Kerry had recognized that “consolidation” of the disparate Syrian opposition is the most important goal to achieve before peace talks can take place.

Under an agreement reached exactly a year ago in Geneva and endorsed by international governments including Russia and the United States, Syria’s opposition has proposed a meeting of negotiating teams whose members were chose “by mutual consent” to establish a transitional government. The United States, which has said no end to the Syrian war is possible unless President Bashar al-Assad cedes power, has since made clear that the “mutual consent” clause ensured that Assad would not be involved.

Russia, Assad’s main diplomatic and military backer, has said that barring the Syrian leader from negotiations is an unacceptable precondition. In a meeting in Moscow in May, Kerry and Lavrov brushed over that disagreement and proposed that a second Geneva meeting take place within weeks between opposition and government representatives.

Commanders of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have reacted with fury to the assassination of a senior FSA officer by a jihadist group, warning that the killing would lead to further violence between the disparate factions battling to oust the president, Bashar al-Assad.

Kamal Hamami, a member of the opposition's supreme military command, was killed and his body mutilated after he was lured to a planning meeting on Thursday with fighters believed to be foreign jihadists in the Jebel al-Krud region, north of Latakia.

The killing – the first internecine targeting of a ranking member of the mainstream Syrian opposition group – follows rising tensions between the exclusively Syrian militia and jihadi fighters, including increasing numbers of foreigners who see the civil war in Syria as part of a global jihad.

Rebel leaders in northern Syria said on Friday that the assassination had shattered trust between the two sides and set off a blood feud.

"This will not go unpunished," said a former officer of the Syrian army who now commands a mainstream opposition militia near Idlib province. "They are trying to assert themselves, to make us bow to them. They need to be taught a lesson."

In a statement released the previous Friday, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that "huge explosions shook the area where a large Syrian army base and weapons depots are located."

According to reports that have reached the rights group, fighter jets were seen in the skies in the area of the city of Al-Haffah, east of Latakia. It was further reported that several troops have been killed and wounded in the explosions. Fires broke out in the region.

If the report is proven to be true, this would be the fourth Israeli strike in Syria in six months. In January, Israel struck a convoy carrying weapons evidently meant for Hezbollah while it had stopped at a Syrian research center on the outskirts of Damascus. Israel attacked twice more, over the course of one weekend in May, targeting a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles at the Damascus international airport.

No one had officially claimed responsibility for the explosions at Latakia, in Syria's north.

Israel's government has also declined to comment on the allegations.

An air raid on Syria's famed Crac des Chevaliers castle, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has damaged one of the fortress's towers, footage shot by activists showed.

Several videos posted online on Saturday showed at least one air strike on Friday against the Crusader castle in central Homs province, where fighting is raging between government troops and rebel forces.

The footage shows a huge blast as a tower of the fortress, which is built on a hill, appears to take a direct hit, throwing up large clouds of smoke and scattering debris in the air.

A separate video filmed inside the castle purports to show some of the damage caused by the air strike, including a gaping hole in the ceiling and a pile of rubble below.

Rebel fighters battled the Al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Saturday after the jihadist group tried to seize their weapons, a monitoring group said.

The clashes erupted at dawn near Ras al-Hosn, in the north of Idlib province, when the “ISIS fighters tried to seize weapons stored in Free Syrian Army depots,” Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

The fighting comes amid mounting tensions between mainstream rebel forces and radical Islamist groups including ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front.

On Thursday, ISIS fighters shot dead a Free Syrian Army commander in the coastal province of Latakia, an incident that is expected to further ratchet up tensions.

Idlib province, in Syria’s northwest has already seen clashes between mainstream rebels and jihadists.

Late last week, dozens of FSA fighters were killed in a battle against ISIS, according to the Observatory.

The FSA battalion chief there was beheaded by ISIS and his brother slaughtered, the group reported.

Israel used a Turkish military base to launch one of its recent airstrikes against Syria from the sea, a reliable source told RT. Israel has been under scrutiny since last week, when it was reported to be responsible for a July 5 depot attack in Latakia.

News that Turkey assisted Israel in attacking another Muslim state could result in serious turmoil for Ankara, once the information is confirmed.

A Syrian rebel group which has proclaimed loyalty to al-Qaeda posted an audio recording attributed to its leader on Monday in which he promised a fightback.

In the recording, al-Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani also hit out at Lebanon's Hezbollah whose public intervention in the Syrian conflict since late April has been a major factor in recent rebel reverses.

Julani's speech, entitled: "The Coming Days are Better Than Those of the Past," were his first since April 10, SITE Intelligence, which monitored the posting, said.

In it, the Nusra leader warned Lebanese Shias not to allow Hezbollah to drag them into a proxy war in Syria on behalf of its Iranian backers.

"I say that abandoning Hezbollah and disowning it will save you from woes and disasters that you would do without," SITE quoted him as saying.

Julani also warned other rebel groups in Syria against the dangers of accepting support from Arab or Western governments.

In his last public intervention in April, Julani spoke out against the al-Qaeda leadership in neighbouring Iraq for its attempt to steamroller a merger between rebels in the two countries.

He made no reference in his latest speech to the controversy, which sparked a split among al-Qaeda loyalists inside Syria between al-Nusra and the rival al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria.

On July 24 2013 05:15 HunterX11 wrote:
The armed wing of Hezbollah has certainly engaged in terrorism in other instances, but their support for the Assad regime isn't terrorism unless your definition of terrorism is nothing more than "violence by bad people I don't like" (which, to be fair, IS pretty much the most common definition).