Beirut: Iran says pro-Damascus forces will press ahead with attacks on an insurgent enclave near the Syrian capital, as ground fighting raged on there in defiance of a UN resolution demanding a 30-day truce across the country.

Turkey, too, said its military operations in another theatre of war in the north of Syria would not be affected by the unanimous Security Council vote demanding the truce to allow for aid access and medical evacuations.

 

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/syria-martyred-as-iran-turkey-d...

 

The pope is correct : "Syria is being martyred" but lets add it is by the West supporting the terrorists... A unilateral ceasefire resolution is stupid. it needs to be BILATERAL...

 

Read from top...

 

See also the bombing of the Red Cross in Damascus by the terrorists:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/02/26/watch-bashar-jaafari-at-the-unsc-aft...

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile:

 

It should be no surprise that Washington’s Syrian Kurdish allies—who have long had daggers drawn and pointed at our fellow NATO member Turkey—are now reconciling with our Syrian enemy President Bashar al-Assad.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) and its allies, with critical military support from the United States, have occupied three cantons in Syria along the border with Turkey as part of their war against ISIS. Turkey views the Syrian Kurdish forces now in place as in league with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), against whom it has been waging intermittent battles in Turkey for many years.

On January 20, Turkey began a limited military operation to drive out the YPG from the westernmost canton, anchored by Afrin, a town of 35,000. In recent days Damascus, too, has joined the battle in support of its disaffected citizens, sending uniformed irregulars to the front.

It at first seems difficult to understand the (so far) limited skirmishes between all these players. But while the battlefield may be messy, it’s not impossible to break down. A new chapter in the struggle for Syria is unfolding, and Washington’s nominal allies in its war against ISIS are looking to their futures. For the estranged Kurds, that means continuing efforts to improve the terms under which their minority in Syria is ruled from Damascus.

 

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/in-the-turk-syrian-kurd-...

 

Read also: 

the dark ages...

A new report by Syrian media about the evacuation of Daesh militants adds to the growing evidence that the US is using its aviation to assist terrorists.

According to the Syrian state-run news agency SANA, the US has evacuated Daesh leaders from the Al-Shaddadah area in the northeastern al-Hasakah Governorate using its helicopters.

The extremists have been transported to Sabah al-Khair, a base located 20 km south of the city of al-Hasakah, which US forces use to train militants, the civilian sources said as cited by SANA.

The sources added that the helicopters dropped off four senior Daesh terrorists, including one holding Belgian nationality.

They also noted that the evacuation occurred amid reports on social media accounts held by terrorists that the militant called “Abu Qasim al-Iraqi” had disappeared along with his wife and a bodyguard as well as a large amount of money.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201802261062013188-us-choppers-evacua...

As the Syrian Arab Army, Russia, and Iran move closer to liberating the last remaining parts of Syria still occupied by Salafi-jihadi groups of various stripe, the regime change propaganda in the Western media has gone into overdrive, painting a picture of an upside-down world with a savage assault on reality.

In the process groups such as Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam, the latter of which is the dominant Salafi-jihadi faction in opposition-held Eastern Ghouta, is being referred to as 'rebels' — rehabilitated as Partisans of Second World War repute, holding out against a brutal fascistic regime and its evil Russian backers.

Indeed going by the raft of articles that have appeared in particular in the UK Guardian newspaper of late, you would think the Syrian Arab Army, which by way of a reminder is a conscript army that draws its soldiers from every part of the multicultural and multi-religious mosaic that constitutes Syrian society, are not fighting to liberate their country and its people from these murderous sectarian fanatics, but instead have invaded it and are occupying as in an Arab Waffen SS.

READ MORE: What Mainstream Media Won't Tell You About Eastern Ghouta

British journalist and veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk makes the point in a recent article that "footage from Ghouta — like almost all the film from eastern Aleppo — contains not a frame of acknowledgement that these armed men [of Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam] exist."

What we have now, it bears emphasizing — in the context of the Syrian army's operation to liberate Eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus — are people who adhere to the same ideology responsible for 9/11, along with a litany of terrorist attacks in Europe and the US in more recent times, being depicted as rebels, while those fighting to defeat them are decried and vilified as butchers. The words of Winston Churchill, a man whose belief in the virtues of colonialism and imperialism was on a par with Julius Caesar's, spring to mind: "In wartime truth is so precious, she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

READ MORE: Moscow Worried UN Resolution on Syrian Ceasefire Aimed at Accusing Damascus

Such wilful distortion and dissembling on the part of Western ideologues and their leftist bag carriers when it comes to Syria, people who continue to make the case for something they describe as the Syrian revolution, is the foundation upon which colonialism and imperialism have rested throughout its malign history.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201802221061908039-eastern-ghouta-syr...

 

Read from top. Read also: 

the dark ages...

Over the last four years, all commentators have underlined the impossibility for Russia to deploy ground troops against the jihadists in Syria at the risk of reliving their defeat in Afghanistan. But what is true if Moscow confronts Washington by proxy is false if the two great powers agree not only on the future of Syria, but the whole region. Thierry Meyssan was the first journalist in the world to announce the arrival of the Russian army in Syria in 2015. He is today the first to announce the deployment of its infantry.

Washington has decided to relegate its project for the destruction of states and societies in the Greater Middle East to second place in its preoccupations, and to concentrate its forces on opposing the Chinese project for the Silk Road. This has apparently been implemented by President Donald Trump and the Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull (representing the British), on 24 February at the White House.

This is not just the traditional conflict between the Anglo-Saxon maritime Empire on one side and the land-based Chinese project on the other. It also concerns the potential threat that Chinese industry represents for the whole of the developed world. To put it simply, while in Antiquity, Europeans were eager to obtain Chinese silks, today, all the Western powers fear having to the compete with Chinese cars.

Since Beijing has abandoned the project of re-opening the Silk Road along its historic route through Mosul and Palmyra, the United States have nothing to gain by sponsoring jihadists to create a Caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria.

It was also on 24 February that Russia and the United States presented Resolution 2401 to the Security Council - a text which had been ready since the night before, and in which there had been no changes made, although everyone pretended to continue their bargaining.

Allegedly adopted in response to the French media campaign aimed at saving the population of the Ghouta, this Resolution deals, in reality, with a solution for almost all of Syria.

It puts on hold the question of the withdrawal of Turkish and US troops. Concerning the latter, it is not impossible that they balk at leaving the extreme North-East of the country. Indeed, if China decided to route the Silk Road through Turkey, Washington would fan the flames in order to create a Kurdistan in Kurdish territory (if we accept that South-East Anatolia is no longer Armenian territory since the genocide) and block Beijing’s way.

Moscow has moved new planes to its base in Hmeimim, including two Su-57 stealth aircraft – jewels of technology that the Pentagon imagined would not be operational before 2025.

Above all, Moscow, which until now had limited its engagement in Syria to its air force and a few Special Forces, has now secretly moved in infantry troops.

On the morning of 25 February, the Russian land army moved into East Ghouta alongside the Syrian Arab Army.

It is now impossible for anyone at all to attack Damascus, or attempt to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic, without automatically provoking a Russian military riposte.

Saudi Arabia, France, Jordan and the United Kingdom, who had secretly formed the « Little Group » on 11 January in order to sabotage the peace conference at Sotchi, will be unable to take any further decisive action.

The gesticulations of the British and French Ministers for Foreign Affairs, Boris Johnson and Jean-Yves Le Drian, cannot disguise the new agreement between the White House and the Kremlin, nor the international legality of the Russian military presence and its military action in favour of the civilians who are prisoners of the jihadists.

They can not hope to question this agreement, as their respective countries did in July 2012, taking into account the evolution of the local and international situation.

If necessary, we will pretend not to know that the two armed factions present in East Ghouta (pro-Saudi and pro-Qatari) are run by Al-Qaïda. They will be discreetly exfiltrated. The officers of the British MI6 and the French DGSE (who are operating under cover of the NGO Médecins sans Frontières) will be repatriated.

The war has not yet ended for the whole of the territory, but it is already over for Damascus.

Thierry Meyssan

Read from top. Read also: 

the dark ages...

It is surprising that Meyssan accuses the MSF for being infiltrated by French spies. But it is not surprising...

Whitaker’s latest outburst is directed against the impudence of a handful of British academics, including experts in the study of propaganda, in setting up a panel – the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media – to “provide a source of reliable, informed and timely analysis for journalists, publics and policymakers” on Syria. The researchers include Tim Hayward of Edinburgh University and Piers Robinson of Sheffield University.

So what are Whitaker’s objections to this working group? Let’s run through them, with my interjections.

They dispute almost all mainstream narratives of the Syrian conflict, especially regarding the use of chemical weapons and the role of the White Helmets search-and-rescue organisation. They are critical of western governments, western media and various humanitarian groups but show little interest in applying critical judgment to Russia’s role in the conflict or to the controversial writings of several journalists who happen to share their views.

Western governments and western corporate media have promoted a common narrative on Syria. It has been difficult for outsiders to be sure of what is going on, given that Syria has long been a closed society, a trend only reinforced by the last seven years of a vicious civil-cum-proxy war, and the presence of brutal ISIS and al Qaeda militias.

Long before the current fighting, western governments and Israel expressed a strong interest in overthrowing the government of Bashar Assad. In fact, their desire to be rid of Assad dates to at least the start of the “war on terror” they launched after 9/11, as I documented in my book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations.

Very few corporate journalists have been on the ground in Syria. (Paradoxically, those who have are effectively embedded in areas dominated by al Qaeda-type groups, which western governments are supporting directly and through Gulf intermediaries.) Most of these journalists are relying on information provided by western governments, or from groups with strong, vested interests in Assad’s overthrow.

Should we take this media coverage on trust, as many of us did the lies promoted about Iraq and later Libya by the same western governments and corporate media? Or should we be far more wary this time, especially as those earlier regime-change operations spread more chaos, suffering and weapons across the Middle East, and fuelled a migrant crisis now empowering the far-right across much of Europe?

Whitaker and his ilk are saying we should not. Or more disingenuously, Whitaker is saying that the working group, rather than invest its energies in this supremely important research, should concentrate its limited resources on studying Russian propaganda on Syria. In other words, the researchers should duplicate the sterling efforts of Whitaker’s colleagues in daily attributing to Russian President Vladimir Putin the superpowers of a James Bond villain.

Here’s a counter-proposal: how about we leave well-funded western governments and media corporations to impugn Putin at every turn and on every pretext, while we allow the working group to check whether there is a large (larger?) mote in the west’s eye?

The worrying part, though, especially in the light of their stated intention to seek ‘research funding’, is their claim to be engaging in ‘rigorous academic analysis’ of media reporting on Syria.

Is this really so worrying? Why not allow a handful of academics to seek funds to try to untangle the highly veiled aid – money and arms – that western governments have been pumping into a war tearing apart Syria? Why not encourage the working group to discern more clearly the largely covert ties between western security services and groups like the White Helmets “search-and-rescue service”? One would think supposedly adversarial journalists would be all in favour of efforts to dig up information about western involvement and collusion in Syria.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/02/28/the-authoritarians-who-silence-syria...

 

Read from top, especially:

the war is over for damascus...

...

On 4 March, the Academy Awards ceremony will be held in Los Angeles. My film, Last Men in Aleppo, is one of the nominees for best documentary feature. It was shot during the 2015-2016 siege of Aleppo, when the Assad regime fought to seize control of the city with the help of its ally, Russia. Throughout this time, the citizens of Aleppo were cut off from food and medical supplies and Russian warplanes dropped bombs on a near-constant basis. That’s the factual background, but the film’s true subject is the people of Aleppo, particularly a small group of volunteer rescue workers with the civil defense organization known as the White Helmets. Last Men in Aleppo is a diary of war, seen through the eyes of ordinary men who race to bombing sites to save the living and retrieve the dead. It is also a story about hope and belief in human values.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/28/feras-fayyad-last-men-alepp...

 

 

PLEASE NOTE: ALEPPO HAS BEEN LIBERATED BY THE RUSSIANS AND THE SYRIAN ARMY LIKE THE FRENCH CITIES WERE BY THE NORMANDY LANDING. THE AMERICAN, ENGLISH AND OTHER NATIONALITIES OF THE NORMANDY LANDING WERE FIGHTING GERMANS. IN ALEPPO, THE RUSSIAN AND THE SYRIAN FORCES WERE FIGHTING JIHADIST TERRORISTS —  SOME LOCAL, MOST COMING FROM AROUND THE WORLD IN A MUSLIM SUNNI CRUSADE AGAINST THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT.

"A story about hope and belief in human values?" FUCK! Which human values? those of terrorists or those of defenders of most of the population of Syria under threat from a Sunni/Saudi exclusive religious extremism?... The Academy Awards always reward the Hollywoodians — those people who support the empire and its dark sins. That's the way it works... May you get an award Mr Feras Fayyad, This would confirm the total bullshit of the empire.

The US has established as many as 20 military bases in the part of Kurdistan that lies within Syria, the Russian National Security Council has stated according to Russian media.

The establishment of peace in war-torn Syria is impeded by external – in particular, American – interference in the crisis, Assistant to the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Venediktov told Ria Novosti.

The return of peace and stability to Syria is hampered by continued external interference in the Syrian crisis. For example, in the territory controlled by the people’s self-defense units of Kurdistan, some 20 US military bases have been created,” the official said.

READ MORE: ISIS is almost gone but the fighting continues: Who’s still in Syria?

US interference in the Syria conflict has provoked Turkey into launching a military operation targeting Kurdish militias in the northern Syrian region of Afrin. The provocation took the form of “boosting” the Kurds with advanced weaponry, according to Venediktov.

Kurdish militias control some regions in northern Syria, including Afrin, which has been the subject of the Turkish military cross-border operation since January 20. Ankara believes the targeted Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is deemed a terrorist organization in Turkey.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/420092-syria-kurdistan-military-base/

The information war is perhaps the most fiercely fought in the West to gain influence over the Syria narrative, and recently the US/UK coalition media proxies have been failing miserably. 

Western public consensus on Syria appears to have shifted dramatically since Aleppo’s liberation in December 2016, which drove a stake through the heart of corporate media misdirection and deception on the Syrian ‘crisis.’ As Syrian civilians haltingly told their tales of misery, imprisonment, execution, rape and murder under terrorist occupation, the corporate media headed for the hills, unwilling to confront the suffering they had effectively prolonged for over four long years.

Now we have a repeat spin cycle in Eastern Ghouta and other eastern suburbs of Damascus that have been occupied by Al-Nusra Front and its affiliates since 2013. Parallels to the distorted propaganda produced in relation to East Aleppo are unmistakable. The usual UN inflation of civilian numbers, the cries of “chemical weapon attacks,” the “starvation” of civilians by the Syrian “regime” and of course the “incessant bombing” of hospitals by Syria and Russia, “targeting exclusively civilians,” are as rampant in Western media as they were during the Syrian-led military campaign against many of the same terrorist factions in East Aleppo.

READ MORE: ‘Truth is the 1st casualty of war’: Syria’s East Ghouta battleground distorted by MSM propaganda

Western media “hysteria” has reached unprecedented levels, all manner of analogy is being utilized to convey the message of civilians “driven to their knees” under a “brutal onslaught by Syrian armed forces and allies who are hell-bent on slaughtering the Syrian people” – of course nothing could be further from the truth. As in East Aleppo, there is a high probability that many of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers giving their lives to liberate Eastern Ghouta from the clutches of Al-Nusra Front affiliates have family in those areas. The SAA is the Syrian people, it is an army of conscripts from all walks of Syrian life. It is not some disembodied Assad-loyalist entity, despite what that Western media would have you believe. It is from the people and it is for the people, it is most certainly not deliberately targeting the people who are being used as human shields by the extremist factions.

The reality is that the huge majority of the estimated 6 million Syrian civilians in central Damascus City will be rooting for the SAA, the Syrian government and its allies in their efforts to finally end the siege of Eastern Ghouta and surrounding districts. A siege that has been wholly imposed by the Western-sponsored extremist groups such as Jaysh al-Islam, Al-Nusra Front, Failaq al-Rahman and Ahrar al-Sham. Those same terrorist factions have murdered 867 Damascene civilians and injured 1,356 more since 2016, according to Fares Shehabi, head of Aleppo’s Chamber of Commerce. The daily mortar fire from the terrorist factions into densely populated residential areas of Damascus Old City is random and deadly, but it is rarely mentioned by the Western media in their efforts to obfuscate the crimes of NATO-member-state-sanctioned terrorists.

The din of propaganda drowns out all voices of reason and logic that dictate an entirely different narrative to the one being universally presented to us by colonial media in the West. There is one voice that rises above all others in the US coalition neocolonialist circles – that of the US/UK/EU, Qatar-financed-and-equipped propaganda construct, the White Helmets.

In the last few weeks, we have seen a blizzard of White Helmet images and pseudo humanitarian testimonies all engineered to elicit sympathy and to ensure UN Security Council protection of the “rebel” factions. These reports are devoid of any context or rational evidence, but as usual they are picked up and run with by the copy-paste media in their eagerness to fulfil the geostrategic dreams of the US coalition hegemons.

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a long-term advocate of the “Britain must do something” foreign policy in Syria, has recently met with representatives of the ‘Syria Civil Defence,’ a moniker stolen by the White Helmets from the REAL Syria Civil Defence, established in Syria in 1953 and deliberately “disappeared” from the Western narrative. Rarely have we seen such an above-ground connection between the UK Foreign Office and its intelligence assets in situ during one of its faux “humanitarian war” campaigns.

Then we were presented with a truly breathtaking performance by Heather Nauert of the US State Department on February 22, just two days after Johnson had met with White Helmet reps in the UK. As Nauert informs us, she broke with State Department protocol to “shine a spotlight” not only on the “humanitarian crisis” in Eastern Ghouta but on the Oscar-nominated White Helmet promotional movie, ‘Last Men in Aleppo’ (LMIA).

This was a performance reminiscent of CNN anchor Kate Bolduan’s tearful rendition of the Omran Daqneesh story in August 2016 that brought the media-packaged “face of Aleppo’s suffering” to TV screens around the world. Subsequently, the CNN ‘Omran’ story was proven to be largely “fake news” in 2017.

Nauert also gives the impression of fighting back emotion as she makes her theatrical appeal to the bemused media audience. She begs the “passionate media megaphones” to direct their attention to the “selfish – I mean selfless” White Helmets and their “saving of those buried under rubble” in Syria. Nauert refers to ‘Last Men in Aleppo’ as if it were the unadulterated truth of life in Aleppo under Nusra Front-led occupation, while in reality LMIA never refers to the brutal Al-Nusra Front-led occupation of East Aleppo.

We could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps she is beseeching the media to lobby for LMIA to be awarded the Oscar in 2018, the Netflix White Helmet ‘documentary’ already won it in 2017. Perhaps that might protect the suspected White Helmet global franchise and ensure its success in future interventionist projects?

The UK and US administrations are ramming their primary propaganda asset in Syria down the throats of the compromised media because they are losing the information war on all fronts. For some time, the “spotlight” has been shining upon US coalition sponsorship of terrorism in Syria, with an emphasis on Eastern Ghouta right now. Nauert tells us that people have been asking “what is the US doing” to end the crisis in Syria, Nauert’s response is to divert attention to the White Helmets and their skewed, Al-Nusra Front-free version of events in Aleppo, Ghouta and Idlib. Unfortunately for Nauert, Johnson and their captive media, the public spotlight is on them and it’s unlikely to be shifting its glare in another direction any time soon.

What should the US (and its UK/EU accomplices) do to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria? It should stop arming, financing and promoting its terrorist proxies and their White Helmet auxiliaries. It should lift economic sanctions and it should get out of Syria, ending its illegal occupation of Syrian territory.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/420211-white-helmets-aleppo-ghouta/

 

As another article says: "imagine 10,000 armed terrorists holding (Surry Hills), killing the residents trying to leave and bombing the (Eastern Suburbs)"...

A new “left” appeal for imperialist intervention in Syria

By Bill Van Auken 

2 March 2018

On February 27, the New York Review of Books published an open letter signed by some 200 people, many of them identifying themselves as activists, academics, writers and journalists. Originally titled “Stop pretending that you can’t do anything to save Syrians,” the headline was subsequently changed to “The World Must Act Now on Syria.”

The letter was published with no introduction. Who wrote the text of the letter, who changed its title, how the signatures were gathered and indeed all other information about the document is left in the dark.

Its purpose, however, is crystal clear. Issued in the midst of a massive war propaganda campaign in the Western media over the Russian and Syrian government assault on the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, one of the last strongholds of the Islamist militias backed by Washington and its regional allies, the letter constitutes an open appeal to the US and the other imperialist powers to launch a full-scale military intervention.

Like the media propaganda campaign of which it is an integral part, the “open letter” constitutes a thoroughly one-sided, false and deeply hypocritical portrayal of the Syrian developments.

It protests solely “the crimes that the Assad regime has committed against Syrians, aided by local and foreign militias, by Iranian strategic and financial aid, by Russian airpower and mercenaries.”

Noticeably absent from its concerns are the crimes carried out by US and the other imperialist powers in Syria, not to mention the broader region. The authors of the open letter and its signatories were not motivated to make any such appeal as US airstrikes and artillery bombardments razed the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria to the ground, burying tens of thousands of their inhabitants in the rubble.

Just days after the issuance of the letter, it was reported that the Pentagon had deployed another 600 special forces troops, backed by armor, to the strategically vital area of El Tanf on the Iraqi border. Far from protesting such an intervention, those who drafted the open letter want more—much more—of the same.

Chiding the imperialist governments, the letter declares: “Those with the power to act have been generous with expressions of sympathy but have offered nothing beyond the wish that this war on civilians—which they grotesquely call a ‘civil war’—would end. They call on ‘all parties’ to show restraint, even though one side alone has a virtual monopoly on violence.”

The imperialists have “offered nothing”? The Assad government maintains a “monopoly on violence”? Who do they think they are kidding? The CIA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the other reactionary Sunni oil sheikdoms poured tens of thousands of tons of arms and ammunition and billions of dollars into Syria to arm Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias that carried out a reign of terror across Syria. Tens of thousands of foreign fighters were funneled into the country and paid to serve as proxy ground forces in the US-orchestrated war for regime change aimed at toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Somewhere between 130,000 and 170,000 government troops and militia members supporting the Assad regime have been killed fighting these CIA-backed forces.

The letter writes off the United Nations as “ineffectual,” adding, “While there are no longer any illusions about the role of the Security Council, every member state has nevertheless adopted and pledged to uphold the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine...”

“For the agony of the people of Syria to come to an end, it must be forcibly stopped,” the document continues, adding that there “are myriad geopolitical reasons why this is an imperative, but none as immediate and important as the sanctity of life and the exercise of free will.”

The message is clear: world imperialism must take action! Military intervention is required. The “myriad geopolitical reasons” for such action go unstated, but are nonetheless clear to anyone familiar with the complex struggle in Syria. US imperialism sees both Russia’s and Iran’s influence in the country as an obstacle to its own bloody and protracted struggle for hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East, a struggle that has left literally millions of victims in its wake. With their talk about the “sanctity of life,” the authors of the letter not only mock these victims, but offer their services in providing window dressing for Washington’s bloody operations.

The signatories to this reactionary document represent a disparate and dubious group that includes no small number of direct imperialist agents, emigre “assets” of one or another Western intelligence agency and, no doubt, some roped in on false pretenses and by means of a hollow appeal to “human rights” sentiments.

Among those signing the document are individuals who have a long and direct experience in imperialism’s operations in the region. One such person is Burhan Ghalioun, the former head of the Syrian National Council, who served as a conduit for the money and arms poured into the Syrian Islamist militias by the CIA and the reactionary Sunni monarchies.

There are others, such as Moncef Marzouki, the former Tunisian president who played a key role in strangling the revolutionary uprising of the working class in that country and aligning Tunisia with the reactionary wars that Washington and its European allies have waged in Libya and Syria.

Also putting his name on the list was Saad Bin Tefla, a former Kuwaiti government minister and media tycoon.

Joining such figures—and no doubt playing the key role in fashioning the letter’s phony human rights rhetoric, which echoes the propaganda used to justify every major imperialist intervention from the Balkans to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond—is a collection of of self-described “socialists” and “leftists”.

These include Gilbert Achcar, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and the principal spokesman on the Middle East for the Pabloite United Secretariat and its website International Viewpoint. Having backed the imperialist interventions in both Libya and Syria, Achcar has gone beyond mere propagandizing for war, meeting with Syrian National Council (SNC) officials, a collection of US and French intelligence assets, to advise them on the best strategy to bring about direct imperialist intervention.

Also among the signatories is Eric Ruder, a prominent member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the US and writer for its publication Socialist Worker. Like Achcar and International Viewpoint, the ISO has supported the imperialist intervention in Syria from its outset, providing reporting and analysis that are, in all essentials, indistinguishable from State Department propaganda.

Dan La Botz, co-editor of New Politics and a leading member of Solidarity who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America, also signed the letter. Like the ISO, New Politics has its roots in the political tendency founded by Max Shachtman, who broke with the Trotskyist movement in 1940 and later became a champion of US imperialist intervention in Korea and Vietnam.

Also signing the letter is Michael Karadjis, a member of the Australian pseudo-left organization, Socialist Alliance, with a long and filthy record of promoting imperialist interventions around the world in the name of “human rights,” from Kosovo to Timor, Libya and Syria. On Syria, he has authored pieces justifying a Syrian “rebel” commander eating the organs from the body of a slain soldier as only “minor cannibalism” and praising both the 2015 Turkish shoot-down of a Russian warplane and the Trump administration’s firing of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase last April.

None of these pseudo-left signatories, who invoke the brutality of the government of Bashar al-Assad to promote imperialist intervention in Syria, have anything to do with genuine socialism or Marxism. Assad’s regime, like those throughout the oppressed former colonial countries of the Middle East, is ultimately an expression of the incapacity of the national bourgeoisie to carry through either a genuine struggle against imperialism or a restructuring of the old colonial forms of rule along democratic lines.

As Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution established, that task can be accomplished only by the working class through the revolutionary overthrow of these regimes as part of the global struggle for socialism. It cannot—as these pseudo-lefts would have it—be contracted out to imperialism and its Islamist proxies.

Achcar gives their game away in a recent interview with International Viewpoint. Pointing to the Pentagon’s use of the Syrian Kurdish militia as its principal proxy ground force, he dismisses “anti-imperialism”—which he placed in quotes—as a perspective that “does not fit the situation” in Syria, where “the United States supports ... a progressive force in its fight against a reactionary enemy.”

All of these pseudo-left elements are aligning their politics directly with those of US imperialism and in particular with those sections of the US military and intelligence apparatus that are demanding a more aggressive confrontation with Russia. Not only are they functioning as direct accessories to the crimes committed against the masses of Syria, but they are helping to pave the way to world war.

 

Read more:

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/02/letr-m02.html

Multiple civilians were killed and dozens more injured in a coalition strike targeting the village of al-Sirajieh in southern Al-Hasakah governate, the Syrian Arab News Agency reports, citing civilian sources. Coalition warplanes reportedly fired several missiles into the village, hitting residents' homes.

The alleged airstrike was a follow-up to an attack March 1 which killed three civilians, including a child, and injured at least five more, in an attack on the village of al-Safawi.

The US-led coalition has escalated its activity in Syria's eastern region over the past two weeks or so, killing at least 69 civilians and injuring dozens more in the area of Dhahret al-Allouni, as well as al-Sh'afeh and al-Bahra in the Deir ez-Zor countryside.

 

Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense marked its concern over the fate of civilians in territories held by US-led coalition forces or their armed opposition allies, stressing that the civilians in Raqqa and the Rukban refugee camp in At-Tanf region in particular were experiencing a "humanitarian catastrophe." The Russian military also reported that jihadist militants were moving freely near the US base in al-Tanf, seemingly contradicting the US's stated aim of fighting terrorism in Syria.

The US-led coalition has been conducting a campaign of airstrikes against what it has said are Daesh (ISIS) targets in Syria since September 2014, but has no mandate to do so from the UN, or from the internationally recognized government in Damascus. Last month, the coalition confirmed that airstrikes in Syria and Iraq had accidentally killed several hundred civilians.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201803031062182506-syrian-civilians-k...

 

Will there be an outrage from the Western media? Probably not... It's our guys doing the killing of civilians... So there...

 

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If Xi Jinping is the world’s most powerful man, conventional wisdom puts Vladimir Putin a close second. He’s made his own bare-chested virility synonymous with a resurgent Russia. Mr. Putin seems to be playing on every chessboard, from what Russia calls its “near abroad” to the Middle East, from Europe to America.

When it comes to sowing doubt about democracy and fueling dissension among Americans, Mr. Putin is eating our lunch. And Russia retains the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, with new weapons in the works that Mr. Putin saw fit to brag about during last week’s state of the nation speech — even if his rhetoric far outpaced their technical reality.

But elsewhere, Russia’s adventurism is feeding a growing, gnawing case of indigestion. And it masks a deep-set rot in Russia itself. Mr. Putin is a masterful painter of facades. But his Russian village looks increasingly less Putin and increasingly more Potemkin.

Let’s start with Syria. It’s true that Moscow’s in extremis intervention prevented the collapse of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and preserved Russia’s sole foothold in the Middle East. But having put his finger in the dyke, Mr. Putin can’t remove it or Mr. Assad will drown. So Russia is stuck in the middle of multiple conflicts it cannot control — between the Assad regime and the rebels; between Turkey and the Kurds; between American-led coalition forces and the Islamic State; between Israel, Syria and Iran; between Sunni and Shiite. This Rubik’s cube of conflicting interests makes partners on one front adversaries on another.

 

Far from abating, Syria’s civil war is raging — slowly but surely becoming more lethal to Russia’s forces, more damaging to its reputation, and more of a drain on its resources. Moscow is fully complicit in Mr. Assad’s murderous campaign against the primarily Sunni opposition, which has now reached new levels of depravity with the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Ghouta, a suburban area outside Damascus. Moscow’s alliance with Mr. Assad and Iran in slaughtering Sunnis risks alienating Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Turkey. It also will inflame Russia’s own Sunni Muslim population and their brethren in Central Asia and the Caucasus, lighting the fuse for more terrorism directed at Moscow.

Mr. Putin insists that any Russians now fighting on the ground in Syria are guns for hire. But American intelligence believes that the man who controls them is Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a prominent oligarch close to Mr. Putin who takes his orders from the Kremlin and is one of the 13 oligarchs recently indicted in the United States’ special prosecutor’s investigation of Russian meddling the 2016 election. Irregular or not, the Russian fighters in Syria increasingly find themselves in crossfires of their own making, including an ill-advised attack on American-backed anti-Islamic State forces in eastern Syria. When American air power came to their defense, as many as 200 Russians may have been killed. Mr. Putin swept the debacle under the rug to avoid acknowledging the deaths at home — having repeatedly declared mission accomplished — or risking direct conflict with the United States.

Syria may not be Russia’s new Afghan quagmire yet, but its quicksand is sucking Russia in deeper and deeper.

Read more: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/opinion/vladimir-putin-syria.html

 

Gus: and the USA (and their lackeys) will support the terrorists...  as much as possible... And talking of Afghan quagmire... the US (and their lackeys), 17 year later are still pushing poppies...

 

 

The Western media affirm that Syria and Russia are crushing brave democrats in eastern Ghouta.

According to the British and French governments, they would be three armed groups: the Army of Islam, the Rahman Legion and Ahrar al-Sham.

On the contrary, according to Syria and Russia, these three denominations would not designate separate ideologies. These three entities would in fact defend not an idea of ​​Syria, but the interests of their sponsors. They would have regrouped in favor of Resolution 2401 and the attack they are now undergoing.

Many figures are circulating about the number of soldiers in each of these groups and about the number of inhabitants of Eastern Ghouta. In reality, none of this data is verifiable to the point that the UN has given up quantification. If the civilians present in eastern Goutha are indeed Syrians, we do not know the nationality of the combatants. Admittedly, a number of them are Syrians, often convicts, but many others are foreigners (who by definition can not be "rebels"). Again, the estimates are unverifiable.

There are only two things that we know for sure about these groups:

First, the weapons available to one of them, the Army of Islam, in 2015. This is obviously a bit old, but it is verifiable thanks to the video of a military parade organized by its leader, in Ghouta, in 2015. This group has 4 tanks and nearly 2,000 men, that is to say, 10 times less combatants than he claims to have.

Then and finally, we know these groups through their communication: logos, flags, websites, Twitter accounts, spokespersons.

Jeïch el-Islam, that is, the Army of Islam, is the only one of these groups to have a local presence. It was created in September 2013 by the family Allouche, from another group, the Brigade of Islam, in the mode of a gang imposing its law on merchants of the Ghouta, not hesitating to publicly execute those who challenged their power.

The group was initially commanded by Zahran Allouche, son of the preacher Abdallah Allouche, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood refugee in Saudi Arabia. From 2009 to 2011, he was imprisoned for belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. He was released in a general amnesty decreed by President al-Assad at the request of third countries. For several years, Zahran Allouche terrorized the inhabitants of Damascus declaring that he was going to "clean" the city. He announced each Friday [1] the attacks he was going to commit against the capital. In 2013, he abducted Alawite families [2] in Aadra. He used some as human shields and walked a hundred in cages, before executing the men so that we’d know what fate he reserved for "infidels". After his death, a businessman, Sheikh Isaam Buwaydani called "Abu Hamam", succeeded him.

His cousin Mohammed Allouche, made famous by his repression of manners. He created the Unified Judicial Council, which imposed the Saudi version of Sharia law on all Ghouta residents. He notably organized executions of homosexuals, thrown from the roof of buildings. He represents the group at the UN negotiations in Geneva.

The Allouche family is now comfortably settled in London.

At the time of its creation, the Army of Islam brought together about fifty small groups. In a widely circulated statement in Asia, it introduced itself as the defender of Muslims and called on Muslims around the world to join them and to make jihad in Syria.

In July 2017, the Army of Islam, following an Egyptian-Saudi mediation, agreed to recognize Eastern Ghouta as a "de-escalation zone" under Russian control.

His Twitter account in English: https://twitter.com/islamarmy_eng3 
His YouTube channel has just been closed.

Faylaq al-Rahman, ie "The Legion of the All-Merciful", is a mercenary group of Qatar from which it receives a modern weaponry, especially RPG. It is massively composed of foreigners.

Its Twitter account broadcasts many videos extolling the terrorist profession: https://twitter.com/alrahmancorps

Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, abbreviated as Ahrar al-Sham, translates as the Islamic Movement of the Free Men of the Levant. "Free men" do not refer here to "freedom" in the Western sense. They did not liberate themselves from a dictatorship, but were released from their human condition by practicing Salafist Islam. So that there is no doubt about the interpretation of the word, a minaret appears on the group logo.

This group, very internationalized, was created by Egyptians during the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak by the United States [3]. Syrian Muslim Brothers, who were imprisoned for belonging to a terrorist organization, joined him after being pardoned in 2011 at the request of third countries. Among them, several former collaborators of Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan then in Yugoslavia. This explains their proximity to the Taliban, whom they often cite as an example of faith.

In all its publications, it defines itself as a "complete Islamic movement, fighting for Allah and defending religion".

The group is commanded by Hassan Soufan, known as "Abu al-Bara", who was imprisoned for a decade for his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Foreign Minister of this group, Labib al-Nahhas, travels to the West. He is a British, MI6 officer. In July 2015, he published free forums in the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph.

The group is supported by Qatar and Turkey. It is considered a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

The group’s website is: ahraralsham.net 
His Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ahrar_alsham_en 
His YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCAgcKXwipFldow9ipQH2oA/videos

Commonalities of these three groups

These three groups have no ideological difference. All claim to be the thought of the Muslim Brotherhood [4]. According to them, daily life is divided between what is lawful from the point of view of their Islam and what is not.

There are, however, differences between the three groups about how they can treat people who do not share their point of view. Be that as it may, no one lives under their rule without being a Sunni.

Like all the fighters of the "Islamic revolution", their men often change their group and these groups fight each other and join together frequently. It is absurd to draw substantive conclusions. At most, we can see territorial quarrels between their leaders and opportunities for their soldiers.

All of these groups and countless others have well-designed flags and logos as well as quality videos. All of this communication material is manufactured by the United Kingdom. In 2007, it had a war propaganda unit, the Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) headed by MI6 (Secret Service) officer Jonathan Allen. Starting from the chemical weapons case in the summer of 2013, the RICU financed an external company to assist the communication of combatants in Syria (and subsequently those of Yemen). It was initially Regester Larkin, then Innovative Communications & Strategies (InCoStrat). Both companies are headed by an MI6 officer, Colonel Paul Tilley.

Jonathan Allen, whose rank we do not know, has become number two in the UK permanent representation at the United Nations. He is currently leading the Security Council against Russia and Syria.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 
Marie-Hélène Penhard

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article200163.html

 

 

 

 

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Washington and Paris are seemingly seeking ways to mend fences with Turkey after Ankara's trust in the US has largely been undermined, Turkish analysts suggested while speaking to Sputnik. The US and France want to boost their positions in Syria, however, it is unlikely that they will succeed in the near future, they added.

It is highly unlikely that US President Donald Trump will withdraw from Syria any time soon, while French President Emmanuel Macron's pledges to mediate between Ankara and the Kurdish militias on the ground is nothing but wishful thinking, Turkish analysts told Sputnik.

"Just 15 days ago Trump said that Obama's withdrawal from Iraq was a mistake and that he would not take such a step in Syria," Baris Doster, political scientist at Marmara University, told Sputnik Turkey. "Moreover, by now the US has invested heavily in [Kurdish] self-defense units and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) which they regard as their ground force. To date [the US] has supplied Kurdish formations with 5,000 trucks of weapons, while planning to create a regular 50,000-strong army out of the members of these formations."

According to Doster, there are at least 20 American bases in the territory of Syria. The Turkish political scientist suggested that having made such huge investments, the Americans are unlikely to leave the country.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201804021063146860-trump-macron-syria/

 

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The Turkish Press Agency, Anadolu Agency, has published a map of five secret military bases in Syria belonging to France (see above part of this map pinpointing with the French flag four of these bases). One of these bases is the cement factory of the transnational group, Lafarge-Holcim, which is currently under a French judicial inquiry for financing terrorist groups.

The Agency specifically states that the first RPIMa (the Parachutist Regiment of the Navy’s Infantry) is deployed on Syrian soil. Furthermore, an additional 30 French soldiers are already in Raqqa and 70 at other sites in Syria.

Under international law, France’s military presence in Syria is illegal.

This publication of this information by the Turkish Agency constitutes a warning to France which has recently announced its support for terrorists belonging to the YPG, a Kurdish organization that is pro-US.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article200488.html

Jaysh al-Islam militants holed-up in the Syrian city of Douma have agreed to withdraw, after talks with the Syrian and Russian militaries. A mass evacuation is being prepared and a humanitarian corridor has been set up.

“The Russian Reconciliation Center has held talks with the leaders of Jaysh al-Islam [militant group], during which agreements were reached on a ceasefire and a disarmament of this group, and the resumption of the withdrawal of militants from the town of Douma,” the Russian military said in a statement.

100 buses have arrived in Douma in order to relocate 8,000 Jaysh al-Islam militants and around 40,000 of their family members, the Reconciliation Center said. The Muhayam al-Wafideen checkpoint in Douma has been reopened to organize the withdrawal, it said, adding that hostilities in the area have now ceased.

“This proves once again that no chemical weapons were used in this area and that all the Western accusations against the [Syrian] government troops are nothing more than another fake,” the statement reads.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/423520-jaysh-islam-withdrawal-talks-douma/

 

Read from top. Watch for the USA to find ways to muck up this ceasefire...

BEIRUT — France is urging Russia to join a push for a political solution in Syria after joint U.S., French and British attacks on Syrian chemical weapons sites.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in an interview published Sunday in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper that “we should join our efforts to promote a political process in Syria that would allow a way out of the crisis.”

France has continued to talk regularly with Russia even as East-West tensions have grown. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, hours before the Western missile strikes.

Western countries blamed Syria’s government for a chemical attack on a rebel-held area earlier this month that killed more than 40 people. The Syrian government and its ally Russia denied the allegations.

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/04/15/france-urges-russia-to-join-push-for-peace...

 

The French should know — as I do and most intelligent people know —that there is presently a political solution being worked out for Syria, but it does not involved the bombing nutcases of France, the UK and the USA. It is negotiated by Russia, Iran, Syria and Turkey.  Read comments above. 

The little napoleon (lower case n) wants to be recognised for being a little napoleon, like Sarkozy was when he helped bomb the shit out of Libya. 

 

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Contrary to Donald Trump’s promise to withdraw, the Americans “are actively settling down” on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in Syria and have no plans to leave, the Russian Foreign Minister has said.

Speaking in Beijing on Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov said “a number of countries have explicitly chosen to disintegrate Syria.” According to Russia’s top diplomat, the US, in particular, pledged that their only aim was to “drive terrorists out of Syria and defeat the so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).” 

Despite this promise and contrary to President Donald Trump’s statements, “the US are actively settling down on the eastern bank of Euphrates River and have no plans to leave,” said Lavrov. The Americans are setting up local authorities in the areas they control, he added.

“By the way, it is the French president [Emmanuel Macron] who encourages them [to stay],” the Foreign Minister said. “He recently said the US should not withdraw from Afghanistan [and added that] the American coalition has to remain in Syria until they create the order there that favors the Western countries,” he stated.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/424934-us-stay-syria-lavrov/

The militants that attempted to assault the city of Palmyra claimed that they belong to the "Lions of the East" group that is stationed near a US military base, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.

The militant group "Lions of the East" was set to carry out terrorist attacks in the country, capturing Syria within one week, the Russian Reconciliation Center stated.

"The militants’ objective was to conduct a series of terrorist attacks in the vicinity of the city of Palmyra and to ensure the passage of the main forces of about 300 militants to capture the city within the next week," the center’s report said.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the militants, captured by Syrian government forces, claimed that they had been trained and armed by American instructors in a camp near the US military base in al-Tanf.

 

The information follows reports of clashes between Syrian troops and terrorists southeast of the city of Palmyra.

"Today, at 5:00 a.m. local time [02:00 GMT], 36 kilometers [22 miles] southeast of the city of Palmyra, clashes between Syrian government troops and a group of militants, who attempted to approach the city of Palmyra from the settlement of at-Tanf, took place… As a result of the clashes, two terrorists were killed, two more were detained and are being questioned," the Russian Ministry of Defense informed.

The Russian Ministry of Defense also stressed that during the whole time of existence of the US military base in al-Tanf there were no reports about any US operations in the area against terrorists.

"Refugees remaining in the [nearby] Rukban refugee camp are today in fact hostages, 'human shields' for the militants," the statement added.

The US-led coalition is conducting military operations against the Daesh* terror group in Syria and Iraq; however, the coalition's activity in Syria is not authorized by the government of President Bashar Assad or the UN Security Council.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201809011067667433-syria-government-f...

 

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On Friday, August 31st, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Russia has handed to the OPCW (Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons), and to the U.N., “proof” that the U.S. Government has been working with Al Qaeda to set up a chemical incident in Syria. The U.S. and its allies will then use that incident as a supposed justification for invading Syria as a ‘humanitarian’ response to a chemical attack allegedly by Syria’s Government, but actually done by U.S.-backed forces. The goal is to re-ignite the 7-year-old ‘civil war’ between Syria’s Government and U.S.-backed ‘rebels’, who consist almost exclusively of fundamentalist-Sunni jihadists that are trained and led by Al Qaeda in Syria, with U.S. help and Saudi financing.

On August 29th Global Research headlined “Video: US Creates Strike Force to Attack Syria”, and posted an August 28th report from South Front saying:

Reports are appearing that the Syrian Air Defense Forces (SADF) have already started preparing to repel an expected US-led missile strike by deploying additional specialists and air defense systems near the crucial objects of the infrastructure, which they expect may be targeted.

On August 22, US National Security Advisor John Bolton claimed that “if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons, we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”

This was only one of a series of threats to the Syrian government issued by the US, the UK and France. While all these threats are clearly exploiting the chemical weapons narrative, their main goal is to prevent the defeat of the terrorists in Idlib by delaying the Syrian Army operation.

On August 25, a source close to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) told the Kurdish news outlet Bas News that the US-led coalition began deploying radar stations at its bases in the governorates of al-Hasakah and Aleppo as part of a new plan to increase its control of Syrian airspace. The report  pointed out the airbases in Kobani and Rmelan as places where the radars were installed.

Also on August 28th, the U.S.-backed Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was informed by reliable sources that negotiations are underway between the Turkish intelligence services and between Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham [Syria’s Al Qaeda branch, formerly called “Al Nusra”], The Islamic Turkestani Party, and other jihadi groups, with the aim of reaching agreement and consensus for these factions to resolve themselves, where these endeavors coincide with accelerated preparations by the regime forces and their loyal fighters for the start of the grand battle of Idlib [the place to which the surrendered jihadists in Syria have been sent], through which the regime forces seek to control the province and other areas in its surroundings of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces, and the continuation of negotiation comes after the conflicted information about reaching consensus on this issue, where Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham and the rest of the groups continue to experience confusion among their leaders and members, as a section of which has agreed to the demands of the Turkish authorities to resolve themselves, while the larger section rejects this process and refuses to approve any of the Turkish terms within the Negotiations. …

[In the] Idlib battle, … Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham controls the largest part of Idlib province, and shares it with other 3 parties: the rebel and Islamic factions, the Islami Turkestani Party, and the regime forces and militiamen loyal to them.

The military operation to be conducted in Idlib province, … the regime forces and their allies have been significantly preparing over the past weeks, by bringing in thousands of members of their forces and loyal gunmen as well as hundreds of faction fighters who have recently joined the “reconciliation”, and hundreds of vehicles, armored vehicles, ammunition, and machinery….

Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham … is one of the renewed names of al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda Organization in the Levant)…

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored the regime forces bringing more vehicles, members, materiel and ammunition, to these lines, and in conjunction with these mobilizations by the regime forces, the SOHR monitored on the 21st of August 2018 the leader of Al-Nusra Front (Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham) Abu Mohammad al-Julani, taking a military tour in the northern mountains of Lattakia, where al-Julani reviewed with a number of the commanders of the first and second rank in Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham, the members of Tahrir Al-Sham and the front lines.

Like other reports by U.S.-allied organizations, Syria’s Government is called “the regime” instead of “the Government,” and the jihadists (except for ISIS) are accepted as being the U.S. alliance’s boots-on-the-ground in Syria to ‘liberate’ the Syrian people from Syria’s Government.

So, the U.S. Government can hardly call this allegation of U.S. working in conjunction with Al Qaeda, ‘Russian propaganda’. However, on that very same day, August 28th, RT bannered “US army accuses RT of ‘ridiculous misinformation’ over Syria, but not UN or NBC”, and reported:

A US Army colonel has accused RT of ‘ridiculous misinformation’ for reporting a Russian government suggestion that Islamic State is operating inside a US-controlled zone in Syria, despite the UN and NBC reporting the same.”

On August 25th, RT had headlined “Terrorists readying chemical attack to frame Damascus & provide pretext for US strikes – Russian MoD”, and reported:

The US and its allies are preparing new airstrikes on Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that militants are poised to stage a chemical weapons attack in order to frame Damascus and provide a pretext for the strikes.

The attack would be used as a pretext for US, UK and French airstrikes on Syrian targets, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov said. USS ‘The Sullivans,’ an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was already deployed to the Persian Gulf a couple of days ago, he added.

The destroyer has 56 cruise missiles on board, according to data from the Russian Defence Ministry. A US Rockwell B-1 Lancer, a supersonic bomber equipped with 24 cruise missiles, has also been deployed at the Qatari Al Udeid Airbase.

On August 24th, RT had headlined “ISIS & Al-Nusra terrorists are hiding in Syrian refugee camp within US-controlled zone – Moscow”, and reported that:

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and the Al-Qaeda proxy group Jabhat al-Nusra found quiet shelter in one of the biggest camps, Rukban, near the Syria-Jordan border. … The same refugee camp was listed in a recent UN Security Council’s Sanctions Monitoring Team report as one of the sources of IS reemergence. The same document reported that ISIS had been defeated in most of the Syrian Arab Republic during 2017, but ‘rallied in early 2018’ due to ‘loss of momentum’ by forces fighting in the east of Syria, where the US base is located.”

The Wikipedia article on “Rukban” opens by saying that its population is 75,000, and that:

Rukban … is an arid remote area near the extreme northeast of Jordan, close to the joint borders with Syria and Iraq. The area contains a refugee camp lying along the demilitarized berm between Jordan and Syria, a no man’s land.” 

That would be an ideal place for the U.S. and its allies to be assembling the materials for what will be alleged to be a chemical weapons attack ‘by the Assad regime’. Rukban is located in Jordan, a U.S. ally, and adjoining Syria, of which the U.S. has been an enemy ever since first failing in 1949 to turn Syria into a land controlled by the Saud family, as Obama and now Trump are again trying to do.

I had reported, on August 25th, the history of this sort of operation by the U.S. Government, going back to 1949, and mentioning recent faked ‘chemical attacks’ set up by the U.S. Government working in conjuction with Al Qaeda in Syria. So: with that lengthy history as background, there exists very sound reason for Syria and its allies to be expecting now yet another invasion of Syiria by U.S.-and-allied missiles, to be ‘justified’ on the basis of lies.

The latest of America’s missile-invasions of Syria occurred back on 14 April 2018, allegedly in response to a Syrian Government ‘chemical weapons attack’ in the city of Douma, which had allegedly occurred on April 7th. Russia tried to get the U.N. Security Council to announce that no invasion of Syria should occur until after the OPCW would enter Douma and collect samples and testimony to determine whether any such attack had actually occurred; and, if so, who had done it. The U.S. blocked that proposal, and invaded on the 14th. Despite that, the OPCW rushed in, to examine Douma, even after the invasion. On April 18th, America’s jihadist allies in Douma shot at OPCW inspectors, who courageously continued their work, despite the U.S. Government’s repeated efforts to stop it. The OPCW’s findings have been kept secret, so that the public still doesn’t know what the evidence about that April 7th matter actually showed.

Also on April 18th, Turkey’s newspaper Yeni Safak headlined “US to build Arab force in NE Syria as part of new ploy: The US is seeking to amass an Arab force in northeastern Syria comprised of funding and troops from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.”

That effort by Trump failed; so, the only path forward for him on Syria now is a U.S. invasion, but this one will have to be much larger than the last one, which was done on April 14th, and in which UK and France also supplied a few of the 100+ missiles. Perhaps, if the U.S. does that, Russia will this time target and maybe destroy some U.S. planes and warships. Then, the question would be whether to go to all-out nuclear war, over the Syrian matter and, of course, over America’s other excuses for its aggressions against Russia and its allies, such as America’s 2014 conquest of Ukraine and turning that country over to nazis.

Perhaps these are the reasons why Russia is announcing clearly, ahead of time, that it won’t simply acquiesce if the U.S. tries this faked accusation against Syria, yet again. Perhaps things won’t be so easy, if there is a “next time” on this particular matter.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

 

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Repeated blasts were heard from the direction of Syria's Mazzeh Military airbase Near Damascus on Sunday, Reuters reported.

According to the source in Syrina Intelligence services, the unannounced airstrike hit an ammunition storage facility at a Mazzeh military airbase, however, the military airfield was not affected.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201809021067677438-syria-damascus-air...

 

Douma “Chemical Attack”: Still Waiting for an Apology

 

James O’Neill

 

On 7th of April 2018 an alleged chemical attack took place in the city of Douma in the Syrian Arab Republic. Dramatic footage of the “victims” was widely broadcast throughout the western mainstream media. Particularly prominent were images of children foaming at the mouth and being hosed down.

The footage for these dramatic depictions was almost entirely sourced from a group known as the White Helmets. They are invariably depicted in the western media as a form of civil defence organisation. They are in fact an arm of Britain’s MI6, trained by the British and financed by the UK and the United States.

The alleged “chemical attack” was used by the US, UK and French governments to make a missile attack upon Syrian targets. The approximately 100 missiles fired destroyed buildings and caused civilian casualties. Many of the missiles failed to reach their target, being either deflected or shot down by Syrian air defences.

Speaking to a press conference on the Sunday following the attacks, the then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made a series of unqualified assertions. He gave his government’s “strong support” for the military action, and urged Russia to exercise its authority to ensure that the chemical weapons were destroyed.

He further called on Russia to use its influence to ensure the “most recent chemical weapons attack is thoroughly investigated.” He blamed the Assad government for the incident and described the military action by the US, UK and France, “targeted, proportionate and responsible.”

He even attempted to link the Douma incident with the Skripal events in Salisbury, England, using both as a stick with which to beat the Russians over the head. Both the timing of and the linking of the two incidents were not a coincidence. They were clearly part of a campaign to discredit Russia, whose intervention in the Syrian war proved a decisive turning point, to the chagrin of the “regime changers”in Washington and London.

As is now almost invariably the case there is a marked distinction between the political rhetoric and the actual situation, both in terms of the relevant international law, and the facts on the ground. That has become glaringly obvious in the Skripal case, as has been well documented elsewhere, by for example, www.theblogmire.com 3 March 2019.

Dealing briefly with the legal situation in the Syrian bombing, there is no such thing as a “targeted, proportionate and responsible” bombing of a sovereign state unless two pre-conditions are met. It must either be in self-defence, if the countries taking the action have themselves been attacked, and that was manifestly not the case; and secondly, in the alternative, it must be an action authorised by the United Nations Security Council. That didn’t happen either.

As in so many of Australia’s military forays around the world, the legal basis for the Syria involvement is notably absent, although in this particular case their role was limited to being cheerleaders on the sidelines. Australia’s participation in the so-called coalition of forces fighting in Syria and allied to the United States, a serial offender against international law, has no legal foundation whatsoever. The Australian government has had legal advice on the matter, and has had such advice since 2014. If it was confident of its legal position, why then does it continue to refuse to release that advice?

The facts on the ground do not support the Turnbull position either. Turnbull criticized Russia for using its Security Council veto to block motions to investigate chemical weapons crimes. In fact, both Russia and Syria asked the Organisation for the Prevention of Criminal Weapons (OPCW) to investigate the Douma incident.

The OPCW fact-finding mission began their investigation on 21 April 2018, two weeks after the alleged attack. Jihadist groups blocked their initial investigation and they were only able to enter the relevant areas with protection provided by the Syrian army and the Russian military police.

An interim report was published on 6 July 2018 in which it concluded, “no organophosphate (sarin) nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or the plasma samples taken from the alleged casualties.” The use of sarin had been one of the principal accusations against the Syrian government. This interim conclusion received minimal media attention.

The OPCW Final Report of the investigation was released on 1st of March 2019 although one will hunt in vain for an accurate account of that report in the western mainstream media. The reason for the media silence is not difficult to discern. The 0PCW Report effectively destroys the arguments advanced by US President Trump, UK Prime Minister May and Turnbull.

The OPCW’s investigation was hampered in significant ways. The White Helmets and their jihadist allies had either cremated or buried all the deceased “victims” of the alleged chemical attack. Those burial locations were not disclosed to the investigators. No autopsy material was therefore available.

The evidence of the medical staff in attendance at the Douma hospitals at the time began receiving “victims” prior to the timing of the alleged chemical attack. None had symptoms of chemical or nerve agent attack.

The OPCW investigation team carried out a number of analyses from areas said to have been affected by the chemical attack. Again, they found no traces of any banned chemical substances.

They were shown two yellow cylinders claimed to have been responsible for the casualties. Even that “evidence” was compromised as the two cylinders had been moved by the jihadists and were located in two places and in such a manner that they had no probative value.

The OPCW team was unable to say how the cylinders might have been used to release any toxins. Given that no toxic traces could be found anywhere, the likely inference is that the two cylinders were simply stage props.

This inference is reinforced by the fact that the OPCW team did find a further yellow canister similar to the two mentioned above. That canister however, was found in a jihadist workshop that also contained a variety of chemicals and equipment associated with bomb production. Insofar as this finding received any media coverage, it was to suggest that the Syrian government had planted the material. The OPCW made no such suggestion.

What the OPCW team did find were traces of chlorine. Chlorine however, is a common household substance and for that reason it is not on the list of banned chemical weapons. Chlorine would not in any case be likely to cause death, much less the significant casualty figures claimed.

The evidence of the medical professionals interviewed by the OPCW team was that the victims they treated at the hospital were suffering from the effects of dust and smoke inhalation. None had life threatening injuries and none died in hospital.

There was accordingly no basis in fact for the missile attack by the US, UK and France (quite apart from its illegality) and therefore no justification for Turnbull’s unequivocal assertions of Syrian culpability and Russian complicity in a chemical weapons attack upon the civilian population.

Notwithstanding the OPCW’s demolition of the claims made by the US and others, including Turnbull’s ill-advised unequivocal support, the US and mainstream media still refer to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons as a reason to justify their continued occupation of Syrian territory.

That occupation itself is a violation of international law. The “debate” within US ruling circles about whether Trump’s original professed desire to leave Syria (since resiled from) should be carried out or not has a surreal tone to it. It never seems to occur to them that they are neither welcome nor legally entitled to be there at all.

Perhaps the final word should go to a senior BBC TV producer, Riam Dilati. On 13 February 2019 he tweeted: “after almost 6 months of investigations I can prove without a doubt that the Douma hospital scene was staged.”

If our own media and politicians could show a similar degree of honesty and integrity, they would be offering Syria and Russia the long overdue apologies to which they are entitled.

That may however, be a long wait.

James O’Neill is a barrister at law and geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/03/13/douma-chemical-attack-still-waiting-for-an-apology/

 

 

Read from top.

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34803

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33315

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33312

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33384

 

 

 

 

 

THE DECEPTION OF INTERNATIONAL PENAL JUSTICE

The ICC intends to violate the decision of the Security Council and try Bachar el-Assad

by Thierry Meyssan

Everyone believed it to be impossible for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to try the Syrians, since China and Russia exercised their vetos against a Western draft resolution to do so. But no! A piece of legal sleight of hand may make it possible to dodge the decision of the Security Council. The Court hopes to incriminate President Bachar el-Assad, not for the murder of Rafic Hariri (that lie fizzled out some time ago), but for « crimes against humanity ».

In 1998, the United Nations convened the Conference of Rome, which created the International Criminal Court (ICC). Of course, the aim was not to to create a super-Tribunal which would legislate, on behalf of the member-states, in the name of humanity, but to possess a tool capable of judging criminals at the end of a war, when the institutions of the vanquished are diminished or destroyed.

Thus the statutes of the Court emphasise that it may only accept a case with the agreement of the local Justice system. But these same statutes also state 
 that it may take on the case of a crime committed by a citizen of a non-member country, inside a member country, in place of the victim country; 
 as well as a crime committed by anyone, anywhere, as long as it is handled by the Security Council of the United Nations.

In both cases, the Rome Statute, developed within the UNO and signed by a few States, may apply to all States, even that of non-members.

This why the three greatest world States - China, the United States and Russia - refused to ratify it. They saw in it – quite rightly - a violation of the principle of sovereignty, formulated in the 18th century by the legal expert Emer de Vattel, and voted into action by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties [1].

Last September, the ICC declared admissible a complaint against the authorities of Myanmar, despite the fact that it is a non-member, because it was said to have committed atrocities which provoked the exodus of the Rohingyas. The Court considered itself competent because the victims fled to Bangladesh, which is a signatory of the Rome Statute [2].

On this model, a family of the Muslim Brotherhood recently filed a complaint against President Bachar el-Assad and the Syrian representatives, although the Syrian Arab Republic is not a member of the Court. The family claims to have witnessed various atrocities and was obliged to flee to Jordan. The Court would have to ignore the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is the heart of Islamist terrorism and that it is listed as a terrorist organisation in many countries. Logically, though, it could declare itself competent, since Jordan is a signatory of the Rome Statute.

However, on 22 May 2014, when the Western powers and their Gulf allies sought to engage the ICC via the Security Council in the context of the events in Syria, both China and Russia exercised their veto [3].

However, it makes no difference – the Court has acquired autonomy. It no longer pretends to help states render Justice, but has proclaimed itself the defender of humanity against states.

It is important to understand what is happening – over the last few years, the ICC has mainly been financed by the European Union, and has drawn up its own Code. Until 2016, it tried only African defendants under its own laws, and found them all guilty [4]. After a vote by its Parliament, Burundi then decided to withdraw from the Rome Statute, on the motive that the ICC had become « an instrument of pressure on the governments of poor countries, or a means of destabilising them according to the desires of the great powers ». Three other states then followed - Gambia, the Philippines and South Africa. However, South Africa and Gambia changed their minds after Gambian Fatou Bensouda was named as the new Prosecutor General for the Court.

Nonetheless, until the nomination of Madame Bensouda, the ICC offered none of the guarantees expected from an impartial legal system. Thus, during NATO’s attack on Libya in violation of the Security Council’s mandate, the « proof » tabled by the General Prosecutor, Argentinian Luis Moreno Ocampo, against Mouamar Kadhafi, his son Saïf el Islam and his brother-in-law Abdallah Al-Senoussi, was limited entirely to Press cuttings from the invading states. Worse – when NATO bombed Tripoli, the prosecutor declared that Saïf el-Islam Kadhafi had been arrested by the Western powers and that his bureau was organising his deferment to The Hague. By doing so, he was guilty of a bare-faced lie, and demoralised the Libyans to the point where they no longer resisted the aggression of NATO. In reality, Saïf el-Islam was safe and sound in the cellars of the Hotel Rixos, where I was myself.

The same Luis Moreno Ocampo raped a female journalist in his Court office, but escaped Justice only by his immunity as an international prosecutor [5]. Corrupt, he demanded secret payments for prosecuting individuals who were marked for elimination [6]. The Prosecutor’s secret bank accounts were later revealed by journalistic investigations in Panama and the Virgin Islands [7]. Luis Moreno Ocampo has never had to answer to these charges.

Certainly, his successor, Fatou Bensouda, is more presentable. But the structure has not changed. The magistrates of the Court are so aware of this that on 15 January 2019, they revolted and acquitted Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Ble Goude - two defendants whose alleged « crimes against humanity » had served to justify the « régime change » imposed by France in the Ivory Coast. It was the first time that the ICC abandoned the political role with which the Europeans had tasked them.

On 29 July 2015, the Western powers attempted to pass a resolution at the Security Council intended to divest the Ukrainian Justice of the destruction of flight MH17 and transfer the affair to the ICC. This was a strategy aimed at preparing the indictment of President Vladimir Putin, although Russia is not a signatory of the Rome Statute. The question here is not to determine who destroyed the plane, but to observe the political manipulation operated by the international penal Justice system. Russia exercised its veto against the Western resolution.

The Syrian President, Bachar el-Assad, will therefore probably be tried in absentia by the ICC. He will appear in abstensia with other Syrian representatives whose names have not yet been released. He is used to this. In 2005, he was accused of ordering the assassination of ex-Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, this time with the complicity of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. An international enquiry was led by a German/ Israeli team [8]. Then a pseudo-tribunal was created on the initiative of the US ambassador US to Beirut, Jeffrey Feltman. A treaty was signed by General Secretary of the UNO – with the approbation of the Security Council - and by the new Lebanese Prime Minister – without the authorisation of either the government or the Parliament.

At that time, the West had persuaded itself of the guilt of the accused. Alas! After a year of sensational accusations, Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis resigned in the midst of a shattering scandal – the witnesses on whom he relied were imposters paid by his friends. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon pursued its malicious work by accusing Hezbollah this time, although this organisation published recordings of an Israëli drone over the site of the assassination. The Tribunal persisted in pretending that Rafic Hariri had been killed by the explosion of a van, despite the fact that the forensic records were formal – this was impossible [9]. They spent millions of dollars reproducing the scene and attempting to validate their theory, but in vain. They are therefore working on a thesis that everyone knows is false.

The Syrian Arab Republic fought for eight years in order to preserve its sovereignty. It should therefore not allow its representatives to go to The Hague. But it can still contest the validity of the procedure.

It was initiated by the British lawyer for the plaintiffs, Rodney Dixon, known for also being the lawyer for Qatar against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He had a long experience of « international Justice » since he had been one of the councillors for Canadian Louise Arbour, the General Prosecutor for international Justice for ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda - two institutions which failed to find the truth about the crimes with which they were tasked.

Mr. Dixon had already declared that he intended to pursue the Syrian leaders for « crimes against humanity ». He based his case on the Caesar Report [10]; a document made public by Qatar, via the London cabinet Carter-Ruck, on 20 January 2014, two days before the peace negotiations of Geneva 2. The report was a collection of 55,000 photographs of torture victims taken by a photographer of the Syrian Arab Army. According to the accusation, they represented the victims of the « régime », while according to the Syrian government, they were on the contrary photos of the the victims of the jihadists. The report was authenticated against Syria by three international prosecutors with a shameful past, since they had worked at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Penal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia.

 Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva is the author of a report ordered by the British Prime Minister concerning the death of an Irish lawyer, qualified as « shameful » by the victim’s family. He recognised the responsibility of the authorities, which no-one could hide any longer, but blurred the proof against the Crown. 
 Sir Geoffrey Nice made himself famous by pursuing Slobodan Milošević for two years, without ever managing to find the slightest proof of crimes against humanity. The trial ended with the death of the prisoner, who, according to Russia, was assassinated in prison. 
 David M. Crane is an ex-representative of the CIA and the DIA who, since the beginning of the war against Syria, has been running a programme designed to drag Bachar el-Assad in front of any special international court at all for any reason at all.

In September 2012, the US State Department, on an idea by ambassador Jeffrey Feltman who had become an assistant to the Secretary of State, created an association, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), tasked with collecting proof of the crimes of the Syrian government. He financed it to the tune of 5 million dollars annually, the rest being at the charge of the « Friends of Syria », especially Morocco. Two years later, Washington ended their use of this tool. However, ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, who had since become the Director of Political Affairs for the UNO, relaunched the SJAC, this time with European funds.

There exists no control of the ICC, even when its general prosecutor is a corrupt criminal. The Court is reserved exclusively for the service of those who pay for it – the European Union.

In the past, war was considered as a means of conquest or defence. Today, on the contrary, we like to pretend that it is an illegal act in itself, even in legitimate defence. Thus, the party that decides on war must not declare it, but establish the proof a posteriori that by committing the crime of war, it is defending Good. Which the victor can always claim.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

Source 
Mint Press News (USA)

Until the International Criminal Court (ICC) tries Tony Blair, George W Bush and John Winston Howard for WAR CRIMES, this outfit has no leg to stand on. By now, everyone in the universe would know that these three murderers lied to go to war. Their "intelligence failure" was a set up from the start to GO TO WAR. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a farce designed to give kudos to Western bullies such as the USA, Europe and the UK when they are the ones that created the original discord and the "civil war" in Syria — by supplying weapons to "rebels" who were no more than terrorists (al Qaeda, al Nusra, ISIS). On this basis, the USA, the UK and Europe should be charged for war crimes against Syria. But the "judges" of the International Criminal Court (ICC) would show they are corrupt, in the pocket of their Western masters, should they charge "Syria with war crimes" or for "crimes against humanity.".

 

Read from top and read above.

Fresh off his likeness’s appearance on the big screen, former vice president Dick Cheney is back in his element dispensing foreign policy advice to Republican administrations.

Politico’s Eliana Johnson reports that Cheney politely but firmly pressed Vice President Mike Pence about President Donald Trump’s deviations from his handiwork during the George W. Bush years. The encounter took place at an American Enterprise Institute confab in Georgia in front of Republicans with deep pockets.

Some of Cheney’s complaints could easily command bipartisan assent: too much policymaking via Twitter, for example, and inartful rhetoric that hasn’t exactly smoothed the path to diplomacy. But that was not the crux of the Bush veep’s argument against Trump and Pence.

“It seems, at times, as though your administration’s approach has more in common with [Barack] Obama’s foreign policy than traditional Republican foreign policy,” Cheney reportedly told Pence. It was an assertion, the kind neoconservatives often make, of total continuity between presidents dating back to at least Ronald Reagan—if not all the way to Dwight Eisenhower—and the architects of the Iraq war. It’s as if history, or at least Republican Party traditions, began circa 2002.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-problem-with-trumps...

 

Trump is also trying to join the list of war criminals.... Read from top.

 

A dozen countries sent senior officials to Stockholm for a meeting on 3 June 2019. Under the chairmanship of Swedish Interior Minister Mikael Damberg (photo), they assessed the possibility of creating an international court to try Daesh crimes.

For several weeks, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have expressed interest in a formula inspired by the Special Court for Rwanda.

Many problems have been raised:

- Opportunity: Judging the only crimes of Daesh would validate other crimes committed in the Levant.

- Feasibility: The creation of such an international tribunal presupposes the agreement of Iraq and Syria. However, the Iraqi constitution forbids it and Syria - which many participants do not recognize - considers itself capable of judging the crimes committed on its territory - and does it itself.

Cost: An international tribunal would amount to at least several hundred million dollars. For example, Iraq is demanding $ 2 billion from the international community to try the jihadists it holds.

- Jurisdiction Limitation: At least 17 states - including several at the meeting - armed Daesh, while others allowed him to commit crimes (such as the genocide of Yazidi Kurds) while their army was there.

According to one participant at this meeting, States participating in this meeting intend to prolong the consultations beforehand and never succeed.

Unmissable difficulties are already visible in the repatriation of children of European jihadists. Sweden and Norway have reached an agreement with Rojava, a Kurdish state they do not recognize. While two other states deal directly and in secret with Damascus that they nevertheless publicly accuse of all kinds of crimes. All other states have abandoned the children of their nationals.

 

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article206669.html

 

 

Read from top.

On 22 April, the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran, and Turkey held a trilateral video-conference on the situation in Syria within the framework of the Astana format. International observers have explained why the group has succeeded in maintaining the balance of interests in the region and what is behind the growing divisions within jihadi ranks.

The Astana group, a trilateral format comprising Russia, Turkey and Iran created in 2017 to tackle the Syrian crisis, acknowledged on Wednesday that the 5 March 2020 ceasefire deal had facilitated the de-escalation of the situation in Idlib, following Turco-Syrian clashes earlier this year, despite Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's* attempts to obstruct it.

Meanwhile, divisions are growing within jihadi groups in Syria. A week ago, over two dozen militants from Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra (‘Revolutionary Commando Army’) who were previously deployed in the US-held At-Tanf area surrendered to the Syrian Arab Army. Later, on 20 April, unidentified groups reportedly attacked and destroyed a US military vehicle in Al-Hasakah governorate. At the same time, in Idlib, jihadi militants are deeply split over joint Turkish-Russian patrols on the M4 highway which started on 15 March.

Syrian Militants are Growing Disenchanted With US

 

"Incidences of discontent and partisan warfare against the illegal US military occupation of east Syria are inevitable and increasing likely in frequency and escalating intensity", says Mark Sleboda, a US military veteran and international affairs and security analyst. "One of the primary reasons for these uprisings is local Arab tribal unhappiness with being governed over by the US' preferred proxies of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) within the US-organised Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) brand. Another is the unwillingness of the US to provide sufficient financial and other aid to begin reconstruction of the war-ravaged territory east of the Euphrates or restart economic activity".

 

Nevertheless, the US has been heavily reinforcing its troops in east Syria in recent months, particularly around Syria's oil fields, the US veteran notes, adding that Washington is "unlikely to easily give away its last card for leverage in forcing regime change in Damascus via political and economic blackmail".

At the same time, the US cannot rely on any of its beaten proxies, as the Syrian Army made its advances over the entire Syrian geography including the Idlib governorate, believes Christopher Assad, a Canada-based political analyst of Syrian origin, stressing that eventually all foreign troops will have to unconditionally withdraw from all Syrian territories, especially those whose presence is illegal.

 

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/202004251079091696-discontent--partisan...

 

 

Image at top is still relevant whether the former whathisname has gone from the US administration... Actually it could be more relevant now as he was an "oil" CEO executive before being tapped on the shoulder by trump to join his litle dictatorship.