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(Posted by Omar Sabbour on FB.)
Alerting developments on Syria - Warning for Syria groups
1) The end of the CIA "vetting" program of "arming rebels".
For those who have closely followed Syria over the years, they will know
of course that the CIA programme has not been dictated by actually
providing weapons to the rebels directly (groups which received weapons
directly from the US tended to have agreed not to use them against
Assad, such as the SDF, New Syrian Army, Mou'tasem Brigade, Hamza
Division), but in "co-coordinating" (i.e. controlling) the arms supply
to them coming from other parties (i.e. Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and
private parties - references for this can be found at the bottom [1]).
This control has been exercised via two main "Operation Centres" - the
MOC in Jordan and the MOM in Turkey - and has taken the form of
determining the quantity and quality of weapons which are allowed to go
in (for instance advanced weaponry are either restricted - such as
anti-tank missiles - or altogether blockaded - such as anti-aircraft
missiles; whilst the flow of regular weaponry and ammunition varies
according to events and strategic interests on the ground) and which
groups receive them.
Of course the CIA and Jordanian intelligence had already been banning
(the already previously restricted [2]) arms going into the South for
the purpose of anti-Assad operations for years
(https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/…/us-and-jordan-demand-sou…/), whilst
in the North the CIA had restricted allowing arms to rebel operations
even against ISIS [3] - though the degree of US control here had been
much less than in the south, as the US had been circumvented more by
Turkey (whilst Turkey always pressured the US to allow in an effective
supply of weaponry to the rebels, by contrast Jordan had an effectively
identical position to the US vis a vis Syria: i.e. supporting the
survival of the opposition but not empowering it to overthrow Assad).
What this news piece means, in other words, is that the US is going to
try and institute a total blockade of any rebel weaponry going into
north or south Syria. This essentially means a return to the US policy
before the CIA program (i.e. 2011-late 2013), which consisted of
"unofficially" (i.e. not through the MOC or MOM) seizing even light
weaponry shipments - this CIA policing policy at the time was described
as "choking" the Syrian rebel supply [4].
In combination with what appears to be Turkey's selling out of the
rebellion, this is essentially merely a "publicisation" of the
undeclared US-Russian-Turkish arrangement aimed at ending the armed
resistance to Assad which had begun with the fall of Aleppo (when the US
actually bombed rebel areas of the city during the siege and US
officials even justifying the Russian bombardment - whilst Turkey
blocked arms supplies going in during the siege [5]). Supporters of
Turkey need understand that whilst Turkey did indeed want to empower the
rebels militarily to overthrow Assad (unlike Jordan), it has never been
brave enough to cross the US red-lines which were explicitly against
this policy [6].
2) The capture of Mosul by the Iraqi government
Warning to Syrian groups: With the capture of Mosul it is very likely
that you will find the Iraqi government reshifting its full efforts to
helping Assad in Syria. Of course, there are already about a dozen or so
core Iraqi PMU groups which are part of the Iraqi Military (not Army,
which is a noteworthy distincion) and are salaried by the central
government - but have not had so-called official "permission" to fight
there by the Prime Minister Abadi (although obviously the permission is
very much present by the fact that they're paid and armed by the
government) - who have been fighting in Syria for a long time. A few
weeks ago I read that one of the PMU groups who hadn't yet intervened in
Syria "asked Abadi" for permission to do so. As so many others have
already done so without waiting for "official permission", the fact that
this group has bothered to "ask" raises the notion that the Iraqi
government might "officially" adopt intervention in Syria. As a result
you might very well have much more PMU units (and one should know that
there are a lot more of those - with tens of thousands of more fighters
- than the ones already present in Syria) who've been tied down in Iraq
against ISIS coming to fight in Syria - and these units would likely be
backed much more directly by the central government, security forces and
Army (i.e. even if the regular Army divisions don't actively cross the
border into Syria, they will likely provide the PMUs with other forms of
support, intelligence, etc.).
With Trump's policy direction and the effective declaration that the US
will seek to block any external weapons supplies to the rebels, it seems
very likely that there won't be any pretense of US opposition to the
central government's "official" acceptance of intervention in Syria. Of
course this "official" distinction is largely irrelevant as the Iraqi
PMUs are very much backed by the Iraqi government in their Syrian
invasion, but the point is that the abandonment of the official pretense
will likely be accompanied with a far-escalated and directed support to
Assad coming from Iraq.
[1]
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/…/anti-aircraft-missiles-could-be…
http://web.archive.org/…/12/cia-syrian-rebels_n_3912583.html
[2] https://eaworldview.com/…/syria-special-the-us-saudi-confl…/
www.nytimes.com/…/citing-us-fears-arab-allies-limit-aid-to-…
http://syrianobserver.com/…/The_U_S_Veto_Arming_Syrian_Oppo…
https://www.pri.org/…/why-are-us-made-anti-tank-missiles-sh…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/russias-intervention-in-s_b…
[3]
http://syrianobserver.com/…/The_U_S_Veto_Arming_Syrian_Oppo…
[4]
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/…/cia-chokes-rebels-weapon-suppl…
http://web.archive.org/…/report-cia-blocked-u-s-groups-eff…/
http://www.upi.com/…/CIA-allegedly-over…/UPI-93401344880820/
[5]
https://www.facebook.com/SyriaSolidarityCampaign/posts/326207664389091
https://www.facebook.com/SyriaSolidarityCampaign/posts/339374613072396
http://uk.businessinsider.com/defense-department-nusra-alep…
[6]
http://foreignpolicy.com/…/state-dept-rebels-are-never-goi…/
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