******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
Omar Sabbour says: "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 [were] even justifying the Russian bombardment - whilst Turkey blocked arms supplies going in during the siege). Supporters of Turkey need to 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". This account misses a key point - Turkey's desire to crush the Rojava revolution. This Kurdish-led revolutionary movement is seen as a threat to the Turkish state, which oppresses Kurds. But the increasing involvement of other ethnic groups in the movement does not lessen Turkey's hostility. Its democratic, feminist and secular character makes it a threat to Erdogan's reactionary and repressive regime. Suppressing the Rojava revolution was always one of Turkey's goals. But for a time this was combined with an anti-Assad policy. Turkey gave weapons and other aid to anti-Assad rebels. Probably Erdogan hoped that an Islamist government would come to power in Syria. But Russian intervention made the overthrow of Assad much more difficult. Turkey therefore abandoned this policy and now focuses solely on attacking Rojava and the broader Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. Some rebel groups have been coopted to participate in this attack. This change of policy by Turkey led to what Sabbour calls the "selling out of the rebellion". There was an "arrangement" berween Turkey and Russia. Turkey would stop trying to overthrow Assad. In return Turkey would be allowed to send troops into northern Syria to prevent the spread of the Rojava revolution. Chris Slee ________________________________ From: Marxism <marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu> on behalf of Louis Proyect via Marxism <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> Sent: Friday, 21 July 2017 12:06:10 PM To: Chris Slee Subject: [Marxism] Alerting developments on Syria ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. ***************************************************************** (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://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…/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/chris_w_slee%40hotmail.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
