For the last eight months, the facility’s spacious, well-equipped trauma center has received a steady flow of casualties from the Syrian civil war, with wounded arriving every few days and sometimes several times a day. These include men, women and children, some with injuries so severe that hospital veterans who treated wounded soldiers and civilians in Israel’s wars cannot remember encountering anything similar.
Syria’s a little worse than having the backyard kids beat each other up and going crying off to their mommies, but in some ways, the combat is not much different as it completely degrades the productive capability of the entire societies.
Hospitals do close.
Medicine and medical expertise disappear.
The desperate who can and may seek sanctuary.
So far, Israel, graciously, has accepted a comparative but significant smattering of dreadfully injured and some distraught with the gravity of a medical emergency.
Time precludes more thorough fast reporting at the moment — certainly, the IDF produced a field hospital in the Golan for this situation or worse — but the quick collection that follow should suffice for a message about compassion, humility, inclusion, and integrity.
Perhaps Israel is keeping mum, neither claiming nor denying responsibility for the destruction of a Syrian air base between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning this week.
As suggested on this blog, there are so few (to none) of objective observers in the battle space that those following the war news in mainstream media and the more seasoned defense journals online needs must accept that the perception of events may be a part of the province of intelligence interests.
In the deeply paranoid and suspicious atmosphere attending the fighting in Syria, which has been overrun by spies and riven by the separate interests of small cabals, throwing a little more “not knowing” into the mix adds to the bloody mischief already in full swing.
—The Israeli government and military establishment have declined to comment on the reports, although one Israeli official told Reuters he thought Israel had carried out the strike, but wasn’t certain.—
It appears that not even general Israeli military staff know what happened.
Very hush hush.
I’m sure the spy novelists are having a field day with every facet of Syria’s continuing meltdown.
. . . the Syrian conflict has come to represent one involving (1) elements within the Syrian government; (2) Lebanese Hezbollah units and foreign fighter-dominated Shiite militias; (3) small remnants of genuinely nationalist and sometimes secular opposition rebel units; (4) Muslim Brotherhood-type rebel groups; (5) Salafist groups; and (6) al-Qaeda affiliates and similarly aligned units. Crucially, while 1 and 2 share a central goal of ensuring Assad’s survival and 3 through 6 aim to overthrow the Assad regime, all six can be said to individually retain their own unique ideological and operational objectives.
ZAATARI CAMP, Jordan: Largest camp for Syrian refugees becoming a city – World Wires – MiamiHerald.com – 11/1/2013: “ZAATARI CAMP, Jordan — The manager of the region’s largest camp for Syrian refugees arranges toy figures, trucks and houses on a map in his office trailer to illustrate his ambitious vision. In a year, he wants to turn the chaotic shantytown of 100,000 into a temporary city with local councils, paved streets, parks, an electricity grid and sewage pipes.”
Saudi Arabia funds Syrian rebels, splits with U.S. – UPI.com – 10/8/2013: “BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 8 (UPI) — Saudi Arabia, exasperated with U.S. vacillation related to Syria’s chemical arsenal and now its effort to reconcile with Iran, Riyadh’s foremost adversary, is forging a new alliance of Islamist rebels in Syria under a pro-Saudi warlord to supersede the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army.”
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Obama’s bungling has enabled Russia’s chief autocrat to 1) seize leadership of the Christian position and leverage power and approval unto himself while supporting an essentially murderous dictator and 2) urged on Arab support and de facto Turkish allowance — either that or incompetence — for the Al Qaeda affiliates to produce a sustained presence and fill out their ranks in the theater.
Not only does “Syria” not end well . . . it doesn’t end.
The Assad regime long ago lost the ability to enforce its sovereignty out to the boundaries of its writ; substantial Syrian populations have been displaced internally or made refugee, many permanently, having no business or homes to which to return; for the west, Israel and Kurdistan mark the chief lines of containment while Jordan and Turkey flex to take in the stranger and resist losing themselves, or parts of themselves, in the chaos next door.
Channel 2 News reported that the attack’s target was a S-125 surface-to-air missiles battery.
Satellite images of the area obtained by Channel 2 show the Russian-made Neva missiles, as well as a SA-3 missile battery, that also includes a command center with a radar to track the missiles’ targets and broadcasting anthenas to track the missiles as they are launched. The missiles have a range of 35km. and a 70k. warhead.
The casual reader Syrian war news may be subject to many impressions from the media but can no longer “see” or sort the chaos involved in Syria’s agony.
RT and the alternative press of which it has become a part will probably get in its digs as it did back in July by accusing Turkey of enabling an Israeli-borne attack on a shipment of Russian Yakhont anti-ship missiles.
Syrian President Bashar al Assad has made no secret of his contempt for Israel or his intentions to target the Jewish state with the intent of deflecting attention from his own failings. A little more than a month again in the latest of rants, he had said, “We have weapons that could blindside Israel.” Indeed, it’s possible, but it’s possible too that he will find himself with fewer of them this afternoon, which is not to say Israel is the only party that could have or would have done it.
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In the murky period associated with Assad’s chemical weapons deployment, the British seem to have alternately prepared for a strike on Syria and reversed tracks on the same.
Did intelligence stand down? Were agents retrieved?
Back in July, MI6 seems to have been worried about Assad’s chemical weapons stocks finding their way to the Al Qaeda affiliates operating in Syria and with Chinese and Russian meddling on the high tech side of the stew.
I would think it doubtful that British military and security operations have backed off the theater at all but rather gone about their missions more quietly than during the potential run-up to a punitive strike in relation to the chemical weapons imbroglio.
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a dilemma. He is invested in a peace process at home with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. And Turkey has a flourishing relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, whose oil and natural gas it needs desperately. Yet the permissive attitude of the Turkish state toward the jihadists battling the Syrian Kurds has been a source of trouble for Erdogan. He has gone a long way toward keeping the jihadists at arm’s length.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had to navigate the slim channel between NATO’s interests and those of the Muslim Brotherhood, on whose behalf he appears to be struggling in the Egyptian quarter of the middle east mess, and outright affiliation with the Al Qaeda affiliates that have apparently slipped across his borders to badger Christians and Kurds in Syria’s northern regions.
Who is cooperating with whom in Syria?
Whatever the true state of affairs may be as regards each aspect of the fighting in Syria, one probably will not find it on the front pages of newspapers.
The desk analysts consigned to perusing clippings may have cause to believe they’ve been left with looking over the shell of a very rotten egg.
I’d rather turn “data” into “information” than turn out lists, but data for lists comes fast and quick and paints its own picture. This insert, another brief melange, might suggest how hot the spy games are getting around the mixed motivation fighting inside Syria.
For more than four decades, Syria’s ruling family — President Bashar Assad and his late father, Hafez — has depended on informants — or the fear of them — to help keep the population in line.
In America’s entertainment culture, the statement “Trust no one” has developed a life all its own, but also one largely in jest; of course, with the post-9/11 domestic black operations elephant of a budget, that good humored acceptance of some potential invasive probing may change; however, for war torn Syria, there’s no humor or good natured winks to be found: the spies would seem to have swarmed one another’s offices and outposts.
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Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.
Seated at Mr. Erdogan’s side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.’s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In unusually blunt public remarks, Prince Turki al-Faisal called Obama’s policies in Syria “lamentable” and ridiculed a U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Assad’s chemical weapons. He suggested it was a ruse to let Obama avoid military action in Syria.
“The current charade of international control over Bashar’s chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious. And designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down (from military strikes), but also to help Assad to butcher his people,” said Prince Turki, a member of the Saudi royal family and former director of Saudi intelligence.
Today’s alternative and blithely anti-Semitic Far Gone and Leftward Press seems to be conflating today’s explosion 30 minutes south of Latakia with Israel and the old “Davy Crocket” tactical nuclear weapon.
I’m not waiting on the radiation reports.
The one thing certain about today’s blast is the real journalists are absent, the politically venal are present and active, and whatever pictures and news reports make into the still news vetting mainstream media tell very little about what has happened or what is happening in combat inside Syria.
Additional and Cited Reference In Loosely Reversed Chronological Order
INTERNATIONAL – Turkish FM denies Israel used Turkish base in Syria attack – 7/15/2013: ““Turkey will neither be a part nor a partner of such ‘attacks.’ The ones who claim this want to damage Turkey’s power and reputation,” he said. “It is out of the question that Turkey and Israel are part of a joint military operation.”
Using these sources and methods, the Small Arms Survey has calculated that, worldwide, state militaries hold roughly 200 million small arms, out of a total of some 875 million firearms of all kinds.
Key findings of the Research Note include:
Just two countries (China and Russia) hold almost 25 per cent of the global total; and the top 20 countries hold 50 per cent;
Globally, military procurement of newly manufactured weapons outstrips destruction of surplus firearms;
A standardized international reporting system would be a great advance for global transparency and policy-making.
The organic qualities attending contemporary warfare may be underplayed by the mainstream press. In swimming in the politics daily, it seems to me rare to see pieces on arms routing and supply.
Not too long ago and with Viktor Bout out in the wild, some interest seemed reflected in the press and in film (e.g., Lord of War, Blood Diamonds), but the etiology for the popular mind seems to have been let to go by the wayside, so here it may be refreshing as well as scary to NYT piece by former U.S. Navy Ordnance Disposal Officer John Ismay.
Apart from that, a fast tour of the war news looks about as usual — another bombing in Pakistan, a piece indirectly on the level of cooperation between anarchic Somalia and the Untied States, and some input on the field politics taking place in Syria between rebel forces less interested in theocracy and those hell bent on establishing just that.
“In the case of Barawe, we were informed. The way it happened, and the way it was planned was okay with us,” President Mahmoud said, describing Barawe as a target for further military action as the port had emerged as a safe haven and financial centre for Al-Shabab, the al-Qaeda affiliated militia that took responsibility for last month’s attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi.
As a result of their American-enforced protections until 2003, and later as a result of the weakened central government in Baghdad after Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Iraqi Kurds were left to govern themselves for 22 years, from 1991 to present. During this period, the Kurds have literally lifted their corner of Iraq from the ashes, establishing not only one of the most prosperous polities in the region, but also by far the best approximation of secular democracy that the Middle East can currently offer.
At least at the moment, “Syria Kurds fighting” isn’t bring up hours old reports and videos.
All may be tense on that front but, so far as the reality-to-news lag is concerned, it’s quiet, and that’s a good thing: in addition to fending off the AQTypal Out There, the Kurds in their camps and villages have a turn coming in the weather to be followed by winter.
It’s good, I’m sure, to have a few fair days ahead of what’s to come, winter being always certain.
This year may be different — different zone, relief planes instead of trucks, bands of marauders instead of Saddam Hussein’s military, etc.
The web may make a difference too.
What was barely out of the laboratory in 1992 has produced its own civilization and intelligentsia. However, while the newfangled global political system may prove responsive to those in distress and more than worthy of aid, it seems not to have really kicked in yet. In fact, the Internet’s Emerging Global Order (I-EGO) has at this point only to watch the world, take it in, set up its emotions, think about what it will do when it’s a little more capable of urging its own defense and better attending to the security of those it loves — and there will be those it loves.
Turkey and the Syrian Kurds: A little-noticed battle | The Economist – 9/25/2013: “A Syrian rebel fighting the Kurds told our correspondent that “Allah be praised, Turkey is giving us some weapons” though he added that the France and Saudi Arabia were “much more generous”.
These two are not even remotely “on topic” but they’re telling of the type of wars being fought, i.e., two wars of annihilation and enslavement and a smaller one about democracy.
What troubles Western observers is not the groups’ fighting prowess, however, but their shared vision of a jihad that extends beyond Assad’s ouster. While other rebels are fighting to remove the Syrian dictator, former and current U.S. and Middle Eastern officials say, the al-Qaeda groups are transforming the conflict into a symbolic struggle against the West and Israel, using words and images that resonate with like-minded Muslims from the Arab Peninsula to Western Europe.
The United States has had limited success cutting off funding to the al Qaeda-linked fighters and foreign jihadists flowing into Syria — in part because of a lack of cooperation on the part of Middle Eastern allies, Intelligence and national security community sources say.
Less well known is the sectarian strategy pursued by Sunni extremists, particularly the ultraconservative Salafis living in the Persian Gulf, who are sending “hundreds of millions” of dollars to ensure the worst factions of the revolt are ascendant — mostly under the guise of humanitarian relief.
Over the course of the operation, Human Rights Watch says the fighters killed 190 civilians. Residents and hospital staff in Latakia, the nearest city, spoke of burned bodies, beheaded corpses and graves being dug in backyards. Two hundred people from the area remain hostage.
Two opposition groups that took part in the offensive, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham and Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, are still holding the hostages, the vast majority women and children. The findings strongly suggest that the killings, hostage taking, and other abuses rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said.
“We are collecting money to buy all these weapons, so that our brothers will be victorious,” hard-core Sunni Islamist Sheikh Shafi’ Al-Ajami announced on Kuwaiti television last month, listing the black-market prices of weapons, including heat-seeking missiles, anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
U.S. and Middle Eastern officials describe the money as a small portion of a vast pool of private wealth being funneled to Syria’s warring factions, mostly without strings or oversight and outside the control of governments.
Excessive license and loss of boundaries and containment have long characterized the Islamic Small Wars. One may trace that back at least as far as the slaughter of the men of the Banu Quarayza who had surrendered to Muhammad expecting to keep their lives and their community intact. Instead, so goes the legend, males with even a single pubic hair for signal were beheaded and the wives, daughters, and sons taken as war booty. That Human Rights Watch should today be screaming about Al Qaeda-class war crimes comes as no surprise.
For the field, the image of the organics of the Islamist front becomes ever more clear as well as daunting as we learn that some middle east governments, as powerful and wealthy as they may be, cannot rein in their own rogues — or, perhaps, they are shielding the same from western powers. Either way, private bank accounts seem unhindered as regards collecting the kind of “charity” that becomes cash for the arms leveled at hapless and unarmed residents in the path of the coldly deranged and enraged.
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“We often see buses around with all their curtains drawn. I have no doubt that their passengers are Islamists on the road to Paradise,” says Mehmet with a sad smile. He criticizes the “silence of the Turkish media on Ankara’s dark moves,” as he puts it.
“Here it’s not about rebels fighting [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad, it’s Jabhat al-Nusra – an armed group close to al Qaeda – and Syrian Kurdish fighters engaging in brutal clashes.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday said “Turkey has never supported any units which have connections with Al Qaeda and never let them use our borders with Syria”, Anadolu Agency reported.
Remember: lies are told to hide something or to get something.
It was the first face-to-face between Mr. Erdogan and President Barack Obama in almost a year. Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.
Seated at Mr. Erdogan’s side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.’s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Later, however, Muslim accused Turkey of facilitating the jihadists’ cross-border movements by clearing passages through minefields and removing barbed wire. During our September interview, he had strong words for Turkey. He said he wanted to continue the dialogue with Ankara, but could not understand Ankara’s support of extreme religious elements.
Whatever Syria was three years ago, it’s either gone today or is missing parts of its once constituted sovereignty. Death has taken more than 100,000 of its constituents; fighting has displaced more than three million once settled residents; the same has “forced” autonomy on the Kurdish community — ten percent of Syria’s population overall; entire cities lay in ruin; borders, checkpoints, and roads have been overrun but by God only knows what.
The worst thing may be the latent Somali-like sub-state anarchy evident in the transfers of arms, cash, and Al Qaeda-type fighters from one location to another across numerous borders and boundaries. Rather than running their separate parts of the show in Syria, it appears that governments and their intelligence agencies have been reduced to searching for ways to benefit from or leverage the activities of a largely unremarked class of private persons with the connections and wherewithal to exert their own will through young proxies.
Moscow’s and Washington’s posturing around chemical weapons and peace talks would seem to gloss over the anarchy and the prospect, which one may as well interpret as the reality, that all civil and responsible government has fled northern Syria and what remains are armed bands in various stages of collusion and contest left to mayhem, murder, and making themselves comfortable.
Rebel-on-Rebel Violence Seizes Syria – WSJ.com – 9/18/2013: “ISIS fighters recently raided a council arms depot filled with lights weapons and ammunition, funded by the Gulf states and funneled to the council with the guidance of the Central Intelligence Agency, council members said.”
Eleven militias have announced their formal split from the Syrian National Coalition and dismissed its aim for a democratic government in favour of strict Islamic law.
The disturbing development comes after a study revealed the alarming spread of the hard-line Al Qaeda jihadist terror network.
In Tweihineh, “the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant… has forbidden girls in primary education and above from attending school unless they wear fully Islamic clothing including an abaya (gown), gloves and a veil,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“Isis fighters broke the cross of the Sayida al-Bshara Catholic church,” SOHR said. “They also burned the church’s contents (crosses, paintings and statues) and set up the Isis banner on top of the church.”
“Isis fighters also removed the cross from the al-Shuhada’ Armenian church near the al-Rashid garden,” the group added.
The pretense that the so-called Syrian opposition-in-exile speaks for those inside the country, never firm to begin with, was further exposed late on Tuesday, in a two-minute video statement called “Communiqué No. 1,” which was issued by eleven armed rebel groups that are influential in northern Syria.
“Communique No. 1” — as if a new regime has taken power (when it has not or may not hold it or no one has or will acknowledge it) — discredits the Syrian rebel cause.
In the next few days, those who watch will look for evidence of a resurgent moderate or Idris-type resurgent FSA. If it doesn’t show up — around here, that means showing up in online reportage — Syria will continue down a Somalia-like path characterized by increasing anarchy, barbarism and cruelty, and fighting without cause or end apart from having learned how to live smeared in blood.
“The statements has [STET] four points, some of them a little rambling:
– All military and civilian forces should unify their ranks in an “Islamic framework” which is based on “the rule of sharia and making it the sole source of legislation”.
– The undersigned feel that they can only be represented by those who lived and sacrificed for the revolution.
– Therefore, they say, they are not represented by the exile groups. They go on to specify that this applies to the National Coalition and the planned exile government of Ahmed Touma, stressing that these groups “do not represent them” and they “do not recognize them”.
– In closing, the undersigned call on everyone to unite and avoid conflict, and so on, and so on.
The following groups are listed as signatories to the statement.
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