A Few Items Related To Syria

moon of alabama

The U.S. candidate to (again) become Prime Minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi, is out of the race. After the recent riots in Basra the party of Moqtada al-Sadr renounced its support for his candidacy. Even before that Abadi lacked the votes in parliament to get elected. On top of that Ajatollah Sistani let it be known that he will not support any candidate who had already tried and failed to solve Iraq's problems. Former Prime Minister Maliki and Abadi both fall into that category.

U.S. envoy Brett McGurk had tried to press the Sunni and Kurdish factions to support Abadi and encouraged the Saudis to bribe Moqtada al-Sadr.  He failed. It now looks like the various Shia parties, plus some Sunni and Kurdish independents, have a solid coalition large enough to reign the country. Most of them want the U.S. military to leave Iraq. Iraq will get a new prime minister and it will not be the person that U.S. would like to see in that role. This will create some serious logistic difficulties for the increasing U.S. deployment in Syria.

The fight against ISIS in Iraq is not over. The political instability allows ISIS to return (vid) in the form of a lose guerrilla army. Iraq still lacks some tools, intelligence and nighttime fighting capabilities, to wear down these groups. With an anti-U.S. government the ISIS problem will certainly increase as the U.S. will gain use ISIS to keep a foot in the door.

Robert Fisk travels along the frontline of Idleb governorate in Syria. He sees remarkably few Syrian forces. He expects that the upcoming attack will smaller than expected and a rather slow moving affair.

Geographer Fabrice Balanche reasonably assumes that the Syrian army will, in a first phase, only attack the Turkish supported "moderate" rebels, painted in light green, in the southern part of the Idleb pocket. The Al-Qaeda/Nusra/HTS brigades, painted in middle dark green, would only be attacked in a later phase. This fits to the observations Robert Fisk made on the ground.

bigger (pdf)

That the "moderate" rebels are not moderate at all is again proven through a recent scandal in the Netherlands. The Dutch newscaster NOS Nieuwsuur and the daily newspaper Trouw report (in Dutch) that the Dutch government until very recently spent at least €25 million to provide "moderate" rebels in Syria with pick-up trucks, uniforms, satellite phones, cameras, medical kits, tents and rubber mattresses.

The journalists find that the "non-lethal" supplies were of course used to fight the Syrian government. They also reveal that the groups supplied, which the government held secret, were all Jihadis and that the Public Prosecutor of the Netherlands indicted several of their members for terrorism.

Trouw and Nieuwsuur decide to carry out further research into the NLA program. In recent months, both media have been talking to about 100 rebel leaders and those involved in the NLA program, and have succeeded in determining which groups the Netherlands has supported in any case. These are the Sultan Murad Brigade, the Suleyman Shah Brigade, Suqour al Jabl and Division 13 of the Free Idlib Army, Brigade 51 and Jabhat al-Shamiya. Commanders from these groups have spoken to us in recent months and tell us what kind of goods they received from the Netherlands.
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The Public Prosecution Service has actually prosecuted Dutch Syria volunteers for joining brigades of the Free Syrian Army. Take the Dutch Syrian Driss M. On March 21, 2017 he had to appear in court. He is accused of having participated in the Islamist group Jabhat al-Shamiya in 2014 and 2015. According to the Public Prosecution Service, this is a 'salafist/jihadist organization that seeks to establish a caliphate, and is part of the jihadist Ahrar al-Sham. But at the same time, Jabhat al-Shamiya is also part of the Free Syrian Army supported by the Netherlands and described as moderate.

At least one prosecutor seems to believe that the government committed a crime:

The sending of relief supplies to combat groups can also be punishable, because then you contribute to the fight and possibly even terrorist financing. "If you send pick-up trucks, you enable someone to travel, you enable an organization to be able to get from A to B." Van Veghel concludes in a strict tone: "If you in any way role plays in that battle, either active as a combatant, or less active but in such a way that you enable another person to take part in that battle, then you will have criminal responsibility."

Legal trouble is also coming up for the German government.

The U.S. asked the Merkel administration to participate in "retaliatory" regime change strikes on the Syrian government forces when, likely soon, another faked 'chemical' incident will be blamed on it. Several high ranking members of Chancellor Merkel's party want to follow that call. But now the Scientific Services of the German Bundestag, the equivalent of the U.S. Congressional Research Service, released an authoritative legal opinion (pdf, in German) on the issue. Such an attack would be illegal under international law and it would also violate the German constitution. There will be no official German support for such a wider attack on Syria. (In an earlier opinion the Scientific Service found that the continued U.S. presence in Syria is illegal.)

Fitting to the anniversary of a remarkable incident that took place in New York, Maram Susli, aka SyrianGirl, released this video with quotes from Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter ISIS, and from the U.S. ambassador to the UN Nicky Halley.

Posted by b on September 11, 2018 at 01:40 PM | Permalink

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