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Trump imposes sanctions on Turkey in response to Ankara’s “Operation Peace Spring” in Syria

By Sarah Abed | October 15, 2019

On Monday, after a weekend of bloody chaos in northeastern Syrian brought on by Turkey’s cross border military incursion “Operation Peace Spring” which included airstrikes, ISIS prison breaks, and a continuation of the exodus we’ve seen over the past few days of over a hundred thousand civilians fleeing their homes, President Trump signed an Executive Order authorizing sanctions against current and former Turkish government officials and anyone who is contributing to Turkey’s actions in destabilizing northeast Syria.

In a formal statement, published by the White House, President Trump went on to say that steel tariffs will be increased back to 50%, which is the level they were at prior to a reduction in May of this year. President Trump also said negotiations led by the Department of Commerce which include a $100 billion trade deal with Turkey, would cease immediately.

The Order goes beyond sanctions and would also authorize consequences including blocking of property and barring entry into the United States on anyone Washington deems to be involved in serious human rights abuses including obstructing ceasefires, preventing displaced people from returning to their homes, and forcing the repatriation of refugees etc.

President Trump mentioned a few times during the past few days that the United States and their partners are the ones that brought Daesh to their knees and are responsible for eliminating 100% of their territorial caliphate.

Each time I hear this claim, I justify its inaccuracy by saying even though this is categorically false, and the United States has protected and helped Daesh on more than one occasion and the previous administration supported extremist groups which bore Daesh, that if taking credit and feeding his enormous ego means that US troops will withdraw from Syria, then by all means give President Trump all the credit, perhaps even an award, or a trophy, heck add on a Nobel Peace Prize, just as long as he withdraws US troops, which will help end this monstrous western-manufactured war.

President Trump also cautioned Turkey against indiscriminate targeting of civilians, destruction of civilian infrastructure and targeting ethnic or religious minorities. He also mentioned that refugees must be returned in a safe, voluntary and dignified manner. President Trump announced again that he would be withdrawing remaining US service members from northeast Syria and that they will be redeployed while remaining in the region to monitor the situation to prevent a resurgence. Trump stated that a small number of troops will remain in southern Syria at Al Tanf Garrrison to disrupt remnants of ISIS.

Repeating his threat to destroy Turkey’s economy if they continue down this “dangerous and destructive path” could just be more posturing by President Trump and distancing Washington from Ankara’s war crimes.

Vice President Mike Pence on Monday announced he would be leading a delegation to Ankara where they will be discussing with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the US’s demands which include an immediate ceasefire and negotiating with the Kurds in Syria.

Just the notion of asking President Erdogan to negotiate with Kurdish militias is preposterous considering their history. Turkey will most likely say that they do not negotiate with terrorists, considering they see the Kurdish militias in Syria as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey who they have been at war with for over three decades.

Secondly, the Kurdish militias are now in talks with the Syrian government. It’s a little too late for the US to try to win them back. I would hope that after seeing how many times the United States has left them out in the cold that the YPG/SDF/PYD would know by now not to put their trust in them again.

It’s worth mentioning that corporate media and war hungry politicians have intentionally focused on the “plight of the Kurds” and highlighted their cause above and beyond any other ethnicity in Syria. This begs the question, why is 7-10% of the population given an unequal amount of attention when “the Kurds” are not even a homogenous group of people.

There’s no mention of how Kurds migrated to Syria in waves and sought refuge and stayed for decades. Rather than telling you how they bought property, studied in Syrian schools, received benefits that are awarded to all Syrian citizens regardless of ethnicity and religion, propagandists will try to convince you that they were systematically oppressed.

There’s also little to no mention of the war crimes committed by the Kurdish YPG and the SDF in Syria against the indigenous populations including closing the vast majority of schools, enforcing a non-authorized Kurdish curriculum, forced conscription, theft of property and businesses, kidnapping of children to turn them into soldiers, etc, much like the PKK in Turkey.

Reporting has been very one-sided and has portrayed them as the leading fighters against terrorist groups in Syria and although they did play a part the Syrian Arab Army and their allies are the ones that did the heavy lifting and made the most progress, but they get trashed in the media.

And, many are surprised to learn that there are Syrian Kurds that are in the Syrian Army that categorically reject the notion of establishing a US/Israeli sponsored Kurdistan on sovereign Syrian land. They oppose the wrongdoing of the Kurdish militias and stand with the Syrian government and army.

Celebrations erupted once news was received that the SAA was on their way to northern towns. Even tribal leaders came out in support of the SAA, saying the SAA were the only true protectors of the land.

On Monday the SAA entered Manbij, Tal Tamr and towns in Raqqa’s countryside. Videos showed US armored vehicles exiting the area while Syrian troops were entering, in a peaceful almost poetic re-alignment of power. The American-Israeli backed “Kurdistan” dream was destined for failure from the beginning.

October 15, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

One out, another one in: Retreating US military meets advancing Syrian Army

RT | October 14, 2019

An unlikely road meeting of US and Syrian troops was captured in northern Syria as the American vehicles were retreating from the Kurdish-held town of Kobani, while the Syrians rushed to protect it from the Turkish-led offensive.

Getting American and Syrian government forces into a single image is quite a difficult task despite the protracted – and illegal – US military presence in the war-torn country. Nonetheless, RT’s video agency Ruptly managed to snap a rare shot at a highway between northern Syrian towns of Tabaqqa and Kobani.

The short clip from the scene shows a US military convoy of several armored vehicles leaving the border town of Kobani. A Syrian military unit, transported on apparently less fancy vehicles, is seen heading towards the town.

It was not immediately clear if the servicemen somehow reacted to seeing one another, as both parties seemed to be in a rush.

The US military has been withdrawing from northeast Syria following the orders by President Donald Trump, issued last Monday. The withdrawal has been sped up by the Turkish-led military operation against the Kurdish militia, one-time ally of the US, that incidentally heads the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) controlling around one-third of Syria’s territory. Washington used the SDF as a ground force in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

Ankara regards Kurdish militia groups as terrorists over links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging insurgency in Turkey’s southeast for decades, ultimately seeking secession from the country. However, the Turkish incursion into Syria, which aims to establish a 30-km wide “safe zone” and plant previously displaced refugees and Ankara-backed Islamist rebel groups there, was not met with open arms by Damascus.

After apparently striking a deal with the Kurds, the Syrian Army said it was moving in to secure the strategic border area and entered the towns of Qamishli and Manbij. Kobani, once famously besieged by ISIS, is likely to become a hotspot of conflict again due to its position right on the Syrian-Turkish border.

Moscow on Monday said it never approved of the occupation of Kobani in security discussions with Ankara, with the Defense Ministry dismissing reports that such a question was ever brought up.

October 14, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

Washington’s Sum of All Fears: Kurdish Militants Cut a Deal with Damascus

By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | October 14, 2019

Last night, Kurdish officials in northeastern Syria issued a statement that an agreement has been reached with the government in Damascus allowing the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to takeover key strategic positions along the Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

Not surprisingly, cheers can he heard from Damascus to Moscow, and Tehran too, while leaving Washington’s foreign policy blob visibly moaning in agony.

The reality of the situation is that Turkey sprung a trap set by Damascus and its allies. In doing so, Turkey helped to clean up what was previously a near impossible situation for Damascus.

While much of the western mainstream media has laboured over ‘Trump’s decision‘ to pull-out US troops from Syria, there are other factors which have been driving the current situation. If you’ve been monitoring the Turkish press over the last few years, you would know that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been eager to fire-up his AKP base at home and project Neo-Ottoman power regionally, so this latest Turkish foray into Syria can be seen as a resumption of the ‘New Turkey‘ – the AKP’s gradual transformation of Turkey from a secular Kemalist state, to an Islamic one. This gradual revolution is not confined within Turkey’s own borders though, as it hopes to extend its micro-colonial project of Sunnification to include areas in question located inside and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey. Hence, Ankara has moved its forces into Syrian territory for the third time in as many years, this time dubbed “Operation Peace Spring,” and with Erdogan justifying the move under the auspices of ‘fighting terrorism,’ vowing once again to secure the country’s national security by stamping-out the Kurdish YPG-PKK ‘terrorist threat’ embedded in northern Syria. He may have achieved some marginal success in this department, but not in the way most mainstream pundits think.

Unknowingly perhaps (or not), Turkey helped towards resolving at least three separate problems which had been grating at Damascus and Moscow for at least the last three years. Firstly, the Turkish incursion has finally displaced uninvited US military forces that had begun illegally occupying northeastern Syria since late 2016, effectively propping-up their SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) Kurdish-led proxy militants, many of whom share membership with Kurdish YPG/PKK militant groups. This weekend has shown the world that without its US protection, Kurdish-led forces are not as viable as they have been depicted in the western media, now exposed to the painful reality that their ‘autonomous’ status in northeastern Syria is on borrowed time, evidenced by the fact that they failed to protect Kurdish residents from the Turkish military and their jihadi vanguard ground forces, formerly known as Free Syrian Army (FSA), who’ve rather cynically rebranded themselves now to the ‘Syrian National Army’. With Syrian Kurdish forces now on their back heels, they were left with no other option than to approach Damascus to negotiate an alliance. That agreement was inked this weekend, with the SAA now heading towards key towns and cities in the northeast of Syria including one of the centers of fighting – the hotly contested Syrian border town of Kobani. This new reality also means that Turkish military will not willingly fire upon SAA forces inside of Syrian sovereign territory, although Turkey’s jihadist FSA/SNA militias might engage with its old nemesis. Those side skirmishes could prolong instability, but they are not nearly as insurmountable as entrenched US forces in the area.

Reports show the SAA’s arrival in these areas as being met with cheers from crowds – which is a public relations disaster for Washington and its Kurdish ‘Rojava’ nation-building project in northern Syria.

Lastly, aside from securing its key northern border crossings, Damascus in now one step closer to reclaiming its oil and gas fields situated north of the Euphrates river near the city of Deir Ezor, and which have been continuously occupied by ISIS and SDF forces respectively since 2014. Liberating its own domestic energy supply will go a long way towards helping Damascus mitigate some of the economic suffering felt as a result of the imposition of joint EU-US  sanctions, a punitive embargo designed by western powers to strangle the country and foment more domestic unrest.

A New Middle East

The Kurdish request for Damascus protection also flies in the face of years of western propaganda which tried to justify Washington’s policy of military occupation and nation-building by convince the world that the Syrian government was unwelcome in the northeastern region of its own country, and that “Kurdish independence” was a fait accompli. Moreover, Damascus is a step closer to securing previously vulnerable stretches of is eastern border with Iraq which the US was previously ‘managing’ and which allowed ISIS the move through and use as a staging ground for attacks further afield in areas like Sweida and Al Tanf. If a mutual security arrangement can be reached between Syria and Iraq to secure its shared border, then this would potentially revolutionise political and economic affairs in the region, and even globally.

If these events do come to pass, it would be a complete defeat for decades of Washington-led efforts in the region. Together with its allies, the US has worked long and hard to keep this part of the Middle East unstable and divided. It was in this US-led and Saudi and Israeli-engineered environment of destablisation that both al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists were able to emerge and thrive for so long. Its adversaries should remain vigilant though, as history demonstrates, both Washington and Israel are not above provoking instability in order to achieve their shared short-term and long-range goals for the region.

Regardless, the board has been flipped in Syria. Unable to either hold territory or keep thousands of ISIS prisoners in custody, US-backed SDF militias have been exposed as the latest in a long lineage of hapless pawns of Washington in the Great Game. Once new ground locations are secured by SAA forces, then Damascus could invite Russian air support to secure this airspace – an outcome which can only mean that terrorists’ days will be numbered going forward. Any remaining ISIS or Al Qaeda terrorists brigades active in north of the Euphrates will have few remaining escape routes, other than north to seek refuge in the various AKP-sanctioned terrorist enclaves located across the border in southern Turkey.

As this author said back in early 2018, the US-Kurdish dance in northeastern Syria was always a game of musical chairs, and sooner or later, someone had to leave. And that someone is the USA, and immediately followed by ISIS.

As President Bashar al-Assad said already, Syria is determined to reclaim “every inch” of its territory. So it might behoove western powers not to underestimate the will and determination of a country and army which has withstood eight years of a fully internationalised regime change war waged against it.

***

Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting in the Middle East including work in Syria and Iraq.

October 14, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

US poised to withdraw remaining troops from northeastern Syria: Pentagon

Press TV – October 13, 2019

The Pentagon has announced that the United States is set to withdraw the rest of its troops from northeastern Syria amid an ongoing Turkish offensive in the region.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in an interview with the CBS News on Sunday that the US would be pulling out around 1,000 troops from Syria’s northeast as part of a “deliberate withdrawal” directed by US President Donald Trump.

Describing the situation for American troops in the region as “untenable,” Esper said the measure was taken to ensure that US forces were not “put in harm’s way.”

During the interview, the Pentagon chief claimed that Kurdish militants of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were planning to negotiate a deal with the government in Damascus and Russia to withstand the Turkish attacks.

“In the last 24 hours, we learned that [the Turks] likely intend to extend their attack further south than originally planned, and to the west,” Esper told the CBS News.

“We also have learned in the last 24 hours that the SDF are looking to cut a deal with the Syrians and the Russians to counterattack against the Turks. And so we find ourselves, we have American forces likely caught between two opposing advancing armies, and it’s a very untenable situation,” he added.

Turkish military forces and Turkish-backed militants of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Wednesday launched a long-threatened cross-border invasion of northeast Syria in a declared attempt to eliminate Kurdish militants from the so-called People’s Protection Units (YPG) to push them away from border areas.

The YPG, which itself is the military wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), constitutes the backbone of the SDF, an anti-Damascus alliance of predominantly Kurdish militants.

Ankara views the US-backed YPG as a terrorist organization tied to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, which has been involved in armed separatism in Turkey since 1984.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Ankara will not stop its military operation against Kurdish militants in northeastern Syria “no matter what anyone says.”

The Turkish Defense Ministry announced on Sunday that a total of 480 YPG militants had been “neutralized” since the operation began.

The Turkish military generally uses the term neutralize to signify that the militants surrendered or were killed or captured.

The self-proclaimed Kurdish-led authority in northeastern Syria says more than 191,000 people have been displaced as a result of the Turkish invasion.

The US has long been providing the YPG and SDF militants with arms, calling them a key partner in the purported fight against the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group in Syria. Many observers, however, see the support as part of Washington’s plans to carve out a foothold in the Arab country.

The Turkish military, with support from allied militants of the so-called Free Syrian Army, launched two cross-border operations in northern Syria, namely “Euphrates Shield” in August 2016 and “Olive Branch” in January 2018 with the declared aim of eradicating the presence of Kurdish militants and Daesh terrorists near Turkey’s borders.

October 13, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

Three Arab-language media interview Russia’s President Putin

RT | October 13, 2019

Excerpts:

Moscow is supporting Damascus to ensure that extremists never reach Russia’s borders

Damascus has to take responsibility for the country’s political and social problems, but these internal issues would not be resolved by allowing Syria to be overrun by extremists, Putin told RT Arabic, explaining Russia’s rationale for entering the conflict there in September 2015.

“We came to Syria to support the legitimate government… It does not mean that they do not have internal problems… It does not mean that the current leadership is not responsible for what is going on there. They are, but it does not mean that we were to allow terrorist organisations to capture Syria and to establish a terrorist pseudo-state there.”

“We still remember what happened in Russia’s North Caucasus region not that long ago,” Putin said, referring to the bloody conflicts in Chechnya and making the case for protecting Russian borders from terrorism spill-over.

“We could not allow militants to move to former Soviet republics. We do not have hard borders or a visa regime with them. We could not allow militants to infiltrate Russia from there.”

Supporting “rebels” in the Middle East and North Africa, like Washington and its Gulf and European allies has routinely done, has had disastrous effects for global security, Putin pointed out. The invasion of Iraq led to an insurgency that later created Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL/ISIS), he said, and NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” in Libya created a “chaos and confusion” that is still seen today.

‘Syria must be free of foreign military presence’

Russia will be least affected if US exit from INF treaty brings back arms race, Putin says

A renewed arms race between the US and Russia would be bad for the world but Moscow won’t be dragged into excessive military spending, as it has already developed next gen weapons of “unmatched” capabilities, Vladimir Putin said.

The Russian president discussed Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty at a joint interview with RT Arabic, UAE-based Sky News Arabia and Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya broadcasters.

“I do understand the US concerns. While other countries are free to enhance their defenses, Russia and the US have tied their own hands with this treaty.”

However, Putin pointed out that “it was not worth ruining the deal,” which helped the US and Russia by precluding the fielding in Europe of ground-based missiles with a range of between 500km and 5,500km, and which remained the cornerstone of security on that continent since 1987. “I believe there were other ways out of the situation,” he added.
Also on rt.com Russia offers NATO a moratorium on missile deployment, but won’t sacrifice its own security to prove its goodwill

The New START Treaty, which came into effect in 1994 and limits the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers possessed by the two countries, is the final element that could “prevent us from falling back into a full-scale arms race,” Putin warned.

That deal expires in 2021 and, “to make sure it is extended, we need to be working on it right now,” he said.

But if an arms race couldn’t ultimately be avoided, the President assured interviewers that “Russia will be the least affected party because… we already have the next generation of weapons, and these are unprecedented, with unmatched capabilities. We have done our homework. We do not need to rush now and can calmly think of what can be done next.”

An arms race is a bad thing, and it will not be good for the world. However, we will not be dragged into exorbitant budget-spending games.

The reason for Russia obtaining those state-of-the-art weapons, despite being only sixth globally in terms of military spending – behind the US, China, Saudi Arabia, UK, France and Japan, is “focused research on priority areas,” he explained.

Read/watch the full interview here.

October 13, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Ironic’: Congress Seeks to Punish Turkey’s Incursion, Even as US Troops Remain in Syria

Sputnik – October 11, 2019

Turkey’s “Operation Peace Spring” has kicked off in Syria and caused a divide in the US muddied by what US President Donald Trump has deemed a misunderstanding. With Turkish troops already clashing with Kurds, hundreds dead, and US politicians calling for sanctions on Turkey, the so-called confusion may trigger a larger conflict.

In response to Turkey’s offensive, GOP members of the US Congress have called for sanctions to be placed on NATO ally Ankara, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) issued a Thursday statement that said: “President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and his regime must face serious consequences for mercilessly attacking our Kurdish allies in northern Syria.”

This came hours after Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced their own proposal for sanctions.

While Turkey claims Operation Peace Spring is necessary for its security, Spain, another NATO ally, has also threatened to take action against Ankara and remove its Patriot missile defense systems from the country.

Peter Ford, the former UK ambassador to Syria, joined Radio Sputnik’s Loud and Clear on Thursday to explain the main point of confusion concerning Trump’s troop pullout and highlight the hypocrisy from US officials.

“There was never any serious talk of Kurdish region breakaway. Never. Not until the US presence,” Ford told hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou. “It’s actually been the US presence and guarantee which has been the real cause of destabilization.”

The former ambassador said that while the Kurds did have some grievances in the region, such as calls to have “more teaching of the Kurdish language in their schools,” Syrian Kurds have historically “been well integrated into the state.”

Trump’s statements on pulling out of Syria and bringing US troops home have been the subject of bipartisan ire, but the US president explained earlier this week that only approximately 50 soldiers were removed from the area.

Ford echoed the president’s claim and asserted that “all the hyperventilating” was over “the removal 50 guys.”

“The remaining hundreds of US forces are still there controlling about 20 to 25% of Syrian territory rich with oil and grain, preventing the reabsorption of those areas into the state of Syria. They still stand ready to act as a tripwire against the forces of Damascus,” he said. “Trump, for all his bluster about bringing the troops back, has taken only a very small step towards that goal.”

He went on to say that he believes that once the dust settles on this issue, those in the US currently outraged by Trump’s actions will realize how minimal the withdrawal is in reality. That is, unless there are Turkish “atrocities” in the area.

Ford concluded that in any case, he finds it quite “ironic that all these people who see no objection to the US occupying Syria are hyperventilating about another NATO power occupying Syria. The situation is very rich in irony.”

October 11, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Yemen’s Ansarullah offers new prisoner swap deal to Saudi-backed ex-govt

Press TV – October 11, 2019

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has offered the Saudi-backed former government a new deal for exchange of prisoners over a week after the popular movement unilaterally released hundreds of detainees.

Head of Yemen’s National Committee for Prisoners Affairs (NCPA), Abdulqader al-Mortada, said Friday the group had told “local mediators” that it was ready to implement a prison exchange within one week.

“We are waiting for the other side to respond,” he noted, according to a report by Al Masirah TV.

The Ansarullah official said the deal offered to the other side would cover 2,000 prisoners in the “first phase”.

The offer came days after the Houthi movement released hundreds prisoners, including three Saudi nationals, in its latest goodwill gesture.

Through the release, the Ansarullah movement and its allies in the Yemeni army said they sought to underline their commitment to peace negotiations held in Sweden last December.

The talks with Yemen’s Saudi-backed former government resulted in an agreement, which calls for a ceasefire in Hudaydah, a prisoner exchange and a statement of understanding on the southern city of Ta’izz.

The unilateral release of prisoners proved Ansarullah’s “credibility in implementing the Sweden agreement and we call on the other party to take a comparable step,” the NCPA head said at the time.

The released detainees were “included in the prisoner lists of the Sweden deal,” Mortada said in a press conference.

Mortada noted that the Ansarullah movement launched the initiative due to the big delay in the implementation of the prisoner swap deal.

It is the latest goodwill gesture from the Ansarullah movement which called for a cessation of strikes in September.

President of the Supreme Political Council in the Yemeni capital, Mahdi al-Mashat, on September 20 said the Ansarullah movement would stop targeting Saudi territories with drones and ballistic missiles, hoping Riyadh would reciprocate the gesture.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the former regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 91,000 over the past four and a half years.

The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.

October 11, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

Everything Going Wrong in Okinawa

By Doug Lummis | CounterPunch | October 11, 2019

On 23 February 2016 Admiral Harry Harris, then Commander US Forces Pacific, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, was asked how the construction of the Futenma Replacement Facility was progressing. This refers to the super airbase the Japanese Defense Ministry is building at Henoko in northern Okinawa to house the units of the First Marine Air Wing now deployed at Futenma Air Station, in crowded central Okinawa.

Admiral Harris, his voice betraying irritation, replied, ”it’s . . . a little over two years late. It was going to be done by 2023, now we’re looking at 2025 . . .”

This made the front pages in Okinawa, though probably nowhere else. The next day Suga Yoshihide, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, was asked about this at a press conference. He wanted to say Admiral Harris was wrong, but attempted to put it more diplomatically: “It’s too early to say”, – which amounts to the same thing.

Harris was indeed wrong, but not in the way Suga wanted his listeners to believe. A year before this, in 2015, the Okinawa Defense Bureau, the Defense Ministry’s branch in Okinawa, completed a report stating that their soil tests of the sea bottom of Oura Bay, scheduled to be filled to support the new airstrips, had yielded an N-value of zero. N-value is derived by dropping a 140 pound hammer on a hollow drill resting on the sea bottom. The number of blows required to drive it down six inches is the N-value. Thirty or more is considered a firm base. Zero means no blows were required; the drill sank of its own weight.

This information was kept from the Okinawan Government and public for two years, until an independent engineer managed to obtain a copy of the report. Judging from Admiral Harris’ statement, the information had also been kept from the US, and had not been taken into account in Harris’ (as we now know, wildly optimistic) “two years”. Before anything can be built on the “mayonnaise sea bottom”, as it is popularly known in Okinawa, it must be firmed up. The preferred way to do this is by implanting “sand piles” (pillars) into the slime. Huge hollow drills filled with sand are driven down until they reach bedrock. The drills are raised, the sand is left behind. The Okinawa Defense Bureau estimates that if this operation is repeated 77,000 times, the sea bottom will be sufficiently firm to begin construction. This is expected to take as much as five years. That means that 2025, the year Harris predicted the base will be completed, will be the year the sand pillar operation will be completed and sea wall construction on Oura Bay can begin – if all goes well.

If all goes well – and if Murphy’s law ceases to operate (Murphy’s law, If there is anything that could go wrong, it will).

But from the standpoint of the Okinawa Defense Bureau, everything is going wrong. First of all, they have failed to persuade (or to force) the Okinawans to give up their opposition to the new base, which they see as a danger, an environmental catastrophe and an insult. From the Governor’s office through the Prefectural Assembly through Okinawa’s two newspapers down to the daily sit-ins at various points where trucks can be blocked, from every direction, and using every non-violent tactic, including lawsuits, construction is being slowed. Then there is the fact that the site is surrounded by dozens of structures that violate FAA and DOD height regulations for airports. Then there are the two earthquake faults beneath the site, which the Defense Bureau has addressed by going into denial.

But it is on Oura Bay where Murphy’s law is doing the most damage. The Okinawa Defense Bureau’s soil tests have shown that in some places the mayonnaise sea bottom extends to 90 meters below sea level. Sand pillar implantation to 90 meters has never been attempted in Japan (some say, never in the world), nor do rigs exist capable of drilling to that depth. It’s not clear how the Okinawa Defense Bureau plans to deal with that – unless the comment by a government official that “maybe 60 meters will be good enough” can be considered a plan.

Until recently US government officials have avoided commenting on the problems plaguing the Futenma Replacement Facility project, saying, Japan is paying for it; it’s Japan’s problem. But that may be changing. This year’s Senate version of the FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act contains a section (Section 1255) that would require DOD, in cooperation with the General Accountability Office (GAO), to do a full-fledged review of the project.

Let’s hope they carry out this review with the proper severity of a Marine Corps barracks inspection. They’ll need more than one pair of white gloves.

October 11, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

On the Geo-Politics of Turkish Incursion into Syria

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 10.10.2019

Despite the fact that Turkey has been defying the US as of recently with regard to its purchase of Russian S-400 missile system, the US president has finally conceded to its NATO partner’s long-standing demand of invading northern Syria and wipe out the Kurdish militias. This is a critical decision since Kurdish militias were the main US ground allies in the war against the Islamic State in Syria. With the US now abandoning its only ground ally in Syria, a policy shift is in the air, a change that might ultimately go to Syria’s benefit. While we shall come to this point later, what is pertinent here to discuss is the factor that led the US to change its erstwhile position vis-à-vis Kurds.

There is hardly any gainsaying that the world is increasingly becoming multipolar, and Turkey being a ‘Middle Kingdom’ between two poles has been making the best use of its geo-strategic position in the emerging world order. As Erdogan said in his recent UNO speech, “the world is bigger than five.” He was referring to the five permanent members of the Security Council: Britain, France, Russia, China, and America. Perhaps he wants his country to be included as a sixth, or that the world has already changed too much for these countries to manage on their own without showing sensitivity to other powers’ interests.

As many reports in the mainstream western media have indicated, Turkey, despite its very explicit strategic ties with Russia, remains important for the US. The fact that the US, despite being so deeply accustomed to running the world unilaterally, has had to change its position reflects the necessary foreign policy and strategic adjustments that even the US is having to make in this increasingly multipolar world where a country, relatively much smaller than the US and lying on the intersection of Asia and Europe, can force a much bigger and powerful country to prioritise a smaller country’s interests.

Two things, as such, stand out. First, Turkey is no longer a pliant and a willing US partner and/or a strong adherent to the dead cold war agenda of ‘containment’ of the Soviet Union, or Russia and China in the contemporary era, although it still continues to provide İncirlik Air Base, a military airport in southeastern Turkey, which hosts fifty tactical nuclear weapons aimed at primarily reinforcing what NATO experts call ‘extended deterrence guarantee’ of their organisation against a Russian invasion of Europe. Secondly, the US, due to deep presence of Russia in the region, is no longer an external hegemon entrenched in the region, practically no longer in a position to force its policies on its partners. This means that Turkey is in a far better position to pursue its interests a lot more independently than was the case few years ago. This is perhaps the reason why Russia, despite knowing that Turkish territory can be used against Russia in any future conflict with the NATO, is still developing its relations in a way never known before to both countries.

This is something that the US cannot control. All it can do is to adjust its position to secure its long-term interests. Its decision to stand aside in the up-coming Turkish On the Geo-Politics of Turkish incursion reflects that adjustment.

On the other hand, Russia and Syria are also very much in the equation. While Syria and Russia may object to a large scale military presence of Turkey in Syria—and both will reiterate that this presence is uninvited and has no legal basis—this objection will not turn into a practical opposition; for, a Turkish incursion and the US silence that followed together with its abandoning of Kurds might bring the Kurds closer to Syria and Russia.

Russian officials, as of recently, have been speaking of the “maximalist positions” the Kurds have adopted in their dealings with the Syrian government. Therefore, when cornered by the Turks and abandoned by the US, they might turn to the Syrian government for a settlement. This will, of course, provide Syria and Russia with an opportunity to reunify the whole of Syria, an ultimate objective that even Turkey has shown sensitivity to. A recent statement from the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said that Ankara had “supported the territorial integrity of Syria since the beginning of the crisis and will continue to do so” and that by eliminating all ‘terrorist forces’ from that region, Turkey will only “contribute to bringing safety, peace and stability to Syria.”

Also, given that Russia has been eyeing an expansion of cooperation with Turkey beyond Syria, Moscow will not object to Turkish incursion and let Ankara slip out its hands. At the same time, Moscow would want to make sure that no large-scale fighting takes place, allowing rouge groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to resurface and reverse the gains Russia and Syria have made in last two years or so.

Moscow will, therefore, make its own adjustment and prefer to play a mediatory role between the Kurds and the Turks, and Kurds and Damascus in order to solidify Syrian control on all of its territories.

Given this, it is possible that a settlement might emerge out of the storm that Turkey is going to start. Moscow’s mediation might be acceptable to all the parties. Ankara, of course, would want a guarantee from Damascus and Moscow about Kurds being confined to their traditional areas and not engaging in any militant and activities against Ankara, or inciting separatism among the Kurds living in Turkey.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.

October 10, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Despite Withdrawal Claims, US Troops Retain ‘Colonial’ Hold on Syrian Kurdish Lands

Sputnik – October 10, 2019

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced Ankara’s military offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces just a day after US President Donald Trump announced he would pull troops from Syria. However, with US troops simply shifted in the region, questions remain about Trump’s actual motivation.

On Wednesday, Erdogan announced that Turkey would be carrying out “Operation Peace Spring” in order “to neutralize terror threats against Turkey and lead to the establishment of a safe zone” and combat terrorism in the region.

The move and its intended “safe zone” for refugees have been condemned by the European Union and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who said “it will not work,” in a Wednesday address in Brussels.

Nevertheless, Turkey has pushed forward, and some Washington officials are even defending Ankara’s offensive.

Ambassador Peter Ford, the former UK ambassador to Syria, joined Radio Sputnik’s Loud and Clear on Wednesday to discuss the Washington’s possible motivation behind moving US troops in the region

“It looks like all the US has done is … pull back 150 guys who [were] sprinkled in that northern safe zone,” Ford told hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker. “But they are still there with the rest of the 1,000 occupying that quarter of Syria, which is effectively controlled by the US.”

While the move is minor, the ambassador pointed out that now the Turks are able to make their first move in the region “without having to worry about tripping over US” troops.

Amid both domestic and international backlash for Trump’s decision, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with PBS in a Wednesday interview and said Washington in no way provided Ankara with “a green light.” He went on to defend Turkey’s offensive by asserting they had “legitimate security concerns” and argued that Trump’s decision to move to troops was out of concern for their safety.

Ford highlighted that “the Turks are not actually being threatened by the Kurds [and] there have been virtually nil incursions from the Kurdish side of the Syrian border,” and that Turkey’s claim of respecting “the territorial integrity of all our neighbors” is false.

Instead, Turkish troops have been deployed to “prevent the emergence of a US-protected Kurdish statelet,” Ford said.

According to him, it is likely that the Kurds will “mount a token resistance,” rather than to go all in against Turkey, and “hope the hullabaloo in the US will force the Turks to either stop or withdraw.”

Ford reiterated that while Trump said he wanted to bring the US troops home, the fact remains that they are still in Syria. Prior to this move, part of the rationale given for having a US troop presence in the region was to deter a Turkish attack, but with that no longer being an objective, “the only remaining rationale is to deter the Syrians from regaining control of their own country,” he asserted.

“You have to ask: at the end of the day, what right does America have to prevent a country like Syria [from] establishing control over itself? This is purely colonial, imperialist behavior.”

October 9, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

Pompeo & Biden BOTH have it wrong: ‘Green light’ for Turkey’s Syria invasion wasn’t for the US to give

RT | October 9, 2019

Presidential candidate Joe Biden and US mainstream media insist the White House gave a ‘green light’ to Ankara to invade Syria. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denies it. Neither seem to understand that it’s not up to Washington.

Trump “impulsively gave Turkey a green light to invade Syria, blindsiding our military,” Biden tweeted on Wednesday, accusing President Donald Trump of a “betrayal” of Kurdish fighters that helped the US defeat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

The “green light” phrasing also found its way to most mainstream media outlets. Later in the day, Judy Woodruff of PBS NewsHour treated it as an established fact, asking Pompeo to comment on the Turkish operation in northern Syria.

“Does the US take responsibility for whatever the outcome is, because the US has given Turkey a green light?” asked Woodruff.

“Well, that’s just false. The United States didn’t give Turkey a green light,” Pompeo replied.

He’s technically correct. As Turkey launched ‘Operation Peace Spring,’ bombing Kurdish targets in northern Syria on Wednesday, Trump issued a statement calling it “a bad idea” and warning Ankara that it was now responsible not just for the safety of civilians in the area, but the fate of IS prisoners.

However, the real issue isn’t whether Washington did or did not give Ankara the “green light” for its military adventure. The question no one in Washington or the legacy media seems to be asking is whether such permission was up to the US to give – because the obvious answer is “no.”

American politicians and pundits of all stripes love to talk about the “rules-based international order,” but one of the actual, written rules of that order is that the world consists of sovereign nation-states, one of which is Syria. Both the US and Turkey have had troops in Syria for years. Yet neither has been invited by the Syrian government – unlike, say, Russia, which has had an expeditionary force there on request from Damascus since 2015.

Only Damascus, or the UN Security Council, can legitimately give the “green light” for a military intervention in Syrian territory. Neither has done so.

October 9, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Syria Says Ready to Welcome Kurds back into Fold

Al-Manar | October 8, 2019

Damascus voiced readiness on Tuesday to welcome Syria’s Kurds back into the fold after Washington left them to face Turkish military threats alone.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad stressed that Damascus “will defend all Syrian territory, and will not accept any occupation of its land,” he told Al-Watan newspaper.

The official said Kurdish groups have been “tossed aside” by Washington, after US President Donald Trump on Monday gave Turkey a green light to press ahead with its planned military operation.

“The nation welcomes all its children and Damascus will solve all problems in Syria in a positive manner, away from violence,” Mekdad said, vowing to take back all Syrian territory.

“We advise those who have gone astray to return to the nation, because the nation is their final destiny,” he added, encouraging Syria’s Kurds to reconcile with the government.

Ankara has threatened an offensive in Syria against Kurdish militias and US forces on Monday pulled back from Turkish border areas, opening the way for an invasion President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said could come at any moment.

Mekdad said that Kurdish militias in Syria were being “played” by Washington.

October 8, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

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