Al-Manar | June 6, 2017
Remember the five-year-old boy whose bloodied and dusty image went viral on media outlets and social media last year?
Omran Daqneesh, whose photo made a CNN presenter weep on air, and whose photo was taken from a pocket of a Swiss Journalist in front of President Bashar Assad, in a bid to blame his government for “killing civilians in Aleppo”.
Today, a new footage of Omran has emerged. However this time a new story is being told, by Omran’s father.
In a video broadcast on Syrian TV, Omran’s father told TV presenter Kinana Alloush that he and his family did not get out of Aleppo, stressing that he did not consider himself and his family targeted by the Syrian army.
Moreover, the father revealed that Takfiri terrorists brought his son to the hospital “just to film him, in order to use him for their propaganda.”
He said that he did not hear a plane above his house before the alleged strike last August and said he rejected offers to leave Syria by parties wishing to damage the reputation of the country’s army.
Omran’s father said that he changed his son’s name and his hairstyle to evade individuals who threatened to kidnap him, noting that the insurgents intimidated him.
Below is a video of Omran aired on Press TV:
This boy seems to be fine and happy in the liberated Aleppo pic.twitter.com/0b9qmQqA1I
— Press TV (@PressTV) June 6, 2017
By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | June 4, 2017
The remark by the Syrian Kurdish militia spokesman Saturday that their final assault on the ISIS “capital” city of Raqqa will start “in the coming few days” highlights the keen struggle for control of eastern Syria bordering Iraq that is playing out. The ISIS is staring at defeat and the issue now is what follows thereafter.
The big question is whether Syria survives or will get balkanized. The Russian President Vladimir Putin flagged this stark reality when he said on Friday,
Of course, there is the danger that Syrian war may become a “frozen conflict”. The key, therefore, lies in gaining control of Iraq’s border crossings with Syria across vast desert lands through which Iran renders vital help to the government forces and the Hezbollah and the Shi’ite fighters battling the insurgents and the ISIS.
As the map, here, shows, the Syrian-Iraqi border regions are largely under the control of either US-supported Kurdish and other insurgent fighters or the ISIS and other extremist groups. The Syrian government aspires to regain control of those regions.
Essentially, the struggle is for control of the border crossings that are depicted in the map. Clearly, the border crossing way up in the north is under the control of the Kurdish militia and it remains to be seen (a) whether the US would allow the Kurds to reach an understanding with Damascus; (b) whether Turkey will allow Kurds to consolidate their grip in that area; (c) whether the over-stretched government forces will take on the Kurds or, alternatively, will regard it to be tactically prudent to avoid a shooting match at this point and instead keep options open to eventually negotiate a power-sharing deal with the Kurds.
Unlike the northern front, the central and southern fronts are hotly contested. As the map shows, there is one border crossing in the central front at Al-Bukamal (where the Euphrates flows into Iraq) and another key border crossing is at Al-Tanf in the southern front.
In the central front, Bashar Al-Assad’s forces are in Palmyra and are making their way toward Deir Ezzor where a Syrian garrison is desperately holding out against a siege by the jihadi groups. The US appears to be encouraging the ISIS fighters in Raqqa to evacuate toward Deir Ezzor. But Russian cruise missile strikes recently targeted these ISIS convoys. (Sputnik) The US apparently prefers that somehow Assad’s forces must be prevented from reaching Deir Ezzor, because from there they could take control of the highway leading to the border crossing at Al-Bukamal. (See the map.)
Similarly in the southern front, the US is impeding the advance of the government forces to al-Tanf (which is connected to Damascus), another border crossing into Iraq. The US would hope that the rebel groups in al-Tanf will also seize control of the Al-Bukamal border crossing up north so that US proxies will be in control of the entire Syrian-Iraqi border as well as the southern Syrian region straddling the border with Jordan and the Golan Heights. The game here is essentially about cutting off Iran’s access to Lebanon (Hezbollah).
Why is it so important for the US to prevent Assad’s forces from taking control of the Al-Bukamal and Al-Tanf border crossings? Simply put, the spectre of a Damascus-Baghdad-Tehran land route reopening is what is haunting the US (and Israel), because such a solid land route will have a multiplier effect on Iran’s capacity to influence the future developments in Syria (and Lebanon).
The US has not directly jumped into the fray so far to take control of the Syria-Iraq border. It maintains the pretence that it is narrowly focused on fighting the ISIS. However, when it seemed that Assad’s forces were lunging toward Al-Tanf recently (May 18), the US forced them to turn back by launching an air strike.
The overall balance of forces does favour the Syrian government and in a conceivable future it should take control of Deir Ezzor, Al-Bukamal and Al-Tanf. Thus, the US will have to find a way to work around Assad (and Iran) than work against him. The other option will be to bear the heavy costs of a long-term, open-ended strategy of military intervention and occupation, which doesn’t figure in President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy calculus. The US’s best bet will be to seek some sort of understanding with Russia based on the premise that Moscow may not be fully sharing the agenda of Assad and his Iranian ally. But then, Moscow has no reason to bet on any other horse than the one it has been so far, which also happens to be a winning horse.
By Ben Norton | FAIR | June 2, 2017
The United States has bombed Syrian government–allied forces three times in just eight months. Major media outlets have overwhelmingly failed to ask critical questions about these incidents, preferring instead to echo the Pentagon.
For years, media have consistently downplayed the extent of US military intervention in Syria, and repeatedly propagated the long-debunked myth that Washington never pursued regime change there in the first place. The distorted reporting on these US attacks reflects this longer trend.
On May 18, the US military launched an air raid against forces allied with the Syrian government, killing several soldiers. The Trump administration claimed Syrian- and Iranian-backed militias had entered a 55-kilometer (34-mile) “deconfliction zone” around a base in southern Syria, near the borders of Iraq and Jordan, where the US trains opposition fighters.
Yet US officials also later admitted that they do not themselves recognize the legitimacy of these de-escalation zones—even while using them to justify carrying out such attacks.
No major media outlets questioned the government narrative, or the notion that the Syrian-allied forces were a “threat.” (For context, 34 miles is the distance between Aleppo and Idlib, considered two separate theaters in the Syrian civil war. It is also roughly the distance between Baghdad and Fallujah, or between Washington, DC, and Baltimore.)
In its report on the attack, Reuters‘ cartoonish headline (5/18/17) was “US Strikes Syria Militia Threatening US-Backed Forces: Officials.” The article uncritically repeated that an unnamed pro-government militia “posed a threat to US and US-backed Syrian fighters in the country’s south.”
Reuters added that, when those “threatening” government-allied forces were hit, they were allegedly still a distant 27 kilometers (17 miles) from the US-led coalition’s al-Tanf base.
USA Today (5/18/17) simply noted that the “forces came within a 34-mile defensive zone around the al-Tanf base,” and unskeptically claimed the US airstrike “targeted pro-regime forces who were threatening a coalition base.”
Fox News (5/18/17) triumphantly declared, “US Airstrikes Pound Pro-Assad Forces in Syria.” Obediently echoing the US government, Fox claimed the Syrian forces “were near the Jordanian border and deemed a threat to coalition partners on the ground.”
The New York Times‘ report was similarly deferential (5/18/17), echoing Pentagon officials who insisted the pro-government convoy “ignored warnings.”
Later follow-up statements added a wrinkle to the US government narrative the media had parroted.
In peace talks in early May, Russia, Iran and Turkey signed an agreement to create four deconfliction zones in Syria. This deal was supposed to apply to the US as well, but the Trump administration has refused to recognize the legitimacy of these de-escalation zones—even while using them to justify attacks on Syrian government-allied forces.
The US military official who is leading the air war against ISIS, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, insisted at a May 24 press conference (The Hill, 5/24/17), “We don’t recognize any specific zone in itself that we preclude ourselves from operating in.”
Harrigian stressed that the US carries out whatever air strikes it wants in Syria. “We do not have specific zones that we are deconflicting with them,” the general said. “When we’ve talked to the Russians, we do not talk about those deescalation zones.”
Yet media reports still went along with the narrative that US forces were “threatened” by Syrian government-allied forces miles away in a zone that the US does not even accept as legitimate.
An anonymous CENTCOM official quoted two weeks after the attack by Military Times (5/30/17) complained, “These patrols and the continued armed and hostile presence of pro-regime forces inside the deconfliction zone are unacceptable and threatening to coalition forces.”
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels applauded the US attack and called for more strikes against the government.
Immediately after the May 18 airstrike, media portrayed the attack as something completely new. The Associated Press published a newswire headlined “US Airstrike Hits Pro-Syria Government Forces for First Time,” which was reprinted by the Washington Post and Yahoo News. Foreign Policy (5/18/17) similarly claimed “US Bombs Syrian Regime Forces for First Time.”
In reality, this was the third time in eight months that the US bombed Syrian government and allied forces. Some of these reports, strangely, even acknowledged the Trump administration’s April strike on a Syrian airfield, but acted as though this somehow did not constitute an attack.
In September 17, 2016, the Syrian military was leading a fight against the genocidal extremist group ISIS near the airport of Deir al-Zor, in eastern Syria. Suddenly, the US launched an hour of sustained airstrikes on the Syrian military, killing 106 soldiers in the attack, according to the Syrian government.
The US insisted the air raid was an accident and that it had meant to target ISIS militants. This has been called into question, however. A senior officer in the Syrian Arab Army said the US-led coalition had sent drones above the Syrian troops’ positions before the attack, so it knew where they were situated. The officer also recalled that the majority of the US airstrikes were not targeted at the frontline, where the Syrian soldiers were fighting ISIS.
Ultimately, it was the self-declared Islamic State that benefited from the US attack. The extremist group seized important areas around the Deir al-Zor airport. The US air raid also led to a breakdown in the ceasefire in Syria that had been agreed to just six days before.
Since President Donald Trump entered office, the US has launched two more intentional attacks on pro-government forces. In April, the US launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria’s Shayrat airbase, in an attack that the Pentagon said destroyed 20 percent of Syria’s war planes. Trump claimed the strike was done in retaliation for a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, a village in the Al Qaeda–dominated province of Idlib, although this accusation has been called into question by some arms experts.
This incident, the US’s first officially intentional attack on the Syrian government, also in effect aided ISIS, which launched an offensive near the city of Homs immediately afterward.
Many questions remain unanswered. Why can the US use deconfliction zones it does not even itself recognize to justify attacking Syrian government-allied forces? Do the US and UK have the right to tell Syria where its forces can go in its own country? How is 34, or 17, miles “close”? How can the US attack Syrian government forces without benefiting ISIS, a group that routinely threatens Western civilians?
A strong independent media should be asking these important questions. Instead, news outlets are effectively recycling government press releases.
For their part, Syria and Russia were furious after the May 18 strike. “This brazen attack by the so-called international coalition exposes the falseness of its claims to be fighting terrorism,” declared a Syrian military official on state media. The Syrian government said “a number of people” were killed, and equipment including a tank and a bulldozer were struck.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called the attack “a breach of Syrian sovereignty,” and Russia’s deputy foreign minister said it was “completely unacceptable.”
Yet the apparent presupposition shared and spread by corporate media is that Syria now belongs to the US, and the US can do whatever it wants in the country without anyone questioning it—especially not media outlets, which have been bending over backward to defend US actions.
The May 18 US air raid at the town of al-Tanf is only the latest in a string of attacks that have steadily been growing under Trump. The US has not officially declared war in Syria, although for more than 1,000 days it has waged thousands of airstrikes in the country, most of which have targeted ISIS.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in the US air campaign, which began in September 2014.
Even the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—which is frequently cited by media as an impartial observer, even though it until recently had the Syrian opposition flag openly at the top of its website and consists essentially of one man in England—has acknowledged the massive civilian casualties.
In the month from mid-April to mid-May alone, at least 225 civilians were killed in US-led air strikes in Syria, including 44 children and 36 women, according to the Observatory. From February to March, another 220 civilians were killed.
The bombing campaign against ISIS has killed many civilians in Iraq as well as Syria. FAIR has previously detailed how media outlets have whitewashed and downplayed US complicity in the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Mosul, Iraq.
Media should be asking critical questions about US military intervention in Syria and beyond. Instead, they are downplaying US involvement and relaying Pentagon press releases.
Morning Star | May 30, 2017
SYRIA’S armed forces made clear yesterday that they will not obey US air force instructions to halt military operations near the Tanf border crossing with Iraq.
An army officer told Al-Masdar News that, despite the US air force dropping leaflets over Syrian army positions in south-east Homs at the weekend, army units will continue fighting against Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Isis militants until the entire Iraqi border with south-east Syria is sealed.
“Any movements toward Tanf will be considered hostile and we will defend our forces,” the US-led coalition leaflet read.
The officer added that the Russian military is deeply embedded with the Syrian army and their allies in southeast Homs and is backing continued operations.
Government forces greatly outnumber the Western-backed FSA in the region and the US allies also do not have the backing of the Iraqi government or the Shi’ite Popular Mobilisation Units that operate both in Iraqi desert areas west of Mosul and alongside Syrian government forces in south-east Homs.
US warplanes hit pro-Syrian government Palestinian fighters on May 18 on the pretext that they posed a threat to US troops and allied rebels near the border with Jordan.
Syrian army and allied paramilitary forces continued their successful campaign in the eastern Aleppo countryside yesterday afternoon, breaking through Isis defences and capturing the Ras al-Ayn village and its surroundings, heightening the pressure on the Isis stronghold of Maskanah.
The last batch of jihadist insurgents and their family members were transported in government-provided buses from the Barzeh suburb of east Damascus to Idlib province yesterday.
Their departure means that the Syrian government has full control of this suburb for the first time since late 2011.
Several rebels opted to remain in Barzeh and will have six months to resolve their status with the government.
Four members of the pro-Syrian government Harakat al-Nujaba militia, together with two Syrian army soldiers, were freed from year-long captivity in jihadi-controlled province Idlib on Sunday night after Nujaba fighters launched a behind-the-enemy-lines raid.
By David Macilwain | American Herald Tribune | May 28, 2017
Following the Manchester suicide bombing, one wonders just what is necessary before Western media commentators and journalists join the dots – to make a true picture of the terrorist monster unleashed on the world by their own governments.
It is a question many people were asking only a day earlier, as those media blandly reported the demented ravings of the US, Saudi and Israeli leaders about the global terrorist threat posed by Iran. Surely there must have been some misunderstanding! Even though some commentators noticed a few of the Emperor’s clothes were missing, or a little inappropriate (black-flag underwear?) none challenged the ludicrous ideas that Iran was a global sponsor of terrorism, and “still” sought to develop nuclear weapons.
For Iranians however, and their friends and allies, events of the last weeks have stripped bare both the “Emperor” and his terrorist partners, and revealed the depths of deceit in the West’s fight against the “Islamic State”. The Libyan link in this chain of covert war – the LIFG connections of the Manchester bomber – has finally and unexpectedly rounded out the picture.
Silence over the collapsed Libyan state is just another of the Western media’s failings, though silence might be preferable to further repetition of the old lies about a “Revolution against the dictator Qadhafi”, followed by tribal warfare, and now compounded by the supposed presence of “Islamic State”. What has actually been happening in Libya, both since 2011 and dating back to the ‘90s has been cleverly or unwittingly concealed from Western audiences by their media and leaders in what looks like a complex game of diversions and distractions, white lies and black lies.
As revealed recently by Tony Cartalucci, and further dissected by Thierry Meyssan, the network of alliances and collaboration between Libyan Salafist groups and US and UK intelligence services has played a central role in NATO’s campaign against the “resistance” states, including Libya, Syria, Iran and Shia Lebanon. The failure of Western commentators and analysts to notice this “conspiracy” and consequently adjust their viewpoint has enabled grossly criminal behaviour to continue without public opposition. The exposing of the “Libyan connection” – by US intelligence agencies – threatens to change this, and the extreme reaction from the UK to the US leaking of the Manchester bomber’s identity – cutting communications between their intelligence services for 24 hours – indicates just who is threatened by it.
It was former MI5 agent David Shayler and his partner Annie Machon who first made public the co-operation between MI6 and anti-Qadhafi Salafists in Libya in the 1990s. MI6 helped in the formation of the “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group” from Afghanistan mujahideen/Al Qaeda veterans, with the express aim of assassinating the Libyan leader. Following the plot’s failure, and changing attitudes to Qadhafi in the UK, marked later by Tony Blair’s much publicised rapprochement with him, the tables were turned on several key leaders. Most notable, and now notorious, was Abdulhakim Belhaj, who was delivered back to Tripoli by the CIA/MI6 and imprisoned for six years.
During this period, up until the “Arab Spring”, other members of the LIFG who were resettled in the UK around 1998 – in the Manchester suburb where they were rediscovered last week – became rather persona non grata and some were placed on control orders as the LIFG was classified as a terrorist group.
However… a big however – when US, UK and French leaders decided in 2011 that they could no longer live with Moammar Qadhafi – who now supported his traditional secular Arab Nationalist allies in Syria – the UK leaders again found a use for their Libyan friends in Manchester, as leaders of the ‘Revolutionary forces’ against the Libyan government.
But of course it didn’t end there – in Libya – and hasn’t ended yet, either in Libya or in Syria, which is where many Libyan militants soon went.
The story of the ‘rat line’, from Eastern Libya to Turkey and onto Syria, was first prominently exposed by Seymour Hersh in early 2014, but observers in Turkey had noticed the presence of many Libyans in Turkey back in 2012, as they waited to join the violent insurgency against the Assad government in Syria. Amongst these fighters – or terrorists if you prefer – was Belhaj, who the CIA found was someone they could work with in their operation to “smuggle” militant jihadists and weapons from Libya to Syria. The US “consulate” in Benghazi seems to have been the centre of operations for the rat line, and disputes between different terrorist groups including the LIFG, and the CIA were likely the cause of the well-publicised attack and killing of the US ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Abdulhakim Belhaj meanwhile had returned to Libya, and somehow became the head of military forces in the Libyan transitional government. Rather contradictorily he had also launched legal action against the UK government for their years of action against him, including rendition and alleged torture by Libyan Intelligence on behalf of MI5. Compounding the picture of this terrorist-in-a-tie were claims last year that Belhaj was now the leader of Islamic State in Libya…
Before getting to the crucial questions on the identity of the Manchester bomber and his relatives, there is one other little thing to mention – Clinton’s emails. As is the habit with Western mainstream media, their focus has been almost entirely on aspects of this story which are relatively unimportant – such as Clinton’s use of a private server, and a witch-hunt over how the emails were leaked. It is of course the content of those emails that is the real story, and what they tell us about Clinton’s direct role in supporting the terrorist groups in Syria. Along with David Petraeus, who just happened to be in Tripoli when the Benghazi consulate was attacked, Clinton could hardly have been ignorant of the whole rat-line operation, even as her President Obama publicly debated whether to arm the “moderate opposition” in Syria.
But then Belhaj and his Libyan terrorist mates were not exactly moderate. Once Al Qaeda and now “Islamic State”.
It is against this background that we discover some shocking truths about the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi – this young man who “appears to have become radicalised in Syria”.
In 2011, when MI5 facilitated the passage to Libya of LIFG members from Manchester, Salman’s father Ramadan Abedi evidently took his sons back to Tripoli to join the armed insurgents and learn how to kill people. Ramadan already had experience doing this in the ‘90s alongside Belhaj, as despite failing to kill Qadhafi there were many other innocent victims of the MI6 enabled LIFG “contras”.
In the six years since, Salman Abedi evidently went to fight in Syria, with Al Qaeda or “IS”. Perhaps he even went there with the CIA’s “rats”. So it could be said that joining the dots on the Manchester bombing gives us quite a good picture of a Western mercenary rat, whether it’s a white rat or a black rat…
Sputnik – 28.05.2017
Damascus sent letters to the UN Secretary General (UNSG) and the UN Security Council (UNSC), calling for the cessation of the US-led coalition airstrikes in Syria as it causes numerous deaths among civilians and violates international law, local media reported.
The 69-member US-led coalition is conducting airstrikes, ground-based and rocket-propelled artillery fire against the Islamic State terrorist group (outlawed in Russia) on the territory of Syria and Iraq. The strikes in Iraq are conducted in support of the Iraqi government, but those in Syria are not authorized by the UN Security Council or the government of President Bashar Assad
In the letters, the Syrian foreign ministry strongly condemned the coalition’s airstrike on Friday in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor, when the residential quarter of the Mayadin city came under attack and 35 civilians were killed by the strike, the Sana news agency reported Saturday.
Damascus urged the United Nations to halt the airstrikes as it violates the UNSC resolutions and the international law, while causing an enormous damage to the infrastructure and integrity of the country, according to the agency.
The foreign ministry stressed that the US-led coalition’s actions do not facilitate the fight against terrorism as the strikes cause chaos in the country, benefiting the activities of the terrorist groups.
Earlier in May, a report issued by the Syrian Network for Human Rights showed that the US-led coalition strikes had killed over 1,200 civilians since the beginning of the operation in 2014. Later that month, an airstrike carried out by the coalition in Syria’s eastern town of Al Bukamal reportedly killed at least 31 civilians and injured many others.
Sputnik – 27.05.2017
An Israeli combat drone was downed on Friday in southwestern Syria after killing three soldiers , local media reported Saturday.
Troops loyal to the Syrian government shot down a drone overnight suspected of killing three soldiers on Friday in southwestern Syria, according to the reports.
The armed drone was struck down by anti-aircraft units of the Syrian ground forces operating in the Quneitra province, the Al-Masdar newspaper said.
According to the outlet, Syrian troops were attacked in the area between the towns of Al Hamidiyah and Abu Shabta as they made in-roads into territories held by militant forces.
Syrian armed forces reportedly shot down two suspected Israeli drones in the past couple of months.
Syria and Israel have been technically at war since Israeli forces took control over a large part of Golan Heights five decades ago.
By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | May 26, 2017
Two months after the alleged chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Syria and the US cruise missile strike on Al-Shayrat air base from where the alleged chemical attack was allegedly launched, the OPCW investigators charged with investigating the alleged chemical attack have failed to inspect either location.
This has provoked an angry and exasperated statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry yesterday, highlighting especially the failure of the OPCW inspectors to inspect Al-Shayrat air base, the location from which the chemical attempt was allegedly launched
All the conditions have been created there in terms of security and compliance with obligations under the Convention. The Syrian government demanded an urgent visit, thus reaffirming the preparedness to fulfil its obligations that arise from Clause 12 of the OPCW mission mandate and from the provisions specified in Clause 15 of Part IX of the Chemical Weapons Convention appendix on inspections. These documents state in clear terms that an (OPCW) inspection group has the right of access to any and all areas that might have been affected by the employment of chemical weapons. This means all the conditions have been created there (at Shayrat) in terms of security and compliance with obligations under the Convention. Standing in a sharp contrast to it is the inaction of the (OPCW/UN) Joint Mechanism and the detached position of the OPCW leadership that believes a trip to Shayrat is outside of the sphere of competence of the OPCW Mission.
I discussed the obvious lack of enthusiasm of the OPCW inspectors to inspect either location in an article I wrote for The Duran on 21st April 2017. I pointed out in that article that though there might be safety concerns preventing the OPCW inspectors from inspecting the location of the alleged attack at Khan Sheikhoun – which is under Jihadi control – the same was certainly not true of Al-Shayrat air base, which was from where the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun was allegedly launched.
I said that the failure of the OPCW inspectors to inspect either location meant that the investigation of the Khan Sheikhoun attack had effectively collapsed even before it started.
Needless to say it is a basic principle of any criminal investigation – which is what this investigation essentially is – that the investigators inspect the crime scene and any other locations related to it. The fact that the inspectors in this case have not even attempted to discharge this basic task shows that they are not really interested in carrying out an investigation at all.
This is the inevitable consequence of the President of the United States and of Western governments making a pronouncement of the Syrian government’s guilt before any investigation of the Khan Sheikhoun incident had taken place. That inevitably was going to prejudice the conduct of the investigation, with the result that we now see.
What that means is that when the investigation eventually reports its findings they will carry no authority, and will be rejected with good cause by those who dispute its conclusions.
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 26.05.2017
The Syria crisis has seen too many actors playing different yet identical games just as it has seen too many twists, taking place on pretty regular intervals. Whereas the last month (April) saw the proverbial demonization of Assad, as also Russia, for launching a so-called chemical attack that invited a subsequent US missile strike on the Syrian army, this month (May) has seen the US participating in the Russia-Iran led Syria talks in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. What makes it a truly dramatic development is that these talks are based upon the fundamental principle of restoring peace in Syria under Syria’s incumbent leadership, further leading to transition. Now, this is a point that has been the bane of contention between the US-led and Russia-led alliances, a point that saw intense reinforcement by the US and its allies in the wake of the verbal and diplomatic spree that had followed the chemical attack and US strike. While the US and its allies then stated in unequivocal terms that Assad “must go”, Russia and its allies maintained that the Syrian regime had nothing to do with the attack nor did it have in its possession any chemical weapons.
It seems that the dust has settled now and the Trump administration is now apparently revisiting the prism guiding its Syria policy. Welcome the US undersecretary, Stuart E. Jones, who is a professional career diplomat, in Astana.
Stuart Jones’ arrival came after the phone conversation between US President Donald Trump, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. According to reports, the White House said the conversation was a “very good one” and the Kremlin was satisfied that it was “businesslike and constructive”. It was left to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to add texture to it. He said: “Well, it was a very constructive call that the two presidents had. It was a very, very fulsome call, a lot of detailed exchanges. So we’ll see where we go from here.”
For example, while Jones’ presence in Astana stresses that the US remains committed, even if theoretically, to political settlement in Syria, what lends further credence to the up-coming meeting between American and Russian presidents who would try to find “common grounds on Syria” on the sidelines of G20 summit during a possible one-on-one meeting at the beginning of July.
Clearly all this points to the fact that emphasis is back in the US on reaching a political settlement with Russia. But the key questions remain unanswered: what change has made the US revisit its position vis-à-vis the whole Russia-Iran led peace process? Will it lead to a major breakthrough?
Apparently, no significant change has happened at least within the US policy circles which remain dominated by the military establishment. Military brass is visibly in the driver’s seat on foreign-policy issues and the Pentagon harbors an enduring hostility towards Russia and is quite comfortable with an adversarial relationship with Moscow (read: the Pentagon officials think that Russia is a ‘foreign policy test’ for the Trump administration).
Is the US participation then a likely-to-die-soon development, rooted as it seems in the Trump administration’s attempts to carve out an independent foreign policy course to rescue itself from the defence establishment?
Whereas the gradual dispatch of Steve Bannon, chief strategist, into political oblivion in the White House suggests a ‘defeat’ for the anti-establishment elements, it cannot still be gainsaid that within Trump administration there is still a chance of co-operation.
For instance, the very decision to participate in the Astana talks shows that not only the Trump administration is not seeking regime change in Syria, it isn’t ratcheting up, very much unlike the Obama administration, pressure in Ukraine. In fact, in his remarks following talks in March in Moscow, Tillerson did not even mention Crimea once.
Still, there is a lot that doesn’t seem possible at this stage and would seem too much to expect. For one thing, Russia does no longer seem to think that a grand bargain is possible with the US, involving a rebalancing in Asia and beyond, due primarily to the way the Trump administration has succumbed on various occasions to the establishment.
Therefore, what is more likely to happen is small bargains in separate dealings on the various issues both Russia and the US have locked their horns in. The little-bit of softening we have seen is not a massive melting of the ice; it is only a narrow opening, not apparently capable of experiencing a heat-boom. For a boom to happen, a lot depends upon how the Trump administration deals with the domestic pressure coming in the wake of its warm gestures. Will another twist take place? Let’s wait and see!
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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