Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 17 January that a Kurdish delegation representing the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) visited Syria’s capital Damascus today, to engage in dialogue with the Syrian government in light of the potential Syrian-Turkish rapprochement.
According to the report, the SDF “welcomed” Damascus’ insistence that the rapprochement not officially begin until Turkiye guarantees its intention to withdraw from Syria. Quoting the head of the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) foreign relations office, Badran Jia Kurd, who led the delegation, it has a priority “to develop Syrian-Syrian dialogue as an ideal path to a political solution.”
At the same time, however, in continuation of its attempt to foil any chance of Syrian-Turkish reconciliation, Washington is now trying to, in a sense, reform and restructure the Kurdish organization to make it more acceptable to Ankara.
A 12 January report released by Al-Akhbar stated that in an attempt to do this, the US has asked the SDF to disassociate from Turkiye’s sworn foe, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and clear Raqqa and Deir Ezzor of Kurdish militants so that they could be overseen by ‘local councils’ made up of Arabs.
It is worth noting that the Kurds have expressed reluctance over this US project and have said that despite being willing to negotiate, they cannot accept to make such large concessions.
Proceeding with this plan, the US is currently recruiting Arab fighters to eventually incorporate into the SDF, thereby working to make it somewhat more acceptable to Turkiye. These Arab fighters are being recruited into the Raqqa Revolutionary Brigade (Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa), the revived version of a former extremist faction which was allied to Jabhat al-Nusra in 2012, and then fought ISIS alongside the SDF from 2015 to 2018 under US sponsorship before a dispute saw them break apart.
Having been inactive for a few years, Al-Akhbar reported on 20 December 2022 that Washington has brought this group into action once again, giving it the capacity to recruit fighters, and promised its members monthly salaries. Later reports claimed that the US has already begun making payments to the Raqqa Brigade, which it hopes can remerge with the SDF at some point.
Today, Al-Akhbar reports that the Raqqa Brigade is coordinating with the Syrian National Alliance (SNA), a New York-based opposition group made up of Syrian exiles, which is supposed to make up the brigade’s political wing.
However, as Washington scrambles to forge together alliances in an attempt to keep Turkiye and the SDF away from Damascus and closer to each other, the Kurds have expressed wariness over these efforts.
“This vision cannot be viewed positively, given the difficulty of persuading Turkiye to end hostility towards the Kurds in general … the most appropriate solution for the region lies with Damascus,” Kurdish sources close to the SDF have said.
In other news, the armed opposition’s leading faction, the extremist, former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has continued to voice its complete rejection of Ankara’s diplomatic turnaround and is currently mobilizing heavy reinforcements.
January 17, 2023
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Aletho News | Syria, Turkey, United States |
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Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, formerly the leader of the foreign ‘Soldiers of the Caucasus’ group in Syria, and now an official member of Ukraine’s international legion (Photo: Atlas News )
As the prospect of a rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus becomes more imminent, the most extreme elements of Syria’s armed opposition have been feeling a sting of betrayal, accelerating a trend that, over the past year, has seen many jihadists relocate to Ukraine.
This is especially true for foreign militants, particularly those from Central Asia or the Caucasus.
On 12 January, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that after several months of disappearance, the well-known Chechen extremist and leader of the ‘Soldiers of the Caucasus’ militia, Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, has reappeared in Ukraine as a member of Kiev’s so-called ‘international legion,’ established in order to attract and recruit foreign fighters against Russia.
According to the report, there has recently been news of an increased number of foreign fighters leaving Syria to make their way over to the “new battlefield,” reinforced by “Turkiye’s lack of need for ‘jihadists’ on Syrian soil” and its “definite interest … to get rid of them.” This comes following recent talks aimed at reconciling Damascus and Ankara, over which the opposition has already expressed a great distaste for.
The report also highlights a leading role played by Turkish intelligence in facilitating this cross-country transfer of extremists, “at least during the first months of the Russian-Ukrainian war.” This could have been Ankara’s way of disposing of militants from Syria and clearing the way for a solution to the Syrian war (provided it was serious about reconciliation at the time, and still is). According to Al-Akhbar, Shishani himself passed through Turkiye on his way to the “new land of jihad,” just as he initially had on his way to join the war in Syria.
Syrian officials have also suggested Washington’s role in facilitating these transfers to Ukraine, as the US has been involved in the relocation of extremists between Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.
On 7 January, the official account of Ukraine’s intelligence agency posted a video on Twitter showing Shishani and a group of fighters engaging in clashes with Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. The video essentially serves as propaganda designed specifically to attract extremist militants from Syria to Ukraine.
Shishani’s disappearance coincided with the establishment of recruitment centers in northern Syria designed to send fighters off to Ukraine, as Al-Akhbar reported in March last year.
Soon after the start of the Ukrainian war, hundreds of fighters from ISIS and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the Al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, began making their way to Ukraine to take part in a newer, more direct front against Russia.
On 1 March, before these reports began emerging, Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Bashar al-Jaafari, predicted this.
“We, as a state, have evidence that the US military in Syria is transferring terrorists from one place to another, especially members of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra … So, one should not be surprised, and we do not exclude, that tomorrow ISIS terrorists will be sent to Ukraine,” he said.
If the plan for a restoration of ties between Syria and Turkiye is fruitful, and if Ankara chooses to officially abandon Syria’s armed opposition, which the extremists fear has already happened, then it is a likely possibility that the raging battlefield in Ukraine will emerge as a new safe haven for Syria’s jihadist movement.
January 12, 2023
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Militarism | ISIS, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, United States |
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During a speech in Ankara on 5 January, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted that a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad may soon take place, “as part of efforts for peace.” He added that a tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia and Syria is scheduled to be held in the near future for the first time since 2011.
The upcoming meeting aims to enhance communication after Russian-sponsored talks between the Turkish and Syrian defense ministers were held in Moscow on 28 December. The meeting was the highest-level of official meetings between Ankara and Damascus since the start of the Syrian war.
In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 5 January, Erdogan called on the Syrian government to “take the steps to achieve a tangible solution concerning the case of Syria.”
US seeks to establish a middle ground between Ankara and the SDF so as to prevent Turkish-Syrian reconciliation
The Syrian-Turkish rapprochement via declared Russian mediation was paralleled by Emirati-Syrian rapprochement – the latest of which was a “brotherly” meeting aimed at strengthening cooperation and restoring historical relations between Assad and Foreign Minister of the UAE Abdallah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, according to SANA.
Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that the UAE seeks “to join Russia in sponsoring Syrian-Turkish relations at a high level,” noting that the Emirati foreign minister’s visit to Damascus sought to arrange Turkiye’s participation in the tripartite meeting of Syrian-Turkish-Russian foreign ministers, making it a quadripartite meeting.
The meeting is meant to pave the way for a presidential meeting between Erdogan and Assad in the presence of Putin. Reportedly, the UAE has offered to host this summit, with a possibility of a high-level UAE official being present at the meeting if it will be held in Moscow.
Asharq Al-Awsat added that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu plans to visit Washington on 16-17 January to brief US officials on the developments of Turkish-Syrian normalization, his meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Faysal Mikdad, and the “roadmap” sponsored by Moscow in the context of security, military, political and economic fields – as agreed upon by the defense ministers as well as the intelligence chiefs in Syria, Turkiye and Russia over the past weeks.
As Turkiye has been launching successive operations against Kurdish groups both on the Turkish-Syrian border as well as within Syria itself under ‘Operation Claw Sword,’ a Western official informed Asharq Al-Awsat that a high-ranking US official will be visiting Ankara in the coming hours as part of efforts to mediate between Turkiye and the SDF in northeastern Syria.
Ankara has demanded that Moscow and Washington commit to the implementation of the bilateral military agreements signed at the end of 2019. The agreements stipulate the withdrawal of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to beyond 30 kilometers from the Turkish border, and from the areas of Manbij and Tal Rifaat, in addition to the withdrawal of all heavy weaponry.
The SDF says that it has fulfilled its obligations, and will not withdraw its police force – known as the Asayish – nor dismantle its local councils, despite Turkiye’s insistence on dissolving all Kurdish military and civil institutions in the area.
Meanwhile, Cavusoglu told media on 29 December that Ankara is willing to withdraw from the territory it occupies in northern Syria and hand it over to Damascus in the event that “political stability” is reached – after cooperation in “neutralizing ISIS members, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the YPG.”
The Saudi newspaper’s report stated that US mediation seeks to reach a “compromise” between the Kurdish groups and Ankara without a new Turkish incursion taking place ahead of the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections in mid-2023. This mediation seems to be an attempt at circumventing the imminent Syrian-Turkish reconciliation.
Another official source disclosed that Ankara was “uncomfortable with the leaks following the meeting of the Syrian, Turkish and Russian defense ministers in Moscow, and that it had agreed to a full withdrawal.” However, the source confirmed that, “it is true that Ankara and Damascus consider the PKK a common threat, and will work against any separatist agenda, because it is an existential threat to both countries,” adding that the two countries will “work to open the Aleppo-Latakia Highway.”
Following the UAE’s visit to Damascus, which came after the US called on its allies and international partners to refrain from normalizing ties with Syria, Asharq Al-Awsat quoted an official as saying that the US has been the only western country to issue a statement against normalization, and is working alongside Paris, Berlin, and London to assume a united stance against normalization with Syria.
Communication is currently underway for a meeting between the representatives of Paris, Berlin, London, and Washington and UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pederson in Geneva on 23 January. This meeting will take place before Pedersen’s visit to Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister to “confirm the position against normalization, and support the provision of funding for electricity projects within the timeline of early recovery,” stipulated by a resolution for international aid that will be extended before 10 January.
Asharq Al-Awsat said that the UAE has proposed to contribute to the funding of economic and electrical projects in Syria – within the confines of the Caesar Act.
Simultaneously, Jordan, who was the first to open high-level channels of communication with Damascus, is leading efforts alongside other Arab countries to reach a “united Arab position that defines Arab demands in order to make normalization possible.”
The newspaper quoted another western official as saying that Jordan is calling for coordination to put pressure on Damascus to provide political and geopolitical steps for the coming phase in southern Syria, as Amman confirmed that there has been an increase in the smuggling of Captagon, weapons and ammunition across the Syrian border following the start of the normalization process. Additionally, Amman has said that the Iranian presence in southern Syria near the Jordanian border has not diminished, and that there has been an expansion of ISIS activity in the area, according to the official.
Syria’s Arab League membership was suspended in November of 2011 following the start of the Syrian war, and it has been excluded ever since.
January 8, 2023
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Aletho News | Middle East, Russia, Syria, Turkey, United States |
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has expressed the possibility of meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in forthcoming talks with Russia to discuss peace and stability in the region and in the Arab country.
Erdogan said on Thursday that a trilateral meeting of the foreign ministers from Turkey, Russia and Syria would first be held to further develop contacts after last week’s landmark talks between the defense ministers of the three countries in Moscow.
“We will bring our foreign ministers together and then, depending on developments, we may come together as the Russian, Turkish, and Syrian leaders. So, our aim is to establish peace and stability in the region,” Erdogan said at a meeting of his Justice and Development (AK) Party in the capital Ankara, without specifying an exact date for the possible meeting.
“Turkish, Russian, and Syrian defense ministers and intelligence chiefs came together in Moscow. Hopefully, the foreign ministers will come together in a trilateral format,” he added.
On December 28, the Turkish, Russian, and Syrian defense ministers gathered in Moscow to discuss counter-terrorism efforts in Syria, and they agreed to continue tripartite meetings to ensure stability in Syria and in the wider region.
The meeting revolved around the Syria crisis, the refugee issue, and joint counter-terrorism efforts against terror outfits in the Arab country.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said a second meeting could take place in mid-January.
Turkey severed its relations with Syria in March 2012, a year after the Arab country found itself in the grip of rampant and hugely deadly violence waged by foreign-backed militants and terrorists, including those allegedly supported by Ankara.
Turkey has for the past 11 years backed armed terrorists that unsuccessfully sought to topple the democratically-elected government of Assad, with Erdogan even calling him a “murderer.”
Since 2016, Turkey has also conducted three major ground operations against United States-backed militants based in northern Syria.
The Turkish government accuses the militants, who are known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of bearing ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party terrorist group.
Turkey has been launching airstrikes on northern Syria and Iraq since November 20, against, what it calls, hideouts belonging to the PKK.
January 5, 2023
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Illegal Occupation | Russia, Syria, Turkey |
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The prospects for peace, justice, and the advancement of liberty in 2023 may at first seem further away than ever. Washington’s determination to overthrow the Russian government via a proxy war in Ukraine has brought the threat of nuclear war closer than ever in history. The mainstream media is even “normalizing” the idea that a nuclear attack on the US is really no big deal. Yahoo News wrote yesterday that a “public health expert” is “concerned” that Americans are not sufficiently prepared for nuclear bombs hitting major US cities!
The Yahoo article even links to a FEMA-authored “nuclear detonation planning guide” to help us better get through a barrage of nuclear missiles. Are they insane? They act as if a nuclear attack on the United States is just another inconvenience to plan for, like an ice storm or a hurricane.
The FEMA guide’s advice on what to do during a nuclear attack is, “Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.” Stay tuned to what? Have they not seen the photos from Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
While we are foolishly edging toward war, with the media and Beltway neocons cheering it on, there are still some bright spots we can look to in 2023.
First, polls consistently demonstrate increasing American opposition to US involvement in Ukraine. Republicans are set to take control of the House this week right as Republican voter support for more military aid to Ukraine has seen a dramatic and steady decline. US households continue to struggle under runaway inflation and a looming economic crack-up and more Americans are going to demand answers from their government as to why we have sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine while so many are struggling at home.
Second, a recent Rasmussen poll has revealed that in light of the “Twitter Files” – which showed that the FBI viewed the social media platform as a paid subsidiary of the US government – some 63 percent of likely US voters “believe Congress should investigate whether the FBI was involved in censoring information on social media sites.” A large percentage of those polled believe the FBI has been politicized by the current Administration, which may give incoming Republicans in the House some backbone to launch an actual investigation. Without the First Amendment, the other Amendments are virtually meaningless, and when the US government can strong-arm “private” businesses to attack free speech, freedom has no future.
A third bright point is that the nearly twelve-year war on Syria might finally be closer to settlement. Syrian and Turkish defense ministers held negotiations brokered by Moscow which resulted in an agreement by Turkey to withdraw its military forces from Syrian soil. There are rumors that a meeting between the leaders of Turkey and Syria may come as soon as early this new year.
The destruction of Syria was part of the Obama/Hillary/neocon plan to “remake” the Middle East, but as always these interventionist schemes have only resulted in death and destruction. Washington continues to lecture Russia about occupying Ukrainian soil, yet the US military has for years occupied Syrian territory for the sole purpose of backing extremists and stealing Syrian oil. Turkey leaving Syria will add pressure for the US to leave Syria. That is a good thing.
The new year is upon us. It might be easy to feel dejected. But for we who promote peace, freedom, and justice, there is much to build on. Do not allow your voices to be silenced!
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute
January 3, 2023
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Militarism | FBI, Syria, United States |
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Iran’s Foreign Ministry says the assassination of the country’s top anti-terror commander Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani by the United States is a “glaring example of an organized terrorist act.”
The ministry made the remark in a Monday statement, issued to mark the third anniversary of the assassination of Gen. Soleimani and his companions on the direct order of then US President Donald Trump.
“Indubitable as it is, the criminal act of assassinating General Soleimani, designed and executed by the United States, constitutes yet another glaring example of an ‘organized terrorist act’,” the statement said.
It added that based on legal and international regulations, “the American regime bears ‘definite international responsibility’ for this crime, noting that all the agents, instigators, perpetrators, aiders and abettors of this terrorist crime bear responsibility.
“In this regard, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in conjunction with the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran and other agencies, has adopted, from the very outset, a number of measures premised upon the legal principle of ‘combating impunity of crimes’ in order to hold the above-mentioned to account and bring them to justice,” it added.
The ministry noted that the Joint Judicial Committee between Iran and Iraq also continues its work to follow up on the US act of terrorism.
Elsewhere in the statement, the ministry said that in cooperation with other relevant institutions, it has “set up the Special Committee on Legal and International Follow-up of the Assassination Case of General Soleimani and His Companions.”
“Ever since its establishment, the Committee has been investigating and pursuing the legal aspects of the case and has thus far taken several measures to press the issue at all domestic, bilateral, regional and international levels. The Committee is determined to proceed in all seriousness until its objectives are fully met and the international responsibility of the American government is invoked,” it noted.
“In line with its principled policies to counter terrorism and extremism, the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to work towards the establishment of peace and stability at the regional and international levels. And although the martyrdom of General Qassem Soleimani is too great a loss for Iran and Iranians, it will by no means prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from pursuing its lofty goals,” the statement said.
General Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were martyred along with their companions in a US drone strike on January 3, 2020.
The two anti-terror commanders were tremendously respected and admired across the region for their instrumental role in fighting and decimating the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, who heads a special committee formed to follow up on General Soleimani’s murder case from legal and international aspects, on Saturday said Tehran is seriously pursuing a judicial process to serve justice in the case of Soleimani’s assassination, stressing that the indictment in the case is nearing its final stages.
January 2, 2023
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War Crimes | Da’esh, Iran, Iraq, Syria, United States |
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The curtain is coming down on the brutal 11-year old Syrian conflict, which former US President and Nobel Laureate Barack Obama initiated, as the Arab Spring swept through West Asia two decades ago. The United States has suffered yet another big setback in West Asia as the year 2022 draws to a close. The unfolding Turkish-Syrian reconciliation process under Russian mediation is to be seen as a saga of betrayal and vengeance.
Ankara came under immense pressure from the Obama Administration in 2011 to spearhead the regime change project in Syria. Obama blithely assumed that Turkiye would gleefully serve as the charioteer of “moderate” Islamism for the transformation in West Asia. But Ankara took its time to calibrate its foreign policies to adapt to the Arab Spring before responding to the shifting landscape in Syria.
Erdogan was caught unprepared by the uprising in Syria at a juncture when Ankara was pursuing a “zero-problems” policy with Turkiye’s neighbours. Ankara was unsure how the Arab Spring would play out and remained silent when the revolt first appeared in Tunisia. Even on Egypt, Erdogan made an emotional call for Hosni Mubarak’s departure only when he sensed, correctly so, that Obama was decoupling from America’s staunch ally in Cairo.
Syria was the ultimate test case and a real challenge for Erdogan. Ankara had invested heavily in the improvement of relations with Syria within the framework of the so-called Adana Agreement in 1998 in the downstream of Turkish military’s massive showdown with Damascus over the latter harbouring the PKK [Kurdish] leader Ocalan. Erdogan initially did not want Bashar al-Assad to lose power, and advised him to reform. The families of Erdogan and Assad used to holiday together.
Obama had to depute then CIA chief David Petraeus to visit Turkey twice in 2012 to persuade Erdogan to engage with the US in operational planning aimed at bringing about the end of the Assad government. It was Petraeus who proposed to Ankara a covert program of arming and training Syrian rebels.
But by 2013 already, Erdogan began sensing that Obama himself had only a limited American involvement in Syria and preferred to lead from the rear. In 2014, Erdogan went public that his relations with Obama had diminished, saying that he was disappointed about not getting direct results on the Syrian conflict. By that time, more than 170,000 people had died and 2.9 million Syrians had fled to neighbouring countries, including Turkey, and the fighting had forced another 6.5 million people from their homes within Syria.
Simply put, Erdogan felt embittered that he was left holding a can of worms and Obama had scooted off. Worse still, the Pentagon began aligning with the Syrian Kurdish groups linked to the PKK. (In October 2014, US began providing supplies to Kurdish forces and in November 2015, US special forces were deployed in Syria.)
Indeed, since then, Erdogan had been protesting in vain that the US, a NATO ally, had aligned with a terrorist group (Syrian Kurds known as YPG) that threatened Turkiye’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
It is against such a backdrop that the two meetings in Moscow on Wednesday between the defence ministers and intelligence chiefs of Turkey and Syria in the presence of their Russian counterparts took place. Erdogan’s reconciliation process with Assad is quintessentially his sweet revenge for the American betrayal. Erdogan sought help from Russia, the archetypal enemy country in the US and NATO’s sights, in order to communicate with Assad who is a pariah in American eyes. The matrix is self-evident.
On Thursday, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said: “At the meeting (in Moscow), we discussed what we could do to improve the situation in Syria and the region as soon as possible while ensuring peace, tranquility and stability… We reiterated our respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty rights of all our neighbours, especially Syria and Iraq, and that our sole aim is the fight against terrorism, we have no other purpose.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been counselling Erdogan in recent years that Turkiye’s security concerns are best tackled in coordination with Damascus and that the Adana Agreement could provide a framework of cooperation. The Turkish Defence Ministry readout said the meeting in Moscow took place in a “constructive atmosphere” and it was agreed to continue the format of trilateral meetings “to ensure and maintain stability in Syria and the region as a whole.”
Without doubt, the normalisation between Ankara and Damascus will impact regional security and, in particular, the Syrian war, given the clout Turkiye wields with the residual Syrian opposition. A Turkish ground operation in northern Syria may not be necessary if Ankara and Damascus were to revive the Adana Agreement. In fact, Akar disclosed that Ankara, Moscow and Damascus are working on carrying out joint missions on the ground in Syria.
The Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu’s willingness right in the middle of the Ukraine war to take the steering wheel and navigate its reconciliation with Syria adds an altogether new dimension to the deepening strategic ties between Moscow and Ankara. For Erdogan too, Syria becomes the newest addition to his policy initiatives lately to improve Turkiye’s relations with the regional states. Normalisation with Syria will go down well with Turkish public opinion and that has implications for Erdogan’s bid for a renewed mandate in the upcoming elections.
From the Syrian perspective, the normalisation with Turkiye is going to be far more consequential than the restoration of ties with various regional states (starting with the UAE) in recent years who had fuelled the conflict. Turkiye’s equations with Syrian militant groups (eg., Syrian National Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), its continued occupation of Syrian territory, Syrian refugees in Turkiye (numbering 3.6 million), etc. are vital issues affecting Syria’s security.
The US resents Erdogan’s move to normalise with Assad — and that too, with Russia’s helping hand. It is now even more unlikely to give up its military presence in Syria or its alliance with the Syrian Kurdish group YPG (which Ankara regards as an affiliate of the PKK.)
But the YPG will find itself in a tight spot. As Syria requests Turkiye to withdraw from its territories (Idlib and so-called operation areas) and stop supporting armed groups, Turkiye in return will insist on pushing the YPG away from the border. (The government-aligned Syrian daily Al-Watan reported quoting sources that at the tripartite meeting in Moscow, Ankara has committed to withdrawing all its forces from Syrian territory.)
Indeed, the replacement of the YPG militia by the Syrian government forces along the borders with Turkiye would lead to the weakening of both YPG and the US military presence. However, the question will still remain unanswered as regards the place of Kurds in the future of Syria.
The US State Department stated recently, “The US will not upgrade its diplomatic relations with the Assad regime and does not support other countries upgrading their relations. The US urges states in the region to consider carefully the atrocities inflicted by the Assad regime on the Syrian people over the last decade. The US believes that stability in Syria and the greater region can be achieved through a political process that represents the will of all Syrians.”
Last week’s meetings in Moscow show that Russia’s standing in the West Asian region is far from defined by the Ukraine conflict. Russian influence on Syria remains intact and Moscow will continue to shape Syria’s transition out of conflict zone and consolidate its own long-term presence in Eastern Mediterranean.
OPEC Plus has gained traction. Russia’s ties with the Gulf states are steadily growing. The Russia-Iran strategic ties are at their highest level in history. And the return of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister means that the Russian-Israeli ties are heading for a reset. Clearly, Russian diplomacy is on a roll in West Asia.
Conventional wisdom was that Russia and Turkiye’s geopolitical interests would inevitably collide once the floodgates were opened in Ukraine. Herein lies the paradox, for, what has happened is entirely to the contrary.
December 31, 2022
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Aletho News | Obama, Russia, Syria, Turkey, United States |
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Türkiye has agreed to fully withdraw its troops from northern Syria following tripartite talks involving Moscow, Ankara and Damascus earlier this week, Syrian newspaper Al-Watan has reported.
The three countries’ defense ministers – Hulusi Akar, Ali Mahmoud Abbas and Sergey Shoigu – met in Moscow on Wednesday for the first meeting of its kind since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011.
According to the paper’s source in Damascus, the negotiations resulted in “Türkiye’s consent to completely withdraw its troops from the Syrian territories that it occupies in the north of the country.”
Ankara and Damascus also expressed a common view that the Syrian-based Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey associates with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), “are agents of Israel and the US, and pose a grave threat to both Türkiye and Syria.”
Türkiye considers the separatist PKK and allied Kurdish groups to be “terrorist organizations” that threaten its national security. The Turkish military carried out airstrikes against YPG targets in northern Syria in November, with Ankara saying a ground operation in the area was also on the cards.
A special trilateral commission will be created by Russia, Türkiye and Syria to ensure that the agreements reached in Moscow are honored, Al-Watan reported.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told local media on Saturday that “one shouldn’t expect that everything will be solved at once in a single meeting.”
In Moscow, Türkiye “emphasized that we respect Syria’s territorial integrity and sovereign rights, and that our only goal is the fight against terrorism” including the PKK/YPG and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), he said.
Ankara and Damascus have agreed to continue talks to deepen reconciliation, Akar added. He also suggested that those negotiations could even result in a joint anti-terrorist operation involving the two countries, which would happen “if we can solve our problems related to defense and security, if we can meet our needs.”
The Syrian side had earlier described the meeting in the Russian capital as “positive,” while Russia’s Defense Ministry said the talks had been conducted in a constructive manner and stressed the need for the continuation of such engagement.
December 31, 2022
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Aletho News | Israel, PKK, Russia, Syria, Turkey, United States, YPG, Zionism |
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Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told media on 29 December that Ankara is willing to withdraw from the territory it occupies in northern Syria and hand it over to Damascus in the event that “political stability” is reached.
Cavusoglu’s comments came just one day after a high-level meeting in Moscow between the defense ministers of Turkiye, Russia, and Syria, aimed at ensuring “stability in Syria and the region.” This was the first ministerial meeting between Syria and Turkiye since 2011.
Speaking to reporters, the Turkish Foreign Minister also said that it was possible to establish a joint mechanism between Damascus and Ankara aimed at ‘fighting terrorism.’
Cavusoglu also lauded his country’s ‘respect’ for Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, claiming that its occupation is solely based on combatting terror and “securing stability,” something he said the Syrian authorities were incapable of doing.
He went on to say that Turkiye would continue fighting terrorism in Syria, despite the hindrances posed by “political differences” between Ankara and Damascus.
Recently, both the US and Russia have been attempting to mediate a withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the Turkish border with Syria to prevent a long-promised Turkish ground offensive from taking place. This potential ground offensive comes under the pretext of avenging the deadly 13 October Istanbul blast.
In order to prevent the offensive, Russia has offered a complete pullback of the SDF from the Turkish border, as Ankara has requested.
Although Moscow has been negotiating a potential redeployment of Syrian troops to this area, Washington has been seeking to compromise Russia’s mediation efforts by reviving an inactive Islamist militia in the north of the country – with the intention of placing them on the border, thereby preventing a handover of the territory to Damascus.
From Syria’s perspective, genuine negotiations with Turkiye are unlikely to begin until Ankara accepts a complete withdrawal of its forces from Syria.
Although Washington plans to compromise an eventual return of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to the Turkish border, Cavusoglu’s latest comments signify a potential Turkish willingness to make concessions.
December 30, 2022
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Illegal Occupation | Russia, Syria, Turkey, United States |
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According to the Syrian news agency SANA, demonstrations against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US occupation in Syria continue to grow.
The protests, which are still ongoing on 27 December, demand the expulsion of US forces and their regional allies from the Deir Ezzor province.
Activists quoted by the Syrian news agency reported that residents of the village of Al-Atala blocked roads with burning tires and chanted slogans against the SDF.
Locals demand the expulsion of the forces and want to see the prosecution of its commanders for alleged crimes they have committed in the region, as well as the theft of national resources such as oil.
The Kurdish-majority SDF dominates most of the oil-rich Al-Jazira region and receives arms, money, and training from US occupation forces.
On 25 December, protests broke out against the SDF in the Deir Ezzor countryside, denouncing the alleged kidnapping of two girls who sought refuge, the girls were allegedly raped and killed, and the bodies were dumped in a village in the western countryside of Deir Ezzor.
Meanwhile, according to a report published by the Lebanese Al-Akhbar, the US is currently attempting to rebuild Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa (Raqqa Revolutionary Brigade) – a former Islamist militia opposed to the government in Damascus.
The report states that US efforts are aimed at appeasing Turkiye by facilitating the withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the border – as Ankara has requested – and replacing it with a revived version of the former opposition group to serve as a buffer zone on the Syrian-Turkish border.
In a recent meeting, US officers told the group’s leader to consolidate a formidable force of 3,000 fighters and assured him that Washington would secure their monthly paychecks.
Washington’s scheme to revive the group comes as the US continually attempts to strengthen the foothold of its occupation in Syria, particularly in Raqqa, where they have planned to construct a new military base.
December 27, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | Syria, Turkey, United States |
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The damning exposure of collusion between the Pentagon and Twitter raises further suspicions about Washington’s ongoing online operations in West Asia
The Cradle has previously deconstructed the Pentagon’s online bot and troll operations targeting Iran. These wide-ranging efforts, over many years, sought to destabilize the Iranian government by disseminating and inciting negative sentiment against it, on a variety of social media platforms.
Their exposure led to the White House demanding an internal audit of all Department of Defense (DoD) “psychological operations online.” Ostensibly, this was triggered by high-level concerns that Washington’s “moral high ground” was potentially compromised by the “manipulation of audiences overseas.”
The audit was revealed in a Washington Post article, the details of which pointed to a very different rationale. One passage noted that representatives of Facebook and Twitter directly informed the Pentagon, repeatedly, over several years, that its psychological warfare efforts on their platforms had been detected and identified as such.
Weaponizing social media
Frustratingly, the focus wasn’t even that these operations were being conducted in the first place, but that the Pentagon got busted doing so.
For example, Facebook’s Director of Global Threat Disruption, David Agranovich, who spent six years at the Pentagon before serving as the US National Security Council’s Director for Intelligence, reportedly reached out to the DoD in the summer of 2020, warning his former colleagues that “if Facebook could sniff them out, so could US adversaries.”
“His point was, ‘Guys, you got caught. That’s a problem,’” an individual “familiar with the conversation” told the Washington Post.
The obvious takeout from this excerpt – unnoticed by any mainstream journalist at the time – was that Facebook and Twitter staffers actively welcome their platforms being weaponized in information warfare campaigns, as long as it’s the US intelligence community doing it, and they don’t get caught in flagrante.
Moreover, in the event they are compromised, those same social network luminaries readily provide intimate insight on how US spooks can improve their operational security, and better conceal their activities from foreign enemies. Unmentioned is that these “foes” include tens of millions of ordinary people who are the ultimate target of such malign initiatives, of which residents of West Asia are preponderant victims.
‘Whitelisting’
Internal emails and documents from Twitter, published by journalist Lee Fang, have now confirmed that Twitter executives not only approved of the Pentagon’s network of troll and bot accounts, but also provided significant internal protection for them through “whitelisting.”
This practice allowed these ‘superpower accounts’ to operate with impunity, despite breaking numerous platform rules and behaving egregiously. The “whitelist” status also effectively granted these accounts the algorithmic and amplificatory privileges of Twitter verification without a “blue check.”
As The Cradle previously reported, these accounts over many years sought to influence perceptions and behavior across West Asia, in particular Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In many cases, users had “deepfake” profile photos – mocked up pictures of realistic human faces generated by artificial intelligence.
Target: West Asia
In respect to Twitter-enabled activities against Tehran, multiple different personae were formed to attack the Iranian government from different ideological and political positions. These were not your standard ‘opposition’ accounts – the ops were more sophisticated. Some posed as ultra-conservative Shia Muslims critical of the administration’s “liberal” policies; others as progressive radicals condemning the extent of the Republic’s enforcement of Islamic code.
Many users amplified Washington’s disinformation, disseminated by US government-funded Voice of America’s Farsi-language service, among a myriad of other US funded and directed propaganda platforms. All along, Twitter higher-ups were aware of these accounts, but did not shut them down and even protected them.
The impact of the collaboration between Twitter and the Pentagon on the tweets that users around the world saw and did not see is unknown, but likely significant. Twitter staff were aware of what they were doing.
For example, in July 2017, an official from the Pentagon’s central command for West Asia and North Africa (CENTCOM) emailed the social media network to request the “blue check” verification of one account and the “whitelisting” of 52 accounts that “we use to amplify certain messages.”
The official was concerned that some of these accounts, “a few” of which “had built a real following,” were no longer “indexing on hashtags.” He moreover requested “priority service” for several accounts, including the since-deleted @YemenCurrent, which broadcast announcements about US drone strikes in Yemen. The account emphasized how “accurate” these attacks were; that they only killed dangerous terrorists, never civilians – a hallmark of US drone war propaganda.
Of course, US drone strikes are anything but precise. In fact, declassified Pentagon documents indicate there was “an institutional acceptance of an inevitable collateral toll,” and that innocent people were killed indiscriminately.
In 2014, it was calculated that, in attempting to slay 41 specific, named individuals, Washington had murdered 1,147 people, among them many children – a rate of 28 deaths for every person targeted.
‘Misleading, deceptive, and spammy’
In June 2020, Twitter spokesperson Nick Pickles testified to the US House Intelligence Committee on the company’s determined efforts to end any and all “coordinated platform manipulation efforts” on the part of hostile enemy states, stating these efforts were his employer’s “top priority.”
“Our goal is to remove bad faith actors and to advance public understanding of these critical topics. Twitter defines state-backed information operations as coordinated platform manipulation efforts that can be attributed with a high degree of confidence to state-affiliated actors,” he declared.
“State-backed information operations are typically associated with misleading, deceptive, and spammy behavior. These behaviors differentiate coordinated manipulative behavior from legitimate speech on behalf of individuals and political parties.”
The following month, however, Twitter executives were invited by the Pentagon to attend classified briefings in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) to discuss the defense of the Pentagon’s “coordinated and manipulative” social media activities.
Then-Twitter lawyer Stacia Cardille noted in an internal email the Pentagon may be seeking to retroactively classify its malign online activities “to obfuscate their activity in this space, and this may represent an overclassification to avoid embarrassment.”
Jim Baker, then-deputy general counsel of Twitter and an FBI veteran, subsequently noted that the DoD had employed “poor tradecraft” in setting up numerous Twitter accounts, and was now covering its tracks in order to prevent anyone finding out multiple users “are linked to each other” or to the US government, one way or another.
“DoD might want to give us a timetable for shutting them down in a more prolonged way that will not compromise any ongoing operations or reveal their connections to DoD,” he speculated.
Free speech absolutism
So it was the compromised accounts that were permitted to stay active, spreading disinformation and distorting the public mind all the while. Some even remain extant to this day.
To say the least, Twitter executives were well-aware that their eager and enthusiastic support of Pentagon psyops would not be received well if publicized. Shortly before the September Washington Post report on the DoD’s audit of these efforts, Twitter lawyers and lobbyists were alerted by a company communications executive about the forthcoming exposé.
After the Post story was published, Twitter staffers congratulated themselves and each other over how effectively the company concealed its role in covering up CENTCOM’s deeds, with one communications official thanking a welter of executives “for doing all that you could to manage this one,” noting with relief the story “didn’t seem to get too much traction.”
Were it not for the series of #TwitterFiles disclosures since Elon Musk controversially took over the company, these dark, shameful secrets would likely have remained buried forever. The full extent of the company’s mephitic collusion with US intelligence agencies, and the comparable, simultaneous collaboration of every major social network, must now be told in full.
December 27, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | DoD, Facebook, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Twitter, United States, Voice of America, Yemen |
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Information continues to roll out about how Twitter knowingly became a conduit for US propaganda efforts abroad that only serve to produce more violence and chaos. Sadly, this news has seemingly been greeted with a collective yawn by both the US corporate press and the American public.
A recent article by The Intercept details how Twitter facilitated efforts by US Central Command, or CENTCOM, a division of the US Defense Department, to spread propaganda, particularly in and about the Middle East using fake accounts posing as private individuals in the region. These accounts were given special treatment by Twitter, which accorded them the same privileges as ‘blue-checked’ verified accounts, which, as The Intercept article describes, “would have bestowed a number of advantages, such as invulnerability to algorithmic bots that flag accounts for spam or abuse, as well as other strikes that lead to decreased visibility or suspension.” And, of course, this was being done at a time when Twitter was deleting hundreds of accounts it viewed as associated with the Russian government and designating other such accounts as “Russian-state affiliated media” even when, as in the case of some of my friends, such as Fiorella Isabel, these accounts were of private individuals writing in their own, personal capacity.
One example of an account given “priority service” by Twitter was @yemencurrent (now deleted), which, among other things, “had emphasized that U.S. drone strikes were ‘accurate’ and killed terrorists, not civilians, and promoted the U.S. and Saudi-backed assault on Houthi rebels in that country.” Such a whitewashing of the US-Saudi war on Yemen – a war barely covered in the US press and therefore barely known to most Americans – is especially infuriating given that that war has been marked by the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure on a colossal scale and by the US government’s willful failure to even properly account for civilian casualties.
The US’ own Government Accountability Office has, in a restricted-access document reported upon by the New York Times in June, concluded that, since the war began in 2015, “[t]he State Department and the Defense Department have failed to assess civilian casualties caused by a Saudi-led coalition in the catastrophic war in Yemen and the use of American-made weapons in the killings . . . .” The NYT also reported that earlier, “in August 2020, the State Department inspector general issued a report that said the department had failed to take proper measures to reduce civilian deaths.” The result has been an estimated 150,000+ deaths, including nearly 15,000 civilians, and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in history.
And yet, Twitter aided and abetted CENTCOM’s misinformation campaign through fake accounts claiming that civilians were somehow not being harmed by US-manufactured weapons – claims that deceive American taxpayers about the war they are bankrolling, and which are designed to prime the government pumps for more aid to this unholy conflict that President Biden had promised to stop funding.
According to The Intercept article, other fake CENTCOM accounts given priority by Twitter “focused on promoting U.S.-supported militias in Syria and anti-Iran messages in Iraq.” Again, few Americans are aware that many of these militia groups the US has backed in Syria, while claiming to be “moderate rebels,” have themselves carried out terrible atrocities against civilians in that country. Fake Twitter accounts promoting such militia groups only further obfuscate this subject.
As for the “anti-Iran messages in Iraq” and elsewhere, The Intercept explains that, as reported earlier by the Stanford Internet Observatory, some of the fake Twitter accounts falsely “accuse Iran of ‘threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth,’ while others promoted allegations that Iran was harvesting the organs of Afghan refugees.” Such propaganda has a dual purpose: to gin up tensions and conflict between nations in the Middle East and to manufacture consent in the US for potential armed conflict between the US itself and Iran.
In other words, Twitter has been aiding and abetting the US Defense Department in war propaganda, an act that was established to be a crime in the post-WWII Nuremberg trials. If we had a fair and working system of international law, Twitter and Defense Department officials involved in such offenses would indeed be investigated. However, we do not have such a system. Therefore, it is up to the American people to act, having learned of such misconduct by their government and by the social media companies they so rely upon to hold them accountable. It is also up to Americans to finally realize that, when it comes to matters of war and peace, they are being lied to constantly, and they must withhold their consent for the wars that our government undertakes with the help of traditional and social media alike.
Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and is author of the recently-released No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests.
December 26, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Middle East, Syria, Twitter, Yemen |
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