Category: Syria

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Turkey NATO Member Shoots Down Russian Fighter Jet Over Syria; Putin Vows Revenge / Politics / Syria

By: John_Rubino

This is the kind of thing that happens when you put ten different armies, taking orders from at least ten different commanders, in the same theater.

Last night a Russian fighter was flying in and out of Turkish airspace and Turkey shot it down. Then local rebels (Syrian Turks) shot the pilots as they parachuted to the ground.

Sunday, November 01, 2015

Syria, Putin Makes Obama an Offer He Can’t Refuse / Politics / Syria

By: Mike_Whitney

Why is John Kerry so eager to convene an emergency summit on Syria now when the war has been dragging on for four and a half years?
Is he worried that Russia’s air campaign is wiping out too many US-backed jihadis and sabotaging Washington’s plan to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad?

You bet, he is. No one who’s been following events in Syria for the last three weeks should have any doubt about what’s really going on. Russia has been methodically wiping out Washington’s mercenaries on the ground while recapturing large swathes of land that had been lost to the terrorists. That, in turn, has strengthened Assad’s position in Damascus and left the administration’s policy in tatters. And that’s why Kerry wants another meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pronto even though the two diplomats met less than a week ago. The Secretary of State is hoping to cobble together some kind of makeshift deal that will stop the killing and salvage what’s left of Uncle Sam’s threadbare Syrian project.

Friday, October 09, 2015

Obama Abandons Scheme to Train Nonexistent Syrian Moderates / Politics / Syria

By: Stephen_Lendman

On Friday, Defense Department publication Stars and Stripes (S&P) headlined “Pentagon plans new approach to train Syrian rebels.” More on this below.

Thursday, October 08, 2015

The Real Reason for the Refugee Crisis You Won’t Hear About in the Media / Politics / Syria

By: Casey_Research

By Nick Giambruno

There’s a meme going around that the refugee crisis in Europe (the largest since World War II) is part of a secret plot to subvert the West.

I completely understand why the locals in any country wouldn’t be happy about waves of foreigners pouring in. Especially if they’re poor, unskilled, and not likely to assimilate.

Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Putin’s Lightning War in Syria / Politics / Syria

By: Mike_Whitney

For more than a year, the United States has been playing patty-cake with an army of homicidal maniacs who call themselves ISIS. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he’d had enough of Washington’s song-and-dance and was planning to bring a little Russian justice to the terrorist militias that had killed 225,000 Syrians and ripped the country to shreds. In language that could not be more explicit, Putin said to the General Assembly: “We can no longer tolerate the currents state of affairs in the world”.  Less than 48 hours later, Russian bombers were raining down precision-guided munitions on terrorist strongholds across western Syria sending the jihadi vermin scrambling for cover.

Monday, October 05, 2015

Ron Paul - I Wish Nobody Was Bombing Syria / Politics / Syria

By: Dr_Ron_Paul

The US regime change policy for Syria has been a catastrophe. More than 200,000 killed and an entire country reduced to rubble at least partly because President Obama decided that "Assad has lost his legitimacy." How is it that the president of a country 6,000 miles away has the authority to decide whether another leader belongs in office or not? What if Rouhani in Iran decided that Obama had lost his legitimacy for killing a number of American citizens by drone without charge or trial? Would we accept that?

Sunday, September 27, 2015

France Bombs Syria / Politics / Syria

By: Stephen_Lendman

France is part of the problem, not the solution, in Syria. It supported Obama’s war from inception. It partners in all US imperial wars, a key member of NATO’s killing machine, smashing one nation after another.

On Saturday, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius lied, blaming Assad for four-and-a-half years of war, ignoring Obama’s full responsibility and French complicity, backing his aggression on another independent country, using ISIS and other takfiri terrorists to do his dirty work.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Syria's Economy Not Shaken by ISIS / Economics / Syria

By: Steve_H_Hanke

The fog of war has removed any sense of certainty regarding developments on the Syrian battlefield. That said, we know that ISIS has captured several towns, and that waves of Syrian refugees are disembarking upon Europe's shores. But, the picture remains chaotic and hazy.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Ankara: the New Capital of Jihad, U.S. Policy for Strengthening ISIS / Politics / Syria

By: Mike_Whitney

“The US and it’s allies want to keep this monster (ISIS) in check, but they don’t want to destroy it. All their military, political and media campaigns are smokescreens. What the West has done so far has strengthened terrorism not ended it. The proof of this is the fact that terrorism has spread everywhere, its material resources have increased, and its ranks have swollen.” — Syrian President Bashar al Assad

Has US policy in Syria fallen prey to the political ambitions of one man, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan?

Friday, November 14, 2014

The Syrian War Goes On / Politics / Syria

By: Andrew_McKillop

Confused Names – Confused Games
Real world Syria was dimly recognized and not accepted by western leaderships and their security strategists, in just another unfortunate example of the stumble-to-war process that is now heavily analyzed, discussed and reported, retrospectively, as the consensus explanation for World War I. For many non-German politicians and strategists in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm was a surrogate for Osama bin Laden after 2001 – fanatical and sure to overreach when opposed  Al Assad's overreach by declaring a total war strategy did happen but his regime's resistance to ISIS or ISIL helped force the fanatics and psychopaths to also overreach and look for a softer enemy and easier pickings - over the frontier, in Iraq. To be sure there are huge differences with the 1914-18 war in this case of another war that "could only" be short and would be “all over by Christmas”, but few persons can forecast the possibly massive sequels of the Syrian war across the Middle East, North Africa, western Asia and Europe.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Iraq and Syria Follow Lebanon's Precedent / Politics / Syria

By: STRATFOR

By George Friedman: Lebanon was created out of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This agreement between Britain and France reshaped the collapsed Ottoman Empire south of Turkey into the states we know today -- Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and to some extent the Arabian Peninsula as well. For nearly 100 years, Sykes-Picot defined the region. A strong case can be made that the nation-states Sykes-Picot created are now defunct, and that what is occurring in Syria and Iraq represents the emergence of those post-British/French maps that the United States has been trying to maintain since the collapse of Franco-British power.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Syrian Geopolitics Aka The Country That Never Existed / Politics / Syria

By: Andrew_McKillop

Stratfor's Deliberate Mix and Mingle
Writing for Stratfor, one of its leading analysts Reva Bhalla probably feels obliged to mix fact and fiction, news and opinions, to offer us a “deeper understanding” of the Syrian civil war. He for example kicked off his recent-published Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly article on Syria with the question of why, after the UN invited Iran to participate in the coming Jan 22 meeting in Switzerland, aimed at a possible settlement within rebel factions and between them and the Syrian regime of al-Assad, the Syrian rebel representatives could so quickly and successfully push for the Iran offer to be rescinded.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War / Politics / Syria

By: STRATFOR

Reva Bhalla writes: International diplomats will gather Jan. 22 in the Swiss town of Montreux to hammer out a settlement designed to end Syria's three-year civil war. The conference, however, will be far removed from the reality on the Syrian battleground. Only days before the conference was scheduled to begin, a controversy threatened to engulf the proceedings after the United Nations invited Iran to participate, and Syrian rebel representatives successfully pushed for the offer to be rescinded. The inability to agree upon even who would be attending the negotiations is an inauspicious sign for a diplomatic effort that was never likely to prove very fruitful.

Friday, September 13, 2013

The CIA and its Weapons Are Pouring into Syria / Politics / Syria

By: Jack_D_Douglas

The U.S. is already fully engaged in a massive war against the Syrian government, in complete violation of the UN Charter and treaties the US signed. The U.S. is already a war-criminal for training, arming, and directing the rebel Sunni “terrorists” (in US terms) with intelligence and staff planning at the top.

The US news mediaare full of articles about this secret U.-CIA war against Syria which yesterday became a fully open war of aggression against a sovereign nation that is a member of the UN, by the open shipment of US weapons to the rebel “terrorists” through the U.S. Sunni puppet regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Jordan.

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Obama's Syria Tightrope Walk, The Reluctant Coalition Leader / Politics / Syria

By: STRATFOR

Last week began with certainty that an attack on Syria was inevitable and even imminent. It ended with the coalition supporting the attack somewhere between falling apart and not coming together, and with U.S. President Barack Obama making it clear that an attack was inevitable, maybe in a month or so, if Congress approves, after Sept. 9 when it reconvenes. This is a comedy in three parts: the reluctant warrior turning into the raging general and finding his followers drifting away, becoming the reluctant warrior again.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

The Battle for Damascus, Assad's Last Stand / Politics / Syria

By: STRATFOR

The battle for Damascus is raging with increasing intensity while rebels continue to make substantial advances in Syria's north and east. Every new air base, city or town that falls to the rebels further underlines that Bashar al Assad's writ over the country is shrinking. It is no longer possible to accurately depict al Assad as the ruler of Syria. At this point, he is merely the head of a large and powerful armed force, albeit one that still controls a significant portion of the country.