Syria

[myboynoah]

Sounds like they are headed for an escalation, possibly even civil war.

In Syria, world inaction fuels armed revolt

Several years ago I travelled to Damascus. I had never before seen so many men in a variety of uniforms (and even some out of uniforms) carrying AK-47s. Every street corner seemed to be patrolled by 2-3 different groups. The Assads are a brutal bunch; this is likely to get very ugly.

Damascus was a great place to visit; very, very cool. In the main mosque I saw the box which reportedly contained the head of John the Baptist.

[myboynoah]

Syrian rebels feel abandoned, betrayed by U.S.

The rebels say they don’t want direct military intervention in the form of troops on the ground. But they have repeatedly appealed for a no-fly zone similar to the effort that helped Libyan rebels topple Moammar Gaddafi last year and for supplies of heavy weapons to counter the regime’s vastly superior firepower, say rebels and opposition figures.

When the regime falls, as the rebel battalion spokesman assumes it eventually will, Syrians will not forget that their pleas for help went unanswered, he said.

“America will pay a price for this,” he said. “America is going to lose the friendship of Syrians, and no one will trust them anymore. Already we don’t trust them at all.”

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“America and the West could have prevented this,’’ Omar Sabha, 21, said as his younger brother lay weakly under a bloodstained sheet, his face twisted with pain and incomprehension. Abdel Rahman had been struck the previous day by a missile apparently fired by a helicopter outside his home, and the loss was only now beginning to register. “They are able to help us, but they don’t want to,” the older brother said. “They don’t have the courage or the intention.”

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“After everything we’ve been through, we don’t want any help from the West,” said Ahmed Dosh, 24, an Aleppo university student who is on a waiting list for a gun so he can join the Free Syrian Army. “We know only God can help us. We have great faith in God, and only God will end this.”

Dosh described himself as an Islamist, though not an extremist. But at a time when al-Qaeda-influenced jihadis are trying to establish a presence in Syria, there is a risk that a virulently anti-American form of Islamism could take hold among disillusioned Syrians, said Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute of Near East Affairs, who believes that the United States should selectively arm rebel groups identified as supporting America’s interests.

If Washington continues on its current path, “ultimately the political entity that comes to power is not going to be in U.S. interests,” he said. “A secular and democratic Syria is what we’re going to lose big-time.”

The Obama team has fully dropped the ball on this one. I guess the key for rebels in the region is to target leaders that are allied with the U.S. (Egypt, Tunisia) because Obama will not only sit idly by while an ally is threatened, but actively back the rebel cause. If the leaders are U.S. enemies (Iran) or their surrogates (Syria), then the rebels are on their own.

Has there been a more feckless Middle East foreign policy president?

[wuapinmon]

"America is going to lose the friendship of the Syrians."

[lambdacoug]

America is going to lose the friendship of Syrians, and no one will trust them anymore. Already we don’t trust them at all.

Sweet! We'll lose something we don't have.

[UtahDan]

Syrian rebels feel abandoned, betrayed by U.S.



The Obama team has fully dropped the ball on this one. I guess the key for rebels in the region is to target leaders that are allied with the U.S. (Egypt, Tunisia) because Obama will not only sit idly by while an ally is threatened, but actively back the rebel cause. If the leaders are U.S. enemies (Iran) or their surrogates (Syria), then the rebels are on their own.

Has there been a more feckless Middle East foreign policy president?

I think it is a lot more complex than you are allowing.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/natio...ebels-20120227

http://www.nationaljournal.com/natio...apons-20120808

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...?newsfeed=true

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-bl...rias-civil-war

There may come a time when we need to get in there to keep chemical weapons from falling into the wrong hands, but I think Congressman Brooks point is well taken that in the past when we have picked short term winners they feel little loyalty to us and the defeated group blames us for everything. I also think that the countries that live in that neighborhood should get off their asses and help more if it is needed. It would be good for them to have an experience with what a quagmire military intervention is.

[myboynoah]

This is truly remarkable, the aligning of the views of the Washington Post Editorial Board with mine.

Getting around a dead-end in Syria

All this underlines a point made five months ago by some of the State Department’s own Syria experts: The longer the fighting in the country goes on, the more it evolves toward open sectarian war, promotes extremist ideology and undermines the possibility of an eventual settlement based on pluralism and democratic principles. That’s why the Obama administration was foolish to waste the intervening months backing a feckless U.N. diplomatic initiative and why its current attempts to promote a “managed transition” from the Assad regime are equally misguided.

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A major effort should be made to persuade them to plan for a postwar order in which Alawite and other minorities are protected and a transition to democracy is organized with international assistance. Though U.S. diplomats have been pushing that agenda, they have focused mainly on exiled opposition leaders, rather than those doing the fighting. As veteran diplomat James Dobbins, who helped guide U.S. interventions in the Balkans and Afghanistan, noted in congressional testimony last week, “American influence and ability to advance such goals will tend to be in direct proportion to the help the United States provides the opposition in their fight to overthrow the regime.”

By refusing to step in, the Obama administration is merely ensuring that Syria’s future leaders will be more resistant to the West and perhaps more open to groups such as al-Qaeda. It is also giving the enduring hard core of the Assad regime the space and the opportunity to fight on.

[UtahDan]

This is truly remarkable, the aligning of the views of the Washington Post Editorial Board with mine.

Getting around a dead-end in Syria

Gotta admit, that is pretty sweet (even if you called someone else feckless).

[myboynoah]

U.S. says Hezbollah is helping Syrian regime

The new U.S. sanctions on Hezbollah are likely to have more symbolic than substantive effect. The Shiite militia, whose political wing dominates the government in neighboring Lebanon, has long been supported by Iran and Syria. The Treasury Department first designated Hezbollah a “Global Terrorist” group in 1995, prohibiting U.S. financial transactions with it and freezing its assets.

Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen said the new action, focused on activities specifically related to Syria, was “not solely focused on the immediate financial impact” but was designed “to expose” Hezbollah activity in that country.

What possible priviledges are we giving a terrorist organization that we can now turn around and sanction?

Clinton meets with opposition leaders today to offer humanitarian aide to refugees. The Obama team steps up.

[myboynoah]

Syrian activists say pledges of U.S. communications aid are largely unfulfilled

Even as the Obama administration hardens its rhetoric on Syria, members of the Syrian opposition say the United States has failed to deliver promised communications and other equipment intended to support those seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

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U.S. officials acknowledged that the program, known as the Office of Syrian Opposition Support, only started work two months ago and had been hampered by bureaucratic and diplomatic delays. Among them, officials said, was concern by the Turkish government that OSOS could emerge as a rival to other Syrian groups or secretly be used to ship weapons into Syria.

It is “fair to say that it’s very much a work in progress,” said Rick Barton, the assistant secretary of state who oversees the program. “We are moving as aggressively as possible now that we have cleared many of the cobwebs in our own system and with our allies.”

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In the meantime, Syrian activists said they have assembled elaborate supply chains that account for the bulk of electronics, cash, medical supplies and other material being moved through Turkey by Syrian opposition groups. Activists said separate networks funnel weapons to the rebels.

A key outpost in the nonlethal supply chain is an office in a high-rise near the airport in Istanbul. Inside, activists oversee an informal procurement operation that takes orders from groups inside Syria, buys electronics from suppliers in Britain and has them shipped to Paris, where the devices are packed into suitcases by Syrians flying to Istanbul.

Among the recent arrivals was a pair of Astra 2 satellite receivers earmarked for opposition leaders in Homs and Hasakah. From Istanbul, the gear is carried to the border, often by bus, then picked up by smugglers and activists making regular runs into Syria.

The two devices were all that were left “from a large shipment of 70 units we bought last month,” said a 30-year-old Syrian who asked to be identified by a pseudonym, Abu Lina, citing concern for the security of his family inside Syria.

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Abu Lina said his group, which gets funding and office space from the umbrella group Syrian National Council, has sent at least 200 satellite receivers and 100 satellite phones into Syria in recent months. Asked how many he had gotten from the United States, he replied: “None whatsoever. Just promises.”

Others provided similar accounts. An activist with ties to opposition elements in the Syrian city of Latakia said his most recent shipment included 50 radio handsets — referred to almost universally among Syrians as “talkie-walkies” — and an 18-foot antenna that, because of its length, had to be delivered to the border by bus.

The money to buy the equipment comes “from donors outside the country,” said the activist, Abdul Rehman Selwaye. He added that neither he nor others in his group had received U.S. gear, saying that American aid “is all virtual.”

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U.S. officials said Syrian opposition groups may be unaware of how much gear came from the United States because it was largely distributed through nongovernmental organizations. The officials also suggested that activists may be unhappy with the amount they have gotten or convinced that rivals have gotten more.

[frank ryan]

Syrian activists say pledges of U.S. communications aid are largely unfulfilled

Damnit we need to help these people

[wuapinmon]

Check out this series of photos of DIY Syrian Rebel weapons.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2...rebels/100461/

[il Padrino Ute]

I think they'd have a better pipe bomb slingshot if they could get some surgical tubing.

[myboynoah]

I think they'd have a better pipe bomb slingshot if they could get some surgical tubing.

Looking at it more closely, I think that is braided surgical tubing; a more high-tech pipe bomb slingshot.

[il Padrino Ute]

Looking at it more closely, I think that is braided surgical tubing; a more high-tech pipe bomb slingshot.

You may be correct. At first glance, it looked like a big tow rope. But looking closer, it does look like braided surgical tubing.

It makes me wish I had thought about that rather than a single strand of surgical tubing for the water balloon launcher my friends and I made when we were teens.

[myboynoah]

You may be correct. At first glance, it looked like a big tow rope. But looking closer, it does look like braided surgical tubing.

It makes me wish I had thought about that rather than a single strand of surgical tubing for the water balloon launcher my friends and I made when we were teens.

I kept looking at that photo wonder what happens when one of the stones weighing down the base dislodges and they hit the wall with the pipe bomb.

"Oh #$%&"