generalspeaking

"We have absolutely advised them to stay out of At Tanf. We are postured to respond."

"The United States does not seek to fight the government of Syria or any groups that may be providing it support."
" However, if attacked, the United States will not hesitate to use necessary and proportionate force to defend US, coalition or partner forces."
U.S. defense official 

"The government plan was to give the maximum possible chance for a reconciliation, but unfortunately there was no progress in this regard."
"The radicals are in control in Idlib."
"This looks like preliminary bombardment before a major land operation."
Syrian government official

"[Safe passage would be essential in the event of an assault.] A staggering 700,000 people could be displaced overnight. Already people are on the move again out of fear of what might come next, and are struggling to find shelter."
"As NRC witnessed in eastern Ghouta or Aleppo, routes to safety came too little too late for thousands of civilians trapped in the violence. The only way to truly ensure the safety of civilians in Idlib is to prevent an outbreak in violence altogether."
"We must see the world’s top powers commit to peaceful negotiations and agreements which protect civilians and grant them safety."
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)

One of the world's "top powers" is bombing the hell out of Idlib city, evidently unconcerned that the top "top power" has issued a warning that Russian jets doing just that are in the process of helping Syria to make yet another "grave mistake". Syria doesn't seem to care. Moscow seems less than concerned that it is once again, placing the lives of Syrian civilians into a destructive dust-heap of cadavers. Damascus may have pointed out to Moscow that Washington is protecting some areas the Syrian regime means to recapture, shielding U.S. allies.

To which Moscow has responded by warning Washington it should haul its troops out of harm's way. Washington's response was that there is no intention of withdrawing its troops which will, if they come under fire, return fire, both for self-protection and that of its allies, aiding in removing what remains (in the thousands) of ISIL fighters. No fewer than 24 locations in the northwester province of Idlib were struck, interpreted as the opening salvo of an offensive.

Even Israeli jets visited Syria, striking Iranian military positions in Hama and Tartus provinces two days ago. On many fronts, this long-lasting, wide-ranging war in what was once a well developed country has become complex with a myriad of opposing actors, from Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Russia, United States, Israel, and Turkey, involving Sunnis, Shias, Kurds and foreign Islamists all clamouring for their aspirations and rights to be recognized in a country whose infrastructure has been bombed, its heritage smashed, its citizenry displaced, dismembered, murdered en masse.

The Syrian government forces that have massed around Idlib are prepared for an assault to rout the last opposition stronghold remaining in the country. President Trump's warning against Russian and Iranians "recklessly" attacking Idlib hasn't made much of a dent in their plans though he elaborated that "a grave humanitarian mistake" was on the horizon where hundreds of thousands of lives could be lost. But as long as chemical weapons are refrained from use, it's unlikely there will be any U.S. intervention; Russia's presence mitigates against anything so foolish.

Millions of Syrians live in Idlib province, half of them displaced from other areas in Syria, where they moved in panic to avoid being bombed elsewhere, now finding themselves targets once again. When, not if the offensive strikes it is expected to be one of the deadliest outcomes in the seven-year war. According to UN officials up to 800,00 people may be displaced, those in urgent need of aid dramatically increasing.

Any citizens, including Sunni Syrian rebels who baulk at surrendering to government troops with the full knowledge of what they will mean to their chances of emerging alive, have nowhere left to migrate to, for survival much less safety.

George Ourfalian/AFP/Getty Images

Labels: Confrontation, Death, Idlib, Iran, Russia, Shia, Sunni, Syria, United States

posted by Pieface @ Friday, September 07, 2018

Islam's Divine Pursuit of Conquest : Take Your Pick, Shiite or Sunni

"Still under ISIL control are the cities of Tal Afar, an hour west of Mosul by car or tank, Al Qaim, which is to the south of Tal Afar, and Hawija, where the jihadis, totally surrounded and 100 kilometres from the front lines, somehow manage to hang on."
"Yet these are surely the last gasps of ISIL in Iraq. After an unbelievably cruel three-year run, it is finished as a fighting force there."
"The problem for  Washington as well as for the Sunni-dominated Arab countries grouped around Iraq is not much different than it was when marines with whom I was embedded closed in on Baghdad during the Second Gulf War in 2003. There, beside a highway on the eastern outskirts of the capital, [was] a group of smiling, immaculately groomed Shia clerics eager to greet the marines and let them know they had patiently outlasted Saddam Hussein."
Matthew Fisher, Journalist, Postmedia

Members of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) take a selfie in front of the ruins of Grand al-Nuri Mosque in the Old City, July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

First Iraq, then Syria, and throw in Yemen for good measure. Lebanon was long ago lost to Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic of Iran's proxy militia that effectively took over that bifurcated country as its own. Iran has achieved one of its major goals. To become the effective dominant force in the Middle East. Sunni Islam may vastly outnumber their Shiite counterpart in population numbers and governed states, but it seems they are political naifs compared to the conniving ayatollahs whose command of the art of intrigue has gained them the upper hand.

Islamic State terrorists who meted out barbaric medieval torture and murders of the utmost atrocity, delighting in the horror they invoked in the delicate-minded humanist West, hugely augmenting their reputation for brutality and in the process gaining greater numbers eager to follow-the-leader whose ambition had established a caliphate, a shining hill of commanding presence in the name of pure Islam based on the most fundamentalist of Sharia law interpretations, met their match when the Iran-linked Shiite militias began throwing the ISIL members they caught over cliffs.

The ruined Grand al-Nuri Mosque is seen in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq, taken on July 20

In the annals of summary dispatch this was as gruesomely efficient and briefly agonizing a manner of destroying one's enemies as any, a spur-of-the-moment, hugely satisfying exercise for Shiites eager to demonstrate their own mettle as warriors of Islam. And while Iraq smothers itself with satisfied gratification that it has succeeded in (almost) wrenching Mosul back from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, it is not Iraq that benefits to the greatest degree, but Iran.

The former Sunni-Iraq-majority population of Mosul will now see itself being replaced and outnumbered by Shiites determined to take possession of Iraq's second-largest city; that is, what is left of it. It has become, like Aleppo and parts of  Damascus, a pitiable ruin. Ancient cities that withstood other, earlier invasions and battles did not in the past, face the sheer destructive power of the bombing events visited upon them in this era of human development featuring civilization's advancement.

When the government of Iraq proudly announced the liberation of Mosul and the destruction of Islamic State, Syria fell next in line for the attainment of geographic strategic advantage. The possession of Raqqa is next on the agenda. Despite the presence of U.S. troops and American air strikes meant to aid in destroying Islamic State, they have been outfoxed, with Tehran leisurely approaching the realization of its ambitions of a Shiite corridor of power from Iran Across Iraq and Syria.

Russian backing for Bashar Assad's Alawite Shiites has contributed nicely to Iran's plans, just as Hezbollah has itself has been more than willing to deliver Lebanon to the control of the Republic of Iran. The hundreds of ISIL fighters remaining in Mosul, still prepared to fight to the end, will find their end there, thanks to airstrikes finding their target. Those ISIL fighters not yet prepared to die as martyrs have taken to disguising themselves as women, applying makeup, wearing women's robes, only their facial hair betraying their identities.

So much for Washington's investment in Iraq in both treasury and manpower sacrificed to remove one tyrant, and eventually see the installation of a malign Shiite power with Iran's Grand Ayatollah pulling all the strings after leaving the Obama administration with the misconceived impression that it had hobbled Iran's nuclear ambitions. As in all agreements with Iran, its surreptitious plans for advanced ICBMs and nuclear warheads have simply gone underground in undisclosed areas as sacred as ancient mosques.

The expenditure of $1-trillion U.S. and the deaths of 4,200 American military personnel all in a good cause, as far as the Islamic Republic of Iran in its revolutionary zeal to alter the status of the Middle East power platform and eventual outreach to the world at large is concerned, leaving it as the major beneficiary, its subtle and brilliant manoeuvring of the American political and military zeal in protecting the world order in its democratic image trumped handily.

But while American naivete has helped Iran to launch and complete its mission of control and conquest to elevate Shia Islam, the simmering resentment of the Sunni power elite has also been launched. This volatile region of the world for which mayhem and murder on a grand scale reflects its tribal, ethnic, clan and sectarian dystopia, has drawn into its circle the ambitions, oblivious to consequences, of the United States and Russia.

Should a standoff between all those powers suddenly erupt, the explosive results will roil the world in an immense series of cataclysmic paroxysms. Who better to take advantage of the chaos to follow than an resurgent Islamic State owing nothing to any ideology save its very own Islamofascism, and whose fervent admirers in Europe and North America are only too eager to join, abroad or in situ.

From Mosul to a site near you. Wait for it.

A member of Iraqi security forces holds an Islamic State flag on top of a building destroyed from clashes in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

Labels: Conflict, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Russia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria, Terrorism, United States

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 25, 2017

One Religion, Two Versions, Deadly Antipathy

"This is a Daesh fighter. We found him in the sewers in Aleppo. He surrendered, and we handed him over to the Syrians."
"I don't know what happened to him but we treat our prisoners with respect. If they [Daesh] caught one of ours, they would have killed him right away."
"If we lose in Syria, we will definitely lose in Lebanon. The war isn't only in Syria. It's here also."
"They're not refugees [Syrian Sunni refugees entering Lebanon for haven]. They're terrorists."
Mohammad, Lebanese Alawite, Jabal Mohsen, Tripoli, Lebanon

"The Syrian crisis has affected the mindset of the people here."
"When the Syrian war started, the people in Jabal Mohsen raised the image of Bashar Assad. We saw this as a provocation because we knew Assad was killing Sunnis. So we started to fight [their Alawite neighbours]."
"The Syrian army besieged one opposition area in Syria. That caused us to do the same to Jabal Mohsen."
Ramzi, Sunni Lebanese, Bab al-Tabbaneh, Tripoli, Lebanon

"The Syrians [refugees in Lebanon] have ruined everything. They do not let us work, because they'll work for much less."
"Each refugee has an iPhone 7. They'll tell  you they're poor but they're not."
Yusuf, Sunni Lebanese, Tripoli, Lebanon

(left) A man proudly displays the Syrian state flag in the neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen. (Preethi Nallu) (right) A protester waves a Free Syrian Army flag on his way to a demonstration in Bab al-Tabaneh. (Preethi Nallu)

Lebanese Muslims live their lives isolated from one another; the Shiites in their neighbourhood, the Sunnis in theirs and never the twain do meet. Except in combat, now that Syria has collapsed into a divided state itself, with the Sunni terrorist group Islamic State on one hand, the Sunni Syrian rebels on the other, and the Alawite Shiite regime of Bashar al Assad taking up the slack. Taking up the slack with him are his defending sponsors, Russia, Iran (with its al Quds division of the Republican Guard Corps, the Iranian Shiite militias), and Iran's proxy Lebanese terrorist militia Hezbollah.

Mohammad, who lives in the Alawite section of Tripoli, is a fighter with a Lebanese militia dedicated to supporting Syrian President Assad against the Syrian Sunni opposition rebel groups. They cross the border into Syria to cooperate with the regime's military, alongside Hezbollah and the Iranian advisers to Assad. From his neighbourhood alone, Mohammad boasts no fewer than two hundred Alawite Lebanese have fought in Syria for the Syrian government side.

When his militia is not busy fighting in Syria, they turn their attention to doing the same in their very own neighbourhood of Tripoli; even the street next to the one Mohammad lives on is named Syria. Not surprising, since Syria dominated Lebanon for years, as an occupying force. In Lebanon's second largest city the animus between the Islamic sects is as intense and deadly as it is anywhere else in the Middle East. In the divided city, unemployment is high and the presence of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees hasn't helped.

Able-bodied young men hang about, loitering outside the shops, drinking, sweet thick coffee, some of them high on Captagon, an amphetamine popularly used by fighters in Syria. Lebanese soldiers patrol the streets inside armoured personnel carriers mounted with .50 calibre machine guns. The fighting between the two  Tripoli neighbourhoods has seen dozens of people die in their newly reawakened hostilities resulting from Syria's civil war.

The government of Lebanon, intimidated and coerced by Hezbollah, is indifferent to its Alawite Lebanese citizens fighting in Syria in support of the Syrian regime. Mohammad's proud recounting of his fighting escapades in Syria bear no consequences. His Sunni adversary Ramzi, on the other hand, is circumspect when and if he alludes to crossing the border to fight against the Syrian regime, for to do so does bear consequences. "If I say 'yes' it's four years in prison", says one resident of Bab al-Tabbaneh. Ramzi discreetly notes that several men of his neighbourhood have fought in Syria with opposition groups, as well as with Islamic State.

Syrian refugee children play outside a slum complex in Tripoli. (Preethi Nallu)

Lebanese from Tripoli may go back and forth to Syria, but tens of thousands of Syrians have entered Lebanon as refugees, fleeing the fighting there. Deputy Mayor Khaled Wolley places the figure of such refugees in Tripoli at 150,000 including the city and its suburbs. And as far as Maysa Saif with the civil society group Basmet Amal is concerned, though working to bridge sectarian divisions in the city, refugees import an extremist ideology amplified in local mosques. "Sheiks were trafficking fighters to Syria. I'll say it publicly. I don't care."

Labels: Civil War, Conflict, Lebanon, Refugees, Shiite, Sunni, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 21, 2017

The Beauty of Islam

"I had nothing to do with any of this [Syrian Sunni protests against the Alawite regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] before I was working and then going home. I hadn't even taken part in the demonstrations."
"They [Syrian prison guards] ask you in prison who is your lord. If you say God, they torture you more. You must say it is Assad."
"As soon as I was well enough [after his discharge from prison in Syria] I joined the fighters [rebel Sunni Syrians battling the Syrian regime]."
"It's true that I have been through all this but I'm not upset. It's all for the sake of God. This is what God has written for me. Our prophet would fight for the sake of God and be rewarded. I will be rewarded for this in paradise."
Abid Borhun, Syrian refugee, Reyhanli, Turkey

This man, Abid Borhun, lives with his wife and their four children in Turkey now. He once fought with the Syrian Sunni rebel group calling itself Ahrar al-Sham. But before he had decided to join the rebels he had no connections whatever to the growing protest movement. This was a man, an ordinary citizen of Syria, who remained beyond politics, as he saw it being played out, between Shiites and Sunnis in his native Syria.

Now he lives in a border town where Syria and Turkey meet, along with thousands of other Syrian refugees. His children are young, ranging in age from eight to 18 months. He has named his youngest boy Ibraham, but calls him Erdogan in honour of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to whom he feels grateful that he and his family have found haven.

As a businessman, busy shaping his life in the capital Damascus, Abid Borhun, might never in his wildest, most bleak nightmares have imagined a time when he would not be hale and capable, the master of his own fate. But he is a paraplegic, unable to move his legs, his arms, requiring that he be propped up. He suffered a severed spinal cord, three shattered vertebrae. Bullet fragments remain in his chest. A colostomy bag collects his waste.

"I tried to scream but no sound came out", he tells an enquirer, asking what had happened to him. Crouched with his rebel group in a shallow trench, preparing to launch a nighttime attack on a hilltop where Syrian army soldiers were stationed in northern Syria, he was hit by a sniper's bullet, through his neck. He felt certain he would die. The shahada slipped in a whisper from his mouth, leading him with a reverence for his spiritual investment in Islam, to death, and peace.

Instead, he survived, ending up at the Turkish border. Permitted entry, months of medical treatment followed in Turkish hospitals. This man who never entertained thought of protesting against the repressive government that ordained his life, was arrested on his way home on the outskirts of Homs. He was accused of terrorism. "What I saw in prison I hadn't even seen in films. I felt near the end of my breath", he told his interlocutor.

Beaten, hung by his wrists tied behind his back, he was electric-shocked. He was treated to a process whereby he came close to drowning. Then he was fitted and forced into a tire. And for twelve hours he was left squeezed into the tire before being released. He was released because he had been forewarned that if he 'confessed', in hopes of releasing himself from torture, he would be killed. Two months later he was released, ill and disillusioned.

And that's the point at which he joined the rebel militia, after he had recuperated from his ordeal. He is not bitter. What he experienced, he emphasizes, is what God had ordained for him. And if it is God's wish that he remain as he is, a shadow of what he was, he is content. Islam, the faith that instructs its faithful to slaughter the infidel, and to dedicate their lives to jihad, inspires him.

He does think about his country, and he hopes that the Sunni Syrian rebels will manage somehow to defeat their bloodthirsty president who destroys the lives of his citizens through chemical weapons, barrel bombs, starvation and privation geared toward killing more than the half-million he has already slaughtered. In this sectarian war. Where one branch of Islam has a venomous detestation for the other. Where either branch of Islam feels that the other represents apostasy.

"I want everyone to know about the beauty of Islam", he says. "I want Islam to spread. No matter what country, I want Islam to spread."

Heaven forfend!

Turkey’s Yayladağ camp for displaced Syrians. CRISIS GROUP/Hugh Pope

Labels: Conflict, Islam, Shiite, Sunni, Syria, Turkey

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Iranian Shiite Crescent

"The average person [in war torn Yemen] lives on tea and bread. It's just one meal a day."
"They are in a weakened state, and that is why they are getting sick [in the cholera epidemic outbreak]."
Jamie McGoldrick, UN humanitarian coordinator, Yemen

"People will continue to get sick, and they will always be treated like cattle here."
"The international community should just make people stop fighting and help our hospitals."
Aziz Ramadan, Yemeni Coast Guard officer

It's a telling phenomenon, that in the Middle East the enmities of ages past relating to tribal, clan, ethnic, sectarian and political violence is never far from the surface. From time to time unappeasable rage from one group to another bubbles up and hatred grows, nourishing bloodlust and conflict. In this century the Middle East has become accustomed to looking to the 'international community', and more singularly, the United States, to intervene and miraculously produce if not peace, then a temporary hiatus between peace and war.

Without such intervention they feel persecuted and deadlocked in arriving at any workable solution of their own invention whereby they might all live in peace with one another. Their passions, so close to the surface appear resistant to reason. That basic human rights should be the inheritance of all people anywhere and everywhere appears to elude their consciousness. And so, they inflict misery and carnage upon one another through their abrasive denunciations, threats and violence.

The one country that, under its current heightened fundamental Islamism appearing to initiate much of the hostile reaction that permeates the region is the Islamic Republic of Iran, with its glowering ayatollahs inflicting misery not merely in the region but far afield. Shiite Persia considers itself superior and closer to the Almighty than its Arab neighbours, most of whom practise Sunni Islam, representative of the majority of Muslims anywhere in the world.

Envisioning itself the ultimate authority on Islam and nourishing its ambitions to replace the command of Saudi Arabia as the custodian of the two most sacred sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, Iran has been engineering a Shiite triangle as a power source with itself at the helm, to gain the legitimacy of authority and power that it craves and feels is rightfully its own. It has succeeded in alienating the Arab world against its machinations, and it has given the wider international community ample reason to suspect its ambitions go wider afield than the Middle East.

It is undeniably involved in creating and supporting terrorist groups to do its bidding both in the region and internationally. Iran's authority in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon (where its proxy jihadist militia Hezbollah holds sway) and Yemen, and the support it receives from Qatar, has it poised, alongside its growing thrust in ballistic missile and nuclear warhead enterprise, to present as the ultimate power in the Middle East. Its links to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program gives the lie to its constantly-assuring critics it has only peaceful aspirations.

Iran's meddling in Yemen's politics, spurring the Shiite Houthi rebels to challenge the country's Sunni government has brought the impoverished nation into a state of vicious conflict. The country's damaged infrastructure and state of war has brought it to an even greater degree of destabilization. Half of its 27 million people have no access to clean water and two-thirds lack enough food. Their state bordering on mass malnutrition has made the population vulnerable to cholera, which has become epidemic.

At least 269,608 people in Yemen in 21 of its 22 provinces have been infected with cholera, with 1,624 dying of the bacterial infection caused by feces-contaminated water that modern sanitation and water systems have eradicated elsewhere in the world. Treatment is simple enough with rehydration solutions and sometimes antibiotics, but in Yemen where structures and systems are overburdened and supplies short and medical facilities destroyed by bombing mostly from Saudi Arabian-led forces, the situation is dire.

Clinics that remain struggle to cope. The state is so poor civil servants were no longer being paid and sanitation workers went on strike. Lack of garbage collection caused septic backups contaminating water wells, and when dirty rainwater polluted the wells even more, it was inevitable that cholera would ensue. The United Nations requires $2.1-billion for humanitarian relief in Yemen, easily supplied by a wealthy country like Qatar, but the UN remains reliant on the international community.

Iran, which began the conflict leading to this dire humanitarian crisis, has other fish to fry, destabilizing the world order alongside North Korea. The coalition of Sunni-majority Arab nations in the Middle East has embarked on a disagreement with Qatar for its support and friendship with Iran and in the process they are now divided, leaving Iran dismissive of their claims, content to see its enemies in a state of disarray.

Labels: Conflict, Disease, Iran, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, Yemen

posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 17, 2017

And Six Years On, in Syria ....

"We have observed activities at Shayrat airbase that suggest possible intent by the Syrian regime to use chemical weapons again."
"[The region is threatened by Assad's] brutality."
Marine Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, Pentagon spokesman


"I am not aware of any information about a threat that chemical weapons can be used."
"Certainly, we consider such threats to the legitimate leadership of the Syrian Arab Republic unacceptable."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov  

Donald Trump's missile attack was a very direct act of controlled aggression with a clear note attached. Tomahawk missile attack, April 4, 2017. Reuters: US Navy/Robert S Price

"The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children." "The activities are similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4, 2017, chemical weapons attack."
"As we have previously stated, the United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price."
White House press secretary, Sean Spicer

"It is unusual we would warn them -- even more unusual in a White House statement."
"It has serious consequences. We are saying 'we are watching you, we can see you, don’t do it.' The United States would have to respond. Otherwise it raises serious credibility problems."
Jon Wolfsthal, (former) senior director, arms control and nonproliferation, National Security Council

 

"This is the decisive moment for the Trump Administration if Syria launches an attack. Clearly the administration’s last retaliatory strike, if this report is correct, did not deter Syria."
"If Syria goes forward the administration cannot launch another pinprick attack at obsolescent Syrian aircraft. The warning from White House talks of the 'heavy price' not only Syrian regime but Assad must pay... That means striking top level Syrian leadership including Assad. Anything less will be seen as America blinking. We tried diplomacy, then limited retaliation, now it is all out or virtual capitulation."
Jim Jeffrey, (former) U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq; (former) deputy national security adviser under President George W. Bush. 

"The alleged preparations [for a chemical attack] are the latest in a series of episodes over the past two months where Assad is escalating with the US, not the other way around." 
"Will Russia and Iran support Assad as they have recently in southern and eastern Syria?"
Andrew Tabler, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Former President Barack Obama chose not to honour his own warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad when he spoke of 'red lines' that would not be permitted to be crossed. Referring to the use of chemical weapons, Syria was given adequate warning that there would be repercussions should Assad decide to make use of them to destroy the lives of civilian Syrians helpless to defend themselves against the murderous venom of their Alawite ruler who took umbrage that his Sunni population defied him.

In stepped Vladimir Putin, reasoning that diplomacy and persuading Assad to surrender his chemical stockpile was a better choice than military action, and he was successful in assuring Barack Obama that this disciplinary action was all that was required to bring moral order and some semblance of sanity back to the Syrian regime. That was a notable farce; not only were all of Syria's chemical stockpiles not released to the international agency tasked to receive and destroy them, but the United States administration lost its superpower status in one fell swoop of accommodation.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate made his choice and his decision led to a brief loosening of tensions, but also emboldened Vladimir Putin to seriously enter the madhouse that Syria had made of the Middle East, enrolling Europe as Syria's major recipient of Sunni Syrian refugees; haven in exchange for restraining himself from slaughtering even more civilians than he was committed to destroying. Those chemical weapons went into use yet again, and were the occasion for the new president to demonstrate American mettle, discarded by his predecessor.

Still from video; aftermath of April chemical attack on Syrian civilians.

At that juncture the Tomahawk missiles that were sent into Syria to partially destroy an airstrip used by the regime to launch that latest chemical strike that killed an estimated 80 Syrians and sent countless children to hospitals, failed to adequately persuade Assad that more would be on the way should he fail to take that rebuke seriously enough. That it was an air base that Russian planes, giving air cover to Syrian troops, Hezbollah and Shiite militias attacking Syrian rebel groups and Kurds fighting Islamic State, raised objections from Moscow. Yet several months on, signs of another impending chemical attack have been detected.

Signs that Russia and Iran characterize as inventions of Washington, looking for any plausible excuse to once again intervene in the Syrian civil war. The American threat extended to Assad to deter him from any possible new chemical attack represents a "dangerous escalation", according to Iran's foreign minister, while a senior Russian lawmaker speaks of an American "provocation". Each of these sources know intimately all about dangerous escalations and provocations. One the world's foremost supporter of terrorism, the other a skilled provocateur-nation.

The message, however is clear; once again with this new administration the White House intends to respond should Syria assault its own with chemical weapons. A Syrian fighter jet was shot down earlier in the month, and Iranian drones have on two occasions been brought down by American strikes. And the message is that the government of Syria would "pay a heavy price" should it proceed as it seems it has planned to. The U.S. is prepared to once again send cruise missile strikes into Syria.

That is certainly a dangerous escalation, but one in response to a considered warning that the actions of a brutal regime against its own population will no longer be accommodated by the world's super power that has once again assumed its mantle of global sheriff. Even under the guidance of a president whose comportment is less than coherent at times.

Labels: Chemical Weapons, Civil War, Iran, Russia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria, United States

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, June 29, 2017

Syria's Slaughterhouse

"[Death was always present], like the air."
"Death is the simplest thing. It was the most hoped-for because it would have spared us a lot: hunger, thirst, fear, pain, cold, thinking. Thinking was so hard. It could also kill."
Omar Alshogre, 21, former Syrian prisoner at Saydnaya prison, Syria

"The horrors depicted in this report [from Amnesty International] reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population."
Lynn Maalouf, deputy director, research, Amnesty International, Beirut regional office

"[We] would hear a huge sound. From ten p.m.until twelve a.m. or from 11 p.m. until 1 a.m. We would hear screaming and yelling, coming from below us ... these people were screaming like they had lost their minds."
"It wasn't a normal sound -- it was not ordinary. It sounded like they were skinning them alive."
Nader, former Saydnaya prison detainee, Syria

"The bodies of those who are killed at Saydnaya are taken away by the truckload and buried in mass graves."
"[There were beatings] on the journey after arrest. In transit between detention centres. As part of a 'welcome party' of abuse on arrival at a prison. And in some cases every day for every conceivable minor 'breaking' of rules, including talking or not cleaning their cells."
"Many of the people we spoke to said they had been beaten with plastic hose pipes, silicone bars and wooden sticks. Some had been scalded with hot water and burnt with cigarettes Others were forced to stand in water and given electric shocks."
Amnesty International report on Syrian prison detainees at Saydnaya

"The soldiers will practise their 'hospitality' with each new group of detainees during the 'welcome party' ... You are thrown to the ground and they use different instruments for the beatings; electric cables with exposed copper wire ends -- they have little hooks so they take a part of  your skin -- normal electric cables, plastic water pipes of different sizes and metal bars."
"I was blindfolded the whole time, but I would try to see somehow. All you see is blood: your own blood, the blood of others. After one hit, you lose your sense of what is happening. You're in shock. But then the pain comes."
Salam, Aleppo lawyer, detained in Saydnaya from 2012 to 2014

Inmates are seen behind bars in Aleppo's main prison on May 22, 2014. Amnesty International says tens of thousands of people in Syrian prisons have been tortured and nearly 18,000 have died since March 2011. (George Ourfalian/Reuters)

That testimony, however starkly brutal, is from survivors. Among the narrative reports from interviews undertaken with 31 former prison detainees and augmented by further interviews with prison officials willing to speak, including former guards and judges. No one speaks for the thousands of dead, other than the former guard who said: "We already know they will die anyway, so we do whatever we want with them."

And so, they did. Using various forms of inventive torture. One of which was named the "flying carpet", where prisoners were bound facing upward, on a foldable board. Another where prisoners were forced into a vehicle wheel tire, with foreheads pressed to knees or ankles, and then beaten.  Omar Alshogre, 17 at the time of his arrest, spent nine months in the prison. Guards, he said, would enter his cell three times weekly calling detainees out by name.

Now 21, released because his family was able to pay his ransom out of prison, he recalls hearing those called out in the process of being tortured. "Then the sound would stop", a sound that doubtless visits his waking and his sleeping hours without respite. He would keep his eyes closed, his back to the guards while a cellmate would be abused or suffocated, the body left behind, or a pool of blood left in the cell that the prisoners were meant to clean up.

He was spared, he said, when upon being brought before a judge, though he was informed he was summoned "for execution", he responded to the judge's question of how many soldiers he had been responsible for killing: "none". While in prison he developed tuberculosis. His body took on a skeletal appearance, when his weight fell away leaving him at 77 pounds.

The prison is located some 30 kilometres north of Damascus. A military prison, where an estimated 13,000 prisoners were killed through torture and mass hangings. If they didn't die first from thirst, hunger or disease. Some 20 to 50 prisoners were hanged weekly; on occasion twice weekly mass hangings took place in a "calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution", as Amnesty put it. That was then, from March 2011 to December 2015.

Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus called Saydnaya Prison. Detainees refer to the prison as 'the slaughterhouse.' (Amnesty International/Google

But Amnesty warns that the prison still practises the same techniques and prisoners continue to be starved, exposed to disease, tortured and hanged, There are two sections to the prison; one the "white" building and this is where military officers and soldiers identified as being disloyal to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad are housed. And the "red" building is where political dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, doctors, humanitarian aid workers and students opposed to the regime are placed.

Not to think that there was no due process. Prisoners were  routinely collected from the cells on the day they were meant to be executed. They were told they were being taken to a civilian jail. Brought before a tribunal, a one- or two-minute "trial" took place. Whereupon they were transferred to a room, beaten for hours on end. Then brought to a basement cell and there nooses lined the walls for the mass executions to take place.

Labels: Civil War, Conflict, Shiite, State Atrocities, Sunni, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 08, 2017

Syrian Fallout in Lebanon

"When it's light out and we're looking down from these positions and see groups in the mountains, we fire at any target we see."
"We can go in sometimes [into the Lebanese town of Arsal], but if we go in too often they will remember us and plant a bomb under our car."
"We obey international law, so we can't just go in and kill them all, because we can't afford the legal consequences."
"It's like a border now. A buffer zone. Anyone who wants to leave should be checked. If you're an illegal refugee you can sty here, but  you can't cross further into Lebanon."
"[Relations with the townspeople] ... is excellent. They love that the army is here."
"They're [Islamic State fighters] all over the mountains. These natural shelters are what make it so hard to root them out."
"When we have a good government in Syria we can communicate with, you can get them out very easily [getting rid of the presence of Islamic State]."
Col. Ahmed Assir, commander, Lebanese Army Ninth Infantry Brigade

Reuters

"Whenever there's a security problem, they let it fester to the extent that the solution is to turn it into an enclave and close it off."
"What they don't understand is that by inflicting this exclusion on Arsal, it's creating lots of resentment in the population. It will sooner or later backfire."
Sahar Atrache, analyst, International Crisis Group

Islamic State fighters as well as al-Qaeda-linked Nusra militias descended out of the mountains above the town of Arsal and into the town of mostly Sunni Lebanese for a short-lived victory in 2014. The Lebanese Armed Forces responded in kind pushing the foreign Islamists out of the town, with thousands taking shelter in the town's outskirts and alternately finding refuge in caves and the naturally occurring redoubts of the mountains.

As the Islamists retreated they took with them 29 Lebanese police officers and soldiers, four of them soon executed and others still being held, years later. Lebanon's population has swelled with the influx of Syrian refugees. At first the country welcomed the Syrians fleeing the vicious assaults mounted against them by their country's Shiite president. Those assaults were aided by Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist group representing Iran's interests in Syria. The entry of Sunni ISIL fighters into Lebanon might be viewed as a response to Hezbollah's defence of the Syrian regime in a sectarian conflict.

Lebanese army soldiers work on a 130mm howitzer cannon, pointed to areas controlled by the Islamic State group at the edge of the town of Arsal, on the Syrian border, in northeast Lebanon. The Lebanese army is fighting a war against the Islamic State and al-Qaida and has clawed significant territory back from the extremists. The fighting and shelling near the eastern border town of Arsal occur almost daily. Some 5,000 Lebanese soldiers are fighting against a dwindling number of militants. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Now, for every three Lebanese in the country there is one Syrian refugee. Lebanon is staggering under the weight of refugees. In a country already long divided by Christians, Druze, Shiites and Sunnis all in conflict with one another, and the addition of large numbers of Palestinian refugees, the country is further dissected and fraught with the huge presence of Syrian refugees. The international community has set aside funding to aid Lebanon in its coping strategies. France, the U.K. and the U.S. along with Canada are donors to Lebanon.

The town of Arsal originally housed 30,000 inhabitants. Now there are an additional 60,000 to 90,000 Syrian refugees to swell its population, with large masses of white refugee tents clustered everywhere around the town. The town's locals have become a minority in their own home town, and another reality rears its head; that among the refugees and posing as refugees themselves are jihadi fighters. In response to which the people of Arsal increasingly resent the presence of Syrians.

The municipality imposed a curfew whereby refugees had to remain inside between ten p.m. and seven a.m. The town is surrounded by five thousand Lebanese troops, effectively creating a siege situation. Army outposts are numerous and sandbagged barricades, tanks and artillery guns proliferate on the barren, rocky landscape. Militants and the Lebanese army exchange fire daily.  Col. Assir describes jihadists creeping within range of army positions to open fire with American-made TOW missiles or rocket-propelled grenades.

A Lebanese army soldier takes his position overlooking an area controlled by the Islamic State group at the edge of the town of Arsal, on the Syrian border, in northeast Lebanon.  (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The Lebanese Armed Forces have their work cut out for them in and around the town. Not only the jihadis remaining in the town's outskirts and those in the mountains, but they are aware that many more still remain among the local population in the town. Where Lebanese soldiers have homes in Arsal, they can be identified and are ripe for murder. They have taken to wearing balaclavas to ensure they cannot be recognized and become targets.

The military perimeter around Arsal enables them to mount intelligence networks hoping for warnings whenever an ISIL leader enters town so they can respond by raiding and making arrests. Those living in the town as normal residents or as refugees cannot come and go as they please. Because of the military surrounding the town both townspeople and refugees -- and terrorists among them -- are virtual prisoners, since access is limited and all within the town are stuck there.

Allegations of torture conducted by the army against Syrian and Lebanese terror suspects detained in Arsal have been remitted to Human Rights Watch. According to its local researcher, torture extracts false confessions used to convict in ensuing military trials. The Shiite Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, Iran's proxy militia, is an integrated part of the government, although their militias have refused to merge with the Lebanese military. It's quite conceivable that the combat-skilled Hezbollah could, if they felt obliged to rid Lebanon of Islamic State fighters, counter their presence.

On the other hand, Lebanon, already freighted with conflicts between its political, ethnic and religious/sectarian groups, would erupt into another tinder-box explosion of violent hatred and vicious conflict, upsetting the balance of each vested interest put to the test once again of setting aside political accommodation and succumbing to the passions of savage conflict, so familiar to the people of Lebanon.

Syrian refugee camps in the foreground, and the town of Arsal, near the Syrian border, in northeast Lebanon. The Lebanese army is fighting a war against the Islamic State and al-Qaida and has clawed significant territory back from the extremists. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Labels: Christian, Conflict, Druze, Hezbollah, Islamic State, Lebanon, Palestinians, Shiite, Sunni, Syrian Refugees

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 31, 2017

The View Into Syria From Delusional Britain: An Unfortunate Misadventure

"Both Russia and Iran have failed to uphold their  obligations under international  humanitarian law, specifically by failing to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians during the months when eastern Aleppo was besieged."
"They deserve no credit for the fact that an evacuation appears to be under way today."
Boris Johnson, British Foreign Secretary

"Even if he defeats the opposition in Aleppo, there is no victory in bombing hospitals and restricting humanitarian aid and ending up in a country that you only control 40 per cent of and is half destroyed with millions dispersed and hundreds of thousands killed. That is no victory."
"[The crisis in Aleppo is] a tragedy of Russia’s making."
Sir Michael Fallon, British Defence Secretary

"[British forthcoming aid will] mean the difference between life and death for those fleeing Aleppo and those caught in freezing conditions in the city after being systematically bombed from their homes by the Syrian regime and its Russian allies.""Protecting innocent civilians must be an absolute priority. It is paramount that aid agencies now get the unfettered, secure access they need to save lives inside east Aleppo."
British International Development Secretary Priti Patel

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's assured victory in east Aleppo, thanks to the involvement of Iran's Republican Guard militias, its proxy Lebanese Hezbollah, Moscow's air cover and Shiite militias eager to meet face-to-face with Sunni opposition rebels, will not end with the destruction of east Aleppo and the starvation, privation and misery forced through siege on its civilian population, along with the defeat and departure of the Syrian rebels.

The tens of thousands of the original half-million left in the east of the city that once housed two and a half million Syrian Sunnis will only enjoy a temporary reprieve with their evacuation from bombed-out east Aleppo and their arrival in rebel-held territory in Idlib and Aleppo provinces. Assad's intention of destroying the insurgency completely is far from complete. And he means to complete the miraculous accomplishment that appeared so formidable a year earlier.
The Syrian Baathist president stated in a recent interview that winning back Aleppo "won't mean the end of the war in Syria, but it will be a huge step toward this end". The temporary relief that the on-again-off-again evacuations will provide for Syrian Sunni civilians and their rebel counterparts is but a temporary device. Their east Aleppo evacuation means that for the time being, once taken out of that damned theatre of one-sided war, they will suffer no more siege, starvation and bombs, a hiatus not a cessation.

President Assad's idea of what constitutes a truce, is in fact a prelude to one of his many emerging victories, courtesy of Russian air power which, like Syrian air power never hesitates to bomb schools, dense communities, health clinics and hospitals. Hundreds of young men in the opposition who had agreed in 2014 to surrender in the Old City of Homs were detained following a similar to east Aleppo starvation siege. There is nothing quite like the efficacy of dire privation to promote submission.

Assad promised amnesty to those who voluntarily surrendered. And though many met their ends, others were forcibly conscripted into the military they abhorred, knowing that their families were killed by that military, yet becoming at one with them, however against their will. Assad has refined siege, refugee-making and detentions, torture and death-deliverance to a fine art of conquest of his perceived enemies. It is his inimitable "scorched soul" policy.

From a low point several years back, to his present high with his confidence restored and his resolution supported unquestioningly by Vladimir Putin and the Iranian Ayatollahs, he forges ahead knowing that the rebels' resistance will ultimately be futile against the strengths Assad has so serendipitously acquired. His three-step protocol of making areas held by his opposition unlivable, his isolation of fighters from civilians, and his ability to force both to surrender or to leave, gain him his goals quite handily.

There will surely come a time when he will face a final quandary of how to dispose of what is left of millions of Syrian Sunnis who form a majority in the country. He can slaughter and he has, with grim impunity, putting the Islamist jihadist terrorist ISIL to shame on their death count, but he cannot dispose of that many annoying-to-his-complacency-as-tyrant, opposition Syrians. Can he? Or can he?

Leaving the European Council summit in Brussels, Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May stated that: "President Assad and his backers, Russia and Iran, bear responsibility for the tragedy in Aleppo.They must now allow the United Nations to ensure the safe evacuation of the civilians who are left there." Must they? They do not appear to feel that they must, despite the grumblings and the calls for conscience to prevail....

Perhaps they must put a shuddering and final halt to bombing civilian enclaves, hospitals, schools and heritage sites. It's likely that they must surely stop destroying so many lives of men, women and children who just happen not to enjoy the fact that they are not given the status of equality to that other Muslim sect whom Assad represents? Must they? Why mustn't they be forced to stop their atrocities? Why because no one forces them to.

But all is well, Britain is 'urgently' sending blankets, medical kits, clean water and food for civilians from Aleppo. They will be so fittingly grateful.

Civilians take shelter in a rebel-held neighbourhood in Aleppo. Photograph: Karam al-Masri/AFP/Getty Images

Labels: Aleppo, Britain, Civil War, Crisis Management, Shiite, Sunni, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, December 17, 2016

Vast Fields of Mass Killings From Saddam to ISIL

"He may be there [expansive field by the side of a road, laden with corpses]. Or he may be there [large area where soil had recently been moved]."
"I don't know his destiny, his fate. At the very least, I need to find his body."
"This is the important thing for us. So we can have a funeral."
Zaman Mijwal, Iraqi soldier, Hamam al-Alil, Iraq

Mosul operation: Iraqi-led forces push into key city -- CNN

His older brother Munther lived in a village close by. But the family hadn't heard from him in weeks, and fear the worst. He was a former policeman. During the period when Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant jihadis have been trying to hang on to Mosul, while being challenged by a coalition led by the Iraqi military, the ISIL fighters had been selecting from nearby villages all those whom it knew to be eligible for death, and that included former police and military aligned with the Iraqi regime.

Everywhere that the security forces of Iraq regain territory from Islamic State, it has become a predictable finding, they will come across a mass grave holding hundreds of bodies. There has been a long tradition of mass graves in Iraq. During the tyrannical reign of Saddam Hussein mass graves became a familiar disposal solution to hold the countless victims of the man who led his country into a backlash of atrocities and death against any who might venture to challenge his supremacy.

An ISIS mass grave discovered near Mosul on November 7, 2016, most likely contains the bodies of at least 300 former local police officers. The corpses were not buried, some were covered with piles of trash while others were left on the surface.   © 2016 Belkis Wille/Human Rights Watch

Symbolic of decades of Iraq under the relentless fist of a man who had to be obeyed and certainly not challenged, as Marsh Arabs and the Ayatollahs of Iran discovered for themselves. Iraq and Iran appeared equally matched in the madness of their investment in war against one another, a war that went on and on and met a stalemate; no solution, no winner, countless losers inhabiting mass graves. Each countries ruled by despots considering the population sacrificial fodder through which they would achieve their ends.

The U.S.-led invasion that led to the collapse of the Baathist Sunni regime of Saddam dismissed the national military, leaving trained officers in Saddam's army unemployed and bitter. Many of those officers now represent the senior jihadis embracing Islamic State's caliphate, bitterly at war with the Shiite-led government of Iraq, now closely aligned with the Islamic Republic of Iran, with the Republic's al Quds Division of the Republican Guard and its proxy militia Hezbollah, fighting alongside government troops. Aided as well by Iranian-supported Shiite militias.

Kurdistan's semi-autonomous region has sent its Peshmerga army, strangely enough allied with the Turkish military, to aid the Iraqi military in vanquishing the Islamic State caliphate, to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city, from ISIS. It might even seem like a seamless transition for Saddam's former officers to now represent the top ranks of ISIL's fighters. As clear a representation of sectarian-centric hatred and conflict as any.

Smoke rises during clashes between Peshmerga forces and Islamic State militants in the town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul. Photograph: Azad Lashkari/Reuters

Former policeman Jamal Abul Younis has some haunting memories that he will recall for the rest of his life, but he did manage not to become one of the nameless, faceless corpses littering one of the mass graves. He hid in a hole in the ground, behind an air-cooler, in the floor of his house, comprised of dirt. "Each one hour" he said, "was like one year". As one of a few surviving witnesses to the killings in Hamam al-Alil, he describes watching eight minibuses driving to the area of the mass grave recently discovered.

Ironically, Saddam Hussein himself hid in a hole dug in the dirt, his famous "spidey-hole", from which he was dredged and taken prisoner, back to Baghdad, to stand trial and execution. Now his former brigade and security force commanders faithful to his tyrannical vision of Sunni exceptionalism under a regional madman, are meting out death to any they can identify as Shiite Iraqis, and particularly those who act in the same security-military capacity under the al-Maliki government as they did under the Saddam administration.

There, as he hid, Abul Younis heard one gunshot following another, as all of the captured former police and military men were killed in a mass orgy of death. "I saw Daesh bury 200 bodies over here", he said, motioning to the area where an estimated one hundred were killed in the town's outskirts. Human Rights Watch, however, believes that number is much higher, that at least 300 people were killed on that site. Hundreds of people were herded by the Islamic State jihadis, he said, as much as thousands from villages nearby, bringing them to Hamam al-Alil.

Iraqis inspect the damage at a site in the Hamam al-Alil area, about 14 kilometres from the southern outskirts of Mosul. Photograph: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

They were used as human shields on the possibility that American airstrikes would occur. Then they separated out the former policemen and they were ordered to be killed. "I cannot believe I am still alive", Abul Younis said. The International Commission on Missing Persons, Netherlands-based, estimates that up to a million Iraqis will be forever unaccounted for, encompassing the war between Iran and Iraq, Saddam's mass killings, chemical strikes against Kurds, and recent sectarian conflict.

Few of the bodies being disinterred are ever identified by DNA testing. "The most difficult thing is when my grandson asks me about his father", said Abu Marwan in Diyala Province where the Islamic State presence is now just a bad memory. "I answer, 'He is on a trip and will return one day'." And as the Iraqi military clear out former ISIL strongholds, the civilians whose homes they were, are being singled out, the men and the youth, for close scrutiny by the regime and Shiite militias to ensure they pose no threats -- sometimes becoming revenge-fodder in the process.

Men wait to go through and ID and security check at a civilian screening point after fleeing Mosul in Gogjali, Iraq. Photograph: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Iraq, Islamic State, Shiite, Sunni

posted by Pieface @ Monday, December 12, 2016

"I Want To Live"

"Syrian government forces have repeatedly launched unlawful attacks on Aleppo city displaying a callous disregard for the safety of civilians living in parts of the city controlled by armed opposition groups."
"Given the Syrian government’s long and dark history of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances on a mass scale it is even more crucial that civilians are protected in newly captured areas of Aleppo city. The Syrian government must not arbitrarily restrict the movement of civilians and they must allow civilians who wish to leave the area freedom to do so without threat or constraint."
Samah Hadid, Deputy Director for Campaigns, Amnesty International’s Beirut Regional office.  

"Please save us right now. I need peace. I can't go out because of the bombing, please stop bombing us."
"Tonight we have no house ... I saw deaths and almost died."
"I got minor injury. I didn't sleep since yesterday. I am hungry. I want to live. I don't want to die."
Bana Alabed, seven, eastern Aleppo

Bana Alabed sent out a message on social media on Sunday night that her home in Syria had been bombed. Twitter

"The problem today, in this moment, is not water and food."
"We are threatened with slaughtering."
Hisham al-Skeif, council member, eastern Aleppo

Rebel forces are losing their defensive capability with government forces moving into the Hanano district of eastern Aleppo. This advance represents the furthest the regime has been able to penetrate eastern Aleppo for the past four years. As the country's once-largest, and former commercial hub falls into the hands of Bashar al-Assad once again, it is a hollow victory. That half of the city is nothing but a shell of its former self, destroyed to rubble, with hundreds of thousands of its Sunni Syrian civilians facing starvation and disease, fully deprived of all amenities.

There are no hospitals left, bombed into oblivion by Russian and Syrian fighter planes. The standoff that had given residents some semblance of hope that some kind of peace might be accommodated yet through negotiations is a blighted memory now in the face of current realities. The besieged portion of the city, rebel-controlled and fast shrinking, has been closed off to any access to food, medicine or any supplies of any nature. Over one hundred rebels had put aside their arms to exit the eastern suburbs of the city in recognition of the failure of ability to hold out.

Reality points to a total rebel defeat, turning the five-year conflict completely in the regime's favour. The coastal region as well as the country's four largest cities will return to government control. Thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, have been fighting alongside the regime, under cover of the Russian air force. Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods are destroyed, completely laid waste. Syrian warplanes pounded the enclave, leaving no element of civil life untouched.

A tide of displacement was set off by the advance of both Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces on Sunday. Thousands of residents have been evacuated, those going to Kurdish-controlled areas of the city could be assured of some level of security, while those herded toward government controlled areas perhaps less so, with the prospect of revenge attacks not far from the imagination of those who have lost everything, but not yet their lives.

Labels: Conflict, Hezbollah, Rebels, Russia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, November 30, 2016