War Widens in Iraq & Syria + Spotlight Back on Saudis + Trump & Le Pen Riding High

Sunday night going to bed after watching football on television and reading the news all day I was oppressed by the feeling that world powers are cycling out of control, ably summed up by a Niqnaq blog post this morning titled "come on, cut the shit and start ww4, i was planning to die fairly soon anyway," having to do with Turkey's refusal to withdraw its troops from around Mosul.

Then yesterday Syria accused the U.S.-led coalition of bombing one of its military bases in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, killing three soldiers and wounding 13. The U.S. immediately denied that it was at fault and blamed Russia. Brett McGurk, Obama's ISIS czar, the guy who managed the Western response to the fall of Mosul, tweeted "Reports of coalition involvement are false."

The problem for the U.S. is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Western, anti-Assad propaganda outlet, puts the blame on the U.S.-led coalition. According to Hwaida Saad and Eric Schmitt in "Syria Blames U.S. in Base Bombing, but Americans Blame Russia":

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group that tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts on the ground, also reported on Monday that American coalition airstrikes had apparently hit a Syrian military post on Sunday near Ayyash, in the western part of Deir al-Zour.

Over at the Moon of Alabama blog, "Is Erdogan's Mosul Escapade Blackmail For Another Qatar-Turkey Pipeline?," a connection is made between Turkey's invasion of Iraq and the attack on the Syrian military base in Deir al-Zour:

Damascus insists that four jets entered Syria from Al-Bukamal, Iraq and fired 9 missiles against al-Saeqa military base in Ayyash near Deir Ezzour.

The U.S. accuses Russia to have committed the strike. I very much doubt that. There have been accidental "friendly fire" strikes by the Russian air force against Syrian troops and against Hizbullah. But those accidents were always immediately admitted and investigated within the 4+1 alliance. The Russians say they did not do this strike and Damascus agrees. 

But notice the weasel word in the U.S. statements: "U.S.-led coalition". The Turks in Mosul are not part of the "U.S.-led coalition" even if they first claimed to be. If the air strike in Syria today were not done by the "U.S.-led coalition" it could mean that some country committed these air strikes on its own without the strike being officially within the "U.S.-led coalition" framework. Could that country's name start with a Q? [Qatar]

The U.S. will know who really launched this strike. In both, the Turkish aggression on Iraq and the airstrike in Syria today and even with the earlier mountain ambush on the Russian jet, the U.S. is likely "leading from behind" the curtain. All these events are, like the now forming new alliance with Jihadis, part of Obama's bigger plans and designs for Syria and the Middle East.

Events appear to be spiraling out of control. But the spotlight on the Saudi origin of the Wahhabite ideology espoused by the jihadists of the Islamic State, a spotlight that quickly dimmed after shining brightly for about a week following the Paris terrorist attacks of November 13, looks to have been turned back on. 

Yesterday Declan Walsh published a remarkable story, "Tashfeen Malik Was a ‘Saudi Girl’ Who Stood Out at a Pakistani University," about the female member, Tashfeen Malik, of the husban-&-wife terror team of last week's San Bernardino massacre. Malik was born in Pakistan but reared in Saudi Arabia where her father worked as an engineer. She returned to Pakistan where she attended a religious school, Bahauddin Zakariya University, in Multan. Malik studied pharmacy. Her professors considered her such an excellent student (even if they didn't know what she looked like since she was always decked out in a face-covering niqab) that they hoped she would stay on after she received her degree and teach.

Here is the passage where Walsh focuses the spotlight on Saudi Arabia:

In many ways, Ms. Malik was a classic product of the conservatizing influence that Saudi Arabia has brought to bear on countries like Pakistan. 

Critics of Saudi influence usually focus on the funding of hard-line mosques and religious schools, a criticism echoed on Sunday by the German vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, who connected the export of Saudi-style Islam to the danger from growing extremism in Europe. “We must make it clear to the Saudis that the time of looking the other way is over,” Mr. Gabriel said an interview with the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. 

[Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, also squarely affixed blame to the Saudi's for exporting jihadist ideology. See Alison Smale, "Germany Rebukes Its Own Intelligence Agency for Criticizing Saudi Policy." 

But Ms. Malik’s family represents a different strand of the same phenomenon: changes wrought by Pakistanis who, since the 1970s, have migrated to Saudi Arabia for work, only to return with a far more conservative creed. 

Relatives and neighbors said that, after some years in Saudi Arabia, Ms. Malik’s father, Gulzar, rejected the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam that his family had traditionally practiced, and turned to the stricter Deobandi school. He stopped returning home for weddings, and his children, including Ms. Malik, did not meet their Pakistani relatives. 

“There was a lot of friction within the whole family as they adhered to different sects,” said Zahid Gishkori, a journalist based in Islamabad who is from the same district as the family.

Walsh obviously struck a bull's-eye based on the preposterous Saudi reaction reported by Ben Hubbard in "Discrepancies Emerge Over Where Tashfeen Malik Grew Up." Saudi officials are denying that Tashfeen Malik grew up in Saudi Arabia:

Maj. Gen. Mansour Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, said via text message on Saturday that Ms. Malik had visited the kingdom twice. In 2008, she arrived in June from Pakistan to visit her father and stayed for about nine weeks before returning to Pakistan, General Turki said. 

Then, in 2013, she arrived on June 8, from Pakistan, and departed for India on Oct. 6 of the same year, General Turki said. 

He gave her full name as Tashfeen Malik Gulzarahmed Malik and said his office did not know whether her father was still in the kingdom. 

General Turki said there was “no evidence” that Ms. Malik had met her husband in the kingdom, but they were in Saudi Arabia at the same time for about five days in October 2013, according to information General Turki provided.

Mr. Farook, 28, visited Saudi Arabia twice, once for the hajj pilgrimage between Oct. 1 and Oct. 20, 2013, and once for an off-season pilgrimage known as umrah for nine days in July 2014. 

American officials reported that the couple flew to the United States together from Jidda in July 2014. And members of a mosque the couple attended in California said they had been married in Saudi Arabia. 

Both Saudi and Pakistani officials have bristled at the suggestion that their respective countries played any role in the radicalization of Ms. Malik and Mr. Farook. 

In Multan, Pakistan, where Ms. Malik went to the university, the authorities swarmed around journalists who were seeking interviews with people who knew the family. "What is your intention?” one security guard asked a reporter seeking comment at the university. “Why do you want to interview people here? We will not allow anyone to malign our institution.”

Saudi officials, meanwhile, have rejected the idea that Ms. Malik took up more fundamentalist views in Saudi Arabia, or that it played a role in the relationship between her and Mr. Farook. The Saudi narrative has varied to the extent that one official denied she had ever been there. 

The day after the attack, Osama Nugali, a spokesman for the Saudi Foreign Ministry, said via text message that Mr. Farook had visited the kingdom only once, for nine days in 2014. He said he had no record of Ms. Malik having ever entered the kingdom. 

“For the lady, we don’t have a record of this name,” he wrote.

The Saudis are lying of course. Anyone who has followed their war on Yemen should know by now that for the House of Saud no lie is too blatant or too big. The Saudis are scared because things are getting out of their "pay-to-play" control. Trump, the candidate who is going to win the White House and/or destroy its remaining patina of legitimacy, is calling for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S., while Marine Le Pen is heading to a resounding victory in France's regional elections.

The Caliphate Grows, as Does the Case Against Kiev in the Downing of MH17

Islamic State was on the march over the weekend. The jihadis routed the vaunted pesh merga in three Iraqi cities north of Mosul: Zumar, Wana and Sinjar. Tim Arango reports from Baghdad in "Sunni Extremists in Iraq Seize 3 Towns From Kurds and Threaten Major Dam" that

In a statement, ISIS boasted of conquering “more important areas which were controlled by the pesh merga and the secular militias.” With the new territory, which the group described as “the border triangle of Iraq, Syria and Turkey,” ISIS strengthened its hold on territory that traverses the frontiers of Iraq and Syria, giving it an even greater ability to move fighters and weapons between the front lines of the civil wars in both countries. 

According to security officials and residents in the area, the Kurdish forces were routed from Zumar, a town on the road from the Syrian border that also sits on oil fields, and then Sinjar. Sinjar, an isolated city in northwestern Iraq, has been home to a sizable community of Yazidis, Kurdish speakers who ascribe to a religion that combines elements of Islam and ancient Persian religions and who are considered apostates by Muslim extremists. 

Later on Sunday, the militants captured Wana, a strategic town near the Tigris River — putting them within striking distance of the Mosul Dam, the country’s largest and an important supplier of electricity and water. The dam is on the Tigris River about 30 miles northwest of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which fell to ISIS on June 10. 

Yazidi residents of Sinjar, who were reached by phone, were terrified. They told of kidnappings and executions of members of their sect. One resident, Sami Hassan, said he was at work at a hospital on Sunday when an injured ISIS fighter arrived and demanded to know the sect to which Mr. Hassan belonged.

Mr. Hassan said he had escaped from a window while being shot at. 

Another local, Khudhur Rasho, said he had seen two Yazidi men executed and the members of 10 families, their hands bound behind their back, being led away by militants. 

A State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said Sunday that ISIS posed “a dire threat to all Iraqis, the entire region and the international community” and that the United States would continue to seek ways to support the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish pesh merga. 

The seizing of the three towns in a triangle that stretches north and west from Mosul to the borders of Syria and Turkey allowed the extremists to expand their territory, but the capture of the Mosul Dam would be a bigger prize, and could give the militants the ability to unleash a deadly flood on large populations.

Also over the weekend, Islamic State, operating with Nusra and Free Syrian Army fighters, took the Lebanese border town of Arsal. Hwaida Saad reports in "Fighters From Syria Kill 10 Lebanese Soldiers in Battle Over Border Town" that

Islamist fighters from Syria killed 10 Lebanese soldiers and appeared to have captured more than a dozen others in an armed offensive that left them in a tense battle for control of a Lebanese border town, Lebanon’s army chief said Sunday. 

The new toll was reported one day after fighters from Syria — who included members of rebel brigades, an affiliate of Al Qaeda and the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — carried out a series of attacks on army checkpoints that left them largely in control of the town of Arsal. 

The two-day clash was the most recent spillover into Lebanon from the civil war in neighboring Syria. The two countries share a complex web of political and sectarian ties that have made the violence in Syria resonate in its smaller neighbor, where street clashes, car bombs and political deadlock related to the war in Syria have been common.

Residents, aid workers and Syrian rebels reached in Arsal on Sunday said that insurgents had seized the town but that it was surrounded by the Lebanese Army, which was shelling it.

The weekend gains by Islamic State represent acute problems for U.S. policy in the region. First, while publicly opposed to IS, as the Jan Psaki quote in the Arango story makes clear, the United States has actual done nothing to stem the caliphate's growth. In fact, overwhelming, the Obama administration's reaction to the Salafis military advance on June 10, which led to the capture of Mosul, has been to blame Iraq's Shiite prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. Now that IS has turned its aggression on the Kurds, trusted American allies, and the Kurds are crying out for military assistance, it is going to be interesting to see how the U.S. manages its allegiance to both the House of Saud, the main benefactor of Islamic State, and Kurdistan, where the United States is expanding a drone facility at Erbil.

Patrick Cockburn, who has a new book out on Islamic State, had a piece over the weekend on the Counterpunch web site that is quite bullish on the prospects of continued success for the caliphate. He sees IS as shrewd and disciplined, consolidating its territorial gains while always on the look-out to pluck low-hanging fruit. Cockburn does not have many good things to say about the Shia leadership of Iraq. He predicts a jihadi encirclement and prolonged siege of Baghdad. Things are going to go from bad to worse.

The attack on Lebanon, no favorite of the U.S. because of Hezbollah, represents trouble for Obama due to the presence of Free Syrian Army fighters among the jihadis. The FSA, presumably, remains the United States principal Syrian ally in the battle against the Assad government. Getting the FSA weapons, training and hundreds of millions of dollars is going to be difficult if it is operating in open alliance with, as State Department spokeswoman Psaki says, “a dire threat to all Iraqis, the entire region and the international community.”

So the difficulties mount for Team Obama. The presidential recount that Kerry negotiated in Afghanistan is tottering. Carlotta Gall reports in "Disputes Threaten to Derail Audit of Afghanistan Vote" that an argument between the Adbullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani camps as to what counts as an invalidated ballot brought the recount to a halt over the weekend, necessitating direct intervention by the U.S. State Departmant. The Abdullah camp revealed tape of a telephone conversation which seems to show that there was a criminal conspiracy by the Karzai government and international community to swing the runoff to Ghani:

Also on Sunday, Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager released an audiotape on which he said Vice President Karim Khalili could be heard directing his followers to support Mr. Ghani in the runoff. An aide to Mr. Khalili has denounced the tape as fake, according to the independent television news channel Tolo TV. 

In the tape the speaker, who sounded like Mr. Khalili but had not been independently verified as such, said that the international community, the election commission and the president all supported Mr. Ghani for president. He even suggested that Afghanistan’s allies would tolerate the use of any means to achieve such a result. 

“Our international friends have promised us that by using any means and using any opportunity, the election outcome must turn in favor of this team, even if these opportunities, even if these means are against electoral mechanisms,” the voice said.

Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager, Baryalai Arsalai, said the tape proved that the election fraud had been planned to return a victory for Mr. Ghani. 

“This evidence was released today to inform our countrymen that our president, other government elders and the so-called election commission are instruments,” Mr. Arsalai said. The election was a public process, he said, calling it the right of the Afghan people, not the president or the commission chief. “We have a responsibility to let people know that their rights are being violated,” he said.  

Mr. Arsalai vouched for the tape’s authenticity and said details proving that would be released later.

Afghanistan is not going to make it. Thus, with Lebanese territory now under jihadi control and the Taliban soon to be back in power, the caliphate rises, from the Mediterranean to the Durand Line.

Before signing off for the day, it is worth mentioning that the U.S. control of the MH17 narrative is slipping fast. Two good articles over the weekend -- Mike Whitney's "The Unanswered Questions of MH17" and Robert Parry's "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts" -- marshal the evidence and clarify the events since July 17, and everything points to the Kiev junta. The arguments that Whitney and Parry present are compelling. There is even a possibility that their line of thinking will find its way to the mainstream.

Uncle Sam Knuckles Down on Syrian National Coalition + Haqqani Network Fundraiser Assassinated

I would not take seriously the news emerging out of Istanbul that the Syrian National Coalition has agreed to attend the Geneva II peace talks. What appears to be going on is some linguistic pussyfooting to appease the West. Rather than demanding that the Baathist government of Bashar al-Assad step down prior to any peace talks, now the opposition's position is that any transitional government that emerges from Geneva cannot include al-Assad and his principals. Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad have the story, "Leading Syrian Opposition Group, Yielding to Pressure, Votes to Join Peace Talks":

With the Monday vote, the coalition appeared to drop its demand that Mr. Assad step down before any talks. But it continued to insist that it would participate only if there are guarantees that the talks would lead to a full transfer of executive power, including over military and security forces, to a transitional government in which Mr. Assad and “those with blood on their hands” would have “no role.”

Other conditions stipulated by the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces include the release of prisoners and full access to humanitarian aid.

This doesn't sound like a breakthrough that will enable substantive peace talks anytime soon. What is encouraging is the line currently coming from the U.S.:

Stoking tensions all around, Robert S. Ford, the United States ambassador to Syria, told the activists on the sidelines that the emerging reality presented them with unpalatable options: accept that the current government could continue in power longer than they would like, or face the continued rise of extremist jihadist groups that have terrified residents, clashed with rival insurgents and undermined Western support.

The U.S. is telling the opposition, "It's either ISIS or the regime," basically saying to the rebels, "Shit or get off the pot. The days of pretending to be a potent force while arguing in hotel conference rooms are over. Either go with the jihadis or sit down and talk to the Baathists in Geneva." It's about time.

Declan Walsh and Ihansullah Tipu Mehsud have an informative piece on the assassination of Nasiruddin Haqqani, chief fundraiser for the Haqqani network and scion of founder Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was gunned down last night outside a bread store on the outskirts of Islamabad:

The killing added to an impression of increased turbulence for the militant groups harbored in Pakistan’s tribal belt, including Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network. Over just two months, one major leader has been arrested, two have been killed in a drone strike, and now a major financier — Mr. Haqqani — has died. 

The link, if any, between those events remains hidden in the miasma of tribal politics, skulduggery and treachery that has for centuries haunted the rugged frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But many are taking the violence as a portent of increased upheaval as rival intelligence services and militant groups vie for power and influence ahead of the withdrawal of American combat troops from the region next year. 

The first major shot came when American forces detained Latif Mehsud, a senior commander for the Pakistani Taliban, inside Afghanistan. Weeks later, on Nov. 1, a C.I.A. drone strike killed the Pakistani Taliban’s leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, and a top deputy. Now, Mr. Haqqani, a looming figure in a militant network closely allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, is dead.

Nasiruddin Haqqani was a crucial link to Pakistan's ISI and funders in the GCC. The Haqqani network is aligned with the Afghan Taliban but is really a Saudi and ISI tool. More war can be expected in the tribal belt as jihadi factions positions themselves for the torrent of spoils to be reaped once the United States pulls out next year.

Al Nusra Assaults Aramaic-Speaking Town + Obama Tosses in Towel on AUMF + HRW Report

I am often critical of Anne Barnard, Beirut bureau chief for the New York Times, for being reflexively pro-opposition in her reporting on the Syrian civil war. Most of the time reading her dispatches feels as if one is reading reports vetted at Langley. But this morning Ms. Barnard deserves praise. Her story, written along with Hwaida Saad, "Assault on Christian Town in Syria Adds to Fears Over Rebels," is devastating to the rebel cause. Fighters, the Nusra Front in the vanguard, took control of the town of Maaloula:

Most of the town’s residents have fled, and Maaloula, one of the last places where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken by Christians and some Muslims, has become a one-word argument against Western support for the rebels — at the worst possible time for Mr. Obama and the opponents of Mr. Assad. 

Syrian-Americans lobbying against the proposed American missile strike flooded Congressional message boards with appeals for Maaloula. A common refrain was that Mr. Obama was throwing Syria’s Christians “to the lions.”

**** 

The situation in Maaloula underscores the core problems that bedevil the movement against Mr. Assad: the opposition, rooted in Syria’s Sunni majority, has failed to win over enough Christians, who make up 8 percent to 10 percent of the population, or other religious minorities. More than 450,000 Christians have fled their homes, church leaders say, during more than two years of war. 

On the battlefield, well-armed radical Islamist groups, including foreign fighters, show little inclination to coordinate with local battalions, and sectarian killings and references to non-Muslims as infidels further intimidate Christians. In Maaloula, according to fighters, the rebel attack was led by members of the Nusra Front, a group with ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq, even after local fighters affiliated with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army tried and failed to dissuade them. 

Last week, as the battle began, opponents of American military action in Syria circulated a recent video of a Syrian Christian woman accosting Senator John McCain, a proponent of military action, accusing him of abandoning Christians. “I could trace my family’s name to the Bible,” she said. “We refuse to be forced to leave.”

The fact that jihadists lead the rebel war effort is a huge barrier for the Obama administration and helps explain why, in addition to war weariness on this anniversary of 9/11, the American public, though it blames the Assad regime for the Ghouta gassing, overwhelming refuses to support a military assault on Syria. People know that such an attack would benefit the very forces we have been at war with since 2001.

No, the elites misread the gullibility of the populace on this issue. Obama has requested a delay in Congressional consideration of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) while Kerry and Lavrov attempt to hammer out an agreement on the Russia-sponsored proposal for Syria to give up its stockpile of chemical munitions.

Based on the Syrian reaction -- both opposition and pro-government -- one would have to conclude that events since Monday when Kerry made his impromptu comment about a possible path to peace have benefited the anti-war forces. This from another article written by Anne Barnard, "In Shift, Syrian Official Admits Government Has Chemical Arms":

Abu al-Haytham, the commander of a rebel group in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, said he had redeployed fighters to attack government bases after the expected American strike, but was now forced to revise those plan because the strike might never happen. 

He said he believed that under any deal, the government would secretly retain some chemical weapons stocks, continue using them and blame rebels for the attacks.

“We will continue the battle — it’s either death or life, no other choice,” he said. “Bashar will feel stronger now — why not, since all his fears have gone?” 

Supporters of the government cast Russia in a heroic light. 

“Obama is a coward,” said Shifa, 29, a humanitarian worker from Jaramana, a government-held suburb near Damascus. “He didn’t have enough support in the first place to do the strike, and now he just feels relieved.” 

She said that Russian officials had saved Mr. Obama by proposing the weapons deal in response to an off-the-cuff suggestion on Monday by John Kerry, the American secretary of state, that Mr. Assad could avoid the strikes by giving up his weapons. 

“The Russians are great and very smart,” she said.

Obama's speech last night, which I didn't bother to watch, deciding instead to spend my time on an evening run in the late summer sun, will persuade no one to back the AUMF who didn't already do so; rather, it was a way for Obama to tactfully toss in the towel.

In all the hubbub of the last couple of days -- the AUMF apparently headed to defeat in both chambers of Congress; anti-war public opinion triumphant; then the Russian proposal to rid Syria of its chemical weapons and the Obama administrations confused, seesaw response -- the Human Rights Watch (HRW) glossy report "conclusively" blaming the Syrian government for the August 21 chemical weapons attack got buried. HRW at first glance makes a more compelling case than the U.S. Government. The HRW assessment is based on the type of rocket system used:

Syrian Government Forces Responsibility for the Attacks

The evidence examined by Human Rights Watch strongly suggests that the August 21 chemical weapon attacks on Eastern and Western Ghouta were carried out by government forces. Our basis for this finding is: 

• The large-scale nature of the attacks, involving at least a dozen surface-to-surface rockets affecting two different neighborhoods in Damascus countryside situated 16 kilometers apart, and surrounded by major Syrian government military positions.

• One of the types of rockets used in the attack, the 330mm rocket system – likely Syrian produced, which appear to be have been used in a number of alleged chemical weapon attacks, has been filmed in at least two instances in the hands of government forces. The second type of rocket, the Soviet-produced 140mm rocket, which can carry Sarin, is listed as a weapon known to be in Syrian government weapon stocks. Both rockets have never been reported to be in the possession of the opposition. Nor is there any footage or other evidence that the armed opposition has the vehicle-mounted launchers needed to fire these rockets.

• The August 21 attacks were a sophisticated military attack, requiring large amounts of nerve agent (each 330mm warhead is estimated to contain between 50 and 60 liters of agent), specialized procedures to load the warheads with the nerve agent, and specialized launchers to launch the rockets.

It is still a circumstantial case -- the kind of munitions most likely used to disperse the gas have never been seen in the possession of the rebels while they have been seen being used by the government. One question. Weren't the initial reports -- by Anne Barnard, in fact -- of the chemical weapons attack of August 21, didn't they say that the delivery system was low-tech tube rockets?

Gray Lady's Anne Barnard Savors Ambiguous Rebel Victory

Anne Barnard, back in Beirut after her stay in Damascus, celebrates the rebel capture of Minakh air base (spelled as "Minnigh" and "Minnegh" in other accounts) in northern Syria's Aleppo Province. Writing with Hwaida Saad, Barnard, in "Rebels Gain Control of Government Air Base in Syria," is even more accepting of rebel claims than the reliably pro-opposition Al Jazeera, which in its story, "Syrian rebels claim control of Aleppo airbase," is careful to frame the government's loss of the air base as hearsay. SANA issued a pro forma denial.

According to Barnard and Saad,

Warplanes from the base had struck at villages across northern Syria, and the base, in flat fields with little cover, had presented its own challenge. But as rebels began to acquire antiaircraft weapons from Qatar and other donors, shooting down helicopters and warplanes, it became harder for the army to restock the base by air, stranding the soldiers with dwindling supplies.

Chechen jihadis were apparently instrumental in the attack:

The base was first besieged by a Free Syrian Army brigade called North Storm, and joined by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and a group calling itself Jaish al-Muhajireen wal Ansar. Muhajireen means emigrants, and the group, which carried out several suicide attacks at the base, is led by Russian speakers from Chechnya and other parts of the Caucasus. 

Mr. Farzat said Chechen Islamist fighters near the airport had refused to let the defecting government soldiers flee, so he helped them escape by another route. “I give the Islamic fighters credit for the liberation,” he said.The seizure of the base could have an impact on the stalemated fight for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, by freeing up rebel fighters and antiaircraft weapons to put pressure on Aleppo’s airport, which rebels have been unable to take despite months of trying. It could also dampen the morale of government troops in other remote outposts. 

Abu al-Haytham, a rebel fighter who fought for months to seize Minakh and is now in Turkey, called the capture of the base a morale booster and “a strike against the regime.” But, he added, “it won’t change anything on the ground — we just got some vehicles and ammunition.”

Licking her lips in anticipation of those freed-up antiaircraft guns being trained on Aleppo, Barnard also heralds an ISIS surge into the Alawite coastal stronghold of Latakia:

In Latakia, the rebel offensive, involving more than 1,500 fighters led by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, accelerated what had been a gradual rebel push into a province whose government-held central city has been a relatively secure haven for displaced Syrians from war-torn areas. 

Government forces withdrew Monday from a number of villages in the coastal mountains, said Ammar Hassan, an opposition activist in close touch with rebels. 

He said rebels had seized four mountaintop military posts that had been shelling villages below, and were trying to advance farther toward the coast and toward Qardaha, the ancestral mountain village of President Bashar al-Assad’s family.

Regardless of the veracity of rebel gains in these two particular instances, it does seem that Patrick Cockburn's assessment of the conflict after the government victory at Qusayr is on target: there are going to be no outright winners here. The government can continue to rack up victories, but the opposition -- with its myriad Islamist groups; its CIA-supported Free Syrian Army; its Kurdish separatists -- controls significant amounts of territory and appears ever ready to mount fresh offensives.

A piece that appeared in The Guardian at the beginning of last month, "Syria's al-Nusra Front – ruthless, organised and taking control," written by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, provides excellent insight into the antagonistic relationship between Al Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, as well as why the United States seems blithely unconcerned about the spread of Islamist fighters into Syria:

If the jihadis are in the ascendant in the east, they are not without challenges. The first of these is a strategy that bore fruit for the Americans in Iraq: the threat of an Arab "awakening", or sahwa, in which the US pays tribes to fight the jihadists on their behalf. In Iraq, this delivered a disastrous defeat for al-Qaida and other jihadis, but it has since achieved mixed results in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. 

But while it took the Americans months of intricate negotiations and huge sums of money to convince a few tribal elders in Iraq, in Syria almost every other marginal tribal elder and his many cousins flirt with the the idea of sahwa, and the money that it could bring. 

"They used to tell us that the FSA will turn to sahwa and fight us, which I thought was an exaggeration," said the emir of gas before we departed. "Now I know that will happen for sure."

Abdul-Ahad's piece gives one a non-partisan perspective of the breadth of opposition within Syrian.

Improved Reporting of Syrian Civil War + ISIS Terror Bombing

As Anne Barnard has been on assignment in Damascus, Ben Hubbard and Hwaida Saad have taken over the daily coverage of the Syrian civil war and there has been a marked improvement in the reporting. Take this morning's offering for instance. In "Across Syria, Violent Day of Attacks and Ambush," the most newsworthy items are placed at the top of the story -- a significant government victory in the town of Adra and ongoing clashes between Kurdish militia and rebels on the northern border with Turkey -- while the news -- bloody fighting in the coastal province of Tartus heavily populated with Alawites and Christians -- that seems to be more like opposition propaganda and is sourced only to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is placed at the bottom. This order would likely be reversed if Barnard had written the story, and without the caveats that "The account could not be independently confirmed."

It's a refreshing departure for the New York Times, putting it more in line with the reporting provided by Reuters and The Associated Press. Here are the important paragraphs in Hubbard and Saad's story. First, on the rebel setback in Adra:

In the deadliest attack, government forces ambushed a group of rebel fighters in the town of Adra, northeast of Damascus, and left dozens of dead bodies lying in the sand, according to video broadcast on Al Manar, a television station run by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party that supports President Bashar al-Assad. 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad group based in Britain that tracks the conflict through a network of contacts on the ground, said on Monday that 65 people had been killed in the countryside around Damascus, including 58 insurgent fighters. The ambush in Adra accounted for 49 rebel deaths. 

It was another blow to the rebel movement. The momentum in the civil war has shifted in favor of Mr. Assad, whose forces have rolled back a number of rebel gains near Damascus, the capital, and elsewhere. Infighting among rebels who took up arms to topple Mr. Assad has allowed his forces to solidify their hold on central Syria and gradually expand their reach.

Next, the Kurds vs. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS):

Clashes have been raging for days across the ethnically mixed strip of land along the northern border with Turkey, pitting mainstream rebels and extremist groups linked to Al Qaeda against Kurdish militias. The Kurds, Syria’s largest ethnic minority, seek greater control of their own areas and fight to keep the rebels out. 

On Sunday, Kurdish fighters surrounded the local leader of one of the groups linked to Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, inside a school he and his fighters were using as a base near the border town of Tel Abyad. Activists said the Kurdish fighters did not storm the school to detain the group’s leader, who is known by the nom de guerre Abu Musab, because they feared he would blow up the school. 

To push the Kurds to grant him safe passage, rebels and the group’s fighters detained hundreds of Kurdish civilians. The two sides finally reached a deal and the group’s leader was released in return for the 300 detained Kurdish civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory group. 

Syria’s Kurds have used the erosion of state control during the civil war to push for greater autonomy in their areas. This has increased tensions with the area’s rebel fighters, many of whom hope to found an Islamic state. Other rebel groups resent the extremists who have joined the fight in Syria to serve their own ends.

With ISIS blowing up mostly civilians throughout Iraq, 250 people have been killed since the start of Ramadan, there has been sparse New York Times reporting from Baghdad. Tim Arango, who had been reporting from Iraq, hasn't been heard from since he covered the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul this June. This is a big failure for the Gray Lady. There is an obvious connection between the violence in Iraq and Syria; it's a regional jihad bankrolled no doubt by wealthy Wahhabis. I am reminded of the Rumsfeldian neoconservative wisdom, "When you've got a problem, often the way to solve it is to first make the problem bigger." Or something to that effect. But if the Times accurately covered the regional nature of the jihad and whose money is making it possible that would queer the anti-Assad pitch of the U.S. State Department that the paper has been parroting in its daily reporting.

Gray Lady Discovers Reality of Syrian Civil War

The newspaper of record is finally trying to get atop of the Syrian civil war story. Ben Hubbard, who has been reporting from Cairo on the coup in Egypt, spells Beirut Bureau Chief Anne Barnard and provides a frontpage story, "Momentum Shifts in Syria, Bolstering Assad’s Position," that appears top of the fold right-hand side of this morning's New York Times national edition. In it, Hubbard gives a bird's-eye view of developments that have been well underway for several weeks but have been given short shrift by Barnard; the long and short of which is that the rebels are coming apart at the seams -- despised by local populations that they're purportedly liberating, fighting among themselves and distrusted by their state benefactors -- and that the Syrian government is steadily consolidating its territory on the battlefield.

To be sure, Hubbard doesn't abandon the Gray Lady's anti-Assad bias; but he does curb its enthusiasm for the rebels (Barnard consistently reports on the rebels through the rose-colored glasses of the Arab Spring). There are some choice passages:

Even fighters who had hoped that Mr. Assad would end up deposed, dead, jailed or exiled like other autocrats singled out in the Arab Spring uprisings have begun to acknowledge the emerging reality. 

“If the revolution continues like this, the people will revolt against us,” said a rebel commander from the central city of Homs, where Mr. Assad’s forces have made gains in recent days. 

The commander, who wanted only his first name, Ahmed, used to protect his family, criticized his fellow rebels for putting the interests of their brigades ahead of the wider anti-Assad struggle and accused them of hoarding powerful weapons or selling them for a profit. That lack of unity has prolonged the war and made their mission harder, he said. 

“If a regular Syrian comes and asks me what we have given him, I don’t know what to say,” Ahmed said.

Hubbard quotes Free Syrian Army leader General Salim Idris basically tossing in the sponge, saying the West wants to maintain al-Assad in power:

“They do not want the fall of this regime; that is why they are not helping,” said Gen. Salim Idris, the head of the Free Syrian Army, a loosely knit umbrella group that has been soliciting aid and that is supposed to funnel it to vetted groups while keeping it from extremists. 

General Idris accused the West of delaying with endless meetings, summits and requests for new “guarantees” that extremists would not get arms, and said this left the rebels at a huge disadvantage against Mr. Assad’s forces.

The reporting of the Times from Egypt has always been much stronger than the coverage of Syria, which is a testament to David Kirkpatrick. Barnard's reporting seems to follow the basic contours of the official position of the U.S. government. And while Hubbard's article is a welcome improvement, he does make one glaring omission. In recounting state support of the rebels, he mentions Saudi Arabia and Qatar; but he fails to mention the role the Central Intelligence Agency has played in providing logistical support as well as the rebel training base it runs in Jordan.

Hubbard, writing with Hwaida Saad, also has a story about yesterday's murder of al-Assad supporter Mohammed Darrar Jammo in southern Lebanon and the battle between the Wahhabis and the Kurds in the Syrian city of Ras al-Ain:

Along another Syrian border, fighting among Syrian rebels, extremist groups and Kurdish militias killed 29 fighters in Syria and at least one civilian in Turkey.

The clashes in the Syrian city of Ras al-Ain pitted Syrian rebels and extremists linked to Al Qaeda against Kurdish militias that have used the chaos of the civil war to push for greater autonomy.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts on the ground, said the clashes began Tuesday when extremist fighters attacked a Kurdish patrol and took a Turkish militiaman captive.

On Wednesday, Kurdish fighters seized control of most of the town and the nearby border crossing with Turkey as fighting spread to nearby areas, the observatory said, adding that at least 29 combatants had been killed since Tuesday, 10 of them Kurds.

Reporting from London, Alan Cowell has more bad news for the Syrian opposition in his story "Britain Said to Step Back From Push to Arm Syrian Rebels":

After leading a determined push with France to remove legal hindrances to arming Syria’s rebels, Britain is apparently signaling a more cautious approach, even as British newspaper reports say Prime Minister David Cameron has retreated from the idea altogether.

The car bombs and mortar attacks will continue as the SAA continues operations. But at this point it appears the Syrian government has won the civil war.

Talibanizing Sykes-Picot

A decent piece summarizing the positions of the great powers in relation to the Syrian civil war appears on Reuters this morning; written by Louis Charbonneau, "Analysis: Syria peace conference: Don't hold your breath," it predicts a long conflict:

There may be no swift end to the war. And even if the opposition were to prevail, it is unlikely to bring stability. 

"The Syrian civil war is likely to go on for years," said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"It is not just that it is proving harder and taking longer to oust the Assad regime than many expected," he told Reuters. "It is also that even if the regime were to be removed, what would follow would be a prolonged round of fighting among opposition forces who disagree on just about everything except their opposition to the current regime."

Haass, who in the past has not been shy about advocating the use of U.S. military force, recently had a opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times saying that the United States should not get involved militarily in Syria. Sadly, it appears too late for that. Kerry appears to be committed to air strikes. There are a lot of obstacles in the way, but the Franklin Lamb story, based on his discussions with congressional staffers, that the U.S. will be conducting an air war against Syria by the end of summer, is looking like a reliable prediction.

Hwaida Saad and Rick Gladstone's story, "Christian Quarter of Old City in Damascus Hit by Attacks," explains why the attacks on the Syrian pound have not phased the al-Assad government:

The conflict and the Western sanctions imposed on Syria have caused a near economic collapse in the country, and the official currency, the Syrian pound, has plummeted in value against the dollar and the euro. Last week Mr. Assad’s government ordered double-digit increases in salaries for public employees and retirees to help offset the pound’s diminished worth, which is almost certain to cause sharply higher inflation in Syria. 

But in a sign that the Syrian leadership does not seem overly concerned about a financial crisis, a senior economics official said in an interview with The Financial Times, published on its Web site Thursday, that Iran, Russia and China were helping to prop up the Syrian economy, delivering $500 million a month worth of oil and extending generous credit lines. 

The official, Qadri Jamil, deputy prime minister for the economy, was quoted as saying that the Syrian government was now doing all of its business in Iranian rials, Russian rubles and Chinese renminbi, and that the three economic allies would soon help with a “counteroffensive” against what he called a foreign plot to destroy the Syrian pound’s value. 

“It’s not that bad to have behind you the Russians, the Chinese and Iranians,” Mr. Jamil was quoted as saying.

As the terror bombings continue in Iraq, what we're witnessing, thanks to the Gulf Arab monarchies and their partners Uncle Sam and the old colonial powers Britain and France, is the Talibanizing of Sykes-Picot. In a jiffy, the Global War on Terror is tossed on the dung heap in favor of a Global War with Terror. No wonder Israel has pulled its head into its tortoise shell the last month.

Islamists Execute Boy Barista in Aleppo

The BBC is reporting this morning that Syrian troops are preparing for a major assault on the rebel-held northern city of Aleppo. This is in line with reporting from over the weekend that says the rebels are in free fall, that the opposition forces that remain on the ground are foreign mercenaries.

To make matters worse for the rebels both the BBC and the New York Times are reporting this morning that Islamist fighters in Aleppo have summarily executed a 15-year-old boy in front of his parents. This from Hwaida Saad and Hala Droubi of the New York Times:

Hezbollah has portrayed the fight in Syria as necessary to preserve Hezbollah’s ability to strike at Israel, by keeping open the conduit for arms from Iran that Mr. Assad’s government provides, and to protect Lebanon from extremists among the Syrian rebels. In an indication of the threat, such extremists were accused by fellow opponents of Mr. Assad on Sunday of killing a 15-year-old boy in Aleppo, in northern Syria, after the boy invoked the name of the Prophet Muhammad in a way that the extremists considered blasphemous.

Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad watchdog group based in Britain, gave an account of the boy’s death that he said came from a member of his group who witnessed some of the events. 

He said Islamist rebels overheard the boy, who came from a poor family and sold coffee from a street cart, as he argued with some friends who wanted him to lend them money. The boy told his friends he would not do so “even if Muhammad comes back to life, “ Mr. Abdulrahman said, adding that “he just used a common Syrian expression that people use when they are adamant about something.” 

The gunmen beat and tortured the boy, he said, and then brought the boy to a public square, where they declared that those who insult the prophet deserve the same punishment as infidels. He said they spoke in classical Arabic, possibly indicating that they were foreigners. In front of a crowd that included the boy’s parents, Mr. Abdulrahman said, the men shot the boy in the head and neck. 

“His mother is veiled,” he added. “She went up to them, uncovered her hair and begged them to leave him and kill her instead.” 

Mr. Abdulrahman provided what he said was a photograph of the boy, with what appeared to be a bullet exit wound through his mouth.

The fact that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group, is publicizing this execution is significant. We'll see if it disappears down the Western memory hole like Carla Del Ponte's allegation that rebels used sarin. At this point, short of a massive intervention by Israel and/or the West, the Syrian Coalition looks like it is on its last legs.

Syrian War Expands

Al Jazeera is reporting this morning that two pro-Hezbollah Sunni Lebanese leaders have come under attack.

Hwaida Saad and Hala Droubi report this morning of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley increasingly feeling like a war zone:

On Sunday, Israeli warplanes buzzed over Lebanon, violating its airspace and deepening the sense of anxiety. In Baalbek, a resident said that the overnight clashes between Hezbollah and the rebels were only the latest sign of a growing crisis. The resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns, said gunfire around Baalbek from nearby villages had become routine as had the funerals, for both Hezbollah and opposition fighters killed in battles across the border.

Anne Barnard reporting from Damascus has a piece, "Rushing to Aid in Syrian War, but Claiming No Side," worth reading about the work of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. There are no good guys and bad buys in this civil war story. Just emergency medical technicians doing their job. One interesting and dispiriting note is struck at the end of Barnard's report. She interviews two brothers who work for the Red Crescent in Damascus. They predict that the city is going to be devastated:

Yet their outlook is also dark. They debate whether rebels will “take revenge” on Damascus for not rising up sooner; Hamza says yes, Mohammed no. They worry that rebel sleeper cells will fight newly armed government militias, and that if rebels enter the city, the government will shell it. 

“We are waiting for this bubble to explode, and we know it will,” Mohammed said.

“The waiting is killing us,” Hamza added. 

That, they say, is why they volunteer in central Damascus, not in “hotter” areas. They want to be here to help, when the storm comes.

John McCain was on Face the Nation yesterday calling for an act of war, U.S. missile strikes on Syria. There is no appetite in this country for yet another war. Of course that doesn't stop elites from doing as they please.

Sectarianism in Syria's Civil War

Qusayr, a rebel-held Syrian city on the border with Lebanon, is falling to government forces and Hezbollah fighters. This from today's story, "Hezbollah Aids Syrian Military in a Key Battle," by Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad:

The small city, about 100 miles north of the Syrian capital, Damascus, is crucial to supply routes for both sides. Qusayr is a conduit for rebel supplies and fighters from Lebanon, and it links Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, which is the heartland for Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect. 

The Syrian government appears to be trying to regain as much territory as possible, to strengthen its negotiating position while Russia and the United States try to organize peace talks for next month.

The regional, sectarian nature of the conflict is plainly visible for all to see. It's Sunnis backed by the rich Gulf States, Israel and the West against Shiites supported by Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Russia. The Arab Spring is a fading memory. Bashar al-Assad in an interview with an Argentinian newspaper that appeared over the weekend cast doubt on peace talks that Russia and the United States are organizing; he said that the West doesn't want peace. Assad asserts that Israel is providing logistical support to the rebels.

At the end of last week Ben Hubbard had a story, "Syria Begins to Break Apart Under Pressure From War," about the fractured Syria of the present and likely future. There is a Sunni jihadist state in the north, a Kurdish state in the northeast and a Shiite state in the center of the country. It's a story worth reading. Another noteworthy story from last week is the news that Russia has sent advanced antiship missile batteries to Syria.This will deter the United States from having a carrier group to sit in the Mediterranean to enforce a no-fly zone. Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada had a story last week about atrocities committed by pro-government militias against Sunni civilians who live in the coastal Tartus Province.

The West's position seems untenable. They want the folks at home to be outraged by atrocities and the horror of war, and at the same time they want us to support the widening of the war by supplying weapons to jihadist groups with whom we are supposedly engaged in a life-or-death struggle.