Saudis Send Big Guns to Jihadis in Aleppo

Looking for information on the military campaign in and around Aleppo, I notice that there is little in the Western media. The best available reporting of late has been from The Telegraph's Richard Spencer. His story, "Syrian rebels get first heavy weapons on the front line of Aleppo," though reported from the rebel point of view, at least provides a sense of the contours of the struggle. The government, according to Spencer, seeks to cut the rebel held north in two and then pacify the rural areas:

After the fall of Qusayr on June 5, the regime promised an all-out attack on Aleppo, but it has not yet materialised.

Ahmed Hafash, the leader of Free Men of Syria, the non-Islamist brigade leading the defence of Kafra Hamra, said he expected the assault to drive north away from the city. 

Five kilometres north-east lie two loyalist Shia towns, Nobbul and Zahra, where a regime general has raised a local militia several thousand-strong and flown in reinforcements from the Labenese militia Hizbollah. 

Walky-talky intercepts suggest the regime hopes to link up with these towns and press on to relieve the Minegh air base, under rebel siege for 10 months, and then head to the Turkish border nearby. Having cut the north in two, the regime could squeeze out the rebels in their rural strongholds and surround Aleppo.

Most of Spencer' story deals with the arrival of antitank guns thanks to Saudi Arabia. Al Jazeera has a similar story.

Rick Gladstone's story for the New York Times has a headline that mentions government battlefield gains but the copy talks only of the loss in value of the Syrian pound since the Obama administration announced at the end of last week that it would supply weapons to the rebels. Much if not all of Gladstone's reporting feels as if it has been crafted at Langley or Foggy Bottom.

This dearth of balanced information has led me to bookmark on my web browser both the Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn pages on The Independent, as well as the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). Yes, SANA is a Syrian government web site. But I'm not convinced it is significantly more biased than the Western prestige press. Al-Assad's labeling the rebels "terrorists" was derisively dismissed in the U.S. media. Now we know that to be accurate. After all, the post-9/11 law authorizing the U.S. to wage war on Al Qaeda and its affiliates could easily be used by Obama to bomb the Syrian rebels.

As for the military campaign to expunge the rebels from Aleppo, if it goes at all like Qusayr, the government will move slowly and methodically; and after several weeks, if not a month or two, it will fall to the government.

Shiites Targeted for Terror as SAA Rolls

As predicted, Saudi Arabia, reported yesterday by Richard Spencer in the Telegraph, is going to supply the Syrian opposition with antiaircraft weapons. The strategy of government forces seems to be first to sever Aleppo from supply routes to Turkey:

Regime tanks pounded Kafra Hamra, on the northern Aleppo outskirts and near an important intersection and regime base overlooking the city, activists and opposition television said.

A regime advance in this area would threaten the supply of weapons to Aleppo along the roads from the Turkish border 25 miles away, just as the rebels' allies promised to increase their provision.

Car bombs targeting Shiites rocked Iraq yesterday, killing more than 30 people, mostly civilians. This from Duraid Adnan's story, "Dozens Killed In Attacks Targeting Iraqi Shiites":

Several bombs exploded in five southern Shiite-dominated provinces, killing civilians. Other attacks, near Tikrit and Mosul, struck security forces, officials said. 

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni extremists have stepped up their efforts to undermine the Shiite-led government and to stoke sectarian divisions since the beginning of the year. Nearly 2,000 Iraqis have been killed since April, according to the Interior Ministry, making it the country’s most violent period since 2008. Sunday’s attacks also came a day after the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, threatened Shiites with more violence.

Something to watch as this Middle East war accelerates is the relationship between the success of government forces within Syria to attacks on Shiites in neighboring nations. As the rebels were defeated in Qusayr, attacks on Shiite communities in Lebanon proliferated. The same is true of Iraq. Though Hezbollah gets all the attention for sending fighters to Syria, there are plenty of Iraqi Shiites there as well. They're fighting to defend the sacred places of their religion.

Israel seems to have, for the time being at least, decided to stand down from further direct military participation in the fast-approaching catastrophe. Putin got the best of Cameron yesterday:

The G-8 meeting in Northern Ireland should be the place where a deal is brokered to prevent the Middle East from falling apart in burning pieces. But there is no indication that this is going to happen. The big players in the West still insist that any agreement include the removal of al-Assad. So there will be more war, more death.