gareth as usual, slow & thorough

Obama’s ‘Moderate’ Syrian Deception
Gareth Porter, Consortium News, Feb 16 2016

Obama once called the idea of “moderate” Syrian rebels a “fantasy,” but he has maintained the fiction to conceal the fact that many “moderates” are fighting alongside AQ Jihadis, an inconvenient truth that is complicating an end to Syria’s civil war. Jackass Kerry insisted at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that the agreement with Russia on a temporary halt in the war in Syria can only be carried out if Russia stops its airstrikes against what he is now calling “legitimate opposition groups.” But what Jackass did not say is that the ceasefire agreement would not apply to operations against AQ’s Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra, which both Pindostan and Russia have recognized as a terrorist organization. That fact is crucial to understand why the Obama administration’s reference to “legitimate opposition groups” is a deception intended to mislead public opinion.

The Russian airstrikes in question are aimed at cutting off Aleppo city, which is now the primary center of Nusra’s power in Syria, from the Turkish border. To succeed in that aim, Russian, Syrian and Iranian forces are attacking rebel troops deployed in towns all along the routes from Aleppo to the border. Those rebels include units belonging to Nusra, their close ally Ahrar al-Sham, and other armed opposition groups, some of whom have gotten weapons from the CIA in the past. Jackass’ language suggests that those other “legitimate opposition groups” are not part of Nusra’s military structure, but are separate from it both organizationally and physically. But in fact, there is no such separation in either of the crucial provinces of Idlib and Aleppo. Information from a wide range of sources, including some of those that Pindostan has been explicitly supporting, makes it clear that every armed anti-Assad organization unit in those provinces is engaged in a military structure controlled by Nusra. All of these rebel groups fight alongside Nusra and coordinate their military activities with it. This reality even slips into Pindo MSM accounts on occasion, such as Anne Barnard’s NYT article last Saturday about the proposed Syrian ceasefire in which she reported:

With the proviso that Jabhat al-Nusra, AQ’s branch in Syria, can still be bombed, Russia puts Pindostan in a difficult position. The insurgent groups it supports cooperate in some places with the well-armed, well-financed Nusra in what they say is a tactical alliance of necessity against government forces.

At least since 2014, the Obama administration has armed a number of Syrian rebel groups even though it knew the groups were coordinating closely with Nusra, which was simultaneously getting arms from Turkey and Qatar. The strategy called for supplying TOW anti-tank missiles to the “Syrian Revolutionaries Front” (SRF) as the core of a client Syrian army that would be independent of Nusra. However, when a combined force of Nusra and non-Jihadi brigades including the SRF captured the Syrian army base at Wadi al-Deif in Dec 2014, the truth began to emerge. The SRF and other groups to which Pindostan had supplied TOW missiles had fought under Nusra’s command to capture the base. And as one of the SRF fighters who participated in the operation, Abu Kumayt, recalled to the NYT, after the victory only Nusra and its very close ally Ahrar al-Sham were allowed to enter the base. Nusra had allowed the groups supported by Pindostan to maintain the appearance of independence from Nusra, according to Abu Kumyt, in order to induce the Pindos to continue the supply of Pindo weapons. In other words, Nusra was playing Faschingstein, exploiting the Obama administration’s desire to have its own Syrian army as an instrument for influencing the course of the war. The administration was evidently a willing dupe. Former Pindo Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who had been supporting an aggressive program of arming opposition brigades that had been approved by the CIA, told a Jan 2015 seminar in Faschingstein:

For a long time we have looked the other way while Jabhat al-Nusra and armed groups on the ground, some of which are getting help from us, have coordinated in military operations against the regime. I think the days of us looking the other way are finished.

But instead of breaking with the deception that the CIA’s hand-picked clients were independent of Nusra, the Obama administration continued to cling to it. Nusra and its allies were poised to strike the biggest blow against the Assad regime up to that time: the capture of Idlib province. Although some Pindo-supported groups participated in the campaign in Mar-Apr 2015, the “operations room” planning the campaign was run by Nusra and its close ally Ahrar al-Sham. And before the campaign was launched, Nusra had forced another Pindo-supported group, Harakat Hazm, to disband. Nusra took all of Hazm’s TOW anti-tank missiles. Furthermore, the Toads and Qatar were financing the “Army of Conquest,” commanded by Nusra, and were lobbying the administration to support it. Pindo strategy on Syria was then shifting toward a tacit reliance on the Jihadis to achieve the objective of putting sufficient pressure on the Assad regime to force some concessions on Damascus. But the idea that an independent “moderate” armed opposition still existed, and that Pindostan was basing its policy on those “moderates,” was a necessary fiction to provide a political fig-leaf for the covert and indirect Pindo reliance on Nusra’s military success. When the fall of Idlib led to the Russian intervention last September, Pindostan immediately resorted to its propaganda line about Russian targeting of the “moderate” armed opposition. It had become a necessary shield for the Pindos to continue playing their political-diplomatic game in Syria.

As the current Russian-Syrian-Iranian offensive between Aleppo and the Turkish border unfolds, the Obama administration’s stance has been contradicted by fresh evidence of the subordination of non-Jihadi forces to Jabhat al-Nusra. In late January, Nusra consolidated its role as the primary opposition military force in the eastern part of Aleppo city, by sending a huge convoy of 200 vehicles loaded with fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in London (in Coventry – RB). The BBC reported that “thousands of troops” had just arrived in Aleppo for the coming battle. Ahrar al-Sham confirmed on Feb 2 that its ally Nusra had deployed a large convoy of “reinforcements” to Aleppo. The pro-Assad Beirut daily as-Safir reported that the convoys also included artillery, tanks and armoured vehicles, and that Nusra had taken over a number of buildings to serve as its HQs and offices.

An assessment published on Saturday by the Institute for the Study of War, which has long advocated more Pindo military assistance to Syrian anti-Assad groups, provides further insights into Nusra’s system of control over Pindo-supported groups. One way that Nusra maintains that control, according to the study, is via Ahrar al-Sham’s control of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, which gives them (Nusra and Ahrar jointly – RB) power over the distribution of supplies from Turkey into Aleppo City and surrounding areas. ISW points out that another instrument of control is the use of “military operations rooms” in which Nusra and Ahrar play the dominant role while allocating resources and military roles to lesser military units. Although Nusra is not listed as part of the “Army of Aleppo,” formally announced to combat the Russian offensive, it is hardly credible that it does not hold the primary positions in the operations room for the Aleppo campaign, given the large infusion of Nusra troops into the theater from Idlib and its history in other such operations rooms in the Idlib and Aleppo regions. Another facet of Nusra’s power in Aleppo is its control over the main water and power plants in the opposition-controlled districts of the city. But the ultimate source of Nusra’s power over Pindo-supported groups is the threat to attack them as agents of Pindostan and take over their assets. Nusra “successfully destroyed two Pindo-backed groups in northern Syria in 2014 and early 2015,” ISW recalls, and initiated a campaign last October against one of the remaining Pindo-supported groups, Nur’al-Din al-Zenki (that is the name of a person, not a group – RB).

The official Pindosi posture on the current offensive in the Aleppo theatre and the proposed ceasefire obscures the fact that a successful Russian-Syrian operation would make it impossible for the external states, such as Turks & Toads, to resupply  Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, and thus end the military threat to the Syrian government, as well as the possibility of AQ seizure of power in Damascus. Russian-Syrian success offers the most realistic prospect for an end to the blood-letting in Syria, and would also reduce the likelihood of an eventual AQ seizure of power in Syria. The Obama administration certainly understands that fact, and has already privately adjusted its diplomatic strategy to take into account the likelihood that Nusra will now be substantially weakened. But it cannot acknowledge any of that publicly, because such a recognition would infuriate many hard-liners in Washington, who still demand “regime change” in Damascus whatever the risks. Obama is under pressure from these domestic critics as well as from Turks, Toads and other GCC allies to oppose any gains by the Russians and the Assad regime as a loss for Pindostan. And the administration must continue to hide the reality that it was complicit in a strategy of arming Nusra, in part through the mechanism of arming Faschingstein’s “moderate” clients, to achieve leverage on the Syrian regime. Thus the game of diplomacy and deceptions continues.