The Pentagon Aiding Syrian Opposition in October Aljazeera…

The Pentagon: Aiding Syrian Opposition in October

Aljazeera – July 09, 2014

Pentagon spokesman Admiral John Kirby declared that the funding requested from the Congress by president Barack Obama to equip and train the Syrian rebels will not be available before next October, in minimum.

U.S Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel asked his staff to develop detailed plans for funds allocation, place of training, time it will take, and most importantly, choosing the rebel fighters to be trained, Kirby added.

Kirby clarified that the Pentagon is currently preparing these detailed plans, and it is expected to receive primary reports soon. Funding value to equip and train Syrian rebels is $ 500 million, he added.

Some news in early May said that U.S. is putting finishing touches on the plan of training increase of Syrian opposition fighters and sending small weapons for moderate fighting groups mostly available in Jordan and Syrian south borders. While the regime troops gained momentum after failure of the U.S-led peace talks.

(This article is translated from Arabic) by Syria Forum of Economy

http://sy.aliqtisadi.com/%D9%88%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%B5%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%AC%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A9/

#aid, #arming, #barack-obama, #pentagon, #syria, #the-distribution-of-funds, #the-syrian-opposition, #the-united-states, #training

Non-Intervention Has a Price Too

Max Boot | @MaxBoot

According to David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria is a writer whom President Obama “reads and consults.” He is also a writer that I read and respect—but do not always agree with.  His latest column, is a case in point. It argues for a more hands-off American attitude to the Middle East in line with the president’s policies.

Zakaria argues that the current mess in the Middle East—with active wars going on in Iraq and Syria, terrorism worsening in Lebanon, a new military regime in Egypt, Iran in possession of 19,000 centrifuges, etc.—is not America’s making. He blames instead the machinations of European powers who empowered minorities like the Syrian Alawites, “the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism,” and “the invasion of Iraq.”

Of the first two factors, there is not much debate—but it seems a bit of a stretch to ascribe events going on as far afield as Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iran to the ripple effects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is, in fact, as much of a stretch as the mirror-image argument made by Bush partisans who claim, with equally scant evidence, that the invasion catalyzed the Arab Spring a decade later.

There is little doubt that the early years of the Iraq War created a disaster in Iraq—but the success of the 2007-2008 surge bought Iraq another opportunity to develop peacefully. The fact that this opportunity has been lost is, in no small part, due to America’s lack of follow-up. In particular, President Obama’s failure to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and his rubber-stamping of Nouri al-Maliki’s election to a second term after a hung election in 2010. At least that’s my analysis.

Zakaria will have none of it. He writes of this argument: “Not only does this perspective misunderstand the very deep nature of the conflict in the Middle East but it also fails to see that Washington choosing one side over another made matters substantially worse.”

But the fact that the Middle East has deep problems doesn’t mean that the U.S. and other outside powers can’t help to ameliorate them. (Isn’t this what Secretary of State John Kerry and others argue when they press for more American involvement in the “peace process”?) And in fact it is American non-involvement in Iraq that is empowering Maliki and his sectarian tendencies. When the U.S. was more actively involved in 2007-2009, we served as a bridge between Shiite sectarians in Baghdad and Sunni sheikhs in Anbar. Now that bridge is gone, and open warfare has erupted between the two camps. Lacking much influence, Obama has been reduced to fulfilling Maliki’s arms orders, which in fact does fuel the conflict.

None of this is to deny the very real costs of the Iraq War. But it is to point out that non-interventionism comes with a heavy price too, and that price is now being paid in blood in Iraq, Syria, and beyond.

Non-Intervention Has a Price Too

 

#barack-obama, #iraq, #syria

The Utter Failure of Obama’s #Syria Policy @MaxBoot

That sound you hear is President Obama’s Syria policy shattering into a million pieces. The latest sign of the ongoing catastrophe is the administration’s decision to suspend nonlethal aid to the mainstream Syrian resistance after fighters from the Islamic Front seized warehouses in northern Syria belonging to the Supreme Military Council, as the moderate rebel faction is known. The head of the council’s military wing, Gen. Salim Idris, had to beat a hasty retreat to Turkey and Qatar.

That the non-Islamist opposition is collapsing is utterly predictable given the administration’s hesitancy to provide it with more backing. The Islamic radicals are the obvious winners on the rebel side, while Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds Force grow stronger on the other end.

Yet somehow the administration, and in particular Secretary of State John Kerry, is still hoping to cobble together a Syria peace conference on January 22 in Switzerland. How, one wonders, is a deal going to be reached between an increasingly powerless and disjointed moderate opposition and a Syrian president who is growing increasingly confident in his ability to hold onto power?

This is so crazy that it makes you wonder whether the administration policy is on the level. Is it a total coincidence that Obama is trying to reach a deal with Iran and at the same time he is suspending aid to the Syria rebels fighting an Iranian-backed regime in Damascus? Is there perhaps a quid pro quo involved here?

That may, however, be giving the administration more credit than it deserves for strategic thinking. The Occam’s razor explanation here is that the administration has simply been incompetent and incoherent when it comes to Syria. The costs of its policy failures are, unfortunately, being paid by the poor Syrian people: more than 100,000 have already died and more are dying all the time. The war shows little sign of ending, and as it goes on extremists grow stronger, to the detriment of the U.S. and its moderate allies in the region.

The Utter Failure of Obama’s Syria Policy

#barack-obama, #islamism, #syria

Tide Turns Towards Diplomacy as Key Senators Oppose…

Tide Turns Towards Diplomacy as Key Senators Oppose New Iran Sanctions

President Obama and the White House have been engaged in a battle in the Senate to block the chamber from passing new sanctions that could derail ongoing negotiations with Iran. The White House has been clear: new sanctions could kill the talks and put the U.S. on a “path to war.”

Groups including NIAC, FCNL, Peace Action, Americans for Peace Now, J Street, and International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran have all come out against new Senate sanctions. Groups including AIPAC and Foundation for Defense of Democracies are, as usual, advocating more sanctions. AIPAC even says they will explicitly try to kill a deal.

But it looks like the pro-diplomacy side is winning.

#barack-obama, #carl-levin, #chris-murphy, #dianne-feinstein, #diplomacy, #john-mccain, #netanyahu, #sanctions, #u-s-senate, #white-house, #world-news

What Can Iran Deliver on Syria? @QifaNabki

There’s been some speculation in the press this week about what a possible thaw in US-Iranian diplomatic relations (the product, no doubt, of an extensive public relations campaign) might mean for several big-picture issues, such as Iran’s nuclear program and the threat of an American strike, the territorial and strategic balance of power in the Persian Gulf, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and so on.

Syria is part of the discussion but it’s not clear what Iran can deliver on this front, assuming that the negotiations on the larger and more complex issues develop productively. Last week, I argued at a teach-in we held at Brown that if the Obama administration is serious about a political solution to the Syrian crisis (or a “political outcome,” as my friend Nadim Shehadi puts it), then the US should be talking to the Iranians, not the Russians. Unlike Moscow, Tehran has an enormous strategic, financial, and military investment in its alliance with Bashar al-Assad, and so has more to lose from the current state of affairs.

Iran exerts considerable leverage over its client, but having leverage means little without a workable political settlement in view. What can Iran actually deliver? A couple weeks ago, we had a debate in the comment section about what a Syrian Ta’if Accord might look like, once the principal combatants agreed to lay down their arms. Very few readers could see their way to such an agreement in the near term, citing geopolitical factors as the main obstacle.

But if the geopolitical environment is looking more amenable to a regional agreement over Syria’s fate — what with Iranian smoke signals and White House pen pal letters — it’s worth asking the question again: What kind of agreement by outside powers can be imposed effectively in Syria, in the way that Ta’if (for all its warts) managed to end Lebanon’s Civil War and has kept the peace for nearly a quarter century?

Steve Walt believes that “the most one could hope for is an agreement that imposed a cease-fire, acknowledged the de facto partition of Syrian territory into government and opposition zones, began negotiations on some sort of power-sharing arrangement, and maybe got outside powers to reduce their support for their various clients.” My regime contacts’ views on what a potential compromise should involve envision a more ambitious process.

If we take Walt’s more limited position as a base line, could Iran help broker such an agreement? Would they commit troops to enforcing a ceasefire, or lend support to a UNIFIL-type force to do the job? Do they have the leverage to force Assad to step down and sponsor a new power-sharing arrangement in Syria? At this point, it may not even be sensical to speak about a “political solution” in Syria without some form of military involvement to enforce it, just as Syria enforced the Ta’if Agreement in Lebanon.

And, of course, assuming one can even separate the Syrian file from all the larger issues involved, how to square the Resistance/Hizbullah circle? Surely Rouhani is in no position to sacrifice a major strategic asset in the service of better relations with the United States. Unless, of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict is solved in the process.

Surely that’s what President Obama’s plan was all along.

What Can Iran Deliver on Syria?

#barack-obama, #bashar-al-assad, #iran, #rouhani, #syrian-civil-war