The Progressive Syrian Opposition Is Not Dead

 "After three years of demonstrating, nothing changed, even when the situation in Syria has been widely publicized and the world now knows of the Syrians' suffering. The world didn't lift a finger."

Russia's Vested Interests in Supporting Assad

 How many times are we told that we must oppose military interventions because they are a conspiracy to take control of Middle East oil? Now the Russians are doing it in Syria, where are the No Blood For Oil placards?

 Actually the naval base at Tartus may be strategically more important to them. The billions of dollars of weaponry they have sold to Assad of course dwarf all the shipments all the rebel factions have received, but still it is the latter that "anti-war" activists focus on stopping.

 'From Mig-29 fighters to Yak-130 training jets, armored vehicles, drones and guided bombs, the total value of Syrian contracts with the Russian defense industry likely exceeds $4 billion as of 2013.

 Likewise, Russian state-owned firm Soyuzneftegaz recently signed a $100 million exploration deal with Damascus to explore offshore drilling opportunities in the Levant basin. While a $100 million contract is small by oil and gas standards, the recent massive gas finds in the Israeli and Cypriot sections of the Eastern Mediterranean shelf hint at the potential that Russia wants to cash in on. Russia has long been keen to protect Gazprom's lucrative gas sales to the European market, and the Soyuzneftegaz-Syria deal is one way for Russia to hedge its bets regarding the sources of gas it can sell to Europe.'

Syria’s invisible mainstream rebel groups

 'Those who dismiss “mainstream” rebel groups as being either too fragmented or too weak should note that they have spent much of 2014 battling both ISIS and the regime, and that they continue to control significant chunks of half a dozen provinces – namely Deraa, Qunaitra, Rural Damascus, Hama, Idlib and Aleppo.

 “It’s very ironic that we’ve arrived at such a stage, in which the discussion of the Syrian opposition takes place the way it does. It’s as if the White House forgets how it’s systematically withheld support.”

 He said the Obama administration’s repeated, dismissive references to the capabilities of the rebels – a “bunch of farmers and dentists,” as the president recently put it – would only end up working to do away with the moderate rebels for good, “so that Syria is divided between ISIS and Assad.”

 “And even today, there are still [rebel] groups that haven’t abandoned the demands of the revolution, for a civil, democratic state.” '

Winning Kobane, Losing Syria

 'At this point, Sunni Arabs in Syria might consider shopping for a new faith or ethnicity if they want America’s attention. Barrel bombs, Scud missiles, gang-rapes, electrocutions, genital mutilations, chlorine and sarin gas attacks, all Holocaust-invoking revelations of systematic torture in Assad’s dungeons — sorry, but this is all quite boring. Where’s the symbolic importance? The strategic vitality? Yes, we know Syrian rebels fought and routed ISIS as well as the Kurds have, but that was in January and ISIS came back. And while it may be true that rebels have a better track record with keeping American-made weaponry out of the hands of ISIS than the US or Iraqi militaries have, we’re still not impressed. What have you done for us lately?'

Right and Left against the revolution

 'The Syrian revolution today is not just fighting a brutal regime like the Assad regime, but it is also fighting this regime’s allies - Russia and Iran especially - and furthermore it is dealing with the putrid concepts, alternately racist, indifferent and immoral, bandied about by many Leftists and “anti-imperialists”. Until now, and for many reasons that should be looked into, it has not possessed a political leadership or media office responding regularly to all its enemies and their arguments. To make up for this lack so far, it is counting on bravery and perseverance, on exceptionally courageous and creative intellectuals, artists and activists, and on a great store of patience and hope which has allowed it to soldier on; a store not likely to be exhausted even as the pressure grows and difficulties mount, both within Syria and around it.'

Take No Heroes

 This is about Syria, and how any article that lays its problems at the feet of US and Gulf support for Sunni militias is a betrayal of socialist principles.

 I found myself thinking about pandas this morning. I was looking at the scaffolding on the next block, and remembered how bamboo rather than steel is used to scaffold in the Far East. Then I started to wonder if the Chinese government does enough to protect bamboo forests, the pandas only habitat, or if was happy with the situation that most of the pandas left were in its own hands in captivity, and could be used as tools in its diplomacy*. Not to create peace and friendship between the Chinese and other peoples, but to reward those countries that did as the Chinese Communist Party wants, and to punish those that might treat with its enemies, like the Dalai Lama. There's an analogous situation whereby most of the remaining lions and tigers are in the hands of rich individuals in the US, but we're talking about pandas here, where the problem is not that all governments are as bad as each other, but specifically the Chinese government uses them as a tool to ensure that its own exploitation and oppression can occur more smoothly. It isn't a situation where the US is equally to blame, they haven't got any pandas as far as I know.**

 There is a tradition in left-wing politics of saying that the state capitalist regimes of Russia, China and the like, and certainly their very capitalist successors, are no better, and no worse, in essence, than the straightforwardly capitalist powers of the West. This is a tradition most associated with Tony Cliff, who founded the International Socialist tendency with the slogan Neither Washington, Nor Moscow, But International Socialism. When the Korean War broke out, a battle between the proxy and actual forces of the imperialist rivals, Cliff was condemned by other socialists because he was equally critical of each side.*** When people rose in revolt, whether in French Algeria or El Salvador in the West, or Hungary or Poland in the east, he would try to act as Lenin suggested, that to be a revolutionary is to be a tribune of the oppressed, condemning the ruling class of that country and their own imperialist backers; offering solidarity to those in struggle, not writing them off as agents of imperialism if they rose in the East, just as those fighting for freedom in the West were not a foreign Communist plot.

 Syria is not an American colony. It is not Americans, or Saudis and Qataris, who have been committing genocide. It is the Assad monarchy, supported by a billion dollars of weaponry a month by Russia, plus the diplomatic cover which enables them to carry out an illegal war on civilians without even condemnation from the international community. A régime that would have fallen in 2012 despite the paucity of support to its opponents, if it had not been for the thousands of soldiers sent by Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah to enable Assad to continue his massacres and cling on the to the vestiges of power. So if you want to give voice to the aspirations of the Syrian people, those are the enemies you need to identify as being arrayed against them. It is not enough to say that the demonstrations in 2011 were great, but that no good can come out of the militarisation of the opposition that has occurred since. It was precisely to defend the demonstrations that the Free Syrian Army emerged, it was to prevent, and because of refusing to participate in, the massacres with which Assad tried to stop the protests, that the FSA swelled in numbers, as soldiers defected who refused to support the dictator any more.

 These forces are the same forces of liberation fighting today. There aren't so many demonstrations, but what is the point of protesting to a government that drops barrel bombs on you? That Kafranbel continues to demonstrate weekly is a symbol of the revolution that still is the struggle against Assad, not an outlier. The Local Coordinating Committees haven't felt the need to broadcast that they are on the same side as the Free Syrian Army, because it should be blatantly obvious, and would invite extra bombing from Assad. That there has been a growth of other, more Islamist forces isn't due to them being bussed in by Gulf states, but because there hasn't been any Western support for the Free Syrian Army, and people have gravitated towards those who might better fight Assad, like Jabhat al-Nusra, who have benefited from their anti-Americanism when there was no US support for the FSA (and gatekeepers in Jordan, preventing anti-aircraft weapons getting through to the FSA, which which they could have stopped the aerial bombardment by Assad); the lack of support led to the chaos in Northern Syria which meant that ISIS could move in, and in alliance with Assad try to crush the revolution entirely.

 This isn't a view you'll have got from the mainstream media. Partly because of technical reasons, with the spread of ISIS (and to a lesser extent JaN, who partly get confused, but also it's their own fault for allying with al-Qaida is they get mixed up with Caliphate types) it became dangerous to report from "opposition" held areas (the use of the word "opposition" conflating ISIS with the actual rebels), and so it became easier for the BBC to send Jeremy Bowen to Damascus to report the régime's perspective, with a few platitudes or lies about the unseen "Western-backed opposition." The perspective that Assad was supported by most Syrians, that they Americans and Israelis were threatening him, that the rebels were foreign terrorists supported by the Saudis. The same lies that ignore the torture, rape and murder with which he has tried to crush the uprising. Torture, rape and murder that is the daily reality for Syrians, a nightmare from which they are trying to awake, and the reality that any international socialist should be trying to address.

 The other reason the mainstream media has been more full of Owen Jones denouncing Turkey for supporting al-Nusra (untrue, but he did it a number of times on the BBC News press preview), than it has of any "demonisation" of Assad (reporting of his actual crimes) is that the leaders of the West aren't trying to overthrow him, and so there is no reason for a flow of What A Bastard He Is stories as there was with Saddam Hussein. When Robert Fisk says we are told we have to hate Assad, he's just lying. A defector called Caesar went to Congress a few weeks ago with 11,000 photos he'd taken of torture, quite horrific torture, in Assad's prisons. There was no outcry that Assad must be taken from his palace and taken to a War Crimes trial. Just as when Assad used chemical weapons last year there was no chance the US was ever going to go to war over it. Syria is not an American colony, and there is no chance of them making it one. So they have found it much more profitable to use the situation to denounce Assad and damage the Russians credibility, while doing nothing to support the opposition. When people are dying because the US acts as a gatekeeper preventing the flow of defensive heavy weapons to the FSA, that is what the left should spend its time denouncing, not the imaginary threat of a rerun of the Iraq invasion, the demonstrators against which fantasy last year, insulted the Syrian people by claiming that as a greater problem than the chemical attacks.

 So that's what I think the international socialist position is on Syria, that you support the insurrection against Assad wholeheartedly, not worry in an orientalist and racist way that they all sound a bit too Muslim. That military aid to the rebels should be demanded from any country that can provide it, that a US invasion isn't the answer, but neither is the the real threat here, which are Assad and his imperialist backers.**** There are supporters of the Syrian revolution who think differently, some who think Russia is much worse all round the world than the US, some who think that the US is in alliance with Iran. I don't agree with either (or at least think it is more complicated than that), but at least their views come out of a good place, wanting the Syrian revolution to succeed. One that isn't likely to produce a socialist anti-imperialist republic any time soon, because the socialist tradition has been so compromised my accommodating with the likes of Assad for one thing, but a democratic republic where the torture stops would not just be exchanging one oppressor for another.

 There might need to be an ongoing struggle to stop it going back that way, but that's true of all states at some time, and it is to treat Syrians as Other to ignore the value that getting rid of Assad, and his régime would do them, and the region which has been massively destabilised by Assad's war. Hezbollah have happily gone to Syria to kill thousands of Syrians and drive millions more out of the country, the opposition has resisted the temptation to retaliate against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

 That's about all I can think of for the moment. I was a member of the SWP for seven years, and although I find it unlikely that I'll be actively involved in politics again, especially on this I feel the international socialist tradition to be my tradition, and am disappointed to find so many of those who have come out of the SWP think it means something different, that when it comes to Syria the main enemy is in Washington, or even that Washington and Moscow are equal threats to Syria, when clearly they are not. If anything, in a more globalised world, any support for the Syrian revolution is more effective, and more important to demonstrate. But people are funny sometimes.

 * "In his book The Last Panda, George Schaller, the scientific director of the Bronx Zoo, says zoos are actually contributing to the near-extinction of giant pandas by constantly shuttling the animals from one zoo to another for display." [https://www.peta.org/faq/dont-zoos-help-to-preserve-endangered-species/#ixzz3GxHJU0Cu]

** Articles about CIA breeding programmes in Antarctica that originate from globalresearch.ca should be treated with a degree of skepticism.

*** "The motive force of American imperialist expansion is the greed for wealth of the big US corporations...In the USSR itself the state-capitalist exploitation of the oppressed nations – Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Tadjiks, etc. (making up more than half the population of the USSR) – by Russian imperialism, calls forth a struggle for national and social liberation, even if for a time it is successfully suppressed by the iron hand of the MVD."
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1950/11/powers.html]

**** I wrote a piece in September 2013 that goes into this some more.

 "If the Left claims that thousands will die in carpet bombing, that depleted uranium will be scattered across Syria, that American soldiers will be dying to help al-Qaida, and none of these things turn out to be true, it will discredit the Left, and because the Left does not control the media, that impression will stay for a long time, and when the US does want to intervene, the pendulum will have swung back to it being easy again for the US to do what it wants. And if the situation in Syria takes another step towards Hell, then there is a greater likelihood that American, French or British power will be brought to bear on Syria, rather than the empowerment of those rebels that we just don’t know about from what we’ve read in the press." [http://notris.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/dominoes.html]

This Is Why You Can’t Have Nice Guns

 After the intro, which treats the difficulties of fighting a war against genocide as the reason not to help overcome them, some voices supporting Syria are heard.

 "Look, Syria and Syrians were coming out of a 50-plus-year political coma [when the opposition bodies were formed]," said Fred Hof, a former special advisor on Syria at the State Department and currently a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

 Did we really expect opposition politics to be characterized by trust, openness, loyalty, and selfless teamwork?"

Try as He May, John McCain Can’t Shake Falsehoods About Ties to ISIS

 'Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based group that helped to arrange the senator’s visit, said all of the people who appeared in those photographs were at risk. When ISIS published the first issue of its magazine, Mr. Moustafa said, it featured one of the photographs and proclaimed, “We have to cut all these people’s heads off.” '

'Return to Homs': Cycles in Syria

 “Even in my darkest nightmares, I couldn’t have imagined the city as it is today. Nothing interrupts this silence, but the chirping of birds and the roaring of bombardment.”

We plan to form a “Syrian national army”

 "We appreciate all the efforts of the brigades which are taking part in the fight against the [Assad] regime, whether they are affiliated with the FSA or not. But our relationship with all of them derives from the necessity of working to establish a free, civil, democratic Syria; we do not accept any other goals for our revolution. For this reason we have asked all groups to abandon their different slogans and to join the Syrian national army [which the Coalition plans to form], which will form the core of Syria’s next [standing] army."

Doubling Down on Disaster in Syria

 'A glance at the same maps demonstrates that Syria’s non-jihadist rebels — including the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, Harakat al-Hazm, the Southern Front and Division 13 – control more of Syria than “5 percent.” '

Syria's 'Moderate Rebels' Say They Need Weapons

 ' "If we start with a few thousand men on these three fronts, with real weapons, you would soon see success," he says. "Because there are also a lot of fighters inside ISIS-controlled territory, they're waiting for a reason to get into the fight against ISIS."

 Askar says in his opinion the unpopular decision by the Turkish government to oppose arming the Kurds is absolutely right, not just for Turkey, but for Syria as well.

 "That's right, because the (Kurds) want their own state, they don't think about Syria as one state," he says. "If we win against ISIS, the Kurds will be no help in fighting the regime." '

Syrian opposition report encircling foreign fighters

 'The Syrian opposition said on Friday that their forces are encircling "50 Iranian fighters" in the northern city of Aleppo.'

 When people talk about stopping foreign intervention in Syria, they should concentrate on those killing the Syrian people and arming those who do: the Iranians, Hezbollah and the Russians.

Britain's Syrian diaspora unites to build peace in their homeland

 'I see the conflict in Syria in the same context that Guernica came out of. Politically speaking and artistically speaking. I see the Spanish Civil War as similar to the Syrian Civil War now. When the Republicans got elected into government it was met with silence from the international community and basically the Spanish people were slaughtered, especially in Guernica. I think it was one of the first aerial bombardments in history.'

US congressman Adam Kinzinger calls for Syria no-fly zone

 'Mr Kinzinger said a no-fly zone would "equal the playing field" for the Free Syrian Army and stop the use of barrel bombs. "If they disappear, it's only going to be bad actors in Syria." '

Syria's nine-year-old YouTube storyteller

 'My dream is to wake up in the morning
and water the plants on my balcony,
and look up at the sky,
and see only birds and pigeons.'

Why ISIS Is Gaining Ground – and So Hard to Beat

 "The Syrian opposition" here means the civilian population Assad is bombing, and so is at one with 'rebels' in needing to get rid of him.

 'The rebels can’t divert resources from the fight against the regime to go fight ISIS. By doing so they would enable the regime to make additional gains, which in the case of Aleppo would be particularly devastating for the rebel militants and the Syrian opposition in general.'

Now ISIS is under attack from guerrillas itself

 'Ultra-secret White Shroud group strike fear into terrorists by picking off fighters one by one.'

 I remember the Free Syrian Army in Deir Ezzor appealing for help when they were under attack from ISIS, and nobody but the supporters of the Syrian revolution noticed.

Exiles say they are key to crushing the Islamic State

 ' “There’s talk that support is on the way. We haven’t seen it,” said Assad Al Zuobi, a former brigadier general in the regular Syrian army who is a leader of the Free Syrian Army, or FSA, the loosely affiliated non-Islamist rebel factions. The Obama administration has said it will arm the moderate rebels; instead they have received non­lethal aid, such as night-vision goggles and communications equipment.

 “Everything is much worse than it was 18 months ago, when the United States began promising to help,” he said.

 FSA commanders here say plans being floated to take their fighters out of the battle and train them — not in Jordan or Syria, as the commanders would like, but in Saudi Arabia — is another delaying tactic.

 “Our troops do not require training,” said Abulhadi Sari, a former brigadier general in the Syrian air force who is now an FSA commander. “What we require are weapons, weapons, weapons.” '

The struggle of memory against forgetting

 'VETO is a short film which sheds light on the current Syrian Revolution and the circumstances behind the transformation from peaceful movement to an armed revolution. VETO takes you through the last two years of this unbearable suffering with over 100,000 Syrian victims and more than 5 million displaced people, and a clueless world about how to stop this horrendous crime!'

Why the US will be forced to join the fight against Assad

 'The Turkish reaction to an American policy that is clear that ISIL must go, but highly ambivalent about the future of Mr Al Assad, will be shared by most American allies in the region and all serious potential local forces that could emerge as the ground troop vanguard against ISIL in Syria.

 Like it or not – and the Obama administration is not going to like it much – one way or another, and sooner rather than later, the United States is going to have to make the replacement of Mr Al Assad an explicit goal of its intervention in Syria. Otherwise, not only will Turkey stay out of the fight, no plausible local forces will sign up for the task either. And the entire enterprise will fail.'

We Who Call Ourselves Internationalists

 'The Syrian opposition has not raised the red flag of socialism; they have not made strident attacks on US imperialism—their badly wounded limbs will not fit our ideologically perfect glass adornments. On the country, the Syrian revolution challenges the left to respond positively to the most basic revolutionary demands: the right to live free from state-terror, the right to live at all. If our ideological constructions cannot fit these demands then we cannot call ourselves revolutionaries.'

U.S. is complicit as it blames Turkey for the catastrophe in Kobane

 'The United States expects these same moderate rebels to become its foot soldiers in the war against the more extreme Islamic State. Yet it refuses to target the Assad regime, which the moderates see as their chief enemy — and which is doing everything it can to wipe them out while the United States calls for patience and restraint.

 This lies at the heart of President Obama’s disagreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is urging the United States to create a no-fly zone over northern Syria. Such a move would not interfere with the campaign against the Islamic State, but it would give moderate rebels some respite from attacks and some territory in which to regroup. In other words, it would serve the interests of what Mr. Obama in the past has claimed as U.S. objectives: helping the moderates and unseating Mr. Assad. That may be why Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the proposal was “worth looking at very, very closely.”

 But the White House seems as uninterested as ever in truly helping the moderates. Easier just to blame the Turks.'

Assad regime ‘freely’ kills Syrians in several cities

 'A Free Syrian Army member told Daily Sabah, "The coalition suffers from the lack of cooperation on the ground. Their officials also voiced this deficiency. We are saying that we can help you against ISIS since the group turns its weapons on us on every occasion. However, we also demand help against the regime that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in this country since the war started." He added, "Our people do not believe in the sincerity of this coalition and cannot understand how ISIS became the main target while the regime was destroying the country." '

Voices from Syria

 'I feel compelled to talk about the strength of one young woman in particular. She is well connected, both politically and socially, inside and outside the Assad regime. Her status easily affords her the chance to live comfortably in Damascus, free of the horrors associated with the revolution. Instead, she has chosen to live a remarkably dangerous and clandestine existence. She has used her resources and connections to brave regime blockades in order to bring in urgently needed food and medical supplies to desperate people. She has evacuated people from regime-controlled areas when their safety was at extreme risk. I was particularly disturbed by one story she shared.

 The Assad regime systematically uses rape and torture to spread fear and attempt to deter revolutionaries. One of these regime units decided to “make an example” of two brothers for their seditious behavior. They brutally raped their young sister in front of them and their mother. As if the horror of the rape wasn’t enough, the brothers felt compelled to try to murder their sister rather than bear the shame of her rape. The mother intervened, took her shattered little girl from their village, and gave her away to neighbors. They secretly moved her between towns until my friend was able to pick her up. Because of my friend, she was able to get medical care and is now safe, with a loving family.'

US says Turkey will train moderate Syrian rebels

 'The US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, said the US wanted to know how far Turkey was willing to go in helping train and equip moderate opposition fighters whose ultimate goal is to topple Bashar al-Assad.'

 Hopefully they are not going to wait months before doing anything like the American plan for training Syrian rebels.

An exodus of refugees waits out Assad and Islamic State

 'Many residents of Darakshakran left their homes well before Islamic State’s current onslaught, fleeing instead the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its response to an uprising that began with non-violent street demonstrations in 2011. Since then, more than 200,000 Syrians have died as Assad’s attempts to crush protests against him escalated into all-out war.

 Some Syrians in Darakshakran believe Assad allows Islamic State to flourish in order to discredit the revolution against him. They want to go home, but say this won’t be possible until both Assad’s regime and Islamic State are defeated.'

Syria doesn’t matter to the United States

 Michael Weiss has a detailed understanding of what's going on in Syria. The whole thing is worth reading.

 'Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have said that they’re all-too-willing to participate in the current military campaign and even deploy ground troops to Syria — provided that the coalition’s remit is expanded to target the regime and establish no-fly and safe zones. The White House has countered that these are just excuses and that the US-fronted air war in northern Syria constitutes a de facto no-fly zone, a claim belied by the increase of Syrian Air Force bombardments in Aleppo and Idlib since coalition airstrikes commenced.

 The Pentagon has dismissed Turkey’s conditions for joining up as not worthy of consideration. Secretary of State John Kerry, evidently the last man to receive or read his boss’s memoranda on foreign policy, has said that Turkey’s proposals should be “examin[ed]… very, very closely.” Never mind that those proposals were first advanced in 2012 and just as blithely ignored then.

 Erdogan’s approach to Kobani is almost as cretinous as Obama’s approach to all of Syria. Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that three dozen Turkish tanks were stationed in a circle on a hill just overlooking Kobani, “apparently ready for action but still not deployed – further [fueling] Kurdish suspicions, which on Tuesday boiled over into angry protests in Istanbul and other cities and left one man dead.” '

Free Syrian Army Rebels Join Forces With Kurds To Fight ISIS In Kobane

 IB Times can be full of shit, the linked report about Assad forces in Kobane is nothing more than a claim from an ISIS video.

 'Turkish analysts say Erdogan will intervene in Syria only if the U.S. gives more support to the opposition to Assad, so it can take out the regime.

 And for now, that leaves the Free Syrian Army battalions in Kobane -- except possibly for a small contingent of Assad government troops -- as the only ground troops that can help Kurdish militia fighters fend off ISIS.'

Destroying ISIS Means Destroying Assad

 Eiad Hererra:

 'Syria was intolerable long before ISIS existed. It was so intolerable that brainwashed Syrian schoolchildren like me -- Christians, Muslims, and all other faiths -- have grown up to free their minds and sacrifice their lives by the thousands for a free Syria. The international community ignored our cries.

 Now that the Islamic State is in the picture, the world is paying attention to Syria again. As the world fights the radical presence of ISIS, they must keep in mind that Assad and the Islamic State are two sides of the same coin. They are both brutal, bloodthirsty murderers. If we destroy ISIS now, another ISIS will quickly emerge. I believe that the only way to destroy ISIS is to destroy Assad too.'

A Letter from a Syrian to an American Friend

 'If it is America’s intention to see Assad deposed, then it won’t have to supply a single bullet to make it happen; there are more than enough of its allies in the region willing to give the Syrian rebels the American-made equipment they need to fight the war as soon as American permission is forthcoming.

 But but but. I can already hear the many reasons and excuses on why Obama should tread cautiously. What if American arms ended up in the hands of the bad guys? Well, Nazi Germany captured huge stocks of American weapons from the USSR in WW2. In fact, the British left quite a lot of their equipment at Dunkirk. It’s not like there has never been a precedent.

 Unless Obama is contemplating handing out tactical nukes to the Syrian opposition, nothing that falls in the hands of Da’esh can tilt the balance of power more than the recent capture by that group of division after division of American made Iraqi army equipment.'

This is not an article on IS

 'In neighbouring Syria, the Syrian Network for Human Rights reports that pro-Assad forces have killed over 120,000 people out of the estimated 140,000 who died in the on-going conflict; 23 percent of the victims are women and children.
IS is blatantly evil and violent, of course. But other forms of violence that are more destructive and “lethal” hide under a thick cover of political propaganda.

 An academic study published in the United States reveals that over half a million people have died from war-related causes in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. Despite that, the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been decorated as technologically-advanced and highly-precise insurgencies. All the death and violence that followed the invasion are framed as an outcome of long-inherited sectarian strife.

 There is a form of violence that does not inflict direct damage, but rather consent to a damage being inflicted. For instance, it seemed impossible to establish a no-fly zone over Syria to spare the millions of innocents more arbitrary bombardment and collective punishment by the brutal Assad regime. Yet, it seemed so easy to bomb Syria when IS took over while implicitly coordinating with the Assad regime that has killed and threatens to kill tens of thousands more than IS.

 These forms of violence that are done using modern tools and communicated to the public through representatives of power are normalised and legitimised. These forms of violence, and the history behind them, are perpetually covered by a power-knitted fabric of security and interest. They are framed as benevolent, as part of a greater moral argument against the exclusive source of evil that is occasionally reproduced; from the Communists to the Islamists.'

To Defeat Islamic State, Remove Assad

 John McCain and Lindsey Graham:

 'It’s unlikely that the U.S. can maintain public support among Syrians for the fight against Islamic State, or succeed without their support, unless it does more to end Assad’s war against them. Syrians are already asking why America is bombing Islamic State but not stopping Mr. Assad from bombing them. This only hardens their pervasive belief that America cares only for itself. This belief threatens to strengthen Islamic State and discredit our moderate partners among the anti-Assad forces.'

The man who turned his back on the Islamic State

 'It was in the battle for the village of Shuheil that Abu Hakam realised the FSA could not hold IS forces back any longer and that the Assad regime was rejoicing in their defeat.

 He says soldiers loyal to Assad were taunting them: ''Our brothers in IS are coming to kill you".'

Isis is turning us all into its recruiting sergeants

 Owen Jones:

 Continuing his lie that the rebels against Assad are 'Western-backed terrorists.'

 'The western-backed dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar must be compelled to crack down on the funding networks that are helping to sustain Isis and other terrorists.'

 Doesn't bother to say who these good regional powers are.

 'External military intervention in Iraq and Syria must be led by regional powers.'

Syria's 'Free Police' outgunned by all its foes

 'In areas outside state control, Shallaf says he heads a force of over a thousand policemen with U.S., British and Danish backing that has paid for salaries, uniforms, vehicles, generators, computers - but not guns.

 That is in line with the broader policy of Western states that form part of a "Friends of Syria" alliance which have shied away from arming the opposition to Assad.

 "The problem in the policy of the Friends of Syria is that it prevents support in the form of weapons, even simple handguns." '

 I think the civilian deaths have taken an uptick now Assad knows that his airforce isn't going to be interfered with for the time being.

 Mohammed Alaa Ghanem:

 'U.S. air strikes have had important positive impacts. The Islamic State has suffered real losses, and there have been fewer civilian deaths now that Assad’s aerial monopoly is broken. But the dangers are substantial; anti-U.S. sentiment has risen in western Syria, and the Islamic State has continued to creep toward Baghdad. To preserve the viability of its strategy, the United States must complement its air strikes with firm support, in both word and deed, to moderate anti-Islamic State Syrian rebels.'

Why the US-led bombing of Iraq and Syria will not save the Kurds

 If you can't see that this is the voice of a pro-Assad stooge, you really don't understand what's been going on in Syria.

 'The Turkish government, along with authoritarian Western allies in the Persian Gulf, was a pillar of support for those forces in the Syrian civil war out of which ISIL emerged. That was part of a wider policy of preventing any progressive outcome of the conflict in Syria – for Syrians and for the wider region."

 The only interest Kevin Ovenden has in the pile of corpses is to forestall any support to those wishing to prevent its increase.

 'The only interest that Washington, London, Ankara and Israel have in the Kurds' suffering in IS-areas is in a mountain of corpses with which to hide their own murderous policies in the region.'

Remember Our Syrian Allies

 'But even this year, in an effort to defend past hesitation about supporting the moderate rebels, officials have talked about them as some kind of civilian rabble. The moderate opposition and its fighters were never that, but if we’re still saying so, it undercuts confidence within Syria and the region about America’s commitment to implementing our policy now.'

Here's What The World Should Know

 "We thought that if we fight for the same values that you announce and you pledge for, we thought that you would help us. Because, in the end, if all of us in the world implement the same values of freedom and dignity and equality, that would bring peace for all human beings. But in the end, we were disappointed."

My journey to the land of blessing, and torture

 From 2012.

 Moazzam Begg:

 'On the outskirts of the city of Aleppo I stayed with a group of pious, well-educated, relatively young and very hospitable fighters. They were as concerned about the country’s future and avoiding a repeat of the Iraqi-style disaster as they were with ridding the country of Bashar al-Assad. They reminded me of the good that still exists in Syria, despite the betrayal they've faced from their own government - and others. Like many of the people leading the rebels several had been imprisoned and survived tragedies like the 2008 Sednaya prison massacre and the “underground tombs” and “graves” of Palestine Branch Military Intelligence (Fara’ Falasteen).

 Many western leaders and senior former Syrian ministers have predicted the imminent downfall of the house of Assad. If Palestine Branch is captured by the rebels and intelligence secrets are laid bare, just as they had once been in Tripoli, Scotland Yard will have its hands full- again, and we’ll hear more about British ministers suffering amnesia, instead of justice.'

Kerry: Assad has violated chemical arms pact

 “We believe there is evidence of Assad’s use of chlorine, so he’s in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

 Well, he has, for months. There aren't going to be airstrikes on Assad, any more than there were last year, but this does suggest that the US isn't positioning itself to be Assad's friend.

Syrian Kurds paying price of disharmony

 Davutoğlu used to be the hero of the anti-imperialists. In reality I think he's committed to the advance of the Turkish state and capital. But rather than encouraging ISIS by giving them guided tours to the Syrian border, they have found themselves unable to co-exist with Assad and so willing to encourage his replacement with a more democratic system; but their first priority has been to keep in with the Americans, which has meant doing as little as possible to help up until now.

 'Davutoğlu said the government contacted the Kurdish PYD and the FSA last year and told them to act together to "avert the terror threat and regime attacks in the northern belt."

 He added: "If the PYD, instead of cooperating with the regime, had joined forces with the FSA and with the opposition, ISIS would not have found that much opportunity in the field." '

Terrorism can’t be fought effectively without defeating the Assad regime

 'The murderer of Damascus will not come out of this crisis with the same opportunities he has had since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution. When the Arab and international coalition began striking [ISIL] in Syria, Al Assad wanted to declare himself an ally of the international community and its partner in the war against terrorism, so as not to lose face before his own community and, above all, before Hizbollah that is fighting against Syrians on his behalf and the Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani, who oversees security in Damascus. In the meantime, the international community is fighting ISIL. So, what is Mr Al Assad’s role? What exactly is he doing?'

Assad loyalists concerned by rise of paramilitaries

 Lina Sinjab:

 'Only a just deal that prevented reprisals and brought to justice those responsible for war crimes would allow the dust to settle.'

 Exactly, but the idea of negotiating an Iran friendly deal that sends the Assads off but keeps the rest of the criminal régime intact is not going to help Syrians forget, or even escape the genocide, as the régime would still be asserting its legitimacy by Assad's bloody methods. 

 Reports from inside régime held areas have dominated what news coverage there is of Syria, when you face torture for saying the wrong thing, that isn't usually a good way to get an objective picture. But the inability to control the activities of the gangs of thugs who organise the reign of terror in the government held areas seems like another sign of how this hollowed out state cannot go on for long, can never govern Syria as a state authority again; and the pretence that this is a sectarian civil war rather than a revolution should be exposed.

 Not helped by the killing of several dozen schoolchildren* yesterday, I would tend to guess by Jabhat al-Nusra, in Homs, which has led each Russia Today news broadcast since. I expect it will be condemned by most opposition groups, and that will go unreported, and I hope those responsible are brought to justice, just as those in Assad's forces who commit such crimes day in, day out, should be.

 I'm not sure I agree with everything in this piece** by Ben Allinson-Davies. I think it may be a little too conspiratorial about the US administration, that Obama doesn't read his intelligence briefings does suggest blundering rather than calculation drives the policy. The point is well made that Syrians are being forever asked to prove that they are moderate Muslims (even if they aren't sectarian the religious label is imposed on them. A woman who says she is against the Assad régime, and her baby is Sunni but the mama is Shia, popped up on my Timeline this morning. How are we supposed to pigeonhole her?) while the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is allowed automatic membership of the moderate club. And this is bang on:

 'The way to “defeat” a group that espouses Salafist-jihadism is never to bomb it. It will just legitimise its uncompromising message, and gain it a stronger following; bombing these groups will give them legitimacy. The key is to ARM the Free Syrian Army wholesale; with anti-tank weapons to defeat Assad’s armour, anti-aircraft weapons to blow his helicopters and jets out of the skies, and weapons and ammunition to sustain them in battle. Half the reason why so many FSA members left for al-Nusra is because al-Nusra has everything the FSA doesn’t have, from money to weapons. The key is to take that power OUT of their hands. If the FSA had everything it needed, and more, much of Nusra’s power would significantly weaken: why them if the FSA has everything you need?

 If only we lived in a parallel universe in which Obama realised that he would gain firm, long-lasting allies in Syria if he armed the revolutionaries from the start, eradicated terrorism in Syria at its roots by helping them to overthrow the regime (which has created the jihadist threat in order to undermine the revolution) and tried not to use the heroic Syrian people as anti-ISIS cannon fodder.'
*[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2014/10/2/children-killed-in-homs-double-blast]
**[https://web.archive.org/web/20150718031029/https://unfetteredfreedom.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/obama-can-read-when-it-suits-him/]

Hama maintains its calm amid Syrian storm

 'Soumar Ali (a pseudonym), a member of the pro-regime National Defense Forces, told Al-Monitor, “The city’s residents are peaceful; we know they are opposed to the regime and they may hate us, but they did not use their arms against us. The city is a big opposition bloc and certainly, if residents are given the chance, they will fill the squares as they did before. We are trying to win them over to our side since we are in daily contact with them. However, the fact that authorities allowed some foreign fighters from among those who participated in the battles of the countryside to come to the city foretells the failure of all our efforts.” '

Time running out to save Syria’s soul

 'No bombs have hit the assets of the Assad regime, the largest purveyor of death and chaos in Syria. As a result of this omission, the Syrian people are starting to feel a sense of betrayal. The United States and its international coalition can correct this path by taking steps to eliminate Assad’s ability to kill civilians and to empower moderate opposition forces and local governance to fill the vacuum as ISIS retreats.'

Deluded and deplorable

 'It is about time Assad’s regime admitted it has absolutely no concern for the borders or sovereignty of Syria. It has demonstrated clearly over the last three years that it cares about the survival of the regime, and only the survival of the regime, even if that means the whole country is destroyed in the process.

 Moallem went on to say Damascus was committed to a political solution to the crisis, while at the same time regime aircraft are raining down barrel bombs on Aleppo and elsewhere across the country. It is hard to imagine a single person in the audience at the U.N. could have taken his words seriously.

 He also urged refugees – now half the Syrian population, if we count internally displaced people – to return to the country, without mention of why they were forced to leave in the first place, and while ignoring the fact that the situation on the ground has only worsened, and that he was actually inviting them back to their likely deaths.'

Bashar Al-Assad is the main Syrian terrorist

 Yassin Al-Haj Saleh:

 'Obama confirms his inability to provide an adequate policy when he reduces the situation to a Sunni-Shiite confrontation instead of mentioning the socio-political dimension of the conflict and the exceptional injustice that permeates the area. By assigning our struggle a meaningless old feud, this powerful man robs us of our cause, anything that has to do with justice, freedom, equality and human dignity.'

United States has a role and responsibility in Syria

 'In the eyes of the regime, no rules of war exist. Thus hospitals, residential areas, mosques, and churches, have all been targeted and the security branches are overflowing with stories of people dying under torture. Thus, we find the Syrian people struggling for the three past years not just to maintain their resistance, but, more importantly, their coherence against a policy that aims to break them.

 Syria today is undergoing a transition. Large swathes of Syria are liberated and beyond the reach of the government. Bashar al-Assad has turned from the president of a country into the mayor of Damascus and some of its suburbs. He is unable to leave his palace without being preceded by his military. Also al-Assad’s loss of control over the border crossings with Turkey and Iraq means, in a political sense, that he has lost the ability to establish his rule over strategically important geographical areas. Though he certainly can shell and burn these places, he cannot regain control over them.

 Nonetheless these liberated areas, at the same time, are mostly disconnected geographically and can be easily targeted from the air, which prevents them from becoming safe zones. The absence of a central authority makes it difficult and complicated to manage them. Basically, the more Assad stays in his palace, the more painful the transition becomes.The U.S. has a responsibility and role to help the Syrian people end this nightmare and open a democratic future for them. Of course, the air strikes against ISIL announced by President Obama are a good step. But much more important, the Obama Administration needs a strategy to end the Assad government which allowed ISIL to rise.'

U.S. doesn’t face much threat from Syria’s air power

 'The Assad regime has dropped thousands of so-called “barrel bombs” — oil drums packed with explosive fertilizer that flight crews literally pick up and hurl out of helicopters. It’s a brutal and indiscriminate method of warfare. Russia and Iran play a large role in keeping the Syrian Air Force in the fight. Moscow is Syria’s largest arms supplier and has been for years.'

Cameron on Marr

 Cameron's been very good in an Andrew Marr interview on Syria. He did call the Syrian National Coalition the Syrian National Opposition at the start, but he'd corrected himself by the end. But he'd got his talking points fairly straight, Assad is the cause of the rise of ISIS, we need to support the SNC and the FSA. Marr repeated Galloway's lie that the FSA doesn't exist, which Cameron wasn't confident enough in his material to reply directly to, but repeated that Assad's army had only made things worse. The actions of the government aren't likely to be that helpful, and in Iraq may not be at all, but at least there is some pressure on the government as a result of this prognosis to ensure that some shoddy deal to keep Assad in power is not made.

 Just to make this clear once again, I'm not a fan of Cameron or his politics. I'd tend to agree with Henry David Thoreau that those who serve the state best, "necessarily resist it for the most part; and are commonly treated as enemies by it."

‘Western hypocrisies have been driving support for extremism’

 There's a lot wrong with Nick Cohen. But this is right.

 'The root cause of Islamic State is Shia sectarianism in Iraq and sectarian mass murder in Syria. Mohammed Antabli, a leader of Syrian exiles in Britain, told me how he took British and European politicians to Turkey’s border with Syria at the start of the war and warned them that Islamism would flourish if the west did nothing for the moderate opposition. And so it has.
You will remember hearing, or perhaps said yourself, that we must not alienate “the Arab street”. Kassem Eid, an opposition activist now in exile in the US, said what streets were left in Syria were alienated beyond measure. The democratic world has done nothing. No no-fly zone. No attempt to slow Assad down, even for a day, even when he crossed Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons. Every Syrian activist I spoke to repeated his assertion that western hypocrisies were driving support for Islamism.

 A great evil has been done to Syria. I cannot see how any western project against Islamic State can prosper until the “conscience of the world” provides redress by saying it will not tolerate the continuation of the Assad regime. At present, however, the world won’t even acknowledge evil’s existence. We must expect evil in return.'

 And much preferable on Syria to idiots who say things like this:

 "So in one year, Cameron has proposed bombing all warring factions in Syria, with the exception of the secular liberal one that doesn't exist."
[https://twitter.com/flying_rodent/status/515437838805258241]