Foreign Policy Diary – 2015, Year of Crisis Escalation. What expected in 2016?

Bingo! You got it right ” the US is losing its monopoly of the resort to force” I do fear, however, that fighting in Syria will intensify. They ( neocons) are not going to let “Putin win”. It is so childish but part of the megalomania of exceptionalism is that not only do they have to set the rules but also they have to win all the time. Let us hope that there is someone sane and powerful in Germany who can say NO to this insanity thereby blocking both NATO and more bogus cover for some mid-East set-up.

And this especially irks them from antiwar.com re-posted on RI

http://russia-insider.com/en/military/us-officials-russia-achieving-goals-syria-and-sustainable-costs/ri12035

Looks like porkshank finally found his niche:

https://mobile.twitter.com/NinaByzantina/status/683775712206061568/photo/4

I don’t really understand why the problems in Central Asia are being allowed to continue. Geographically it should be a closed area to NATO. Except for some forces in Afghanistan (and those are very busy). All the land borders are controlled by Russia,China,or Iran. Except for going through Pakistan to Afghanistan,no NATO troops can enter any part of Central Asia unless through one of those states. And with China’s influence in Pakistan. They should be able to fix that problem.Russia,China,and Iran,”should” be able to easily control all of Central Asia.Only more of the “foolish” acting friendly with the West by those three states,allows there to be a problem there. If they would stop that insane policy there would be no problems for them in Central Asia. And that would be one less big mess to deal with.Now “how” are ISIS fighters going into Afghanistan. It must be from Pakistan. And “why” are they allowed to go through Pakistan.Because the US or corrupt elements in Pakistan allow it. So the answer is clear. Close of the route through Pakistan. Iran has a lot of trade with Pakistan. And China is one of Pakistan’s most important backers and trading pardners. Let those countries apply the “screws” to Pakistan. Either Pakistan stops allowing NATO and ISIS entry,or Iran and China will stop dealing and supporting Pakistan. In a case like that Pakistan would quickly see “the light”.Its simply amazing that those three states haven’t acted to secure Central Asia and get the US totally out of that region by now. Certainly if they say they are concerned with the potential threats there. That they haven’t looked at a map and said “whoa,wait a minute. We should be able to control the borders”. Maybe its time to shake up their intelligence services if they haven’t realized that yet.

But, but, but, all of Russia’s goals in Syria have been met. Shouldn’t that be the end of it?
Capitalism in Crisis leads to fascism at home and imperialist war abroad. Anyone who doesn’t view these present conflicts through this lens really has a circumscribed understanding of the global forces at play in the world.
Cheers,
RR

http://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/20160104/1032683858/ray-macgovern-us.html

Ray Macgovern 1 hr interview on sputnik radio posted today should be v interesting…….

Since people could not see any changes in a month, here is an anointed map which shows well… mostly no change..

But mostly some changes,, Because of the Canadians bombing the SAA base in the middle of nowhere, IS has been able to advance a few blocks.. It is defended by Syria’s own GI Joe so we wont see any surrenders or defections.. But they are all alone in the middle of IS..

http://www.agathocledesyracuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Syria-3-Jan-2016-most-active-frontlines1.jpg

The Ten Most Important Developments in Syria in 2015

10. The Death of Zahran Alloush.
In October 2013, the esteemed proprietor of Syria Comment, Professor Joshua Landis, compiled a top five list of Syria’s most important insurgent leaders, excluding al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Kurdish YPG. It contained the following five names:

Hassane Abboud (Ahrar al-Sham)
Zahran Alloush (Islam Army)
Ahmed Eissa al-Sheikh (Suqour al-Sham)
Abdelqader Saleh (Tawhid Brigade)
Bashar al-Zoubi (Yarmouk Brigade)

Of these five, two remain alive but have been demoted to second-tier ranks in their factions. In March 2015, Ahmed Eissa al-Sheikh merged his group into Ahrar al-Sham and took up a less prestigious job in the new outfit. In October, the Free Syrian Army heavyweight Bashar al-Zoubi was reassigned to run the political office of the Yarmouk Army, as it is now called, and replaced as general commander by Abu Kinan al-Sharif.

The other three are dead. Abdelqader Saleh was hit by a missile in Aleppo in November 2013. Soon after, his powerful Tawhid Brigade began to fall apart. Most of its subunits are now dispersed across two rival-but-allied outfits, called the Levant Front and the First Corps, which are both active in Aleppo. Hassane Abboud was killed alongside other Ahrar al-Sham leaders in a September 2014 bombing—or whatever that was. And on Christmas Day 2015, Zahran Alloush suffered the same fate. A missile hit a building in the Eastern Ghouta where he was meeting with other local rebel leaders.

9. The Failure of the Southern Storm Offensive.
This summer, the loose coalition of rebel units known as the FSA’s Southern Front got ready to capitalize on a year of slow and steady progress, during which Sheikh Miskin and other towns had been captured from Assad. They encircled the provincial capital, Deraa, for a final offensive dubbed Southern Storm. The city actually looked ready to fall. After Idleb, Jisr al-Shughour, Ariha, Palmyra, and Sukhna, the fall of Deraa was intended to be the nail in Assad’s coffin and a show of strength for the Western-vetted FSA factions in the south, drawing support away from their Islamist rivals.

Stories differ on what happened next, but the Southern Storm campaign was a fiasco.

8. Operation Decisive Quagmire.
In early 2015, they were sulking over Syria, emotionally drained by Egypt, flustered by unfaithful Libya, and at wits’ end over that shrew in Baghdad, when Yemen suddenly walked into their lives—a huge, incoherent, boiling mess of splintering armed factions, collapsing institutions, Africa-level poverty, jihadi terrorism of every imaginable stripe, and aggressive interference by rival foreign governments.

It was love at first sight.

7. Europe’s Syria Fatigue vs. Assad’s Viability
The huge numbers of refugees coming from Syria and other countries to the European Union in 2015 had many causes, but one of the effects was to rearrange Europe’s list of priorities in the Middle East. Goals number one through three are now as follows: stability, stability, and stability. Number four is anti-terrorism, number five is economic growth, and then there are a few others along those lines. Promoting democracy is also on the list, right after ”fix the nose of the Sphinx.”

At this point, however, a growing number of European policymakers are so tired of Syria and its problems that they’ll happily roll the dice on Assad being the healthy, happy autocrat that he looks like. They would be quietly relieved to see Syria’s ruler reemerge in force to tamp down the jihadi menace and stem refugee flows with whatever methods, as long as they don’t have to shake his bloody hands in public and on the condition that he delivers a semi-functional rump state for them to work with, at some unspecified point in the future.

6. The Vienna Meeting, the ISSG, and Geneva III.
While not the most important, the November 14 creation of the International Support Group for Syria (ISSG, not to be confused with ISIS or ISIL) was certainly the most unambiguously positive piece of news of the year.

5. The Donald.
The politics of the United States is a key part of the politics of Syria, although the reverse is rarely true.

4. The Iran Deal.
The effects of the Iranian nuclear agreement, which was finalized between April and June 2015, are only very gradually becoming apparent. But unless the deal is somehow scuttled by the combined efforts of hawks in the United States, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, it could reshape the region.

3. The Continuing Structural Decay of the Syrian Government. 

Assad took some real body blows in spring and summer 2015. After an upward curve in 2014, the Syrian army started to seem exhausted by the end of the year and its offensive in Aleppo petered out after a last hurrah in spring 2015. With rising support for the rebels, the hollowed-out base of Assad’s regime began to show.

As it turns out, most Syrians have no intention of giving their lives in service of Bashar al-Assad and draft dodging is now pervasive. Tensions have become so great that in the Druze-majority Sweida region in the south, the government apparently decided in 2015 to abstain from normal recruitment to the Syrian Arab Army out of fear of provoking a local rebellion. Druze men can instead report for home defense units, on the understanding that they won’t be shipped away to die in distant Hassakeh or Latakia. A similar arrangement reportedly applies in Aleppo and they seem to be creeping into other regions as well.

On the frontlines, Shia foreign fighters are taking a greater role. They appear to be behind much of the successful offensive south of Aleppo. Iran is rallying Iraqi and Lebanese fighters with both religious and financial inducements, but its client groups—Hezbollah, the Badr Organization, Asaeb al-Haqq etc—do not seem able to mobilize enough fighters. According to some reports, Iranian authorities have resorted to press-ganging young Hazara Shia refugees into going to Syria, under threat of deporting their families back to Afghanistan.

2. The American-Kurdish Alliance. (Now the Russian Kurdish alliance)
Since late 2014 and early 2015, the United States Air Force has transformed itself into something that more closely resembles the Western Kurdistan Air Force. Under U.S. air cover, Kurdish forces are constructing their own autonomous region (called Rojava) and in autumn this year, the U.S. started delivering ammunition and small arms directly to Arab units working under the Kurdish umbrella, currently called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). We’re still in the early stages of what may or may not turn out to be a longterm relationship, although certainly not a monogamous one.

1. The Russian Intervention.
Here we are, at number one, and it’s an easy choice. The single most important event of the Syrian war in 2015 was of course Russia’s September 30 military intervention. Unfortunately, it’s much harder to pin down exactly why this is so important: because it strengthened Assad so much or because it didn’t strengthen him enough?

Russia did not intervene against anyone in particular, it intervened for Assad. Who gets hurt depends on who stands in his way.

Less visibly but perhaps more importantly, a series of local ceasefire-and-evacuation deals have helped neutralize rebel strongholds in the Homs and Damascus regions. Since the costs to Russia seem to be fairly limited, they can probably keep this up for a long time, meaning that Assad is in no hurry and can focus on preserving cohesion and manpower.

The Russian state media continues to claim that they’re winning, winning, winning, but if people were willing to listen to that on September 30, they don’t any longer. After three months of nonstop lying and braggadocio, the progress reports from Russia’s ministries of defense and foreign affairs seem no more credible than the shrill propaganda we’ve grown accustomed to from Syria’s rebels and regime.

That said, I think it is quite possible that the Russian bombings will have made a deep cut in the rebellion’s fortunes by spring 2016. The long-term and cumulative effect of all this pressure should not be ignored. How long can the Idleb insurgents fight a three-front war against forces coming from Aleppo in the east, Latakia in the west, and Hama in the south? Both the Syrian and the Russian air forces are now hitting munitions storages, supply routes, and transports all over Idleb and Aleppo. The longer-term effects of these bombings may remain invisible to us still.

They are also bombing civilian trade and points of access for food and medical aid in areas that had previously been off limits to the Syrian air force. This is either a calculated gamble or part of a deliberate strategy to create a humanitarian disaster, since the Russians are well aware that hundreds of thousands of people depend on deliveries channeled through these areas. Whatever the case, it stirs up the situation all over northern Syria. Rebel forces could theoretically begin to unravel structurally in the same way that the Islamic State is now doing on some fronts, after a year of mostly Iraqi, Kurdish, and American pressure.

Another possible metric is the death of senior commanders. There is no shortage of new recruits for the rebellion, so one shouldn’t overstate the overall significance, but if leaders get killed it’s at the very least a sign that something is wrong. Since September 30, there has been a lot of reports about dead and injured senior figures in the insurgency. The most well known victim is of course Zahran Alloush in Damascus, though we do not know if the Russians were involved in that attack. Further north, recent deaths include Abu Abdessalam al-Shami, an Ahrar al-Sham member who served as Jaish al-Fath’s governor of Idleb City, Ismail Nassif, who was the military chief of the Noureddine Zengi Brigades, and his counterpart in the Thuwwar al-Sham Front, Yasser Abu Said. All three were killed on the south Aleppo front. Jaish al-Fath’s chief judge, the Saudi celebrity jihadi Abdullah al-Moheisini, was wounded just before Christmas (but survived), while Sheikh Osama al-Yatim, who ran the Dar al-Adl court system in the Houran, was killed in mid-December. The list could be made a lot longer.

full article much longer..
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/ten-most-important-developments-syria-2015/

With the Frenchies & their carrier (anyone know what they’re up to this past month no news so quiet!), then Lord O sent those 50 US ‘specialists’ into Iraq, then the Germans sent their BND in a few weeks ago, now some German fighters, NATO has coalesced like a blob of toxic mercury right under Putin’s nose, yet he sees nothing just like right up to the outbreak of every previous crisis.

Four German Tornado type reconnaissance jets arrived at Turkey’s İncirlik Air Base on Tuesday as part of the military campaign against the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), taking the total number of German jets to six.

Two of the jets took off from Jagel Air Base near Flensburg with the other from Büchel Air Base in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz. A cargo plane brought to İncirlik 100 German military personnel, which, according to the Turkish media, consisted of pilots, technicians and specialists who are to analyze the photos taken by the jets.
http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_germany-sends-4-more-jets-to-i-ncirlik-base_408861.html

Southfront also has:

http://southfront.org/nato-enlargement-the-balkans-and-russia-integration-and-consolidation/

NATO ENLARGEMENT, THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA: INTEGRATION AND CONSOLIDATION
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“The following text is the second in a series of articles presenting an analysis and evaluation of NATO enlargement in the Balkans, the interests that are driving this policy and the implications this has for Russia. You can find Part 1 HERE.”