International Military Review – Syria, Feb. 16, 2016

Dear Saker,

I’m having some difficulty in gauging the current situation and wondered if you could hazard a guess at changes in the size of the forces in Syria since Russia entered the fray?

We know a good many jihadi rebels have been liquidated, even more have cut and run at the prospect of the same fate for only half the salary and a not insignificant number have relocated to Sirte, Libya. Surely the loss of commanders, dwindling supplies, deserters, no winning strategy, et cetera is having a cumulative and decisive effect?

Can we draw any parallels from Libya where Gaddafi and his mercenaries held out for a far longer period of time relative to their final, abrupt collapse?

Since the jihadis entered Syria millions of civilians have fled and/or been displaced but now that the government and allied forces are retaking their country only a relatively small fraction of the civilian population has recently gathered on the Turkish border. Is this indicative of the support the jihadi rebles have?

No longer do we see these jihadis pouring in from around the world but in fact their own sponsors are readying to take up the fight to illegally oust Assad. However, there seems to be deep divisions developing within NATO with the U.S. neither maneuvering their forces nor blowing hot air this time round.

Meanwhile in Zionist La-la land:

US Expected ISIS to Seize Damascus by October.

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/russias-ambassador-uk-drops-bombshell-us-expected-isis-seize-damascus-october/ri12860

Russia ‘Must Prepare Measures’ to Avoid Internet Blockade Due to Sanctions

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160216/1034846319/russia-sanctions-internet.html

“Russia must prepare a series of measures that would help it avoid the Russian segment of the Internet being blocked due to Western sanctions, Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, we cannot continue blindly trusting our respected Western colleagues, who have new ideas on sanctions every day. In this regard, we must prepare a series of measures that would help avoid the Russian segment being blocked,” Nikiforov said.

“For the first time, I believe, the fate of Internet resources is determined by US presidential administration decrees. Even though our American colleagues like to say that the Internet is beyond politics, for some reason, Crimean domains were removed,” he said.”

re: power plant: One would hope that no one will allow this vital bit of infrastructure of the Syrian people to be bombed. This, unfortunately, is a time for red lines to be drawn very, very clearly. Megalomaniacs do not believe that consequences for actions apply to them.

Hezbollah Nasrallah:”We won’t allow Turkey, SaudiArabia USA & Israel to control Syria.
We shall be wherever is needed 2 make victory”

Before opposition walked @ Geneva, US said they’d continue to support “moderates” but Russia was to cease bombing them..

Also “rebels” received grads 4 days ago. https://t.co/IjA1Phpjqc … So the west is lying about ceasefires

But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together.

Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath

In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US intransigence – Clinton’s intransigence – that led to the failure of Annan’s peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats.

Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all clamored to remove Iran’s influence in Syria.

This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional power for a long time–in fact, for about 2,700 years. And Shia Islam is not going away. There is no way, and no reason, to “defeat” Iran. The regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that recognizes the mutual and balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Iran. And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists.

Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran’s influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.

In early 2011, Turkey and Saudi Arabia leveraged local protests against Assad to try to foment conditions for his ouster. By the spring of 2011, the CIA and the US allies were organizing an armed insurrection against the regime. On August 18, 2011, the US Government made public its position: “Assad must go.”

Since then and until the recent fragile UN Security Council accord, the US has refused to agree to any ceasefire unless Assad is first deposed.

The US demand that Assad be removed and sanctions be imposed before negotiations could seriously begin, along with the refusal to include Iran in the process, doomed [Annan’s] mission.

Clinton has been much more than a bit player in the Syrian crisis. Her diplomat Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was killed as he was running a CIA operation to ship Libyan heavy weapons to Syria. Clinton herself took the lead role in organizing the so-called “Friends of Syria” to back the CIA-led insurgency.

The U.S. policy was a massive, horrific failure. Assad did not go, and was not defeated. Russia came to his support. Iran came to his support. The mercenaries sent in to overthrow him were themselves radical jihadists with their own agendas.

The hubris of the United States in this approach seems to know no bounds. The tactic of CIA-led regime change is so deeply enmeshed as a “normal” instrument of U.S. foreign policy that it is hardly noticed by the U.S. public or media. Overthrowing another government is against the U.N. charter and international law.

This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark violation of international law but has also been a massive and repeated failure.

And where is the establishment media in this debacle? The New York Times finally covered a bit of this story last month in describing the CIA-Saudi connection, in which Saudi funds are used to pay for CIA operations in order to make an end-run around Congress and the American people.

Clinton herself has never shown the least reservation or scruples in deploying this instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Her record of avid support for US-led regime change includes (but is not limited to) the US bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq War in 2003, the Honduran coup in 2009, the killing of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and the CIA-coordinated insurrection against Assad from 2011 until today.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-and-the-s_b_9231190.html