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August 3, 2012
Syria: Insurgents Give Up For Now – The Grownups Made A Deal? Reuters Got Hacked

UPDATE II (Aug 3, 2012 01:20 PM):
It seems that my post below was based on two Reuters blog entries that were hacked and put up by the hacker for disinformation purposes. My post below the updates is thereby likely very wrong. (Thankfully though I used enough qualifiers in it to not be seen as totally gullible.) I will not change my original piece but, for documentation purpose, keep it as it is.

Reuters took down those two hacked post shortly after I blogged about them. Then the site blog.reuters.com went completely dead. You can follow the story has it happened by reading through the post below and the earlier comments thereto.

For the record: I was first made aware of the first Reuters post by this tweet by Maya Naser and of the second Reuters post through this tweet by Orthodox warrior. Please note: I have followed those accounts for several weeks now and have absolutely no reason to believe that these two persons knew that they were distributing links to hacked pieces.
END UPDATE II

UPDATE (Aug 3, 2012 12:15 PM):
Something weird happened. As you can tell from the first comments to this post Reuters deleted both pieces I linked in it very shortly after I posted about them. Both links are now dead. As those pages were still open in my browser window I immediately made screenshots. Here is the screenshot of the first piece I linked. The screenshot from the second link/piece in two parts. I have no idea why Reuters pulled especially the second rather juicy piece.
END UPDATE – original posted August 3, 2012 at 11:20 AM follows below.

This just in from Reuters:

The Syrian rebels fighting the forces of Assad have fallen in key districts of their stronghold Salah Al Deen in Aleppo. This comes hours after the army has announced that it has destroyed the communication network provided by Turkey. Earlier the rebel forces have complained that they are running low on ammunition as the city has been completely surrounded by government forces, coupled with lack of communications, has left the rebels in disarray. Several trucks with mounted heavy machine guns have been destroyed, leading to the deaths of 20 rebels.

According to footage on the ground, the rebel forces in Aleppo have failed to take Aleppo Citadel, contrary to earlier reported news. A journalist on the ground, Hussein Murtada, has reported that an attempt to damage the ancient Citadel’s walls by rebel missiles was repelled by security forces, resulting in the death of General Mustafa Al Sheikh and Abdul Jabar Aqede, field Marshals of the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo.

This is very much what I had expected:

If the Syrian army is able to cut the insurgents supply lines into Aleppo it only has to fix them on the ground to slowly fight them down.

With their communications destroyed, their commanders dead, low on ammunition and surrounded there was no alternative for the foreign supported insurgents than to give up.

Reuters' Jeffrey Goldfarb has more and some of it is really explosive:

The chief leader of Syrian Free Army (FSA) has stated on Friday that the Syrian Free Army has tactically withdrawn from Aleppo province after severe clashes took place yesterday between the regular army and FSA.

[Riad] Al-Asaad confirmed on a phone call to Reuters that the regular army killed 1000 soldiers of Free Syrian Army and arrest around 1500.

That is quite a huge loss of the insurgencies personal.

He added that Syrian regular army carried out several airdrops on Friday early morning.

Those airdrops, probably parachuters by helicopter, will not have been in the city. I guess they have been between Aleppo and the Turkish border 30 miles north to cut of the supply and retreat route for the fighters in Aleppo.

Riad Al-Asaad said that the Syrian Free Army will withdraw from all Syrian cities due to the huge losses caused upon the soldiers, as well, the betrayals made by rebels, due to in-fighting amongst them, for money and positions. They are expected to re-coordinate in Turkish territory where they have set up secret bases under the close supervision with the Turkish government and the Israeli intelligence service.

One wonders how Turkey will now handle these insurgents. Will it try to build them up for another attack or will it finally stop supporting them? And to admit that Israeli(!) intelligence plays a key role here, some David Ignatius of the Washington Post had mentioned earlier, is quite a blow for the insurgents and their supporters moral.

It is not clear how much the alleged FSA commander Riad Al-Asaad really has to say about which insurgent group or how much he is lying here. But if what he said next is true, then we are much nearer the end of the crisis than anyone thought:

Riad Al-Asaad accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of betraying him, dealing secretly with the Syrian regime.

He revealed that Riyadh and Doha has made a secret deal with Damascus to eliminate the Syrian Free Army for investments and privileges in Syria post conflict. Information about all the leaders of the FSA has been passed on according to Riad Al-Assad.

Assad made a deal with the Saudis and Qatar? I do believe very much that this is possible but some caution is warranted to believe this until we have further confirmation. If a deal was made who did it? (Manaf Tlass?)

The consequences of such a deal would be immense. Without the money and support from the Gulf the whole scheme to bring down Syria will collapse. I very much doubt that the U.S. and/or Turkey will want to continue this without the Arab League backing them.

If such a deal indeed was made then the Turkish premier Erdogan will have a huge loss of face and will be in serious political trouble.

What is then left to do for the Syrian army is to hunt down the foreign Jihadists of who at least some 200, likely many more, are now in Syria. It may even get help doing so. As the Pentagon think tank RAND recommended today:

The U.S. and its allies should launch a covert campaign to ramp up intelligence-collection efforts against al Qaeda [in Syria], capture or kill its senior leaders, and undermine its legitimacy.

Did all the reports about AlQaeda and foreign fighters in Syria had this impact. Was it the turn in western media coverage that did this? Did Washington finally understand the need to climb down?

Could the RAND recommendation mean that the U.S., behind the doors, pushed the Gulf states towards this deal? And what was that baseball bat phone call Obama had with Erdogan a few days ago about? Was that also related to the deal? Did Kofi Annan step down because the deal was done and the issue finished? The last graph from Jeffery Goldfarb is ominous:

These rapid developments have all occurred 24 hours and are related to the resignation of UN envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, who has been accused of participating in a “plot already set against the FSA”, Al-Asaad concluded to Reuters via private channels.

Whatever. It will be very, very interesting to find out what actually happened here.

Posted by b on August 3, 2012 at 15:20 UTC | Permalink
Comments

http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/syria-spin-machine-uk-mainstream-lies-exposed
‘the Guardian and BBC have jumped on the story , first eg of ‘a high profile defector from Damascus’s ;powerful propaganda arm ‘ LOL you cant make this sht up! what are BBC and Guardian if not power propaganda arms of the UK/USrael regimes!

Posted by: brian | Aug 4 2012 3:20 utc | 101

Now this is a first.
Moon of Alabama made it into the New York Times Lede column:
Reading the Fake Reuters Reports on Syria

The editor of the blog Moon of Alabama, who writes as Bernhard and was initially taken in by the false posts, managed to capture a screenshot of what seemed to be a later, slightly more polished version of that report before it was removed from the Reuters site. That version of the post, which contained linguistic and factual errors of its own — like calling the Gregorian calendar the “Georgian calendar,” also reported as if it were a matter of fact that the Syrian rebels “are expected to re-coordinate in Turkish territory where they have set up secret bases under the close supervision with the Turkish government and the Israeli intelligence service.”
Moon of Alabama’s editor also saved an image of a second fake post, “Rebel Resistance Collapses in Key Suburbs,” which appeared under the byline of Frederick Kempe, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now leads the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institution.
…
As the Moon of Alabama blogger noted, another journalist working for Iranian state television in Syria, Maya Naser, drew attention to the post mentioning Mr. Mortada on Twitter.
…
That reporter’s recent dispatches from Aleppo for Press TV, an English-language satellite channel owned by Iran’s government, have suggested that life in the city remains calm for most residents. In a report posted online on Friday, Mr. Naser passed on Syrian military claims that they were fighting foreigners, not Syrians, in Aleppo.

Posted by: b | Aug 4 2012 5:58 utc | 102

Interesting detail and a possible clue to the source of the texts.
Under the tag “Assad” I found two blog texts.
http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/tag/assad
One of these has not been linked to from anywhere else.
Crucial disputes among the Syrian Free Army fighters in Homs
Jill Kitchener
AUG 3, 2012 07:00 EDT
Senior source in the leaderships of Syrian Free Army has indicated that crucial disputes have occurred among the battalions’ leaders in Homs. The clashes resulted in plenty deaths among them.
In a phone call with Reuters, the source proceeded that the clashes appeared between the battalions of Syrian Free Army, in which last for hours in Al-Hamedieh area of Homs.
In Maya Naser’s Press TV report from Aleppo today I find the same odd use of the word plenty.
Syrian”>http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/08/03/254269/calm-restore-in-aleppo/>Syrian army trying to restore calm in Aleppo
Upon our arrival to what was an area controlled by armed militias, Syrian army commander explained to us how did they free the area through intensify clashes during the night, assuring that these clashes resulted to killing plenty of armed group members and most of the killed were foreigners.

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Aug 4 2012 6:06 utc | 103

Where is the Syrian army? It seems some are deployin in force in the Lebanon border. My guess is that implies a complete militarization of the country. Must be happening everywhere else.
Al-Akhbar<\a>

Posted by: ThePaper | Aug 4 2012 6:07 utc | 104

the Syrian army has been trying to cut supply routes and protect strategically/politically important centers/buildings, while the “rebels” are doing cat and mouse/hit and run trying to attack strategic buildings/centers, that is what I guess from different reports on the situation. there is also a very serious media war including threats and executions, whilst poor people in Aleppo and Damascus lose their subsistence and eat from garbage cans. Everybody moves back and forth trying to escape the fighting, which goes on where the “rebels” choose to strike. So the rebel strategy is destabilization and the regime strategy is drying up rebel supplies and keeping them on the run. The loss of subsistance means people can be bought on the cheap by either side. The conflict has become very sectarian which means part of the population feel they have to fight to death or flee. a solution on the ground seems impossible as long as outside powers support and fuel the conflict. there will be no Schwerpunkt fight the rebels cannot afford one.

Posted by: somebody | Aug 4 2012 9:36 utc | 105

the interesting thing about the Reuters hack is that the faked news items are a message as well as psychological warfare.
it is very likely Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran are negotiating. it is very likely they will climb the fence if they cannot be sure the US intervenes in their favor. the rebels very likely called the Schwerpunkt off. there probably is a plot to accuse the Syrian government of using chemical weapons …

Posted by: somebody | Aug 4 2012 11:48 utc | 106

News About Syria – English
5 hours ago
#Syria #RealSyria
Top insurgent leaders on Thursday made death threats against the director of Arabic-language Al-Alam news network in Syria, Hossein Mortada, and gave similar warnings to Maya Naser, who is the local correspondent of English-language Press TV news network in Aleppo.
The death threats come as Syrian insurgents and their advocates are angry at the channels’ coverage of the events in Syria.
Press TV
=============
you know you are doing your job when thuggish criminals take offence

Posted by: brian | Aug 4 2012 13:17 utc | 107

some good news-
Aircraft carrier CVN72 Abraham Lincoln, which at last report was in the eastern Med, transited the Strait of Gibraltar on July 26 and is due in Norfolk on Tuesday.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Aug 4 2012 14:34 utc | 108

FYI
‘So, despite Syrians’ clear right to defend the secularity of their way of life, the aim of the West is to dismantle the Syrian state, alter the power structure, and create new demo-geographic entities such as a confederation of the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, which at present, is Turkey’s nightmare. Specific areas might also be depopulated, which might then be used, as has been done with the Druze, to repopulate with Syrian Christians and perhaps with Christians from Lebanon. Other Christians would leave the Levant altogether. The Alawites would then have another state, linked perhaps, with Iran.
The plan is to destroy the modern Arab state of Syria that emerged after WWI and in the 1940s, and, where possible, to establish new religious states (similar to the Jewish state of Israel). In this way, Arab power and along with it, the Pan-Arab ideology of Michel Aflaq and Antun Sa’ade (both Arab Christians) and Nasser of Egypt, would disappear. This process began when, in 1978-9 under Sadat, Egypt signed its peace treaty with Israel, and was followed by the destruction of Lebanon in 1982, the second Intifada in 1987, and the economic takeover of Iraq in 2003. It was then followed in Libya with the seizing of oil and gas in 2011. Therefore, in order to keep the US-Rael (US-Israel) hegemony, the West needs to align states along sectarian lines (Sunni-Shiite) rather than on Pan-Arabism. Indeed, this process was boosted after the occupation of Iraq and the toppling of the Ba’ath party.’
http://www.deliberation.info/dismembering-the-arab-worl

Posted by: brian | Aug 4 2012 15:28 utc | 109

The United Nations has stuck its nose into this affair in an unhelpful way again. The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution which inexplicably has not been published so we can’t read it. The UN record of the session includes a one-sided anti-Syria diatribe:
“By a recorded vote of 133 in favour to 12 against, with 31 abstentions, the Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution expressing its concern about a raft of gross human rights violations being carried out by Syrian Government forces, systematic attacks against civilians, and the increasing use of “heavy weapons, armour and the air force against populated areas”.
Webster Tarpley had an interesting observation:
“I would point out that this resolution was actually written by the Saudis, written by Saudi Arabia, unbelievable piece of hypocrisy. I don’t know how they can do this with a straight face- an absolute monarchy, a relic of feudal barbarism, one of the most backward regimes in the world is going to give lessons to Syria- a much more advanced country. I think this is absolutely absurd. This was also made possible by the president of the United Nations general assembly who is from Qatar. He represents the royal family there, the Thanis.”
And Syria spoke to it also:
The representative of Syria said it was a strange paradox that the States sponsoring the text were the same ones that were providing weapons to the terrorist groups in Syria.
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/ga11266.doc.htm

Posted by: Don Bacon | Aug 4 2012 15:38 utc | 110

A couple of weeks ago,Reuters reported that Shrillary was shot at in Israel,and they pulled the story.I have no idea of its veracity,but it was suspicious that any news that hurts the Zionists is not for American consumption.

Posted by: dahoit | Aug 4 2012 15:44 utc | 111

Syria reached out to its supposed ally Russia on Friday, senior officials asked with Moscow for financial loans and supplies of oil products -Sanctions and the cost of War are squeezing Assad’s regime – The risk is also no fuel – Syria also wants diesel oil and other oil products from Russia in exchange for crude supplies, this is more than likely the lull of military activity and much was used in the winter months. There was no immediate comment from the Russian government – This could be the deal Russia have made, their spoils once they evacuate its citizens is the control or Oil business, and retaining the Port/Naval base.
Much of everything is about energy. If you can provide, supply, control it, you are king. If you can offer an alternative, or disrupt this position, you are a danger – Obama was more or less bought into office on his agreement to build 120 Nuclear power stations, this all went tit’s up with the Japan disaster, and if you notice this was a media blanket and around the Arab spring time. To make matters worse, the reactors were made by GE (US) and an agreement from the US with Japan was also pertaining to Uranium enrichment. All but 2 or 3 Nuclear power stations in the world have dual purpose, the ability to produce weapons grade material, this was by design, in the same era they could have opted for Thorium systems, cleaner, safer , but most of all, not able to produce weapons grade materials.
Thorium is three times more abundant in nature than uranium. All but a trace of the world’s thorium exists as the useful isotope, which means it does not require enrichment. Thorium-based reactors are safer because the reaction can easily be stopped and because the operation does not have to take place under extreme pressures. Compared to uranium reactors, thorium reactors produce far less waste and the waste that is generated is much less radioactive and much shorter-lived. So far, Germany has built a Thorium reactor and India is about to put its first on-line, it is home to a quarter of the world’s known thorium reserves and notably lacking in uranium resources, it’s no surprise that India envisions meeting 30% of its electricity demand through thorium-based reactors by 2050. Energy is an export commodity, and herein is the tipping of the apple cart for the Oil markets and in that some will create Wars to hold on to this global hold. China is the other nation with a firm commitment to develop thorium power, the race is by many, programs in Japan, Russia, France, and the US are all ongoing, most under wraps.
Iran could quite simply opt for Thorium and mitigate the backlash it’s having. Although I still feel it would be a target of the US regardless as autonomous energy is a bigger risk than weaponry and to be a superpower if you have the on/off switch including the military might pretty much nothing can knock you off, more so if this is a constant. There are already tonnes and tonnes of Thorium buried in casks in the desert in the US There is enough thorium to supply America with base energy for over 3,000 years. Thorium is a very common element in nature. It occurs in Earth’s crust, statistically, with three to four times the abundance of uranium, and approximately as abundantly as lead. Australia probably possesses the world’s largest quantity of economically recoverable thorium resources. One would think this would be sufficient to convert? Well, no it’s all about the power and control.
So where am I going with this, simply that War is fueled and fuel is War, energy the use, the control and the resources are very much the issue…

Posted by: Kevin | Aug 4 2012 15:49 utc | 112

Latest film from Farsnews
http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=13910514001222

Posted by: LOYAL | Aug 4 2012 15:59 utc | 113

B,
You are mentioned in this NYT blog http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/reading-the-fake-reuters-reports-on-syria/?smid=tw-share concerning yesterday’s reuters story

Posted by: Sophia | Aug 4 2012 17:01 utc | 114

‘b’ i am sure you saw this, but then again, maybe not
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/reading-the-fake-reuters-reports-on-syria/

Posted by: F | Aug 4 2012 17:16 utc | 115

The New York Times opining on fake news/war propaganda is like Saudi Arabia opining on alleged human rights abuses of the Syrian government.
I love how ‘The Lede’ cites the Guardian’s faked e-mails to support the proposition that the fake hack was real.

Posted by: Walter Wit Man | Aug 5 2012 14:05 utc | 116

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