It is by Fisk and the guy is not always as sober as one would like but his story rings true:

Six weeks ago, a two-man delegation arrived in secret in Damascus: civilians from Aleppo who represented elements of the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group largely composed of fighters who deserted the regime’s army in the first year of the war. They came under a guarantee of safety, and met, so I am told, a senior official on the staff of President Bashar al-Assad. And they carried with them an extraordinary initiative – that there might be talks between the government and FSA officers who “believed in a Syrian solution” to the war.

It makes sense for nationalist minded insurgents to stop the fight against the government as other parts of the armed opposition are now aligning themselves with Al-Qaeda and thereby against any nationalist form of Syria.

Last week some 10 to 14 groups in northern Syria, including the hardline Jabhat al-Nusra, united under an Islamic flag. Yesterday 43 groups south of Damascus united as a new Army of Islam under the command of the head of the Liwa al-Islam brigade. While the numbers seem impressive at least some of these "new" associations are fake and one has to keep in mind that there are some 1,200+ insurgency groups in Syria, most of those just local gangs or thieves. Many of those will not be happy with the ascent of a rigid Islamic system and will prefer an amnesty or some other arrangement with the Syrian government.

We may thereby now see a new configuration of the parties in the Syrian conflict. Insurgent groups with Islamic tendencies will unite under ever more radical banners and will depend on "private" money from the Gulf states. The more secular groups, who will no longer receive money or weapons from the defunct FSA command and the useless exile Syrian National Council, will now turn to the government to gain amnesty or some other understanding. They may well join the Syrian Arab Army in the fight against the radical groups. The Kurds have defended their areas against Jihadis as well as the Syrian government but the leftist PYD group leading them does not have good relation with the Barzani clan that leads in the Iraqi Kurd territories. The Syrian Kurds will therefore stay in the national Syrian realm but will demand some local and language autonomy which will be granted.

The precautious U.S. government move to detente with Iran, widely supported by the U.S. population, will put pressure on the Gulf regimes. They are financially bound to the "west" and can not stand against the U.S. will. When Obama will finally throw away the regime change platitudes and decide to shut down the supply lines to the Jihadis in Syria, the Gulf states, as well as Turkey, will have to comply. Iran and Russia put out some feelers that might make it it easier, especially for the Saudis, to dismount from the sectarian horse they have been riding in the wake of Shia ascendency. The only stumbling block for these new arrangements are the hardliners in Israel. But Netanyahoo's star is already sinking with other hawks arguing against his stand and any resistance to these developments will only accelerate its demise.

It will take time for the Syrian government to eliminate the terrorists from Syrian territory. But the now emerging new constellations of the war are much clearer and much more to the advantage of the government then they have been in the previous two years.

The British Daily Mail, in a now deleted piece, promoted what it called exclusive CCTV pictures of the Nairobi mall attack.

bigger

London Times Africa correspondent Jerome Starkey points out that the picture in the middle is from an April 16 2010 FBI Miami release of photographs of a bank robbery (see pic 4). The picture on the left is from a Reuters distributed video of a raid on a hospital in Columbia released on September 19 2013. The provenance of the other two pictures are yet unknown.

The FBI picture from 2010 is also used in this Mail Online piece, still online, where it is attributed and copyrighted to Keith Waldegrave, a Mail on Sunday photographer.

Cont. reading: Mail Fakes Nairobi Pictures

The Rouhani week is over and it was a full success. Contrary to various propaganda claims the Iranian president said nothing essential that differed much from what his predecessor said. But he said it in a different tone and with a much better orchestration and that made all the difference. When Rouhani arrived back in Tehran he was greeted by some 50 protesters who condemned him for talking with the Great Satan. They may well have been part of the Rouhani show demonstrating to the United States that Rouhani can not go all the way it wants him to go. He was also welcomed by Ali Akbar Velayat who is a close advisor to supreme leader Khamenei. His week in New York and his phone-call with Obama can therefor claim to have high endorsement.

The White House seems to be very happy that it can now deal with someone who its own and Israel's propaganda have not (yet) demonized as the next Hitler. It is also glad, for now, that it can avoid a further escalation with Iran and a possible war which, as the campaign against open war on Syria demonstrated, would have no support from United States citizens. Indeed a deal with Rouhani over the nuclear file, easy to get if the U.S. walks back from its hostile position, may help to find a solution for Syria where the U.S. regime change project has thoroughly failed and the threat of a new Al-Qaeda base is now its most pressing concern.

These new developments are destroying the strategy of Israel's prime minister Netanyahoo. He can no longer outright push for War on Iran. The Israeli delegation was the only one that left the UN General Assembly when Rouhani spoke. A clear demonstration of Israel's new isolation. Its AIPAC lobby had already lost the fight for War on Syria and upcoming domestic business will keep Congress occupied with other issues. Sure, there are still some loyal Senators for AIPAC pressing for more sanctions and war "preventing Iran from achieving nuclear capability". Nuclear capability is something Iran achieved some years ago and the U.S. public is not in the mood to wage war to turn the clocks back on that. The lobby has lost for now and some of its leaders are recognizing it. David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, warns Netanyahoo in a Haaretz piece:

[U]nless Israel wants to continue to find itself largely alone on the world stage, it will have to find new ways to make its case, so that it is not just talking to itself and its supporters. Simply implying, for instance, that anyone who sits down with Rohani is a modern-day Neville Chamberlain or Édouard Daladier won’t do the trick.

To the contrary, it will only give offense and alienate. There are more effective and less shrill ways of making the case for caution, vigilance, and strength.

One wonders what "more effective and less shrill ways" Mr Harris has in mind. One thing is sure, he is not yet willing to give up. We can expect some open and some hidden dirty tricks to derail any successful talks between Iran and the United States.

But Netanyahoo may truly lose this one. We will know that he has given up when he changes his target. After the first Gulf war Israel's propaganda changed from demonizing the then defanged Saddam Hussein and instead started to demonize Iran. Israel always needs an enemy, the new Hitler, to distract from its continuing colonization of Palestine and to keep its picture as an eternal "victim" alive. As the War On Iran project fails could, please, Saudi Arabia become Israel's new villain?

Next week Netanyahoo will be visiting Washington and New York. He is unlikely to get the same attention and success that Rouhani got. Another stupid comic stunt at the UNGA in New York would make him even more irrelevant. He needs a new game but will have difficulties to find one.

What does Seymour Hersh know that we do not know?

Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the 'pathetic' American media

Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

It was quite obvious from the very beginning of the protests and insurgency violence in Syria that the violent part was done by sectarian Sunni Jihadists aligned groups who's aim were to implement an Islamic state. Every name of the "brigades" that announced their youtube existence was taken from some famous Sunni hero, historic event or other sectarian religious scheme. The "western" media tried their best to avoid noticing such and for two and a half years continued to talk about "democratic" and "peaceful" "protesters".

But now the mask is finally off:

A collection of some of Syria's most powerful rebel brigades have rejected a Western-backed opposition group that announced the creation of an interim government in exile this month.

The 13 rebel groups, led by the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, also called on supporters of the Syrian opposition to embrace Sharia law "and make it the sole source of legislation."

The new group includes many who were until now members of the openly U.S. supported Free Syrian Army and include the very "democratic" folks Senator John McCain met at the Turkish-Syrian border.

Who does the Obama administration suggest should now sit on the opposition side to negotiate with the Syrian government in Geneva? Neither the exile National Syrian Council nor the exile Supreme Military Command have any control over or traction with the groups fighting against the Syrian government. And how will the Obama administration justify further support for these groups?

Obama will not yet abandon his aim of destructing the Syrian state but pursuing this aim is becoming more and more indefensible.

Iran and the United States have come to some agreement about Iran's nuclear program. They, at least, have agreed on the two main framework points that will be discussed the future negotiations – the points of rights and of peaceful nuclear program.

Considers these excerpts on the issue from president  Obama's and president Rouhani's UN General Assembly speeches yesterday.

Obama:

We are not seeking regime change, and we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy.
…
We should be able to achieve a resolution that respects the rights of the Iranian people, while giving the world confidence that the Iranian program is peaceful.

Rouhani:

Iran and other actors should pursue two common objectives as two mutually inseparable parts of a political solution for the nuclear dossier of Iran.
Iran's nuclear program – and for that matter, that of all other countries – must pursue exclusively peaceful purposes. […]

The second objective, that is, acceptance of and respect for the implementation of the right to enrichment inside Iran and enjoyment of other related nuclear rights, provides the only path towards achieving the first objective.

So these two points as a framework for further negotiations have now been accepted by both sides. The only difference in these positions is "enrichment". Obama still sticks to "access nuclear energy" which, in his mind,  may not necessarily include enrichment.

In 2009 the Obama administration's (wrong) position on Iran's rights, like that of the Bush administration, was "nuclear energy yes but no enrichment":

Cont. reading: Some Agreement On U.S.-Iran Negotiations

One wonders how much international condemnation such reports would (rightfully) provoke if they would read like this:

Hotline lets callers inform on Germanic-Jewish couples

A right-wing, anti-assimilation organization that campaigns to prevent Jewish men from dating Germanic women has opened a hotline enabling members of the public to inform on women so that they can be persuaded to end the relationship.

When called, a recording on the Flamme hotline says the service is meant to “save the daughters of Germania.” In addition to offering support for women, the line also provides the names and telephone numbers of Jewish men that the organization suspects of dating Germanic women.

Bundeswehr soldier passes IDs of Germanic girls who socialize with Jews to anti-assimilation NGO

A female Bundeswehr soldier who is often stationed at checkpoints is apparently very disturbed by the fact that some Germanics and Jews actually hang out. The soldier turned anonymously (on Facebook) to Hand of Brothers a religious organization whose mandate is to “save Germanics from assimilation,” in the hopes they can help her prevent this from happening in the future by talking some sense into these young women.

Sharmine Narwani on Questions Plague UN Report on Syria with some bits also from this.

There seems to be little news of Syrian army action against the foreign sponsored insurgents but there is lots of action between some foreign Al-Qaeda bandits and the Syrian ones. One wonders how much of this is real. Could this be a spoof to make the Syrian bandits look more "secular"? Al Qaeda in Syria: We Fought FSA Because It Conspired With John McCain Against Us

There is also ongoing fighting between the Kurds and Al-Qaeda groups sponsored by Turkey: Turkey Stands With al-Qaeda Against the Kurds

The U.S. sponsored exiles are worthless: Rebels View Coalition Leadership Outside Syria as Detached From the Suffering

The Washington Post had a piece on "private" financing for Al-Qaeda in Syria. I regard this as propaganda that gives some plausible deniability to Saudi Arabia and Qatar who are state financing the terrorists and at the same time gives an argument to the "we must finance the good 'secular' terrorists to give them the edge" lunatics in the Senate. Private donations give edge to Islamists in Syria, officials say

On the CW stuff Syria is sticking to its words U.S. official: Syrian CW list more complete than anticipated

Please add other news on Syria in the comments.

Someone in Manhattan called a guy in the City of London:

Hi Miles, did you see that Reuters piece about that new lunatic?

About that guy speaking in Sardinia? yeah I did. And I had thought we had the Soviets down the toilet.

Yeah, we had. But now these socialists are creeping up again.

That and with an long-term ideology and a big following.

How did this wacko come to power? He have had such a good run. That Polish guy was great for us and that German dude never made a fuss as long as he could get away with his hobby.

Hehe, a small boy a day …

Look, we can't let this get any more grounds. It must be snuffed out and as soon as possible.

I agree. Do you still have those friends in Palermo.

You mean Mario and his brothers? Those silent knife folks? Yeah. Should I give them a call?

Do so immediately. This guy must be buried before he creates more damage. We have our bottom lines to watch.

I agree. I'll get Mario on the phone as soon as I'll hang up on you.

Cont. reading: Will They Whack That Socialist Too?

Lavrov: US pressuring Russia into passing UN resolution on Syria under Chapter 7

“Our American partners are starting to blackmail us: ‘If
Russia does not support a resolution under Chapter 7, then we
will withdraw our support for Syria’s entry into the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This is a
complete departure from what I agreed with Secretary of State
John Kerry’,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told
Channel 1’s Sunday Time program.
…
“Our partners are blinded by an ideological mission for regime
change,” said Lavrov. “They cannot admit they have made
another mistake.”
…
“I am convinced that the West is doing this to demonstrate
that they call the shots in the Middle East. This is a totally
politicized approach,” said Lavrov.

There were two Geneva agreements on negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition between the U.S. and Russia. Then there was the latest agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons. The U.S. has tried to renegotiate or reinterpretate all three of these agreements.

It is obvious, not only to Russia, that the United States government and especially its current Secretary of State can not be trusted. It will not stick to even written agreements.

Iran’s new president Rouhani and his team must keep this in mind when they start to negotiate with their United States government colleagues.

News & views …

This is anti-Syrian propaganda:

Syria has submitted a letter detailing of its chemical weapons to the global chemical weapons regulator but officials said the information was only part of the required details.

…
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)said the letter had fallen short of its requirements and indefinitely postponed a Sunday meeting to discuss a Russia-US plan to destroy Syria's arsenal.

This is, more or less, reality:

"We have received part of the verification and we expect more," an OPCW spokesman said.

A U.N. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the details had been submitted, saying: "It's quite long … and being translated."

The organization's core members are due to vote –
probably next week – on a plan aimed at fast-tracking the destruction
of Syria's chemical stockpiles by mid-2014.

So the "letter" in the propaganda is in reality "quite long" and still has to be translated. That takes time and is likely the reason why the OPCW meeting has been postponed for a day or two. That there are additional yet unfulfilled requirements, like detailed documentation that could not have been produced on such short notice, was to be expected and is just normal. But notice how some media are trying to spoil the process of getting rid of Syria's chemical weapons even before it really starts.

In the early days of the insurgency, some U.S. commanders appeared oblivious to the possibility that excessive force might produce a backlash. They counted on the iron fist to create an atmosphere conducive to good behavior. The idea was not to distinguish between "good" and "bad" Iraqis, but to induce compliance through intimidation.

"You have to understand the Arab mind," one company commander told the New York Times, displaying all the self-assurance of Douglas MacArthur discoursing on Orientals in 1945. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face." Far from representing the views of a few underlings, such notions penetrated into the upper echelons of the American command. In their book "Cobra II," Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor offer this ugly comment from a senior officer: "The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I'm about to introduce them to it."

Such crass language, redolent with racist, ethnocentric connotations, speaks volumes. These characterizations, like the use of "gooks" during the Vietnam War, dehumanize the Iraqis and in doing so tacitly permit the otherwise impermissible. Thus, Abu Ghraib and Haditha — and too many regretted deaths, …

One would have thought that such language, which Bacevich rightly characterizes as racist and ethnocentric, would not be used in a White House under a black president.

But alas, it is:

But, the officials say, these are the long-delayed fruits of the administration’s selective use of coercion in a part of the world where that is understood.

“The common thread is that you don’t achieve diplomatic progress in the Middle East without significant pressure,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, said Thursday. “In Syria, it was the serious threat of a military strike; in Iran it was a sanctions regime built up over five years.”

The result of such thought will of course be similar to the result in the War on Iraq where the United States lost and had to leave with its tail between its legs.

Human Rights Watch and the New York Times are trying to implicate the Syrian Arab Army in a chemical incident that happened on August 21 in Ghouta near Damascus. Using the report of an United Nations commission which investigated various sites around Damascus they try to reconstruct from where the rockets suspected to have been used in the attack may have been fired from.

The UN commission identified two finds of largely intact rockets that landed in a way that lets one estimate from which directions these rockets have been fired. Lining out from the impact sites towards the direction from where the rockets came the crossing of the two lines point, say HRW and the NYT, to the possible launch point of both rockets. That point, a Syrian army artillery site, is then seen as implicated in the chemical attack.

When taken together, the azimuths drawn from different neighborhoods lead back to and intersect at Mount Qasioun — so far an impregnable seat of Mr. Assad’s power — according to independent and separate calculations by both The New York Times and Human Rights Watch.

“Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible,” Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery analyst for Human Rights Watch, noted in a statement on Tuesday.

“This isn’t conclusive,” Mr. Lyons added. “But it is highly suggestive.”

But that analysis is faulty. At least one of the two rockets the UN commission assessed contained no chemical agent at all. In the whole area where that one rocket was found none of the environmental probe showed any sign of a chemical weapon impact. It is therefore not legit to use that impact as a direction finding point for the launch point of the chemical weapon incident. Before and after the chemical incident the sites the UN visited had been reported to be under conventional artillery attack. There is no conclusive evidence that binds the rocket debris found to the chemical incident.

Specifically the first site the UN commission visited was near Moadamiyah, south of Damascus. The investigators took blood and urine samples from some people they met on their visit there. Those samples proved positive for exposure to Sarin. But all environment samples taken in Moadamiyah proved negative (Appendix 6 and 7 of the UN report. Sample 1 to 12 taken on August 26.) If those person found in Moadamiyah would have been exposed in Moadamiyah the environment there would also have been exposed. But the UN team found that this was not the case. The persons must have been moved to Moadamiyah after having been exposed elsewhere. The 140 mm rocket the UN team assessed in Moadamiyah can thereby not be implicated in the chemical attack.

The second point where the UN team found ammunition and assessed the direction where it came from was in Ain Tarma east/south-east of Damascus. The ammunition debris found there was from a 330 mm rocket. Environmental probes taken in Ain Tarma and from parts of the found rocket debris showed exposure to Sarin. The UN commission report does not explicitly state that the ammunition found carried the chemical agent. It notes that the area was well traveled and that people were seen moving ammunition debris around.

The UN commission report does not say how the chemical agent found in some of the investigated areas was distributed. It does not say that it came from rockets. It identified two impact sites of rockets and directions that allows to assume the direction, not the distance, from where those rockets were fired from. But one of those sites and rockets was never exposed to the chemical agent in question while the other site, and the ammunition debris found there, was. To conclude from these finds that ammunition carrying chemical agents were fired from a specific point or army unit or was fired by rockets at all is not legit but propaganda.

In 2008 Human Rights Watch falsely accused Russia of having used cluster ammunition in the Georgia war even while the ammunition found was easily identifiable as “western” sourced ammunition. C.J Chivers, who wrote the above for the New York Times, has been implicated in propaganda reporting on Syria claiming “poorly armed rebels” while he knew and had seen that those “rebels” had received many modern arms and ammunition from their “western” and Gulf sponsors.

Michael Oren, the outgoing Israeli ambassador to the United States, wants to lift any doubt about who really wants Assad to go:

“The initial message about the Syrian issue was that we always wanted [President] Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,” he said.

This was the case, he said, even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated to al-Qaida.

“We understand that they are pretty bad guys,” he said, adding that this designation did not apply to everyone in the Syrian opposition. “Still, the greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc. That is a position we had well before the outbreak of hostilities in Syria. With the outbreak of hostilities we continued to want Assad to go.”

So Israel, according to Oren, would rather have AlQaeda ruling in Syria than the current secular government. Israel is not the only country that has such desire:

On other issues, Oren – who has contact in Washington with some ambassadors from Persian Gulf countries – said that that “in the last 64 years there has probably never been a greater confluence of interest between us and several Gulf States. With these Gulf States we have agreements on Syria, on Egypt, on the Palestinian issue. We certainly have agreements on Iran. This is one of those opportunities presented by the Arab Spring.”

Don’t expect to read over any such agreements in the New York Times. The Times does not cover anything that might Israel shine in a bad light.

A week ago the Guardian reported that the National Security Agency “routinely” hands over raw, unfiltered intelligence data it illegally collects on U.S. citizens and others to Israeli agencies. The New York Times did not mention this in any of its own reports. It did not even provide a wire story from one of the news agencies on the issue. Its managing editor, rather incredible, claimed to the NYT’s public editor that it was not “a significant or surprising story” and therefore not worth of any coverage.

How much of the NSA data does Israel use for its drive to install AlQaeda in Syria? And how much of does it use to influence the New York Times editorial policies?

Obama said in a recent interview that some letters have been exchanged between the U.S. government and the new government of Iran. The new Rohani administration in Tehran is doing its best to show its willingness to negotiate with the "west" over its nuclear program and other issues. The Obama side swwms also to be ready to at least feel out how far Iran might want to go.

Negotiations between Iran and the United States are not welcome by Israel and the Gulf states. Israel needs to have some "bad guy" bogeyman in the neighborhood to point away from its continuing colonization of the West Bank and the Golan heights. Saudi Arabia is unwilling to allow a somewhat enlightened and developed example of an Islamic State in its neighborhood. Its own people could get ideas that other forms of government than by some dictatorial king might be desirable and compatible with their religion. These two powers will attempt to spoil any negotiations between the "west" and Iran.

A recent report may be part of such an attempt. It asserts that the new Iranian government may be willing, in negotiations, to do away with one of its enrichment sites:

SPIEGEL has learned from intelligence sources that Iran's new president, Hassan Rohani, is reportedly prepared to decommission the Fordo enrichment plant and allow international inspectors to monitor the removal of the centrifuges. In return, he could demand that the United States and Europe rescind their sanctions against the Islamic Republic, lift the ban on Iranian oil exports and allow the country's central bank to do international business again.

Fordo is an underground side and that would be difficult to dismantle through bombing. It is the guarantee Iran has build for itself that its nuclear program can not be erased solely by air attacks. Would Iran, as the first step in negotiations, dismantle on of its best defenses against an attack? That does not sound credible to me. Note also the very odd sourcing of that claim: "SPIEGEL has learned from intelligence sources … that Iran … is reportedly .." What "intelligence sources" from what country? And what does "reportedly" mean here? That those "intelligence sources" have read such a claim in some blogpost or fishwrap?

More plausible to me is that someone is trying to exaggerate what Iran could be willing to offer in a first step to thereby create disappointment and dismay when that first offer is made and does not meet the expectations created by such reports.

There will be more such spoiler attempts. Likely more intelligent ones and more severe ones. Some will aim at a solution of the Syria crisis and some directly at U.S. Iran negotiations. Such spoilers must be exposed and confronted to degrade their effects.

As I am time restricted today just three points on the developments in Syria:

• The UN report on chemical stuff used in the Damascus suburb Ghouta on August 21 finds (pdf) that Sarin has been used which was probably distributed by unguided 140mm rockets. The report and the facts therein say nothing about who might have fired those missiles.

• The Turkish air force shot down a Syrian helicopter that, it alleges, violated Turkish airspace. The helicopter fell on Syrian ground. This, to me, seems to be an attempt to insert a spoiler into the recently achieved U.S.-Russian understanding about Syria's disarmament of chemical weapons.
  That spoiler, and others to come, will likely be ignored by the relevant sides.

•  The U.S. is finally recognizing that to keep the Syrian government in place is the least bad choice it has. The former CIA No. 2 Mike Morell is the first of the Washington insiders to publicly make that point. He concludes though, wrongly, that there must be more balance between opposition and the government to achieve some transition first. That is not going to work. The core quote from his interview:

[I]t's going to take the institution of the Syrian military and the institutions of the Syrian security services to defeat al Qaeda when this is done. And every day that goes by, every day that goes by, those institutions are eroded.

From yesterday's Short History Of The War On Syria – 2006-2014:

The Syrian Military Council will do its best to derail [the chemical weapons deal]. But it will soon be out of political support and out of money. Meanwhile the local SMC forces are fighting al-Qaeda aligned groups. It could well be that some of the local Syrian insurgency groups will soon join government forces in attacking the Jihadis.

That was, may be, a bit wrong. It seems like its not the local Syrian insurgency groups joining government forces in fighting the Jihadis but just the other way around.

Consider:

Cont. reading: Syrian Government Air-Support For The Syrian Insurgents?

In 2006 the U.S. was at war in Iraq. Some of the enemy forces it very much struggled to fight against were coming in through Syria. The same year Israel lost a war against Hizbullah. Its armored forces were ambushed whenever they tried to push deeper into Lebanon while Hizbullah managed to continuously fire rockets against Israeli army position and cities. Hizbullah receives supply for its missile force from Syria and from Iran through Syria. Its long-term plans to attack Iran and to thereby keep supremacy in the Middle East depend on severing Hizbullah’s supply routes. The sectarian Sunni Gulf countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, saw their Sunni brethren defeat in Iraq and a Shia government, supported by Iran, taking over the country. All these countries had reason to fight Syria. There were also economic reasons to subvert an independent Syria. A gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey was competing with one from Iran to Syria. Large finds of natural gas in the coastal waters of Israel and Lebanon make such finds in Syrian waters quite plausible.

In late 2006 the United States started to finance an external opposition to Syria’s ruling Baath party. Those exiles were largely members of the Muslim Brotherhood which had been evicted from Syria after their bloody uprising against the Syrian state between 1976 and 1982 had failed. In 2007 a plan for regime change in Syria was agreed upon between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The aim was to destroy the “resistance” alliance of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

By 2011 three years of drought, caused by global warming and Turkey’s upstream dams and irrigation projects, had weakened the Syrian economy. Large parts of the poor rural population lost their means of living and moved into the cities. They provided the fertile ground needed to launch an uprising against the Syrian state.

Cont. reading: A Short History Of The War On Syria – 2006-2014

News & views …