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Syria Summary – Will The Trump-Putin Agreement Hold?
The conflict between the U.S. and Russia over Syria seems to have calmed down after the recent G-20 meeting between Putin and Trump. Some kind of agreement was made but neither its scope nor its bindingness is known. One common current aim is the defeat of ISIS.
Source: Fabrice Balanche/WINEP – bigger
At the meeting between the Presidents Trump and Putin in Hamburg a temporary truce was agreed for the south-west area of Syria. The Syrian government (violet) holds the city of Deraa while various foreign sponsored insurgent groups (green), including al-Qaeda and ISIS, occupy the borders towards Israel and Jordan. There had been some serious fighting after recent al-Qaeda attacks on Baath city neat the Golan. During these the Israeli airforce had multiple times supported the al-Qaeda groups with attacks on the Syrian army.
Under the truce agreement the Russian side guarantees that the Syrian government and its allies stop fighting while the U.S. guarantees that Israel, the various FSA groups, al-Qaeda and ISIS stay quiet. The truce has now held for several days. There were no spoilers. The U.S. seems to have strong influence with ALL those entities.
East of the Deraa area in the governate of Sweida the Syrian army has continued operations against U.S. supported Free Syrian Army groups. Within a few days it has taken a lot of ground against little resistance including a deserted U.S. base that was not publicly known. It is possible that a secret part of the Deraa truce agreement allows for the Syrian army to liberate the whole area next to the Jordan border towards the east up to the U.S. held border crossing at al-Tanf.
The U.S. base in Tanf had become nonviable after the Syrian army had taken all ground north of it and Iraqi militia had blocked it from the Iraqi side. The U.S. had trained some Syrian mercenaries at Tanf and had planned to march those north towards Deir Ezzor. As that route is now blocked some of the trained mercenaries were recently transferred by air to Shadadi base in north-east Syria where they will have to fight under Kurdish command. Others have refused to move north. Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra, previously called the New Syrian Army, is mostly made up of local men who probably do not want to leave their nearby families and do not want to come under Kurdish leadership. The U.S. should send them home and leave the area.
Today a new two-pronged move against the ISIS siege on Deir Ezzor was started. Syrian army forces and its allies moved east from their Palmyra positions and south-east from their positions south of Raqqa. An additional move against Deir Ezzor may come from the Syrian forces further south-east near the Iraqi border. The Iraq air force has recently flown attacks against ISIS position in the Deir Ezzor areas. This was done in agreement with the Syrian government. That may be a sign that Iraqi forces will join the fight to relief the city with an additional move south-west from their positions near Tal Afar. The U.S. military has for now given up its dream of assaulting and occupying Deir Ezzor with its proxy forces.
The west and north west of Syria have been relatively quiet. A rumored imminent Turkish attack on Kurdish held areas has not happened. The mostly al-Qaeda held areas in Idleb governate are still unruly. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Turkmen, Uighurs, Kurds, local Free Syrian Army gangs all have their little fiefdoms in the area. Assassinations and attacks on each other are daily occurrences. There is no reason for the Syrian government to intervene in that melee.
The agreement between Trump and Putin over Syria might be more wide ranging than is publicly known. For now it seems that the parties have agreed on areas of influences with the U.S. for now; occupying the north-east currently under control of its YPG proxies. It is building more bases there with the total number now being eight or nine. At least three of these have their own airstrips. It is asking Congress to legalize further base building. It is obvious that the U.S. military plans to stay in the area even after ISIS is defeated.
But the Kurds in Syria are only a minority in almost all areas they currently control. They are not united and the YPG, the only U.S. partner, is a radical anarcho-marxist group that has no legitimacy but force. The area is landlocked and all its neighbors are against Kurdish autonomy.
The U.S. effort to impose itself on the area is doomed. The use of the Kurds as a Trojan horse is unlikely to succeed. The Defense Department, it seems, has not yet accepted that fact. It still may try to sabotage whatever Trump and Putin have agreed upon.
V. Arnold and others above: this is a general and professedly naive question, born out of my ignorance about weapons r&d. It is also somewhat rambling, since it could be boiled down to one sentence, I suppose. We often hear about or mutually reassure one another about (I mean we sensu lato, we who seek freedom from tyranny)… about the superiority or present unassailability of this or that new device or system or technology being tested or trialled or deployed by, say, Russia or China. F.i., S-500, unpredictable missile flightpaths, China’s tangled particle or wave wotnots. Isn’t it the case that that the enemy, with their vast financial, intellectual (used advisedly) and manpower resources, not to omit mention of the ubiquitous mycelium of espionage, will be (will already have been)immediately copying / improving whatever new development transpires. My impression is that the USA is deliberately fostering and projecting an impression of “outdated systems”, of incompetence, dissatisfaction, among their own, of fractiousness among the multitude of m and i agencies, of failed contracts, of ACCs without effective aircraft (UK, that one), that dud F-fighter we hear so much about and that not only the general “ignorant masses”, but also “we” are, in a very high-level way, taken in by it, that we are willing to let ourselves be, in a wishful thinking sort of way. Think of places where they ought to know (and perhaps have a hidden agents). Turcopolier springs to mind. Or that slightly hysterical saker-bird who used to have a (pretty valuable, if approached in a slightly sceptical manner) blog called the vinyard (since transformed into a tedious run-of-the-mill digest site full of syndicated pieces better read at source). I digress. We talk and hear constantly these days, years, about the rising military sophistication of Russia, China and other enemies of the USA, but relatively little about the USA vast historical (I mean post-USSR up to the present day) military might, and when it is mentioned, it is always countered with “reassurances” about falling behind in cutting-edge research, maintenance, etc., yet the budgets alone should provide a wake-up call, let alone the unbudgeted funds, probably greater, and the other factors spy-rings, national pride, sense of mission, wolfowitz doctrine, first-strike, etc.
Surely the one things we can / should be absolutely certain of is that the USA has absorbed every single piece of weapons knowledge that Russia and China have come up with and applied and that they are putting that knowledge to good use behind the scenes, a la Manhattan? Let alone their own autochthonous ideas (assuming they are capable of original thoughts beyond Manifest Destiny, R2P and other such claptrap). Most of the tertiary colleges in the US appear to be intricately linked with defence and the mic.
Posted by: Petra | Jul 14 2017 14:03 utc | 61
Here’s a few interesting articles – from Politico and NY Times, so basically it’s American establishment propaganda, so you have to read between the lines. Kind of surprising they’d even mention these topics, but the spin factor may be the reason why. I.e., there’s a real effort to hide the fact that the American-Israel-Jordan-Saudi axis actively supported Al Qaeda and ISIS jihadi terror groups in Syria and Iraq as part of the anti-Iranian-influence game. The target of this propaganda game is the American voter, ultimately.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/israels-secret-arab-allies.html
“Taken as a whole, Israeli activities in Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, Egypt and the Gulf can no longer be viewed in isolation from one another. Rather, Israel is now involved in the Arab world’s military campaigns — against both Iran and its proxies, as well as against the Islamic State.”
That’s PR line #1 – i.e. Islamic State has been viewed by Israel as an ally against Assad and Iran. Israeli Defense Minister Ya’alon even said he’d prefer ISIS running Syria to Assad, in the Israel press, 2014. Israel has carried out operations in support of ISIS, as has the U.S. military (Deir Ezzor) Trying to tell the brainwashed devotees of the NYT and WaPo this? Tricky at best.
A few other blurbs:
“Yet there is a major United States-led coalition operation being run out of Jordan to support the various Syrian rebels groups. An open question is whether, or more likely how, Israel is now involved.”
“Less well known, however, is the increasingly close relationship with the Arab Gulf states, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Such ties are often referenced only obliquely by Israeli government ministers as “shared interests” in the security and intelligence realms against the common Iranian threat.”
The only real point to make here is that Qatar hasn’t gone along with this game, and Al Jazeera continues to run plenty of news stories on Israel’s long-term oppression of Palestinians, and the Arab street in UAE and Saudi Arabia then gets into conflict with the ruling dictatorships; resulting in ripe conditions for populist revolt and overthrow of the House of Saud and its allies. This is one reason, I guess, that Saudi Arabia went after Qatar and demanded the closure of Al Jazeera.
Here’s the other article, it’s basically 100% bullshit, but there’s one telling quote that reveals all:
http://www.politico. . . trumps-syrian-ceasefire-makes-israel-nervous-215376
None of this should be misinterpreted to mean that Israeli officials want ISIS to stay—they just fear the aftermath of its ouster.
Ha ha ha! Of course Israel wants ISIS to stay, that’s their whole game. And, as the other article shows, the ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia and the ties between Saudi Arabia and ISIS, that was supposed to make a neat little circle, i.e. there would be this Salafiist caliphate in Syria that would take orders from the House of Saud.
It’s probably the stupidest foreign policy regime change game ever devised (well, 2003 Iraq is also a contender), and it blew up in their faces, and now it’s all about damage control and respinning the story.
Posted by: nonsense factory | Jul 14 2017 19:09 utc | 77
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