War in Syria 2

An important Thermal Power Plant is east of Aleppo, and is now back in Syrian government hands. This should be fired up soon, and the civilians of Aleppo will rejoice. 

Yaalon said, “The United States and Russia, both of which are currently active in the Syrian civil war, recognize Israel’s freedom to act in defense of its interests.”
While the two powers may indeed recognize this freedom in principle, Israel will be certain to avoid any action that makes it liable to being accused of damaging the chances of a ceasefire going into effect in Syria on Feb. 27. Both the US and Russia will also make sure that no outside power, whether Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Israel, intervenes militarily in the Syrian conflict whatever their security interests may be....from Debka

...this ceasefire agreement undoubtedly is consequence of Erdagon`s insane drive to invade Syria supported by Saudi Arabia and Israel...and no doubt will go to extreme lengths to prevent Israel et al from further attacks...we shall see!

http://www.syriaonline.sy/?f=Details&pageid=21107&catid=30

The Aleppo Thermal Power Plant looks quite damaged, but hopefully the funding will find it's way to getting it operational.

from South Front

According to reports, Jeish al-Fatah militants backed up by Turkish artillery fire, gained control over the villages of al-Dorra and al-Saraf in the Northwestern parts of al-Rabia’a town in the province of Lattakia. After taking control of these two villages, the militants receive reinforcements and a large cargo of weapons and military equipment poured through via the Turkish borders.

Some 30 Saudi Air Force officers with a cargo of military equipment have arrived to the Incirlik military airbase in Turkey to prepare for a joint air campaign in Syria. The deployment of Saudi fighter jets is expected in next 24 hours.

....so more violations of the ceasefire agreement...if and when it collapses.....?!

The ridiculously non-existant "ceasefire" is just a pretext for Kerry's "plan B", the partition.

How can a "ceasefire" exist when both the most the most effective fighting collections against the Syrian government refuse to participate-- ISIL and Al Qaeda?
Russia of course will be blamed.

"Plan A" is "Plan B" is the result of the "F[eldman] Plan", the plan leaked from the hacked STRATFOR files.

The $2 billion Saudi financed Feltman Plan is outlined here:

Quote:

21.02.2016 Author: F. William Engdahl
Mr President, Sir, Are You About to Blow Up the Middle East?

.....
First it’s useful to look a bit more closely into the UN-sponsored Geneva III “peace talks” which began the first week of February. The talks, despite Russian and Syrian efforts, have been a farce from the onset. The key UN point-person guiding the Geneva sabotage agenda is UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey D. Feltman.

.... in 2008, Feltman authored a secret plan with former Saudi Ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, nicknamed “Bandar Bush” by George W. Bush for his intimate ties to the Bush family. That Feltman-Bandar Plan was revealed in internal documents hacked in 2011 from the thousands of files of STRATFOR, the murky US “strategic intelligence” consultancy to the Department of Defense and military industry.
....

The Feltman-Bandar plan called for dividing Syria into different ethnic groups–Alawite, Sunni, Shi’ite, Kurd, Christian, and dividing the country into three areas: big cities, small cities and villages. Then the USA and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and selected allies would begin covert training and recruiting of five levels or networks of actors, controlled by the CIA and Saudi intelligence, which Bandar later headed, to execute the destruction or national dismemberment of Syria. The plan outlined the five networks they would manipulate:

1- The “Fuel”: educated and unemployed youths who are to be linked in a decentralized way.

2- The “Thugs”: outlaws and criminals from remote areas, preferably non-Syrians.

3- The “Ethnic-Sectarians”: young people with limited education representing ethnic communities that support or oppose the president. They must be under the age of 22.

4- The “Media”: some leaders of civil society institutions which have European funding not American, to conceal US role.

5- The “Capital”: traders, company owners, banks and commercial centers in Damascus, Aleppo and Homs only.
....

http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/21/mr-president-sir-are-you-about-to-blow...

Some analysis of Erdogan's meddling in Syria. Is he backing down?

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/02/turkey-syria-davutoglu...

This is absolutely a remarkable sea change. Of course the most important thing is the well being of the Syrian people.Every day that passes that the ceasefire, such as it it, holds, fewer Syrians will die.

The role for Canada is simple: get the phuck out of Syria, which you have no business in (nor have you been invited!) , and get out of the brutal NATO military alliance while you're at it. Turkey? The US? These are our allies?

Meanwhile, the Canadian Trudeau regime approves, with their "hands are tied" excuses, billions in military sales and aid to the barbarous Saudi regime - the same regime making war on the poorest Arab country in the world (Yemen) and preparing for war and/or invasion of Syria.

iyraste1313 wrote:

Are we watching a sea change in the balance of powers on this fragile planet?

Usually it is historians who can answer that, long after the fact, by identifying incipient trends in their infancy. One hopes. Certainly for the Syrian people, whose well being is what matters here, the ceasefire couldn't come soon enough.

My own view is that this trend began back in 2008, when the brutal Saakashvili regime in Georgia was rebuffed in South Ossetia, then later when, following the coup d'etat in Kiev, Crimea re-joined Russia and the Donbass resisted. But don't forget it is not just Russia; China, Iran, and other countries have been the target of the US hegemon. And they are starting to work together, in trade- including, critically, trade outside of US dollar hegemony - in mutual defence, and so on. It's heartening to see the Chinese and the Russians working together, and a bigger role for the Iranians, and the BRICS member states. These are still capitalist countries, often implementing the same austerity that we rightly oppose in Canada, but their intra-capitalist challenge to the hegemon can, and often does, play a positive role internationally.

It is a shame that Canadians are so deluded when it comes to foreign policy. In general, we imagine ourselves to be peacemakers, when the opposite is the truth. I quote rabble blogger Yves Engler on this ...

Yves Engler wrote:

There is no other domain of political life in Canada where the disconnect between policy and perception is remotely close as Canadian foreign-policy. Canadians overwhelmingly, including far into the left, believe Canada is broadly a good force in the world while evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.

Cheers.

A fascinating development is that some of the Opposition political/military forces are asking for Russian AF protection from the jihadists. This is really great news. It means that there is room for political opposition, even now, in Syria, and that the SAA and the (invited!) Russian AF are playing a positive role. I'm really heartened by this development.

Hooray for the Syrian people!!

The Russian President has just ordered the beginning of an orderly military withdrawal from Syria.

Objectives Achieved. Western sponsored terrorists pounded.

What's that I hear? Wailing and knashing of teeth?

It's simple really. If the Russians are involved, then they're bad. They bomb hospitals, you know? Some MSF friends say so anyway. No evidence really. But if the Russians aren't involved, then they're still bad.

What's the bet that Western MSM will, within days, maybe hours, find some reason to denounce the Russians for the military withdrawal? You know, the same media that denounced them for coming in the first place.

ikosmos wrote:

The Russian President has just ordered the beginning of an orderly military withdrawal from Syria.

Objectives Achieved. Western sponsored terrorists pounded.

 

What's that I hear? Wailing and knashing of teeth?

It's simple really. If the Russians are involved, then they're bad. They bomb hospitals, you know? Some MSF friends say so anyway. No evidence really. But if the Russians aren't involved, then they're still bad.

What's the bet that Western MSM will, within days, maybe hours, find some reason to denounce the Russians for the military withdrawal? You know, the same media that denounced them for coming in the first place.

I was a bit surprised by this story, but not by the fact that Putin has made such a masterful geopolitical move. In my opinion, he has proven himself to be the most skilled statesman of the 21st century so far. If he were as compassionate to his own people as he is clever in his statecraft, he would be an excellent leader. Unfortunately, this great statesman is also an authoritarian thug.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

I was a bit surprised by this story, but not by the fact that Putin has made such a masterful geopolitical move. In my opinion, he has proven himself to be the most skilled statesman of the 21st century so far. If he were as compassionate to his own people as he is clever in his statecraft, he would be an excellent leader. Unfortunately, this great statesman is also an authoritarian thug.

Can't fully agree with the latter but yeah, foreign policy is pretty impressive. I've once or twice attributed it to a legacay of the "good part" of the old Soviet regime. Objectively, Russia is part of the BRICS counter-weight to the US Empire, so they're bound to develop policy critical of the Empire which coincides with what those of us on the left also support. 

One other thing. Russian President Putin has very cleverly not been very specific about what is leaving Syria, in what time frame, and so on. He's leaving the door open to all sorts of possibilities. That is no accident in my opinion.

Some commentators believe that having mostly accomplished what they set out to do, which was to prevent the overthrow of the current Syrian government by the jihadists, [and thereby deny them the base from which they could attack Russia directly, etc.] the Russian government not having any compulsory long term loyalty to Assad, will strike a deal with the US and the other NATO regimes and move towards solving their problems with the Ukrainian regime and related NATO country sanctions. The governments may not publicly make a connection, but if this is true then the next few months may show some big, unexpected progress in Ukraine.

And, frankly, that would be a good thing.

I think the Russians understood very well that another secular Arab regime overthrown by sectarian fundamentalists (with Western and sectarian Sunni help) would have been bad news of the kind that Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan turned out to be. I think they were preventing more Empire of Chaos horrors (Pepe Escobar's term) rather than just propping up Assad. But time will tell.

Rikardo wrote:

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives's latest "Monitor" contains a "blame Assad for everything" article by some "revolutionary" that omits mentioning the West's $multimillion military support for the armed "revolutionaries". Though he claims to speak for "Syrians", most Syrians did not want a violent overthrow of the Regime.

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/peace-not-pacification-syria.

The CCPA has excellent domestic stuff but, as another babbler pointed out (maybe you?), there aren't any unions that really care about foreign policy with the enthusiasm that they care about domestic policy. So I'm not surprised that they get this all wrong.

The internationalism [like the anti-war sentiment] of the Canadian labour movement seems pretty fake or shallow. I'd like to be proven wrong about that. Yves Engler and others have addressed this in general (about Canadians) and kudos for them.

Matt Lee and State Department idiocy: Syrians can decide everything. Except if we disagree.

USA! USA! How many kids did you kill today?!!