Arab Youth Survey

"Now in its milestone 15th year, the annual ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey is largest study of its kind of the Arab world’s largest demographic – its over 200 million youth. The survey presents evidence-based insights on the hopes, attitudes and aspirations of Arab youth, informing governments, the private sector, multilateral institutions and academics on policymaking, business strategy and emerging trends."

Link here.

Ready, Fire, Aim: U.S. Interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria

"It is widely claimed that the United States was inadequately engaged in the Syrian maelstrom. Nonsense! Since 2014, we have spent well over $50 billion in appropriated funds to train, arm, and otherwise support various factions in the conflict, including some with direct links to al Qaeda. This fiscal year alone, DoD has budgeted $15.3 billion and the Department of State about $1 billion for Syria. In total disregard of international law, we have carried out well over 11,000 air and missile strikes against both government and rebel forces in Syria and deployed about 2,000 U.S. troops there to support secessionist factions. We cannot escape a considerable measure of moral responsibility for both the perpetuation of the conflict in Syria and some of the 200,000 undocumented and 375,000 documented Syrian dead, about 125,000 of whom have been verified as pro-government, 133,000 as anti-government, and 112,000 as noncombatant, neutral civilians. But we have made it clear we will not contribute to Syria’s reconstruction."

Link here.

We need diplomacy not sanctions for peace in Syria

The truth is that the U.S. engagement from 2011 was misguided and doomed to fail. The U.S. goal was to overthrow Assad in order to end a regime backed by Russia and Iran. Yet, both countries were prepared to more than match Obama’s commitment of forces, especially with Russia’s intervention in 2015, rendering the U.S.-backed insurgents a complete failure. The misguided proxy war stoked by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and other US allies eventually displaced more than 10 million people and led to the deaths of around half a million civilians and combatants.

Moreover, Operation Timber Sycamore supported Sunni jihadists favored by Saudi Arabia, and it was the splintering of those jihadist forces that led to the rise of ISIS in Syria. This was a classic boomerang effect, where the initial CIA action came back to haunt the U.S. in even more disastrous terms.

Link here.

Ending America’s Disastrous Role in Syria

"Here are the basics. In 2011, in the context of the Arab Spring, the US government, in conjunction with the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel, decided to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, even though overthrowing another country’s government amounts to a blatant violation of international law. We know that in 2012, if not earlier, President Barack Obama authorized the CIA to work with America’s allies in providing support to rebel forces composed of disaffected Syrians as well as non-Syrian fighters. US policymakers evidently expected Assad to fall quickly, as had occurred with the governments of Tunisia and Egypt in the early months of the Arab Spring."

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"America’s official narrative has sought to conceal the scale and calamitous consequences of US efforts – in defiance of international law and the UN Charter – to overthrow Assad. While the US vehemently complains about Russian and Iranian influence in Syria, America and its allies have repeatedly violated Syrian sovereignty. The US government mischaracterizes the war as a civil war among Syrians, rather than a proxy war involving the US, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Qatar."

Link here.

About time someone acknowledged the obvious

Bravo for Assad – he is a vile tyrant but he has saved Palmyra from Isil

The Syrian regime, with military help from Russia, is succeeding where the West has failed

"It is alas very hard to claim that the success of the Assad forces is a result of any particular British or indeed Western policy. How could it be? We rightly loathe his regime and what it stands for, and for the last few years we have been engaged in an entirely honourable mission to build an opposition to Assad that was not composed simply of Isil. That effort has not worked, not so far.

It has been Putin who with a ruthless clarity has come to the defence of his client, and helped to turn the tide. If reports are to be believed, the Russians have not only been engaged in air strikes against Assad’s opponents, but have been seen on the ground as well. If Putin’s troops have helped winkle the maniacs from Palmyra, then (it pains me to admit) that is very much to the credit of the Russians. They have made the West look ineffective; and so now is the time for us to make amends, and to play to our strengths."

Exactly.  Because "The West" was not serious about defeating ISIL.  And I'm not sure why it should pain him to give credit where its due.

Link here.

The US Role in Sustaining Islamic Terrorists

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON — From the January 2016 issue
A Special Relationship
The United States is teaming up with Al Qaeda, again

By Andrew Cockburn

"Even as we have continued our desultory bombing campaign against the Islamic State, Ahrar al-Sham and Nusra are creeping closer and closer to international respectability. A month after the London Eleven meeting, a group of scholars from the Brookings Institution published an op-ed making the case for Ahrar al-Sham: 'Designating [the] group as a terrorist organization might backfire by pushing it completely into Al Qaeda’s camp.' (The think tank’s recent receipt of a multiyear, $15 million grant from Qatar was doubtless coincidental.)

Over the past year, other distinguished figures have voiced support for a closer relationship with Al Qaeda’s rebranded extensions. David Petraeus, another former head of the CIA, has argued for arming at least the 'more moderate' parts of Nusra. Robert Ford, a former ambassador to Syria and a vociferous supporter of the rebel cause, called on America to 'open channels for dialogue' with Ahrar al-Sham, even if its members had on occasion slaughtered some Alawites and desecrated Christian sites. Even Foreign Affairs, an Establishment sounding board, has echoed these notions, suggesting that it was time for the United States to 'rethink its policy toward al-Qaeda, particularly its targeting of Zawahiri.'”

Link here.

Former UK Ambassador on Syrian Conflict

“I think sadly, but inevitably, he is. Realistically, Assad is not going to be overthrown. This becomes more clear with every day that passes. Western analysts have been indulging in wishful thinking for 5 years; it’s time to get real, we owe it to the Syrian people to be much more realistic and hard headed about this. The West has to stop propping up the so-called ‘moderate opposition’, which is not moderate at all by the way, and it has to allow the Syrian Army backed possibly by the Russians to deal with IS.”

Article link here.

Moscow Nights in Latakia

"Another, related reason is that since the United States has no comprehensive strategy, the repercussions of the Russian actions, military and political, are generating a piecemeal reaction that finds it difficult to gain any intellectual or diplomatic traction in each policy sphere. Theoretically, these developments should highlight the need for such an overarching strategy by underscoring the costs of not having one. There is no evidence, though, of that happening within the Obama administration - or within the American foreign policy community generally. Why? In addition to the manifest lack of aptitude for such an undertaking, the kinds of conceptual adjustments indicated by the Russian intervention touch on highly sensitive questions of America's status and mission in the world which its political elite is unprepared to engage."

Amen.

Link here.

The media are misleading the public on Syria

"Politicians may be forgiven for distorting their past actions. Governments may also be excused for promoting whatever narrative they believe best suits them. Journalism, however, is supposed to remain apart from the power elite and its inbred mendacity. In this crisis it has failed miserably.

Americans are said to be ignorant of the world. We are, but so are people in other countries. If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. It can do so with popular support because many Americans — and many journalists — are content with the official story. In Syria, it is: 'Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran! Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends to support peace!' This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death."

Link here.

Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria

"Even as America contemplates yet another violent Mideast intervention, most Americans are unaware of the many ways that 'blowback' from previous CIA blunders has helped craft the current crisis. The reverberations from decades of CIA shenanigans continue to echo across the Mideast today in national capitals and from mosques to madras schools over the wrecked landscape of democracy and moderate Islam that the CIA helped obliterate.

A parade of Iranian and Syrian dictators, including Bashar al-Assad and his father, have invoked the history of the CIA’s bloody coups as a pretext for their authoritarian rule, repressive tactics and their need for a strong Russian alliance. These stories are therefore well known to the people of Syria and Iran who naturally interpret talk of U.S. intervention in the context of that history.

While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Arabs see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective."

Link here.

Hersh on Syria Machinations

Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war

"The four core elements of Obama’s Syria policy remain intact today: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support. The Paris attacks on 13 November that killed 130 people did not change the White House’s public stance, although many European leaders, including François Hollande, advocated greater co-operation with Russia and agreed to co-ordinate more closely with its air force; there was also talk of the need to be more flexible about the timing of Assad’s exit from power. On 24 November, Hollande flew to Washington to discuss how France and the US could collaborate more closely in the fight against Islamic State. At a joint press conference at the White House, Obama said he and Hollande had agreed that ‘Russia’s strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime, whose brutality has helped to fuel the rise’ of IS. Hollande didn’t go that far but he said that the diplomatic process in Vienna would ‘lead to Bashar al-Assad’s departure … a government of unity is required.’ The press conference failed to deal with the far more urgent impasse between the two men on the matter of Erdoğan. Obama defended Turkey’s right to defend its borders; Hollande said it was ‘a matter of urgency’ for Turkey to take action against terrorists. The JCS adviser told me that one of Hollande’s main goals in flying to Washington had been to try to persuade Obama to join the EU in a mutual declaration of war against Islamic State. Obama said no. The Europeans had pointedly not gone to Nato, to which Turkey belongs, for such a declaration. ‘Turkey is the problem,’ the JCS adviser said."

Full article here.

Brilliant. Foreign policy, Clinton style.

Sell-out your country's interests, and instigate the murder and suffering of millions. All so you can get campaign funding and endorsements from neocon weasels and think tanks bankrolled by state-sponsors of terrorism.

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"Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East, view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a border state of Israel. 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."

Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath

So why does the US consider Turkey an ally?

Turkish President Erdogan and his loser son - proper filth the both of them. Bombing the Kurds, buying oil from ISIS, supplying weapons to terrorists and ambushing their "friends." And that's on top of their election stealing and murdering political opponents.

Inside Isis Inc: The journey of a barrel of oil

Video purports to show Turkish intelligence shipping arms toSyria

"Turkish Air Force F-16s ambushed the Su-24Fencer": here’s Russia’s version of the controversial shootdown