Syria struggles to tap frozen funds for food tenders

By Maha El Dahan and Michael Hogan

ABU DHABI/HAMBURG |(Reuters) - Syria's efforts to step up food purchases are being thwarted by sellers unwilling to risk delays in payments from frozen foreign bank accounts.

Civil war and a deepening humanitarian crisis have prompted the government of President Bashar al-Assad to issue a series of tenders for sugar, wheat, flour and rice in recent weeks.

Battle for control in Syria

Syria's war splits nation into 3 distinct regions

By ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press

BEIRUT (AP) -- More than two years into Syria's civil war, the once highly-centralized authoritarian state has effectively split into three distinct parts, each boasting its own flags, security agencies and judicial system.

In each area, religious, ideological and turf power struggles are under way and battle lines tend to ebb and flow, making it impossible to predict exactly what Syria could look like once the combatants lay down their arms. But the longer the bloody conflict drags on, analysts says, the more difficult it will be to piece together a coherent Syrian state from the wreckage.

"There is no doubt that as a distinct single entity, Syria has ceased to exist," said Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center. "Considering the sheer scale of its territorial losses in some areas of the country, Syria no longer functions as a single all-encompassing unitarily-governed state."

The geographic dividing lines that have emerged over the past two years and effectively cleft the nation in three remain fluid, but the general outlines can be traced on a map.

The regime holds a firm grip on a corridor running from the southern border with Jordan, through the capital Damascus and up to the Mediterranean coast, where a large portion of the population belongs to President Bashar Assad's Alawite sect. The rebels, who are primarily drawn from Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, control a chunk of territory that spans parts of Idlib and Aleppo provinces in the north and stretches along the Euphrates river to the porous Iraqi border in the east. Tucked into the far northeastern corner, meanwhile, Syria's Kurdish minority enjoys semi-autonomy.

Those contours provide the big picture view. The view from the ground, however, is slightly muddied.

While Sunni rebels control large swathes of Syria's rural regions in the north, the government still controls provincial capitals there, with the exception of Raqqa city and parts of Aleppo city. The regime also still retains some military bases and checkpoints in the overwhelmingly rebel-held countryside, but those are besieged and isolated and supplies for troops are air-dropped by helicopters or planes.

Moreover, the opposition movement itself is far from monolithic, and there have been increasing outbursts of infighting between al-Qaida affiliated extremists and moderate rebel groups, as well as between Kurds and rebels of a radical Islamic bent. That violence holds the potential to escalate into a full-blown war among armed opposition factions.

The Assad regime has made headway in recent months in the strategic heartland of Homs, clawing back territory long-held by rebel fighters. Those gains have helped the government secure its grip on Damascus and the pathway to the coast. They also have reinforced opposition accusations that Assad's military is driving out local Sunni communities to try to carve out a breakaway Alawite enclave that could become a refuge for the community if the regime falls.

For now, Assad's overstretched and war-weary troops appear unable to regain the vast territories they have lost to rebels and jihadists who now control oil wells and other key resources such as dams and electricity plants in the north and east. Black al-Qaida flags that carry the Muslim declaration of the faith now fly over many areas there, as a way to mark their turf distinctly from the three-starred green, black and white flag flown by the various rebel brigades that make up the loose-knit, Western-backed Free Syrian Army.

In the north, fighter brigades have set up judicial councils known as Shariah courts that dispense their own version of justice based on Islamic law, including in some cases, executions of captured regime soldiers and supporters.

In the northeast, Kurdish flags now flutter proudly over buildings after the country's largest minority carved out a once unthinkable degree of independence. Kurds, who make up more than 10 percent of Syria's 22 million people, were long oppressed under Baathist rule. Now, they have created their own police forces, even their own license plates, and have been exuberantly going public with their language and culture. Schoolchildren are now taught Kurdish, something banned for years under the Assad family's rule.

"While there are shifts in momentum on the battlefield, Bashar Assad, in our view, will never rule all of Syria again," Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, told reporters in Washington last month.

The comments appeared to leave open the possibility that while Assad has lost control over large parts of the country, he may well be able to hang on and even expand his core territory in the future.

This view has been reinforced recently with steady regime gains in and around the capital Damascus, and in Homs province, a strategic linchpin linking Damascus with predominantly regime strongholds on the Mediterranean coast. Homs is a crossroads, and if the regime were to secure its hold on the city - where a few rebel-held neighborhoods are holding out - it would put it in a stronger position to strike out at the opposition-held axis running through the middle of the country.

Already, the government has been successful in clearing key routes leading to the Alawite community's heartlands of Tartus and Latakia, which have been largely spared the fighting in other parts of the country.

Recent visitors to Tartus speak of beaches dotted with swimmers and night clubs packed with revelers.

"It's like stepping into another world, completely sealed off from the rest of the country," said one Syrian in Beirut, who recently arrived from the Syrian coast and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Despite the geographic split into three regions, none of the sides can speak of confidently retaining the terrain they control.

Northern Latakia, for instance, has a notable presence of Islamic extremists, while in the capital, Damascenes live in constant fear of a repeat of the so-called "Damascus Volcano," when rebels briefly overran several neighborhoods in an assault in the summer of 2012. Mortars launched from rebel-held pockets around the capital constantly crash into the city, killing and wounding people.

In rebel held areas, regime warplanes swoop down at random, dropping bombs over targets that often kill civilians instead. The rebels have proved they are able to strike back despite significant advances by the military that have bolstered the confidence of the regime.

Rebels on Thursday sent a wave of rockets slamming into regime strongholds in Homs, triggering a succession of massive explosions in a weapons depot that killed at least 40 people and wounded dozens, according to opposition groups and residents.

The conflict has laid waste to the country's cities, shattered its economy and killed more than 100,000 people since March 2011. The bloodshed also has fanned sectarian hatreds, and many fear that the divisions now entrenched in a country where Alawites, Sunnis, Shiites, Druse and Christians coexisted for centuries will make it hard in the future for people to reconnect as citizens of a single nation.

Syria's partition into mini-states is an ominous scenario for a country that sits along the Middle East's most turbulent fault lines. Any attempt to create an official breakaway state could trigger a wave of sectarian killings and have dangerous repercussions in a region where many religious, ethnic and tribal communities have separatist aspirations.

Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi author and columnist, argued in a recent article that at least one of Syria's neighbors will benefit if the dividing lines harden.

"It is an ideal solution for Israel which will benefit from Syria's division into three weak rival states that will never again represent a strategic threat for Israel," he wrote in an article that appeared in the pan Arab Al Hayat newspaper Saturday.

U.N. and Syria say chemical arms talks were 'productive'

BEIRUT | Sat Jul 27, 2013 9:51am EDT

(Reuters) - The United Nations and Syria said on Saturday that negotiations between Damascus and the U.N. chemical weapons investigator were "productive", but did not say if his team would be allowed to probe allegations that such weapons had been used in the country's civil war.
Ake Sellstrom's full team has not been allowed into Syria due to diplomatic wrangling over access. His mission this week was to prepare the ground for an investigation.
Sellstrom met Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, and a joint U.N.-Syrian statement said "discussions were thorough and productive and led to an agreement on the way forward." It did not say if the agreement included access for Sellstrom's team.
Damascus has so far refused to let U.N. investigators go anywhere except Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and its ally Russia say rebels used chemical weapons in March.
The United States said last month it had proof that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against fighters trying to overthrow Assad.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has insisted that his team be permitted to visit at least one other location, the city of Homs, site of an alleged chemical attack by government forces in December 2012.
Both sides deny using chemical weapons in a war which the U.N. says has killed 100,000 people.
(Reporting by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Syria says rebels killed 123 people in north, majority civilians

By Oliver Holmes

BEIRUT | Sat Jul 27, 2013 1:28pm EDT

(Reuters) - Syrian state media accused insurgents on Saturday of killing 123 people, the majority of them civilians, during a rebel offensive this week to take the northern town of Khan al-Assad.
A two-year revolt-turned-civil war has left more than 100,000 people dead and both forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebels are accused by rights groups of war crimes.
State news agency SANA said that "armed terrorist groups" committed a "massacre ... mutilating the bodies of the martyrs and throwing them in a big hole on the outskirts of the town, in addition to incinerating a number of (their) bodies."
The accusations come a day after a rebel group, calling itself the Supporters of the Islamic Caliphate, posted a video on YouTube of around 30 bodies of young men piled up against a wall who they said were pro-Assad militiamen.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad monitoring group, cited activists on Friday in Khan al-Assal who said that more than 150 soldiers were killed on Monday and Tuesday in and around the town, including 51 soldiers and officers who were executed.
Having won Western support in the early stages of the revolt, the opposition has since succumbed to infighting between moderate and hardline Islamist groups. Meanwhile, Assad has been able to rely on Iran, Russia and Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group to support his crackdown.
Islamist militants fought with ethnically Kurdish units on Saturday near the border with Turkey in part of an ongoing territorial dispute.
An official in Turkey said there were reports that the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front had approached the border and that shelling from Syria had fallen on Turkey. It was not clear who controlled the nearby border gate of Ras al-Ain, he said.
The war - pitting Sunni majority rebels against Assad's own Alawite sect and Shi'ite Hezbollah - has descended into sectarian hatred.
The army continues to hit major cities with artillery and airstrikes. The Observatory reported on Saturday that 29 civilians, including 19 children and four women died when a surface-to-surface missile hit a building in the northern city of Aleppo, once Syria's commercial hub.
Insurgents have focused on taking isolated army outposts, mostly in rural areas while forces loyal to Assad have made gains in recent months around the capital Damascus and the central city of Homs.
(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Editing by David Evans)

Insight - Obama and Syria: a trail of half-steps, mixed messages

 

By Matt Spetalnick and Warren Strobel

WASHINGTON | Sat Jul 27, 2013 1:08am EDT

(Reuters) - As the Syrian civil war deepened and anti-government rebels struggled to unify their fractious forces, the White House early last year quietly convened an elite group of senior policymakers to advise President Barack Obama.
Their unusual mandate: think outside the box on how to push Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power.
Led by a senior member of Obama's National Security Council, the handful of Pentagon, State Department and intelligence specialists came to a consensus: Obama should weigh military options to reinforce his vow that Assad must go.
But with Obama determined to avoid U.S. military intervention, the idea found little traction inside the White House. And by mid-2012, the so-called "small group" - whose very existence was known to only a few within the government - was disbanded, former U.S. officials said.
The group's aborted mission underscores the half-steps and mixed messages that have characterized Obama's Syria policy. After nearly two years of hesitancy in Washington, Assad now has regained the upper hand in the conflict, and the White House last month finally approved providing limited arms for Syrian rebels, a step Obama had long resisted.
Implementing even that decision has proven difficult, as U.S. lawmakers criticize the aid as too little, too late and question Obama's Syria strategy. A House of Representatives committee approved the arms shipments only this week following a month's delay during which members demanded more administration clarity.
Reuters interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials and foreign diplomats provide new details about Obama's decision-making, guided by his conviction that Assad could be toppled without direct foreign intervention and his reluctance to drag the United States into another Middle East war.
In months of internal debate, he often spurned advice from senior advisers who proposed more robust action as the carnage in Syria intensified, leaving some frustrated.
Administration officials reject criticism that if Obama had acted more forcefully earlier the rebels would have fared better against well-armed government troops.
"There was no way support from outside sources to the opposition would have narrowed the gap when the regime had tanks and warplanes," said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some former officials and many Syria specialists disagree and say the fighting - which has killed an estimated 100,000 people, created 1.8 million refugees and deepened sectarian rifts in Syria and beyond - now threatens wider U.S. interests in the Middle East.
RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY?
Obama's tone emerged early in the conflict. On August 18, 2011, in what was supposed to be a watershed moment, he called for Assad to give up power, a move coordinated with leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Turkey.
"For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside," Obama said.
The declaration, which the White House had resisted making for months, came in response to intense pressure from U.S. allies and the public to break with Assad, as the Syrian leader sent troops and tanks into urban centers to crush swelling civilian protests.
But Obama's statement was preceded by spirited internal debate at the White House.
Some younger advisers, including Samantha Power, now Obama's choice for U.N. ambassador, and communications strategist Ben Rhodes, argued that with Assad's rule looking shakier by the day, the president should get on the "right side of history" and call for him to go, former aides said.
But Middle East policy veterans were more cautious. They argued that uttering what one called the "magic words" about Assad would raise expectations of an active U.S. role.
Steven Simon, the White House's top Middle East adviser, questioned whether Obama should make the statement if Washington was unprepared to follow up with action, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
Simon argued that Assad, backed by the Russians and Iranians, might have greater staying power than it appeared, this source said.
But at the time, Obama was prepared to do little more than combine diplomacy aimed at easing Assad out with economic sanctions - he banned purchases of Syrian oil and U.S. citizens from dealing with the Damascus government.
Some ex-aides now see a critical miscalculation about the strength of the Assad government.
"There was a kind of consensus that, early on ... he couldn't survive all that long," said Dennis Ross, a top White House adviser on the Middle East until late 2011, who argued for both tougher rhetoric and more action. "And there was a kind of presumption that if we just do the economic stuff, we'll make it untenable and that will be sufficient."
Another former senior official lamented the gap between Obama's call for Assad's ouster and plans to enforce the declaration: "When the president says something like this, it's not an advisory opinion. Something's got to be done to make it happen... There was no strategy in place. That was it."
'TELL ME WHERE THEY LEAD'
As Syria's civil war spread in early 2012, with lightly-armed rebel factions outgunned by Assad's army, senior lawmakers such as Republican Senator John McCain began calling on Obama to back the rebels.
Support for that step was not limited to Capitol Hill. At various stages, most of Obama's foreign policy cabinet had advised more robust rebel backing - including two secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry; former CIA chief David Petraeus; and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
In an unusual move, Petraeus and Clinton a year ago jointly proposed to the White House that Washington arm rebel groups that had been carefully vetted, minimizing the chances that weapons would fall into the hands of radical Islamist factions. The proposal was backed by Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey. U.S. intelligence czar James Clapper was aware of it and not opposed, a U.S. official said.
But Obama vetoed the recommendation.
His reluctance underscored what Ross described as the president's skeptical and exacting approach to military intervention, colored by U.S. difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The inability of rebel forces to organize and overcome their political divisions posed another major hurdle.
Obama "would say, 'If you are going to propose specific steps, tell me where they lead,'" said Ross, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "I don't think you can look at it independently from Iraq and Afghanistan. And particularly the sense that these are easy to get into and hard to get out of."
By the time Clinton and Petraeus made their proposal in the summer of 2012, the White House was already quietly examining what the former senior official called "harder options."
A U.N.-brokered Syria truce was falling apart; Russia and China had vetoed U.N. Security Council sanctions on Assad; and the rebels and their Arab allies were calling for arms.
Created and led by National Security Council adviser Simon, the "small group" had six to eight members, including Frederic Hof, then the State Department's top Syria adviser, and senior Pentagon and intelligence community officials. The group's existence has not been reported before, and the White House did not respond to emailed questions about it.
The Pentagon representatives cautioned over the cost, risk and outcome of U.S. military involvement.
Nonetheless, a rough consensus formed, officials said, that Obama should at least review military contingencies such as no-fly zones and targeted air strikes.
But after Obama rejected the Clinton-Petraeus proposal, the study group was also shut down, around July 2012.
THE TIDE TURNS
By mid-2012, the White House seemed increasingly convinced that Assad was on his way out. It told U.S. government agencies to focus on planning for a post-Assad Syria, the former senior official said.
On July 25, Clinton confidently urged Assad to seek a negotiated exit.
But U.S. intelligence reports showing Syrian forces moving chemical weapons stocks were also alarming U.S. officials. Obama on August 20 declared the movement or use of chemical weapons a "red line" that, if crossed, would bring unspecified consequences. The threat had little visible impact.
This spring, two factors came together to finally spur Obama to arm the rebels, current and former officials said.
Mounting evidence that Assad was ignoring Obama's "red line" brought the president under intense public pressure to respond.
As deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken put it in one Situation Room meeting with Obama and other aides: "Superpowers don't bluff."
More critical, officials said, was that Assad's forces - reinforced by Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters - were reclaiming ground. Assad's departure no longer seemed imminent.
On Saturday, June 8, the State Department's top Middle East official, Beth Jones, took an urgent telephone call from General Salim Idriss, head of the rebels' Supreme Military Council.
Idriss, who had won Secretary of State Kerry's backing, confirmed that Syrian government and Hezbollah fighters had taken the key rebel stronghold of Qusair, and were threatening other areas.
Kerry, who had already canceled an overseas trip to deal with the Syria crisis and his Middle East peace initiative, argued during White House meetings that the rebels needed much stronger U.S. support.
In a meeting of the "principals," Obama's top national security team, on June 12, Kerry said that the United States should go beyond arming opposition fighters and use air strikes, a person familiar with the talks said. Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey pushed back strongly, arguing that such a mission would be complex and costly.
The next day, the White House announced the president had decided on direct military aid to Idriss' Supreme Military Council. By one account, Obama had made the basic decision to shift policy, on his own, in the opening days of June.
The announcement came not from Obama himself, but from his aide Rhodes. That was seen by some as proof of Obama's continued wariness.
When Kerry and CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell briefed intelligence committee members in late June, both men left the impression that the administration itself still had reservations about arming the rebels, sources familiar with their presentations said.
The limited and relatively light arms - automatic weapons, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades - are unlikely to be delivered until August, officials have said. Many observers inside and outside the administration are doubtful it will be enough to tilt the balance in the rebels' favor.
(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Mark Hosenball and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Alistair Bell and Claudia Parsons)

Syria says agreement reached on UN chemical probe

By BARBARA SURK
Associated Press
Jul 27, 7:50 AM EDT

BEIRUT (AP) -- Talks between the Syrian government and a U.N. delegation tasked with investigating chemical weapons allegations in the nation's civil war have "resulted in an agreement on ways of moving forward," Syrian state media said Saturday.

President Bashar Assad's government invited a U.N. team to visit Damascus earlier this month after requesting that the international organization investigate an alleged chemical attack in Khan al-Assal, a village in the north. The Syrian regime and the rebels fighting to topple it accuse each other of using chemical agents in the March 19 incident.

Assad's government refused to have a possible inquiry include other alleged chemical attack sites in the central city of Homs, Damascus and elsewhere.

Earlier this week Swedish chemical weapons expert Ake Sellstrom and U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane met with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem and his deputy, Faisal Mekdad, in the Syrian capital.

A joint statement by the foreign ministry and the U.N. that appeared on Syria's official SANA news agency's website on Saturday said the meetings were "comprehensive and fruitful and resulted in an agreement on ways of moving forward."

It did not elaborate. The U.N. team couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Khan al-Assal, on the southwestern edge of the embattled city of Aleppo, was under government control in March. It was captured by the rebels on Monday after weeks of heavy fighting between government troops and opposition forces who took large swathes of territory in the north - including parts of Aleppo - in an offensive last summer.

Saturday's announcement on an agreement on a possible U.N. probe of the March attack that killed 31 people in Khan al-Assal coincided with government allegations that the rebels committed "a massacre" in the village, killing "a number of civilians and military personnel," according to a SANA report. It did not give a death toll. The report said "terrorists" were behind the recent killings in Khan al-Assal, a term the government uses for rebels.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 150 soldiers were killed on Monday and Tuesday, some after they had surrendered, during and after the rebel storming of Khan al-Assal.

The group, which relies on a network of activists on the ground inside Syria said at least 51 of the soldiers were shot dead after they were captured or had surrendered to rebels, the Observatory said Saturday. It said around 100 were killed when they tried to hold on to positions inside and around the village.

The Observatory's report could not be independently confirmed. Syria's official media does not release casualty figures for security forces and government soldiers.

In Aleppo, a rocket fired by government forces into a rebel-held district killed at least 18 people, including six children and four women, The Observatory said Saturday. The attack occurred a day earlier during government shelling of al-Qaida-linked rebel fighters in the Bab al-Nairab neighborhood of Aleppo. One of the rockets slammed into a residential area about 50 meters (yards) away from positions held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Observatory said. At least another 50 people were wounded.

More than 100,000 people have been killed in the 2-year-old conflict, according to the U.N.'s recent estimate.

----

Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria.

Syrian rebels press US to send weapons fast, Kerry sees no military solution to crisis

Syrian opposition leaders on their three-day visit to the US have urged Washington to get a move on with sending promised arms to the rebels. John Kerry has declared there’s no military solution to the crisis.
A delegation representing the Syrian National Coalition, headed by its newly-elected leader Ahmed Jarba, met with John Kerry on Thursday at the US mission to the United Nations in New York. The statement Jarba issued following the closed-door talks described the situation in Syria as “desperate” and urged the US to start delivering on its military aid promise as soon as possible.

"The US commitment of military support to the Supreme Military Council is vital, but it needs to happen fast, and in a way that allows us to defend ourselves and protect civilians," Jarba said.

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have recently given a green light to arm Syrian rebels, declaring they had their concerns alleviated. Not fully though, as can be seen from a comment made by Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

"One of our main issues is to make sure that, whatever we do, that nothing gets in the hands of Al Qaeda," said Ruppersberger, as cited by Reuters.

The task is impossible to fulfill, according to political science academic Dr. Colin Cavell, who spoke to RT.

“Anybody who sends arms to the Syrian opposition, they know that it’s going to support the jihadists. When you go ahead and violate international law and support opposition fighters in a country in attempt to overthrow it, then you are declaring yourself at odds and at war with that country. The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchs have declared themselves at war with Syria… We’ve just gone through two terribly expensive wars and lost thousands of American soldiers, and now we’ve got  Barack Obama and John Kerry trying to get us into a third war,” Cavell said.  

Reuters / Khalil Ashawi

Even if the US does start supplying arms to the Syrian rebel forces, it might be for a short term only. Funding for the program will cease with the end of the US fiscal year, which is  September 30. The US Congress will then have to approve the plan once again, which would mean a new round of bitter debate among the lawmakers.

Despite the congressional approval of weapons supplies, John Kerry was cautious speaking of the Syrian crisis on Thursday, pledging commitment to its peaceful settlement.  

“There is no military solution to Syria. There is only a political solution, and that will require leadership in order to bring people to the table,” John Kerry said.
Russia and the US bringing to the Syrian government and the opposition the negotiating table is something the two countries have been trying to do for quite some time, despite their differences on the crisis. In May Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov announced their joint initiative to organize a peace conference in Geneva. Dubbed ‘Geneva II’, the conference is a follow-up to last year’s international meeting in the Swiss city, where a peace roadmap for Syria was drafted.

Prospects for Geneva II

The Syrian National Coalition’s visit to New York is part of the US’s effort to make the opposition forces sit down for talks. That possibility will be tested at an informal meeting Jarba and his three colleagues are about to have with the 15-member UN Security Council.

The meeting is not a sign of the UN official recognition of the Syrian National Coalition, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin has warned.

Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin (RIA Novosti / Ruslan Krivobok)

encourage the National Coalition and its leadership to prepare for Geneva II,” he said as cited by RIA Novosti. “It’s an informal event, it’s not even a UN Security Council event. The fact that this meeting takes place should not be viewed as a step towards the National Coalition’s recognition in any official role.”
The group is yet to prove its legitimacy and to respond to some critical voices questioning its status, according to RT’s Marina Portnaya, reporting from New York.

“Critics say the group has no official power and lacks support and recognition inside Syria. The Syrian National Coalition was founded in Doha and is based in Istanbul. Some see this group as outsiders lobbying for more arms to import into Syria’s already-bloody civil war,” Portnaya said.

John Kerry seems not to be one of those skeptics, sounding quite optimistic following his Thursday meeting with the leadership of the Syrian National Coalition.

"The Syrian opposition committed that they believed Geneva II is very important and they agreed to work over the course of the next couple of weeks to pinpoint the terms, the conditions under which they think it could work," he said.

Conditions and terms put forward by the opposition are however exactly what hampered peace talks in the past, as some of them are hardly realistic, such as the current Syrian President’s giving up his power.   

"In principle nobody is against Geneva II, but we cannot enter into talks while the regime continues to kill hundreds every day and use arms of mass destruction," said Burhan Ghalioun, a senior coalition member who was in the delegation, as cited by AFP.  

The Syrian government in turn describes the rebels as terrorists and blames the US for double standards.

"Washington's decision to arm the terrorist groups in Syria proves that the United States [wants to] exacerbate the crisis in Syria, and shows up its dishonesty in the search for a political solution at a [proposed peace] conference in Geneva," a Syrian Foreign Ministry official said in a statement. 
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has called on both sides of the conflict to halt the violence which has raged since the start of the unrest in March 2011 resulting in more than 100,000 deaths.  

"Military and violent actions must be stopped by both parties, and it is thus imperative to have a peace conference in Geneva as soon as possible, as was initiated by Secretary Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov," Ban said.
-(RT)

http://on.rt.com/fggcdh

U.N. decries growing 'anti-Syrian' hostility in Egypt

GENEVA | Fri Jul 26, 2013 8:30am EDT
(Reuters) - Egyptian authorities have arbitrarily arrested and detained Syrian refugees as sentiment against them grows, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.
The climate of hostility has increased since the Egyptian army seized power this month, human rights groups say. More than 90,000 Syrians are believed to have come to Egypt to escape the civil war, now in its third year.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said Syrians had been accused of taking part in protests supporting Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, who was toppled by the army on July 3.
The UNHCR had requested access to 85 detained Syrians and assurances that they will not be returned to Syria, she told a news briefing.
"There were a few who were arrested for alleged violent acts during protests. We're not sure what the charges are for the others," she said.
Mursi last month announced he was cutting off diplomatic ties with Syria, and some of his Sunni Muslim followers had talked of waging holy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Shi'ite Muslim Iran and the Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah militia.
The new army-backed administration in Cairo has distanced itself from Mursi's position.
But Egyptian media and television have made "disturbing" statements against Syrians, Fleming said.
"We're obviously very concerned when big public communications machines like television are behind some of this rhetoric that is very xenophobic," she said.
The hostile environment has led to surge in the number of Syrians already in Egypt approaching UNHCR to register as refugees, she said. The government estimates that there are up to 300,000 Syrians currently residing in the country, she added.
The Egyptian government has introduced entry requirements for Syrians, requiring that visas and security clearance be issued prior to travel to Egypt, the agency said.
Flights carrying Syrians have been turned back from airports in Egypt to Damascus and Latakia in Syria, she said. Some 476 Syrians had been deported or denied entrance to Egypt since the new measures were put in place on July 8.
"UNHCR has appealed to the government to consider at least allowing women, children and the elderly to enter the country without the visa restrictions," Fleming said.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Turkey warns Syrian Kurds against 'dangerous' moves

 

By Humeyra Pamuk and Gulsen Solaker

ANKARA | Fri Jul 26, 2013 3:07pm EDT

(Reuters) - Turkey urged Syrian Kurds on Friday not to establish a break-away entity in northern Syria by force, with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan warning against any "wrong and dangerous" moves that could hurt Turkish security.
The warning was issued at a meeting in Istanbul between Turkish intelligence officials and Saleh Muslim, head of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), whose militias have been fighting for greater autonomy for Kurdish parts of northern Syria.
Muslim said last week that Kurdish groups aimed to set up an independent council to run Kurdish regions in Syria until the civil war ended. That would alarm Ankara, which is wary of deepening sectarian violence on its border.
Turkey is trying to hold together a delicate peace process with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants on its own soil and is worried that moves towards Kurdish autonomy in Syria could embolden them and jeopardize that process.
"Necessary warnings will be made to them that these steps they're taking are wrong and dangerous," Erdogan told reporters, as members of his National Intelligence Agency met Muslim.
Separately, a Turkish farmer was killed and his two sons were wounded on Friday when a mortar shell from fighting between Kurds and Islamist rebels in Syria hit their field near the border, officials at the local state hospital told Reuters.
The incident in the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar underscores fears that Syria's civil war, now in its third year, is dragging in neighboring states.
Last week Turkish troops returned fire and shot at PYD fighters after stray bullets from Syria killed a man and a 15-year-old boy in Ceylanpinar.
SEEKING ASSURANCES
Turkey wants to extract assurances from the PYD that it will not threaten Turkey's security or seek an autonomous region in Syria through violence, and that it will maintain a stance of firm opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"We have three main expectations from Kurds in Syria. Firstly not to cooperate with the regime. When that happens, tensions between the Kurds and Arabs rise," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the Radikal newspaper.
"Two is not to establish a de-facto entity ... based on ethnic and sectarian lines without consulting with other groups," he was quoted as saying. "If such an entity is established, then all the groups would attempt to do the same thing and a war would be unavoidable."
His third expectation was that Kurds did not engage in activities that would "endanger Turkey's border security".
Muslim's meeting with the Turkish intelligence agency comes after a surge in violence on the Syrian side of the border.
The PYD captured the Syrian border town of Ras al-Ain last week after days of clashes with Islamist rebel fighters from the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front.
ROAD MAP
Erdogan, who called a meeting of his military and intelligence chiefs as well as senior cabinet ministers on Wednesday to discuss the unrest, said they would come up with a plan soon to contain the violence.
"Our chief of staff, national intelligence agency and foreign ministry are working on this ... We will get together again and by discussing the developments over (the border) we will identify our steps and prepare a road map," he said.
Clashes between the PYD and rebels fighting Assad have flared since Kurds began asserting control over parts of northeast Syria from late last year. Turkish foreign ministry officials have met with the PYD twice over the past two months and have held "positive" discussions, a government source said.
The anti-Assad revolt has evolved from its origins as a peaceful protest movement in March 2011 into a civil war that has killed over 100,000 people and turned markedly sectarian.
Turkey has emerged as one of the strongest backers of the Syrian rebels, giving them shelter on its soil, but denies arming them. Along with its allies, Ankara has, however, tried to distance itself from hardline Islamist groups like Nusra.
"I view (their) behavior as a betrayal to the Syrian revolution," Davutoglu said, citing footage of killings and kidnappings carried out by radical groups.
"But we have always supported the legitimate Syrian opposition and we continue this support."
Syria's ethnic Kurdish minority has been alternately battling Assad's forces and the Islamist-dominated rebels. Kurds argue they support the revolt but rebels accuse them of making deals with the government in order to ensure their security and autonomy during the conflict.
Turkey meanwhile has been making gradual but fragile progress in its efforts to end a three-decade insurgency by the PKK in its southeast, a conflict which has killed some 40,000 people.
The PKK called a ceasefire this year but there has been a recent increase in militant activity and Kurdish politicians have voiced concern that the government has not been enacting promised reforms quickly enough.
(Additional reporting by Seyhmus Cakan and Ayla Jean Yackley; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Mike Collett-White)

Japan's FM pledges more aid to Syrian refugees

ZAATARI, Jordan (AP) -- Japan's foreign minister says Tokyo will increase its aid to Syrian refugees living in a desert camp in Jordan and help provide better sanitation there.

Fumio Kishida's pledge followed his visit Friday to Zaatari camp, home to 120,000 Syrians and just across the border from Syria.

Kishida was shown the camp's limited and basic washing facilities, which lack shower areas and which have been blamed for poor sanitation in Zaatari.

Parched Jordan says it can do little and that the refugees are exhausting the country's meager water resources.

Kishida says that "considering the hot desert climate here, we feel the importance, indeed the urgency, to help out in this area."

He says Japan contributed $95 million to Syrian refugees who fled to other countries since the conflict erupted in 2011.

U.S. uses Syrian rebel supply lines as it prepares to send arms

 

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON | Thu Jul 25, 2013 6:33pm EDT

(Reuters) - The United States has quietly been testing the Syrian opposition's ability to deliver food rations, medical kits and money to rebel-held areas as Washington prepares to send arms to the rebel fighters.
U.S. officials meet weekly in Turkey with Syrian opposition leaders to work out how best to keep supply lines open to rebel fighters and war-ravaged towns and districts.
One of the Syrian opposition's best-known female leaders, Suhair al-Atassi, attends the meetings as coordinator of the "non-lethal" aid that includes equipment for rebel fighters and local councils, as opposed to humanitarian aid for the displaced.
Supplies are handed to officers of the moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) at clandestine locations that cannot be divulged for security reasons.
"I sign the paperwork, and shake the hands of the FSA official," said a U.S. State Department official involved in the effort. "I wish them well and walk away."
The rebels take aid for their own units and also distribute some of it to schools, clinics and local councils.
The United States has committed $250 million in non-lethal aid to Syria in addition to the $815 million in humanitarian assistance in support of the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
Recently, Washington began scaling up its assistance to bigger items like trucks, radios, large generators and sophisticated medical equipment.
Some of it is not only aimed at helping fighters but also at supporting civilian authorities in towns that have rejected Assad's rule.
"We are just now starting to send large equipment over the border for local councils and cities in liberated areas," the U.S. official said.
Syria's civil war has killed more than 100,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes. The involvement of Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah in the conflict has shifted the balance of power on the battlefield in favor of Assad, increasing frustration among rebels over delays in the United States sending weapons to them.
With no U.S. diplomatic presence on the ground, Syria presents a unique challenge for aid coordinators.
U.S. officials say they rely on a network of some 75 young Syrians who collect information in rebel-held areas and report back to Atassi's unit. The information is often corroborated with U.N. groups.
SUPPLYING WEAPONS
The U.S. Congress cleared the way earlier this month for Washington to give the rebels not just non-lethal and humanitarian aid but also weapons. Lawmakers have only approved limited funding for the arms operation, as they fear that U.S. weapons and ammunition could end up in the hands of hardline Islamist militant groups.
"One of our main issues is to make sure that, whatever we do, that nothing gets in the hands of al Qaeda," said Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
To keep track of the non-lethal aid already going into Syria, American officials ask the opposition to bring back photographic evidence of deliveries as proof that the goods made it into the right hands.
"If we are providing small amounts of cash to a local council to pay salaries we insist on signatures and photographs," said the official. "One of the ways to minimize the risk is we keep the amounts of cash small and would pay something like a stipend rather than a salary."
While it is not always easy to guarantee that supplies reach their intended recipients or that they don't eventually make their way to the black market, the Syrian opposition coordinators have begun to earn the trust of U.S. officials.
"They have so far passed the test," the official said.
France also sends supplies to the rebels, including envelopes stuffed with money handed over at the Turkish border.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)

Analysis: Setbacks to bring quieter Qatar foreign policy but no U-turn

 

By Regan Doherty, Amena Bakr and William Maclean

DOHA/DUBAI | Fri Jul 26, 2013 2:32am EDT

(Reuters) - Qatar may tone down its pushy foreign policy, chastened by setbacks in Syria and Egypt, but is likely to keep supporting Arab Spring revolts and bankrolling Islamist influence, albeit a little more quietly.
The tiny state provided much of the armed muscle behind the Arab rebellions, while its aid for Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt alarmed neighboring Gulf monarchies who see the Islamist movement as a threat to their own hereditary authority.
Under a long-standing policy of international self-promotion, Qatar earlier mediated in disputes from Somalia to Lebanon, and became the enfant terrible of the Gulf Arab dynasties by using its al Jazeera TV to attack authoritarian rule beyond its borders and promote Islamist views.
But rebel defeats in Syria, the ousting of Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Mursi on July 3 and a failure to host planned Afghan peace talks in June exposed as over-hasty Doha's dreams of becoming a heavyweight international power-broker.
The wealthy gas exporter got its comeuppance, critics say, and must now be more circumspect abroad, defer to regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, and focus on priorities at home such as building projects before it hosts the 2022 soccer World Cup.
Last month's accession of a young emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, after the abdication of his father, gives Qatar an opportunity to make a fresh start, the argument goes.
People who know Qatar, however, do not expect any U-turns.
BETTING ON THE BROTHERHOOD
"They might like to change policy but they are not in a position to do so, at least immediately," said Ghanem Nuseibeh, an expert on Gulf Arab politics at Cornerstone Global Associates, a UK-based risk management consultancy.
Under Tamim's father Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Qatar lent Egypt more than $7 billion during Mursi's year in power, which ended when the army detained the president.
Doha had placed a bet on the Muslim Brotherhood, said Nuseibeh, and for the Qatari state "it is very difficult to go back now, even if some of their advisers would like them to".
"Dropping the Muslim Brotherhood would obliterate their popularity with the pro-Brotherhood camp in the Arab world. They have taken a gamble and they hope that it might pay off at some point in the future," he said.
Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal analyst at Maplecroft, a political risk consultancy based in London, said Qatar "will likely scale back its adventurous foreign policy, but I wouldn't expect them to abandon it altogether".
"It will still be important for them to maintain an independent policy, to distinguish themselves from Saudi Arabia," he said.
Asked about the future course of diplomacy, a Qatari official said there would be little change, adding the country needed to pursue "domestic and foreign policies in parallel to each other" to continue serving its national interest.
He also suggested Qatar would continue military help for rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "With over 100,000 killed and about 2 million refugees, we believe the Syrian people are in dire need of support to defend themselves from the vicious and barbaric assaults of the regime," he said.
A QUIETER STYLE
He emphasized that shipments of any weapons to the Syrian people ought to be coordinated with the international community.
Qatar was focused on helping all the region's peoples, he said, and did not favor one party over another.
"Just as the United States continued to support Egypt while the Muslim Brotherhood was in power, so did we. It is for the Egyptian people to determine who will lead their country."
The accession of Sheikh Tamim in June stirred speculation he might adopt a less Islamist-friendly approach now that the main implementer of foreign policy, the energetic and influential Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, is no longer foreign minister.
Sheikh Hamad lost his jobs as prime minister and foreign minister in a cabinet reshuffle after Tamim took power, replaced as premier by a much less well-known military man who had previously served as deputy interior minister.
The idea that Qatar might scale back its alliance with Islamists gained further ground after Sheikh Tamim's June 26 accession speech. Although he said the country would not "take direction" from anyone, his 15-minute address focused on domestic issues and made no mention of the Syrian conflict.
But on July 23, Qatar issued a statement of concern about the continued detention of Mursi, becoming the only Gulf Arab state to voice sympathy openly for the ousted Islamist.
GRASSROOTS ARAB SUPPORT
To followers of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim's long tenure as foreign minister, this maverick stance looked familiar.
In another sign Qatar has not lost its taste for regional deal-making, the head of Syria's opposition coalition is expected in Doha soon to coordinate aid supplies.
For now, Nuseibeh said, Qatar would continue to seek grassroots support around the Arab world but it would do so in a more low-key manner. "The style will be quieter," he said.
Analysts says this might mean less spending on armed support or big emergency loans or grants to favored states, and greater resources spent on long-term international development aid.
Gauging opinion in a conservative society that guards it privacy is not easy, but there are signs that Qataris would not be disappointed by a less activist foreign policy.
A source close to the ruling family said many of Qatar's citizens expected it would eventually play a quieter role in foreign affairs. "The average person just wants to lead a quiet life. Qatar is a small country and we had no business getting ourselves roped into all of this outside activity," the source said.
Doha has enough to keep it busy at home. It is spending $150 billion before the World Cup building a new airport, seaport and roads, plus carrying out an urban makeover.
The risks of worldwide embarrassment if these projects aren't finished on time are great.
(Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi and Mahmoud Habboush; Editing by David Stamp)

Senior Russian diplomat blasts use of child soldiers by Syrian rebels

 
The world must react to the fact that the Syrian anti-government rebels reportedly use children in combat, said Russian Foreign Ministry’s plenipotentiary for Human Rights.
“We hope that these facts will not be left without proper reaction on the part of the international community, including the UN General Secretary’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict,” Konstantin Dolgov noted in a statement published on the Foreign Ministry’s website.
Special representative Leila Zerrougui has just completed her visit to war-torn Syria and said on Monday that she was “overwhelmed” by the suffering of children there. Among other crimes, she mentioned that some groups were arming teenagers and using them in fighting.
The military conflict between the military loyal to President Bashar Assad and the assembled force of armed opposition, including militant Islamists and Al-Qaeda has continued since 2011, with an estimated death toll exceeding 100,000 people.
Russia promotes political dialogue on condition of ceasefire and criticizes the Western countries for their support of the opposition fighters. The United States has granted political support to the rebels since the start of the conflict, followed by direct military aid that, however, excluded weapons.
This week, however, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have approved the CIA program to send weapons to Syrian rebels, allowing the Obama administration to continue the pre-planned but stalled program.
Also this week, one of the members of Assad’s government visited Moscow and told reporters that Russia would continue supplying weapons to the Syrian army, including the modern S-300 anti-aircraft systems that could become a serious deterrent if foreign nations try to impose a blockade of Syrian airspace.-(RT)

http://on.rt.com/r0qo1l

Al-Qaeda unleashed against Syria and Iraq with acceptance of the West

 
Author: Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. Published time: July 25, 2013 14:13
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – the official denomination of al-Qaeda in Iraq – does not even pretend to be not responsible for the relentless bombing, political assassination and mostly sectarian horror unleashed across Iraq during Ramadan.
But this is exactly what they’re doing, with relish; throwing arrays of crude bombs made with fertilizer enhanced with ball bearings, manipulating a small army of foreign suicide bombers. Most of these, by the way, crossed the desert from Syria.
July has been a deadly month ; over 600 Iraqis killed up to July 25. May was even worse; at least 963 civilians killed and more than 2,000 injured. And now comes the coup de grâce; the already notorious Abu Ghraib jailbreak. 
Abu Ghraib is charged with symbolism – indelibly linked with the American occupier. When the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted in 2004 I was on the road in the US. This is what I wrote at the time; in Texas especially, everybody saw the routine humiliation of Iraqi prisoners as the new normal.

To the Syriamobile !

Fast forward to 2013. The al-Maliki government insists anti-terrorist forces are on top of everything going on in Baghdad. Not really. My matchless source in Baghdad, Asseel Kamal, explains how the commander of the 17th Army Division, General Abdul Naser al-Ghanam, apparently did not resign; he fled, before advising al-Maliki that all hell would break loose. The government was stunned by the veritable horde that staged the double attack - on Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, and Taji prison in the north of the city.
The siege of Abu Ghraib started with nine bombs thrown at the entrance, and dozens of mortars, followed by a battle against the guards; a group of suicide bombers attacked the walls while another group of car bombers attacked the main entrance. And then the critical gambit, when a series of car bombs exploded all along the main road up to the bridge that links the prison to the highway leading to Baghdad, cutting all its connections with the capital.
The numbers game is still a mess; everything from 500 to 1,000 and even 1,400 escapees. Same for the official numbers of dead prisoners (65), dead guards (28), injured prisoners (124) and injured guards (43). Kamal quotes prisoners’ families saying prisoners who did not manage to escape were brutally "interrogated". And helicopters bombed them mercilessly.
According to Hakim al Zamili, a member of Parliament who’s part of the Committee for Defense and Security, this operation has been prepared for at least two weeks – and plenty of guards were onto it. Kamal reveals that at least 15 men dressed in military garb got inside and "released" - as in escorted to freedom - selected al-Qaeda princelings ; and left the rest to fend for themselves. Better yet : this selected group – which includes a bunch of Jihad International foreign fighters captured by the US military in 2006 and 2007 - has fled to, where else, Syria. 

It’s the occupation, stupid

Al-Maliki’s government has closed Iraq’s borders with Syria – to no avail; it’s desert on both sides, it’s powerful Sunni tribal Sheikhs on both sides, it’s 'family' on both sides. This proves once again that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – with its tactical alliance with jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra kind – is already establishing the embryo of a beyond-borders Islamic Emirate. They even have secured territory in northern Syria.
Most of the best commanders on the ground in Syria are Iraqis – and have battleground experience of fighting the Americans. Their long-term wishful thinking strategy is that once Bashar al-Assad’s government falls, the next will be al-Maliki’s.
These jihadis see that fighting a secular, apostate, “infidel” government in Syria – supported by Iran and Hezbollah - is the equivalent of fighting an “apostate” government in Iraq enjoying close relations with Iran. This – a ghastly sectarian war - was always the plan since the bombing of Samarra’s golden shrine in 2006. 
As much as Syrian civilians are caught in the crossfire of the proxy war involving Western powers and Gulf petro-monarchies against the support of Iran (and Russia) to Damascus, Iraqi civilians are now caught in the resurgent civil war. Civilians in Baghdad do fear what these escapees might unleash.
It’s always crucial to go back to the basics. With the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the clueless Bush gang handed out a base to al-Qaeda on a plate.
Yet when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004, the prisoners were not al-Qaeda, but the Sunni resistance. When the Petraeus surge started in 2007, the plan was to buy the leaders of the Sunni resistance to fight al-Qaeda. The Sunni sheikhs took the money and decided to wait. Al-Qaeda dissolved and regrouped.
Now, with Syria as the new magnet of global jihad – once again a direct consequence of a US power play, via Barack “Assad must go” Obama -  al-Qaeda is resurgent on both fronts. Washington has already destroyed the social fabric of Iraq. Now it’s helping to destroy Syria’s. If Abu Ghraib was the new normal in 2004, the jailbreak cannot but be the new new normal of 2013.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.-(RT)

Growing threat of radical rebels infiltrating ranks of Syrian rebels

 
For a long time Britain and France have been hawkish about military aid to the Syrian civil war, but with the growing concern about the role of Al-Qaeda in Syria and in Iraq they are starting to back pedal, Middle East expert Edmund Ghareeb told RT.
In northeast Syria - Al-Qaeda-linked extremists are holding about 200 Kurdish civilians hostage, using them as human shields, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The Kurds living in the area have been trying to protect their homes, amid heavy fighting between jihadist forces and Syrian government troops.
RT: The lives of innocent Kurdish civilians are now in danger from Al-Qaeda terrorists. What do you think the hostage takers want and why would they be targeting the Kurds?
Edmund Ghareeb: Primarily, there has been a struggle between the Kurds and the Jabhat Al-Nusra and the Islamic state in Iraq and Levant over the control of that area, especially since it borders the Turkish region and the Turkish state.  This is an important area for the Syrian armed opposition to continue to receive support and aid, and at the same time extend its control and its influence in this area, which is mainly inhabited by Kurds as well as minorities. There are some Arab tribes also in the area. There are some Syrian Christians who are living in this area. In a way it’s a struggle for control in this region between the two groups: Kurdish Democratic and Unionist Party and the Nusra front and its allies Ahrar al-Sham.
RT: Could you put it in context? What about the relationship the Kurds have in this whole Syrian crisis? Assad is their friend or foe? They’ve played a very little part in this so far. How would they like to see this crisis ending in Syria for them?
EG: Up until now the Kurds were divided. There are two major Kurdish groups. One, there is a Kurdish coalition which includes something like ten different Kurdish parties which have thought to work with Syrian opposition but they had also demanded the recognition of Kurdish rights, linguistic rights, cultural rights in this area, but the opposition has refused to respond to their demands primarily, because the Kurds claim that Turkey has been putting a lot of pressure on them. The other group, however, has taken a more cautious approach. It criticizes the government in Damascus, but has also been very critical of the Syrian opposition, which it has accused of trying to dominate the area and bringing the extremist version of Islam also to their region, which they are not familiar with.
RT: Talking about that opposition, the Free Syrian Army, of course. It is now demanding arms from abroad to fight Al-Qaeda linked militants. That was a day after a top FSA commander was killed by a terrorist. Are we now seeing them fighting two wars here? Are they physically capable of doing this?
EG: This is the main question. What Jabhat Al-Nusra and its allies want to do is to insure that they are not fighting the Kurds and are not fighting the regime at the same time. That’s why, I think, they have made this move. However, what may have triggered this in a sense was a capture of one of the leaders of the radical Islamic groups in that area. As a result of this we saw a move by some of the Nusra front and its allies to try to take hostages to regain the freedom of this commander. 
RT: Britain seems to be putting plans for weapon supplies to the rebels on the back burner in the light of what they have been seeing there. Is the West finally coming around to the fact that Assad isn’t now the real the enemy there?
EG: Not completely, but I think the point that you made is very important because there are different views. Britain and France for a long time have been the most hawkish when it comes to military aid and playing a direct role in the Syrian civil war. However, in recent weeks and with the growing concern about the role of Al-Qaeda in Syria and in Iraq, they are starting to back pedal to a certain extent. Also, what one of the concerns is that what we have been hearing from a number of anti-terrorism experts in Europe is that they are becoming increasingly concerned about those fighters who are going from Europe or the Balkans or North Africa to Syria and the danger of them coming back and the impact on Western societies. On the other hand, in the United States you continue to see a different kind of struggle going on. There are some hoaxes in the administration who want to see the US play a more direct role, more aid to the opposition, more direct military involvement such as No Fly Zone, attacks on the Syrian targets. And there are others, however, who are concerned about that.-(RT)

http://on.rt.com/nowd70

Exclusive: Syria's war halves wheat harvest, erodes state share

 By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN | Thu Jul 25, 2013 7:06am EDT

(Reuters) - Civil war in Syria has cut the wheat harvest to its worst level in nearly three decades and the government's share of the crop is being further eroded as it struggles to procure grain from rebel-held farming areas.
Estimates collated by Reuters from more than a dozen grain officials and local traders suggest the harvest could be as low as 1.5 million tons, less than half the pre-conflict average and well below forecasts from a United Nations food agency.
The agricultural slump deals a blow to the policy of self-sufficiency in food which is a cornerstone of President Bashar al-Assad's efforts to sidestep Western moves to isolate and weaken his government through sanctions.
That policy, part of a command economy imposed by the ruling Baath party when it took power in 1963, turned Syria into a wheat exporter until water shortages six years ago caused in part by intensive farming encouraged by hefty state subsidies.
Despite good rains this year, a scarcity of seed and fertilizer combined with labor shortages and damage to irrigation systems and storage facilities from the relentless conflict have led to the worst crop since 1984, when the country was hit by major drought, the traders and officials said.
Several said the harvest was likely to be as low as 1.5 million tons, with a minority saying it might reach closer to 2.0 million - still significantly lower than the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initial forecast of 2.4 million tons, made shortly before the June-July harvest.
"A favorable rain season like this year would have produced 4 million tons before the crisis, covering the country's annual consumption," said a regional commodities trader said.
Until recently the government had stuck to more optimistic forecasts, with Agriculture Minister Ahmad Qadiri saying in May he expected output to reach 3.6 million tons.
Since then officials have retreated, blaming Western sanctions for the steep fall in output. Prime Minister Wael al-Halki now says the crop will be around 2.5 million tons.
WAR BREAKS UP STATE WHEAT TRADE
Farmlands east of Aleppo, which has seen heavy fighting between rebels and government forces for the last 12 months, have produced just 50,000 tons of wheat so far this year compared to pre-crisis harvests of 175,000 tons.
But the low yield is not the only problem for authorities who are also struggling to buy grain from some of Syria's richest farmland - much of it now held by rebels - stretching from the northern border with Turkey to Iraq in the south-east.
In the village of Deir Hafer, 40 km (25 miles) east of Aleppo, sacks of Ahmed Rahal's wheat harvest have been piling up in his makeshift warehouse.
That has forced Rahal and other farmers, who used to deliver nearly three quarters of their national harvest to the government under a state-dominated wheat trade that subsidized their production, to look for other buyers.
"I no longer even dare go to Aleppo to sell my wheat, there are many checkpoints on the way," said Rahal, who was selling his 100 kilo wheat sacks to private traders.
The state's loss of control over a substantial part of the wheat growing areas means that at least half the 2013 wheat production is now outside the government supply chain, according to grains experts and commodities traders.
Their view is backed up by the volume of grains collected by the wheat marketing monopoly so far. It has received only 950,000 tons, according to officials in the state run General Establishment for Cereal Processing and Trade (HABOOB).
"We are getting a fraction of what we would normally get this time of the year with only a few centers opening across the country to receive wheat," a source in HABOOB, the agency responsible for government grain procurement, told Reuters.
Although the government marketing monopoly raised the price it pays for wheat by 25 percent from last year it was still below market value, prompting some farmers in areas accessible to Turkey to sell their crop there, where prices are at least double.
In other rebel areas, farmers - especially those growing only wheat - have little alternative to transporting their crop for sale to government collection centers. A quarter of grain bought by the state was likely to have come from rebel areas near Hasaka in eastern Syria, said leading Syrian wheat expert Hikmat Gulak.
"We have encouraged farmers in every way to go to government delivery centers, and increased payment. Ensuring Syrians are fed should be above politics," said a grains official.
The state had deposited funds worth 70 billion Syrian pounds - $350 million at current exchange rates - in the Central Bank for purchases of wheat from local farmers.
IMPORTS HAMPERED BY CASH CRUNCH
The drop in local production since last year has forced Syria to step up grain imports with at least one million tons of mainly soft wheat purchased from global markets in 2012, according to a grain official contacted in Damascus.
But increasingly short of hard currency, Syria will struggle to continue importing, he and other experts concur privately. This prompted authorities to seek to unfreeze blocked foreign accounts to pay for food purchases, they added.
In a tender issued on Thursday, a Syrian state agency said it planned to pay for 200,000 tons of soft milling wheat using funds in bank accounts frozen by Western financial sanctions. Damascus first suggested that payment method earlier this month, but is not clear whether it has succeeded in freeing up any of its frozen cash.
The country has so far imported only 300,000 tons of wheat, mainly of Black Sea origin since the start of the year, according to the official.
A pre-crisis, one-year strategic stockpile of over 4 million tons of wheat has almost run out in the last two years, said two former grain officials familiar with the matter.
Production was around 2 million tons last year, and grain traders and experts contacted in Syria say the country would require at least two million tons of imported wheat this year to help cover the shortfall. That compared with FAO estimates of 1.5 million tons, based on official agricultural sources.
On the other hand, agricultural experts say the conflict that has left many parts of rural Syria outside government control and forced nearly two million refugees to flee to neighboring countries, will inevitably ease the pressures on authorities.
"The state now is feeding only part of its citizens so in fact it does not have the same burden. In rebel controlled areas, an increasingly autonomous economy with its own dynamics is developing," said Abdullah Samaha, an Aleppo-based economist.
A growing pattern of reliance by Syrians both in rebel-controlled and state-held areas on food handouts from international aid agencies such as the UN's World Food Program (WFP), has also reduced demands on authorities.
Food barter deals with regional ally Iran and credit lines have helped Damascus get 250,000 tons of Iranian flour this year, easing bread shortages in state-controlled areas caused by the loss to rebels of almost half the northern city of Aleppo, where most of the country's milling capacity existed.
STATE LOSES MOST OF BREAD BASKET REGION
The biggest hit to a state wheat procurement system has been the loss of nearly 50 percent of the harvest from Syria's main eastern breadbasket area known as al-Jazira, which spans Hasaka, Deir al-Zour and Raqqa, where wheat fields rely on underground wells and the Euphrates River.
The resource-rich region traditionally produced 65 percent of the country's pre-crisis average 3.6 million wheat tons. The area around the now rebel-held city of Raqqa alone produces a quarter of the national harvest.
"Last year, Raqqa delivered half a million tons to the state. This year if we have 150,000 that would be great," said Gulak, who worked in government procurement in the Jazira area for decades.
Most grain delivered to the state now comes from Hasaka, with 600,000 tons compared to over 1 million last harvest.
"This year more farmers will keep more of their harvest for personal consumption and sale to local merchants because in such circumstances its safer than sending to a faraway government centre," said Haneen Bakr, a former grains official in Damascus.
"In some areas where armed groups are in control they are forcing people to sell their wheat at lower prices."
Islamist rebel groups such as Ahrar al-Sham that operate in Syria's northern rural areas were already making steps to fill the vacuum left by the state by buying crops from farmers.
Several rebel groups have even brought second-hand mills and harvesters from Turkey to operate in rebel-held towns across northern and eastern provinces.
In the rebel-held border crossing of Bab al-Hawa near Turkey and other towns in rural north Syria, armed groups now manage and operate several small flour mills with an average 2 to 4 tons daily capacity, supplying local bakeries.
(Editing by Dominic Evans and Giles Elgood)

Militants kill 14 Shi'ites after checking ID cards in north Iraq

By Ghazwan Hassan

TIKRIT, Iraq | Wed Jul 24, 2013 6:35pm EDT

(Reuters) - Militants shot dead 14 Shi'ite tanker-drivers after checking their identity papers at a makeshift roadblock on the main route leading north from the Iraqi capital late on Wednesday, police said.
The killings took place near Sulaiman Pek, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, following clashes inside the town between militants and the police and army.
Sunni Islamist militants have been regaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shi'ite-led government in recent months, invigorated by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which has inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq and the wider region.
"All the victims were Shi'ite tanker drivers who were coming from Baghdad to Kirkuk," Talib Mohammed, the town's mayor, told Reuters by phone. "Militants blocked their way near Sulaiman Pek, checked their IDs and executed them by shooting them in the heads and chest."
Earlier, gunmen ambushed a minibus in western Tikrit, 150 km (95 miles) north of the capital, shooting dead four soldiers who were travelling on the road from Baghdad to Mosul.
Nine policemen were also killed when militants riding on pickup trucks opened fire of a checkpoint in Shura, 50 km (35 miles) south of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and capital of the Sunni-dominated Nineveh province.
The steady deterioration of security in Iraq was highlighted by a mass jailbreak near the capital on Sunday when around 500 convicts, including senior al Qaeda operatives, escaped after militants attacked two prisons.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which was formed through a merger between al Qaeda's Syrian and Iraqi branches, claimed responsibility for the raids and said it had freed its jailed comrades after months of preparation.
One security official told Reuters on Tuesday that some of the escaped inmates were heading to Syria to join the ranks of the mainly Sunni rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite sect derives from Shi'ite Islam.
Shi'ite fighters from Iraq have also joined the conflict on Assad's side, along with Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
Insurgents in Iraq have been recruiting from the country's Sunni minority, which increasingly resents Shi'ite domination since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
More than 720 people have been killed in militant attacks in Iraq so far in July, according to violence monitoring group Iraq Body Count.
Three roadside bombs in the volatile, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk wounded several people and a car bomb explosion near a market in the town of Tuz Khurmato wounded three on Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Ziad al-Sinjary in Mosul and Mustafa Mahmoud in Kirkuk; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Peter Graff and Mohammad Zargham)

Syria turning into ‘center of global jihad’ – IDF Intel Chief.

Published time: July 24, 2013 11:08

Fighters of the jihadist group Al-Nusra Front stand on the top of a pick-up mounted with a machine gun during fightings against the regime forces on April 4, 2013 in the Syrian village of Aziza, on the southern outskirts of Aleppo. (AFP Photo/Guillaume Briquet)

Israeli Military Intelligence chief said that Syria is becoming a ‘center of global jihad’ right on Israel’s border, with extremists trying not only to topple President Bashar Assad, but also to create a state governed by the Islamic religious law.
Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi warned that Syria is posing a regional threat as it attracts thousands of global jihadists and Muslim extremists from around the world.
"A center of global jihad of vast proportions is developing on our very doorstep," Israeli media quoted Kochavi as saying. "It is liable to affect not only Syria or Israeli borders, but also the borders of Lebanon, Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula, and have implications for the region as a whole," he said at a graduation ceremony for Military Intelligence commanding officers.
Kochavi argued that the extremists will not stop at toppling Assad, but will go further and try to establish a state based on Islamic religious law, or Sharia law.
Free Syrian Army (FSA) spokesperson Zaky Mallah’s interview with RT confirmed Kochavi’s concerns, saying that Syrian opposition is willing to accept support from anyone, be it “Bin Laden” or “Hitler”.
“The situation in Syria with the opposition is complicated. Al-Qaeda took the advantage and they thought: ‘we are going to step in’, if their own brothers are being killed by this tyrant and the world is not doing nothing about it”, Mallah said.
Some Western states, including the UK, have so far backtracked on their arms supply to the opposition - voicing concerns about the threat of extremists in Syria.
But Mallah explained that the opposition does not fear losing Western support.
“Because a prime minister of some Western country says ‘there is extremism within the opposition’, it is not a justifiable reason not to help the moderates,” he argued. 

Fighters of the jihadist group Al-Nusra Front arrive to hold positions on April 4, 2013 in the Syrian village of Aziza, on the southern outskirts of Aleppo. (AFP Photo/Guillaume Briquet)

The Syrian president's cousin Ribal Assad earlier said that Syrian rebels are led by jihadists who are "worse than Nazis."
Jordan officials also spoke out back in December 2012, describing Syria as “a black hole that will lure jihadists from all over the world."
In the meantime, the House and Senate intelligence committees gave a green light to send CIA weapons shipments to opposition fighters in Syria, spokesperson for the United States Department of State Jen Psaki confirmed on Tuesday.
The US will use the money already in the CIA’s budget and transfer it to the Syria operation. The plan was announced last month by the Obama administration and involves giving small arms and ammunition to some of the 1,200 groups of Syrian rebels, some of which have known affiliations with Al-Qaeda. 
The arms are expected to start coming in the next several weeks.
The number of jihadist fighters in Syria has recently been increasing. Hundreds of European Muslims have joined the Syrian rebels in their fight against the rule of Bashar Assad, the International Centre of for the Study of Radicalization (ICRS) revealed back in April. Most of them hold UK passports.
ICRS estimated that a total of up to 5,500 foreign fighters have traveled to Syria since the beginning of the uprising against the ruling regime.
Disunited Syrian opposition consists of diverse groups, including radical Islamists from abroad affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Some foreign militants fighting in Syria have experience fighting American troops in Iraq.
UN reported in July that the Syrian conflict is “drastically deteriorating” with up to 5,000 people a month dying and the total death toll reaching 100,000 people in over two years. (RT)