Thread: So Who Are the Syrian Moderates Anyway? (Hint: Al Qaeda)

Michael Krieger | Posted Friday Oct 9, 2015 at 9:39 am

You don’t need me to tell you how disastrous the Obama Administration’s Syria “strategy” has been. After all, he pretty much admitted as much by announcing a pullback earlier today.
While the retreat in itself is garnering all the headlines, with people superficially focused on how “Putin outmaneuvered Obama,” the truth is far more disturbing. Putin didn’t so much outmaneuver Obama, as much as he called bullshit on the entire operation. Putin basically said that Russia would begin bombing terrorists in Syria, but the problem is that the U.S. is supporting terrorists in Syria. This is undoubtably true, which is the real reason Obama is pulling back. He needs to get out now before Putin proves to the whole world that the CIA is fighting with al-Qaeda in Syria.
For a dose of hard-hitting truth, I once again turn to one of the best sources out there, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed.
Here is some of what he published at Middle East Eye:

The first Russian airstrikes hit the rebel-held town of Talbisah north of Homs City, home to al-Qaeda’s official Syrian arm, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the pro-al-Qaeda Ahrar al-Sham, among other local rebel groups. Both al-Nusra and the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs) in Homs City, which is 12 kilometers south of Talbisah.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports that as part of “US and Turkish efforts to establish an ISIS ‘free zone’ in the northern Aleppo countryside,” al-Nusra “withdrew from the border and reportedly reinforced positions in this rebel-held pocket north of Homs city”.
In other words, the US and Turkey are actively sponsoring “moderate” Syrian rebels in the form of al-Qaeda, which Washington DC-based risk analysis firm Valen Globals forecasts will be “a bigger threat to global security” than IS in coming years.
Last October, Vice President Joe Biden conceded that there is “no moderate middle” among the Syrian opposition. Turkey and the Gulf powers armed and funded “anyone who would fight against Assad,” including “al-Nusra,” “al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI),” and the “extremist elements of jihadis who were coming from other parts of the world”.
In other words, the CIA-backed rebels targeted by Russia are not moderates. They represent the same melting pot of al-Qaeda affiliated networks that spawned the Islamic State in the first place.

For more on that topic, see:
Additional Details Emerge on How U.S. Government Policy Created, Armed, Supported and Funded ISIS

And they rose to power in Syria not in spite, but because of the US rubber-stamping the jihadist funnel through the so-called “vetting” process. This summer, for instance, al-Qaeda led rebels received accelerated weapons shipments in a US-backed operation to retake Idlib province from Assad.
Notice here that the US priority was to rollback Assad’s forces from Idlib – not fight IS. Yet the brave Western press, so outspoken on Russian duplicity, somehow overlooked how this anti-ISIS coalition operation failed to target a single IS fighter.

But that’s not all. What about some of the other Syrian “moderates”?

The Islamic Front, Syria’s largest opposition grouping consisting of tens of thousands of fighters, aims to establish an “Islamic state” in Syria, rejects democracy and secularism, and welcomes al-Qaeda foreign fighters as “brothers who came to help us”.
Islamic Front leader Zahran Alloush is on record as having praised Osama bin Laden, endorsed cooperation with al-Nusra, and repeatedly called for the total extermination of Shia and Alawite communities in the Levant.
Recruits already known to the US government are checked easily based on internal data. But for new recruits, the US depends on the “expertise” of its coalition partners like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Turkey…Turkey Bombs Kurds Fighting ISIS, Then Hires Same Lobbying Firm Supporting U.S. Presidential Candidates

German journalist Jurgen Todenhofer, who spent 10 days inside the Islamic State, reported last year that IS militants are being “indirectly” armed by the West: “They buy the weapons that we give to the Free Syrian Army, so they get Western weapons – they get French weapons… I saw German weapons, I saw American weapons.”
The CIA knew what was happening: classified intelligence assessments year after year showed that most Saudi, Turkish and Qatari arms ended up with “hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups”.
The CIA programme has not been shut down, although it has predictably failed to arm moderates despite seeding nearly 10,000 rebel fighters – many of whom have joined the IS terrorists the West is supposed to be fighting.
This is, in other words, a New Cold War between competing empires, the unending victims of which are the Syrian people. As for the Islamic State, it is little more than the proxy bastard child of a conflict that looks set to escalate.

That last paragraph is key. This is not the end, but the beginning. You ain’t seen nothing yet in the Middle East.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/10...hint-al-qaeda/

CNBC -
Afghan Taliban’s Reach Is Widest Since 2001, U.N. Says

By ROD NORDLAND and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
8 Hours AgoThe New York Times



Lucas Jackson | Reuters
U.S. soldiers with military vehicles during a training mission in the Laghman province of Afghanistan, December 15, 2014.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban insurgency has spread through more of Afghanistan than at any point since 2001, according to data compiled by the United Nations as well as interviews with numerous local officials in areas under threat.
In addition, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan over the past two weeks has evacuated four of its 13 provincial offices around the country — the most it has ever done for security reasons — according to local officials in the affected areas.
The data, compiled in early September — even before the latest surge in violence in northern Afghanistan — showed that United Nations security officials had already rated the threat level in about half of the country's administrative districts as either "high" or "extreme," more than at any time since the American invasion ousted the Taliban in 2001.
Read MoreAfghanistan examining claim of Taliban leader death
That assessment, which has not been publicly released but is routinely shared by the United Nations with countries in the international coalition, appears at odds with the assessment of its American commander, Gen. John F. Campbell, in his testimony to Congress in Washington last week.
"The Afghan security forces have displayed courage and resilience,'' General Campbell testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. ''They're still holding. The Afghan government retains control of Kabul, of Highway One, its provincial capitals and nearly all of the district centers."
Afghan officials in many districts currently under attack by the Taliban depict a dramatically different situation. Even Highway One, a ring road connecting all of Afghanistan's main cities, has long suffered repeated Taliban ambushes and roadblocks in southern Afghanistan; over the past two weeks the insurgents repeatedly cut the highway in the Doshi and Baghlani Jadid districts of Baghlan Province — long an uncontested government stronghold. Few government officials now use the highway along much of its route.
In many districts that are nominally under government control, like Musa Qala in Helmand Province and Charchino in Oruzgan Province, government forces hold only the government buildings in the district center and are under constant siege by the insurgents.
"We do not have any way to escape," said Wali Dad, the police chief in Charchino, where 400 police officers have been surrounded and pinned down for months. "If we get any means of escaping, I will not stay for a second in the district. The government is failing in their governing and it's better to let the Taliban rule."
General Campbell testified that the Afghan security forces had "reversed almost all of the Taliban gains in northern Helmand after a considerable effort." He also said they had retaken Musa Qala and held on to other districts, like Sangin and Kajaki, that had been threatened in that area.
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On Saturday, however, officials in Musa Qala said the government held only the district government compound, with no freedom of movement outside it because of Taliban threats.

"Only the government can enter the district center, and there are no government activities outside the district center," said Haji Mohammad Sharif, the district governor.
The United Nations data suggests that the tempo of the insurgency has increased in many parts of the country where there had been little Taliban presence in the past, including some areas in the north with scant Pashtun populations. The Taliban have been a largely Pashtun-based insurgency and have been historically strongest in Pashtun-majority areas in southern and eastern Afghanistan, with some pockets in the north, such as Kunduz.
"We have had fighting in 13 provinces of Afghanistan over the past six months, simultaneously," President Ashraf Ghani said this month in response to criticism after the fall of Kunduz.


<p>The difficulties of combating terrorism</p> <p>Torbjorn Soltvedt, deputy head of Middle East and North Africa at Verisk Maplecroft, discusses the threat of ISIS and terrorism around the world.</p>
All four of the United Nations provincial evacuations took place in northern Afghanistan. The United Nations evacuated all of its personnel and their families — both Afghan and international staff — from Kunduz as the Taliban overran that city on Sept. 28, and then a day later it evacuated its staff from Pul-e-Kumri, 60 miles to the south, in response to reports that the Taliban would attack there as well. The attack on Pul-e-Kumri never materialized, but similar fears over the safety of Faisabad, in Badakhshan Province in the far northeast, and in Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province in the northwest, subsequently led the United Nations to at least partly evacuate its staff and close some offices there, according to local officials.
A spokesman for the United Nations mission, Dominic Medley, would not explicitly confirm the four evacuations.
"We constantly review our operating environment, including taking steps such as the temporary re-assignment of staff to different parts of Afghanistan," he said. "Staff from several locations, including Kunduz, have been relocated within the country."
Such evacuations have also led many aid groups to pull out of those communities.
The United Nations security threat rating system is also used by aid groups to guide their assessment of whether they can operate safely in provincial areas.
"It's much more difficult to access many areas in the north than before for aid agencies," said Fiona Gall, director of Acbar, an umbrella group representing nongovernmental organizations in Afghanistan. "It's a general degradation. It is very difficult to combat it in this environment."
The United Nations mission data showed that it considered 186 of Afghanistan's 376 districts to have a threat level considered high or extreme. United Nations personnel would not normally be allowed to travel to or through any district with a threat level that high. Districts with extreme threat levels either have no government presence at all, or a government presence reduced to only the district capital; there were 38 such districts scattered through 14 of the country's 34 provinces.
In all, 27 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces had some districts where the threat level was rated high or extreme.


In Oruzgan Province, in southern Afghanistan, four of its five districts were rated under extreme or high threat, with only the capital of Tarinkot classified as under "substantial" threat. Many local officials predicted that the province might soon become the first to entirely fall to the Taliban.
"We had 570 policemen in Khas Oruzgan District, but now only 75 men remain and all in the district center, the rest have either been killed, surrendered or escaped," said Abdul Hameed, the deputy district governor. "We are still begging for survival but we get no attention from the central government. If the situation remains the same, the district will fall to the hands of the Taliban."
Similar concerns were raised by officials in two other Oruzgan districts, Dehrawad and Chora. They all reported increased activity by the Taliban in recent months.
In Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province, American airstrikes, along with the arrival of pro-government militiamen, helped beat back the Taliban's effort to overrun the city last week, but the Taliban remain active in districts surrounding the provincial capital. Sayed Abdul Baqi Hashimi, a provincial council member from Maimana, said the United Nations had relocated its staff to Mazar-i-Sharif and shut down its activities in the city, but he said he thought it would be temporary.
"I believe our security forces have enough support from locals to defeat any advances made by the militants," he said.
Reporting was contributed by Taimoor Shah in Kandahar; Alissa J. Rubin, Ahmad Shakib and Mujib Mashal in Kabul; and Najim Rahim in Kunduz

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/11/new-y...1-un-says.html