Syria urges UN to take action to stop Turkish attacks on Kurds

February 15, 2016 By administrator

206029 Syria has condemned Turkish military action against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria described it as a violation of its sovereignty. It called on the UN Security Council to take action, BBC News reports.

Turkey carried out a second day of shelling on Sunday, Feb 14, of Kurdish forces advancing in northern Aleppo province.

Ankara views the Kurdish militia in Syria as allied to the outlawed PKK, which has carried out a decades-long campaign for autonomy in Turkey. But the United States and others back the Kurdish militia in Syria, the YPG, in its fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

Syria has accused Turkey of violating its sovereignty by backing “al-Qaeda-linked terrorists” in the north and has warned it has a right to respond.

“Turkish artillery shelling of Syrian territory constitutes direct support to the armed terrorist organizations,” the Syrian government said in letters to the UN Secretary General and the Security Council’s Chairman.

According to the BBC, the letters accused Turkey of allowing about 100 gunmen – believed to be either “Turkish soldiers or Turkish mercenaries” – to cross into Syria. “[Syria] will maintain its legitimate right to respond to the Turkish crimes and attacks and to claim compensation for the damage caused.”

France’s foreign ministry has also urged Turkey to end its assault on Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

Syrian army edges towards Islamic State bastion in Raqqa

February 15, 2016 By administrator

Syrian government forces were poised to advance into the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Saturday, February 13, according to Reuters.

The Syrian army announced the capture of more ground in the northern Aleppo area, where its advances backed by allied Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian fighters have cut the main rebel supply route from Turkey into opposition-held parts of Aleppo.

If its forces retake Aleppo and seal the Turkish border, Damascus would deal a crushing blow to the insurgents who were on the march until Russia intervened last September, shoring up Assad’s rule and paving the way to the current advances.

The Observatory said government troops were just a few kilometres from the provincial borders of Raqqa after making a rapid advance eastwards along a desert highway in the last few days from Ithriya. The Syrian army could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Syrian government has not had a major foothold in Raqqa province since Islamic State insurgents captured Tabqa air base in 2014. “They are on the provincial borders of Raqqa,” Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters.

The Syrian Sea of Hostility and “That Hostile Sultan”

February 12, 2016 By administrator

1033931157 By Pepe Escobar,

There could hardly have been a more appropriate start for the Chinese Year of the Monkey, geopolitically, than the prime monkey business enacted in Munich between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The Syrian charade now proceeds under a vague “cessation of hostilities” – which is not a ceasefire – to be implemented within a week. Further on down the road, as this is the real world, “hostilities” will inevitably resume.

As Lavrov stressed multiple times, “we made proposals on implementing a ceasefire, quite specific ones.” And yet Washington and the Saudi-Turkish combo relented. A frightened, cornered House of Saud – with its remote-controlled “moderate rebel” gaggle being routed on the ground – even started spinning the ludicrous notion of sending ground troops, a.k.a. a bunch of mercenaries, to “help the US effort” against Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/IS).

The monkey business reached such a level of un-sustainability that Russian premier Dmitry Medvedev felt compelled to tell an interviewer from Germany’s Handelsblatt, “The Americans and our [Arab] partners must think hard about this: Do they want a permanent war?”

Sultan Erdogan and the House of Saud certainly do – because their Syrian regime change dreams are in tatters. But the lame duck Obama administration’s case is way more complicated.

True to its trademark, clueless foreign policy mode, there’s not much left for Team Obama except spinning.

The proverbial unnamed “US officials” spin on overdrive on Western corporate media that this postponed “cessation of hostilities” is a Russian trap – as Washington wanted an immediate ceasefire (no wonder; CIA remote-controlled “moderate rebels” are also being routed.) European and Arab vassals spin that Damascus and Moscow are “torpedoeing the peace efforts.”

And yet Kerry caved in – to realism, actually. Lavrov must have made it very clear the two non-negotiables for Russia; win the Battle of Aleppo, still in progress, and seal the Syria/Turkey border against any manifestation of the Jihadi Highway, “moderate” or otherwise.

Do the Munich Spin

There’s a nifty historical echo about the war in Syria being negotiated in parallel to the Munich Security Conference – traditionally dedicated to global security. But the most pressing question is whether this new Munich Pact will actually hold.

What’s certain is that Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/IS) and al-Nusra Front, a.k.a al-Qaeda in Syria, will keep being targeted by both Russians and Americans even after the “cessation of hostilities”.

The “4+1” coalition – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – will also keep targeting every outfit remotely connected with Jabhat al-Nusra (and they are legion).

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) will for its part intensify its attacks against Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/IS). Call it the “all roads lead to Raqqa” syndrome. As soon as the Syria/Turkey border is sealed – with crucial input by the YPG Kurds – the march to Raqqa will be inevitable.

This is the ground scenario for the next few days. So no wonder the Saudi-Turkish combo is absolutely desperate; if they as much as try to support their “moderate rebels” with their aerial assets, they will be reduced to ashes by the Russian Air Force.

Enter extra Exceptionalistan spin, according to which NATO is “exploring the possibility” of joining the US-led from behind coalition against Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/IS).

This is nonsense; the Pentagon is already implicated. Major powers at NATO such as France and Germany want to extricate themselves from a Syrian crisis, not to get into a ground war. The whole charade amounts to Turkey’s Sultan Erdogan desperately trying, over and over again, to get NATO into the fray, even if it that takes a lethal provocation of Russia; after all his dream – now in tatters – of creating a “safe zone” on the Turkey/Syria border refuses to die.

That Hostile Sultan

Behind the whole “cessation of hostilities” charade, there’s a stark fact; the lame duck Obama administration does not seem to want to escalate those proverbial “tensions” with Moscow to an irreversibly critical level (Pentagon/NATO Cold War 2.0 obsession is another story.) The skies above Syria won’t offer a prelude for a US-Russia total war.

But that doesn’t mean the Pentagon will desist from trying.

The Pentagon’s Ash “Empire of Whining” Carter and Britain’s Michael Fallon will be meeting with GCC and Turkey brass in Brussels. And guess who’s the head of the Saudi delegation: Warrior Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the actual House of Saud supremo as it stands (considering King Salman drifts on and off), as well as defense minister and responsible for the Saudi debacle in Yemen.

The Warrior Prince is absolutely livid that his remote-controlled “rebels” are being shellacked on the ground by the SAA and the Russian Air Force. Yet Yemen will be nothing compared to the drubbing his “Special Forces”, a.k.a. mercenaries will suffer under experienced SAA, Iranian and Hezbollah fighters.

The plot thickens. Both sides will deny it, but there are back-room channels being used by the House of Saud and Moscow to clearly demarcate areas to be run by the SAA and some acceptable “rebels” under the framework of fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. This proves Saudis and Russians can join their efforts as long as it’s against hardcore jihadism.

With deranged Sultan Erdogan, on the other hand, any possibility of a deal is beyond remote. Especially after the PYD northeastern Syrian Kurds — which Ankara regards as “terrorists” — opened a representative office in Moscow this past Wednesday, at the invitation of President Putin.

So keep an eye on this “cessation of hostilities”. Because the real hostilities may be just about to begin.

Syrian Kurdish PYD opens office in Moscow

February 11, 2016 By administrator

Syria. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) has opened its first European representation office in Moscow, a development that reveals close ties between the PYD and Russia and has caught the wary eye of Ankara.

Attending an official ceremony on Wednesday, Merab Shamoyev, chairman of the International Union of Kurdish Public Associations, hailed the move as a historic moment for the Kurdish people.

Shamoyev praised Russian support for the PYD and called Russia a great power and an actor that “writes the script” in the region.

Russian intervention in Syria’s complex war has altered the situation on the ground and reversed the tide of war in favor of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Turkey views the PYD, and its armed wing the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Apart from Russia, the PYD also has close ties with the US.

The cooperation between the PYD and the US in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has increased, much to the dismay of Ankara.

Russian firepower has aided Syrian forces in their advance north in the country, cutting rebel supply lines and prompting another mass exodus of refugees toward the Turkish border.

Turkey and the Western-backed rebel groups accuse the PYD of collaborating with the Assad regime and capitalizing on the regimes offensive by capturing villages from rebel groups north of Aleppo.

The PYD expressed its plans to open offices in Paris, Berlin, Washington and other countries as well.

The group does not feel a need to hide its links to the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and EU.

A photo of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was seen on a wall behind the PYD officials at the opening ceremony in Moscow.

Syria Full Throttle: From Aleppo to Daraa, Syrian Army Advances on Militants

January 28, 2016 By administrator

1029116210 Scores of Daesh and al-Nusra Front terrorists have reportedly been killed after the Syrian Army launched major offensives in the key provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, Hama, Homs and Idlib.

The Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) have staged a spate of major military operations all across Syria over the past twenty-four hours, in which dozens of Daesh and Al-Nusra Front militants were killed and many more wounded, according to media reports.

In particular, militants’ strongholds were destroyed in the key provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, Hama, Homs and Idlib.

In the city of Daraa, the Syrian troops obliterated the militants’ fortifications, hideouts and vehicles in the neighborhoods of al-Mahatta and al-Balad, also striking the towns of Rakham and al-Karak in Daraa Province’s northeast.

“The Syrian Army and the NDF continued to advance against the militants in Sheikh Meskeen and took full control over the strategic city after killing and wounding scores of terrorists,” an army source said.

In the city of Aleppo, Syrian Air Force fighter jets destroyed positions held by Daesh militants in the neighborhoods of al-Rashedin, al-Lairamoun, Bustan al-Bacha, Bani Zaid, Karem al-Maysar and al-Sheikh Said, as well as a number of strategic areas in the eastern part of the province.

Dozens of Daesh terrorists were also killed in Deir ez-Ezor, where the Syrian forces clashed with militants in the village of Baqaliyeh and the al-Rushdiye neighborhood in the city of Deir ez-Zor.

In Damascus, the Syrian Army and the NDF launched an attack on the checkpoints of Al-Nusra Front militants, seizing back one of their main supply lines in Western Ghouta. Additionally, the army cracked down on al-Nusra Front terrorists along a road linking the two strategic cities of al-Moadhamiyah and Darayya.

In a separate development earlier this week, the militants’ strongholds based near the town of Tamanna in the south of Idlib Province and in Kafr Zita in the northern part of Hama Province were reportedly massively bombed by Syrian warplanes.

As for Russia’s ongoing air campaign in Syria, it was launched on September 30, when more than fifty Russian warplanes, including Su-24M, Su-25 and Su-34 jets, commenced precision airstrikes on Daesh targets in the country at the behest of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Russian General Staff said on Monday that combat aircraft from the Russian air group in Syria had carried out 169 sorties in the previous three days, hitting more than 480 terrorist targets.

source: sputniknews.com

U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels

January 24, 2016 By administrator

King Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Barack Obama in September at the White House. Credit Gary Cameron/Reuters

By MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZO JAN. 23, 2016

WASHINGTON — When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria’s embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training mission, which the Americans have code-named Timber Sycamore. Under the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of money, and the C.I.A takes the lead in training the rebels on AK-47 assault rifles and tank-destroying missiles.

The joint arming and training program, which other Middle East nations contribute money to, continues as America’s relations with Saudi Arabia — and the kingdom’s place in the region — are in flux. The old ties of cheap oil and geopolitics that have long bound the countries together have loosened as America’s dependence on foreign oil declines and the Obama administration tiptoes toward a diplomatic rapprochement with Iran.

And yet the alliance persists, kept afloat on a sea of Saudi money and a recognition of mutual self-interest. In addition to Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves and role as the spiritual anchor of the Sunni Muslim world, the long intelligence relationship helps explain why the United States has been reluctant to openly criticize Saudi Arabia for its human rights abuses, its treatment of women and its support for the extreme strain of Islam, Wahhabism, that has inspired many of the very terrorist groups the United States is fighting. The Obama administration did not publicly condemn Saudi Arabia’s public beheading this month of a dissident Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who had challenged the royal family.

Although the Saudis have been public about their help arming rebel groups in Syria, the extent of their partnership with the C.I.A.’s covert action campaign and their direct financial support had not been disclosed. Details were pieced together in interviews with a half-dozen current and former American officials and sources from several Persian Gulf countries. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program.

From the moment the C.I.A. operation was started, Saudi money supported it.

“They understand that they have to have us, and we understand that we have to have them,” said Mike Rogers, the former Republican congressman from Michigan who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when the C.I.A. operation began. Mr. Rogers declined to discuss details of the classified program.

American officials have not disclosed the amount of the Saudi contribution, which is by far the largest from another nation to the program to arm the rebels against President Bashar al-Assad’s military. But estimates have put the total cost of the arming and training effort at several billion dollars.

The White House has embraced the covert financing from Saudi Arabia — and from Qatar, Jordan and Turkey — at a time when Mr. Obama has pushed gulf nations to take a greater security role in the region.

Spokesmen for both the C.I.A. and the Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

When Mr. Obama signed off on arming the rebels in the spring of 2013, it was partly to try to gain control of the apparent free-for-all in the region. The Qataris and the Saudis had been funneling weapons into Syria for more than a year. The Qataris had even smuggled in shipments of Chinese-made FN-6 shoulder-fired missiles over the border from Turkey.

The Saudi efforts were led by the flamboyant Prince Bandar bin Sultan, at the time the intelligence chief, who directed Saudi spies to buy thousands of AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition in Eastern Europe for the Syrian rebels. The C.I.A. helped arrange some of the arms purchases for the Saudis, including a large deal in Croatia in 2012.

By the summer of 2012, a freewheeling feel had taken hold along Turkey’s border with Syria as the gulf nations funneled cash and weapons to rebel groups — even some that American officials were concerned had ties to radical groups like Al Qaeda.

The C.I.A. was mostly on the sidelines during this period, authorized by the White House under the Timber Sycamore training program to deliver nonlethal aid to the rebels but not weapons. In late 2012, according to two former senior American officials, David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director, delivered a stern lecture to intelligence officials of several gulf nations at a meeting near the Dead Sea in Jordan. He chastised them for sending arms into Syria without coordinating with one another or with C.I.A. officers in Jordan and Turkey.

Greek coast guard confronts Turkish smuggler with dead children migrant bodies

January 19, 2016 By administrator

n_94052_1 Yorgo Kırbaki – ATHENS,

The Greek coast guard has confronted a Turkish human smuggler with the dead bodies of three migrant children who were in his capsized boat “as a lesson,” while charging the trafficker with 120 years of imprisonment.

The smuggler, identified only as Özkan A., was trafficking 23 migrants, including six children and five women, to the Greek island of Samos when his boat capsized off Turkey’s Aegean coast.

While Özkan A. and 20 of the migrants were rescued by the search and rescue foundation Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), three children were retrieved dead. According to reports, two of the children were four years old and the other was two years old.

After the MOAS rescue boat docked at Samos Island, Greek coast guard teams entered the boat and handcuffed Özkan A., before forcing him to kneel and confront the bodies of the children who lost their lives.

Video footage of the incident has emerged showing the smuggler as he sits and cries watching the toddlers as they are placed inside coffins.

Özkan A. has confessed to being paid $3,000 each time he smuggled a boat of migrants to Greece, saying he previously trafficked migrants to the islands of Lesbos and Samos, Doğan News Agency reported.

He now faces up to 120 years in prison, reports added.

Daily Hürriyet contacted the father of Özkan A., who lives in the Milas district of Turkey’s southwestern Muğla province.

The father claimed that his son had behavioral disorders and psychological problems, for which he had received medical treatment until 2013.

“He [Özkan A.] has the intelligence of a six-year-old,” he said, adding that his son had left home and phoned the family on Jan. 13 but they had not heard from him since.

Greek islands in the Aegean Sea saw more than 800,000 migrants – many of them refugees fleeing war-torn Syria – land on their shores from Turkey in 2015, their first EU stop on a journey to new lives in Germany, Sweden and elsewhere.

Turkey itself has taken in over 2 million refugees from neighboring Syria where a conflict has been continuing since the early days of 2011.

January/19/2016

Syrian Armenian woman: In Syria we never felt we lived among Muslims

January 15, 2016 By administrator

55555 YEREVAN. – Mari Khngikyan, who moved to Armenia with her family 3 years ago due to the war in Syria, remembers with horror how she reached Armenia from Aleppo.

In an interview with Armeninan News – NEWS.am, the 70-year-old Syrian Armenian woman said that before the war in Syria, she came to Armenian with her family to get Armenian citizenship. At that very time the crisis started, but Mrs Mari and her husband decided to return to Aleppo. On 11 September 2012, they returned to Syria.

100 air passengers were heading to Aleppo from the airport when firing was opened at the cars. 6 people died, and Mrs. Mari’s husband was wounded.

Mari Khngikyan remembers that at about 8:00 pm, when shots were still being fired at their cars, with the help of an Arab they could hardly take out the bodies of the killed and wounded from the cars and take them to hospital, as well as themselves reach Aleppo. The Khngikyans were able to soon return to Armenian with the help of the Armenian authorities.

The family, which has been living in Yerevan for 3 years, isn’t going to return to Aleppo even after the normalization of the situation in Syria. According to Mrs Mari, they are in their homeland, in safety and near the Christians.

The woman’s two daughters are doctors, and her son is an engineer; they all have a job. “It’s safe here. Of course, in Syria we never felt that we lived among Muslims, since we had our own circle and didn’t communicate with the Arabs. They respected us very much for that stance. Each of us had our own house and car, but we didn’t have real flats, and now we have a real flat on out land,” Mari Khngikyan said.

She also noted that women mainly didn’t work in Aleppo. The 70-year-old woman finds it odd that women in Armenia work to bring home the bacon. “We lived very happily there, but left everything and relocated here. Here we are also in our homeland and we don’t complain,” she said.

Mrs Mari believes that the situation in Syria will soon normalize, the war will finish and the Syrian state will again start developing, and they will be able to visit their favorite Aleppo as tourists, go to their native district and see their house in Syria.

Vancouver BC: Armenian Syrian refugees celebrate Armenian Christmas in B.C.

January 12, 2016 By administrator

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan meets with newly-arrived Syrian refugees at St. Gregory Armenian Church in Richmond. (Catherine Rolfsen)

Small Richmond church has helped more than 50 Armenian Christians flee violence in Syria

Richmond’s St. Gregory Armenian Church has sponsored more than 50 Armenian Syrian refugees to come to B.C. and most have arrived in the Lower Mainland over the past month.

On Sunday, many of those families gathered to celebrate Armenian Christmas, and were visited by politicians including Federal Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

He thanked them for supporting and sponsoring refugees, but also spoke about a group of 100 people — including Syrian refugees — standing outside the Muslim Association of Canada Centre in Vancouver who were pepper sprayed, Jan. 8 by an unknown man on a bicycle.

“I’m confident that this one little incident that has happened, as horrible as it is, is going to light a fire amongst other Canadian to say, you know what? We can’t allow this to happen,” he said.

“As the prime minister has stated this is not the Canadian way,” he added while gesturing to the congregation that their efforts to sponsor refugees, is the Canadian way.

Canada: Armenian centre in Willowdale to accept more than 1,000 refugees

December 9, 2015 By administrator

Lena and Koko Agigian and their sons say they are getting lots of help from the Armenian Community Centre in Willowdale as they adjust to life in Canada. (CBC News)

Already more than 350 people have been settled in the Greater Toronto Area

There are already roughly 350 Syrian refugees adjusting to their first winter in Canada, the first days of a new life, thanks to the Armenian Community Centre in Willowdale.

The centre’s co-ordinator will see her phone ring all day, as Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) alerts her of new arrivals.

Lorig Garboushian and volunteers have picked up more than 20 people in a day, just the beginning of the 1,079 newcomers they will be sponsoring. That’s roughly half of the 2,600 refugees Toronto will be accepting, according to the numbers released two weeks ago by CIC.

‘They were forced to leave’

There’s always someone there at the airport to welcome the arrivals, whose faces often belie conflicted emotions.

“They will be happy but it’s not full,” Garboushian said. “Their circumstances are different from other newcomers, because they are leaving a lot of things back there. Their memories, their houses, the business, a full life — they were forced to leave.”

That was the experience of Lena and Koko Agigian and their two sons before arriving in Canada three days ago.

As the Syrian civil war worsened, they fled to Lebanon where they had been living for six months.

Now that they are in Canada there’s so much to learn, they say, everything from navigating transit, getting a driver’s license and enrolling Hrag and Avo in school.

Learning English

And, most importantly, Lena Agigian says, learning English, although she already has a strong grasp of the language.

“It’s a little bit hard, because we don’t know Canada, yet. We don’t know Toronto, yet. We don’t know the ways.”

But they are already finding themselves part of a new community, she says, at the Armenian community centre.

“All of them are helping us… we are just feeling, we are feeling good.”

The federal government requires a private sponsor to show proof that they can provide $25,000 to help settle a family of four.

Only $100

But the community centre asks only that a sponsor commit to pay $100. As a community sponsor the centre needs to prove to Ottawa that, within all its members, it has the manpower and the financial resources to help people settle here successfully.

And it does not require that either the sponsor or the refugees be of Armenian background.

The Armenian community is one that routinely welcomes those in need, because of its historic experience with oppression, the program’s director Apkar Mirakian says.

“They are relatives and we have gone through this before,” he said. “My mother and grandfather went through the genocide. We have gone through this difficulty.

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