Konflikten i Syrien

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday Russia is supporting the opposition Free Syrian Army, providing it with air cover, arms and ammunition in joint operations with Syrian troops against Islamist militants.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-putin-idUSKBN0TU1B020151211

We know ISIS has a discreet arrangement with a neighbor, but it’s not Turkey. The Syrian regime has done business with ISIS from day one, just as it did with al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and other rebels who took over energy assets early in the war. President Bashar al-Assad’s point man for ISIS deals, George Haswani, was first designated by the European Union in March. The U.S. Treasury went a step further with its designation on Nov. 25. In addition to the oil deals, Treasury fingered Haswani’s engineering and construction company (HESCO) for servicing active ISIS fields. Leading up to the most recent wave of airstrikes against ISIS oil targets, U.S. officials admitted the network was more resilient and resourceful than expected. Another Treasury designation in late September hinted that ISIS actually increased oil production this year. They may have had some help from Assad’s man.

We don’t know how much oil ISIS has delivered to Assad, but there’s no doubt he needs it. For the first half of 2015, the regime’s oil output was less than 10,000 barrels a day. That was before pro-Assad forces retreated from even more oil-rich territory. All those eyes in the sky over Syria can’t tell how much ISIS oil passes through pipelines to regime-held refineries in the west. There are, however, curious gaps in official data. In April, for instance, Syria’s oil ministry said it refined 106,000 barrels a day, yet trade press could only explain where 85,000 barrels of that oil came from. Data has been increasingly hard to come by since.

Besides oil, ISIS delivers natural gas to the regime. These deals are durable because ISIS can’t use it or sell it to anyone else: It must be captured at the source and moved by pipeline. The only users connected to the gas fields are power plants, refineries, and industries, which are concentrated in Assad’s strongholds. In exchange for gas, the regime provides utilities like electricity, which ISIS taxes accordingly. At natural gas fields like those around Palmyra, which produce lighter liquid hydrocarbons in addition to gas, ISIS takes whatever it can turn into fuel. The gas goes west to Assad.

DK Group, which is already the target of US sanctions, is used by the Syrian regime to access foreign currency, the EU believes.
The company flies undisclosed shipments of sterling and euros it has obtained in Moscow into Syria to prop up the Syrian Central Bank on flights it routes through third countries.

“We have also agreed to target individuals supplying oil to the regime, including George Haswani, a middleman buying oil from ISIL [Isis] on behalf of the regime. This listing gives yet another indication that Assad’s ‘war’ on ISIL is a sham and that he supports them financially.”

The Administration’s policy initiatives have reflected its intention to pressure the Asad
government into negotiating with opposition groups and fulfilling its pledges with regard to
chemical weapons. At the same time, U.S. officials have appeared to be balancing these goals
with concerns that a full scale degradation of Islamic State forces or of pro-Asad forces could
have unintended negative consequences. Specifically, U.S. officials may be concerned that a more
aggressive campaign against the Islamic State may take military pressure off the Asad regime or
create opportunities for other extremist groups such as the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra to
advance. Similarly, U.S. officials have stated their fears that a precipitous collapse of the Asad
government could allow extremists to advance and potentially to carry out atrocities.

Since March 2011, the conflict has driven more than 4.1 million Syrians into neighboring
countries as refugees (out of a total population of more than 22 million). More than 7.5 million
other Syrians are internally displaced and are among more than 12 million Syrians in need of
humanitarian assistance. The United States remains the largest bilateral provider of such
assistance, with more than $4.5 billion in U.S. funding identified to date.

Most of the requested Syria-related foreign operations funding would be used to address the
impact of the crisis on Syria’s neighbors. In congressional budget briefing materials, the
Administration identified its entire $1 billion FY2016 request for Jordan as helping to counter the
Islamic State and mitigate Syria-related economic and security concerns. The Administration has
also requested $335 million to strengthen Iraq’s counterterrorism capabilities and $211 million to
assist Lebanon in meeting the needs of Syrian refugees and addressing the IS threat. An additional $1.6 billion in U.S. humanitarian assistance is being requested for the region to respond to the Syria-Iraq crises in FY2016. The Administration also has requested more than $700 million in
FY2016 CTPF funding to address terrorism threats in the Levant and Iraq; to counter Iraniansponsored
terrorism; and to mitigate foreign fighter flows.17

We were living in a good situation. But you helped to cause the problem for us. We want you to stop protecting the rebels so that we can return to our own country.

There is broad agreement among international and Syrian human rights groups that Assad’s regime — which is laying siege to at least 180,000 Syrians and routinely bombards opposition-controlled towns with barrel bombs — has killed far more civilians than armed rebel and extremist groups. In recent days, the Syrian government has faced international condemnation for starving civilians in the rebel-controlled city of Madaya.

Yet Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, chair of the independent U.N. commission of inquiry on Syria, said last June that most attacks against Syrian civilians are carried out by combatants — and largely by Assad’s forces.

“The government, with its superior firepower and control of the skies, inflicts the most damage in its indiscriminate attacks on civilian-inhabited cities, towns, villages, and makeshift IDP [internally displaced person] camps,” Pinheiro said in a statement.

The number of people the Islamic State has killed, however, remains relatively small, according to Syrian groups trying to document deaths. The Syrian Network for Human Rights claims that the Islamic State has killed 1,712, while the Violations Documentation Center claims that the extremist group has killed 4,406 since the beginning of the war. But the center says the number could be double that.

“I can understand the controversy about the numbers, but that cannot distract from the bigger picture,”. “The truth is Assad has far superior firepower and is willing and able to inflict much greater casualties, including civilians. It’s part of the Assad strategy,” Hokayem said. “It is a deliberate regime strategy to shift the suffering on neighboring countries and humanitarian agencies, leading to policy proposals where stopping the fighting is the focus rather than a [political] transition.”