Konflikten i Syrien

Kitten demands water from Hezbollah. Location: West Qalamoun #Arsal

/.../“The wake-up call for me was when rebel groups from the neighboring towns stormed Aleppo in spring 2012, bringing with them a wave of violence, looting and destruction the likes of which Aleppo hadn't seen in centuries. A particular incident I can clearly remember was seeing black Qaeda flags at a checkpoint in my city, and having a foreign fighter ask Syrian people for their IDs. That's when I knew everything had gone horribly wrong, and it was all over for our side of the ‘revolution’,” he said.

Aleppo has seen widespread damage and destruction during the Syrian civil war and in clashes with ISIL militants. But as the situation improves, some residents are slowly starting to move back into what's left of their homes, trying to pick up their former lives.

The American diplomat Brett McGurk is the central player in the seventy-two-nation coalition fighting the Islamic State, a disparate array of countries twice the size of nato.
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In 2015, he became Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter isis. President Trump kept him on.

Where is isis? The leaders? The fighters? Intelligence assessments claim that at least twenty per cent of the fighters have returned to their countries of origin, with some exceptions like Britain, where it may be as high as fifty per cent. Where are they going as they face defeat?

We had forty thousand foreign fighters come into Syria from over a hundred and ten countries, as far away as China. The reason Mosul was so difficult in the final three weeks of battle was because we had hundreds of foreign fighters in the Old City barricaded in civilian structures. Our guys could hear them on the radio speaking Chinese, Russian, Dutch, French.
Did some foreign fighters get out before we had the borders sealed? Yes. Now it is extremely difficult. Foreign fighters who are in Iraq and Syria are going to die in Iraq and Syria. Mosul is now finished. Raqqa is surrounded.
[The American-backed] Syrian Democratic Forces have cleared about forty per cent of the city. [isis fighters] are concentrating now in small towns along a little span of the Euphrates River that crisscrosses the Iraq and Syria border in the middle of nowhere. These guys used to plan major attacks in Raqqa, with the infrastructure of a city, and then send teams to conduct attacks in Paris and Brussels. They can’t do that anymore.

How many isis fighters are still active? And where?

Our experts think the active cadre of isis fighters is down to twelve thousand total fighters, local and foreign. The Syrian Democratic Forces, the force we are working with, is incredibly brave. They are going into these high-rise buildings, room by room, floor by floor, to root these guys out.

Is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the isis caliph, alive? And what is he doing?

This is someone who cannot show his face. He communicates by audiotapes, like we are back in the nineteen-nineties. He has dramatically tainted his claim to any legitimacy. Whether or not he is alive, we do not know. But his command and control over this organization is severed.
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The nineteen thousand fighters, affiliates, and sympathizers—do we believe they are still alive, or are many of them dead?

Most of them are alive.

Syricide‏
@Syricide
At @MiddleEastInst event today, in front of Lister, #BrettMcGurk breaks rank: Blindly arming opposition may not have been the best approach.

Walid‏
@walid970721
Charles Lister admits he has a working relationship with members of Al-Qaeda. Thanks @EHSANI22 for the link! #Syria

Whether this latest announcement is related is unclear but on Thursday, a spokesman confirmed a group known as Shohada Al Quartyan, which was part of the US-led coalition in southern Syria, had split off after being told to focus on IS and not fighting against Mr Assad's government forces.
Coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon said they "unilaterally, without US or coalition permission or coordination" conducted patrols outside a specified zone and engaged in "activities not focused on fighting ISIS".
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According to CNN, the group was part of the "vetted Syrian forces" - made up of opposition fighters - being trained and equipped by the coalition.
However, Col Dillon told reporters in Washington: "We have made it very clear time and again our goal in Syria and Iraq is to fight ISIS and fight ISIS only [and] we've asked [our partner forces] to be committed to that same mission.
"We had a partner force we were working with who wanted to pursue other objectives, and those objectives were not consistent with defeating ISIS. So we have since talked with them and made them know that we cannot support them if they want to pursue objectives other than defeating ISIS.
"We are no longer going to support this particular group because that is what they want to do."
He said they would try to get back the equipment the group, which operates in the Al-Tanf area, near the Jordanian border, was given.

The Al-Umari Brigade in southern Syria is no longer receiving weapons and ammunition from the U.S. military, the rebel group’s spokesman announced on Saturday, as cited by Smart News Agency.

While the Al-Umari Brigade no longer receives weapons and ammunition, the group’s spokesman did claim that the program to train rebels is still ongoing in Jordan.

However, the program is specifically geared to train rebel fighters to combat the Islamic State (ISIL) forces in Syria, not to fight the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their allies.

Assad's "Four Seas Strategy" of the early 21st century saw Syria becoming a bridge between East and West, linked with China's New Silk Road

What has gone unmentioned in the current year of Syria-bashing is the regional economic strategy proposed by Bashar al-Assad in 2009. Known as the 'Four Seas" strategy, it called for Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran to unite in a bloc that would serve as a global crossroads for trade, connecting the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Assad announced this ambitious plan with Turkish President Gul in a joint press conference in Ankara in May 2009, stating "Once we link these four seas, we become the compulsory intersection of the whole world in investment, transport and more.”

Between that time and the beginning of the Syrian protests in Spring 2011, Assad made a number of initial moves to reify his new strategy. At the heart of the arrangement is the Syria-Turkey relationship, and energy links like the Arab Gas Pipeline (AGP). The AGP connects Egypt to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, but in 2009 Syria and Turkey agreed to a 62 km pipeline extension to reach Turkey, to be completed by 2011, as well as an integration of their respective electricity grids. In the short term, this would supply much needed energy to northern Syria, but in the long term (especially as more of the Iraqi energy sector comes back online) the pipeline would allow for Middle Eastern supplies to be exported overland through Turkey to Europe. In the same vein, Assad visited Azerbaijan in 2009, the first visit to Baku from a Syrian President since the Azeris received independence from the Soviets in 1991. On his visit, Assad signed 19 economic and political agreements with Azerbaijan, most importantly a deal to import one billion cubic meters of Azeri gas every year.

Perhaps the biggest supporter of Assad's regional strategy was Beijing, where the Communist Party called Syria "ning jiu li" or cohesive force. Beijing saw a possible cooperation in their foreign policy, increasingly looking west towards Europe, and Syria's "four seas" mindset. Starting with Assad's visit to Beijing in July 2004, the Chinese-Syria economic relationship began to blossom, and by 2008 China was Syria's largest supplier of imported goods. Chinese energy companies have also invested hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade Syria's energy infrastructure, and have entered into joint exploration deals with Syrian oil exploration companies. Another large development is "China City", a large, popular industrial center in the Adra Free Trade Zone, located 25 km northeast of Damascus. China City was established by wealthy entrepreneurs, and its products--everything from office to factory equipment--are increasingly popular with Middle East Businessmen, especially from Iraq.