Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 4-1-Syria-13

C de Waart; CdW Intelligence to Rent [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 4-1-Syria-13

A big Syrian/Iranian/Russian push has started in northern Syria The big mystery is its goal. The Russian offensive may look futile from Obama’s point of view since it does nothing to

create what the administration believes should be everyone’s desired end state: “a peaceful, stable, multisectarian democracy”.

Why are Assad, Russia, and Iran pursuing this strategy? Simple: It suits their strategic interests

If Putin’s offense in Syria succeeds enough to breath the life into Assad’s regime, Syria’s agony will be extended for years. Far from being something Obama can watch from afar, it has the potential to break open NATO’s southern flank like a can-opener and deliver up the Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, into the hands of America’s mortal enemies.

Despite some setbacks at the hands of the U.S.-led air coalition and Kurdish ground forces earlier this year in northern Syria, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s organization has not suffered anything close to a knockout blow thus far. Thomas Joscelyn’s testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade on the US counterterrorism strategy in Syria.

In November 2014 the Islamic State announced that its goal is to take control of the mosques in Mecca and Medina and oust the “serpent’s head”—the Saudi royal family.

In an interview with Iranian state television, reported by the Syrian presidency Twitter feed, President Assad said Syria, Russia, Iran and Iraq were united in battling terrorism and would achieve "practical results", unlike the US-led coalition. “It must succeed or we are facing the destruction of a whole region, and not a country or two,” he said. “The chances for success are large, not small.”He said the Russian intervention is open-ended, and was planned in cooperation with the Syrian military. Syria’s war is entering its fifth year, with at least 250,000 people killed and half of the pre-war population on the move— 4 million refugees and 8 million internally displaced.

A big Syrian/Iranian/Russian push has started in northern Syria The big mystery is its goal. More than 50 Saudi clerics called on Syrian rebels and Muslim countries to support a jihad against Syria’s government and its allies. "This is a real war on Sunnis, their countries and their identities," said the statement. It urged the rebels to join a "jihad against the enemy of God and your enemy and Muslims will back you every way they can."

The Syrian Offensive by Richard Fernandez A big Syrian/Iranian/Russian push has started in northern Syria The big mystery is its goal. There are no deep penetrations, no flashy armored dashes. Outwardly the objectives appear to be limited: prolonging the survival of the Assad regime. Chas Danner of New Yorker Magazine cites president Obama’s confident prediction that it’s Putin’s Last Gap. “If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we’ve got a different definition of leadership.”The Russian offensive may look futile from Obama’s point of view since it does nothing to create what the administration believes should be everyone’s desired end state: “a peaceful, stable, multisectarian democracy”. Fareed Zakaria notes the president thinks the Iranians and Russians lack the power have to create a stable successor state and therefore Putin’s efforts are doomed. “If Obama’s goal is a peaceful, stable, multisectarian democracy, then it requires a vast U.S. commitment on the scale of the Iraq war. ” He can’t do it. How can Putin?However, as Tom Rogan at the National Review argues, Putin doesn’t need such a tremendous force because the Russian’s goal is different. It is to ensure that nobody wins, to confirm the stalemate and

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perpetuate the chaos disrupting a region that was once America’s back yard, probably for decades to come. Asking himself why Russia is counterattacking against Aleppo (the Stalingrad of Syria) and launching comparatively shallow attacks on the FSA, Rogan writes:Why are Assad, Russia, and Iran pursuing this strategy? Simple: It suits their strategic interests. In all likelihood, the only reason Russia persists in claiming that it is targeting the Islamic State because it hopes that doing so will buy time to distract the White House and dominate Syria’s western battlespace. Once the axis offensive is underway, it will secure the strategic initiative towards securing a contiguous area of Assad-regime control in western Syria, reaching from the north to the south. It doesn’t matter that these areas are where U.S./allied-supported rebels are mostly located. They would never admit it, but in the near to medium term, the axis would allow the Kurds to retain de facto control in Syria’s central and eastern north, and hardline Salafi jihadists like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to retain de facto control everywhere else.But the U.S. cannot stand idle and allow this to happen. Aside from any moral concerns in Syria — an issue the Obama administration cares little about — if Syria divides between Assad, the Kurds, and the Islamic State, the political sectarianism that lies at the heart of the Middle Eastern conflict will explode. The Turks and Sunni Arab monarchies will increase their support for Salafi jihadists in order to counterbalance Assad and Iran, and transnational jihadists will continue their metastasis across western borders.The asymmetry between Russia’s interests and America’s cannot be overemphasized. Obama’s job is analogous to being a system administrator. He needs a “peaceful, stable, multisectarian” Syria. As CNN reported, Obama really wants to replace Assad without dirtying his hands by toppling him, content to await his fall. The U.S. goal is to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the regime. Unlike in Iraq, the United States wants to try to ensure some elements of the Syrian military and key social services and structures in and around Damascus survive if Assad goes, so that Syria can begin to rebuild.By contrast Putin in his role as a hacker only needs to create trouble. Putin’s goals can be achieved by keeping a rump Alawite state around Tartus and maintaining chaos everywhere else. The strategic benefits to Russia of continued turmoil in Syria are immense.As Rogan points out, “this is why the United States must not allow Assad to remain in power for the long term, and it is why we must take greater risks in supporting the mobilization of a moderate Sunni resistance to Assad,” because trouble in the region is dangerous. But Putin is exploiting yet another asymmetry. Obama needs a huge force to stabilize Syria where Putin needs only a comparatively tiny force to cause mischief.

The benefit to the Kremlin of continued turmoil in the Levant are obvious. First, war in Syria will continue to flood Europe with millions of migrants. As the Washington Post notes, a sense of doom is descending on its capitals.Croatia’s interior minister says Hungary’s decision to close the border with Croatia for migrants hoping to reach Western Europe won’t stop the flow.The minister, Ranko Ostojic, says that “nobody can stop this flow without shooting.”As Matteo Garavoglia of Brookings notes the EU is actually incapable of stopping the migrants without undoing much of its law and tearing itself apart politically. He writes:Put simply, individual European Union member states are unable to effectively handle migration flows on their own. There are three overarching reasons for this. To begin with, managing migrant flows requires financial resources that most member states find difficult to mobilize. Secondly, migration is a topic that often stirs particularly conflicting perspectives across different domestic political environments. Finally, migrant movements present logistical challenges that individual countries can seldom effectively address.


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In particular Italy’s navy can’t blockade the Med. Greece’s border patrol doesn’t exist. The European southern border is as porous as those of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick. There’s no political consensus to even create a unified refugee policy. Some European countries may even be torching “migrant” centers on the sly. The Left and Right will lock horns to ensure that EU policy on refugees will be gridlocked. But worst of all, restoring the borders will be ruinous to a Europe that is economically stagnant.To begin with and from a merely logistical point of view, establishing border controls over 8,246 miles is no easy feat. Should border controls eventually be re-established across the Schengen area, inevitable delays and costs would immediately arise for intra-European trade in goods and services. In parallel developments, the freedom of movement enjoyed by European citizens within the area would also effectively come to an end.

The second strategic benefit to the Kremlin of an ME stalemate is existential pressure on Saudi Arabia. Bruce Reidel, former CIA point man for Saudi Arabia wrote in Brookings that the Kingdom is now on a political knife-edge. “What the future has in store for the kingdom is of great concern to Washington. Within months of becoming king, Salman plunged into what appears to be a quagmire war in Yemen, snubbed President Obama, and endorsed hardline clerics who are opposed to reforms that Obama argues are necessary if Saudi Arabia is to remain a stable partner for the United States.”The Saudis are now at a crossroads, divided between those who realize ISIS and al-Qaeda are now an existential threat to the monarchy itself, and those who still see cooperation with the jihadis as the only hope for survival. What makes things even more interesting is the division at the top. The current Saudi King was once the prince in charge of funding the Jihad, and his son the crown prince Nayef, was buddies with Osama bin Laden.The alliance between the House of Saud and the Wahhabis dates back nearly three centuries, to the very beginning of the rule of the Saudis. In 1744 an itinerant preacher and cleric named Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab joined forces with the then head of the Saudi family, Muhammad al-Saud, to create the first Saudi kingdom. While the Saudis provided political and military leadership, Wahhab and his descendants provided religious leadership and legitimacy. Wahhab and his disciples preached a puritanical and sectarian version of Islam that called for a return to literal fundamentalism and an intolerance of any deviation from their hard line views on what constituted the original faith of the Prophet Muhammad. …In November 1979, the kingdom experienced a major challenge to the Saudi royal family’s legitimacy and governance. A band of Islamic extremists who believed the apocalyptic End Times had arrived took control of the Great Mosque in Mecca. The largest in the world, it houses the Kaaba, the holiest site in Islam, which is believed to be the first house of worship….The episode frightened the royal family into moving even closer to the Wahhabi establishment, slowing reform, and stepping up support for militant Islamic causes in other countries. …The current King Salman, who was then governor of Riyadh, was put in charge of raising private funds for the mujahedeen from the royal family and other wealthy Saudis. He funneled tens of millions of dollars to the mujahedeen, and later did the same for Muslim causes in Bosnia and Palestine. Later, when Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaida, Nayef was conspicuously slow to recognize that al-Qaida posed a threat to the kingdom.Unfortunately it is now all too clear that al-Qaeda and ISIS represent a mortal threat to the House of Saud, a fact which Saudi counterterror official reluctantly accept as an empirical fact. But the Kingdom’s brutal and herculean efforts to stamp out the Islamists via a long and expensive internal dirty war have ultimately failed because they relocated to Syria. Reidl continues:It took three years to beat back al-Qaida inside Saudi Arabia, but it has not gone away. Instead, the organization has metastasized throughout much of the Middle East and into Africa. In 2009 al-Qaida


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in the Arabian Peninsula, the successor to the group MBN defeated at home, surfaced in Yemen.The Kingdom’s Wahhabi Islam is the most fundamentalist Sunni branch of the religion. But it has now been outflanked by religious radicals who are even more intolerant, xenophobic, and far more violent. The blood-curdling appearance of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014 represents a new challenge to the world and, in particular, to MBN and his counterterrorism program. Heir to al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, which went deep underground during the American surge in Iraq in 2007 only to resurface after the withdrawal of foreign forces, the Islamic State has staged a multipronged comeback campaign. In 2012-13, it began targeting Iraqi prisons where al-Qaida terrorists were incarcerated and creating an infrastructure in neighboring Syria to assist in its revival. In the summer of 2014 it waged a blitzkrieg-like offensive across Sunni populated Iraq, took command of the country’s second city, Mosul, and declared the creation of a caliphate to rule all of Islam.In November 2014 the Islamic State announced that its goal is to take control of the mosques in Mecca and Medina and oust the “serpent’s head”—the Saudi royal family. Its English language magazine published a cover story with a photo of the Kaaba with the Islamic State’s black flag flying over it. Islamic State militants have attacked Saudi security posts along the Iraqi border and sent suicide bombers to attack Shiite mosques inside the kingdom in order to fuel sectarian enmity. In response to the threat the Interior Ministry has arrested hundreds of Islamic State operatives and is constructing a 600 mile long security fence or wall along the Saudi-Iraqi border, similar to a 1,000 mile long wall it built along the Saudi-Yemeni border to defeat al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.Clearly if Putin gets his way, the coming winter will create a migrant crisis that will shake Europe to its core. Saudi Arabia, bogged down in Yemen, will face a nation of Jihadis based in Syria. From this point of view Obama’s breezy dismissal of Putin’s intervention is hardly justified. It is almost comically obtuse. If Putin’s offense in Syria succeeds enough to breath the life into Assad’s regime, Syria’s agony will be extended for years. Far from being something Obama can watch from afar, it has the potential to break open NATO’s southern flank like a can-opener and deliver up the Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, into the hands of America’s mortal enemies.Obama should be casting around for asymmetric alternatives of his own to counter Putin. Instead he appears to have adopted a policy of denial, refusing to believe that anyone could have outsmarted him.


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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said a coalition between Syria, Russia, Iran and Iraq must succeed "or else the whole region will be destroyed".4 Oct Mr Assad also criticised the US-led coalition and its air strikes in Syria and Iraq as counter-productive, saying that terrorism had only spread.Meanwhile, Russia has carried out more air strikes in Syria it says targeted so-called Islamic State (IS) positions. Syrian activists say the raids appear to have focused on other rebel groups.In an interview with Iranian state television, reported by the Syrian presidency Twitter feed, President Assad said Syria, Russia, Iran and Iraq were united in battling terrorism and would achieve "practical results", unlike the US-led coalition.

Mr Assad's international opponents say a negotiated solution to Syria's four-year-old civil war must involve the president stepping down, although some Western nations now say he could remain during a transitional period.But Mr Assad insisted: "Discussion about the political system or officials in Syria is an internal Syrian affair." Russia's defence ministry said on Sunday that its aircraft had bombed 10 IS targets in Syria over the past 24 hours - including command posts, a training camp, ammunition stores and a workshop making explosive devices including suicide belts.It said its air campaign, which began on Wednesday, was being expanded. "As a result of our air strikes on Isil [IS] targets, we have managed to disrupt their control system, the terrorist organisation's supply lines, and also caused significant damage to the infrastructure used to prepare acts of terror," the ministry added.Syrian activists said Russian strikes in central Homs province had killed at least two children and a shepherd, and wounded a further 15 people. The Syrian authorities have reportedly detained a prominent opposition figure, days after he criticised the Russian air strikes. Munzer Khaddam, spokesman for the National Co-ordination Committee for Democratic Change, was held at a checkpoint near the capital Damascus, an official from his group told AFP news agency.

October 4 at 1:34 PM


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DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s President Bashar Assad said in comments Sunday that the air campaign by Russia against “terrorists” in his country must succeed or the whole region will be destroyed, stressing that the fight against terrorism must precede a political process.In the interview with Iran’s Khabar TV, Assad also accused Western nations of fueling the refugee crisis and said the U.S.-led coalition to fight the Islamic State group will only spark more instability in his country and the region.These were Assad’s first comments since Russia launched its air campaign against multiple armed groups in Syria Wednesday. While the IS controls large swaths of eastern Syria, the Russian attacks have largely focused on the northwestern and central provinces — the gateways to the heartland of Assad’s power in the capital and on the Mediterranean coast. Russia’s only naval base outside of its territories is also located on the coast, in the Syrian city of Tartus.On Sunday, a suicide attack in the center of Homs city, controlled by the government, killed one person and injured 18 others, state TV said. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulated by supporters on Twitter. This is the first such attack by the militant group in Homs following the start of the Russian campaign, which has hit parts of the province controlled by rebel groups. But an ancient town in Homs province, which is controlled by IS, was spared. Assad said the Russian campaign has the potential to succeed because it is supported by Iran and has international, if not Western, support. He called on countries that support the armed opposition to stop, which would increase the chances of the campaign to succeed.

“It must succeed or we are facing the destruction of a whole region, and not a country or two,” he said. “The chances for success are large, not small.”He said the Russian intervention is open-ended, and was planned in cooperation with the Syrian military. Syria’s war is entering its fifth year, with at least 250,000 people killed and half of the pre-war population on the move— 4 million refugees and 8 million internally displaced.

Assad has accused Western countries, neighboring Turkey and some Gulf states of fuelling the war by supporting the armed opposition, all of which he calls terrorists. Militant groups the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, are among the strongest groups operating in Syria. But there are dozens of other rebel groups, some western-backed and armed, fighting against Assad and the IS. Assad said combatting terrorism is “the basis for any solution in Syria.”“The only solution for us is to strike at terrorism. Implementing any solution or political ideas agreed upon will need a state of stability. Otherwise it will have no value,” he said.Russia said it is launching its campaign to target IS and other terrorists groups, but some of the targets so far have included Western-backed groups. A top official with Russia’s general staff, Col.-Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, said Saturday that militants are leaving the areas they control in panic, estimating that 600 of them have left their positions and are trying to reach Europe. It was not clear how the Russians were able to determine their intended destination. He vowed that the air campaign will intensify in the coming days.

On Sunday, the fifth day of the air campaign, Russia said its warplanes had carried out 20 missions in the past day, attacking Islamic State positions in the northwestern province of Idlib. The province is controlled by a rebel coalition known as Jaish al-Fatah, which includes the Nusra Front, but not IS. The statement also said the warplanes attacked a training camp in Raqqa province, which is controlled by the Islamic State group.Activists reported raids on Sunday in the central province of Homs, where at least two children and a shepherd were killed in the town of Talbiseh and nearby areas. A video posted on an activist media platform posted showed panicked residents fleeing.


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Assad has in recent months suffered a series of battlefield setbacks, conceding that his army has had to relinquish some areas in the north to be able to better defend core areas seen as more critical to the government. Some say Russia’s campaign is essentially a mission to prop up the embattled president. President Barack Obama on Friday vehemently rejected Russia’s military actions in Syria, saying the campaign will only strengthen IS.

Syria President: Russia campaign must succeed

By Albert Aji and Sarah El Deeb | AP October 4 at 1:34 PMDAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s President Bashar Assad said in comments Sunday that the air campaign by Russia against “terrorists” in his country must succeed or the whole region will be destroyed, stressing that the fight against terrorism must precede a political process.In the interview with Iran’s Khabar TV, Assad also accused Western nations of fueling the refugee crisis and said the U.S.-led coalition to fight the Islamic State group will only spark more instability in his country and the region.These were Assad’s first comments since Russia launched its air campaign against multiple armed groups in Syria Wednesday. While the IS controls large swaths of eastern Syria, the Russian attacks have largely focused on the northwestern and central provinces — the gateways to the heartland of Assad’s power in the capital and on the Mediterranean coast. Russia’s only naval base outside of its territories is also located on the coast, in the Syrian city of Tartus.On Sunday, a suicide attack in the center of Homs city, controlled by the government, killed one person and injured 18 others, state TV said. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulated by supporters on Twitter. This is the first such attack by the militant group in Homs following the start of the Russian campaign, which has hit parts of the province controlled by rebel groups. But an ancient town in Homs province, which is controlled by IS, was spared.Assad said the Russian campaign has the potential to succeed because it is supported by Iran and has international, if not Western, support. He called on countries that support the armed opposition to stop, which would increase the chances of the campaign to succeed.

“It must succeed or we are facing the destruction of a whole region, and not a country or two,” he said. “The chances for success are large, not small.”He said the Russian intervention is open-ended, and was planned in cooperation with the Syrian military.Syria’s war is entering its fifth year, with at least 250,000 people killed and half of the pre-war population on the move— 4 million refugees and 8 million internally displaced.

Assad has accused Western countries, neighboring Turkey and some Gulf states of fuelling the war by supporting the armed opposition, all of which he calls terrorists. Militant groups the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, are among the strongest groups operating in Syria. But there are dozens of other rebel groups, some western-backed and armed, fighting against Assad and the IS.Assad said combatting terrorism is “the basis for any solution in Syria.”“The only solution for us is to strike at terrorism. Implementing any solution or political ideas agreed upon will need a state of stability. Otherwise it will have no value,” he said.Russia said it is launching its campaign to target IS and other terrorists groups, but some of the targets so far have included Western-backed groups. A top official with Russia’s general staff, Col.-Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, said Saturday that militants are leaving the areas they control in panic, estimating


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that 600 of them have left their positions and are trying to reach Europe. It was not clear how the Russians were able to determine their intended destination. He vowed that the air campaign will intensify in the coming days.

On Sunday, the fifth day of the air campaign, Russia said its warplanes had carried out 20 missions in the past day, attacking Islamic State positions in the northwestern province of Idlib. The province is controlled by a rebel coalition known as Jaish al-Fatah, which includes the Nusra Front, but not IS. The statement also said the warplanes attacked a training camp in Raqqa province, which is controlled by the Islamic State group.Activists reported raids on Sunday in the central province of Homs, where at least two children and a shepherd were killed in the town of Talbiseh and nearby areas. A video posted on an activist media platform posted showed panicked residents fleeing.Assad has in recent months suffered a series of battlefield setbacks, conceding that his army has had to relinquish some areas in the north to be able to better defend core areas seen as more critical to the government. Some say Russia’s campaign is essentially a mission to prop up the embattled president. President Barack Obama on Friday vehemently rejected Russia’s military actions in Syria, saying the campaign will only strengthen IS.Assad said the U.S.-led coalition against IS has failed to achieve any results. “I don’t think that coalition will achieve anything except a certain balance between those forces on the ground to keep the fire raging.”Assad said that the West’s failure to achieve its goals in Syria has forced them to change their positions on excluding him from a future political settlement. In recent weeks, some European officials said Assad must be part of a negotiated settlement to the conflict— a position rejected by the Syrian opposition, the U.S., and Gulf allies.In the more than hour long interview, Assad said it is up to the Syrian people to decide who rules the country and under what political system, not foreign leaders.“What is for certain is that the Western officials are lost, lack clarity of vision and are feeling the failure of their plots (toward Syria),” he said. “The only goal that was realized ... is the destruction of much infrastructure in Syria, shedding lots of blood.”Now, the Western governments are paying the price of their failed policy in Syria, he said, because terrorism has been exported to them as well as a huge influx of refugees.Assad blasted Western countries, accusing them of fuelling terrorism by supporting rebel groups, and ultimately the refugee crisis.“In reality, they are the biggest contributor for reaching this stage by supporting terrorism and imposing a siege on Syria,” he said, in reference to Western countries. “They attack terrorism but they are terrorists in their policies either by imposing the siege of by supporting the terrorists.”Over a half million people have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, more than double the figure for all of 2014, most of whom are Syrians.European countries have grappled with the crisis, described as the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Reuters says Iranian reinforcements to aid Syrians and Hezbollah allies in operations backed by Russian air strikes.01 Oct 2015 Reports from Lebanon say hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria in the last 10 days and will soon join government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies in a major ground offensive backed by Russian air strikes.Reuters news agency reported on Thursday the arrival of the Iranians, quoting two Lebanese sources:The [Russian] air strikes will, in the near future, be accompanied by ground advances by the Syrian


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army and its allies," said one of the sources familiar with political and military developments in the conflict. "It is possible that the coming land operations will be focused in the Idlib and Hama countryside." Al Jazeera could not independently verify the report.

Saudi Clerics Call For Jihad Against Russia, Iran; NATO Warns Of Airspace "Violations"It’s now been nearly a week since Russia began its air campaign in Syria and as we’ve documented extensively, both Moscow and the West have put their respective propaganda machines into high gear in an effort to control the narrative and thus dictate how history will remember Syria’s four-year-old, bloody civil war. Lacking viable options in the face of Russia’s rapid military deployment at Latakia, the US has turned to the only thing left in the spin toolbox: the contention that Moscow’s airstrikes are hitting the “good” guys. Here’s WSJ:

Russia has targeted Syrian rebel groups backed by the Central Intelligence Agency in a string of airstrikes running for days, leading the U.S. to conclude that it is an intentional effort by Moscow, American officials said. The assessment, which is shared by commanders on the ground, has deepened U.S. anger at Moscow and sparked a debate within the administration over how the U.S. can come to the aid of its proxy forces without getting sucked deeper into a proxy war that PresidentBarack Obama says he doesn’t want. The White House has so far been noncommittal about coming to the aid of CIA-backed rebels, wary of taking steps that could trigger a broader conflict. U.S. officials said Russia’s targeting of its allies on the ground was a direct challenge to Mr. Obama’s Syria policy. Underlining the distrust, the Pentagon decided against sharing any information with Moscow about the areas where U.S. allies were located because it suspected Russia would use that information to target them more directly or provide the information to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. American officials and the allied commanders said several other rebel groups covertly backed by the U.S. and its coalition allies have also been targeted by the Russians. They include the First Coastal Division, whose base in northern Latakia province near the Turkish border was struck twice on Oct. 2 starting at 9:45 p.m., according to the group’s commander, Capt. Muhammad Haj Ali. The Obama administration briefly considered asking the Russians to avoid certain areas inside Syria held by moderate opposition rebels, officials said. But they set aside the idea when it became evident the Russians could use the information to more directly target America’s allies. There have long been skeptics within the Obama administration and the Congress about the CIA’s arm-and-train program in Syria, reflecting doubts in both branches of government about the ability and the wisdom of trying to build an anti-Assad army from scratch. “On day one, you can say it was a one-time mistake,” a senior U.S. official said of Russia’s strike on one of the allied rebel group’s headquarters. “But on day three and day four, there’s no question it’s intentional. They know what they’re hitting.”Yes, they indeed do “know what they’re hitting.” They’re hitting any and all targets that are strategically significant for Assad’s enemies which means that, as we’ve said repeatedly of late, this is going to be over in a matter of months if not weeks unless the US decides it’s finally time to deploy


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the best recession cure of all: war. And as unlikely as you may think that is, the media seems to be preparing the American public for a possible direct confrontation with the Russians. As a reminder, Moscow's warplanes allegedly violated NATO member Turkey's airspace on Monday and thanks to Erdogan's need to secure Washington's acquiescence for Ankara's crackdown on the PKK, the US is flying sorties out of Incirlik which means, as we noted earlier today, "close calls" between US and Russian jets are likely to increase. Here’s CBS:

U.S. pilots flying F-16s out of Turkey first picked up the Russian planes on radar. The Russians closed to within 20 miles, at which point the American pilots could visually identify them on their targeting cameras. Lt. Gen. Charles Brown, commander of the American air campaign, said the Russians have come even closer than that to his unmanned drones. "The closest has been within a handful of miles of our remotely piloted aircraft," said Brown. "But to our manned aircraft they've not been closer than about 20 miles." Brown said he intends to simply work around the Russians in Syria, and he doesn't think they will crowd out American operations. "We're up a lot more often than [the Russians] are so when we do have to move around [them] for safe operation, it's for a small period of time compared to the hours and hours that we're airborne over Iraq and Syria," said Brown.Indeed, NATO is apparently "not buying" Russia's "excuse" that it violated Turkey's airspace by accident. Here's Reuters:

NATO on Tuesday rejected Moscow's explanation that its warplanes violated the air space of alliance member Turkey at the weekend by mistake and said Russia was sending more ground troops to Syria. With Russia extending its air strikes to include the ancient city of Palmyra, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was losing patience with Russian violations of his country's air space. "An attack on Turkey means an attack on NATO," Erdogan warned at a Brussels news conference. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had reports of a substantial Russian military build-up in Syria, including ground troops and ships in the eastern Mediterranean. "I will not speculate on the motives ... but this does not look like an accident and we have seen two of them," Stoltenberg said of the air incursions over Turkey's border with Syria. He noted that they "lasted for a long time". The incidents, which NATO has described as "extremely dangerous" and "unacceptable", underscore the risks of a further escalation of the Syrian civil war, as Russian and U.S. warplanes fly combat missions over the same country for the first time since World War Two.Meanwhile, The Kremlin is being careful to preserve its image as the hero in all of this by formally rejecting calls for a no-fly zone, even as Russia's bombing raids have effectively served to keep


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everyone else out of the skies. Via Bloomberg:

Russia rebuffed calls for a no-fly zone over Syria as Saudi clerics and Islamist rebels urged for retaliation against its extended bombing campaign that has targeted Islamic State and other militant groups in the Arab country. Officials from Moscow ruled out sending troops to take part in ground operations in Syria, a day after the head of the Russian parliament’s defense committee said volunteers could go to fight, including some who took part in the conflict in Ukraine. NATO meanwhile said Russian incursions into Turkish airspace in recent days looked deliberate. A no-fly zone would breach Syrian sovereignty and “isn’t based on the UN Charter and international law,” Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who is Russia’s special presidential envoy to the Middle East, said in an interview published Tuesday by the Interfax news service. “Of course, we are against this. You need to respect the sovereignty of countries.” Russia began its air campaign last week to bomb Islamic State and other jihadist groups in Syria, its first foray outside the former Soviet Union in more than three decades. Syria’s opposition groups, including Islamist rebels, and anti-Russia fighters with Islamic State have criticized the move, with many likening its intervention in Syria to the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan that began in 1979."Many" may ideed be likening it to the Soviet-Afghan war but one person who certainly is not is Moscow's spin lady extraordinaire Maria Zakharova: RUSSIA WILL NEVER REPEAT AFGHAN EXPERIENCE IN SYRIA: ZAKHAROVASo there you have it. But even if Russia doesn't intend to repeat the Afghan experience, and even if the notion being propogated in the Western media that Moscow's effort to eradicate Assad's opponents will somehow promote terrorism is largely a myth, it looks as though the Saudis are set to promote still more violence in Syria thus creating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and on that note, we close with this from Bloomberg:

More than 50 Saudi clerics called on Syrian rebels and Muslim countries on Monday to support a jihad against Syria’s government and its allies. "This is a real war on Sunnis, their countries and their identities," said the statement. It urged the rebels to join a "jihad against the enemy of God and your enemy and Muslims will back you every way they can."


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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 4-1-Syria-13

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