War Chronicle 10 Jan 2016

6 views

Skip to first unread message

Allborn Equalrights

unread,

Jan 9, 2016, 11:11:57 PM1/9/16

to Brisbane Anti-War Co-ordinating Committee

1) MASTER OF PUPPETS AND THE STAGE OF CHAOS

2) Syrian Army launches counter-offensive in Hama

3) NATO: Who’s the Aggressor? (I & 11)

4) Islamic State at Europe’s Doorstep: Operation in Libya Imminent

5) Changing Turkish-Russian Relations

6) Fact Check: The Truth About Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr,

7) Why a freedom fighter was killed to fit Saudi Arabia’s hawkish narrative

............................................................................................

1) OPINION: THE MASTER OF PUPPETS AND THE STAGE OF CHAOS

8-01-2015, Written by Ahmed Rajeev exclusively for SouthFront. He is an executive editor of bangla.hunternews.ru.

http://southfront.org/opinion-the-master-of-puppets-and-the-stage-of-chaos/

............................................................

2) Syrian Army launches counter-offensive in Hama

07.01.2016 | http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/01/07/syrian-army-launches-counter-offensive-in-hama.html

almasdarnews.com, 6^th January, 2016 - The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) recaptured the village of Tell Mantana and the Ma’an-Ashtan checkpoint in northern Hama after a surprise offensive was launched from the SAA stronghold of Ma’an. Meanwhile, local Islamist militants loyal to Jund al-Aqsa (an al-Qaeda affiliated rebel group) have hastily retreated to the village of Ashtan.

Heavy clashes are reportedly ongoing in the area. In early November 2015, government troops were forced to retreat from the strategic town of Morek – in fact, the seasoned 555th Brigade was entirely re-stationed to Khannaser to combat ISIS fighters who had cut the government supply line to Aleppo. Simultaneously, Islamist rebels of Jaish al-Fateh and Jund al-Aqsa launched an offensive in northern Hama which had them seize control of Morek whilst securing a buffer zone around the town.

Strategically, the SAA is now set to launch a wide-scale offensive towards southern Idlib. Meanwhile, government troops at both flanks of Idlib, in Lattakia and southern Aleppo respectively, have made huge gains over the past months. Thereby, Jaish al-Fatah now has itself exposed along 3 fronts in Idlib.

...............................................................................................

3) NATO: Who’s the Aggressor? (Part I) by Michael Jabara CARLEY | 06.01.2016

There has been much discussion recently of NATO in the mainstream and alternate media. Why was NATO founded in the first place and why did it expand so rapidly after the collapse and dismemberment of the USSR in 1991...

Who said the cold war only began after 1945? Even Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 failed to provoke a western reappraisal of relations with the USSR. France and Britain were unable to sort out their security priorities. Soviet diplomatic efforts to build an anti-Nazi alliance foundered on open or disguised western sympathies for fascism. The crisis of capitalism in the 1930s made fascism attractive, but so did western Sovietophobia. Even after the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the British government could not entirely shed its anti-Soviet enmity...

The USSR paid a huge price for victory, no one knows the exact human cost, but estimates are around 27 million civilian and military dead, plus the physical destruction of much of European Russia from Stalingrad in the east, to the Northern Caucasus and the Crimea in the south, to Leningrad and other points to the north, all the way to the Soviet Union’s western frontiers. Some 70,000 cities, towns and villages were laid waste during the war, not to mention tens of thousands of factories, collective farms, schools, hospitals and other public buildings. While the United States became rich and suffered few casualties in comparison to the Red Army, the Soviet Union emerged from the war poor and devastated. The most urgent priority was reconstruction, and for that, Soviet generalissimo Joseph Stalin hoped for help from the Anglo-American allies. Yet in the west the USSR was regarded as a post-war threat to European security.

Stalin was aware of Anglo-American hostility, but tried nevertheless for a time to work with his putative «allies» without however sacrificing what he saw as Soviet vital interests. «I am not a propagandist», Stalin said to an American interlocutor, «I am a man of business». Soviet military policy was unprovocative and the huge Red Army was demobilised to approximately 25% of its maximum wartime strength. Big political issues were Poland and Germany. Poland was settled along Soviet lines, but Germany was under joint Allied occupation and there Stalin could not obtain whatever he wished. Having been invaded twice by Germany over the span of little more than a quarter century, Stalin did not want to see the rebuilding of a German state hostile to the USSR.

This was precisely what the United States had in mind. From 1946 onward the US government went about establishing a West German «partial state», integrated into a US dominated western anti-Soviet European bloc. Essentially, it was Churchill’s idea of building a new German counterbalance to the USSR, an idea first conceptualised in Operation «Unthinkable». The eventual Soviet countermove, the Berlin «blockade» in 1948, was a clumsy attempt to gain leverage over the United States to stop the establishment of a West German state. The so-called blockade did not work and served as a splendid pretext for setting up NATO in the following year. In Moscow NATO was viewed as an alliance aimed at the USSR. The West German entry into that alliance seemed like an obvious eventuality.

Funded generously by the United States, the polarisation of Europe continued into the 1950s, and West Germany became a NATO member in May 1955. This development provoked the formation of the Warsaw pact, led by the USSR. Believing western propaganda about an aggressive Soviet Union, an ill-informed person might think that the Warsaw pact provoked the organisation of NATO and not the other way ‘round.

After the collapse and dismemberment of the USSR, NATO ought logically to have been closed down. Even if you accept the NATO line that the alliance was organised for purely defensive purposes against a Soviet threat, there was no USSR and no threat after 1991. It is well known moreover that the US Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand «one inch» toward the east, a promise that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush did not keep. NATO post-Soviet expansion cannot logically be explained except as a movement to extend US hegemony eastward. It was an opportune moment. Russia was in turmoil and led by Boris Yeltsin who needed US backing to stay in power. Based on the principle «I can, therefore I will», NATO expanded quickly, inter alia, to include Poland and the Baltic states, former nesting grounds of interwar fascism and anti-Semitism and Russophobic to the core.

In Eastern Europe, NATO membership became a license for impunity: SS uniforms and banners came out of mothballs in the Baltics and a new atavistic wave of Russophobia swept over Poland.

NATO expanded to construct a new anti-Russian cordon sanitaire, suggesting that the US «Deep State» was not sure it had sufficiently weakened the much reduced Russian Federation. It was an insurance policy against any Russian resurgence, and an arm to be used against any state which failed to do US bidding.

Such was the case of Yugoslavia, a multi-national state torn apart by ethnic conflict encouraged by the United States and NATO. If you look at a map of Yugoslavia in 1941 after its partition by Nazi Germany, you will see similarities with the US/NATO dismemberment of «former Yugoslavia».

The west sided with neo-fascists in Croatia, Muslim fundamentalists in Bosnia and Kosovo, portraying its former wartime allies, the Serbs, as villains, aggressors, and perpetrators of genocide. US and NATO bombers attacked Serbia in 1999 to subdue resistance against the loss of the Serbian province of Kosovo. In a flagrant act of aggression, they blew up bridges, trains, and infrastructure and bombed Belgrade, killing civilians in the way.

Clinton invoked the «Responsibility to Protect» (R2P), and claimed NATO represented the «international» community. These were audacious, bogus claims to justify military intervention. The underlying message to any apostate of US domination was submit or be destroyed.

Continued ... Part II

NATO: Who’s the Aggressor? (Part II) by Michael Jabara CARLEY | 07.01.2016

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/01/07/nato-who-aggressor-ii.html

The US quest for domination did not stop in «former Yugoslavia». After 9/11 in 2001 the US and NATO invaded Afghanistan, though the Afghan Taliban government had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks in the United States. To this day the war in Afghanistan goes on and none too well for the United States. No wonder Afghanistan is called «the graveyard of empires»

Two years later it was the turn of Iraq though this was mostly an Anglo-American venture. The US government claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had «weapons of mass destruction» (WMD), ready to use. R2P was invoked again to justify the new war. A massive invasion led to the destruction of Iraq and the execution of Saddam. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died because of the US invasion or because of prior stringent economic sanctions. Millions became homeless. US authorities turned Iraq upside down in the hopes of finding proof of Iraqi WMDs. It was all a charade. There were no WMDs. On the gallows Saddam bravely accused his executioners of being traitorous US puppets. The United States claimed its objective was to establish «democracy» in Iraq. President Putin, who could no longer tolerate the bogus American narrative, called it «airstrike democracy».

Submit or be destroyed was the real US message. Twelve years later there is no democracy in Iraq, only ruins, continued war and misery.

In 2011 it was the turn of Libya, a rich, independent country, led by Muammar Gaddafi, who for the previous eight years had maintained constructive relations with the west. The US and NATO rolled out a new pretext for R2P. Gaddafi’s forces had attacked the civilian population, a claim as false and preposterous as the WMDs in Iraq. Russia and China abstained in a UN Security Council vote to approve a «no-fly zone», a position they came to regret, because NATO promptly used the resolution as a pretext for an all-out air war against the Libyan government. Libya was destroyed and Gaddafi, sodomised with a bayonet and murdered. The then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, like some ancient tribal barbarian (no offence intended to the latter) gloated and sneered over images of Gaddafi’s bloody corpse. It is reported that Putin has also seen the images and bowed his head in shame and anger. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya remains in ruins, chaos and misery. These are the works, says journalist Pepe Escobar, of the «Empire of Chaos», determined to maintain global hegemony, along with its trusty NATO sidekicks, at whatever cost.

Profligate US/NATO violence did not end there. Encouraged by their «success» in Libya, the United States and some of its NATO «allies», notably France, Britain and Turkey, turned their sights on Syria and its leader Bashar al Assad. After Saddam and Gaddafi, they reckoned, it was Assad’s turn to swing. His days were counted, said US officials. That was back in 2011. The Syrian war continues with no end yet in sight. Like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, Syria is in ruins. It is fighting for survival against a US-NATO backed Jihadist invasion. As elsewhere, the United States and important NATO members have allied themselves with Muslim fundamentalists, who go by many names – Jaish al-Fatah, Ahrar ash-Sham, al-Nusra and Daesh, amongst others – but are cut from the same blood-drenched, terrorist cloth.

Closer to Russian borders, the United States inspired the Georgian attack on South Ossetia in 2008 which ended in catastrophe for Georgia. «We have your backs», American officials told the Georgians, but apparently not. In 2014 the Ukraine became the next battlefield where the United States and European Union (EU) supported a fascist coup d’état against the lawfully elected government. The United States intends to make the Ukraine the buckle of its anti-Russian cordon sanitaire. As in Syria, however, complete success has so far eluded the United States, even though the usual signs of its presence, violence, ruin, and chaos, are everywhere to be seen.

What is one to conclude about the conduct of the United States and NATO since 1991? In what way can NATO now be described as a «defensive» alliance? NATO was not abolished because the United States wanted to maintain its military domination in Europe and check any future, however remote resurgence of Russia. It also wanted to discourage any European movement toward political independence from Washington. When the EU discusses creation of an independent military force, for example, you can count on the United States to exercise its veto. An independent EU army, Washington knows full well, would undermine NATO and thus US domination. Ironically, the raison d’être of the EU was to re-establish European political and economic independence, but in fact it has done neither. NATO and the EU, as it presently functions, are institutions enforcing European vassalage to the United States. Instead of protecting European security, NATO has endangered it by dragging Europe into gratuitous US quarrels with Russia and into aggressive US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

European leaders like David Cameron, François Hollande, and Angela Merkel are US vassals, so much so that they have undermined their countries’ economic and security interests. What chains bind these leaders to the United States? Is it personal advantage? Are they afraid to act independently? Are European political and military bureaucracies too tightly bound to Washington? Is the Atlanticist «Deep State» too deeply entrenched? Or, are European leaders simply complacent, taking the easy way out and liking the narcotic pleasures of proximity to US «power»?

Since 1991 the United States has become increasingly belligerent and reckless, like Wilhelmine Germany prior to World War I, but far more dangerous. Washington flaunts international law and makes war against or threatens those states which do not recognise US domination. American elites exhibit no remorse for the death and destruction they have wrought. Any why should they? No one can hold them to account. The EU and NATO serve as «international» cover to legitimise US behaviour. It’s the «international community», according to Washington.

Observing these developments, President Putin has become a «truth-teller» challenging Washington’s self-interested, exceptionalist narratives. But he has not threatened Europe, or the United States. On the contrary, he urges broad-based security cooperation and has long proposed Russia-Europe political and economic integration. In spite of these proposals (or because of them, a cynic would say), US policy continues unchanged. When Russia therefore responds to the NATO military build-up in the Eastern Europe by strengthening its defences, don’t call it «aggression».

Can Europeans put a brake on escalating tensions? It will not be easy. The best way, really the only way, is for Europe’s most influential powers to withdraw from NATO. It’s an audacious proposition, I admit, but Europe needs to stop being an American cat’s paw and to establish some political distance from Washington. Only Europe can effectively discourage the present course of US policy. Is it not time to break the long cycle of western Russophobia?

Russia wants to be part of Europe, not against Europe. It’s a formidable country with formidable people, who would be strong allies in the tough fight which we now face against Daesh. Just remember what the Soviet people did during the Great Patriotic War. Ask the Germans; they’ll tell you.

If you get to know the Russians, you’ll find they’re not a bad lot, who love, laugh and weep like any other people, but who will defend their country fiercely like no others. Sure, they have bad apples, but so do we. I for one would rather have Russians with me than against me.

I ask in conclusion, what about you?

..........................................................................................

4) Islamic State at Europe’s Doorstep: Operation in Libya Imminent

Peter KORZUN | 06.01.2016

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/01/06/islamic-state-europe-doorstep-operation-libya-imminent.html

While facing a string of defeats in its core territories, but in Libya, the Islamic State (IS) continues to advance on key oil facilities in the country. On January 4, the militant group began an attack east from its home base around Sirte. On January 5, IS was in control of the oil tanks and their immediate surroundings.

The group announced the capture of Bin Jawad, 30km (19 miles) west of Sidra on the road from its stronghold in Sirte. It’s a significant achievement. Evidently, the seizure of yet another population centre by the group is concerning. It has continued onwards from Bin Jawad towards the towns of Sidra and Ras Lanuf – the Libya’s biggest oil ports, capable of shipping more than 500,000 barrels a day.

Although they have been closed for just over a year they have vital crude oil storage facilities.

The capture of the ports would enable the terrorist group to supplement its revenue with money made from the oil products trade in a similar fashion to its counterparts in Syria. The jihadis could make gains inland and towards the east, putting at risk terminals at Brega and Zueitina, as well as a cluster of oilfields, such as Amal and Nafoora, that have enabled two-thirds of Libya’s current production.

Libya's National Oil Company (NOC) made a desperate appeal for help on Jan.5 after Islamic State fighters clashed with forces guarding key oil terminals, shelling storage facilities and setting oil tanks on fire», the Financial Times reported.

«We are helpless and not being able to do anything against this deliberate destruction to the oil installations in Es-Sider (Sidra) and Ras Lanuf», NOC said in what it titled a «Cry for Help» on its website.

After banding together with local fighters, the group began to rapidly expand its reach out from Sirte and towards the rest of the surrounding region. Approximately 125 miles of territory along the Libyan coast is under de facto IS control. IS’s consolidation of territory in Sirte gives the group a foothold in close proximity to Europe — and near a number of potentially fragile neighboring states.

Patrick Johnston, a counterterrorism analyst at the RAND Corporation, also told the USA Today that «Libya is probably right now the most significant threat to becoming a full-blown sanctuary» for IS.

Libya has had rival administrations since August 2014, when an Islamist-backed militia alliance overran Tripoli, forcing the government to take refuge in the east. The UN is pressing both sides to accept a power-sharing agreement it hopes will help reverse gains made by IS. On December 17, under UN guidance, envoys from both sides and a number of independent political figures signed a deal for a unity government. It calls for a 17-member government, led by businessman Fayez el-Sarraj as premier, based in Tripoli. With the new government in place Libya can appeal for international intervention. Until then, a decision to intervene must be approved by the UN Security Council. There are reports the intervention has started to breach the international law.

On Jan.3, the Daily Mirror reported British special operations teams (SAS) are already operating in Libya preparing for the arrival of around 1,000 British infantrymen to be sent against IS there in early 2016.

The forces including military close observation experts from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment are spearheading a major coalition offensive against the terror network. The operation will involve around 6,000 American and European soldiers and marines - led by Italian forces and supported mainly by Britain and France. A senior military source told the Mirror, «This coalition will provide a wide range of resources from surveillance, to strike operations against Islamic State who have made significant progress in Libya».

Regardless of the final results of this offensive, it proves that the Islamic State in Libya is a growing threat. IS has threatened to use its location in Libya to disrupt European security and economic well-being. Due to the fractious nature of the Libyan politics, hardly any one group will be able to dislodge the terrorist militant group from its positions without outside help. With this in mind, growing calls for international intervention are to be expected. An operation appears to be unavoidable - it’s a matter of time. The IS Libyan branch is an imminent threat to Europe (Russia and the EU and NATO members) and a faraway, indirect threat located overseas for the United States. Russia and France have set a good example of close coordination in Syria. Now the events dictate the need for urgent joint diplomatic effort to address the emerged threat. Russia with its power projection capability and main European actors could form a formidable force to defeat IS in North Africa coordinating efforts in accordance with international law, if need be.

...........................................................................................................................................

Was a single accused territorial violation of supposedly only 17 seconds a warrant for the death of a pilot and the destruction of Russian military equipment? Is it also worth the repercussions Turkey has been facing since? It has had major industries affected immensely with the introduction of economic sanctions. It has had its ISIS oil trade exposed. Russian military has expanded in Syria including the powerful S-400 missile system. And it has also had the Army of Conquest, the terrorist group it was hoping to topple Assad, in full retreat in Latakia and southern Aleppo province.