This Times article should have been written by H. L.Mencken after reading a Kafka novel:
1) The "president" of Yemen was installed, not elected; he was run out of the country because he was unacceptable to those who held power in that country; he fled to Saudi Arabia and resigned his presidency; at Saudi Arabia's demand he withdreew his withdrawal, and now command a portion of the port city of Aden, but only because of Saudi Arabia's naval and air support.
2) . The "president" condemns the United States for killing civilians, and his patron, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is killing thousands of civilians, and starving millions of them with its naval blockade. "Finally, Sir, have you no shame?"
3) And the final kicker: the "president" withdraws permission for United States' ground operations, which he ha no power to prevent, because the Trumpists listed Yemen as a "terrorist" country. Utterly pointless.
Ah well. But it does illustrate how poorly Tuumpists are educated in the realities of even so poor a country as Yemen. Until they get up tospeed, it is better, after all, to leave Syria to Russian "kindless."
Read the article. Think of Menchen. Wish he were still with us.
Yemen Withdraws Permission for U.S. Antiterror Ground Missions
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Women walk past graffiti denouncing strikes by U.S. drones, in Sanaa, Yemen.CreditKhaled Abdullah/Reuters
WASHINGTON — Angry at the civilian casualties incurred last month in the first commando raid authorized by President Trump, Yemen has withdrawn permission for the United States to run Special Operations ground missions against suspected terrorist groups in the country, according to American officials.
Grisly photographs of children apparently killed in the crossfire of a 50-minute firefight during the raid caused outrage in Yemen. A member of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, Chief Petty Officer William Owens, was also killed in the operation.
While the White House continues to insist that the attack was a “success” — a characterization it repeated on Tuesday — the suspension of commando operations is a setback for Mr. Trump, who has made it clear he plans to take a far more aggressive approach against Islamic militants.
It also calls into question whether the Pentagon will receive permission from the president for far more autonomy in selecting and executing its counterterrorism missions in Yemen, which it sought, unsuccessfully, from President Barack Obama in the last months of his term.
Mr. Obama deferred the decision to Mr. Trump, who appeared inclined to grant it: His approval of the Jan. 29 raid came over a dinner four nights earlier with his top national security aides, rather than in the kind of rigorous review in the Situation Room that became fairly routine under President George W. Bush and Mr. Obama.
The raid, in which just about everything went wrong, was an early test of Mr. Trump’s national security decision-making — and his willingness to rely on the assurances of his military advisers. His aides say that even though the decision was made over a dinner, it had been fully vetted, and had the requisite legal approvals.
Mr. Trump will soon have to make a decision about the more general request by the Pentagon to allow more of such operations in Yemen without detailed, and often time-consuming, White House review. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will allow that, or how the series of mishaps that marked his first approval of such an operation may have altered his thinking about the human and political risks of similar operations.
The Pentagon has said that the main objective of the raid was to recover laptop computers, cellphones and other information that could help fill gaps in its understanding of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, whose leaders have tried to carry out at least three attacks on the United States. But it is unclear whether the information the commandos recovered will prove valuable.
The White House continued its defense of the raid on Tuesday, making no reference to the Yemeni reaction.
Neither the White House nor the Yemenis have publicly announced the suspension. Pentagon spokesmen declined to comment, but other military and civilian officials confirmed that Yemen’s reaction had been strong.Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, denied reports that the purpose of the attack was to capture or kill any specific Qaeda leader. “The raid that was conducted in Yemen was an intelligence-gathering raid,” he said. “That’s what it was. It was highly successful. It achieved the purpose it was going to get, save the loss of life that we suffered and the injuries that occurred.”
It was unclear if Yemen’s decision to halt the ground attacks was also influenced by Mr. Trump’s inclusion of the country on his list of nations from which he wants to temporarily suspend all immigration, an executive order that is now being challenged in the federal courts.
According to American civilian and military officials, the Yemeni ban on operations does not extend to military drone attacks, and does not affect the handful of American military advisers who are providing intelligence support to the Yemenis and forces from the United Arab Emirates.
In 2014, Yemen’s government temporarily halted those drones from flying because of botched operations that also killed civilians. But later they quietly resumed, and in recent years they have been increasing in frequency, a sign of the fact that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is considered one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups.
The raid stirred immediate outrage among Yemeni government officials, some of whom accused the Trump administration of not fully consulting with them before the mission. Within 24 hours of the assault on a cluster of houses in a tiny village in mountainous central Yemen, the country’s foreign minister, Abdul Malik Al Mekhlafi, condemned the raid in a post on his official Twitter account as “extrajudicial killings.”
In an interview with Al Jazeera this week, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, Yemen’s ambassador to the United States, said that President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi raised concerns about the raid in a meeting with the American ambassador to Yemen in Riyadh on Feb. 2.
“Yemen’s government is a key partner in the war against terrorism,” Mr. Mubarak said in the interview, adding that Yemen’s cooperation should not come “at the expense of the Yemeni citizens and the country’s sovereignty.”
The Pentagon has acknowledged that the raid killed several civilians, including children, and is investigating. The dead include, by the account of relatives, the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Qaeda leader who was killed in a targeted drone strike in 2011.American counterterrorism officials have expressed growing fears about their lack of understanding of Qaeda operations in Yemen since the United States was forced to withdraw the last 125 Special Operations advisers from the country in March 2015 after Houthi rebels ousted the government of President Hadi, the Americans’ main counterterrorism partner.
The Pentagon has tried to start rebuilding its counterterrorism operations in Yemen since then. Last May, American Special Operations forces helped Yemeni and Emirati troops evict Qaeda fighters from the port city of Al Mukalla.
Al Qaeda had used Al Mukalla as a base as the militants stormed through southern Yemen, capitalizing on the power vacuum caused by the country’s 14-month civil war and seizing territory, weapons and money.
The deadly raid last month, launched from an amphibious assault ship off the Yemeni coast, was the first known American-led ground mission in Yemen since December 2014, when members of SEAL Team 6 stormed a village in southern Yemen in an effort to free an American photojournalist held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the raid ended with the kidnappers killing the journalist and a South African held with him.
The United States conducted 38 drone strikes in Yemen last year, up from 23 in 2014, and has already carried out five strikes so far this year, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal.
In response to the raid, Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen urged followers last weekend to attack the United States and its allies in the country.
Qasim al-Raymi, the leader of the Qaeda offshoot, likened his fighters to extremists battling American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a speech translated by SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist activities and messaging.
Specialists in Yemeni culture and politics have cautioned that Al Qaeda would seize on the raid to whip up anti-American feelings and attract more followers.
“The use of U.S. soldiers, high civilian casualties and disregard for local tribal and political dynamics,” the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a report released last Thursday, “plays into AQAP’s narrative of defending Muslims against the West and could increase anti-U.S. sentiment and with it AQAP’s pool of recruits.”
Monday, October 10, 2016
The basic Syrian fight has been between Ira and the Gulf Cooperation Council over who would be able to deliver natural gas from the Pars Field to Europe over the Mediterranean Sea. The field lies mostly under the Persian Gulf. Qatar and Iran both have access to that field:
Natural Gas Pipeline from Iran to Iraq could be Ready in 20 Days - Oil & Gas 360
The field holds the World's largest supply of natural gas. All the world is still addicted to petrochemicals and all the World is interested in getting gas from the field.. Immense wealth goes to the country that can deliver the gas to wealthy Europe. The slaughter of Syrians is directly related to a struggle over whether Iran or Qatar will win that prize. Russia prefers that Iran win, and so is supporting the Syrian Government, which has already agreed to Iran's pipeline to the Mediterranean. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council are supporting Qatar. The United States-- too long backing Saudi Arabia' Monopoly on gas prices, is ambivalently supporting Qatar and is distracted by irrational domestic fears of the Islamic State, whose main goal is control of Mecca and Medina -- Saudi Arabia's greatest fear.. The new article in The Guardian, below, indicated that Iran is on its way to winning the Prize. The United States would be well advised to distance itself from urdrous Erdoğan and the equally brutal Saudi Arabia and form economic and political alliances with Iran and the rest of Asia. Saudi Arabia's years of ruling the world through its monopoly on oil is coming to an end. The World, if it does not recover from oil addiction in time, will see a rise in Iranian power, and Iran will see its brutal theocracy modernize long before Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi government gives up its ancient brutal polity. The Guardian's article suggests that Iran is progressing steadily tower winning the prize. We'll see.
Not far from Mosul, a large military force is finalising plans for an advance that has been more than three decades in the making. The troops are Shia militiamen who have fought against the Islamic State, but they have not been given a direct role in the coming attack to free Iraq’s second city from its clutches. Instead, while the Iraqi army attacks Mosul from the south, the militias will take up a blocking position to the west, stopping Isis forces from fleeing towards their last redoubt of Raqqa in Syria. Their absence is aimed at reassuring the Sunni Muslims of Mosul that the imminent recapture of the city is not a sectarian push against them. However, among Iraq’s Shia-dominated army the militia’s decision to remain aloof from the battle of Mosul is being seen as a rebuff.Yet among the militias’ backers in Iran there is little concern. Since their inception, the Shia irregulars have made their name on the battlefields of Iraq, but they have always been central to Tehran’s ambitions elsewhere. By not helping to retake Mosul, the militias are free to drive one of its most coveted projects – securing an arc of influence across Iraq and Syria that would end at the Mediterranean Sea.
The strip of land to the west of Mosul in which the militias will operate is essential to that goal. After 12 years of conflict in Iraq and an even more savage conflict in Syria, Iran is now closer than ever to securing a land corridor that will anchor it in the region – and potentially transform the Islamic Republic’s presence on Arab lands. “They have been working extremely hard on this,” said a European official who has monitored Iran’s role in both wars for the past five years. “This is a matter of pride for them on one hand and pragmatism on the other. They will be able to move people and supplies between the Mediterranean and Tehran whenever they want, and they will do so along safe routes that are secured by their people, or their proxies.”
Interviews during the past four months with regional officials, influential Iraqis and residents of northern Syria have established that the land corridor has slowly taken shape since 2014. It is a complex route that weaves across Arab Iraq, through the Kurdish north, into Kurdish north-eastern Syria and through the battlefields north of Aleppo, where Iran and its allies are prevailing on the ground. It has been assembled under the noses of friend and foe, the latter of which has begun to sound the alarm in recent weeks. Turkey has been especially opposed, fearful of what such a development means for Iran’s relationship with the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ party), the restive Kurds in its midst, on whom much of the plan hinges. The plan has been coordinated by senior government and security officials in Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus, all of whom defer to the head of the spearhead of Iran’s foreign policy, the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards, headed by Major General Qassem Suleimani, who has run Iran’s wars in Syria and Iraq. It involves demographic shifts, which have already taken place in central Iraq and are under way in northern Syria. And it relies heavily on the support of a range of allies, who are not necessarily aware of the entirety of the project but have a developed vested interest in securing separate legs.
Maj Gen Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran’s all-powerful Quds force. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images
The corridor starts at the entry points that Iran has used to send supplies and manpower into Iraq over the past 12 years. They are the same routes that were used by the Quds force to run a guerrilla war against US forces when they occupied the country – a campaign fought by the same Iraqi militias that have since been immersed in the fight against Isis.The groups, Asa’ib ahl al-Haq, Keta’ib Hezbollah and their offshoots, accounted for close to 25% of all US battlefield casualties, senior US officials have said. They have become even more influential since US forces left the country. And in one of modern warfare’s starkest ironies, in the two years since US troops have returned to Iraq to fight Isis they have at times fought under US air cover.
The route crosses through Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, around 60 miles north of Baghdad. A mixed Sunni/Shia area for hundreds of years, Diyala became one of the main sectarian flashpoint areas during Iraq’s civil war. Along roads that have been secured by militias, which are known locally as “popular mobilisation units”, it then moves northwest into areas that were occupied by Isis as recently as several months ago.
The town of Shirqat in Salaheddin province is one important area. It was taken by militias along with Iraqi forces on 22 September, delivering another blow to the terrorist group and an important boost to Iran’s ambitions.
The militias are now present in large numbers in Shirqat and readying to move towards the western edge of Mosul, to a point around 50 miles southeast of Sinjar, which – at this point – is the next leg in the corridor. Between the militia forces and Sinjar is the town of Tal Afar, an Isis stronghold, which has been a historical home of both Sunni and Shia Turkmen – ancestral kin of Turkey.A senior intelligence official said the leg between Tel Afar and Sinjar is essential to the plan. Sinjar is an ancestral home to the Yazidi population, which was forced to flee in August 2014 after Isis invaded the city, killing all the men it could find and enslaving women. It wasrecaptured by Iraqi Kurdish forces last November. And ever since PKK forces from across the Syrian border have taken up residence in the city and across the giant monolith, Mt Sinjar, behind it. The PKK fighters are being paid by the Iraqi government and have been incorporated into the popular mobilisation units. Iraqi and western intelligence officials say the move was approved by Iraq’s national security adviser, Falah Fayadh.
An influential Iraqi tribal sheikh, Abdulrahim al-Shammari, emerges as a central figure further to the north. He has a power base near the Rabia crossing into Syria, receives support from the popular mobilisation units and is close to the Assad regime in Damascus. “I believe that in our area Iran does not have very much influence,” he told the Observer in Baghdad. “There is nobody here, no major power that is helping us with weapons. Ideologically speaking, the PKK is affiliated with the Kurds of this area, so there is no problem having them here.”
From the Rabia crossing, the mooted route goes past the towns of Qamishli and Kobani towards Irfin, which are all controlled by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. Throughout the war the YPG (People’s Protection Units) has hedged its bets, at times allying with the US against Isis, and at other times siding with the Syrian regime. “Iran thinks it has them where it wants them now,” said the European source. “I’m not sure it has gauged the Turks correctly, though.”
A fighter sits on a balcony in Sinjar, Iraq after the town was retaken from Isis by Kurdish-led forces. Photograph: Cengiz Yar for the Guardian
Of all the points between Tehran and the Syrian coast, Aleppo has concentrated Iran’s energies more than anywhere else. Up to 6,000 militia members, mostly from Iraq, have congregated there ahead of a move to take the rebel-held east of the city, which could begin around the same time as the assault on Mosul.Those who have observed Suleimani up close as he inspects the frontlines in Syria and Iraq, or in meetings in Damascus and Baghdad, where he projects his immense power through studied calm, say he has invested everything in Syria – and in ensuring that Iran emerges from a brutal, expensive war with its ambitions enhanced. “If we lose Syria, we lose Tehran,” Suleimani told the late Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi in 2014. Chalabi told the Observer at the time that Suleimani had added: “We will turn all this chaos into an opportunity.”
Securing Aleppo would be an important leg in the corridor, which would run past two villages to the north that have historically been in Shia hands. From there, a senior Syrian official, and Iraqi officials in Baghdad, said it would run towards the outskirts of Syria’s fourth city, Homs, then move north through the Alawite heartland of Syria, which a year of Russian airpower has again made safe for Assad. Iran’s hard-won road ends at the port of Latakia, which has remained firmly in regime hands throughout the war.
Ali Khedery, who advised all US ambassadors to Iraq and four commanders of Centcom in 2003-11 said securing a Mediterranean link would be seen as a strategic triumph in Iran. “It signifies the consolidation of Iran’s control over Iraq and the Levant, which in turn confirms their hegemonic regional ambitions,” he said. “That should trouble every western leader and our regional allies because this will further embolden Iran to continue expanding, likely into the Gulf countries next, a goal they have explicitly and repeatedly articulated. Why should we expect them to stop if they’ve been at the casino, doubling their money over and over again, for a decade?”
Kurds [who are the most effective fighting force opposing the Islamic State and who have been excluded from the Geneva please talks] should be included in the intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Friday.
• • •
“Some members [of the ISSG] exert strong pressure, because they consider the PYD to be terrorists’ supporters or an unnecessary element, as Kurdish representatives from other political groups [Kurdish National Council] are taking part in the Geneva talks,” he said.
• • •
Although Russian-Turkish relations have drastically improved after the failed military coup on July 15, Russia did not change its stance towards the Syrian Kurdish forces that have been the most effective element against ISIS.
According to Akhmetov, there are several reasons Russia is still supporting the Kurds despite of Moscow’s new relations with Turkey.
“First to not lose their support completely, and secondly to not provoke them to make any reckless steps like announcing secession from Syria,” he said.
__________
The United States has taken contradictory positions on the YPG's joining the peace talks. It formally opposes participation, out of deference to Turkey; and it funds YPG's fighters is Syria, over fierce Turkish objection. Erdoğan's government does not currently deserve international recognition, because of gross human rights violatio ns. Saudi Arabia's dream of a Wahhabi state in Syria is a pipe dream -- to Syrians, it and to most people it is a nightmare.
The United States should join Russia in supporting the YPG's inclusion in the Geneva peace talks.
For those of you who are interested in the long-oppressed, now free and ultra-democratic Syrian Kurds: the view of the cease-fire initiative from Iraqi Kurdistan.
US: Syrian truce applies to Turks, Kurds
Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) walk in the Ghwairan neighborhood of Hasaka, Syria, Aug. 22, 2016. (Photo: Reuters/Rodi Said)
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – The United States Department of State said the Russo-American ceasefire plan for Syria that began at sundown on Monday applies to Kurdish forces and the Turkish army.
The US State Department Spokesperson John Kirby made the comments in a Washington daily press briefing shortly after the Syrian ceasefire – or “the cessation of hostilities” as dubbed by American officials – came into effect.
“We don’t want to see violence or clashes between Turkish forces and Kurdish forces,” said Kirby according to an online transcript of the briefing received by Kurdistan24.
“What we’ve said, and I’ll say it again today, is that we want them, as members of the counter-Da’esh coalition, to fight Da’esh, that that’s where their – we want their energies to be applied,” he added, using the Arabic abbreviaion for the Islamic State (IS).
Sporadic clashes have taken place between Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Turkish Army.
In late August, the Turkish Army entered the town of Jarabulus to obstruct Kurdish territorial expansion in northern Syria and fend off IS from its southern border.
Turkey is supporting the Free Syrian Army (FSA) units and “moderate” Islamist groups on the ground and from the air in its incursion into a 90-kilometer corridor that stands between the Kurdish cantons of Kobani and Afrin.
The US-backed YPG and its multi-ethnic surrogate alliance of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) already announced they would abide by the ceasefire.
They added they would refrain from offensive operations against all the warring factions except for IS and al-Qaeda affiliates.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry called on the Turkish-supported FSA to stop fighting Kurdish units in the run-up to the truce in Syria, according to international news agency Reuters.
