Syria and the contending interests

Lotta news today.  You will need a least a bit of knowledge of the different players in Syria to make much sense of either of  the following al Monitor reports.  A post in my Frey Islands - 

Syria and the contending interests clearly described; why the outcomes mater, and to whom

will give you that background if you are interested.

Here's the first article, relatively easy to follow:

US Secretary of State John Kerry (R) speaks to the media next to Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a news conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Dec. 18, 2015.  (photo by REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

Is Russia helping the US win in Syria?

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Feb. 4 that a recent US intelligence assessment showed a drop in numbers of those fighting on behalf of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq from 31,500 to 25,000, a sign that the Obama administration’s strategy is working, as many of these foreign fighters seek a new base in Libya and elsewhere.

Week in Review POSTED February 7, 2016

The second Week in Review column in December 2012 identified the role of Russia as one of the trends to watch regarding an endgame in Syria. The Russian trend is shaping a new phase in the Syrian war. As this column wrote last month, that endgame could begin with Aleppo, which is nearly encircled by Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government forces.

It might be fair to ask how much credit Russia should get in setting back not only IS, but al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and its allies. Getting an answer might be difficult, however, for two reasons.

First, the Russian air campaign has been ruthless and often indiscriminate. The civilian costs of the war can understandably and rightly overshadow what we might call “strategic” gains. Mohammed al-Khatieb provides a firsthand account for Al-Monitor of a Russian airstrike on a school and the toll of the bombardment on civilians in towns surrounding Aleppo. US Secretary of State John Kerry has appealed to Russia to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions regarding the conduct of the war in Syria. We could not agree more.

Second, and more puzzling and problematic, is that many press accounts have referred to those armed groups on the receiving end of the Russian-backed Syrian offensive simply as “rebels,” implying these are all opposition groups backed by the United States and its Western allies.

Sam Dagher of The Wall Street Journal offered a more complete assessment Feb. 5, writing, “About a half-dozen cities and towns targeted in the new regime offensives have one thing in common: All were held by a mix of Islamist and moderate rebel groups funded and armed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Complicating the picture is that some, but not all, of these groups collaborate with the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. That gives the regime and its allies fodder for their claim that they are fighting terrorism.”

This is a start, but there is more. A Feb. 5 report by the Institute for the Study of War shows the extent of the substantial Syrian military advances since Russia’s expanded military intervention. It also reveals that the Syrian government and its allies have battled IS, Jabhat al-Nusra and the radical Salafi group Ahrar al-Sham, which is often allied with Jabhat al-Nusra, in southern Aleppo province; battled IS in re-establishing a ground line of communication with the Quweires air base and in the Bab region; and battled Jabhat al-Nusra in the Latakia region.

Mustafa al-Haj explains that among the reasons that the Syrian military was able to retake Sheikh Miskin, north of Daara, after relentless Russian bombing, was “internal differences among opposition factions.” Haj reports from Damascus, “The Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been at odds with the Muthanna Movement (which had secretly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in March 2015), as well as Jabhat al-Nusra, following attempts by the FSA to isolate radical Islamist forces, according to the pro-regime Al-Mayadeen news website. These factors weakened the factions’ resistance to the army’s attacks and hampered the entry of FSA fighters from other areas to assist in defending the city.” In other words, the FSA, IS-linked Muthanna and Jabhat al-Nusra were all targets of the Russian-backed regime offensive in Daraa.

Fehim Tastekin writes this week that Syrian Turkmen groups, which have been the target of Russian bombardment, “have developed close links with Salafi jihadi organizations such as al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra.”  [I'm sorry to read this about the Turkmen   groups, who are more sinned against than sinning.  For more on the Syrian Turkmen, see my post here]

So this is a more complex picture of what many in the mainstream media may be reporting about Russia’s intervention in Syria. It is worth recalling that “entities associated” with IS, al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra are also the target of UN Security Council Resolution 2254 (2015), and that a cease-fire “will not apply” to actions against these “entities.” Resolution 2254 reiterates that member states should “prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), Al-Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the Security Council, and as may further be agreed by the ISSG and determined by the Security Council, pursuant to the Statement of the ISSG of 14 November 2015, and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Syria, and notes that the aforementioned ceasefire will not apply to offensive or defensive actions against these individuals, groups, undertakings and entities, as set forth in the 14 November 2015 ISSG Statement.” 

This is the more complex article -

Turkey’s outrageous offer

Turkey’s policies in Syria continue to border on the reckless, so excuse our skepticism on how the introduction of Turkish troops could play a constructive role, especially as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks escalation with Russia over alleged airspace violations. Ankara claimed that a Russian plane had violated its airspace Jan. 29. Metin Gurcan explains that the alleged Russian violation took place on “the Turkish border region that faces the Azaz-Munbij front, which is currently controlled by the Islamic State. If this is accurate, Russia is telling Turkey openly that it seriously intends to maintain the de facto no-fly zone it has established over the Jarablus-Munbij areas, which are also of major concern for Turkey.”

Semih Idiz reports that “developments in northern Syria are aggravating tensions between Ankara and Moscow. Following the downing of its jet, Russia intensified its air campaign, particularly against the Turkmens, but also against radical Islamic groups supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar that are fighting the Syrian army.  

Russia has a particular ax to grind with the Turkmens because it was their fighters who killed the Russian pilot in his parachute after he ejected from the Su-24. Turkmen refugees have started entering Turkey as the Syrian army gradually takes control of the region with Russian air support. …[The Russian army's brutality, shown most clearly in its southern province of Dagestan, stands in sharp contrast with our army's adherence to the Geneva Conventions an various UN resolutions about protecting non-combatants.  Some Republican candidates show a preference for Russia's approach to war, a plane betrays of American values.] 

Russia has an added incentive now to support the PYD [Democratic Union Party] and hit Turkey in its most sensitive spot, namely the Kurdish issue. Russia says it is unthinkable that the PYD can be kept out of the Geneva talks and insists the group will be part in these talks in the future.  [I agree.] Meanwhile, the Turkish media is reporting that Russia had started to provide air support to the PYD’s military wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), west of the Euphrates River.”

Fehim Tastekin writes that Turkish ultranationalists have rallied to the Syrian Turkmen camp, whose armed groups have links to Jabhat al-Nusra. Tastekin concludes, “Many opposition groups labeled the Free Syrian Army have in time shifted to a Salafi mindset. How the war will transform Turkey’s ultranationalists is an important question. … This will inevitably leave a residue.”

Knowing all we know, the United States should therefore be adamant in rejecting any Saudi or Turkish offer to send its forces to Syria, if there is any seriousness to these offers. 

On whose side, for example, would Saudi and Turkish forces be fighting? Radical Salafi groups Jabhat al-Nusra and the Army of Islam, which are often and intimately linked to Jabhat al-Nusra? Would such an intervention give a second wind to Jabhat al-Nusra itself? Our answer is yes.

And who would they be fighting against — IS? The Syrian Kurds who are allied with Russia and the United States? Or Russia itself, risking a NATO intervention? 

We recognize the burden Turkey has assumed by providing relief to over 2.2 million Syrians, with tens of thousands more seeking entry. Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon deserve our thanks and assistance in managing this overwhelming humanitarian crisis, which received a commitment of over $10 billion from international donors last week. But if Turkey wants to further step up in Syria, it should stand down in its confrontation with Russia, and take unambiguous steps targeting IS, Jabhat al-Nusra and affiliated forces, as called for in UN Security Council resolutions.

Syria is a long way from an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where I write this log; and we are all kith an kin.  The wars in Syria have killed many, for whom we do not weep:  the dead are well out of it.  The war has damaged millions more, and for them we weep, if we are still human.  For some Syrian Kurds, the war has lifted them out of a dreary half-life into a vibrant, creative new life -- war's one virtue, and a valuable one, worth ten thousand faux-wars such as the Super Bowl.

China's dwindling control of North Korea; UN lack of control of China

Do you have better analysis of North Korea and its nuclear ambitions?  Of likely Chinese responses?

Would you like for the US to bomb North Korea? Do you think bombing would be effective?  If you do, wold you take responsibility for anticipated responses?  Have you an estimate of what those responses would be?

The New York Times

SIA PACIFIC | NEWS ANALYSIS

China Struggles for Balance in Response to North Korea’s Boldness

By JANE PERLEZ and CHOE SANG-HUNFEB. 7, 2016

Photo

The Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei, center, with Pak Song Il, right, of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, after arriving at Pyongyang Airport last week. 

BEIJING — When the veteran Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei left for North Korea last week, he probably knew he had been dispatched on mission impossible: to persuade the country’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, to climb down from his threat to launch a rocket as part of his quest to develop ballistic missile technologies.

Not only did Mr. Kim ignore China’s entreaties, sending Mr. Wu home empty-handed. He did so emphatically, ordering the launch a day earlier than expected so that it fell on one of China’s most important holidays, the eve of the Lunar New Year.

It is unclear how long President Xi Jinping of China will tolerate what some analysts here are calling the humiliation of his country at the hands of a capricious Mr. Kim. But there are no immediate signs that Beijing will radically change course and turn away from its traditional ally.Continue reading the main storyRELATED 

It’s a bad result, it’s a humiliation,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University. “I think Kim Jong-un made many mistakes, and this is one of his major mistakes.” Even so, he added, “It’s hard to say what different approach China will take.”

North Korea said Sunday that the rocket had successfully put a satellite into orbit.South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said the launch indicated that North Korea had made some technological advances toward its assumed goal of pursuing an intercontinental ballistic missile. The satellite launched Sunday weighed 440 pounds, twice as heavy as a satellite launched in 2012, according to lawmakers who attended a closed briefing by the spy agency on Sunday.

The United Nations Security Council, at an emergency meeting Sunday requested by the United States andJapan, issued a statement signaling its intention to stiffen penalties against North Korea, but without saying how or when. A draft Security Council resolution is under negotiation, diplomats said. The key is what China will allow in terms of tightening or broadening sanctions.

Hours after the launch, the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed “regret” and counseled calm and cautious action, a tone that drew immediate ridicule from users of the Chinese social media site, Weibo.

In contrast to calls from South Korea, Japan and the United States on Sunday for tougher sanctions against North Korea, China said early dialogue — meaning the resumption of talks among major powers and North Korea — was its preferred way to rein in Mr. Kim. Those negotiations, led by China and known as the six-party talks, fell apart in 2009 after North Korea walked out.

In response to the Foreign Ministry’s statement, one person on Weibo said: “I feel ‘regret’ for the Foreign Ministry.”

Another user said: “I have been racking my head but I simply can’t figure out why we have to offend everybody in the world to defend a rogue regime.”

Popular sentiment in China, where Mr. Kim has been maligned online as overweight, bumptious and inexperienced, appears to run against the government’s public patience with the North Korean leader. 

In a poll on Weibo conducted Friday and Saturday, two-thirds of the 8,000 respondents said they supported a strike by the United States to destroy North Korea’s nuclear weaponsprogram. Eighteen percent of those interviewed said they were against such a strike, and 16 percent said they were neutral.

In a telling signal of official disapproval of the results, Chinese censors had deleted the poll by Sunday afternoon.

Continue reading the main story

Despite its frustration with Mr. Kim and frosty personal relations — Mr. Xi has refused to meet with Mr. Kim — China will probably continue to put up with his behavior, said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University.

China is afraid of turning its recalcitrant ally into a worrisome enemy, he said.

The government has opposed severe sanctions aimed at curtailing the amount of oil that China exports to North Korea and at stopping imports of mineral resources. So far, China has supported only sanctions that limit the transfer or sale of military equipment or other items that would help North Korea’s weapons program.

“China thinks more severe sanctions will reduce China’s influence in North Korea,” Mr. Shi said.

Most important, China was afraid that hammering North Korea with heavy sanctions would turn it into a hostile country that could “take action” against Beijing, Mr. Shi said.

Mr. Xi has made the calculation that Mr. Kim, the third generation of the Kim family to rule North Korea, would be an enduring figure, and he sent Liu Yunshan, a member of the powerful Standing Committee of the Communist Party, to a military parade in Pyongyang last October to make a kind of rapprochement, Mr. Shi said.

China even appeared to be willing to risk its budding relationship with South Korea, an ally of the United States, by putting up with North Korea’s bad behavior.

The rocket launch on Sunday, which came after a fourth nuclear test by the North Koreans in early January, showed that China’s goal of maintaining good relationships with both North Korea and South Korea was an extremely difficult balancing act, Mr. Cheng said.

Mr. Xi has gone out of his way to court the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, by stressing the strong economic relationship between the two countries. China is South Korea’s biggest trading partner, and Ms. Park raised eyebrows among Washington officials last September by turning up at a huge military parade on Tiananmen Square in Beijing that was boycotted by Western leaders.

Photo

Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and President Xi Jinping of China during their meeting in Beijing in January. 

CreditIn a move sure to displease China, South Korea’s Defense Department said hours after the launch Sunday that it would start formal discussions with the United States about the deployment of a missile defense system known as Thaad, for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.

China has vigorously opposed the deployment of the system, arguing that it would be used by the United States to interfere with China’s defenses and as a tool to contain China.

The North Korean rocket launch “is aimed at advancing its nuclear weaponsand their delivery missiles,” Ms. Park said. “North Korea poses a grave challenge to the peace of Northeast Asia and the rest of the world by rejecting dialogue and persisting in advancing its missiles for the sake of regime survival.” 

Maj. Gen. Kim Yong-hyun, the head of operations at the South Korean military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said that Seoul and Washington had agreed that their annual joint springtime military exercises, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, would be the largest ever this year.

He said that South Korea would deploy more propaganda loudspeakers along the border with North Korea and operate them for longer hours. South Korea switched on the long-dormant loudspeakers after the January nuclear test, and North Korea responded by sending balloons into the South to drop propaganda leaflets and trash.

In recent years, South Korea has aggressively courted closer ties with China, hoping it would help tame North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

The mood shifted in South Korea, however, after the nuclear test in January. China, North Korea’s only major trading partner, rejected repeated South Korean and American demands that it force the North to give up its nuclear-missile program by squeezing oil and other shipments.

President Obama and Mr. Xi spoke by telephone last week about the need for unified action regarding sanctions at the United Nations, the White House said.

But the agreement between the two leaders in California in 2013, when cooperation on finding a solution to the North Korea dilemma was the high point of their meeting, appears to have evaporated.

When Secretary of State John Kerry held more than four hours of talks with the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, last month in Beijing, there was little enthusiasm for more targeted sanctions by the Chinese, even though both sides knew that a rocket launch was likely to happen, American officials said.

“The general relationship between the United States and China is far from good, and I don’t think the U.S. has any real bargaining chips with China over North Korea,” Mr. Shi said. “The vital interest of the United States is to reduce the nuclear weapons, and the vital interest of China is to keep a minimum degree of stability and to keep North Korea a friend.”

Under various Security Council resolutions, North Korea is banned from rocket launches using ballistic missile technology. But it has touted its missiles and nuclear weapons as the “sacred sword” its people have long sought to deter American invasions. On Sunday, it called the satellite “a gift of most intense loyalty” for Mr. Kim.

Beginning post on solitary confinment

Please check with a lawyer friend in your state or country to find out what state practice is where you live.  California has entered  consent decree which, horribly, is considered an "improvement" of present practices.


The New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDFEB. 2, 2016

President Obama sent a powerful message last week when he barred federal prisons from holding juveniles in solitary confinement and ordered the Bureau of Prisons to undertake sweeping changes in how solitary is used throughout the federal system.

By taking a new course at the federal level, Mr. Obama hopes to accelerate changes that are already underway in many state and local corrections systems.

Solitary confinement, which is often used arbitrarily and to punish minor rule infractions, is a form of torture. It is psychologically damaging even to healthy people and increases the likelihood of suicide among the young and the mentally ill.

Announcing the new policy in an op-ed essay in The Washington Post, Mr. Obama wrote: “The United States is a nation of second chances, but the experience of solitary confinement too often undercuts that second chance. Those who do make it out often have trouble holding down jobs, reuniting with family and becoming productive members of society. Imagine having served your time and then being unable to hand change over to a customer or look your wife in the eye or hug your children.”

A memorial for Kalief Browder who spent two years in solitary confinement and later hanged himself Credit Lucas Jackson Reuters 

A memorial for Kalief Browder who spent two years in solitary confinement and later hanged himself. Credit Lucas Jackson/Reuters

He cited the shameful case of Kalief Browder, who was arrested in New York City at the age of 16 in 2010 and jailed for three years without trial for allegedly stealing a backpack. Mr. Browder spent two of those years in solitary confinement, endured “unspeakable violence at the hands of inmates and guards” and tried to kill himself several times. He was released in 2013, but never fully recovered, and he hanged himself last year.

Despite horror stories like this, as many as 100,000 people — including juveniles and people with mental illnesses — are held in solitary confinement and other forms of restrictive housing in American prisons, according to a new report by the Justice Department. Inmates often spend months or even years in small, cramped cells with virtually no human contact.

According to the report, the Bureau of Prisons in recent years has cut the number of inmates in solitary confinement and other restrictive housing. Federal officials believe that the new policies recommended in the report will lead to additionall reductions in restrictive housing populations. One recomendation is to divert inmates with serious mental illness to mental health units; another is to ban the use of “punitive segregation” for low-level infractions.

The new federal policy sets an excellent example for states and local governments that have yet to undertake reform.