[Centraal] Crisis in Syrië #242 SAA blijft heersen

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Hezbollah's intervention in the Syrian conflict where it is fighting alongside government forces is legitimate, as long as foreign fighters are swelling the ranks of the opposition, Russian ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin said in comments published Tuesday.

Separately, Zasypkin affirmed that a Russian arms deal for Lebanon is on the right track, according to a statement released by the office of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri after a meeting between the two.

“The party (Hezbollah) will remain engaged in the fight to aid the legitimate regime as long as fighters from dozens of countries are streaming into [Syria] to fight against the regime...,” Zasypkin said in an interview with daily newspaper An-Nahar.

“In such emergencies, the need is to focus on combating terrorism and fundamentalist, not stir strife,” Zasypkin added.

Asked about prospects of a political solution to the Syrian conflict in the near future, Zasypkin argued that chances have dimmed due to the situations in the region and internationally.

“The U.S. is taking advantage of the Ukrainian crisis to undermine Russia and this has reflected negatively on global issues and disrupted any settlements,” Zasypkin added.

The Russian envoy lauded Lebanese rival factions for their engagement to conduct dialogue which he said “is strongly requested” to deal with “existing challenges and dangers.”

“Foreign countries support this dialogue, especially that it touches on not only Lebanese, but also regional issues, and I mean primarily combating terrorism and extremism,” An-Nahar quoted him as saying.

Hezbollah and the Future Movement launched talks in December aimed at easing sectarian tensions exacerbated by the Syrian conflict, while preparations are underway to have a similar dialogue between Christian rivals, the Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement.

“We want the most suitable president for Lebanon,” Zasypkin said, noting that settling the presidential stalemate is linked to all Lebanese factions, not only Christians.

A statement released by Hariri's media office said Zasypkin commended the ex-premier and Future Movement leader for engaging in dialogue with Hezbollah, and reassured him that a Russian arms deal for Lebanon was on track.

“We are in continuous contact with Mr. Hariri on political dialogue as well as reinforcing the capacities of the Lebanese Army and security agencies,” the statement quoted Zasypkin as saying.

He said the meeting with Hariri focused on the implementation of bilateral contracts for supplying Lebanon with Russian weapons, refuting allegations that Hariri was seeking to disrupt or delay the delivery of the arms.

“Work is underway to complete the arms deal for Lebanon and we expect tangible results that would benefit the Lebanese state (soon),” Zasypkin said.

Lebanon is seeking to buy Russian weapons from a $1 billion Saudi grant to Lebanon.

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 13:23 schreef reza1 het volgende:

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Die gevangen zullen wel niet voor niks in de cel zijn gegooid...

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Bron?

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 13:36 schreef firefly3 het volgende:

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Mensen die op de verkeerde website zaten werden ook opgepakt.

Het was op het NOS journaal, ndl 2 uitzendingen enz toen de oorlog net begon.

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 13:36 schreef firefly3 het volgende:

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Mensen die op de verkeerde website zaten werden ook opgepakt.

Het was op het NOS journaal, ndl 2 uitzendingen enz toen de oorlog net begon.

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 14:32 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

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moslim broederschap kan niet hard genoeg aangepakt worden.
Dat jij dat als linksgekkie / moslim niet wilt zien is jouw probleem.

twitter:

SkyNews twitterde op woensdag 18-02-2015 om 16:01:18 Islamic State has been accused of 'harvesting organs' to finance its terror campaign http://t.co/6sJ0nM3mgK http://t.co/7hC3WT4NQh reageer retweet

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 17:33 schreef Peunage het volgende:
SAA is bij Nubul en Zahraa aangekomen?

twitter:

EjmAlrai twitterde op dinsdag 17-02-2015 om 20:29:52 #BreakingNews:#SAA infantry reached Zahraa in reef #Aleppo after years of blockage #Syria http://t.co/3fhQZi7lf0 reageer retweet

twitter:

pydinfo twitterde op woensdag 18-02-2015 om 17:50:22 #YPG regains control of over 200 villages in the areas around #Kobane. reageer retweet

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 16:10 schreef Houtenbeen het volgende:

twitter:

SkyNews twitterde op woensdag 18-02-2015 om 16:01:18 Islamic State has been accused of 'harvesting organs' to finance its terror campaign http://t.co/6sJ0nM3mgK http://t.co/7hC3WT4NQh reageer retweet

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Robert Ford was always one of the Syrian rebels’ loudest cheerleaders in Washington, agitating from within a reluctant administration to arm vetted moderates to fight Bashar Assad’s brutal regime.

In recent weeks, however, Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria who made news when he left government service a year ago with an angry critique of Obama administration policy, has dropped his call to provide weapons to the rebels. Instead, he’s become increasingly critical of them as disjointed and untrustworthy because they collaborate with jihadists.

The about-face, which is drawing murmurs among foreign policy analysts and Syrian opposition figures in Washington, is another sign that the so-called moderate rebel option is gone and the choices in Syria have narrowed to regime vs. extremists in a war that’s killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions.

On the heels of meetings with rebel leaders in Turkey, Ford explained in an interview this week why his position has evolved: Without a strong central command or even agreement among regional players that al Qaida’s Nusra Front is an enemy, he said, the moderates stand little chance of becoming a viable force, whether against Assad or the extremists. He estimated that the remnants of the moderate rebels now number fewer than 20,000. They’re unable to attack and at this point are “very much fighting defensive battles.”

In short: It makes no sense to keep sending help to a losing side.

“We have to deal with reality as it is,” said Ford, who’s now with the Middle East Institute in Washington. “The people we have backed have not been strong enough to hold their ground against the Nusra Front.”

Ford today sounds like a different person from the optimist who only six months ago wrote an essay in Foreign Policy that began: “Don’t believe everything you read in the media: The moderate rebels of Syria are not finished. They have gained ground in different parts of the country and have broken publicly with both the al Qaida affiliate operating there and the jihadists of the Islamic State.”

Now, however, on panels and in speeches, Ford has accused the rebels of collaborating with the Nusra Front, the al Qaida affiliate in Syria that the U.S. declared a terrorist organization more than two years ago. He says opposition infighting has worsened and he laments the fact that extremist groups now rule in most territories outside the Syrian regime’s control.

Ford said part of the problem was that too many rebels – and their patrons in Turkey and Qatar – insisted that Nusra was a homegrown, anti-Assad force when in fact it was an al Qaida affiliate whose ideology was virtually indistinguishable from the Islamic State’s. The Obama administration already has suffered a string of embarrassments involving supplies it’s donated to the rebels ending up in the hands of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

“Nusra Front is just as dangerous, and yet they keep pretending they’re nice guys, they’re Syrians,” Ford said. “The second problem is, some of our stuff has leaked to them.”

As his calls to arm the rebels have become more muted, Ford has grown more vocal about the relationship between the rebels and Nusra, something U.S. officials have preferred to ignore, at least in public.

At a seminar last month where the audience included prominent Syrian dissidents he’d worked with for years, Ford began with a disclaimer that what he was about to say was “not going to be popular” among the opposition crowd.

He then launched into an indictment of the moderate rebels, pulling no punches as he told them they could forget about outside help as long as they kept collaborating with Nusra. He suggested that supportive U.S. officials had grown tired of covering for them before an administration and an American public that are skeptical of deeper U.S. involvement in Syria.

“For a long time, we have looked the other way while the Nusra Front and armed groups on the ground, some of whom are getting help from us, have coordinated in military operations against the regime,” Ford said. “I think the days of us looking the other way are finished.”

Most audience members were familiar with Ford’s record, and they were visibly surprised at the tongue lashing; they knew him as a relentless defender of the rebels, someone who’d ended a long diplomatic career a year ago this month with scathing words about the Obama administration’s refusal to arm them. Ford is often described as the first senior official to come out so vocally against U.S. policy toward Syria; the White House is still furious with his decision to go off-message.

Ford hasn’t softened his stance against the U.S. role in the Syrian catastrophe – he still describes American policy as “a huge failure” and “singularly unsuccessful” – but now he doesn’t spare the rebels their share of the blame. He has little patience for the argument that they were forced to work with Nusra and other unpalatable partners because of broken Western promises of assistance. There needs to be agreement, he said, that an al Qaida affiliate is off-limits as a partner.

“It becomes impossible to field an effective opposition when no one even agrees who or what is the enemy,” he said.

Ford said the latest U.S. approach of ditching the old rebel model to build a new, handpicked paramilitary to focus on the Islamic State was doomed; Syrian rebels are more concerned with bringing down Assad than with fighting extremists for the West, and there are far too few fighters to take the project seriously.

“The size of the assistance is still too small,” he said. “What are they going to do with 5,000 guys? Or even 10,000 in a year? What’s that going to do?”

The Assad regime is eager to present itself as an alternative, but Ford said the Syrian military had been severely weakened and that it was doubtful the regime could pull off a successful campaign against the extremists. Then there’s the political and moral fallout that would come from a U.S. détente with a man American officials have described since 2012 as a butcher who’s lost the legitimacy to rule.

Ford said the time had come for U.S. officials and their allies to have a serious talk about “boots on the ground,” though he was quick to add that the fighters didn’t need to be American. He said a professional ground force was the only way to wrest Syria from the jihadists.

And any parallel effort to build up a local rebel movement would have to be streamlined through a central, Syrian chain of command, he said. International partners, Ford said, have to ditch the current “nonsensical” framework in which regional powerhouses each fund client groups in an uncoordinated tangle that he said would be comical if the results weren’t so tragic.

And if those steps can’t be achieved, said the man known for advocating greater U.S. involvement, “then we have to just walk away and say there’s nothing we can do about Syria.”

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 18:04 schreef Morendo het volgende:

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Sympathiek dat ze meewerken aan het terugdringen van het organentekort.

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A civilian was killed and three others were injured in a terrorist attack with rocket shells in al-Sulaimania and Sulaiman al-Halabi residential neighborhoods in Aleppo.
A police source told SANA reporter that a number of rocket shells launched by terrorists on the two neighborhoods left a civilian dead and three others injured who were admitted to al-Razi Hospital for treatment.
In Damascus, a terrorist attack with rocket shells caused material damage to properties in Mazzeh and Zablatani areas.
A source at the Police Command said that terrorists fired two rocket shells; the first one landed in the area surrounding a vegetables market in Mazzeh Jabal neighborhood while the other hit a house in Mazzeh 86 neighborhood southwest of Damascus, causing material damage only.
The source pointed out that two other shells landed near the “8th of March complex” in Zablatani area, causing damage to the parked cars.

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 15:12 schreef firefly3 het volgende:

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Mijn mening mbt extremistische moslims staat volledig naast mijn mening mbt dictators. Zelf zie ik liever niet teveel moskeeen in nederland bijvoorbeeld. Zelfs gematigden gelovigen zie ik liever niet. Dmv educatie verdwijnt geloof, niet met behulp van dictators die zelf in het jaar 0 leven.

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 19:28 schreef Huismoslim het volgende:
ISIS heeft Marokko bedreigd aan te vallen. 1 ding weet ik wel zeker als Marokkaanse moslim, en dat is dat ik een enkele ticket naar Marokko neem wanneer we aangevallen worden om mijn land tegen die apen te verdedigen. Ik verbaas me echt vaak over Irakezen en Koerden die niet eens terug gaan naar hun eigen landen en zich verdedigen tegen die apen. Ik kan niet begrijpen waarom Koerdse mannen in Nederland nog lekker leven alsof er niks aan de hand is. Of ben ik gewoon te hysterisch bezig?

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 19:37 schreef UpsideDown het volgende:

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Er zijn genoeg Koerden die terug naar Irak zijn gegaan om te helpen in de strijd, dat is eind vorig jaar uitgebreid in het nieuws geweest. Het is een afweging, veel hebben hier een baan of doen een studie en hebben een leven opgebouwd. Niet iedereen is bereid alles op te geven voor de zoveelste oorlog in Irak.

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 19:40 schreef Huismoslim het volgende:

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Inderdaad, een mentaliteit die getuigd van weinig liefde voor vaderland. Helemaal al als jij je studie belangrijker vind dan je land verdedigen. Hoe ver moet je dan heen zijn?

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 19:40 schreef Huismoslim het volgende:

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Inderdaad, een mentaliteit die getuigd van weinig liefde voor vaderland. Helemaal al als jij je studie belangrijker vind dan je land verdedigen. Hoe ver moet je dan heen zijn?

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 19:46 schreef UpsideDown het volgende:

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Welk vaderland, Koerden hebben geen eigen land en Irak is een verzonnen staat. Niemand wil daar voor vechten, het is een land zonder eigen identiteit.

Het valt me nog mee hoeveel Koerden voor Iraaks-Koerdistan willen vechten terwijl het niet eens een onafhankelijkheidsoorlog is, ze zitten nog gewoon aan Bagdad vast straks.

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 19:48 schreef Huismoslim het volgende:

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Niet mee eens, koerden hebben Koerdistan en dat zou genoeg moeten zijn. Al helemaal met de zogenaamde onafhankelijkheid wens die ze hebben, dan is dit juist het moment dat de koerden in actie moeten komen. Ze vechten onder de Koerdische vlag en niet onder de vlag van Irak.

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2015 19:48 schreef Djibril het volgende:
Je moet ook van toegevoegde waarde zijn. Manschappen hebben de Koerden genoeg, ze hebben meer wapens nodig. Daarnaast zijn er veel Koerden ui Turkije de grens overgestoken om zich aan te sluiten bij YPG en er hebben zich ook Koerden uit het Zuiden en Oosten zich bij YPG gesloten.
Een Nederlandse Koerd die de taal niet eens goed onder de knie heeft en het gebied niet kent is meer een obstakel dan een hulpzame soldaat tijdens een slagveld.
Koerden in Europa moeten zich juist richten op hun studies en in alle lagen van de Nederlandse/Europese samenleving vertegenwoordigd zijn. Zo kunnen ze daarna aandacht voor de Koerden vragen en is het makkelijker om geld of andere vorm van hulp voor hun Koerdische broeders te zorgen. Daarnaast kunnen ze als ze terug gaan hun kennis overdragen aan de Koerden daar.

En maak je geen zorgen om marokko, daar zal geen "revolutie" komen. Als er een revolutie komt zal het dezelfde weg gaan als Egypte. De oude garde blijft lekker zitten.