Syria

[Ryan Ruck]

Thread for the discussion of Syria.

Original thread found here- Syria and Iran

[Ryan Ruck]

More Battles Along Iraq-Syrian Border

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a dawn assault Monday on another town near the Syrian border and killed 50 insurgents, a U.S. statement said, while the interior ministry reported that a car bomb detonated outside a gate leading into the fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, killing two South Africans.

Operation Steel Curtain entered a new phase when U.S. and Iraqi forces moved into the Euphrates River valley town of Obeidi, about 185 miles west of Baghdad. Troops had successfully cleared the old part of the town and were now moving into the other half, the statement said.

"Approximately 50 insurgents are estimated to have been killed in sporadic but heavy fighting. The combined force of Iraqi army and coalition forces has encountered at least six mines and improvised bomb," the statement said.

"A suspected car bomb placed in the advance of Iraqi Forces was engaged with a round from an M1A1 tank. The blast from the tank initiated a secondary explosion powerful enough to throw the car onto the roof of a nearby building," it added

The troops assigned to the 2nd Marine Division have already fought their way through two neighboring towns, Husaybah and Karabilah. U.S. forces believe the border towns have been an entry point for insurgent fighters and weapons into Iraq.

The explosion in Baghdad killed two South Africans and wounded three others working for a U.S. State Department security contractor DynCorp International, U.S. embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton said. The blast was followed by small arms fire and billowing black smoke that could be seen across the city.

The blast apparently targeted a convoy of sport utility vehicles leaving the Green Zone, the headquarters of the Iraqi government and U.S. forces in Iraq.

The blast occurred near the Iranian embassy, about 100 meters (yards) north of the Green Zone gate, which is surrounded with blast walls. Two Apache attack helicopters were soon flying over the scene as the smoke cleared and sporadic gunfire continued in the area.

On most days in Baghdad at least one car bomb detonates in the city, mostly targeting Iraqi security services or U.S. troops. Direct attacks on the Green Zone are relatively rare.

In the western town of Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold, a road-side bomb detonated shortly after a U.S. patrol passed by, destroying two buses and killing five civilians and wounding 20 others, police Capt. Nassir Al-Alousi said.

The attacks followed demands by Sunni Arab politicians for an end to U.S. and Iraqi military operations, claiming they threaten Sunni participation in next month's elections — a key U.S. goal. The U.S. command also announced on Sunday the deaths of three more American troops.

U.S. commanders have said offensives, especially those in the western province of Anbar near the Syrian border, are aimed at encouraging Sunni Arabs to vote in the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections without fear of intimidation by insurgents opposed to the political process.

However, several major Sunni Arab political groups insisted Sunday that such operations risk keeping Sunni turnout low because civilians are displaced by the fighting or they will be too frightened to venture out to the polls.

Some alleged the Shiite-led government was intentionally carrying out operations northeast of Baghdad to discourage Sunni Arabs from voting — a charge that Iraqi officials have denied.

"We strongly condemn the military operations and demand that they are halted immediately," Saleh al-Mutlaq of the Sunni National Dialogue Front told reporters. "We demand that the United Nations, the Arab League and humanitarian organizations stop these massacres."

Ayad al-Izi, a member of the largest Sunni Arab party, charged that raids by the Interior Ministry in religiously mixed Diyala province were politically motivated to cow Sunnis.

"Such practices are aimed at foiling the political process in the country and they ignite the strife in such areas," said al-Izi of the Iraqi Islamic Party.

The Interior Ministry said 310 people were arrested in the Diyala raids, which followed a truck bombing in a Shiite village that killed about 20 people. It did not say whether all those arrested were Sunnis.

In a statement Sunday, the U.S. command said two Marines were killed the day before by a bomb west of Baghdad and an American soldier died in a vehicle accident in western Iraq. The latest deaths brought to at least 2,065 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Despite the rising casualty toll, U.S. officials have been encouraged because so many Sunni Arab groups have decided to run in the December elections, hoping that will induce members of the Sunni-dominated insurgency to stop fighting. That would allow U.S. and other coalition troops to begin heading home next year.

Most Sunni Arabs boycotted the Jan. 30 elections, enabling the majority Shiites and their Kurdish allies to dominate the current parliament. That in turn ratcheted up sectarian tensions and reprisal killings. Many Sunni politicians now consider the January boycott a disaster for their community. But Sunni hard-liners — including insurgents and many clerics — remain adamantly opposed to the political process.

"Our position is unchanged," Sheik Mohammed Bashar al-Faydhi, spokesman for the hard-line clerical Association of Muslim Scholars, told reporters Sunday. "We will not participle in the political process as long as the occupation exists," although he suggested that might change if Washington offered a timetable for withdrawal.

President George W. Bush has refused to set a timetable, saying that would play into the hands of insurgents. However, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi said Friday that U.S. troops could begin leaving in significant numbers sometime next year.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani predicted in an interview televised Sunday in London that the 8,500 British soldiers could be gone by the end of 2006 — although he was not speaking for the government.

Talabani told Britain's ITV that no Iraqis wanted foreign troops to remain indefinitely, adding that Iraq's own soldiers should be ready to take over from British forces in the southern provinces around Basra by the end of next year.

[Sean Osborne]

Saddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli Says

BY IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun

December 15, 2005 The New York Sun

URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/24480

http://www.nysun.com/article/24480?access=568192 (for nonsubscribers)

Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says.

The assertion comes as President Bush said yesterday that much of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was incorrect.

The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. "He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria," General Yaalon told The New York Sun over dinner in New York on Tuesday night. "No one went to Syria to find it."

From July 2002 to June 2005, when he retired, General Yaalon was chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force, the top job in the Israeli military, analogous to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the American military. He is now a military fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He made similar, but more speculative, remarks in April 2004 that attracted little notice in America; at that time he was quoted as saying of the Iraqi weapons, "Perhaps they transferred them to another country, such as Syria."

The Israeli general's remarks came on the eve of Mr. Bush's speech to the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, in which the president addressed the issue of intelligence and defended the decision to go to war. "When we made the decision to go into Iraq, many intelligence agencies around the world judged that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This judgment was shared by the intelligence agencies of governments who did not support my decision to remove Saddam. And it is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Mr. Bush said in remarks that were one of a series of speeches he has given recently on the war.

Mr. Bush's defense of the war echoed themes he has been pressing since before the war began and through his successful campaign for re-election. "Given Saddam's history and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat - and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power."

An official at the Iraqi embassy in Washington, Entifadh Qanbar, said he believed the Israeli general's account, but that the Iraqi government is "basically operating in the dark" because it does not have its own intelligence agency. He said the issue underscored the need for the new Iraqi government to have control of its own intelligence service. "We don't have any way to find anything out about Syria because we don't have intelligence," Mr. Qanbar said. He said there is a high-rise building in Baghdad with 1,000 employees working on intelligence but that it has no budget appropriation from the Iraqi government and "doesn't report to the Iraqi government."

"Nobody knows who it belongs to, but you should understand who it belongs to," he said, in what was apparently a reference to American involvement.

An Iraqi politician, Mithal Al-Alusi, whose sons were both assassinated in Iraq last year, told The New York Sun's Eli Lake last month that his party would press the Iraqi government to renew the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Mr. Al-Alusi said he believes Saddam clearly had the weapons before the invasion. "They will find the weapons, I am sure they will," Mr. Al-Alusi said.

A spokesman at the Syrian embassy in Washington did not return a call seeking comment. But General Yaalon's comment could increase pressure on the Syrian government that is already mounting from Washington and the United Nations. Mr. Bush has been keeping the rhetorical heat on Damascus. On Monday, he said in a speech, "Iraq's neighbor to the west, Syria, is permitting terrorists to use that territory to cross into Iraq."

Also Monday, Mr. Bush issued a statement saying, "Syria must comply with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1559, 1595, and 1636 and end its interference in Lebanon once and for all. "The resolutions call for ending Syria's occupation of Lebanon and for Syrian cooperation into the investigation of the assassination of a Lebanese politician, Rafik Hariri.

On Saturday, the White House issued a statement calling attention to Syrian prisoners of conscience such as Kamal Labwani. "The Syrian Government must cease its harassment of Syrians peacefully seeking to bring democratic reform to their country. The United States stands with the Syrian people in their desire for freedom and democracy," said the statement, issued in the name of the White House press secretary.

Yesterday, the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, described Syria as an "oppressive regime." He also pointed to a recent report by a United Nations investigator looking into the assassination of Hariri. "The Syrian Government has failed to offer its full cooperation," Mr. McCormack said, citing the U.N. investigator's report that "details allegations of document burning by the Syrians, of intimidating witnesses."

When, during an interview with the Sun in April, Vice President Cheney was asked whether he thought that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been moved to Syria, Mr. Cheney replied only that he had seen such reports.

An article in the Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly reports that in an appearance on Israel's Channel 2 on December 23, 2002, Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon stated, "Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria." The allegation was denied by the Syrian government at the time as "completely untrue," and it attracted scant American press attention, coming as it did on the eve of the Christmas holiday.

Syria shares a 376-mile border with Iraq. The Syrian ruling party and Saddam Hussein had in common the ideology of Baathism, a mixture of Nazism and Marxism.

Syria is one of only eight countries that has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty that obligates nations not to stockpile or use chemical weapons. And it has long been the source of concern in America and Israel and Lebanon about its chemical warfare program apart from any weapons that may have been received from Iraq. The director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March of 2004, "Damascus has an active CW development and testing program that relies on foreign suppliers for key controlled chemicals suitable for producing CW."

[Malsua]

Not sure how reliable the following site is shrug. Not sure exactly what Bush has to do with Syria and maintaining Assad in power.

Interesting anyway.

-Mal
------
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...207425,00.html

Syrian official: Assad, Bush deal in works

Ynet exclusive: Senior source in Damascus tells Ynet Syrian leader Assad interested in deal that would allow him to stay in power; the price: Incriminating senior officials behind Hariri killing, cutting aid to anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq. Assad still refusing to dismantle Hizbullah
Ali Waked

Syria's Assad wants a deal: Syrian President Bashar Assad is engaged in advanced contacts with the U.S. and France in a bid to work out an agreement that will allow him to stay in power, a senior source in Damascus told Ynet.
According to the source, the contacts are being undertaken through Saudi intermediation and are meant to resolve the international crisis currently faced by the Syrian leadership.
The deal being worked out is reportedly based on the following understandings: Two senior Syria officials, General Rustom Ghazaleh and one of his assistants, Jameh Jameh, will be incriminated in connection with the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Meanwhile, Assad himself and particularly his brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, will be cleared of involvement in the killing.

Moreover, the Syrians are expected to end their support for anti-American elements operating in Iraq and pledge to tighten border controls and act to end arms transfers into Iraq.
The Syrians will also pledge to minimize their cooperation with Iran, which is funding and directing many of the groups fighting American troops. Notably, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Damascus a week ago.
The Iranian-Syrian connection is raising concern in the West, particularly in light of reports that the Iranian leader was accompanied in the visit by arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, one of the world's most wanted terror figures.
Israeli interests left out
However, Syria is apparently at odds with the U.S. and France regarding the dismantling of Hizbullah. At this point, Damascus is refusing to meet the demand to disarm Hassan Nasrallah's organization.
However, the Americans are also asking for far-reaching reforms as part of the deal. The senior Syrian source told Ynet Syria is willing to go ahead with extensive reforms, which have already been formulated in the past by a French team of experts and deal with all areas of life in the country.
According to the source, Saudi Arabia played an important behind-the-scenes role, and also blocked former Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam from accessing most Saudi-controlled media outlets. Notably, Khaddam recently submitted to interviews where he slammed Assad's regime and said the Syrian leader was directly involved in Hariri's assassination.

However, Khaddam should not be the only concerned party: Veteran Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara is also drawing remarks of dissatisfaction in western capitals. According to the Syrian source, the U.S. and France recommended that Assad minimize al-Shara's involvement, as the foreign minister is considered to be part of the radical old guard.
As a "bonus," the Syrian leader is also supposed to improve the atmosphere by releasing notable opposition activists from jail.
One thing is conspicuous in the deal: Israel, or more accurately, Israeli interests are left out. The current Syrian refusal to dismantle Hizbullah prevents any possibility of improving the atmosphere between Damascus and Jerusalem, and all other clauses in the agreement have no immediate effect on Israel.
(01.29.06, 03:12)

[Sean Osborne]

SPIEGEL ONLINE - June 22, 2006, 12:42 PM
URL:

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,422911,00.html Russia and Syria

An Old Base (Friendship) Gets a Facelift

By Uwe Klussmann
Harkening to days gone by, Russia's fleet is returning to the Mediterranean as the Kremlin sends military advisors and weapons to Syria.



Russian cruiser Moskva in the Med.





A mild westerly wind blows in from the Mediterranean onto the harbor of Tartus, where cube-shaped and weathered brownish houses sit atop Phoenician era ruins. A small mosque's minaret and a fish restaurant dominate the scene. But this idyllic image quickly disappears just a few minutes outside the town, where Russian soldiers have set up camp. Surrounded by olive groves and long greenhouses, and guarded by Syrian marines, Moscow's last remaining naval base outside of the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) lurks behind a tall metal fence.

At the Tartus naval base, covering an area of almost a hundred acres, about 300 men serve under the command of sea captain Vladimir Gudkov, a former officer in Russia's North Sea fleet. When Gudkov was transferred to Syria from Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, Russia's outpost in Mediterranean was still plagued by a reputation for being a run-down place in the sun.


Founded by the Phoenicians, conquered by the Crusaders in 1102 and subsequently attacked by legendary Arab hero Saladin, the port city just 160 kilometers northwest of Damascus has always been considered strategically important. During the Cold War it served as a supply hub for the Soviets' Mediterranean fleet. But after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the Soviet fleet disappeared from Mediterranean waters and the Tartus base became dilapidated.


But this quickly changed when Gudkov brought in repair teams from Sevastopol to upgrade the facility. A team of technicians is currently replacing hatches and antennas on the base's floating dock, where incoming ships are refueled and loaded with provisions. More and more Russian landing vessels like the "Jamal," and modernized warships like the "Smetlivy" and the "Pytlivy," are dropping anchor in the ancient Crusader port. The missile cruiser "Moskva," the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, with a crew of 850 and Vice Admiral Vassily Kondakov on board, paid a visit to the Latakia naval base in February. As in the old days, Kondakov met with the head of Syria's navy to assure his Syrian counterpart that Russian-Syrian relations are about to experience "an upswing."
This, at least, is what Russian President Vladimir Putin intends. In a speech to military commanders, the Kremlin chief said that a newly "modern and mobile" Russian fleet will once again be flying its colors on the world's oceans. The president had nothing but praise for Russia's navy, which he said has become "significantly more active" in the Mediterranean, clearly a reflection of Putin's efforts to boost his country's profile in the Middle East.

Important ties

Syria is Russia's most important partner in the region. Thirty-five thousand Syrians hold degrees from Russian universities. At a Kremlin reception for Syrian President Bashar Assad, Putin, referring to the Soviet era, praised the two countries' "special and sincere relations" -- and promptly forgave about $10 billion in Syrian debt accumulated over the years, principally as a result of arms purchases. Over three decades, the current president's father, Hafiz Assad, received military equipment valued at about $25 billion from the Russians. To this day, the 308,000 troops in the country's armed forces are equipped almost exclusively with Soviet gear, including 4,600 tanks, primarily T-72 and T-62 models, about 600 MIG and Sukhoi fighter jets, 170 helicopters and at least two diesel-powered submarines.
Putin guaranteed the delivery of Russian Streletz anti-aircraft missiles (referred to as SA-18s in NATO parlance). The carriage-mounted missiles with a range of six kilometers (about four miles) could make "low altitude flights over the residence of the Syrian president" more difficult in the future, Putin said in an interview with Israeli television. Indeed, Israel deeply humiliated the Syrians last year when it sent a squadron of F-16 fighter jets on a low-altitude mission encircling Assad's summer residence near the Russian base.

An office of Russia's state-owned arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, in Damascus is supplying the Russians' dependable customers with new guidance systems and spare parts for tanks, modern electronics systems for MIG-21 fighter jets and ammunition. Sergei Chemesov, a Putin associate from the two men's days working for the KGB in East Germany, runs the company's Moscow headquarters. In the last seven years alone, Syria's Baathist regime has ordered Russian weapons valued at more than $1 billion, including Su-27 pursuit planes, MIG-29 fighter jets and T-80 tanks. But in a departure from Soviet days, Moscow now demands cash payment.

Russian friend, US foe

Moscow's military assistance is going to a country US President George W. Bush has called an "extraordinary threat to US national security," a country the US State Department classifies as a sponsor of terrorism because of its support for terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. But what most concerns American military experts is the Syrian army's acquisition of about 1,000 Russian Kornet-E anti-tank guided missiles. The weapon also has the Pentagon concerned, because of its ability to turn even the most state-of-the-art Bradley armored personnel carrier into burning scrap metal from distances of up to 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) within seconds. About 10,000 Syrian officers have received top-rate training at both Soviet and Russian military academies, with a fresh crop of pilots and air defense specialists currently attending Russia's air force academy.

Western experts estimate that up to 2,000 Russian military advisors, under the command of Lieutenant General Vassily Jakushev, 60, the former commander-in-chief of the country's Far East military district, are currently serving in the Syrian military. Russian officers hold teaching positions at Syria's military officer training academy. Serving on the Mediterranean is popular. With even low-ranking officers earnings at least $1,000 a month, military pay on the Syrian frontier is about triple what it is at home. But a Syrian tour of duty, which usually lasts three years, does have its price: isolation. In an effort to avoid being conspicuous, the Russian guests wear Syrian uniforms and are required to spend their free time with their families in isolated compounds, with a small vacation on Latakia's sandy, palm-lined beaches a rare and precious respite from the monotony of life on base.
Translated from German by Christopher Sultan

[Ryan Ruck]

Disquieting news Sean. Thank you for posting it.

More that goes against the argument of those that claim a broken and useless Russian military. They sure have succeded in perpetuating that myth.

(Post 1776 BTW !!! )

[Backstop]

LATimes

IN BRIEF / SYRIA

Ship's Cargo Reportedly Is Air Defense System
From Times Wire Reports

September 12, 2006

A ship bound for Syria from North Korea and detained in Cyprus on an Interpol alert for suspected arms smuggling was carrying an air defense system, Cypriot authorities said.

The shipment was billed as weather-observation equipment on the freight manifest of the Panamanian-flagged Grigorio 1.

The ship was carrying 18 truck-mounted mobile radar systems and three command vehicles. "The radars on the 18 trucks appear to be part of an air defense system," a police spokeswoman said.

Also posted here: http://www.transasianaxis.com/vb/sho...=8260#post8260

[Sean Osborne]

Dagnabbit... I thought I posted the following material a week and a half ago.

Better late than never.

Here's what the Syrians want the Cyprots to release to them from the captured Gregorio-1 cargo ship which came by way of North Korea. This is the S-300-PMU defensive system that is to guard the forward deployment in western Syria of the advanced, nuclear-capable Iranian Shahab-3 missiles.


Here's an image of the entire suite (83M6E2) for the Russian-made S-300PMU-2 Moblie SAM Battery. 54K6E2 Command and Control (C2) vehicle is in the center. 64N6e2 Target Acquisition phased array 3-D radar is to the left, Clam Shell is to the rear near missile tubes.

High value strategic assets (Iranian Shahab-3) require the best anti-air threat defense possible - this is it. At some point the Shahab-3 will have nuclear warheads fitted to them.

Additionally, according to multiple reports I have seen, nearly 300 former Soviet scientists (with their families) have been employed in Iran for the past 15 years creating these "indigenous" Iranian nuclear warhead designs and the nuclear infrastructure to power them. These scientists are guarded by Russian Army Voiska spetsialnogo naznacheniya a/k/a Spetsnaz (Special Forces) troops.

[American Patriot]

You did post that picture a week or two back

[Sean Osborne]

I thought so, but dang if I can find it now.