US special operations chief confirms end of CIA support for anti-Assad forces in Syria
©
Alaa Faqir / Reuters
RT,
20
July, 2017
A
US army general has confirmed that Washington has decided to put an
end to a CIA scheme to equip and train certain rebel groups fighting
the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. He insisted the
policy shift had nothing to do with improving relations with Russia.
US
Army General Raymond Thomas, head of the Special Operations Command,
said the decision was "based
on assessment of the program."
"At
least from what I know about that program and the decision to end it,
(it was) absolutely not a sop to the Russians," Thomas
said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Friday.
Unnamed
government sources told various media outlets last week that the
decision to end the program had been partly due to the Trump
administration wanting a better relationship with Russia.
The
decision to terminate the program was reportedly taken by Trump in
consultation with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security
adviser H.R. McMaster ahead of his meeting with Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin in Hamburg earlier this month.
But
the end of the CIA's Timber Sycamore strategy was not a precondition
for the ceasefire deal reached between Putin and Trump on the
sidelines of the G20 summit, the US officials insisted.
The
covert CIA program began arming and training the so-called moderate
Syrian opposition forces in 2013.
Two
US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity with Reuters,
pointed out that the covert CIA tactic had produced little success.
Russia
has always warned against arming the so-called moderate opposition
groups in Syria, underlining that weapons supplied to them often fall
into the hands of jihadist groups.
READ
MORE: Aleppo ‘opposition’ blocked humanitarian aid &
held civilians ‘on some occasions’ – Kerry
The
so-called moderate opposition has effectively ceased to exist in
Syria, hijacked by armed extremists, Russia's former UN
ambassadortold the
General Assembly in December last year.
Having
pointed to the scale of destruction in Syria, Vitaly Churkin, now
late, said it was "a
result of the mindless foreign policy of several international and
regional players who once decided to change the leadership in
Damascus and to redraw drastically the political, ethnic,
confessional, and economic map of the region."
But
despite having "extensive
financial, logistical, and propaganda support"
from the outside, "the
elusive concept of 'moderate Syrian opposition' has effectively
failed,"
the Russian diplomat then said.
White
House Admits Defeat in Syria
By
Finian Cunningham
July
21, 2017 "Information
Clearing House" -
President
Trump's announcement this week to end the CIA's covert arming of
militants in Syria is an admission of defeat. The US has lost its
six-year war for regime change in the Arab country. It's time to wrap
it up.
It's
not over yet, of course. It remains to be seen if Trump's decision
can in fact be implemented. Can the CIA be reined in to obey orders?
Will the US be able to stop regional client regimes, like Saudi
Arabia, from stepping up their covert supply of American weapons to
the militants in Syria?
Also, Trump's decision does not mean the US and its allies will withdraw ground and air forces from Syria, where they are illegally operating in violation of international law.
Also, Trump's decision does not mean the US and its allies will withdraw ground and air forces from Syria, where they are illegally operating in violation of international law.
Nevertheless,
the American president's declared ending
of the CIA's role in fueling the insurgency in Syria
should be seen as a welcome move. It is the right thing to do,
and a brave one also because of the anti-Russia flak he is bound
to receive for taking the decision. It would have been
politically expedient for Trump to have not pulled the plug
on the CIA in Syria. But by doing so, he is bound
to compound the anti-Russia hysteria gripping Washington and
large sections of the media accusing him of being a
"Kremlin stooge".
Any
rational person would have to agree that the best way to end
the violence in Syria is for foreign countries to halt
pouring weapons into the country. Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad has long maintained this logical position: if nations want
Syria's bloodshed to stop, as they claim, then they should
stop supplying arms and cut out sponsoring militant groups.
By
its own admission, the US has been funneling weapons into Syria
since at least 2013, according to media reports, and
probably before that date right back to the beginning
of the war in March 2011. Not only the US but its NATO
partners, Britain, France and Turkey, as well as regional
allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. This is an admission of a
criminal conspiracy to destabilize a sovereign country
by supporting illegally armed anti-government militant groups.
It matters little whether these groups are arbitrarily designated
"moderate rebels". They are illegally armed.
With
a Syrian death toll of up to 400,000 over six years
of war, millions of refugees and a culturally rich country
driven to the brink of destruction, it is blindingly
obvious that Trump made the right call to at least partially
reduce the flow of weapons, by ending the CIA program. It
is well past time to bring the US-led criminal assault
on Syria to an end.
Trump's
call was also a brave one because the US media immediately and
predictably depicted the move as a "concession to Russia".
With the US president already being assailed with endless
accusations of "colluding" with Russia in winning
the election to the White House last year, his decision to leash
the dogs of war in Syria this week only lends more grist
to the Russophobia rumor mill.
The
Washington Post headlined the
news with: "Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad
rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow".
Several
other US media outlets followed suit, making snide comments that the
move "will please the Kremlin" and that Trump was
"appeasing Putin" by closing down the CIA covert
operations in Syria.
The
American corporate media persist with the myth that the CIA has
been backing "moderate rebels". When in reality, the
"moderate rebels" and the "terrorist jihadists"
are one and the same motley army of mercenaries.
Mercenaries who
have barbarized the Syrian people with sickening massacres,
under the tutelage of the CIA and other foreign military
services.
With
contorted logic, US media spin that Trump's shuttering of the
CIA program to train "moderate rebels" in Syria
may now strengthen the hand of "extremists".
The
president is accused of capitulating to Putin on Syria.
There are mutterings in the US media suggesting that this is
what Trump talked about with Putin during their meetings
in Hamburg at the G20 summit earlier this month.
Especially, during the so-called "secret meeting"
in front of 18 other heads of state while at dinner.
What
the incorrigible lying US media don't get is that American
involvement in Syria has been a criminal enterprise from the
get-go, constituting a monumental crime against peace and
humanity. The US-sponsored terrorism in Syria has gone on for
far too long. No amount of sanitizing by the media can
alter that brutal truth.
It
was Russia's principled decision at the end of 2015
to intervene in Syria, in accordance
with international law, that began to bring the criminal
conspiracy to an end. Two years on, the Syrian state is
beginning to get the upper-hand over the foreign-backed
militant groups that have ravaged the country. Russia's military
support has been vital to that impending victory.
"The
shuttering of the [CIA] program is also an acknowledgment
of Washington's limited leverage and desire to remove Assad
from power," noted the Washington Post.
In
other words, begrudgingly, the US war for regime change in Syria
is being acknowledged as a defeat. And it is Russia that ensured
that defeat.
The
Washington Post quotes one US official as saying more openly:
"It is a momentous decision. Putin won in Syria."
Rather
than coming clean and admitting that the US has been engaged
in a sordid, criminal war on Syria which it has finally
lost, the American media are now spinning Trump's ending of CIA
operations as a "concession" to Russia.
For
all his flaws, and there are many, at least Donald Trump knows
when to admit that the US war in Syria is a loser. And
despite the carping Russophobia trying to box him in, Trump
appears ready to take the right decision to bring this
criminal American war to an end.
Finian
Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with
articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate
in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the
Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a
career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter.
For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news
media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and
Independent.
From Newsweek
RUSSIAN MILITARY COULD FORCE THE U.S. OUT OF SYRIA, ARMY OFFICIAL SAYS
21
July, 2017
The
head of Special Forces said Friday that Russia had established a more
credible foothold than the U.S. in Syria, and that Moscow could use
this influence to essentially expel his forces.
Addressing
a security conference at the Aspen Institute, Special Operations
Command chief Army General Raymond Thomas said that, while
counterterrorism remained a priority for his forces, international
law could prevent the U.S. from maintaining a long-term presence in
Syria, where its intervention has been declared illegal by the
government. Russia is also involved in the fight against the
Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and other jihadists in Syria, but
entered at the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, something
that Thomas said could allow Moscow to make a solid case for the
U.S.'s departure.
Here's
the conundrum: We are operating in the sovereign country of Syria.
The Russians, their stalwarts, their backstoppers have already
uninvited the Turks from Syria. We're a bad day away from the
Russians saying, 'Why are you still in Syria, U.S.?,'" Thomas
said.
"If
the Russians play that card, we could want to stay and have no
ability to do it," he added.
Russian
soldiers, on armored vehicles, patrol a street in Aleppo, Syria,
February 2017. The Syrian military's successful recapture of Aleppo
has widely been considered a turning point in the war and
demonstrated how Russia's support was crucial to Assad's efforts to
reestablish control over areas lost to rebels and jihadists.OMAR
SANADIKI/REUTERS
The U.S. and Russia are
both battling ISIS in Syria, but they back different factions that
hold opposing views on Syria's political future. The U.S. backs the
Syrian Democratic Forces, which Thomas said Special Forces helped
name in order to distance themselves from the Kurdish nationalist
People's Protection Units (YPG). Thomas also confirmed that the CIA
has cut
ties with other Syrian rebel groups that have attempted to
overthrow Assad since 2011. Russia and Iran support the Syrian
military and its allies, which reject the national aspirations of
Kurdish groups, the ultraconservative Sunni Muslim ideology of
jihadists and calls for political upheaval by the opposition.
Assad, along with his
Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, has continually
demanded that the U.S. and other countries opposed to the Syrian
government respect the country's national sovereignty. While
President Donald Trump appeared to adhere to this view more so than
his predecessor, he took a more aggressive approach in April when he
ordered an unprecedented attack on a Syrian air force base, claiming
it was the origins of chemical weapons strike on civilians days
prior. Assad and Putin have denied these allegations, and the
legality of the strike has come into question among experts.
A
U.S army soldier holds a gun as he stands guard next to an armored
vehicle as Brett McGurk, U.S. envoy to the coalition against Islamic
State militant group (ISIS), visits the town of Tabqa, Syria June 29,
2017. The U.S. is also involved in the fight against ISIS, but backs
a different faction from Russia not associated with the Syrian
government.RODI SAID/REUTERS
The
U.S. argues that it does not intend to target pro-government forces,
but has done so on a number of occasions, arguing self-defense of its
unilaterally declared "deconfliction zone." A series of
attacks on fighters supportive of Assad in the country's south and
the shooting down of Syrian military jet in the north have been met
with fury by Russia, which went as far as to say last month it would
begin targeting U.S-led coalition aircraft. Thomas alluded to this
and other incidents between pro-government and U.S.-backed forces,
calling them "close calls" that could ultimately lead to
Russia questioning the U.S.'s presence in Syria once ISIS is
defeated.
The
two powers have pursued an uneasy rapprochement in recent weeks
and have negotiated a cease-fire between the military and rebels in
the country's southwest. Tensions remains, however, as the Syrian
Democratic Forces and the Syria's armed forces dislodge ISIS from
territory in and around its de facto capital of Raqqa, establishing
their own presence along the way.
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