Turkey,
Saudi Arabia giving terrorists WMDs, Syria claims
12
October, 2014
Syria’s
UN envoy has accused Turkey and Saudi Arabia of giving weapons of
mass destruction (WMDs) to terrorist groups fighting in the country.
The charge precedes reports Kurdish fighters battling ISIS militants
have been attacked with chemical weapons.
Bashar
Jaafari told a UN committee on Friday that Turkey and Saudi Arabia
should examine their own involvement in the Syrian conflict before
leveling “null and baseless
accusations [against] the Syrian government."
In
comments delivered to the UN’s First Committee on Disarmament and
International Security at the UN General Assembly, Jaafari accused
Ankara and Riyadh of being “directly
involved in providing these terrorist organizations with chemical
weapons,”
RIA-Novosti cites a source as saying.
He
further accused the countries of helping finance groups attempting to
overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad. He singled out Turkey in
particular for allegedly supporting over 100 militant organizations
currently active in Syria.
Rather
than lend “a helping hand”
to help Damascus put a halt to the crisis currently engulfing the
country, the Turkish government has become “one
of the main support bases for these terrorist organizations,”
the Israeli- daily Haaretz cites Jaafari as saying.
The
report comes nearly a week after US Vice President Joe Biden was
forced to
apologize
to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after alleging he had
allowed foreign fighters allied with the so-called Islamic State (IS)
to cross into Syria.
A
livid Erdogan said if Biden in fact had made the comments, the US
vice president would be “history
to me.”
During
the phone call with Erdogan, Biden “apologized
for any implication that Turkey or other allies and partners in the
region had intentionally supplied or facilitated the growth of ISIL
(IS, ISIS) or other violent extremists in Syria,"
the White House said.
On
October 2, Biden blamed America’s allies in the region – Turkey,
Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – for allowing the rise
of IS, saying they supported extremists with money and weapons in
their eagerness to oust the Assad regime in Syria.
Hallmarks
of a WMD attack
Meanwhile,
photographs
obtained by the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA
Journal) which were published on Sunday appear to support accusations
IS militants have deployed chemical weapons against Kurdish fighters,
who have been under siege in the northeastern Syrian city of Kobani
since September 16.
According
to the documentary evidence, which cannot be independently verified,
three slain Kurdish fighters were inflicted with “burns
and white spots”
while not bearing any visible wounds or external bleeding.
The
reported injuries could indicate that a chemical agent, potentially
mustard gas, was deployed, MERIA said. The experts said, however,
that more evidence would be needed to conclude the Kurdish fighters
had died due to a chemical attack.
Hamish
de Bretton-Gordon, one of the world's leading chemical weapons
experts, told RT that if the MERIA photos are genuine, the injuries
depicted would be “consistent
with a blister agent, like Mustard [gas].”
“We
know that Islamic State have already used chlorine in Iraq against
the Iraqi army,”
he added.
The
journal suggests IS may have obtained the weapons following the
seizure of the alleged Muthanna chemical weapons compound.
The
journal cites a 2007
CIA report,
which stated Muthanna was used to produce chemical agents, including
mustard gas
The
report follows accusations
from Washington last month that the Assad government had broken the
chemical weapons treaty it signed earlier this year by deploying
chlorine gas in several Syrian villages in Hama.
“We
believe there is evidence of [President Bashar] Assad’s use of
chlorine, which when you use it – despite it not being on the list
– it is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention,”
Kerry told the US House of Representatives. “He’s
in violation of the convention.”
Kerry
added that Washington is studying ways to hold Assad to account.
Last
week, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said findings from the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
“corroborate allegations
that the Assad regime is continuing to use chemical weapons in Syria,
in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention”
the UK Independent cited him as saying.
Responding
to the accusations, Jaafari told the UN Damascus “condemns
in the strongest terms the use of chemical weapons and weapons of
mass destruction, and considers it an abhorrent crime and an
impermissible, reprehensible and unethical act,”
RIA cites him as saying.
He
added that “a small number
of governments had used this report to slander Syria.”
Jaafari
further warned against politicizing the OPCW’s September report,
saying that it had not assigned blame for the attacks.
Turkey
reluctant to intervene in Kobani, fears Kurds' nationalism - Chatham
House analyst
The
West has been counting on the Kurds to spearhead the ground offensive
against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. But with alliances in
the Middle East shifting rapidly, how reliable of an ally are they?
Will the Kurds prove to be the decisive factor in the US-lead
coalition, or will they seek an accommodation with the Islamic State
to suit their own interests?
Oksana
is joined by Fadi Hakura, the Manager of the Turkey Project at
Chatham House, to attack these issues.
From Patrick Cockburn of the Independent
America's
Anti-ISIS Strategy Is In Tatters
12
October, 2014
A
week ago we noted how critical the
seige in Kobani was (and why it suggested President Obama's strategy
was a fiasco given a lack of commitment from supposed allies such as
Turkey). 7 days later.. and America's
plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins
as the militant group's fighters come close to capturing Kobani and
have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.
While John Kerry has today stated, "Kobani does not define
strategy against Islamic State," the 'loss' is symbolic as The
Independent's Patrick Cockburn notes,
in both Syria and Iraq, ISIS is
expanding its control rather than contracting.
The
US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as
Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked.
President Obama's plan to "degrade and destroy" Islamic
State has not even begun to achieve success. In
both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than
contracting.
Isis
reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days
to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish
town's remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy
casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to
the string of victories it has won in the four months since its
forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June.
Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that
there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its
victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US
airpower at Kobani.
In
the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have
been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in
the town, probably Isis's toughest opponents in Syria.
"Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at
its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to
resource itself," said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony
Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. "The
tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to
be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight
effectively."
Unfortunately
for the US, Kobani isn't the only place air strikes are failing to
stop Isis. In
an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the
outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it
did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq
that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa
and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for.
Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west
of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the
Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past,
even when backed by US air strikes.
Today,
only the city of Haditha and two bases, Al-Assad military base near
Hit, and Camp Mazrah outside Fallujah, are still in Iraqi government
hands.
Joel Wing, in his study –"Iraq's Security Forces Collapse as
The Islamic State Takes Control of Most of Anbar Province" –
concludes: "This was a
huge victory as it gives the insurgents virtual control over Anbar
and poses a serious threat to western Baghdad".
The
battle for Anbar, which was at the heart of the Sunni rebellion
against the US occupation after 2003, is almost over and has ended
with a decisive victory for Isis. It took large parts of Anbar in
January and government counter-attacks failed dismally with some
5,000 casualties in the first six months of the year. About half the
province's 1.5 million population has fled and become refugees. The
next Isis target may be the Sunni enclaves in western Baghdad,
starting with Abu Ghraib on the outskirts but leading right to the
centre of the capital.
The
Iraqi government and its foreign allies are drawing comfort, there
having been some advances against Isis in the centre and north of the
country. But north and north-east of Baghdad the successes have not
been won by the Iraqi army but by highly sectarian Shia militias
which do not distinguish between Isis and the rest of the Sunni
population. They speak openly of getting rid of Sunni in mixed
provinces such as Diyala where they have advanced. The
result is that Sunni in Iraq have no alternative but to stick with
Isis or flee, if they want to survive.
The same is true north-west of Mosul on the border with Syria, where
Iraqi Kurdish forces, aided by US air attacks, have retaken the
important border crossing of Rabia, but only one Sunni Arab remained
in the town. Ethnic and sectarian cleansing has become the norm in
the war in both Iraq and Syria.
The
US's failure to save Kobani, if it falls, will be a political as well
as military disaster. Indeed,
the circumstances surrounding the loss of the beleaguered town are
even more significant than the inability so far of air strikes to
stop Isis taking 40 per cent of it. At the start of the bombing in
Syria, President Obama boasted of putting together a coalition of
Sunni powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab
Emirates and Bahrain to oppose Isis, but these all have different
agendas to the US in which destroying IS is not the first priority.
The Sunni Arab monarchies may not like Isis, which threatens the
political status quo, but, as one Iraqi observer put it, "they
like the fact that Isis creates more problems for the Shia than it
does for them".
Of
the countries supposedly uniting against Isis, by the far most
important is Turkey because
it shares a 510-mile border with Syria across which rebels of all
sorts, including Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, have previously passed
with ease. This year the Turks have tightened border security, but
since its successes in the summer Isis no longer needs sanctuary,
supplies and volunteers from outside to the degree it once did.
In
the course of the past week it has become clear that Turkey considers
the Syrian Kurd political and military organisations, the PYD and
YPG, as posing a greater threat to it than the Islamic
fundamentalists. Moreover,
the PYD is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),
which has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey since 1984.
Ever
since Syrian government forces withdrew from the Syrian Kurdish
enclaves or cantons on the border with Turkey in July 2012, Ankara
has feared the impact of self-governing Syrian Kurds on its own 15
million-strong Kurdish population.
President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan would prefer Isis to control Kobani, not the
PYD.
When five PYD members, who had been fighting Isis at Kobani, were
picked up by the Turkish army as they crossed the border last week
they were denounced as "separatist terrorists".
Turkey
is demanding a high price from the US for its co-operation in
attacking Isis, such as a Turkish-controlled buffer zone inside Syria
where Syrian refugees are to live and anti-Assad rebels are to be
trained.
Mr Erdogan would like a no-fly zone which will also be directed
against the government in Damascus since Isis has no air force. If
implemented the plan would mean Turkey, backed by the US, would enter
the Syrian civil war on the side of the rebels, though the anti-Assad
forces are dominated by Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda
affiliate.
It
is worth keeping in mind that Turkey's actions in Syria since 2011
have been a self-defeating blend of hubris and miscalculation.
At the start of the uprising, it could have held the balance between
the government and its opponents. Instead, it supported the
militarisation of the crisis, backed the jihadis and assumed Assad
would soon be defeated. This did not happen and what had been a
popular uprising became dominated by sectarian warlords who
flourished in conditions created by Turkey.
Mr Erdogan is assuming he can disregard the rage of the Turkish Kurds
at what they see as his complicity with Isis against the Syrian
Kurds. This fury is already deep, with 33 dead, and is likely to get
a great deal worse if Kobani falls.
Why
doesn't Ankara worry more about the collapse of the peace process
with the PKK that has maintained a ceasefire since 2013? It may
believe that the PKK is too heavily involved in fighting Isis in
Syria that it cannot go back to war with the government in Turkey. On
the other hand, if Turkey does join the civil war in Syria against
Assad, a crucial ally of Iran, then Iranian
leaders have said that "Turkey will pay a price".
This probably means that Iran will covertly support an armed Kurdish
insurgency in Turkey. Saddam Hussein made a somewhat similar mistake
to Mr Erdogan when he invaded Iran in 1980, thus leading Iran to
reignite the Kurdish rebellion that Baghdad had crushed through an
agreement with the Shah in 1975. Turkish
military intervention in Syria might not end the war there, but it
may well spread the fighting to Turkey.
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