US & EU Sanctions Punish Syrians

[rowan]

'The Syrian war, or at least our role in it, could’ve ended a long time ago if the MSM had done their job and challenged the White House on any number of fronts. They might have, and might still do if they wanted, pointed out how the Assad government’s rejection of a Qatari oil pipeline immediately preceded the eruption of violent “protests” in eastern Syria. Mr. President, was this mere coincidence or was this pipeline the backbone of our plan to unhitch Europe from Russian energy and destroy the Russian economy? They might have asked President Obama why the CIA was arming, training, and funding intolerant jihadist terrorists in Jordan. '

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/16/ ... to-change/

[rowan]

[rowan]

Timeline of US and allied interventions in Syria: https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entr ... 3_08:48:56!

Highlights:

2011
Obama says Assad must go
2012
Secretary of State Clinton says Assad must go
US & UK begin training rebels
CIA sends arms to rebels
Obama authorizes support for rebels
British Intelligence begins supporting rebels
2013
Kerry backs plan to arm rebels, says Assad must go
US sends armoured vehicles.
West trains rebels in Jordan
Arms shipment from Libya reaches Syria
CIA arms rebels in Syria, trains rebels in Jordan
Congress approves arms flow to rebels
Rebels obtain US anti-tank missiles
2014
US air strikes on Syria, say could last years
Civilian casualties reported
British special forces join fray
2015
US air strikes kill 50 civilians in one incident, 'dozens' in another
British pilots involved in air strikes
US delivers 50 tonnes of weapons to rebels
Obama authorizes boots on the ground, sends more arms
2016
US strikes kill 73 civilians
US violates ceasfire, bombs Syrian army 'by accident,' many killed
A billion pounds worth of weapons reach rebels from Europe

[rowan]

From my Irish pal:

The sense of relief amongst the thousands of refugees is palpable.idp16 All were keen to talk, and we interviewed several who had arrived only yesterday and today. They all said the same thing. They said that they had been living in fear. They reported that the fighters have been telling everyone that the Syrian Army would kill anyone who fled to the West, but had killed many themselves who tried to leave – men, women and children. One woman broke down in tears as she told how one of her sons was killed by the rebels a few days ago, and another kidnapped. They also killed anyone who showed signs of supporting the Government. The refugees said that the ‘rebels’ told them that only those who support them are “true Muslims”, and that everyone else are ‘infidels’ and deserve to die.

http://talfanzine.info/blog/2016/12/15/ ... to-report/

[rowan]

The mainstream media is beyond Orwellian: Those who sent the terrorists into Syria, but ultimately lost, are being portrayed as the good guys on a victory parade, while those who fought the terrorists and ultimately won are being portrayed as the villains on the retreat.

It has just become more dangerous to be a foreign correspondent reporting on the civil war in Syria. This is because the jihadis holding power in east Aleppo were able to exclude Western journalists, who would be abducted and very likely killed if they went there, and replace them as news sources with highly partisan “local activists” who cannot escape being under jihadi control.

The foreign media has allowed – through naivety or self-interest – people who could only operate with the permission of al-Qaeda-type groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham to dominate the news agenda.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/19/ ... of-aleppo/

[rowan]

Proof of the propaganda:

This poor girl, grieving over her dead brother during the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in 2014, is now being recycled as part of the Aleppo 'genocide' propaganda campaign:



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... group.html

[OptimisticJock]

Much better sticking to the non msm. They don't have any bias at all.

[rowan]

I thought I did a fine bit of detective work there. The picture claiming to be of Aleppo jogged my memory because I had used it on my own Facebook page at the time of the Gaza massacre to draw attention to the tragedy. Now it's being shared by a spammer named "Joe Slaughter," purported to be of the 'Aleppo genocide,' and of course lots of dumb Americans are sharing it.

[morepork]

Fuck me you are a condescending little shit.

[Sandydragon]

Much better sticking to the non msm. They don't have any bias at all.

Indeed. Accept that you have been led by the nose and take everything on alt media sites as the truth.

[rowan]

[rowan]

Job well done, Russia. Those who started this conflict screamed blue murder over the collateral damage to cover themselves, but the terrorists have been defeated and the war basically brought to a halt; ending Washington's master plan for another regime change.


Russia has begun to withdraw its military forces from Syria, the head of the Russian general staff has said.

Valery Gerasimov said Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, and smaller accompanying warships would be the first to return from the Syrian port town of Tartous to Murmansk.

"In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, [President] Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," TASS news agency quoted Mr Gerasimov as saying.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 12541.html

[Donny osmond]

Job well done, Russia. Those who started this conflict screamed blue murder over the collateral damage to cover themselves, but the terrorists have been defeated and the war basically brought to a halt; ending Washington's master plan for another regime change.


Russia has begun to withdraw its military forces from Syria, the head of the Russian general staff has said.

Valery Gerasimov said Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, and smaller accompanying warships would be the first to return from the Syrian port town of Tartous to Murmansk.

"In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, [President] Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," TASS news agency quoted Mr Gerasimov as saying.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 12541.html

Given the wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians by the Russian forces, this might well be one of the most disgusting things ever posted on RR. Well done Rowan, you've taken a low bar and tried your hardest to sink it even further. And succeeded. You should be proud!

[rowan]

Job well done, Russia. Those who started this conflict screamed blue murder over the collateral damage to cover themselves, but the terrorists have been defeated and the war basically brought to a halt; ending Washington's master plan for another regime change.


Russia has begun to withdraw its military forces from Syria, the head of the Russian general staff has said.

Valery Gerasimov said Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, and smaller accompanying warships would be the first to return from the Syrian port town of Tartous to Murmansk.

"In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, [President] Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," TASS news agency quoted Mr Gerasimov as saying.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 12541.html

Given the wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians by the Russian forces, this might well be one of the most disgusting things ever posted on RR. Well done Rowan, you've taken a low bar and tried your hardest to sink it even further. And succeeded. You should be proud!

You mean the civilians taken hostage by the US/UK-backed terrorists? Well, most of them survived, and that's why they were celebrating their release, even though the Western media chose not to cover that, and instead ran propaganda stories of 'genocide' - complete with photos which were actually of Israel's bombing of Gaza in 2014. Of course, avoiding civilian carnage wouldn't have been top of the Kremlin's list of priorities, but how does that compare to the 10 million Muslims America wars have led to, directly or otherwise, during the past few decades? Your hypocrisy on this point is extraordinary, and merely exposes your socially ingrained prejudices.

Meanwhile, I would personally like to see the Russians deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq & Libya and see if we can't get some of those interminable proxy wars cleaned up at last. Of course, that wouldn't suit the Western military industrial complex too well, since this has all been very lucrative in terms of both arms sales and the freedom to rape these countries of their natural resources. Russia, evidently, was more interested in simply bringing an end to one of these interminable conflicts and all the suffering entailed. To anyone who is not brainwashed with Western government propaganda and Russophobic racism, that is highly laudable, regardless of their motives.

[kk67]

Fuck me you are a condescending little shit.

Easy now. All war is economic. Can we just focus on that..?.

[rowan]

Fuck me you are a condescending little shit.

Easy now. All war is economic. Can we just focus on that..?.

Sure, this one too. It was started at least in part by the Damascus regime's refusal to allow Qatar to build a pipeline straight through Syria to Turkey, thereby reducing Europe's dependence on Russia. But the reason Russia stepped in was to defend its Syrian ally and withal its base at Tartus, while at the same time thwarting American imperialist ambitions in the region.

[rowan]

Looks like the Russians may have left too early

At least 43 people were killed and dozens more injured in a car bomb attack in Azaz, Syria, on Saturday. The town is located near the Turkish border and is about 30 miles north of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that the vehicle used in the blast was a water or oil tanker, the large size of which made it deadlier than a normal car bomb. The Observatory also says six rebel fighters are among the dead, yet many bodies remain unidentified.

No group has taken responsibility for the attack so far, but Azaz is a key stronghold of the Turkish-supported Free Syrian Army, which is fighting the Islamic State

https://theweek.com/speedreads/671835/l ... ear-turkey

[kk67]

Fuck me you are a condescending little shit.

Easy now. All war is economic. Can we just focus on that..?.

Sure, this one too. It was started at least in part by the Damascus regime's refusal to allow Qatar to build a pipeline straight through Syria to Turkey, thereby reducing Europe's dependence on Russia. But the reason Russia stepped in was to defend its Syrian ally and withal its base at Tartus, while at the same time thwarting American imperialist ambitions in the region.

and then the Ukraine situation started escalating.
The economic pricks are always going to call it their way, because they're morons. Let's try and keep these decisions among the grown ups.

[rowan]

It's almost as though they were irritated by the Russians' success

Russia’s Defense Ministry is surprised by a lack of assistance to civilians in Aleppo from international organizations, though the city has been liberated from militants for a month already, spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Jan. 14.

"Surprisingly, after the period of super-close attention to Aleppo from international organizations, involved in humanitarian demining, a month later there are no initiatives to offer assistance to the people in that city," he said.


Will Russia, Turkey, and Iran bring peace to Syria?
"Is the UN authority on demining and the Geneva international center for humanitarian demining aware of the fact working in Aleppo since mid-December does not risk lives, and all roads to the city are absolutely free and safe? They do know, for sure."

This is also well known to UNISEF representatives and to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which are the UN key bodies for assistance to children and adults, who suffer from military actions, he added.

And still, the general continued, as yet main assistance to people in Aleppo comes from the Russian center for reconciliation of the warring parties, from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. The civilians receive regularly medical supplies, food, water, hygienic goods and warm clothes. They also receive medical assistance.

On this background, bewilderment arises with the abruptly "dropped" topic of assistance to Aleppo civilians from international humanitarian organizations and the central Western media, which for a month now already - as if following an order - continue keeping silence.

"It gives the impression that many international organizations, which earlier as if were ‘breaking through’ with humanitarian assistance to seized Aleppo, now that the city is recaptured have all of a sudden lost any interest to it along with the desire to offer assistance," the defense ministry’s spokesman said.

https://rbth.com/news/2017/01/14/russia ... ans_681006

[rowan]

More essential reading on Syria:

Syria has long been a closed society; now it is black hole. But Stephen Gowans does something in this article that I'd been expecting someone to do before: he goes back and examines what western reporters and agencies were saying shortly before and at the time of the supposed mass uprisings in Syria in 2011. What he finds from the contemporaneous record does not fit the picture presented by the western media today.

Instead reports show small, not large revolts, and the bulk of the rebels, then as now, drawn from salafist groups. The revolts are presented as chiefly a battle between Assad's secular Arab nationalist government and Islamist groups. The Islamists are reported to be demanding not western-style democratic reforms, but the release of prisoners and the ending of emergency regulations that would have strengthened their cause against Assad. Reporters at the time describe Assad as largely popular with most Syrians.

I have to say this is how I remember the coverage of the time. I thought my memory had played tricks on me. But Gowans' examination of the reporting from the time suggests my memory is not the problem.

Whether you read this long piece or not, I suggest scrolling through to the end for a short conversation, presumably from around 1970, between an Australian journalist and the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani. The western journalist's patronising sloganeering is beautifully punctured by Kanafani in ways that resonate to this day - Jonathan Cook

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/22 ... hat-wasnt/

[kk67]

101 years since the Sykes-Picot treaty.
If I had my druthers we'd dig up their corpses and donate them to ISIL to do what they want with them. A century of the moneymen f*cking us all up the arse.

[rowan]

[rowan]

Interesting article about Western media propaganda on the destruction of Syria and Iraq . . .

The nadir of Western media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Syria has been the reporting of the siege of East Aleppo, which began in earnest in July and ended in December, when Syrian government forces took control of the last rebel-held areas and more than 100,000 civilians were evacuated. During the bombardment, TV networks and many newspapers appeared to lose interest in whether any given report was true or false and instead competed with one another to publicise the most eye-catching atrocity story even when there was little evidence that it had taken place. NBC news reported that more than forty civilians had been burned alive by government troops, vaguely sourcing the story to ‘the Arab media’. Another widely publicised story – it made headlines everywhere from the Daily Express to the New York Times – was that twenty women had committed suicide on the same morning to avoid being raped by the arriving soldiers, the source in this case being a well-known insurgent, Abdullah Othman, in a one-sentence quote given to the Daily Beast.

The most credible of these atrocity stories was given worldwide coverage by Rupert Colville, the spokesman for the UN High Commission for Human Rights, who said on 13 December that his agency had received reliable reports that 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children, had been killed by pro-government forces in several named locations in East Aleppo. The names of the dead were said to be known. Further inquiries by the UNHCHR in January raised the number of dead to 85, executed over a period of several days. Colville says the perpetrator was not the Syrian army, but two pro-government militia groups – al-Nujabah from Iraq and a Syrian Palestinian group called Liwa al-Quds – whose motives were ‘personal enmity and relatives against relatives’. Asked if there were other reports of civilians being executed in the final weeks of the siege, Colville said there were reports of members of the armed opposition shooting people trying to flee the rebel enclave. The murder of 85 civilians confirmed by multiple sources and the killing of an unknown number of people with bombs and shells were certainly atrocities. But it remains a gross exaggeration to compare the events in East Aleppo – as journalists and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic did in December – with the mass slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994 or more than 7000 in Srebrenica in 1995.

All wars always produce phony atrocity stories – along with real atrocities. But in the Syrian case fabricated news and one-sided reporting have taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not seen since the First World War. The ease with which propaganda can now be disseminated is frequently attributed to modern information technology: YouTube, smartphones, Facebook, Twitter. But this is to let mainstream media off the hook: it’s hardly surprising that in a civil war each side will use whatever means are available to publicise and exaggerate the crimes of the other, while denying or concealing similar actions by their own forces. The real reason that reporting of the Syrian conflict has been so inadequate is that Western news organisations have almost entirely outsourced their coverage to the rebel side.

Since at least 2013 it has been too dangerous for journalists to visit rebel-held areas because of well-founded fears that they will be kidnapped and held to ransom or murdered, usually by decapitation. Journalists who took the risk paid a heavy price: James Foley was kidnapped in November 2012 and executed by Islamic State in August 2014. Steven Sotloff was kidnapped in Aleppo in August 2013 and beheaded soon after Foley. But there is tremendous public demand to know what is happening in such places, and news providers, almost without exception, have responded by delegating their reporting to local media and political activists, who now appear regularly on television screens across the world. In areas controlled by people so dangerous no foreign journalist dare set foot among them, it has never been plausible that unaffiliated local citizens would be allowed to report freely.

In East Aleppo any reporting had to be done under licence from one of the Salafi-jihadi groups which dominated the armed opposition and controlled the area – including Jabhat al-Nusra, formerly known as the Syrian branch of al-Qaida. What happens to people who criticise, oppose or even act independently of these extremist groups was made clear in an Amnesty International report published last year and entitled ‘Torture Was My Punishment’: Abduction, Torture and Summary Killings under Armed Group Rule in Aleppo and Idlib. Ibrahim, whom al-Nusra fighters hung from the ceiling by his wrists while they beat him for holding a meeting to commemorate the 2011 uprising without their permission, is quoted as saying: ‘I heard and read about the government security forces’ torture techniques. I thought I would be safe from that now that I am living in an opposition-held area. I was wrong. I was subjected to the same torture techniques but at the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra.’

The fact that groups linked to al-Qaida had a monopoly on the supply of news from East Aleppo doesn’t necessarily mean that the reports in the press about the devastating effects of shelling and bombing were untrue. Pictures of flattened buildings and civilians covered in cement dust weren’t fabricated. But they were selective. It’s worth recalling that – according to UN figures – there were between 8000 and 10,000 rebel fighters in East Aleppo, yet almost none of the videos on TV ever showed any armed men. Western broadcasters commonly referred to the groups defending East Aleppo as ‘the opposition’ with no mention of al-Qaida or its associated groups. There was an implicit assumption that all the inhabitants of East Aleppo were firmly opposed to Assad and supported the insurgents, yet it’s striking that when offered a choice in mid-December only a third of evacuees– 36,000 – asked to be taken to rebel-held Idlib. The majority – 80,000 – elected to go to government-held territory in West Aleppo. This isn’t necessarily because they expected to be treated well by the government authorities – it’s just that they believed life under the rebels would be even more dangerous. In the Syrian civil war, the choice is often between bad and worse.

The partisan reporting of the siege of East Aleppo presented it as a battle between good and evil: The Lord of the Rings, with Assad and Putin as Saruman and Sauron. By essentially handing over control of the news agenda to local militants, news organisations unwittingly gave them an incentive to eliminate – through intimidation, abduction and killing – any independent journalist, Syrian or non-Syrian, who might contradict what they were saying. Foreign leaders and the international media were at one time predicting slaughter on the scale of the worst massacres in postwar history. But, shamefully, by the time the siege came to an end they had completely lost interest in the story and in whether the horrors they had been reporting actually took place. Even more seriously, by presenting the siege of East Aleppo as the great humanitarian tragedy of 2016, they diverted attention from an even greater tragedy that was taking shape three hundred miles to the east in northern Iraq.

The offensive against Mosul, the biggest city still held by Islamic State, began on 17 October when Iraqi army troops, with the support of US-led air power, entered the city’s eastern districts. Expectations of a quick victory were soon disappointed when Iraqi soldiers began to suffer heavy casualties as small but highly mobile IS units of half a dozen fighters moved from house to house through hidden tunnels or holes cut in the walls to set up sniper positions, plant booby traps and bury IEDs. Local people whose houses were taken over say that the snipers were Chechens or Afghans who talked in broken Arabic. These fighters were supported by local IS men who also helped hide the suicide bombers who were to drive vehicles packed with explosives. There were 632 vehicle bombs during the first six weeks of the offensive. An IS squad would use a house until it had been pinpointed by Iraqi government forces and was about to be destroyed by heavy weapons or US-led airstrikes. Before the counterattack came they would move on to another house. IS has traditionally favoured fluid tactics, with each squad or detachment acting independently and with limited top-down control. Adapted to an urban environment, this approach allows small groups of fighters to harass much larger forces, by swiftly retreating and then infiltrating captured neighbourhoods so they have to be retaken again and again.

The Iraqi and US governments had every reason to play down the fact that they had failed to take Mosul and had instead been sucked into the biggest battle fought in Iraq and Syria since the US invasion in 2003. It was only in the second week of January that Iraqi special forces reached the River Tigris after ferocious fighting: with the support of US planes, helicopters, artillery and intelligence they had finally taken control of Mosul University, which had served as an IS headquarters for the eastern part of the city, along with the area’s 450,000 inhabitants. But reaching the Tigris was far from being the end of the fight. On 13 January, IS blew up the five bridges spanning the river. The city’s western part is a much greater challenge: home to 750,000 people, many of whom are thought to be sympathetic to IS, it’s a larger, poorer and older area, with closely packed streets that are easy to defend. Only the aid agencies, coping with the heavy civilian casualties and the prospects of a fight to the death by IS, appreciated the scale of what was happening: on 11 January, the UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq, Lise Grande, said the city was ‘witnessing one of the largest urban military operations since the Second World War’. She warned that the intensity of the fighting was such that 47 per cent of those treated for gunshot wounds were civilians, far more than in other sieges of which the UN had experience. The nearest parallel to what is happening in Mosul would be the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995, in which 10,000 people were killed, or the siege of Grozny in 1994-95, in which an estimated 5500 civilians died. But the loss of life in Mosul could be much heavier than in either of those cities because it is defended by a movement which will not negotiate or surrender and kills anybody who shows any sign of wavering. IS believes death in battle is the supreme expression of Islamic faith, which fits in well with a doomed last stand.

Figures for wounded civilians in Mosul over the last three months may well exceed those for East Aleppo over the same period. This is partly because ten times as many people have been caught up in the fighting in Mosul, whose population according to the UN is 1.2 million; 116,000 civilians were evacuated from East Aleppo. Of that number, 2126 sick and war-wounded were evacuated to hospitals, according to the WHO. Casualties in the Mosul campaign are difficult to establish, partly because the Iraqi government and the US have been at pains to avoid giving figures. Officials in Baghdad angrily denounced the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq when it announced that 1959 Iraqi soldiers, police, Kurdish Peshmerga and their paramilitary allies had been killed in November alone. The UN was forced to agree not to release information about Iraq’s military casualties in future, but US officers confirmed that some units in the 10,000-strong Golden Division – a US-trained elite force within the Iraqi army whose soldiers get higher pay – had suffered 50 per cent casualties by the end of the year. The Iraqi government was equally silent about the number of civilian casualties and emphasised its own great restraint in the use of artillery and airpower. But the doctors in Iraqi Kurdistan treating injured people fleeing from Mosul were less reticent: they complained that they were being overwhelmed. On 30 December, the Kurdish health minister, Rekawt Hama Rasheed, said his hospitals had received 13,500 injured Iraqi troops and civilians and were running out of medicines. The extent of civilian losses hasn’t ebbed since: the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Iraq said that over two weeks at the turn of the year, some 1500 Iraqis from Mosul suffering from trauma injuries had reached Kurdish hospitals, mostly from frontline areas and ‘with most of these injuries occurring just after the fighting intensified at the end of December’. These numbers only give a rough idea of the real losses: they don’t include the dead, or the wounded in western Mosul who didn’t want to leave – or couldn’t, because they were being used as human shields by IS. The UN says that many people were shot by IS fighters as they tried to escape.

A large number of these losses were inflicted even before Mosul was fully surrounded: the last passable main road to Syria, down which have come food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas since IS captured the city two and a half years ago, was closed in November by Shia paramilitaries. Tracks are still open, but they are dangerous and often can’t be used during the winter rains. As a result, prices in the markets in Mosul have soared: the cost of a single egg has jumped five times, to 1000 Iraqi dinars. In the main vegetable and fruit market there are only potatoes and onions for sale, and at high prices. As cylinders of cooking gas run out, wood taken from abandoned building sites is selling at a premium. The siege is likely to be a long one: if IS is going to make a stand anywhere, it is better from its point of view to do so in Mosul, where the Iraqi government and the US military may be more restrained than elsewhere in Iraq in the use of their firepower. The precedents are ominous: in 2015-16 airstrikes and artillery fire destroyed 70 per cent of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, which had a population of 350,000. IS has every reason to fight to the end in Mosul: aside from being the second biggest city in Iraq, it has iconic significance for IS. It was here, in June 2014, that a few thousand of its fighters defeated an Iraqi government garrison of at least 20,000 soldiers; and it was on the back of this miraculous victory that IS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared his caliphate. Those who are trapped in Mosul aren’t optimistic about their chances: ‘What we feared is happening,’ a woman in her sixties who gave her name as Fatima, told the online newsletter Niqash, which published an account of conditions in the city. ‘The siege is starting for real. From now on every seed and every drop of fuel counts because only god knows when this will end.’

Despite the ferocity of the fighting in Mosul, and warnings from the UN about casualties in the city potentially surpassing those in Sarajevo and Grozny, international attention has been almost exclusively directed at East Aleppo. It wouldn’t be the first time in the region that the Western press corps turned out to have been watching the wrong battle: I was in Baghdad in November 2004 when most Western journalists were covering the end of the siege of Fallujah. The Marines ultimately captured it, but the American generals understandably played down – and the media scarcely noticed – that while US troops were fighting in Fallujah, in central Iraq, insurgents had seized the much larger city of Mosul, in the north. That victory turned out to be significant, because the US army and the Iraqi government never truly regained uncontested control of the city, with the result that the predecessors of IS survived intense military pressure and re-established themselves, waiting until the revolt in Syria in 2011 gave them fresh opportunities.

There are many similarities between the sieges of Mosul and East Aleppo, but they were reported very differently. When civilians are killed or their houses destroyed during the US-led bombardment of Mosul, it is Islamic State that is said to be responsible for their deaths: they were being deployed as human shields. When Russia or Syria targets buildings in East Aleppo, Russia or Syria is blamed: the rebels have nothing to do with it. Heartrending images from East Aleppo showing dead, wounded and shellshocked children were broadcast around the world. But when, on 12 January, a video was posted online showing people searching for bodies in the ruins of a building in Mosul that appeared to have been destroyed by a US-led coalition airstrike, no Western television station carried the pictures. ‘We have got out 14 bodies so far,’ a haggard-looking man facing the camera says, ‘and there are still nine under the rubble.’

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/03/90277/

[rowan]

Shocking

The recent confirmation by the US that DU ammunition was used in two attacks in Syria in late 2015 raises a number of troubling questions.

Firstly, why was DU used? Has it been used again? Will it be used again?

Secondly, and no less important, what will happen next in order to mitigate any health or environmental risks the contaminated sites may pose?

A joint investigation by Airwars and Foreign Policy that was published earlier this week, has finally confirmed that the US used DU in Syria, and that in both cases the targets were large convoys of fuel tankers.

According to the Airwars report, CENTCOM spokesman Major Josh Jacques said that “5,265 armor-piercing 30mm rounds containing depleted uranium (DU) were shot from Air Force A-10 fixed-wing aircraft on November 16th and 22nd 2015, destroying about 350 vehicles in the country’s eastern desert.”

The admission is important because in early 2015, the US had assured reporters that DU had not and would not be used in Syria. In March 2015, Coalition spokesman John Moore said that “US and Coalition aircraft have not been and will not be using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve.”

Later that month, a Pentagon representative told War is Boring that A-10s deployed in the region would not have access to armor-piercing ammunition containing DU because the Islamic State didn’t possess the tanks it is designed to penetrate.

Following a tip off from ICBUW member the Nuclear Resister last year, Airwars’ Sam Oakford, who investigated both the latest story and the revelations published last October, approached US Central Command (CENTCOM) for confirmation. CENTCOM and the US Air Force first denied DU was fired, then offered differing accounts of what happened, before finally admitting that DU had been used.

DU … probably unnecessary for fuel tankers!

The 30mm DU ammunition used in both incidents was fired by A-10 aircraft, a platform notorious for the fact that the pilot cannot select between its DU and high explosive incendiary (HEI) ammunition once in flight. A-10s have been active in operations against Islamic State (IS) over Syria and Iraq since 2014, although this is the first time that DU’s use has been identified in the conflict.

ICBUW analysed the likely targets involved in the incidents, and was initially puzzled that they appeared to be fuel tankers, rather than armoured vehicles. The A-10’s controversial DU ammunition is justified and promoted on the basis of its perceived advantage against armoured vehicles.

However, analysis of its use in the Balkans and Iraq clearly shows that if the political or operational decision is made to deploy the aircraft armed with its standard ‘combat mix’ of DU and HEI ammunition, A-10s will attack a far wider range of targets of opportunity. It is standard practice for combat mix to be available for A-10 deployments in active conflict zones, even if it ultimately isn’t used.

In the case of Syria, a decision appears to have been made during planning for the two operations against the fuel convoys that DU was needed, to ensure what a CENTCOM spokesperson said was a: “higher probability of destruction for targets.”

The first strike on November 16 would see 1,490 DU rounds used – equating to 432kg of DU; the second, on November 22 saw 3,775 rounds used – some 1,095kg of DU. Bombs, rockets and missiles were also used in the two strikes which, according to CENTCOM, destroyed 116 and 283 fuel tankers respectively.

The same CENTCOM spokesperson later explained to the Washington Post that: “U.S. forces wanted to ensure that trucks would be rendered completely inoperable“, and that DU, rather than HEI rounds were the best way to achieve that. While DU rounds would doubtless have the desired effect against fuel tankers it is highly questionable that HEI wouldn’t also have achieved these aims.

Ironically enough, General Dynamics, one of the manufacturers of the A-10’s 30mm ammunition family states that the HEI round: “Provides fragmentation and incendiary effects for use against personnel, trucks, ammunition storage, and many other targets.”

DU may not yet be banned – but it is deeply stigmatised

The use of DU weapons, while not explicitly banned by a treaty, has been deeply stigmatised since at least the turn of the century, if not earlier.

Therefore for military planners, it was not just a calculation over the efficacy or otherwise of the A-10’s DU ammunition, but also a matter of international public perception, particularly as they were, and are, acting as part of a coalition of nations, many of whom have made their opposition to the weapons clear on a number of occasions.

For a conflict as politicised as Syria, it seems only logical that public perception and scrutiny must also have factored into the US’s calculus. The media and public’s response to the latest Syria revelations indicate that this may have been underestimated, as may the propaganda coup disclosure would provide for IS, and for Russia and its media outlets.

In a statement circulated by the Tass press agency this week, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry said of the US’s recent and historical use of DU: “Amid the anti-Syrian and anti-Russian propaganda campaign and in the context of successful operations by the Syrian armed forces with support from Russia’s aerospace group against terrorists and militants in Aleppo, such facts of recent history are ignored by Western mass media.”

It was a moot point that the news had broken a week after Russia’s state nuclear supplier Rosatom announced that it would be supplying the DU ammunition for Russia’s new Armata tank.

As to whether the US intends to use DU again in Syria, or indeed in Iraq – in spite of the latter’s 2014 call for a global treaty ban on the weapons, CENTCOM appears to have now returned to the policy position it had prior to promising not to use DU in early 2015, with its spokesperson refusing to “rule out“ its future use.

Those coalition partners who don’t support DU use, or that view it as an easy propaganda win for IS and Russia, should use their influence with the US to urge restraint. Meanwhile CENTCOM should clarify its DU policy for the operation, particularly over whether it will use DU on Iraqi territory, or restrict its use to Syria.

What will happen to the contaminated sites?

Whether you take domestic or international radioactive waste management standards as a guide, the recommendations of international organisations, or the past practice of states affected by DU contamination, the consensus is that post-conflict measures need to be implemented to mitigate the risks that contamination can pose to human health and the environment.

The first priority is to identify contaminated sites. This can be challenging under normal conditions as the presence of DU can usually only be verified through a ground survey. This has often been complicated by the fact that state users of DU, such as the US, have been historically reluctant to share strike data and coordinates with international organisations or national authorities.

In the case of the two Syrian strikes, the number of vehicles destroyed, the video footage and their rough locations could prove sufficient for them to be geolocated from satellite images before any ground survey is undertaken.

Once identified, the sites should be marked and isolated. For example Serbia’s military proved adept at identifying, marking and fencing A-10 strike sites from the conflict in 1999. For Syria, the affected areas remain under the control of IS at the time of writing, and it seems unlikely that marking and fencing can be expected under the circumstances.

The risks posed by DU are typically specific to the location, its land use and the pathways through which people may be exposed. For the Balkans and Iraq, a limited number of DU-affected sites were assessed by UN agencies such as UNEP and the IAEA, with recommendations provided to the national authorities on subsequent monitoring and clearance work.

And what about the next time … ?

The outcome of the Syrian conflict will strongly influence the likelihood of whether a formal UN-led post-conflict assessment funded by the international community takes place; should Assad remain in power, an assessment of this type seems extremely unlikely.

Assuming that the Syrian government regains control of the affected sites from IS, the burden of clearance will fall on them. Although CENTCOM told the Washington Post that: “the locations where they were used in November 2015 have been marked for clean-up in the future“, this is ultimately meaningless in the context of DU, where there are currently no formal obligations on either user or affected state to conduct clearance operations.

Should Syria end up with a pro-Western regime, perhaps one day there might be support for some clearance programmes; in all likelihood just some surface clearance of DU fragments in the context of explosive remnants of war removal: nothing to address the contaminated soils at the sites.

Should Syria end up with a pro-Russian regime, then perhaps Moscow will live up to its public opposition to DU munitions and provide the technical and financial assistance required. But what will be left if and when this happens?

If Iraq is anything to go by, the remains of the 400 or so oil tankers may have been cut up, dragged off and recycled for scrap by then – exposing workers to DU particulate at every stage of the process.

Whoever thought of voluntary restraint?

Whatever the outcome of the war, DU contamination is now just one of many forms of environmental damage and toxic remnants of war, caused or exacerbated by the conflict.

When it ends, the environment is unlikely to be a priority for anyone, be they donors or the new authorities, and it is Syria’s communities and environment that will pay the cost. Obligations for the post-conflict management of DU contamination are urgently required – but thus far are not something the international community has sought to pursue.

But it’s not just a matter of clearance obligations – it is also a matter of restraint. It is one thing to fire DU for the sake of a tenuous military advantage. It is quite another to do so when the chances that the toxic residues of uranium munitions will ever be dealt with appropriately are so remote.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/23/ ... -in-syria/