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oppose_obama wrote:I am talking about pure military value. "scaring" your opponent is nice and dandy but negligible military value, when you are losing.
Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria
WASHINGTON — Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.
That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives, casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.
“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.
The United States is not sending arms directly to the Syrian opposition. Instead, it is providing intelligence and other support for shipments of secondhand light weapons like rifles and grenades into Syria, mainly orchestrated from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The reports indicate that the shipments organized from Qatar, in particular, are largely going to hard-line Islamists.
The assessment of the arms flows comes at a crucial time for Mr. Obama, in the closing weeks of the election campaign with two debates looming that will focus on his foreign policy record. But it also calls into question the Syria strategy laid out by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger.
In a speech at the Virginia Military Institute last Monday, Mr. Romney said he would ensure that rebel groups “who share our values” would “obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets.” That suggests he would approve the transfer of weapons like antiaircraft and antitank systems that are much more potent than any the United States has been willing to put into rebel hands so far, precisely because American officials cannot be certain who will ultimately be using them.
But Mr. Romney stopped short of saying that he would have the United States provide those arms directly, and his aides said he would instead rely on Arab allies to do it. That would leave him, like Mr. Obama, with little direct control over the distribution of the arms.
American officials have been trying to understand why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition through the shadowy pipeline with roots in Qatar, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia. The officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them.
Those problems were central concerns for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, when he traveled secretly to Turkey last month, officials said.
The C.I.A. has not commented on Mr. Petraeus’s trip, made to a region he knows well from his days as the Army general in charge of Central Command, which is responsible for all American military operations in the Middle East. Officials of countries in the region say that Mr. Petraeus has been deeply involved in trying to steer the supply effort, though American officials dispute that assertion.
One Middle Eastern diplomat who has dealt extensively with the C.I.A. on the issue said that Mr. Petraeus’s goal was to oversee the process of “vetting, and then shaping, an opposition that the U.S. thinks it can work with.” According to American and Arab officials, the C.I.A. has sent officers to Turkey to help direct the aid, but the agency has been hampered by a lack of good intelligence about many rebel figures and factions.
Another Middle Eastern diplomat whose government has supported the Syrian rebels said his country’s political leadership was discouraged by the lack of organization and the ineffectiveness of the disjointed Syrian opposition movement, and had raised its concerns with American officials. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing delicate intelligence issues, said the various rebel groups had failed to assemble a clear military plan, lacked a coherent blueprint for governing Syria afterward if the Assad government fell, and quarreled too often among themselves, undercutting their military and political effectiveness.
“We haven’t seen anyone step up to take a leadership role for what happens after Assad,” the diplomat said. “There’s not much of anything that’s encouraging. We should have lowered our expectations.”
The disorganization is strengthening the hand of Islamic extremist groups in Syria, some with ties or affiliations with Al Qaeda, he said: “The longer this goes on, the more likely those groups will gain strength.”
American officials worry that, should Mr. Assad be ousted, Syria could erupt afterward into a new conflict over control of the country, in which the more hard-line Islamic groups would be the best armed. That depends on what happens in the arms bazaar that has been feeding the rebel groups. In several towns along the Turkey-Syria border, rebel commanders can be found seeking weapons and meeting with shadowy intermediaries, in a chaotic atmosphere where the true identities and affiliations of any party can be extremely difficult to ascertain.
Late last month in the Turkish border town of Antakya, at least two men who had recently been in Syria said they had seen Islamist rebels buying weapons in large quantities and then burying them in caches, to be used after the collapse of the Assad government. But it was impossible to verify these accounts, and other rebels derided the reports as wildly implausible.
Moreover, the rebels often adapt their language and appearance in ways they hope will appeal to those distributing weapons. For instance, many rebels have grown the long, scraggly beards favored by hard-line Salafi Muslims after hearing that Qatar was more inclined to give weapons to Islamists.
The Saudis and Qataris are themselves relying on intermediaries — some of them Lebanese — who have struggled to make sense of the complex affiliations of the rebels they deal with.
“We’re trying to improve the process,” said one Arab official involved in the effort to provide small arms to the rebels. “It is a very complex situation in Syria, but we are learning.”
Robert F. Worth and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
Suicide “insider” kills 2 American, 4 Afghan intelligence officers
DEBKAfile October 16, 2012, 9:57 AM (GMT+02:00)
The killer detonated the suicide vest he wore under his Afghan intelligence uniform when US Army Spc. Brittany Gordon, 24, and Sgt. Robert Billings, 30, arrived Saturday with a delegation at a remote Maruf district in Kandahar province with new furniture for their intelligence office. Among the four Afghans killed was Gulam Rasool, deputy intelligence director for Kandahar Province.
Why has the rebellion not ended?
White House Covering Up Fast and Furious Program in Syria Aiding Al Qaeda
It was one of these that was downed earlier. The Syrian arab forces seem to enjoy using these, they must be easy to maintain and fuel.
Look at this convoy – there are some tanks up front, but behind there are open top trucks and troops carried in buses and on the back of small open top vans, more like the freedom fighter convoys in Libya than a modern army supposed to be able to fight Israel. Once again a clear sign that the regime’s arms purchasing policy has been top-heavy, lots of heavy weapons and a pathetic logistics and supply system.
An ambush with a couple of IED’s, mortars, RPGs and machine guns would devastate this convoy.
pikachu wrote:What video did you watch? Link?
pikachu wrote:"more like the freedom fighter convoys in Libya than a modern army supposed to be able to fight Israel."
pikachu wrote:"Once again a clear sign that the regime’s arms purchasing policy has been top-heavy, lots of heavy weapons and a pathetic logistics and supply system."
JohnRawls wrote:Actually on that video, there were so many mistakes its not even funny. Did they get any training on how to use their equipment ?
JohnRawls wrote:P.S. That looks like a fresh out of the box american m29a1 mortar, gee i wonder where they got that one......
What video did you watch? Link?
Brigades of the FSA were able to progress from al-Ashrafiyeh district where the Criminal Security branch is. There was also progress in al-Midan and Sulaiman al-Halabi districts. The [government] branch responsible for raids is in al-Midan district. These two branches are the biggest in Aleppo.Kuuuuuuuuuuuurds!!!! PYD/PKK is a bunch of ungrateful assholes arent they. Well, they might still pay for this in the end.
Till now the clashes which started at 10am today are continuing and many district have been stormed by the FSA to get towards these two branches. Earlier news claimed that these two branches were taken by the FSA but the truth is the FSA fighters are surrounding these branches and they have still not taken them yet. We are working to get inside them.
In Khan al-Assal district, there is a police school which was under siege by the FSA for 10 days now. The Syrian army were sending reinfocrements every day to ease the siege on it. Today a convoy was heading towards the school and was faced by fire from the FSA and could not get there.
As for al-Ashrafiyeh district, it was controlled by [the Kurdish] PKK party and the Syrian army. The FSA were in Bani Zaid which is at the entrance to al-Ashrafiyeh. The FSA had to take al-Ashrafiyeh district to be able to reach the Criminal branch – and they did. The advance now is just around the Criminal Security and it is not easy to get control.
If we talk about Aleppo and the countryside, the FSA are in control of 90% of the ground but when it comes to Aleppo as a city, the FSA are in control of 60% of the ground to 40% for the Syrian army.
There are spots of power for the Syrian army like the Criminal Security in al-Ashrafiyeh, Political Security in al-Azziziyeh and Air Force security and intelligence in New Aleppo, in addition to the "raids" branch which is one of the biggest security branches in Aleppo.
If the FSA can liberate all these branches, we can say at that time that Aleppo has been liberated entirely.
At the beginning of the attack today, the Syrian army tried to stop the advance but they could not sustain it for long and they pulled out. Some of them left their weapons and ran away, others were killed.
In Khan al-Assal, the FSA fighters were able to take some Syrian army soldiers as prisoners.
For a long time, al-Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsoud districts were under the control of the PKK which is in alliance with Assad's regime (it helps in detaining members of FSA and hands them over to the Syrian army).
At the beginning we did not plan to open a front from this direction – I mean al-Ashrafiyeh – to avoid any clashes with the PKK. Our target is the regime.
The PKK had agreed not to interfere and not to support any side of the confilct. We did not attack any members of the PKK [today], in fact they pulled out to clear the way for us. It was a deal that they would pull out before the arrival of the FSA. The clashes were with the Syrian army only.
The PKK accepted the deal after a lot of pressure from the Kurdish people. Lately, many buses loaded with Kurdish people from Afreen, 70km northwest of Aleppo, were attacked at random by the Syrian army thinking they are coming from Izzaz.
Since the beginning of the revolution the regime has been trying to keep the PKK on its side but I think now it is going to lose them.
More than 300 fighters from al-Fattah brigade, Tawheed brigade and Ahrar Syria brigades took part in the operation today. Till now the number of the martyrs in Aleppo is eight, as the regime did not use the planes owing to the cloudy weather. All of them are civilians.
We also found bodies of two soldiers in Khan al-Assal – it seems they tried to defect and were executed by the regime. Yesterday we found seven bodies who were tortured and executed.
If there is a truce, the FSA will comply and stay in its positions without firing a bullet unless the regime breaks the truce.
pikachu wrote:Mighty SAA in action.
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