Turkish duplicity

Turkey, Saudi Arabia giving terrorists WMDs, Syria claims

RT,

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

Watch the full episode here: ‪http://youtu.be/cjZ0aKawDP



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

Zero Hedge,

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.

Authored by Patrick Cockburn via The Independent,

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.