The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

[Awol]

 

Anyway... AWOL where are you?

Hello mate, just mooching about in the region.  Will reply to your Syria/Russia post soon as I get time. 

Saudi/Qatar are allies of the US/UK/France and could be easily interpreted as direct proxies, and ISIS is being funded by these guys. Not that war is likely to result, but I would expect this is how it will be interpreted on the Russian side.

Now the question is... did ISIS do this on their own or were they given some help by one of the various government agencies playing the game over there... CIA/Mossad jump to the front of the queue given their previous.

Previous of blowing passenger jets out the sky? I don't think so personally.

Iran Air 655, 1988.

Pan AM 103 was them returning the compliment, via the Syrians. 

[foreveryoung]

 

Anyway... AWOL where are you?

Hello mate, just mooching about in the region.  Will reply to your Syria/Russia post soon as I get time. 

Saudi/Qatar are allies of the US/UK/France and could be easily interpreted as direct proxies, and ISIS is being funded by these guys. Not that war is likely to result, but I would expect this is how it will be interpreted on the Russian side.

Now the question is... did ISIS do this on their own or were they given some help by one of the various government agencies playing the game over there... CIA/Mossad jump to the front of the queue given their previous.

Previous of blowing passenger jets out the sky? I don't think so personally.

Iran Air 655, 1988.

Pan AM 103 was them returning the compliment, via the Syrians. 

 

I was very tempted to reply to the air 655 disaster as I read alot about this and false flag stuff, But I have to admit I have never read the PanAm act was in any sort of retaliation to Iran air 655. Is this known to be true Awol.

TWA 800 was another that had the conspiricy boys gossiping

[Awol]

 

So AWOL, what if anything has been the impact on the ground in Syria of the Russian involvement?

I keep reading headlines about the large number of bombing missions and targets destroyed but it is impossible to take Russian news at face value. (Not that you can trust the BBC these days)

Are ISIS feeling the effects more than they did from the efforts of the other nations involved?

It certainly appears that way given the news about the Aleppo air base this morning.

Yes Russian operations are definitely having an effect, not least in the fact that they have saved the Assad regime which was looking very shaky indeed.  The strategic impact of the Russian intervention is ensuring that the Assad regime can no longer be militarily defeated.    

That said the Syrian army is still only making slow (but steady) progress, in part because they are very short of manpower and husbanding what little they have left. Breaking the siege of the military airfield in Aleppo is a big psychological boost for the Syrian forces, until now those bases holding out behind opposition lines were being gradually knocked off - with grim results for the defenders. 

ISIS as an organisation isn't the primary focus of Russian attention at the moment, their plan (and this is a joint effort between Syria, Russia and the Iranians, led on the ground by General Qassim Sulemani, head of the IRGC Al Quds Force - and one of the best Generals of his generation anywhere) appears to be focused on securing the west of Syria where the major population centres are. That means the primary kicking is being taken by groups (laughably referred to as "moderate rebels" by the west) fighting under the banner of Jaish Al Fatah (JaF) or "The Army of Conquest".  

The two largest groups in JaF are  the official Al Qaeda franchise in Syria called Jabhat Al Nusra (JaN) and Ahrar al Sham (AaS) which is also Jihadi based but not "officially" connected to Al Qaeda (yeah, right...).  There is a whole constellation of smaller Jihadi militias bundled up with and satelliting around these big two and a slack handful of Free Syrian Army (FSA) guys who want a democratic Syria. It suits the Jihadis not to kill these guys yet because their presence enables the west, Saudi, Qatar and Turkey to provide aid, arms and assistance to JaF while claiming to support "moderates".  For example, many 100's of US made TOW anti tank missiles are being transferred to groups within JaF and used to support their operations. For avoidance of doubt seriously lethal western made weapons are finding their way directly or indirectly to people who would kill us all given half a chance.  

The JaF alliance is more an accident of geography in that they were lots of individual groups that happened to be fighting in the same areas who could profit jointly by cooperating together. However it doesn't have a great deal of shared ideology and it can - and probably will - fracture at some point which will make it easier for the Syrian army, Hezbollah and IRGC troops to digest in smaller portions.  The Russians showering them with liberal doses of high explosive will certainly assist in that aim.

As a result of geography and demographics ISIS is having a far easier time of it at the moment and despite some pretty modest air activity against them by both Russia and the US in Syria, their main threat there is from the Kurds.  Erdogan has been explicit in stating that he views the Kurds as a greater security threat to Turkey than ISIS (evident to all when Kobane happened and he was hoping for an ISIS win) and he has recently begun striking the YPG militias in Syria directly, obviously making the situation even more difficult for them. The Peshmerga in Iraq have today taken back Sinjar from ISIS (the site of the massacre and mass abduction, rape and enslavement of so many Yazidi and Christian civilians) and here again the main pressure on ISIS is coming from the Kurds, although the Shia militias have effectively locked down their own areas further south, including Baghdad.   

ISIS will still be around for quite a while yet and are starting to do well in other areas too. About half of Al Shabaab (official Al Qaeda affiliate) in Somalia have effectively rebadged to Daesh giving them a strong presence in the Horn of Africa. Similarly in the nightmare that is Yemen Daesh are growing quickly and aggressively by recruiting hardened fighters from within Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - in a real "win - win" scenario those two groups are actually expected to come to blows in the near future. ISIS are also doing very well in Libya, in Sinai, have claimed a double suicide bombing of Shia neighbourhoods in southern Lebanon yesterday, and those Jihadi harlots of Boko Haram in Nigeria have ditched Al Qaeda for the new thing that breezed into town with better bling.     

Taking the bigger picture view, we are basically watching the unravelling of the Westphalian State system in parts of the Middle East, and actually beyond into areas of the broader Muslim world.  I think that the west, as Russia has just done in Syria, will intervene where their absolute core interests are involved, but other than that the plans seems to be to let them work it out for themselves. It might work too, as long as western voters don't mind seeing mountains of dead bodies on the nightly news for the next 10 years, and most importantly those piles of bodies remain in countries that end with "-------stan".

[Awol]

 

I was very tempted to reply to the air 655 disaster as I read alot about this and false flag stuff, But I have to admit I have never read the PanAm act was in any sort of retaliation to Iran air 655. Is this known to be true Awol.

The Iranians have never admitted it but there is quite a bit out there to suggest it is true.

[chrisp65]

Turkey shoots down 'war plane'

Quote

Turkish warplanes are reported to have shot down an unidentified military aircraft near the border with Syria.

A Turkish military official told the Reuters news agency that Turkish F-16s had fired on the jet after warning it that it was violating Turkish airspace.

could turn into an interesting day...

[Eames]

Whoops. 

The Russians have been fairly liberal with other nations airspace and coastal waters recently - the response could be interesting. It also highlights what an unstructured mess the response to ISIS is.  

 

(Of course the Kremlin will deny the plane was anywhere near Turkish airspace) 

[Eames]

......and with laughable predictability there indeed is the Russian denial. The Turks would have to be pretty certain to take action IMO, you don't **** with the Russians unless you are sure of yourselves.

[snowychap]

Bloke from the Henry Jackson society has just been on the news saying that Russia have 'buzzed' NATO members' airspace something like 440 times in the last deacde (I think it was that it may have been a shorter time period).

[foreveryoung]

We have had Russia in our air space many times, an recently had to escort them out the area. To shoot a Russian fighter jet down, is a little above the line, especially as they are no threat to Turkey at this stage. Might change after this, be interesting.

[Awol]

1 hour ago, Eames said:

......and with laughable predictability there indeed is the Russian denial. The Turks would have to be pretty certain to take action IMO, you don't **** with the Russians unless you are sure of yourselves.

I have no idea which side of the border the plane was when it was engaged, but it crashed in Syria and the pilots bailed out over Syria. 1 dead (according to an unpleasant video on Twitter) the other apparently in custody of a Syrian rebel group - good luck to him...

Turkey may have messed up very badly here, but on the upside I look forward to visiting Constantinople on my hol's next summer.    

[chrisp65]

There has been a recent incident with a russian submarine in UK waters too.

We asked the French and the Canadians to help us look for that one - as somehow we don't currently have any maritime patrol aircraft of our own due to them being cut up and sold for scrap.

In other totally unrelated news, the office of Prime Minister is to have it's own jet. It will be a RAF A330, refitted at a cost of £10 Million.

 

[blandy]

The plane was apparently attacking Turkmen fighters (syrian ethnic turks fighting Assad) in Syria. Just for context like. 

[Awol]

@chrisp65  One of the better results in the SDSR yesterday was the purchase of 9 P-8 Maritime Patrol Aircraft. It's a very good bit of kit and will cover the hole created when they scrapped the MR4's. 

5 minutes ago, blandy said:

The plane was apparently attacking Turkmen fighters (syrian ethnic turks fighting Assad) in Syria. Just for context like. 

For context, Russia is operating at the invitation of the Syrian Government (however nasty they may be) while Turkey is sponsoring all kinds of scum bags in Syria AND bombing Kurdish positions in the sovereign territory of both Syria and Iraq. Stand by for an S-400 deployment to Syria and the KRG...  

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, Awol said:

@chrisp65  One of the better results in the SDSR yesterday was the purchase of 9 P-8 Maritime Patrol Aircraft. It's a very good bit of kit and will cover the hole created when they scrapped the MR4's. 

For context, Russia is operating at the invitation of the Syrian Government (however nasty they may be) while Turkey is sponsoring all kinds of scum bags in Syria AND bombing Kurdish positions in the sovereign territory of both Syria and Iraq. Stand by for an S-400 deployment to Syria and the KRG...  

On the P8s  / MR4 - monumental wasting of money by the Gov't. When they cancelled Nimrod MR4 the aircraft were almost all built and ready. The gov't had to pay up the rest of the contract (200 million) they broke. They then cut up 9 new aircraft. They then spend around 4-8 billion (depending who you believe) on these P8s. For all the problems with the Nimrod contract it was a purely political decision, based around a "cost saving" justification that has proven horrendously expensive. it's cost the country somewhere between 4 and 8 billion quid. It's cost jobs, livelihoods and weakened our defences and search and rescue and intel capabilities for years.

On Russia/ Turkey. Yep, agreed. My implication is that Turkey is basically doing what it thinks is in its interests, Russia what it thinks is in its interests. Russia's main aim is propping up Assad. Turkey's in biffing Kurds. It's not really a co-ordinated anti Daesh thing. It kind of looks like the Russians were attacking a turkish supported group, the turks attacked the russian plane doing the attacking. That's more significant than where the plane actually was, geographically

[Awol]

21 minutes ago, blandy said:

On the P8s  / MR4 - monumental wasting of money by the Gov't. When they cancelled Nimrod MR4 the aircraft were almost all built and ready. The gov't had to pay up the rest of the contract (200 million) they broke. They then cut up 9 new aircraft. They then spend around 4-8 billion (depending who you believe) on these P8s. For all the problems with the Nimrod contract it was a purely political decision, based around a "cost saving" justification that has proven horrendously expensive. it's cost the country somewhere between 4 and 8 billion quid. It's cost jobs, livelihoods and weakened our defences and search and rescue and intel capabilities for years.

On Russia/ Turkey. Yep, agreed. My implication is that Turkey is basically doing what it thinks is in its interests, Russia what it thinks is in its interests. Russia's main aim is propping up Assad. Turkey's in biffing Kurds. It's not really a co-ordinated anti Daesh thing. It kind of looks like the Russians were attacking a turkish supported group, the turks attacked the russian plane doing the attacking. That's more significant than where the plane actually was, geographically

Nimrod - yeah agreed. I have read that there were still innumerable issues with the programme in terms of getting the safe to fly certifications, but frankly I'd take your word on the matter.

Think your point about Turkey, their pet terrorists and the response to Russian bombing is well made. Apparently Moscow was warned off by the Turks yesterday about not attacking them so I suspect they were spoiling for a fight and simply waiting for a justification, to the point they appear to have pursued the SU-24 into Syrian airspace to prosecute.

The response will be very interesting given that Russian sources are very directly linking Qatar to the bombing of their airliner in Sinai, and the very open alliance between Qatar, Turkey and Saudi in backing the various Jihadis in Syria - and elsewhere.   Could a nasty proxy war evolve into a more direct conflict between its sponsors? If so I hope Europe tells Turkey to stick Article 5 up its Al Qaeda loving arse.  

[blandy]

19 minutes ago, Awol said:

Nimrod - yeah agreed. I have read that there were still innumerable issues with the programme in terms of getting the safe to fly certifications, but frankly I'd take your word on the matter.

Thanks - you're right there were still issues, and it was not a contract that showed anyone MoD, BAE, Gov't or others involved in a good light. They all messed up and were affected by things they couldn't have foreseen. But here's what our Gov't said, in their own words 

In a Parliamentary written answer Peter Luff MP (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Defence Equipment, Support and Technology) said

 "it is the aircraft’s future support costs that contributed to the decision not to bring it into service, despite its advanced state".

. Obviously those support costs are now going to be for P8s, on top of the costs of the aircraft, themselves. Much of the GSE for the Nimrod was already available. That's not the case for the P8s. So double wrong. Double daft.

 

The Public accounts committee said

 “The department has made a number of decision to save cash in the short term, without a full understanding of long-term costs and the knock-on effect of increased costs on the defence budget.”

 

But that's little to do with Turkey and Russia and Tunisia etc. other than the loss of capability to the UK to have more intelligence and protect ourselves.

[snowychap]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

If so I hope Europe tells Turkey to stick Article 5 up its Al Qaeda loving arse.  

NATO not Europe, no?

Wouldn't the result of that be the end of NATO?

Edited November 24, 2015 by snowychap

[Ikantcpell]

Why did they let turkey join Nato in the first place..

[snowychap]

10 minutes ago, Ikantcpell said:

Why did they let turkey join Nato in the first place..

I'd guess that, in 1951/2, they (along with Greece) were viewed as important states to get on board to combat the USSR and its influence.

Edited November 24, 2015 by snowychap
Date change

[villakram]

Black Sea, strategic location par excellence since forever w.r.t. Russia.