Defeat of ISIS in last stronghold signals new stage of US war in Syria

Photo released on Monday, Sept 4, 2017 by the Syrian official news agency

By Bill Van Auken

Syrian government troops, supported by Iranian-backed Iraqi and Lebanese Shia militia forces, have routed ISIS from its last stronghold in Syria, the Euphrates River town of Albu Kamal just across the border from Iraq.

Far from signaling an end to the US intervention in Syria, launched in the name of fighting ISIS in that country and in Iraq, the collapse of the Islamist militia has only set the stage for a further escalation in Washington’s drive to assert its hegemony in the Middle East by military means.

Remaining ISIS fighters withdrew from Albu Kamal in the face of the government offensive. The group is now believed to control only a few small villages along the Euphrates and small nearby desert areas.

The taking of Albu Kamal follows the driving out of ISIS from the Iraqi city of Qaim, where Iranian-backed militias also took the lead. The linking up of these forces effectively secured the much vaunted “land bridge” linking Tehran to a northern tier of Arab states—Iraq, Syria and Lebanon—which have all established close ties to Iran.

Washington’s main aim now is to blow up these ties. To that end, the Trump administration has sought to sabotage the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear accord struck between Tehran and the major world powers, while seeking to forge an anti-Iranian axis linking the US, Israel and the reactionary Sunni Persian Gulf oil monarchies led by Saudi Arabia.

This anti-Iranian alliance has found its most destructive expression in Washington’s backing for Saudi Arabia’s two-and-a-half-year-old war against Yemen, where an unrelenting bombing campaign combined with a blockade of the country’s airports, sea ports and borders is unleashing a famine that could claim the lives of millions.

The Saudi regime orchestrated the convening of a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on Sunday for the purpose of condemning Iran and the Lebanese Shia movement, Hezbollah. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir told the assembly that the monarchy “will not stand by and will not hesitate to defend its security” from Iranian “aggression.”

This supposed “aggression” consists of a missile fired from Yemen on November 4 which was brought down near Riyadh’s international airport without causing any casualties or significant damage. This, after Saudi warplanes have bombed Yemeni schools, hospitals, residential areas and essential infrastructure into rubble. Both Iran and Hezbollah have denied Saudi claims that they supplied the missile, while a UN monitoring agency has stated that there are no indications of missiles being brought into the impoverished war-ravaged country.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari boycotted the meeting in Cairo, while Syria has been expelled from the Arab League. While hosting the meeting and heavily dependent on Saudi aid, the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi appeared to distance itself from the aggressive anti-Iranian line from Riyadh, with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry calling for the defusing of tensions in the region. Sisi himself called for the return of Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Lebanon in the interest of “stability.” Hariri was apparently kidnapped by the Saudi regime and forced to resign his position in an attempt to blow up the Lebanese government, which includes Hezbollah.

Within Syria itself, US military operations have already shifted from combating ISIS to countering Iranian influence and Syrian government consolidation of control over the areas previously held by the Islamist militia and other Al Qaeda-linked forces.

This has been made explicit in the form of the direct US role in evacuating ISIS fighters and commanders from areas under siege by the Pentagon and its proxy ground troops organized in the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Repeated charges by both Iran and Russia of such complicity have been confirmed by the BBC, which documented the US military and the Kurdish YPG militia organizing a convoy that rescued some 4,000 ISIS fighters and family members together with tons of arms, ammunition and explosives from Raqqa last month.

The purpose of this operation was to redirect the ISIS forces against the offensive by Syrian government troops, while freeing up the US proxies in the SDF to make a dash for strategically vital oilfields north of the Euphrates.

Both Iran and Russia have charged that the US also intervened in an attempt to prevent the fall of Albu Kamal to the Syrian government troops and their Shia militia allies. The Russian Defense Ministry charged that US warplanes were deployed to effectively provide air cover for ISIS by preventing Russian planes from bombing the Islamist militia’s positions.

Last week, US Defense Secretary Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis made clear that Washington has no intention of ending its illegal military intervention in Syria, ostensibly launched for the purpose of defeating ISIS. “We’re not just going to walk away right now before the Geneva process has traction,” he said.

Mattis was referring to the long-stalled UN-brokered talks between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the so-called rebels backed by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Gulf monarchies.

Washington is attempting to uphold this process—and the demand for the ouster of Assad—in opposition to attempts by Russia, Iran and Turkey, the three largest regional powers, to broker their own political solution to the Syrian crisis, the product of the US-backed war for regime change.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is hosting his Iranian and Turkish counterparts, Hassan Rouhani and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a summit in Sochi Wednesday to discuss a joint position on Syria. Washington’s reliance on the Syrian Kurdish forces has served to further solidify relations between Ankara and Moscow.

While there are tactical difference within the US establishment and its military and intelligence apparatus over how to proceed in the Middle East, there is general consensus on an escalation toward military confrontation with Iran.

In a piece published by the Wall Street Journal titled “Iran Strategy Needs Much Improvement,” Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution argues that the nuclear deal, Yemen and Lebanon are distractions from the main arena for such a confrontation: Iraq and Syria.

Pollack, a former CIA agent and National Security Council official, who was one of the leading advocates of the US invasion of Iraq, argues that Tehran is “badly overexposed” by its intervention on the side of both the Iraqi and Syrian governments against ISIS.

“Washington could take advantage of this by ramping up covert assistance to Syrian rebels to try to bleed Damascus and its Iranian backer over time,” he writes, “the way the US supported the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets in the 1980s.”

That the US support for the Afghan mujahedeen produced Al Qaeda, US imperialism’s supposed arch enemy in an unending global war on terror, does not give this imperialist strategist the slightest pause. He like others in US intelligence circles know that such movements have a dual use, serving at one point as proxy forces in wars for regime change, only to be transformed at another into a pretext for US interventions in the name of fighting terror.

At the same time, Pollack calls for the US to maintain “a large residual military force” in Iraq to counter Iranian influence.

What is involved in this proposal is a continuation and escalation of the campaigns of US military aggression that have already claimed the lives of over a million Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of Syrians. To thwart Iran’s influence, Washington is prepared to blow up the entire region.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 21 November 2017, and was republished with permission.

German defence minister on the offensive in the Middle East

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen with her Saudi Arabian counterpart, Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, in Riyadh.

Photo: DPA.

By Johannes Stern

German Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) is currently on tour in the Middle East. The central goal of the trip is the strengthening of Germany’s political, economic and military influence in this resource-rich and geo-strategically critical region.

Von der Leyen’s first stop was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where she was met Wednesday evening at the King Salman Air Base in Riyadh by Saudi deputy defence minister General Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Ayesh, German ambassador Dieter Walter Haller and defence attaché Colonel Thomas Schneider.

On Thursday, the defence minister visited the headquarters of the so-called Islamic Military Counter-Terrorism Coalition and asserted in an official press release that Saudi Arabia was a country which “decisively combats terrorism and is aware it has a special role in combatting Muslim-Arabic terrorism in the Islamic world.”

This is patently absurd. Hardly anything could more clearly expose the German government’s empty phrases about human rights and propaganda about the “war on terror” than the close military and political collaboration between the Western powers and Saudi Arabia.

The reactionary and Islamist character of the Saudi regime is so obvious that even the German media could not avoid raising some issues. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, there were “throughout last year … more than 150 executions. There are also frequent public floggings, [and] the rights of women and minorities are massively curtailed.”

About the impact of Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen, the Süddeutsche Zeitung noted: “The bombardments have destroyed the infrastructure of the Arab world’s poorest country and repeatedly kill civilians. According to investigations by human rights activists, one in three attacks strike civilian targets.” According to the UN, “the more than 10,000 victims of the war include more than 4,000 civilians––many die from bombs from the air which frequently strike hospitals.”

And, according to public broadcaster ARD, “Saudi Arabia is … a strict Islamic governed monarchy, in which––much like the Islamic State (IS)––political opponents are beheaded and women stoned if they end a marriage.”

In Syria, Saudi Arabia is among the chief sponsors of Islamist militias with close ties to al-Qaeda and which are officially designated as terrorist organisations by the German government. The Ahrar al-Sham militia, backed financially and politically by Saudi Arabia, is a “foreign terrorist organisation,” according to the German attorney general, and “one of the largest and most influential Salafist-Jihadi organisations in the Syrian uprising movement.” It pursues the goal of “toppling the regime of Syrian ruler [Bashar al-] Assad and establish a theocratic state based entirely on Sharia law.”

None of this has prevented the German government and defence minister from intensifying military cooperation with Saudi Arabia. According to reports, Von der Leyen pledged to train Saudi soldiers in Germany. The training of “several young officers and contractors with the Saudi Arabian military” will begin in Germany in the coming year, the German ambassador announced Thursday.

In addition, further arms exports to the Gulf monarchy are planned. Recently the Federal Security Council, meeting in secret, approved the shipment of 41,644 shells to Saudi Arabia, even though Germany’s official export guidelines prohibit the supplying of arms to states “engaged in armed conflicts.” According to government sources, weapons exports totaling more than €484 million [$US 511 million] were approved to Saudi Arabia in the first half of the year, including helicopters and components for fighter jets.

With its massive rearmament of the Saudi monarchy, Berlin is pursuing two main goals. First, Riyadh is to be placed in a better position to violently suppress social unrest on the Arabian Peninsula. In early 2011, a few weeks after the revolutionary upsurges in Tunisia and Egypt, Saudi troops and tanks intervened in Bahrain with brutal violence to suppress mass protests taking place there. In addition, the German government views the heavily armed Arab monarchies as important allies in the imposition of German imperialist interests in the region.

After her stay in Riyadh, Von der Leyen travelled directly to Bahrain. She participated in the Manama dialogue, the most important security conference in the Middle East. Several heads of state and government, ministers, military personnel and representatives from security agencies attended the event organised by the influential International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank to discuss the wars and conflicts in the region.

Von der Leyen’s last destination is Jordan, where she will symbolically hand over 24 “Marder”–type armoured vehicles.

Von der Leyen spoke in Bahrain in 2015, announcing greater German engagement in the Middle East. At the time, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung enthused in an opinion piece, “Germany is no longer indifferent. Germany has managed to expand its foreign policy weight. At the Manama Dialogue, Defence Minister Von der Leyen can point out that the Federal Republic is no longer holding back.”

The “fundamental German interest” in the region was already summarised in a strategy paper by the CDU-aligned Konrad Adenauer Foundation in 2001, “It is directed primarily towards a stabilisation of those states and societies to prevent dangers to its own security and that of its European partner states, to secure a seamless supply of raw materials and to create export opportunities for German business.”

The study, entitled “Germany and the Middle East: standpoint and recommendations for action,” emphasised the importance of the “export markets in the region’s core states (Egypt, Turkey, Iran), but above all the wealthy Gulf states” for German exports. Here it was necessary to “make a contribution to securing sales markets, obtain the broadest possible access to these markets and compete with the US, the Eastern European countries and also the East Asian industrial countries.”

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 10 December 2016, and was republished with permission.

Trekt het Westen in het Turkse debacle aan het kortste eind?

Turkije trekt zich terug uit het Atlantisch systeem. Al voor de mislukte coup wilde de regering het roer omgooien: nieuwe betrekkingen met Damascus en Cairo, verzoening met Rusland. Dat ligt aan de basis van de couppoging en aan de paniek binnen de NAVO. De koerswijziging heeft zijn weerslag op onze relatie met Syrië, China, Rusland, Iran en zo voort, met ingrijpende geopolitieke consequenties.

Dat zei Yunus Soner, vice-voorzitter van de Turkse Arbeiderspartij, op 22 juli in CrossTalk op de Engelstalige Russische satellietzender RT. De rol van de NAVO in Syrië is binnenkort uitgespeeld. Rusland en Turkije zullen er alles aan doen om snel een einde te maken aan de oorlog, ISIS verliest in Syrië steeds meer terrein. Overleg met Assad moet leiden tot een oplossing voor het Koerdische vraagstuk, het grote pijnpunt voor Turkije. En Russisch aardgas gaat over Turks grondgebied naar Europa. Zo profiteert ook het door de EU uitgeklede Griekenland. Voor president Putin, die zich niet heeft laten verleiden om militair terug te slaan nadat Turkije een van zijn gevechtsvliegtuigen had neergehaald, is een glansrol weggelegd. De hardnekkige pogingen van het Westen om Rusland te isoleren zijn mislukt.

De betekenis van het Gulen netwerk

Wat er nu eigenlijk op 15 juli precies in Turkije is gebeurd blijft in de media toch wat in nevelen gehuld. Die hameren enorm op de omvangrijke zuiveringen die Erdogan doorvoert, terwijl een generaal die nota bene onder Erdogan onterecht voor landverraad werd veroordeeld die gerechtvaardigd vindt. De pers meldt wel Erdogan's beschuldiging aan het adres van de in de VS woonachtige Turkse imam Fetullah Gulen, maar geeft mondjesmaat uitleg over wat de beweging van Gulen betekent. In ieder geval moet men al zoeken naar informatie over Gulen's banden met de CIA, de tentakels van zijn beweging in tal van Turkse overheidsinstanties, zijn financiële netwerken en zijn connecties met zowat elke hoek van de Moslimwereld.

Volgens politiek analist Osman Softic hebben aanhangers van Gulen zich genesteld in essentiële Turkse overheidsorganisaties als leger, politie, geheime dienst, rechterlijke macht, Openbaar Ministerie en onderwijsinstellingen. Die vormen daarmee een potentiële vijfde colonne die door een buitenlandse mogendheid kan worden ingezet om het land te destabiliseren en zelfs de regering-Erdogan omver te werpen. Voormalig CIA-medewerker Graham Fuller geeft impliciet toe dat de Gulen-beweging een maatschappelijke organisatie is die kan worden gebruikt als wapen tegen een al te kritische NAVO bondgenoot.

Het Gulen-netwerk mikt niet enkel op Turkije. Het miljardenimperium baat een netwerk van privéscholen uit over heel de wereld. Het stuurt een politiek lobbynetwerk aan dat zich uitstrekt van Washington tot Centraal Azië. En als we de vroegere topman van de Turkse geheime dienst Osman Nuri Gundes mogen geloven functioneerden in de 90er jaren de Gulen-scholen in Kyrgyzstan en Uzbekistan als dekmantel voor tenminste 130 CIA agenten. Dat is toch een tegenstander van formaat, die zich aan elke vorm van democratisch rekenschap onttrekt. De VS zal Gulen nooit aan Turkije uitleveren, daarvoor is de man en te belangrijke troef.

In de coup herkent men de hand van de CIA

Terwijl Gulen zegt dat Erdogan de coup zelf heeft bekokstoofd zwijgen de klassieke media over de mogelijkheid dat de VS de coup heeft gesponsord. In 2014 was ex-CIA-medewerker en VS-ambassadeur in Turkije Morton Abramowitz co-auteur van een venijnig opiniestuk in de Washington Post. “Erdogan brengt de democratie om zeep. Dat is een probleem voor de Turken en voor het bondgenootschap. Blijven zwijgen zet de stabiliteit van Turkije op het spel”, aldus de auteurs. Dat was ei zo na een oproep om Erdogan omver te werpen. Voor de VS is een “onstabiel land” synoniem aan “ongehoorzaam, onhandelbaar”. En Obama maakt er geen geheim van: soms moeten we landen die niet doen wat wij willen de arm omdraaien.

De VS heeft het wel gehad met Erdogan. Zijn schandelijkste misstap was het aanbieden van excuses voor het neerschieten van het Russisch gevechtsvliegtuig. Maar de echte pijn zit hem in zijn politieke heroriëntatie op Rusland, China en opkomende niet-gebonden landen. In de ogen van de VS was de eigenzinnige Erdogan niet aan zijn proefstuk toe. Denk aan de deal rond Turkish Stream, de beslissing om Chinese raketsystemen aan te kopen (waar Erdogan later op terugkwam), de voordelige deal met Rusland voor de bouw van kernreactoren. Erdogan bleek een onbetrouwbare bondgenoot. Hij moest dus “weg”, waarbij het netwerk van Gulen nuttige diensten kon bewijzen.

Blijkbaar hebben de coupplegers belangrijke steun gekregen uit de luchtmachtbasis in Incirlik, waar 2.500 Amerikaanse militairen zijn gelegerd. De Turkse F-16's die boven Istanbul en Ankara raasden werden in de lucht bijgetankt vanuit Incirlik. Incirlik was dus een belangrijke operationele basis voor de coup, van waaruit men mogelijk ook kon rekenen op Amerikaanse militaire en CIA-steun. De basis huisvest immers zowel de Amerikaanse drone-operaties in Syrië en Irak, en is een draaischijf in in het Amerikaanse extraordinary renditionprogramma. Bovendien was de zeggenschap over Incirlik al geruime tijd een twistpunt tussen Turkije en de VS.

De geopolitieke implicaties

De recente ontwikkelingen hebben een proces op gang gezet waarbij Turkije zich losmaakt uit de Westerse invloedssfeer en aansluiting zoekt bij Rusland en China. Concreet betekent dat: toetreding tot de BRICS, de Shanghai- Samenwerkingsorganisatie (SSO) waar Turkije sinds juni 2012 al 'dialoog partner' van is, de Aziatische Infrastructuurinvesteringsbank (AIIB), en het ambitieuze Chinese One Belt One Road project, de nieuwe Zijderoute die China’s internationale positie moet versterken en is bedoeld als antwoord op de Amerikaanse aanwezigheid in Azië (pivot to Asia) en het Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Allemaal zaken die indruisen tegen de Amerikaanse belangen.

De toenadering tussen Rusland en Turkije ontlokte zuur commentaar in Foreign Affairs. The National Interest stelt zich de vraag of de NAVO terminal ziek is, niet vanwege het Turkije van Erdogan maar door het optreden van presidentskandidaat Donald Trump! En in een hoofdredactioneel opiniestuk ziet het normaal zo serieuze Nederlandse Financiële Dagblad liever een “junta van verlichte, seculiere kemalisten” dan “[de] gekozen dictator [Erdogan], die een mislukte coup aangrijpt om zijn greep op Turkije te verstevigen en de samenleving een godsdienstiger karakter te geven”.

Men moet er niet aan twijfelen dat de VS Erdogan zwaar onder druk zal zetten, maar dat Erdogan zwicht lijkt uitgesloten. Men moet dus rekening houden met een tweede couppoging. De inzet voor het Westen is bijzonder hoog. Een NAVO zonder Turkije betekent een enorme verzwakking van de alliantie en het failliet van de agressieve Ruslandpolitiek. Daartegenover staat de kans op een snel einde van de oorlog in Syrië en de vluchtelingenstroom naar Europa.

Het Westers bondgenootschap lijkt zwaar te moeten incasseren, de strategische planners in Washington hebben wat om over na te denken.