Middle East' affluent head to UK for carvaganza !!

Who says the middle east is infested with terrorism? :-)

Rich Arabs hit UK streets with supercars this summer

Curated by Yousuf Saifuddin Kapadia

Middle East' affluent head to UK for the summer with their supercars and 6x6(s)!

With temperatures soaring in the Middle East, rich Arabs have once again headed to the United Kingdom for the summer.

Luxury and sports cars have once again flooded the streets of London, a favourite destination among Middle Eastern travellers.

Londoners, who consider the flashy rides an eyesore, have taken to social media to post photos and videos of the supercars, driving around or parked in all their glory.

The Middle East's affluent spare no expense, paying in excess of £20,000 for a return journey - for their metal marvels to be flown around 3,000 miles, and often leave them parked up on the streets of London, the Daily Mail reported.

Most of the fancy rides spotted are flown in from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait - considered among the top richest countries in the region.

From a chrome Mercedes-Benz McLaren to a silver Lamborghini Aventador, the luxury supercars are among hundreds which have been flown into the UK from the Middle East.

Local parking wardens were spotted descending on the supercars in Knightsbridge this afternoon, handing out fines which may never be paid.

According to the Daily Mail, Qatar Airways is one such airline that ships the luxury cars. Using their main and lower deck, the airline offers 31 positions on each flight.

In recent years, Londoners have reportedly complained to authorities about the noise these supercars create, apart from blocking parking spaces and causing traffic.

According to a recent report by The Sun, since the drivers rack up thousands in fines, multi-millionaire Arabs have been offered "50 per cent discount" if they pay their fines within 14 days, under the the Traffic Management Act 2004.

Russia floats out world’s largest nuclear icebreaker

awesome...

Russia floats out Arktika icebreaker, set to be world’s largest
16 Jun, 2016

Nuclear icebreaker Arktika has been floated out in Russia’s St. Petersburg. The vessel is expected to become the world’s largest in its class when finished.

Arktika is the lead ship of the Project 22220 series scheduled to replace nuclear ships of the previous generation. They are going to be not just bigger, but more powerful. Thanks to variable draft, these ships will be capable of sailing open seas and operate in shallow waters of Arctic rivers’ debouchments.

Started in November 2013, the project’s estimated worth is 122 billion rubles (about $2 billion). All three ships of the series will be commissioned by Rosatomflot, an integral part of Russia’s Rosatom nuclear energy monopoly.

The nuclear-powered giant will be capable of breaking ice fields up to 3 meters thick, making way for LNG carriers delivering Russian gas to Asian customers.

The ship was floated off without the deck housing, because the vessel’s “heart,” the double nuclear reactor delivering 60 MWe of power, could not be mounted inside the hull while the ship was on the stocks. The icebreaker will be complete by December 2017.

Arktika’s length is 173.3 meters, its beam is 34 meters, and its draft is variable – 8.55/10.5 meters.

Her maximum speed is 22 knots, and maximum draft is 33,540 tons. The ship will have endurance of six full months having 75 crew members onboard. The icebreaker carries a helicopter for ice reconnaissance and communication purposes.

 

Anti-Trump coup in the offing...

Sadly, Muslim Americans are also duped by the MSM-crafted mass propaganda ...

Obama versus Trump, Putin and Erdogan: Can Coups Defeat Elected Governments?

By Prof. James Petras

Global Research, August 10, 2016

“Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested”. — James Clapper, US Director of Intelligence on Turkish Coup (Financial Times 8/3/16, p. 4)

Washington has organized a systematic, global, no holds barred campaign to oust Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump from the electoral process.  The virulent anti-Trump animus, the methods, goals and mass media resemble authoritarian regimes preparing to overthrow political adversaries.
Comparable propaganda efforts led to political coups in Chile in 1973, Brazil 1964, ad Venezuela in 2002.  The anti-Trump forces include both political parties, a Supreme Court judge, Wall Street bankers, journalists and editorialist of all the major media outlets and the leading military and intelligence spokespeople.
Washington’s forcible and illegal ouster of Trump is part and parcel of a world-wide campaign to overthrow leaders and regimes which raise questions about aspects of the imperial policies of the US and EU.
We will proceed to analyze the politics of the anti-Trump elite, the points of confrontation and propaganda, as a prelude to the drive to oust opposition in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The Anti-Trump Coup
Never in the history of the United States, has a President and Supreme Court Judge openlyadvocated the overthrow of a Presidential candidate.  Never has the entire mass media engaged in a round-the-clock one-sided, propaganda war to discredit a Presidential candidate by systematically ignoring or distorting the central socio-economic issues of their opposition.
The call for the ouster of a freely elected candidate is nothing more or less than a coup d’état.
Leading television networks and columnists demand that the elections be annulled, following the lead of the President and prominent Republican and Democratic Congressional and Party leaders.
In other words, the political elite openly rejects democratic electoral processes in favor of authoritarian manipulation and deception.  The authoritarian elite relies on magnifying tertiary, questionable personal judgement calls to mobilize coup backers.
They systematically avoid the core economic and political issues which candidate Trump has raised – and attracted mass support – which challenge fundamental policies backed by the two Party elites.

The Roots of the Anti-Trump Coup
Trump has raised several key issues which challenge the Democratic and Republican elite.
Trump has drawn mass support and won elections and public opinion polls by:
(1)  rejecting the free trade agreements which has led major multinationals to relocate abroad and disinvest in well-paying industrial jobs in the US
(2)  calling for large scale public investment projects to rebuild the US industrial economy, challenging the primacy of financial capital.
(3)  opposing the revival of a Cold War with Russia and China and promoting  greater economic co-operation and negotiations.
(4)  rejecting US support for NATO’s military build-up in Europe and intervention in Syria, North Africa and Afghanistan.
(5)  questioning the importation of immigrant labor which lowers job opportunities and wages for local citizens.
The anti-Trump elite systematically avoid debating these issues; instead they distort the substance of the policies.
Instead of discussing the job benefits which will result from ending sanctions with Russia, the coupsters screech that ‘Trump supports Putin, the terrorist’.
Instead of discussing the need to redirect investment inward to create US jobs, the anti-Trump junta mouth clichés that claim his critique of globalization would ‘undermine’ the US economy.
To denigrate Trump, the Clinton/Obama junta resorts to political scandals to cover-up mass political crimes.  To distract public attention, Clinton-Obama falsely claim that Trump is a ‘racist’, backed by David Duke, a racist advocate of “Islamophobia”.  The anti-Trump junta promoted the US- Pakistani  parents of a military war casualty  as victims of Trump’s slanders even as they rooted for Hillary Clinton, promotor of wars against Muslim countries and author of  military policies that sent thousands of US soldiers to their grave.
Obama and Clinton are the imperial racists who bombed Libya and Somalia and killed, wounded and displaced over 2 million sub-Saharan Black-Africans.
Obama and Clinton are the Islamaphobes who bombed and killed and evicted five million Muslims in Syria and one million Muslims in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
In other words, Trump’s mistaken policy to restrict Muslim immigration is a reaction to the hatred and hostility engendered by the Obama- Clinton million-person Muslim genocide.
Trump’s “America First” policy is a rejection of overseas imperial wars – seven wars under Obama-Clinton.  Their militarist policies have inflated budget deficits and degraded US living standards.
Trump’s criticism of capital and job flight has threatened Wall Street’s billion-dollar profiteering – the most important reason behind the bi-partisan junta’s effort to oust Trump and the working class’s support for Trump.
By not following the bi-partisan Wall Street, war agenda, Trump has outlined another business agenda which is incompatible with the current structure of capitalism.  In other words’ the US authoritarian elite does not tolerate the democratic rules of the game even when the opposition accepts the capitalist system.
Likewise, Washington’s quest for ‘mono-power’ extends across the globe.  Capitalist governments which decide to pursue independent foreign policies are targeted for coups.

Obama-Clinton’s  Junta Runs Amok
Washington’s proposed coup against Trump follows similar policies directed against political leaders in Russia, Turkey, China, Venezuela, Brazil and Syria.
Russian President Putin has been demonized by the US propaganda media on an hourly basis for the better part of a decade.  The US has backed oligarchs and promoted economic sanctions; financed a coup in the Ukraine; established nuclear missiles on Russia’s frontier; and launched an arms race to undermine President Putin’s economic policies in order to provoke a coup.
The US backed its proxy Gulenist ‘invisible government’ in its failed coup to oust President Erdogan, for failing to totally embrace the US Middle East agenda.
Likewise, Obama-Clinton have backed successful coups in Latin America. Coups were orchestrated in Honduras, Paraguay and more recently in Brazil to undermine independent Presidents and to secure satellite neo-liberal regimes.  Washington presses forward to forcibly oust the national-populist government of President Maduro in Venezuela.
Washington has escalated efforts to erode, undermine and overthrow the government of China’s President Xi-Jinping through several combined strategies.  A military build-up of an air and sea armada in the South China Sea and military bases in Japan, Australia and the Philippines; separatist agitation in Hong Kong, Taiwan and among the Uyghurs; a US- Latin American- Asia free trade agreements which excludes China.

Conclusion
Washington’s strategy of illegal, violent coups to retain the delusion of empire stretches across the globe, ranging from Trump in the US to Putin in Russia, from Erdogan in Turkey to Maduro in Venezuela to Xi Jinping in China.
The conflict is between US-EU imperialism backed by their local clients against endogenous regimes rooted in nationalist alliances.
The struggle is ongoing and sustained and threatens to undermine the political and social fabric of the US and the European Union.
The top priority for the US Empire is to undermine and destroy Trump by any means necessary.  Trump already has raised the question of ‘rigged elections’. But each elite media attack of Trump seems to add to and strengthen his mass support and polarize the electorate.
As the elections approach, will the elite confine themselves to verbal hysteria or will they turn from verbal assassinations to the ‘other kind’?
Obama’s global coup strategy shows mixed results: they succeeded in Brazil but were defeated in Turkey; they seized power in the Ukraine but were defeated in Russia; they gained propaganda allies in Hong Kong and Taiwan but suffered severe strategic economic defeats in the region as China’s Asian trade policies advanced.
As the US elections approach, and Obama’s pursuit of his imperial legacy collapses, we can expect greater deception and manipulation and perhaps even frequent resort to elite-designed ‘terrorist’ assassinations.

--

Raging Anti-Trumpism

By Stephen Lendman

Global Research, August 10, 2016

 

It seems like the whole universe opposes him with an unprecedented daily blizzard of anti-Trump articles, commentaries and editorials in US print media and what passes in America for television news – stuff no respectable independent news director would allow on air.
Make no mistake. He’s not above reproach, not by a long shot. He didn’t get to be a billionaire by being a good guy. He’s unaccountable for lots of unsavory baggage, what it takes to become a corporate tycoon. Maybe he’s not all bad.
His anti-establishment sounding rhetoric rattles bipartisan power brokers, especially Wall Street, war-profiteers and other corporate interests wanting no changes from current policies – not even around the edges, the most to be hoped for from a Trump presidency if elected.
Giving overwhelming opposition from powerful interests and media scoundrels, it’s hard imagining him having any chance to succeed Obama.
He calls things rigged against him. America’s sordid history of election rigging shows he’s right, today with electronic ease and other dirty tricks.
Clinton was chosen to succeed Obama last year before campaigning began. Trump’s nomination defied predictions. Long knives emerged to stop him straightaway after announcing he’d seek the GOP nomination last year. They continue their daily dirty work, especially after he got it.
Why? He says things on the stump other aspirants for high political office wouldn’t dare, virtually unique in US presidential races.
Some comments are outrageous like wanting a wall on Mexico’s border and “a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Others suggest important steps in the right direction if implemented – including a new role for NATO, rapprochement with Russia (the best hope for preventing WW III), perhaps better relations with China, Iran and other independent countries, opposition to TPP and other jobs-destroying trade deals, as well as hopefully less eagerness for war to be America’s top geopolitical strategy of choice.
Advocating these type policies even rhetorically mobilizes America’s bipartisan establishment militantly against anyone suggesting them – wanting Trump defeated in November by fair or foul means.
Electing Clinton assures continuity on steroids, accelerating America’s war on humanity at home and abroad.
If Trump emerged victorious, defying long odds against him, at least they’d be a chance for turning US policy modestly in the right direction.
Preventing WW III is the best reason for opposing Clinton. Trump would rather make money from planet earth than destroy it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
 

Gaddafi's Last Formal Speech

Those greedy, bloodthirsty traitors (including the so-called Islamists) are to be blamed for the sorry state of affairs of present-day Libya which was turned into one of the most prosperous nations on earth under the leadership of Muammar Gaddafi despite all his shortcomings...

“ In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful…

For 40 years, or was it longer, I can’t remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert.

I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Ronald Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child. Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union.

I did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people’s committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were, they wanted more.

THEY TOLD AMERICANS AND OTHER VISITORS THAT THEY NEEDED ‘DEMOCRACY’ AND ‘FREEDOM’, NEVER REALIZING IT WAS A CUT THROAT SYSTEM, WHERE BIGGEST DOG EATS THE REST. But they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free free education, and no free food, except for when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we’ve had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow - to keep my people free from colonial domination – from thieves who would steal from us.

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism".

But all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters.

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it. Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stoop up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light.

When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself…

In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth, yet continue to lie. They know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free".

My brothers and sisters let's start loving more of each other and stop killing each other because Europe America and other western world will never want to see sunshine for the Africans..”

US foreign policy centers around selling weapons !

Finally a sane voice... But alas! the ignoramus populace is not going to get out of their deep slumber in time and fall for the traps of either Republicans or Democrats setup by the Military-Industrial Complex...

‘US foreign policy is a marketing strategy for selling weapon’ – Jill Stein

RT, 31 Jul, 2016

Democrats and Republicans are controlled by banks, oil giants, insurance companies and war profiteers, says Green Party presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein. Her party, she claims, gets no money from corporations and has liberty to really address problems.

As the two major US political parties have officially selected their nominees for president, Chris Hedges, host of RT’s On Contact program, discussed with the Green Party candidate for president, Dr. Jill Stein, what could be an alternative way forward.
According to Dr Stein, in the current presidential race, the American public is “clamoring for something else at unprecedented levels”.
“People have rejected not only both of these parties, which are minority parties by actual polling…Their candidates are running at record levels, all time highest for people disliking the Democratic and Republican candidates,” she said.
“The American people and the people all over the world are being thrown under the bus by this political system…in which both parties are basically funded by and controlled by predatory banks, by fossil-fuel giants, by war-profiteers, the health insurance industry - the usual suspects who are calling the shots from behind the closed doors,” Stein says.
Stein says that since her campaign and the Green Party “are the only candidates and party” that do not take money from corporations and lobbyists, and do not have super PACs, they have “the liberty to address the crises” that the US people are facing.

‘What Trump says has already been done by Clinton’

Speaking about the frontrunners, the Green Party candidate noted that if you “look at the track record, the terrible things that Donald Trump says – which are truly reprehensible and horrific – have actually been done by Hillary Clinton”.
For example, she said, “on immigrants, xenophobia and hate mongering, we’ve learned that Trump and the Republicans are the party of hate and fear”. But, Stein went on, “the Democrats are the party of deportation, detentions, and night raids”.
And the night-raiding is carried out against the women and children “who are feeling the violence that Hillary Clinton herself gave the thumbs up to with this horrific corporate coup in Honduras”.
US policies very much promoted by “Clinton herself are generating these refugees, which she then, and the Democrats, are criminalizing when they get here and sending them back,” says Stein.
Speaking about security issues - “finger on nuclear button”, as she put it, the Green Party candidate noted that Trump makes “irresponsible statements” and Clinton advocates the enforcing of a no-fly zone over Syria “against a nuclear armed country that is Russia.”
Clinton has already been antagonizing Russia by surrounding it with missile bases and soldiers, Stein said. “How would we feel if Russian troops were amassing on the border of Mexico and Canada?” she added. 

Trump – product of economic misery created by Clintons

Dr Stein has called Donald Trump “a product” of economic misery, which created vulnerability, fear, and sense of dread on behalf of the American worker and middle class, “to whom adversity is somewhat new”.
“They become very vulnerable to demagoguery, to wishful memory about ‘how we can recreate a powerful America of the past’,” she said. But not much is being asked about what caused this misery. In Stein’s opinion, this goes back to Wall Street deregulation “and the economic crash” that resulted in disappearance of millions of jobs, “stole five million homes out from under home owners, and to NAFTA which basically allowed a million jobs and more to be sent overseas and for wages to be pushed downward.”
The Wall Street deregulation passed by Bill Clinton was advocated for and celebrated by Hillary Clinton, she said.
“So, putting another Clinton in the White House – that’s not a solution; that was the problem, that is only going to fan the flames of right-wing extremism,” Stein said.

‘We bailed out crooks, time to bail out their victims’

The real solution would be economic investments in a form of a Green New Deal like the one that got the US out of the Great Depression and job-creation, the Green Party candidate said.
“This is not a kind of pie in the sky that we can fix this. The real solution here is economic investment; it’s job creation; it’s not wish fulfilment about how Donald Trump is going to cut a better deal for us. Donald Trump leaves a lake of bankruptcies and lawsuits behind him from workers who’ve been cheated, and jobs that have been sent overseas. So, Big Daddy is not the Big Daddy that we need,” she said. 
The Green Party, she insists, can grow the economy in a just and sustainable way. Her campaign suggests cancelling the student debt that affected about 40 million people “like we cancelled the debt for the Wall Street crooks who crashed the economy.”
“If we bailed out the crooks, it’s time to bail out their victims through the same tool of quantitative easing that doesn’t cost taxpayers a thing…” Jill Stein said.   

Demilitarizing foreign policy

The US spends a trillion dollars a year on its military, says Jill Stein. If that budget is cut it in half, the American economy will have the money it needs at home to provide for free public higher education, insure any health costs that aren’t covered already and work with other countries to address the problem of climate change – which remains one of the crucial problems globally, she believes. 
“Few people know what we pay for this catastrophic military which shoots first and asks questions later. In fact, what we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapon,” she said. “We’ve had these wars for oil - which are opportunities to sell weapons and to come and dear other people’s fossil fuel resources, which is basically what our military is doing. Why do we have a thousand bases for a hundred countries around the world?  This isn’t something that other countries do.”
The reason why the US keeps doing so is to safeguard its energy supplies and their routes of transportation, Stein says.
“This can no longer be justified – it’s all obsolete when we have a Green New Deal, which will reach 100 percent wind, water and sun clean renewable energy entirely by 2030. So, we can begin phasing down this network and stop stealing other people’s oil right now,” she said.
The US spent six trillion dollars on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – both of which failed, the presidential candidate said.
The US killed a million people in Iraq alone, “not winning the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East to say the least. And what do we have for it? Failed states, mass refuge migrations that are tearing apart Europe as well as the Middle East, and creating worse terrorist threats,” she added.

A New Fight Over Syria War Strategy

A must read to understand the inner workings of Syria conflict...

The supposed dissenters knew very well that Kerry has been advocating essentially the same policy they were articulating for years

by Gareth Porter, July 09, 2016

 

The long internal political struggle within the Obama administration over policy toward Syria has intensified following a proposal by President Barack Obama to cooperate with Russia in an air campaign against Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise.
The proposal, in response to an overture from Russia in May, would coordinate airstrikes against al-Nusra Front – the most powerful force in the war against Bashar al-Assad’s regime – in return for Russian agreement to constrain the Syrian regime from bombing non-jihadist forces willing to comply with the ceasefire.
If fully implemented, such a joint U.S.-Russian military campaign against Nusra could help hasten an end to the war by weakening the jihadist group cited by the Syrian regime as a major reason it has refused to make sufficient political concessions. In theory, such cooperation could strengthen both the regime and the so-called “moderate” rebels at the expense of the jihadists.
But Obama’s proposal is under attack by powerful elements of the national security bureaucracy. Even though the opponents have been unable to stop the proposal, they continue to press their case and it is not clear how committed the proponents are in pressuring their Syrian clients to comply with an agreement.
Last week, opponents of the proposal within the Obama administration leaked its existence to Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, whose sympathies clearly lie with the U.S. advocates of direct US war against the Assad regime.
Rogin’s story confirms that one major source of opposition to the proposal is Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his staff. The article suggests, moreover, that the Pentagon opposition has less to do with Syria than with the Pentagon’s interest in preventing any softening of the new U.S.-Russia Cold War.
Carter opposed the Obama plan for a joint military strategy with Russia, Rogin writes, because Russian President Vladimir Putin sees military cooperation with Washington in Syria as “a way to gradually unwind Russia’s isolation following the Russian military intervention in Ukraine.”
But the primary argument against a joint campaign with Russia targeting Nusra Front is that it would jeopardize the military strength of Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise and thus help the Assad government reclaim key territory.
Rogin quotes a complaint from Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, that, even if Russia delivers on a commitment to halt regime bombing of non-jihadist armed groups, the other armed groups fighting Assad would be in a much weaker position.
The on-the-ground subordination of the so-called “legitimate opposition” to the command structure of Al Qaeda’s offshoot, which is officially designated a terrorist organization, has been at the center of the diplomatic maneuvering between the Obama administration and Russia over possible military cooperation in Syria.
Russia’s Overture
The original Russian proposal to the United States for a joint air campaign, announced by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on May 20, was conditional on non-jihadist armed groups separating physically from Nusra. The Russians had made that same condition part of the agreement for the partial ceasefire in February.
Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to the condition but never delivered on the pledge to get the “moderate” armed groups to move away from Nusra and its jihadist allies. Nusra and another hard-line jihadist group, Ahrar al-Sham, have been the leaders of the powerful Saudi-backed rebel umbrella group, the Army of Conquest.
The subordinate non-jihadist groups have made it clear they have no intention of abandoning Nusra Front and its superior fighting capabilities. Instead of separating themselves from Nusra, the non-jihadist forces in northeastern Syria joined Nusra in breaking the ceasefire.
Charles Lister, a British specialist on the jihadists in Syria, recounted being told by the commander of a U.S.-supported armed group around March 20 that Nusra Front officials began a round of meetings with non-jihadist opposition groups from the areas of Hama, Latakia and southern Aleppo to persuade them to join in resuming the offensive against the Assad regime, rather than participating in a ceasefire and political negotiations.
When Nusra Front launched an offensive operation on April 3 on three fronts near Aleppo and in Idlib with the aim of taking back territory lost to the Syrian government in 2015, a number of the armed opposition groups supported by the United States fought alongside Al Qaeda’s affiliate.
The opposition commander explained to Lister that, if his group had not agreed to join Nusra’s offensive, “we would be seen as the enemy” — thus acknowledging that the U.S.-supported groups see no choice but to fight with the much stronger Nusra Front.
On May 5, just over two months ago, 37 armed opposition groups that were continuing to call themselves “Free Syrian Army,” the name applied to many of the U.S.-backed rebel forces inside Syria, issued a declaration that rejected any ceasefire that allowed attacks on Nusra Front.
“[A]ll the armed groups from across Syria will form a single bloc,” it said, adding, “Any offensive that takes place in an area where our units are present will be regarded as an attack against all the units throughout Syrian territory and we reserve the right to respond to it.”
In other words, many of the U.S.-armed, supposedly “moderate” rebels are in a strategic alliance with Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. It is that reality that has complicated Russian airstrikes against “terrorist” elements, both Nusra and the Islamic State, without also hitting U.S.-backed rebel groups and provoking outrage in Washington.
Facing Realities
Obama’s willingness to increase cooperation with the Russians is recognition that the continuing collaboration between Nusra and the so-called “moderates” represents an untenable situation if Syrian peace negotiations are to have any meaning. If the “moderates” don’t separate from Nusra, they effectively serve as its protective shield.
Thus, the inside-Washington bureaucratic pushback against Obama’s proposal to Russia was prompted by the fact that the Obama proposal appears to represent a fundamental departure from its policy in 2014-15 of encouraging – if not participating in – making a Nusra Front-led military coalition a powerful threat in northeastern Syria.
Turkish, Saudi and Qatari financial and logistical support for the Army of Conquest military command – dominated by Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham in Idlib – was the crucial factor in the shift in military balance that raised the specter of a jihadist victory over the largely secular Assad government and led to Russian military intervention last fall.
Though the Russian intervention helped the Syrian military regain key territory, the U.S.-Russian-negotiated partial ceasefire has enabled Nusra and its allies to regroup.
Brett McGurk, Obama’s special envoy for the “Global Coalition to Counter IS” – also known as the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL or Daesh – has noted in written testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Nusra Front “is gaining ground in the west, putting down roots in Idlib province along the Turkish border.”
McGurk said Nusra Front is now “al-Qaeda’s largest formal affiliate in history” and added that it is “a serious concern.” It was the first time anyone in the Obama administration had registered the slightest concern about the military power of Nusra Front in Syria since the strategy of exploiting its military potential for diplomatic advantage over the Assad regime went into effect.
Obama’s proposed cooperation with Russia against Nusra Front was reportedly sent to Moscow by the State Department on June 27. The implication of the counter-argument protesting Obama’s proposal is that the opponents are willing to accept a long-term Al Qaeda-dominated mini-state in northeast Syria and even risk the possibility of a Nusra Front-led coalition coming to power in Damascus.
No Clean Break
But the fact that some hawks in the US security bureaucracy oppose Obama’s proposal does not necessarily mean that the President is seeking a clean break from past administration strategy.
In his Senate testimony, McGurk cited the need to “find a mechanism to de-escalate and end the Syrian civil war, thereby allowing the moderate opposition to take charge of its own territory without threat of Assad’s barrel bombs overhead or terrorists down the street.”
But Kerry and other administration policymakers know very well that the vast majority of the Syrian opposition groups are not going to separate themselves from Nusra Front, so the idea of a “moderate” opposition with its own zone of control is a political fiction.
A key element in the new proposal is the demand that Russia agree to guarantee an end to all Assad regime air attacks against the “legitimate opposition.” That is apparently being interpreted as imposing extreme limitations on operations by the Syrian air force.
Journalist Laura Rozen quotes “a diplomat involved in the international discussions on Syria” as saying, “Grounding the [Syrian] air force is possible; restricting its area of activity could be a possibility.”
Any U.S.-Russian agreement on cooperation against Nusra Front would be clearly based on the premise that any new limitations on either Russian or Syrian airpower would come only after opposition groups have moved away from the Nusra-dominated areas and withdrawn from the Nusra-led military commands with which they have been affiliated.
After those groups failed to move away from Nusra Front troops this spring, Kerry’s State Department did put pressure on their supplies lines across the Turkish border. But Kerry and the State Department continued to blame Russia for failing to prevent the Syrian government from carrying out air attacks on targets in the Nusra Font zone.
Kerry, who is supporting Obama’s proposal, according to Rogin’s report, may still be hoping to use the proposed agreement to build a case that Russian and Syrian government intransigence – not the continued US complicity in Turkish-Saudi-Qatari strategy of backing the Nusra Front-Ahrar al Sham duo in the northeast – is the reason why the “legitimate opposition” is still under air attack.
As the Obama administration goes into its final months, what appears to be the most promising path to an end to the Syrian civil war may yet be blocked by US refusal to break with the policies of its regional allies who have been feeding the jihadist-led war for years.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. He can be contacted at porter.gareth50@gmail.com.
Reprinted from the Middle East Eye with the author’s permission.
 

Eid Mubarak 1437H

May Allah help us celebrate this Eid peacefully...