Middle East and North Africa 20 - The End of the Beginning in Syria? SPECIAL BONUS RUSSIAN JET CRISIS EDITION

[Veltigar]

British Labour MP Skinner asked foreign secretary Hammond some pointed questions: Do you regard Turkey as a reliable ally in the battle against Isil? When you consider that not only today that they’ve shot down a Russian jet - who are also trying to fight Isil - they’re buying oil from Isil in order to prop them up, they’re bombing the Kurds who are also fighting Isil.

Hammond's response, in a true obfuscatory fashion: I see old habits die hard and you remain an apologist for Russian actions. On the question of Turkey, Turkey is an important Nato ally. 

Yes, anyone who asks an uncomfortable and honest question is a Russian apologist. And the fact that Erdogan's Turkey is in NATO is all the answer one needs, apparently. Thank God Saudi Arabia isn't in NATO. One can only wonder what kind of official response we'd be getting then. (Of course, Saudis may as well be in NATO, but that's a topic for another time.)

Well, the whole 'who are also trying to fight Isil' is being a Russian apologist. They have been bomming Daesh a little lately, but most of their bombs have fallen on the FSA, since they are the bigger threat to Assad's regime. 

Clearly, both the Russians and the Turks (and the Saudi's) are in the wrong. Both have sadly played a big role in continuing the slaughter in Syria and that probably won't change anytime soon. I'm personally curious about Putin's response. His early comments were very strong from a communication PoV imo, but I'm waiting to see how they are planning to get even with Erdogan and Turkey. 

[Mr Fixit]

Russians are not married to Assad; they know that only a stable central government in Syria will be able to put up an effective effort in fighting terrorism. So yes, they're also targeting some other groups in Syria, as well they should. This thing will never end while there are all these different guys running around, "moderate" (ha!) or no. And where do you think ISIS got all that equipment from? It's a well known fact that many of these so called moderates have sold/given their foreign-supplied equipment over to ISIS, and in many cases they've wholesale gone over to their side. Wasn't there some Congressional hearing that said as much?

[cgrnosfe]

Putin's comments at the UN a few months a go are starting to make more sense. One of the comments he made went along the lines of:

"Do you think the West does not know who are the people buying the oil that Isis is smuggling out of Iraq and Syria? It is their own allies. I can even tell you the exact amounts."

Putin was obviously referring to Turkey's involvement in the whole affair.

If you think about it, really, where else can ISIS sell their oil?

It can't go through Iran, who hates them. It can't go through Israel or Lebanon. If you look at the areas controlled by ISIS, and consider which countries can be reached directly by truck, without going through enemy held territory, then the only possible destination for their billion dollar oil smuggling operation is Turkey.

The buyers must be in Turkey. This is not rocket science.

Turkey is therefore directly allowing the funding of ISIS. And probably profiting from it at the same time.

Well, I would try to explain but I guess I cannot argue with the logic that opens the map, says smugglers should smuggle this way (assumption 1), if they smuggle this way then the state on this way supports the smugglers (assumption 2), if the state supports the smugglers they support the terrorists behind the smugglers (conclusion). Sorry this is so wrong on so many levels...

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

A BBC report that includes a radar map, released by Turkey, showing the Russian Jet crossing into Turkish airspace:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34907983

[Mr Fixit]

Old news Scot...

[Biglose]

 

Well, I would try to explain but I guess I cannot argue with the logic that opens the map, says smugglers should smuggle this way (assumption 1), if they smuggle this way then the state on this way supports the smugglers (assumption 2), if the state supports the smugglers they support the terrorists behind the smugglers (conclusion). Sorry this is so wrong on so many levels...

Come on, really? First of all your assumptions 1 and 2 are actually conclusions.  The assumption behind it would have been the map and lack of cooperation from Assad and Iran. And yeah, oil tends to be quite hard to smuggle without the authorities turning at least a blind eye...

And on top of that, thats old news. Went through the media in germany a year ago...The ugly truth is, there weren't a lot of fucks given about ISIS.

[Free Northman Reborn]

Well, if I was the Turkmen tribesmen (those who claim to have shot the Russian pilots to death as they glided down on their parachutes, and the same guys Erdogan is trying to support with his actions), I would put my big boy pants on now, because I predict they are about to have the shit  bombed out of them by the Russians.

 

 

[Mr Fixit]

ISIS was ACTIVELY supported while it was primarily fighting against Assad. It was directly and indirectly financed, armed, trained, and otherwise supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and some others with the full knowledge and complicity of NATO countries. They have been instituting harsh religious laws, persecuting Syrian Christians, and doing all sorts of dastardly deeds for years now, often in covert (and from time to time overt) alliances with "moderate" rebels.

It's only when ISIS started making serious inroads in Iraq and threatened to plunge that country in total anarchy as well that we began to see the other side of the coin: heart wrenching stories of brave Kurdish heroines fighting for freedom and democracy and all that good stuff, evil ISIS pillaging, killing, and destroying left and right... Well guess what? They'd been doing that with foreign support for years and no one cared! Gotta get rid of that nasty dictator Assad and usher a new era of peace like in Iraq and Libya. That overrides all other concerns after all.

[Relic]

Well, if I was the Turkmen tribesman (those who claim to have shot the Russian pilots to death as they glided down on their parachutes, and the same guys Erdogan is trying to support with his actions), I would put my big boy pants on now, because I predict they are about to have the shit  bombed out of them by the Russians.

Yeah, them Russian bombs have been super effective...at killing civilians. 

 

[Mr Fixit]

At least it's not depleted uranium. 

[All-for-Joffrey]

ISIS was ACTIVELY supported while it was primarily fighting against Assad. It was directly and indirectly financed, armed, trained, and otherwise supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and some others with the full knowledge and complicity of NATO countries.

Will you please provide evidence to back this assertion up? I hear it tossed around all the time on these boards by various posters that the Gulf States and Turkey knowingly armed ISIS to fight Assad as though it's irrefutable fact. Saudi Arabia (and to an extent Turkey and the other Gulf states) were arming hard line religious groups, but those groups were not affiliated with ISIS/al- Nusra at the time even though they were from the same hard line ideological Salafist strain. A lot of these groups have since joined up with either ISIS and al-Nusra but the Gulf states/Turkey have never armed or supported either group -- for obvious reasons. Oh, and the US and NATO had actively been fighting with Saudi Arabia and telling them to stop arming the hard line Salafist groups while that was going on. (Of course, as usual, they never imposed any actual consequences on the Saudis for doing so.)

My guess is a lot of our conservative friends have decided to start watching RT after Putin began his Syria adventure ("cuz Obama") and are simply repeating Assad-Putin-Khomeini talking points. Just because you keep repeating something ad nauseium without evidence doesn't make it true.

[Mr Fixit]

Nonsense, I'm repeating Pol Pot-Stalin-Hitler talking points, didn't you know?

Seriously, I don't have the time nor inclination to search for and provide links. There's plenty of info out there from reliable sources that indicate that much. Look and ye shall find.

[All-for-Joffrey]

Nonsense, I'm repeating Pol Pot-Stalin-Hitler talking points, didn't you know?

How about you stop evading the damn question and provide proof of your assertions that the Saudis and Turks have armed and supported ISIS?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Mr. Fixit,

So "accept your word as authoritive" and that ends your rebuttal?  Nice.

[Mr Fixit]

No ser Scot, do your job and find the data yourself if you're really that interested in the truth. I don't need to provide links you should be able to find yourself.

But if you insist, here's one of many:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-turkey-and-saudi-arabia-shock-western-countries-by-supporting-anti-assad-jihadists-10242747.html

 

 

[All-for-Joffrey]

Nonsense, I'm repeating Pol Pot-Stalin-Hitler talking points, didn't you know?

Seriously, I don't have the time nor inclination to search for and provide links. There's plenty of info out there from reliable sources that indicate that much. Look and ye shall find.

Translation: I don't have any credible evidence to back up my assertions so I'm not going to provide you with anything.

I've been following this stuff for years -- not just since ISIS became a thing white people were scared of too. The only thing that "supports" claims that the Saudis have been arming ISIS are accusations from Nouri al-Maliki and Iran -- hardly credible sources. The Atlantic has a good rundown of the situation. I'm not absolving the Saudis of guilt here -- they have made the situation worse by arming the Salafist groups I mentioned earlier (many of whom, again, eventually joined ISIS), but to say that they directly armed ISIS is completely inaccurate -- even the Saudi royal family isn't that stupid.

 

ETA: We've known there were individual donors from the Gulf states that have been funding al-Qaeda/ISIS for years and the governments there didn't do as much to stop them as they should have (until perhaps recently) -- that's old news -- but that's hardly to the level of these states directly supporting ISIS, which is what you're claiming.

[Altherion]

Yeah, them Russian bombs have been super effective...at killing civilians. 

Who do you think is going to suffer for this? Russia cannot attack Turkey directly, but nor can they let such a thing go unanswered (Putin has already said as much). The Syrian Turkmen had better pray that at least one of the pilots survived because otherwise the local weather forecast includes a significant chance of an increased number of bombers, almost certainly with fighter escorts.

[Mr Fixit]

No, it's part of "I have a life" routine that doesn't include spending hours sifting through the internet in order to provide links to people I don't know and about whose opinion I frankly don't care all that much. If you do want to know, I presume you know how to use web browsers.

[All-for-Joffrey]

No ser Scot, do your job and find the data yourself if you're really that interested in the truth. I don't need to provide links you should be able to find yourself.

But if you insist, here's one of many:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-turkey-and-saudi-arabia-shock-western-countries-by-supporting-anti-assad-jihadists-10242747.html

 

 

So again, they're providing arms to Jaish al-Fatah, a hard line umbrella group that has some association with al-Nusra. Again, this is different than directly arming and supporting al-Nusra. And your article says nothing of ISIS.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

No, it's part of "I have a life" routine that doesn't include spending hours sifting through the internet in order to provide links to people I don't know and about whose opinion I frankly don't care all that much. If you do want to know, I presume you know how to use web browsers.

Mr. Fixit,

You don't care about anyone here and you aren't interested in our opinions.  You're posting here... why?