Immediate yet Temporary Solution to Global Refugee Crisis?

There is some agreement with Barack Obama, the civil wars, the unrest, the terror conditions in the Middle East is an Islamic problem to solve. When however, outside influences have manifested the state of order in the region, not only is the Obama administration culpable due to lack of leadership, but filling that void is Iran, Russia, the Gulf States and China.

This is not a new condition by any stretch and the cost to the United States has yet to be realized or accounted. In 2013, the United States had already provided $339 million and additional humanitarian aid to the Syria crisis. That is but one small portion to the costs which have mounted still in 2015.

The refugee crisis festering across the globe is worse than what is being reported and the moving parts are countless.

So there are some short term and creative solutions that would provide some relief such that other cures can be devised in the interim.

  1. Call on affected nations to step up assets to rescue and safe haven to the refugees by offering respective naval vessels to the Mediterranean Sea and to ports involved. Each country has decommissioned ships or ships that are expendable for immediate use, including cruise ships. The United States alone has decommissioned countless naval assets and sold many of them to other countries for use. Further, after generally 25 years, cruise ships are taken out of service where some would take minor upgrades to deploy for the cause.
  2. The United Nations along with involved countries call to duty personnel to work resources for humanitarian means. This would include medical, safety, transportation, educational and early vetting.
  3. Place intelligence operations on the entry-way path to interview, fingerprint and background personnel files that are matched with global intelligence services that would and could find the terrorists and jihadis among the crowds.
  4. Set rules aboard the ships for order, when violations occur, aggressive consequences are invoked. This may include prison, deportation or other detention sentences.
  5. Contain the problem and then manage it. Stop spreading the destruction, crisis and despair. The cost of this program would come under that of the Gulf States, Russia and Iran that have offered zero assistance and are in fact guilty of exacerbating the calamity. The global community has a role and for those that ignore, sanctions and isolation is the consequence.
  6. Countries where war and unrest is proven are the target of a worldwide military solution beyond that of today’s feeble strategy. NATO membership is accountable for a tactical strategy in locations such as Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more.
  7. Determine Muslim countries that may be conditioned to take refugees on a medium term basis until stability is gained, one country at a time. Those countries may include Maldives, Malaysia or perhaps even Kyrgyzstan.

It is time to think out of the box for a semi-lasting yet immediate solution during which time Islamic State, al Nusra, Boko Harem, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are defeated.

This post is up for debate and further discussion, yet today, there must be robust collaboration, cures, humanitarian and military strategies on the table. Your comments are invited and welcomed.

The Global Refugee Crisis Snapshot

  1. Refugees travel light, for their trek is as dangerous as it is arduous. They are detained, shot at, hungry. Smugglers routinely exploit them, promising safety for a price, only to squeeze them like sardines into tiny boats. Most have no option but to shed whatever meager belongings they may have salvaged from their journeys. Those allowed to bring extra baggage aboard often toss it overboard, frantically dumping extra weight as the leaky boats take on water.

    Few arrive at their destinations with anything but the necessities of life. The International Rescue Committee asked a mother, a child, a teenager, a pharmacist, an artist, and a family of 31 to share the contents of their bags and show us what they managed to hold on to from their homes. Their possessions tell stories about their past and their hopes for the future. Much more here from Medium.

  2. No one is vetting these jihadists. And worse still, Pope Francis called on Sunday on every European parish and religious community to take in one migrant family each in a gesture of solidarity he said would start in the tiny Vatican state where he lives.

    The Westgate Mall massacre was gruesome even by Islamic standards. Muslims were released, while non-Muslims had their eyes gouged out and were murdered in cold blood. More here from PamelaGeller.

  3. Five of the wealthiest Muslim countries have taken no Syrian refugees in at all, arguing that doing so would open them up to the risk of terrorism. Although the oil rich countries have handed over aid money, Britain has donated more than Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar combined.

    Between 10 and 12 million Syrians have been displaced by the bloody civil war raging in their country. Most still remain within Syria’s borders, but around four million have fled over the borders into neighboring countries, mostly Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon and beyond. More here from Breitbart.

  4. Greek police are still searching for 10 illegal immigrants who escaped from a holding centre in Athens after a riot late on Saturday night. A protest over the extension of their detention turned violent as inmates clashed with police and security guards. The detainees hurled water bottles and set fire to rubbish bags and mattresses.

    Greece, struggling to exit its worst financial crisis in decades, has become a frontier for immigrants mainly from Asia and Africa, who seek a better life in Europe but often end up living in cramped detention centres.

  5. The Syrian operative claimed more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen had been smuggled into western nations – hidden amongst innocent refugees. The ISIS smuggler, who is in his 30s with a trimmed jet-black beard, revealed the ongoing clandestine operation is a complete success. “Just wait,” he smiled.

    The Islamic State operative spoke exclusively to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity and is believed to be the first to confirm plans to infiltrate western countries. Islamic State, also referred to as IS and ISIS, is believed to be actively smuggling deadly gunmen across the sparsely-guarded 565-mile Turkish border and on to richer European nations, he revealed.

  6. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Chairman Michael McCaul, of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter to President Obama last Thursday expressing concerns over the Administration’s announced plans to resettle some 2,000 Syrian refugees in the United States this year. Terrorists have made known their plans to attempt to exploit refugee programs to sneak terrorists into the West and the U.S. homeland. Chairman McCaul’s letter points out the potential national security threat this poses to the United States.

    Chairman McCaul: “Despite all evidence towards our homeland’s vulnerability to foreign fighters, the Administration still plans to resettle Syrian refugees into the United States. The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and the Deputy Director of the FBI both sat before my Committee this Congress and expressed their concern with admitting refugees we can’t properly vet from the global epicenter of terrorism and extremism in Syria. America has a proud tradition of welcoming refugees from around the world, but in this special situation the Obama Administration’s Syrian refugee plan is very dangerous.”

    Read Chairman McCaul’s letter HERE.

    The Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence will hold a hearing on June 24th to examine the refugee resettlement program and discuss vulnerabilities to our security exposed by the Administration’s plan.

The conditions in Europe will soon come to the United States.

 

Here’s a summary of the latest developments:

France and Germany are are to take an extra 55,000 refugees over the next two years. The plan, part of an initiative to taken an extra 120,000 across Europe, will be set out on Wednesday by EU commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker.
France is considering launching airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria president François Hollande announced as he confirmed plans to take an extra 24,000 refugees. “We have proof that attacks have been planned from Syria against several countries, notably France,” Hollande told a news conference.
Angela Merkel called on other European countries to pull their weight to help tackle the crisis. She described the number of people coming to Germany over the weekend as “breathtaking” and said Germany should be proud of its response.
Tensions between the authorities and migrants and asylum seekers have remained tense at a number of flash points across Europe. On Greek island of Lesbos the sight of thousands of frustrated refugees and migrants marching on Mytilini, the capital, prompted Greece’s migration minister to announce that transit of the newcomers would be speeded up immediately. Scuffles broke out earlier on between police and thousands of people attempting to enter Macedonia from with Greece. The Hungarian security forces struggled to contain migrants trying to break out of the Röszke camp on the Serbia border.
The Bavarian authorities have warned they are at “breaking point” after accepting two thirds of the 18,000 refugees who arrived in Munich via Austria over the weekend. “We’re right at our limit,” said Christoph Hillenbrand, meeting reporters at Munich train station.
David Cameron is to set out details of the government’s plans to resettle thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria. He will also announced further details of a counter terrorism strategy on Syria.
Hundreds of millions of pounds from Britain’s aid budget will be used to tackle the crisis, Chancellor George Osborne confirmed that every penny in the “uplift” in the aid budget – the automatic rises as the economy grows – would be spent on global challenges with a direct effect on Britain.
The ruling coalition in Germany has set out plans to spend an extra €6bn to cope with migration. After a meeting in Berlin lasting more than five hours, leaders from chancellor Merkel’s coalition also agreed to speed up asylum procedures and facilitating the construction of asylum shelters.
Hungary’s hardline PM, Viktor Orban, said people coming into the EU are “immigrants not refugees”. He also said that it was the EU primary interest that Hungary protects its borders.
The United Nations warned that its humanitarian agencies were on the verge of bankruptcy and unable to meet the basic needs of millions of people because of the size of the refugee crisis. “We are broke,” the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, told the Guardian.

Snapshots:

 

Meanwhile, the BRICS’ have $100 Billion, Operational

Back to Irregular Warfare, as previously posted on this site:

$100bn BRICS monetary fund now operational

The five leaders of BRICS met in Ufa, Russia on 9 July 2015  [Xinhua]

The $100 billion BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) has become fully operational following the inaugural meetings of the BRICS CRA Board of Governors and the Standing Committee in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

“The first meetings of the governing bodies mark the start of a full-scale operation of the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement as an international institution with activities set to enhance and strengthen cooperation,” said a Russian Central Bank statement on Friday.

BRICS leaders Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Jacob Zuma, Narendra Modi and Dilma Rousseff witnessed the signing of the agreement on the CRA in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza in July 2014.

The agreement entered into force on July 30, 2015.

China will provide the bulk of the funding with $41 billion, Brazil, Russia and India with $18 billion each, and South Africa with $5 billion.

The CRA is meant to provide an alternative to International Monetary Fund’s emergency lending. In the CRA, emergency loans of up to 30 per cent of a member nation’s contribution will be decided by a simple majority. Bigger loans will require the consent of all CRA members.

Meanwhile, Finance Ministers from the five BRICS countries have met in Ankara on the sidelines of the G20 meeting of global finance ministers and central bankers, amid growing worries about the state of the global economy.

With a looming US federal Reserve rate hike and Chinese market turbulence sending shock waves through emerging markets, the IMF has lowered its global growth forecast.

A G20 communique after their two-day meeting in the Turkish capital Ankara noted that global growth was falling short of expectations.

“Global growth falls short of our expectations. We have pledged to take decisive action to keep the economic recovery on track and we are confident the global economic recovery will gain speed,” the statement said.

The G20 vowed to “carefully calibrate and clearly communicate our actions … to minimise negative spillovers, mitigate uncertainty and promote transparency”.

As the BRICS countries launched new financial institutions like the $100 billion BRICS Bank, the China-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and a $100 billion BRICS currency reserve fund, the IMF has once again delayed voting reforms to give emerging countries greater say.

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Meanwhile, Putin is rejoicing in the European refugee crisis, this too is part of Irregular Warfare.

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Refugee Crisis: EU bearing burden of US foreign policy, says Putin

Refugees are prevented by police from entering the Keleti railway station in Budapest, Hungary on September 1, 2015 [Xinhua]

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is willing to hold snap parliamentary elections and share power with a “healthy opposition”.

Russia and Iran, have backed Assad since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011.

Russia, along with other members of the BRICS bloc, have insisted on  international efforts being geared to bring about a ‘political solution’ to the crisis rather than a military one.

Syria’s conflict began with anti-government demonstrations in March 2011, which soon spiraled into a multi-front civil war that has left more than 230,000 people dead, according to UN estimates.

“Overall there is an understanding that the unification of forces in the fight against terrorism should proceed in parallel with some sort of political process within Syria. The Syrian president agrees with that, all the way down to holding early parliamentary elections, establishing contacts with the so-called healthy opposition, and bringing them into the governing,” Putin said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Friday.

“But this is, first of all, an issue of internal Syrian development; we are not imposing anything, but are ready to facilitate this internal Syrian dialogue,” he added.

A 2013 accord, brokered by Russia, took Assad’s declared chemicals out of Syria in an 11th-hour move to avert US bombing.

The Syrian government is fighting a number of rebel groups as well as radical militant organizations, including militants from ISIL and the Nusra Front.

“By the way, the people aren’t fleeing from the regime of Bashar Assad. They are fleeing from ISIL, which has seized their territories, including considerable parts of Syria, Iraq,” Putin said referring to the refugee crisis in Europe.

Russia has stressed in the past that Washington’s refusal to coordinate its airstrikes against purported ISIL positions in Syria with Damascus is a “mistake.” Western and Arab leaders have shied away from cooperating with Assad in the fight against the Islamic State to avoid being seen as legitimising his rule.

More than 300,000 people have crossed to Europe by sea so far this year and more than 2,600 have died during these desperate journeys.

“I think the crisis was absolutely expected. We in Russia, and me personally several times said it straight that pervasive problems would emerge, if our so-called Western partners continued to maintain their flawed, as I always stressed it, foreign policy, which they pursue to date, especially in regions of the Muslim world [such as] Middle East, North Africa,” Putin said on Friday.

“And it is, first of all, the policy of our American partners. Europe is blindly following this policy within the framework of the so-called allied liabilities, and in the end shoulders the entire burden. I am now quite surprised that some of the American mass media are criticizing Europe for what they consider to be excessive cruelty towards migrants,” the Russian President added.

As refugees land on European shores, “the ‘United States of Europe’ appeared singularly dis-united”, writes journalist and Faculty of Media at London College of Communication, Russell Merryman.

“While the EU itself resorted to lofty rhetoric about working together to deal with the crisis and developing equitable ways of distributing refugees among the member states, some of Merkel’s European partners began to retreat into petty nationalism,” writes Merryman.

“The worst display was from Hungary which built a 180km fence, while their pugnacious prime minister, Viktor Orban, said it was Germany’s problem and that the refugees threatened to undermine Europe’s Christian roots,” he adds.

 

 

How Obama Won Iran Deal and the Money Flows

Obama has officially won on the Iran deal. How?

In part from the Hill:

The White House —which has a reputation for keeping an arms-length relationship with Capitol Hill —mounted an all hands on deck effort in the three weeks after the deal was signed and before lawmakers left town for the August recess.

Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and other top officials became fixtures on Capitol Hill and sought to answer every lawmaker’s questions in person before they fanned out across the country.

Moniz was the ringer, offering a detailed yet affable performance that contrasted with Kerry’s more pedantic style, and earned him the affection of even the deal’s most bitter critics.

The president, too, got personally involved, and refused to relent once Congress left town.

Obama spoke to more than 100 lawmakers in individual or small-group settings, according to a White House official, including 30 calls during his two-week August vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials made the case directly to over 200 House members and senators after the deal was reached.

Supporters were up against heavy artillery. At home, lawmakers were bombarded with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of TV ads from opponents of the agreement such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

To counteract that firepower, organizations such as J Street spent millions of their own to run advertisements in key markets.

Obama also made an open plea for liberal groups to lend him a hand.

“As big of a bully pulpit as I have, it’s not enough,” Obama told thousands of activists in July. “I can’t carry it by myself.”

But what do the Republicans know that the Democrats also know but are ignoring because of the covert Iran money deals to the Democrats?

Iran spending billions on terrorists’ salaries: report

 Iran has been sending billions of dollars to fill the pockets of terrorist fighters across the Middle East, including in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, according to a private U.S. government report ordered by Sen. Mark Kirk.

Iran’s defense budget ranges anywhere between $14 billion to $30 billion a year and much of that money goes to fund terrorist groups and rebel fighters throughout the region, according to the Congressional Research Service report conducted at the request of Mr. Kirk, an Illinois Republican.
The report, first viewed by The Washington Free Beacon, discloses that funding for these terrorist groups could be much higher than originally estimated, as Iran often hides public records about its defense spending.

“Some regional experts claim that Iran’s defense budget excludes much of its spending on intelligence activities and support of foreign non-state actors,” the report states, stressing that actual military spending could far exceed the $30 billion that Iran discloses annually, The Free Beacon reported.

“Similarly, another study claims that actual funding for the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force’s Al Quds Force] is ‘much greater’ ” than the amount allocated in the state budget, as the group’s funds are supplemented by its own economic activities,” the report said.

The report gives “low-ball” estimates for each of the groups supported by Iranian funding. Researchers estimate Iran spends between $100 million and $200 million per year on Hezbollah, $3.5 billion to $15 billion per year in support of Syria’s Asad Regime, $12 million to $26 million per year on Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, $10 million to $20 million per year to support Houthi rebels in Yemen and tens of millions per year to support Hamas terrorists in Israel.

In Syria, for example, Iranian-backed fighters are paid between $500 to $1,000 a month to fight in support of Bashar Assad’s regime, according to the report.

Afghan fighters in Syria have disclosed that they “had recently returned from training in Iran and planned to fight in Syria,” the report notes. These militants “expected to receive salaries from Iran ranging from $500 to $1000 a month.”

The report comes as the Obama administration gained the final critical vote needed to suppress a resolution to disapprove a nuclear deal with Iran. Under the deal, the U.S. and other world powers will gradually lift economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic in exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

Similar reports from watchdog groups have revealed that releasing Iranian assets sanctions could allow Tehran to spend more money on its terrorist-link Quds force, as well as beef up its own military in general.

“The administration is celebrating support from a partisan minority of senators for a nuclear deal that threatens the security of the United States and our allies,” Mr. Kirk said, The Free Beacon reported. “This deeply flawed agreement will transfer over $100 billion to a regime that U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper calls the ‘foremost state sponsor of terrorism,’ and pave Iran’s path to nuclear weapons.

“Like North Korea before it, Iran will cheat on this flawed deal in order to get nuclear weapons. Congress must hold accountable the Iranian regime and ensure that our children never wake up to a nuclear-armed Iran in the Middle East.”

20150800-INFOGRAPHIC-Kirk-CRS Estimates of Iranian Financial Support to Terrorists Militants

The report is located here and everyone in Congress has access.

CSMonitor: One of the beneficiaries will be Iran’s primary tool for projecting power – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and especially its elite Qods Force, which handles operations abroad.

But are Iran’s wizened generals, who mostly cut their military teeth in the 1980s as teenage volunteers during the brutal Iran-Iraq War, already in danger of overreach?

For decades, American military planners aimed to be capable of simultaneously fighting – and winning – two full-blown wars in different regions. It was a challenge, even for a superpower. Today, on a much smaller scale and with a sliver of the military means, Iran is attempting the same thing in the Middle East: It is deeply engaged in Syria and Iraq; waving the flag in Yemen; and very influential in Lebanon.

Never before has the Revolutionary Guard, whose 120,000-strong force is much smaller than Iran’s regular 425,000-strong armed forces, been engaged so deeply and widely abroad – yet with increasingly mixed and entangling results.

There is no shortage of commitment: at least seven IRGC generals have died on the frontlines, primarily in Syria but also in Iraq, taken down by snipers’ bullets, bombs, and even an Israeli airstrike. The Guards are relatively top heavy with generals due to their origins as an ideological militia. Still, such high-ranking losses are highly uncommon in modern warfare.

In Syria, the IRGC and its Lebanese Shiite ally Hezbollah are bolstering the regime of President Bashar al-Assad against an array of rebels and jihadists. In Iraq, Iran has mobilized Shiite militias to take on the self-described Islamic State, but at a cost of stoking more sectarian strife. While in Yemen, Iran has played a much lesser role in aiding Houthi militiamen against Saudi-backed forces.

Each conflict has now devolved largely along sectarian lines that pit Shiite Iran against its regional Sunni rivals, Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf states allied with the US and Israel.

The IRGC “exceeded their reach long ago.… They are at the end of their tricks [in Syria], and Hezbollah lost a lot,” says Walter Posch, a specialist on Iranian military forces at the Austrian National Defense Academy in Vienna.

“It worked well when it was low cost, but now it is high cost.… There is no Saddam Hussein who insulted the Iranian nation as a whole” as a national motivating factor, as in the 1980s, says Mr. Posch. “This is a war of their own liking, for the purpose of power projection. But they’ve been too ignorant of the fear of the small Gulf countries; too ignorant about the fears of the Saudis.”

 

Ideological origins

The IRGC was formed after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who wanted a more trusted and ideologically pure force than the regular Army. The grim years of the Iran-Iraq war consolidated its role – and its anything-is-possible reputation.

Embracing the religious Shiite aspects of resistance in the image of Imam Hossein, the 7th-century Shiite saint venerated as “lord of the martyrs,” the IRGC has since become an economic and political powerhouse. It runs a multi-billion dollar business empire that handles everything from oil and infrastructure projects to weapons production. In politics, active-duty guardsman play no formal role, but its generals are close to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and veterans have held cabinet and other government posts.

“I don’t see signs of overreach; I think they’ve got leadership in depth,” says Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran now at the Chatham House think tank in London. “They are tested in difficult situations. They’ve been involved, whether in Lebanon, Iraq, or Afghanistan, for a very long period.”

“It comes back to, ‘Who wins wars?’ People who win wars and are the most effective are the ones with the greatest conviction, and the Iranians have got it,” says Amb. Dalton.

That certainly applies to Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who has often been photographed along frontlines in Iraq and elsewhere. He claimed this week that Iran’s efforts prompted the “collapse of American power in the region,” according to details of a high-level briefing published in Iran’s conservative media.

 

‘Gobbling’ or choking?

Some argue that Iran’s regional expansion is unprecedented. Addressing Congress in March, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran was “gobbling up” Mideast capitals. Yet the tide now isn’t all going Iran’s way.

In Syria, for example, Iran has been fighting to defend Mr. Assad’s regime for more than 4-½ years, spending an estimated $6 billion to $15 billion a year in a war that has claimed more than 240,000 lives. But pro-Assad forces have lost ground in recent months to rebels backed by the US, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, as well as to the self-described Islamic State.

President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to back the Syrian government “until the end of the road.” While Assad is running short of loyalist troops, the IRGC reportedly has tried to fill the gap by finding several thousand Afghans to fight, and die, in exchange for cash, Iranian residency or passports, and sometimes for commuted jail terms, according to Germany’s Spiegel and Agence France-Presse.

In May, a special event held in Tehran commemorated Afghan martyrs killed in Syria, and 65 corpses were returned in a single exchange, according to Iranian media reports. Many are buried in Iran. Officially, Iran denies enlisting Afghans to fight in Syria.

In Iraq, Soleimani was instrumental in reviving tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen to push back IS for more than a year – in concert with American airstrikes, and ironically with a similar mission as US military advisers now in Iraq. But those militias are accused of atrocities against Sunnis, and efforts to bolster the regular Iraqi military – decisive at first – have begun to stumble.

And in Yemen, Iran has been marginally involved on the side of Houthi rebels as they advanced across the country earlier this year. In July, the critical port city of Aden was recaptured by Saudi-backed forces and troops of the United Arab Emirates. Months of Saudi-led airstrikes are imperiling the population, in a campaign explicitly aimed at rolling back Iranian influence.

“There is support for Soleimani but also high expectations,” says Posch, of the IRGC’s Qods Force chief. “He has to deliver now. I don’t know how he deals with all these crises individually. He can’t go to all these battlefields in person.”

 

Russia vs. United States in Syria: Tensions Escalate

In 2013, the Greeks and the Russians signed an agreement on military cooperation.

“We signed an agreement that opens new frameworks and new boundaries for our further work in the sphere of military-technical cooperation,” Sergei Shoigu told journalists after talks with his Greek counterpart Dimitrios Avramopoulos in Athens.
The deal concerns armaments supplied previously as well as military hardware, maintenance and new hardware supplies, Shoigu said.
A Russian deputy defense minister, Anatoly Antonov, said after the talks that Shoigu had proposed that Avramopoulos consider working out an agreement to streamline the procedure for Russian navy vessels calling at Greek ports.
Antonov said the two defense ministers had also discussed the possibility of holding personnel training events and exchanging experience in the fight against terrorism and piracy, as well as other areas of cooperation.
This new agreement will make it easier for Russian ships to dock at Greek port during their deployment in the Mediterranean thus making Greece a reliable alternative to the Syrian port Tartus.
According to Greek blog SManalysis, Russia will help Greek Navy to support the Zubr class hovercraft. Greek Navy has procured 4 of these air-cushioned landing craft. Three of them joined the Greek Navy in 2001 and the last one in 2005. They have a displacement of 550 tons and can carry up to 130 tons military material: 3 main battle tanks or 10 armored personnel carriers or 230 troops.

More here. It must also be noted that the Russians are also using Basel International Airport in Switzerland and Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea in Greece for a staging Russian military hub.

U.S. launches secret drone campaign to hunt Islamic State leaders in Syria

CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’ | Part of an occasional series

(Not so secret if the Washington Post is reporting it)

In part from WaPo: The CIA and U.S. Special Operations forces have launched a secret campaign to hunt terrorism suspects in Syria as part of a targeted killing program that is run separately from the broader U.S. military offensive against the Islamic State, U.S. officials said.

The CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are flying drones over Syria in a collaboration responsible for several recent strikes against senior Islamic State operatives, the officials said. Among those killed was a British militant thought to be an architect of the terrorist group’s effort to use social media to incite attacks in the United States, the officials said.

The clandestine program represents a significant escalation of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Syria, enlisting the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) against a militant group that many officials believe has eclipsed al-Qaeda as a threat.

Although the CTC has been given an expanded role in identifying and locating senior Islamic State figures, U.S. officials said the strikes are being carried out exclusively by JSOC. The officials said the program is aimed at terrorism suspects deemed “high-value targets.” More here.

US Concern Over Russian Military Buildup In Syria

WASHINGTON — The United States expressed concern to Moscow on Saturday about what it called reports of an imminent and enhanced Russian military buildup in war-torn Syria.

Washington made its views known in a telephone call from Secretary of State John Kerry to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, the State Department said.

“The secretary made clear that if such reports were accurate, these actions could further escalate the conflict, lead to greater loss of innocent life, increase refugee flows and risk confrontation with the anti-ISIL coalition operating in Syria,” the State Department said.

In his call with Lavrov, Kerry discussed “US concerns about reports suggesting an imminent enhanced Russian buildup there,” the department said.

“The two agreed that discussions on the Syrian conflict would continue in New York later this month,” it said.

The New York Times reported that Russia has sent a military advance team to ally Syria and was taking other steps that Washington fears may signal plans to vastly expand its military support for President Bashar al-Assad.

The Times said the moves included the recent transport of prefabricated housing units for hundreds of people to a Syrian airfield and the delivery of a portable air traffic control station there.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was asked Friday whether Russia was taking part in military operations against the Islamic State group in Syria.

“We are looking at various options but so far what you are talking about is not on the agenda,” he said.

“To say we’re ready to do this today — so far it’s premature to talk about this. But we are already giving Syria quite serious help with equipment and training soldiers, with our weapons,” RIA Novosti state news agency quoted Putin as saying.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday’s telephone call was made at Kerry’s initiative.

It made no mention of US concerns about a possible Russian military buildup, but said the two men discussed “different aspects of the situation in Syria and its environs, as well as the objectives of the fight against IS and other terrorist groups.”

The foreign ministry said they spoke of “cooperation” between Moscow and Washington to “support UN efforts aimed at launching a political process in Syria.”

Lavrov and Kerry agreed to remain in close contact in pursuing a settlement of the Syrian conflict, which has claimed more than 240,000 lives since March 2011 and driven millions more from their homes.

Flurry of Diplomacy

In recent weeks, there has been a flurry of diplomatic consultations to try to find a way out of the crisis, including an unprecedented meeting in Doha on Aug. 3 between the top US, Russian and Saudi diplomats.

The Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers were later received separately in Moscow, as were representatives of various more moderate Syrian opposition groups.

Moscow, which has been a bulwark of military and diplomatic support to the Assad regime, is promoting an expanded coalition against IS that includes countries of the region as well as the regular Syrian army.

President Barack Obama for his part received Saudi King Salman on Friday for talks dominated by Syria. They advocate a political solution that would include Assad’s departure from power.

Exposing Russia’s Secret Army in Syria

by Weiss: Some wear uniforms, some don’t, but from highway checkpoints to jet fighters, Russians are being spotted all over the Assad dictatorship’s heartland.
Russian military officers are now in Damascus and meeting regularly with Iranian and Syrian counterparts, according to a source with close contacts in the Bashar al-Assad regime. “They’re out in restaurants and cafes with other high officials in the Syrian Army,” the source told The Daily Beast, “mainly concentrated in Yaafour and Sabboura, areas that are close to each other, and in west Mezze,” referring to a district in the capital where Assad’s praetorian Fourth Armored Division keeps an important airbase. “The Russians aren’t in uniform, but they’re constantly hanging out with officers from the Syrian Army’s central command.”  

Other Syrians claim to have seen Russians in uniform. 

One family that recently traveled from Aleppo to Damascus by taxi before emigrating by plane to Turkey says it saw a small contingent of Russian troops embedded with Syrians at a military checkpoint in the capital. “We were near the Shaghour district when we noticed two soldiers who were not Syrian,” a family representative said. “They were tall, blond and blue-eyed and wore different fatigues from the Syrians and carried weapons. I’m telling you, they were Russian.” 

The opposition-linked website All4Syria seems to corroborate such eyewitness accounts. Many residents of Damascus, it claimed, have “observed in the first three days of September a noticeable deployment of Iranian and Russian elements in the neighborhoods of Baramkeh, al-Bahsa, and Tanzim Kfarsouseh.” The Venezia Hotel in al-Bahsa “has been turned into a military barracks for the Iranians.”

Such news comes amid a flurry of reports that Russia has made plans for a direct military intervention in Syria’s four-year civil war and may actually have started one already. The New York Times reported Saturday that Russia has sent prefabricated housing units, capable of sheltering as many as 1,000 military personnel, and a portable air traffic control station to another Syrian airbase in Latakia. That coastal province, the Assad family’s ancestral home, has already seen Russian troops caught on video operating BTR-82 infantry fighting vehicles against anti-Assad rebels, atop rumors that Moscow may be deploying an “expeditionary force,” including Russian pilots who would fly combat missions.

They may already be doing so. A social media account affiliated with the al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra posted images of what appeared to be Russian Air Force jets and drones flying in the skies of Syria’s northwest Idlib province. They were, specifically, the Mig-29 Fulcrum, the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker, the Su-34 Fullback, and the Pchela-1T drone. These images were analyzed as credible by the specialist website The Aviationist, which also noted that “during the past days, Flightradar24.com has exposed several flights of a Russian Air Force… Il-76 airlifter (caught by means of its Mode-S transponder) flying to and from Damascus using radio call sign ‘Manny 6,’ most probably supporting the deployment of a Russian expeditionary force.

ISIS isn’t in Idlib; the terror army that calls itself the Islamic State was driven out of the province completely. As one U.S. intelligence official put it to The Daily Beast, “The question is, what are Russia’s underlying motivations? Are they really there to fight [ISIS], or just to prop up Assad?” 

The concern is that Russia could use military strikes against ISIS as a kind of cover or feint for attacking rebel forces as well, including non-Islamist groups. The U.S. sees these forces as a potential bulwark against ISIS. But they also have as one of their primary goals overthrowing Assad—an effort that Washington has been unwilling to support. 

The White House has fallen back on its customary posture of wait-and-see as proof mounts that the Russians are coming. Spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters this week: ”We are aware of reports that Russia may have deployed military personnel and aircraft to Syria, and we are monitoring those reports quite closely. Any military support to the Assad regime for any purpose, whether it’s in the form of military personnel, aircraft supplies, weapons, or funding, is both destabilizing and counterproductive.” Another unnamed U.S. official told Britain’s Daily Telegraph, ”Russia has asked for clearances for military flights to Syria, [but] we don’t know what their goals are.”

Actually, their goals aren’t terribly hard to discern, nor do they necessarily contradict implicit White House policy, whatever Josh Earnest says. 

Photographs circulated on social media showing what appeared to be Russian soldiers in Zabadani, a city 45 kilometers north of Damascus, which has changed hands several times during the civil war. For months rebels have been fending off a scorched-earth assault by the Syrian army, Hezbollah and Iranian forces, which the U.N. assesses to have led to “unprecedented levels of destruction.” So the injection of Russian legionnaires into a multinational cocktail of combatants duking it out in Zabadani would make perfect sense. The city is considered the sine qua non of Iran’s “strategic corridor” in Syria, which runs from the capital to Lebanon and up along the Mediterranean coastline. The formidable Islamist rebel brigade Ahrar al-Sham knows who’s in charge here—it has even negotiated an ultimately unsuccessful ceasefire directly with the Islamic Republic rather than with Assad.

“The Russians are clearly setting themselves on the ground in regime areas, planting the flag in ‘Alawistan,’ as it were,” says Tony Badran, a Syria expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, referring to the Alawites, the schismatic Shia sect to which the Assad clan and the more powerful Syrian regime elites belong. “This, ironically, reinforces the Obama administration’s position, which has drawn a clear line around the regime enclave: The opposition is not to enter Damascus and the coastal cities. So the Russian deployment actually fits well with the administration’s approach.”

Right on cue, then, came Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement Friday that Syria would soon hold new parliamentary elections and inaugurate a power-sharing government with what he deemed a “healthy” opposition. He did not specify what he considered the diseased opposition, although this would almost certainly include Free Syrian Army fighters the CIA and Pentagon has been recruiting as U.S. proxies.  

While Putin dismissed the existence of any Russian combat forces in Syria as “premature,” he did allow that he was “looking at various options” for militarily involving himself in the war.  Coming from someone who only admits to Russian invasions after the fact, such a signposting of motive should not be ignored.

Moscow’s close coordination with Tehran, both in Damascus and internationally, is also no coincidence. Iran is now busy shopping a new international “peace plan” for Syria, one that goes beyond the parameters of the previously inked Geneva II protocol.  

Intriguingly, just weeks after Iran agreed to a deal to control its nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief, Major General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of its own expeditionary force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force, flew to Moscow for talks with Russian officials, violating the international travel ban related to his terrorist activity. No doubt solidifying Russian backing for whatever he has planned for Syria was high up on Soleimani’s agenda.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time since the Syrian war broke out that there’s been chatter about Russian troops in Damascus.

In May 2013, sources close to the Kremlin suggested that Putin had dispatched the Zaslon special forces detachment to the Syrian capital. Formed in 1998, and conceived as a clandestine unit combining the purviews of America’s Delta Force and Secret Service, Zaslon consists of a mere 280 highly trained operatives. It answers to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and is tasked with protecting high-value Russian officials in uncertain conditions and sometimes even conducting assassinations. It was rumored to have killed Iraqi insurgents in 2006 after the latter had captured and executed Russian diplomats. 

As Mark Galeotti, a New York University-based specialist on Russia’s military and security forces, observed two years ago: “According to one Russian report, two Zaslon elements were also deployed to Baghdad in the dying days of the [Saddam] Hussein regime. Their mission was to seize or destroy documents which Moscow would have found embarrassing had they ended up in U.S. hands. Given the scale and depth of Russian support for Assad, it could similarly be that they are also in Syria to cover Moscow’s tracks or else ensure that sensitive military technology—including new surface-to-air systems—does not end up in foreign hands.”

Under the present circumstances, it is now likely that any Russian soldiers in Damascus are there to fortify and ring-fence another spent Baathist regime, if not to join in a war that is fought increasingly by “foreign hands.”