Syria

Libya, Armed And Dangerous: Piles Of Weapons Fuel Illicit Exportation Of War from Mali to Syria

June 18, 2013

Source: IBT One of the last things the old Libyan regime did before its downfall in 2011 was to distribute stockpiles of arms all across the country. The late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi intended to disperse the weapons so they would not be easily targeted by opposition forces and their international allies. Mines and mortars [...]

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Qatar Red Crescent smuggling arms into Syria

June 18, 2013

Source: alalam A new report says the Qatari Red Crescent has secretly delivered weapons to insurgents in Syria. The report by Lebanon’s Al Akhbar daily says the intelligence agency of the Lebanese army have recently detained a Jordanian citizen with a fake Palestinian ID, who was caught delivering weapons under the cover of the Qatari humanitarian [...]

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ANALYSIS: The internationalization of the Syrian civil war

June 17, 2013

Source: Israel Hayom America sending light arms • Russia sending S-300 and MiGs • Iran sending 4,000 elite troops • Chechen Islamists fighting Assad have anti-aircraft missiles • Jordan, Egypt cut off diplomatic relations with Damascus • Israel, U.S. plan for WMD strike. World powers and regional actors are increasingly converging on Syria, a development [...]

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Onward, Through The Fog Of War

June 16, 2013

Source: Sri Lanka Guardian The world waits. Washington and other western capitals ponder war. Tehran and Moscow assume their positions, wary of their flanks and the rear. Syria suffers. Groups within and without Syria’s borders position themselves as representatives of the Syrian people, almost every one of them hoping for some kind of Western support [...]

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Saudi Arabia plans to supply the Syrian opposition with anti-aircraft missiles

June 16, 2013

Source: DailyStar Source: Der Spiegel Saudi Arabia plans to supply the Syrian opposition with anti-aircraft missiles to counter President Bashar al-Assad’s air force, German news weekly Der Spiegel reported Sunday. The article, citing a classified report received by the German foreign intelligence service and the German government last week, said Riyadh was looking at sending European-made Mistral-class MANPADS, or man-portable air-defence systems. [...]

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Israel and U.S. Coordinating How to Target Assad’s Arsenal

June 14, 2013

Source: Time [...] “Things are happening behind the scenes,” says one Israeli official. “Things are really happening.” Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced it was sending F-16s and Patriot missile batteries to Jordan, ostensibly for an exercise (“Eager Lion”), but which would remain in the Hashemite Kingdom afterward. “It’s a clear, purposeful, presence of a strike force [...]

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Germany’s BND intelligence agency restores security cooperation with Assad regime

June 14, 2013

Source: MEMO Diplomatic sources have revealed that the head of Germany’s BND intelligence agency went to Damascus last month for an unscheduled visit during which he met with Syrian officials led by Major General Ali Mamlouk, the head of Syrian military intelligence. Gerhard Schindler made the trip to Damascus just days after Israel’s bombing raid [...]

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U.S. Military Proposal to Arm Rebels Includes No-Fly Zone in Syria

June 13, 2013

Source: WSJ A U.S. military proposal for arming Syrian rebels also calls for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who would train there, according to U.S. officials. Asked by the White House to develop options for Syria, military planners have said that [...]

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Path to Persia:US to arm Syrian rebels

June 13, 2013

Editor’s Note: Give me a break! And now an overt operation to supply weapons to FSA, while covert operations have been operating behind the scenes for months to smuggle weapons to foreign fighters|terrorists. Related articles are a snippet of weapons operations funneled to Syria US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels [...]

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Putin announces permanent navy presence in Mediterranean to protect Russia’s security

June 6, 2013

Source: EJ/AP Russia announced on Thursday that it will keep a fleet of about dozen navy ships in the Mediterranean Sea, a move President Vladimir Putin said is needed to protect his country’s national security. Putin said the plan should not be seen as saber rattling, but it comes as Moscow is serving as a [...]

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In Golan Heights, Druze villagers are preparing for war

June 4, 2013

Editor’s Note: Hundreds of Israeli Druze said anxious to join the fight against rebels in Syria Source: MH MAJDAL SHAMS, Golan Heights – For the last month, shopkeeper Salah Abu Saleh has found himself having the same conversation again and again: When the war between Israel and Syria begins, what single foodstuff would he not tire [...]

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US Sending Military Planners To Jordan For Possible Chemical Weapons Crisis

June 4, 2013

Source: Fox2/CNN The United States is sending 200 military planners from the headquarters of the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss to Jordan to assist in long-term planning with Jordanian forces in case a chemical weapons crisis erupts, or if a wide scale humanitarian relief mission is ordered. The decision to deploy a Patriot missile [...]

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Report: Yemen Houthis fighting for Assad in Syria

May 31, 2013

Editor’s Note: Iran backing Yemen militants to increase regional influence: expert and Yemen Is Sending Thousands Of Young Men To Fight With Al-Qaeda In Syria Source: JP Yemen Shi’ite Houthi rebels are fighting alongside Syrian president Bashar Assad’s forces in Syria according to a a report on Thursday in the London based daily Asharq Al-Awsat. A Yemeni official [...]

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US Senator John McCain wants to send Yemeni Jihadists to Syria

May 31, 2013

Source: Yemen Post According to several Yemeni-based local newspapers, US Senator John McCain, who briefly visited Yemen earlier this week to offer his support to the coalition government and discuss political and security developments is rumored to have directly urged President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi to facilitate the transfer of Jihadists to Syria. As the [...]

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The Grand Syrian Chess Board: Behind the Game Played by Russia, Israel, the U.S. and Other Powers

May 31, 2013

Source: Time The umbrella group representing Syria‘s rebellion on the world stage announced on Thursday that they would not attend peace talks proposed to take place in Geneva during June, a flat rejection that might appear to sideline the role of diplomacy in the civil war. But diplomacy is running full bore in the Syrian conflict, [...]

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Middle East countries fighting proxy war in Syria-providing weapons on a large scale

May 30, 2013

Source: DW By sending help to Syria’s warring factions, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are struggling to gain influence in the Middle East. The conflict between Sunnis and Shiites has become a proxy war over strategic regional goals. At the moment, several conflicts are being fought simultaneously in Syria. The civil war began more than [...]

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Top Marine Sees a Future of Perpetual War

May 29, 2013

Source: National Defense Magazine President Obama last week said the United States is ready to move beyond the war on terror. The nation’s military, meanwhile, is preparing for a future of continuous combat. “I don’t see any indication that things are going to settle down or become peaceful,” said Gen. James F. Amos, commandant of [...]

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Sources: Jordan drill in preparation for Syria conflict

May 29, 2013

Source: YNET Western sources claim international forces will stay in Jordan after joint military exercise ‘to prepare for possible intervention in Syria’ A joint military exercise scheduled to take place in Jordan next week is aimed among other things at readying forces for a possible intervention in Syria, Western officials told Ynet on Tuesday. More than 15,000 [...]

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U.S. eying no-fly zone over Syria as West ratchets up pressure on Assad, report says

May 28, 2013

Source: Haaretz U.S. President Barack Obama instructed the Pentagon to draw up plans for a no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced by the U.S. and other countries such as France and Great Britain, two administration officials told The Daily Beast in a report published Tuesday. The Daily Beast also said that the U.S. [...]

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Qatar seeks to send Yemen’s military elite to fight alongside the Free Syrian Army

May 27, 2013

Source: Yemen Post Qatar which has been a staunch supporter of the Free Syrian Army against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria is now looking to enroll Yemen’s military elite to fight alongside other Arab-backed militias in a bid to offset Assad’s recent advances against the opposition. Yemen Republican Guards, Yemen’s best of the best, the [...]

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Jordan seeks to deploy patriot missiles on its Syria borders

May 26, 2013

Source: Al Arabiya Jordan, which shares borders with war-torn Syria, said on Sunday it is in talks with “friendly countries” to deploy Patriot missiles on its territory after a similar move by Turkey. “Jordan wishes to deploy Patriot missile batteries in order to boost its defense capabilities and help protect the country,” Information Minister Mohammad [...]

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The Shadow War Behind Syria’s Rebellion: Foreign Backers Jockey for Influence in Turkey

May 24, 2013

Source: Time While the diplomatic grouping known as the Friends of Syria met in the Jordanian capital Amman on Wednesday to discuss a U.S.-Russian plan for peace talks, a low-key yet perhaps equally important gathering was being quietly held in Istanbul between Saudi officials and half of the 30 members of the Free Syrian Army’s Higher Military [...]

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Sunni and Shiite Foreign Fighters Battle for Qusayr

May 23, 2013

Source: WSJ This town on Damascus’s southern fringe, with a shimmering golden-domed shrine at its center and a heavily patrolled perimeter of berms and concrete barriers, has become the first stop for many foreign fighters entering Syria to battle alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Shiite fighters, primarily from Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, are now flowing [...]

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Israel is fighting a regional war in Syria

May 23, 2013

Source: RT The changing internal situation in Syria is putting a new set of plans into motion, which involve Israeli aggression against Syria. Not only have the US and its allies been trying to militarily buttress the retreating anti-government militias, but now they aim to create a new phase in the conflict where states start [...]

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A bonanza under Mediterranean waters. Another source of conflict?

May 23, 2013

Source: Al Arabiya Jubilant statements by Israeli politicians followed by triumphant newspaper headlines welcomed the first batch of natural gas extracted from the Tamar gas field in the Mediterranean basin last month. The gas field is located in Israel’s exclusive economic zone, around 50 miles west of Haifa. It took four years to construct an [...]

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WADING THROUGH THE SYRIAN LABYRINTH

May 22, 2013

The Syrian state and its population are being indirectly attacked by US/EU/NATO/UN; and directly by Israel, HERE and also HERE, by the autocratic dictatorships of the GCC-Gulf Cooperation Council: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, UAE (mostly Sunni Muslims) in partnership with Turkey (secular), and by Al Qaeda plus a diversity of mercenary jihadists (by [...]

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Syria’s jihadists have edge, control oil

May 22, 2013

Source: UPI The seizure of Syrian oil fields by the al-Nusra Front could accelerate the breakup of Syria amid a reshaping of the Middle East’s geopolitical landscape. The seizure of Syrian oil fields by jihadist rebels of the al-Nusra Front could accelerate the breakup of Syria amid a conflict-driven reshaping of the Middle East’s geopolitical [...]

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Syrian Rebels in Trouble: German Intelligence Sees Assad Regaining Hold

May 22, 2013

Source: Der Spiegel Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), has fundamentally changed its view of the ongoing civil war in Syria. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that the BND now believes the Syrian military of autocrat Bashar Assad is more stable than it has been in a long time and is capable of undertaking successful operations [...]

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General says Israel will smash Syria’s arsenals if Assad falls

May 22, 2013

Source: Reuters Israel is poised to attack Syria to prevent advanced weapons reaching jihadi rebels or Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon if President Bashar al-Assad is toppled, Israel’s air force chief said on Wednesday. But Major-General Amir Eshel, addressing a security conference, said his warplanes could be repelled by Syria’s formidable, Russian-supplied anti-aircraft systems – an [...]

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