According the attached report in the 3 October issue of the New York Times, defections from Assad's army to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have slowed to a trickle. No major units have defected. The FSA has resulted to trickery and coercion to gain recruits, including drugging and kidnapping.
Moreover, rebel tactics, like suicide bombing and murdering captured soldiers, are beginning to alienate the people.
Also, there is no evidence that rebel forces have materially weakened Assad's army. The Syrian army has changed tactics to rely more on artillery and bombing to strike from a distance and thus preserve its own forces.
All good info, but then the report concludes with at curious statement that the Syrian civil war as transformed from a struggle against a dictator into sectarian war that is being stoked by foreign meddling. This is a very superficial and, I believe, misleading conclusion. It smacks of apologia. The Syrian civil war has always been far more complex than that portrayed by the mainstream media like the NYT. Secular, Jihadi, and foreign influence have been part of this war from the git go. Almost all of the rebel forces are Sunnis, for example. The other ethnic groups have not joined the revolt. Readers interested in a more balanced and nuanced view of this incredibly complex civil war should read the report Syrian Jihadism attached here in pdf format.
Afghanistan-NATO: The withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan could come sooner than expected, according to NATO Secretary General Rasmussen. He conceded that the recent Taliban strategy of ‘green on blue' killings had been successful in sapping NATO morale.
In an interview with The Guardian Rasmussen acknowledged he felt pressure for a faster withdrawal from Afghanistan and said all options were being studied and should be clear within three months.
Rasmussen also said NATO's forces in Afghanistan have recommenced joint operations with Afghan forces. He said, “Almost all partnered activities have now been resumed and that reflects an assessment made by our commanders as regards the overall security situation.”
Special Comment: Two developments indicate the Coalition command does not know how to deal with the surge in green-on-blue murders. The first is the Afghan government's issuance of a cultural guide to Afghan forces advising them to not over-react to the cultural insensitivity of the Western soldiers.
The financial and banking industries are on high alert tonight as a massive cyberattack continues, with potentially millions of customers of Bank of America, PNC and Wells Fargo finding themselves blocked from banking online.
“There is an elevated level of threat,” said Doug Johnson, a vice president and senior adviser of the American Bankers Association. “The threat level is now high.”
“This is twice as large as any flood we have ever seen,” said Dick Clarke, an ABC News consultant and former cybersecurity czar.
Sources told ABC News that the so-called denial of service attacks had been caused by hackers from the Middle East who had secretly transmitted signals commandeering thousands of computers worldwide.
A group of purported hackers in the Middle East has claimed credit for problems at the websites of both banks, citing the online video mocking the founder of Islam. One security source called that statement “a cover” for the Iranian government’s operations.
The attack is described by one source, a former U.S. official familiar with the attacks, as being “significant and ongoing” and looking to cause “functional and significant damage.” Also, one source suggested the attacks were in response to U.S. sanctions on Iranian banks.
Senior U.S. officials acknowledge that Iranian attacks have been the subject of intense interest by U.S. intelligence for several weeks. Last week, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Intelligence Directorate, known as J-2, confirmed continuing Iranian cyber attacks against U.S. financial institutions in a report described as “highly classified.”
Only a few weeks ago, most western observers had written off Mohamed Morsi, the new President of Egypt and a moderate member of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a stooge who would dance to the tune of the military rulers of the Egyptian deep state. That view is rapidly changing. Morsi quickly consolidated power by forcing “deep-state” generals to retire (with dignity) and replacing them military leaders of a more reformist nature and less likely to lapdogs of the US and Israel. Thus Morsi seems to have out maneuvered the deep state apparat in a similar but even quicker way than Prime Minister Recep Erdogan did in Turkey. Also, like Erdogan in Turkey, he is flexing his nation’s regional diplomatic muscle in independent and sometimes surprising ways. Big things may be happening in Egypt and the Middle East, especially in the area of foreign policy, as only a few writers have noted (see for example, Esam Al-Almin, Patrick Seale, editorialin Al-Arahm). Attached is another analysis in this vein: Immanuel Wallerstein, describes why he thinks Morsi might be on the cutting edge of profound changes shaping the Middle East. If Wallerstein is correct in his sense that the focus of regional geopolitics is about to shift back to the Palestinian Question, the US is will be caught flatfooted again and may be again on the wrong side of history, while Israel’s isolation is likely to increase.
If we analyze the geopolitics of the Middle East, what should be the principal focus? There is little agreement on an answer, and yet it is the key question.
The Israeli government has been sedulously and constantly trying to make the focus be Iran. This has been considered by most observers as an effort to divert attention from Israel's unwillingness to pursue serious negotiations with the Palestinians.
In any case, this Israeli effort has failed, spectacularly. Netanyahu has been unable to get the U.S. government to commit to supporting an Israeli raid on Iran. And Iran's ability to gather most of the non-Western world — including Pakistan, India, China, Palestine, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon — to the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran underlines the political impossibility of the Israeli wish to concentrate attention on Iran.
For the past year, the center of attention has become Syria, not Iran, even if there is a link between the two. It has been primarily Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have struggled, with considerable success, to make Syria the focus of attention. Some observers feel this has been an effort to divert attention from Saudi Arabia's internal problems and anti-Shi'a oppression in the Gulf states, especially Bahrain.
This Syria-focus however is about to come to an end, for two reasons.
This classic case of blowback ought to give pause to those advocating intervention/regime change in the Syrian Civil War or in Iran — but if history tells us anything it won't change any minds in Versailles on the Potomac.
News from Timbuktu is rare, but these days there is too much of it.
Religious fanatics have been destroying exquisite ancient tombs that are cultural icons of universal value. Women who used to walk freely now fear to leave their homes without veils. Schools, clinics, and banks have been looted and burned.
Militants who embrace the rigid Salafi brand of Islam are on a rampage in Timbuktu and other parts of Mali, an ancient, landlocked North African nation that was once the seat of a trading empire. They are allied with Al Qaeda.
Already they control a thinly populated region larger than Texas. It is not difficult to imagine this region becoming an incubator of terrorism and transnational crime — or to imagine that the United States will react by making Mali the newest front in its ever-expanding drone war.
This catastrophe did not “just happen.” It is the direct result of an episode that may at first seem unrelated: the US-led intervention in Libya last year. Rarely in recent times has there been a more vivid example of how such interventions can produce devastating unexpected results.
June 18, 2012 – Do you know how your tax dollars are spent?
US radio host Dennis Bernstein and investigative reporter Dave Lindorff illustrate just how much US tax money goes towards the country's war chest.
“People have to realise that 53 cents of every dollar that they are paying into taxes is going to the military to an astonishing figure there is an enormous, enormous amount of money being blown on war an killing and destruction.”
Attached is a really first rate assessment of the real benefits and costs of the American infatuation with drone warfare. The writer, Patrick Cockburn, is one of the very best reporters now covering the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.
World View: The use of unmanned aircraft to assassinate its enemies is guaranteed to backfire on Washington
Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, Sunday, 10 June 2012
As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defense Department in selling the drone as a wonder weapon despite all the evidence to the contrary.
The attraction of the drone for President Obama and his administration five months before the presidential election is self-evident.
