Russia's and Assad's War Crimes in Syria

Turkey seeks allies' support for ground operation as Syria war nears border

[Don't forget- Turkey is ISIL's main supplier in Syria- SIGNY]

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Turkey, Saudi Arabia and some European allies [Germany? - SIGNY] want ground troops deployed in Syria as a Russian-backed government advance nears NATO's southeastern border, Turkey's foreign minister said, but Washington has so far ruled out a major offensive.

Syrian government forces made fresh advances on Tuesday, as did Kurdish militia, both at the expense of rebels whose positions have been collapsing in recent weeks under the Russian-backed onslaught.

The offensive, supported by Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias as well as Russian air strikes, has brought the Syrian army to within 25 km (15 miles) of Turkey's frontier, while Kurdish fighters, regarded by Ankara as hostile insurgents, have extended their presence along the border.

The advances have increased the risk of a military confrontation between Russia and Turkey. Turkish artillery returned fire into Syria for a fourth straight day on Tuesday, targeting the Kurdish YPG militia which Ankara says is being backed by Moscow.

"Some countries like us, Saudi Arabia and some other Western European countries have said that a ground operation is necessary," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Reuters in an interview.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-idUSKCN0
VP0WO

Let's hope Obama isn't as spineless as he as been in the past. He should, in theory, cut ties with Turkey and tell Erdogan to go to hell. In practice, I doubt that will happen.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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MSF/ Doctors Without Borders, and the USA State Department (and other USA governmental functions)

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In MSF’s recent history, no decision to halt or redirect medical operations has been influenced by counterterrorism restrictions. Our withdrawal from Darfur in 2009 was triggered by an expulsion order from President Omar Hassan al-Bashir at a time when MSF was operating with a license from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a requirement for conducting humanitarian work in certain countries..[ but] ... While limited to date in their direct impact on beneficiaries and at the point of care, counterterrorism regimes have nonetheless provoked a “chilling effect” on humanitarian assistance. The bureaucratic obstacles generated by the U.S. counterterrorism framework have become a reality for all U.S. aid organizations, even more so if they are Muslim. Counterterrorist restrictions also impact bank transactions, insurance coverage, and international trade, and while not designed to constrain humanitarian action per se, they create a risk-averse business climate that slows the deployment of supplies and aid workers. Recently, two United States based pharmaceutical manufacturers refused to complete orders for urgently needed drugs for MSF’s programs in Sudan, Syria, and Libya, despite specific licenses from OFAC for MSF’s Sudan programs and general humanitarian licenses for Libya and Syria.

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https://phap.org/articles/condemned-to-resist

MSF needs cooperation from the USA Treasury in order to use banking services etc. Not that MSF would deliberately lie, but they depend on the largess of the west and cooperation from various western banking and security organizations.

The French President of MSF who accused Russia... was he there?
Did he personally witness (probably not) or did his subordinates observe aircraft?
If so, does he, or do they, know the profile of a Russian-made aircraft versus a Syrian one versus the USA's? (I only know of one distinguishing feature, and even that's not reliable. Otherwise, they all look the same to me!)

Evidence. That's what's missing.


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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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As if I care which muslims Russia kills. Good job Vladdy!

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Russia and the USA have agreed to DECONFLICT the skies over Syria. In other words, the USA provides advance notice to the Russians about their airflights and Russia agrees not to shoot them down. And presumably vice-versa.- SIGNY

Presumably... important word.

"Hey, 'Vlad, just wanted to let you know we're going to be flying over Aleppo today if that's ok with you. We super swear not to bomb anyone on your team. I'm looking at the calendar and it looks like you guys are "shirts" today, so dress appropriately. Hopefully we'll be able to take out some civilians or a hospital or both if we're lucky. I need a Roger on that."= GSTRING

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The fact that Russia and the USA have de-conflicted the skies is both a matter of signed agreement (written record of intention) and a matter of fact. When a Turkish jet downed a Russian jet over Syria, there was much discussion of the exact boundaries of the de-confliction. The USA insisted that the de-confliction only applied to USA (and USA coalition?) planes, not to unrelated USA allies like Turkey, which is a member of NATO.

Once that little misunderstanding was cleared up, Turkey has not had the temerity to violate Syrian skies.

There is some reason to think that Russian information-gathering about air operations is not as real-time or detailed as they might like. When the USA claimed that Russian jets struck a hospital in Aleppo last week, the Russians went back to their records and counter-claimed that it was American A-10 Thunderbolts that did the job ... but they did that a few days later. So either they don't have a perfect handle on the who-and-where, or they're just trying to be really careful with their statements.

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"The only entities that would seem to benefit would be Turkey, ISIL, al Qaida and their allies because it provides the ammunition (so to speak) for the imposition of a "no fly" zone, as Merkel has proposed."- SIGNY

OR it could help the still-very-much-alive civilians on the ground, the ones Russia hasn't bombed yet or just unlucky enough to be caught between angry men with guns. You still care about them or are they just another piece in your guessing game? - DSTRING

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That's ASSUMING that the majority of civilian deaths ... and especially hospital and school strikes .... are caused by airstrikes. For example, there was a huge hue and cry about Syria's use of "barrel bombs" and a drive to bomb Syria's airport runways and make it impossible for them to put planes into the sky. Once an analysis was done, it turned out that barrel bombs were responsible for a miniscule fraction of civilian deaths ... as I recall, it was less than 2% ... and so any move along those lines would have had a negligible effect on that figure. That, plus barrel bombs need to be dropped by helicopter, and helicopters don't need runways.

Of course, it's difficult to collect statistics in government-controlled areas, difficult is Ahrar ash Sham/ al Nusra areas, and impossible in ISIL-controlled areas. What this means is that deaths due to small-arms fire, mines, IEDs etc are definitely UNDER-reported in comparison to government-controlled area airstrike deaths. EVEN SO,

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According to SOHR, [That's that one guy in London- SIGNY] Russian airstrikes in Syria killed 3,578 people, of which: 965 were ISIS fighters, 1,233 militants from the Al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front and other rebel forces and 1,380 civilians. The air strikes occurred in the period between 30 September 2015 and 30 January 2016.

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Overall, we can combine that with stats showing that in this counting,m about 30,000 deaths were from shootings and mass killings, about 30,000 from artillery and rocket attacks, and about 20,000 from airstrikes. Remember, those person-to-person deaths are probably under-reported.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/14/world/middleeast/syria-w
ar-deaths.html

This would all seem to indicate that airstrike

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Yep, way to go Russia. You bombed 5 hospitals and 2 schools in the same day. If Russians are OK with this then they truly are pieces of shit. They deserve all the misery they have experienced throughout history, currently and yet to come. It's called an eye for an eye. You reap what you sow. What comes around goes around. Spit into the wind and you get a face full of spit. What you do onto others they will do onto you. What you give is what you get.

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the Ukrainians, and significant minority of which didn't want the results of the coup. [Yes, KPO, it WAS a coup.

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Ah, this fairy tale coup that you're convinced took place but can't provide any evidence for C'mon Sig, you yourself collected definitions for what constitutes a 'coup' - so where's the evidence for all of this happening in Kiev on Feb 21st 2014?

"a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics; especially: the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group"

"the sudden and illegal seizure of a state, usually instigated by a small group"

"A quick and decisive extra-legal seizure of governmental power by a relatively small but highly organized group of political or military leaders, typically by means of the unexpected arrest or assassination of the incumbent chief executive and his principal supporters within the government."

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Then the FSA can be bombed with their ISIL/ ahrar ash Sham/ al nusra / al Qaida allies.

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The FSA allied with ISIS?? Evidence??

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First of all, KPO, the definitions that you quoted for a coup describe what happened in Ukraine. Where is the mismatch?

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The FSA allied with ISIS?? Evidence??

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Oh my god, KPO, you are clueless! Everybody's been reporting on that for at least a year now. The Israelis, the Brits, Americans, Lebanese, Syrians ... why don't you get your head out of your ass once in a while and stop reading the BBC?

First of all there are a lot of smaller groups which call themselves the FSA, about half of them nominally report to the head of the "FSA" but the other half ... So some groups have allied with ISIL, others with al Nusra or Ahrar ash Sham or other extremist groups, SOME were fighting against both the Syrian government and the extremists until they got completely overwhelmed. So, yes, parts of the FSA have allied with ISIL. There are just too many reports of that happening to link all of them, so here is a sampling from various sources (and none of them Russian):


U.S. Bombings Driving anti-Assad Rebels Into Alliance With ISIS, Report Says

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Rebels fighting President Bashar Assad's regime in Syria are being driven into alliances with the Islamic State group, The Guardian reported on Sunday, based on a series of interviews.

While fighters from the Free Syrian Army are joining the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, civilian support in the terror group has also swelled.

"All the locals here wonder why the U.S. coalition never came to rescue them from Assad’s machine guns, but run to fight ISIS when it took a few pieces of land," an FSA commander named Abu Zeid was quoted as saying.

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read more: http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.628208



'Vetted Moderate' Free Syrian Army Commander Admits Alliance with ISIS, Confirms PJ Media Reporting

On Monday, the Daily Star in Lebanon quoted a FSA brigade commander saying that his forces were working with the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's official Syrian affiliate -- both U.S.-designated terrorist organizations -- near the Syrian/Lebanon border.

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“We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in ... Qalamoun,” said Bassel Idriss, the commander of an FSA-aligned rebel brigade.

“We have reached a point where we have to collaborate with anyone against unfairness and injustice,” confirmed Abu Khaled, another FSA commander who lives in Arsal.

“Let’s face it: The Nusra Front is the biggest power present right now in Qalamoun and we as FSA would collaborate on any mission they launch as long as it coincides with our values,” he added.

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https://pjmedia.com/blog/vetted-moderate-free-syrian-army-commander-ad
mits-alliance-with-isis-confirms-pj-media-reporting/

US-Backed Moderate Group In Syria Signs Truce With ISIS: Reports

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Moderate and Islamist rebel groups in a Damascus suburb in Syria signed a “non-aggression” agreement with the Islamic State (ISIS), a Syrian monitoring group said. Some of the brigades are part of the U.S.-backed Syrian Revolutionary Front but have now agreed to a truce in Hajar al-Assad with ISIS in order to take down Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to the Agence-France Press. The shifting alliances highlight the challenge faced by the Obama administration in its fight against ISIS in Syria: Even moderates supported by the U.S. can't be relied on to help battle the terrorist group.

"The two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy to be the Nussayri regime," the U.K-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. (Nussayri is the pejorative term used for Assad’s Alawite regime.)

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http://www.ibtimes.com/us-backed-moderate-group-syria-signs-truce-isis
-reports-1687662



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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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'Russian operation in Syria is our salvation' – top Syrian Catholic bishop to RT

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The majority of Syrian people support Moscow's anti-terror campaign, the top Catholic bishop in Syria said in an interview with RT, adding that it's not only military assistance, but the promotion of peace process by Russia that they pin their hopes on.

"We see Russia's military operation as a real effort to fight terrorism. What is especially important is that this military campaign goes in parallel with promotion of peace process," Most Reverend Georges Abou Khazen, Apostolic Vicar of Aleppo for the Latins who was appointed by Pope Francis in 2013, told RT in a telephone interview. "We really hope that the peace process will soon prevail over fighting all across Syria," the bishop added.

"The majority of Syrian people" of all backgrounds and faith "regard Russian military campaign as salvation, a way out of the state we've been enduring for five years," the Catholic bishop said, adding that "Syrians are very positive about it."

"Russia's actions are not limited to the military operation. Russia makes a very positive impact by stimulating the negotiations process, and promotes dialogue between various Syrian groups," Bisoph Abou Khazen said.

Syrian minorities have been especially suffering from the conflict, the bishop told RT. Noting that there are over 20 religious and ethnic groups in the Syrian society, the Aleppo vicar said that before the conflict they've all lived in harmony. "Our pre-war society was like a beautiful multicolored mosaic. But unfortunately, it has been destroyed," he said.

Describing the harsh conditions that his congregation and other Syrians have been living in, the vicar said that there is no electricity in Aleppo and water supplies have been disrupted. "The lack of water is what has really made our lives harder," he said, adding that people have been living without water supplies for over a month now.

Many families have fled the violence and the conditions caused by constant fighting, Bishop Abou Khazen told RT, but added: "In light of recent military advances in the Aleppo region, we hope that tension will ease and situation in the city will improve."

Last week, leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches, Vatican's Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia have held a historic meeting in Havana, Cuba. After the first ever face-to-face talks, a joint declaration has been signed, in which a special attention is given to the situation in the Middle East.

Saying that challenges of the situation in Syria, Iraq and other countries in the region with "the massive exodus of Christians from the land in which our faith was first disseminated," require "a shared response," the religious leaders called upon the international community "to act urgently."

"We wish to express our compassion for the suffering experienced by the faithful of other religious traditions who have also become victims of civil war, chaos and terrorist violence," the joint declaration said, with Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill urging global leaders "to seek an end" to the violence in Syria and Iraq

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https://www.rt.com/news/332922-aleppo-bishop-russia-support/

ETA ...


This is another thing I'm sure you won't believe, because it just doesn't fit within your ideology, because you're good and Russia is bad and therefore how can anyone be for Russia? Just like you thought the people who were celebrating their liberation from extremists were ... oh, I dunno ... mistaken, or cowards, or were somehow unaware of the cost in terms of lives that their liberation meant, I'm sure you'll find some reason to discredit this statement by the Bishop of Syria, just as you've found reasons to discredit the statement by my Syrian Xtian acquaintance from four years ago.

As an aside, I lis

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