Category Archives: Syria

Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, Terrorism, United States

‘Significant airstrikes’ carried out by the US-led coalition on Daesh…

ISLAMIC STATE

One of the most sustained air operations carried out to date against the group Islamic State (IS) has been carried out by the US-led coalition.

The United States, using the Arabic acronym Daesh for the IS group, have said ‘significant airstrikes’ were carried out overnight, executed to deny Daesh the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq.

The joint-command statement issued yesterday detailed a total of 38 airstrikes on targets belonging to IS in Syria and in Iraq. Tactical units and vehicles had been hit and sixteen bridges were destroyed in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, as well as Hasaka and Kobani, according to the statement.

Raqqa has become the centre of the IS control of territory which extends across both Iraq and Syria.

This is one of the largest deliberate engagements that the US has conducted in Syria, and the US military believes it will have serious debilitating effects on Daesh’s ability to move from Raqqa.

There were twelve strikes on IS targets near eight cities in Iraq. A statement from Iraq’s Defence Ministry has said government forces repelled an IS attack yesterday morning on the town of Haditha and the nearby Haditha dam in Anbar province. It claimed 20 militants were killed in the attack.

Last month IS lost control of the border town of Tal Abyad to Kurdish fighters. The Turkish border town was a major conduit for the group to smuggle in supplies.

The Turkish newspaper Hürriyet has reported that the Turkish army had called a meeting for next week of the commanders of the 54,000 soldiers deployed along the Syrian border.

Turkey is believed to have increased its military defences on the volatile border in the last week as fighting in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has intensified. The build-up has fed speculation that Ankara is planning to intervene in Syria to push back IS and halt Kurdish forces, which have made gains against IS in the area.

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Foreign Affairs, Syria, United Nations, United States

Syria gas attacks are continuing…

SYRIA & CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Intro: Despite Syria agreeing to dismantle its chemical weapons programme, Bashar Assad is using chlorine against his people

IN 2013 Washington went back on its pledge to strike at the heart of Bashar al-Assad’s regime for having used sarin nerve gas against Syrians in Damascus that summer. Brokered by Russia, the Syrian regime agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons programme.

Theoretically, the deal has been a success: to date, 98% of the country’s banned substances have been eliminated and destroyed, and Syria has joined the treaty against their use. Yet, as is his convoluted way, Assad still appears to be making a mockery of the agreement.

Since 2014 there have been increasingly frequently reports of chlorine gas attacks against towns and villages held by the rebels, most recently in three separate incidents on May 7th. Chlorine is not a banned substance since it has industrial and commercial uses, but it is strictly prohibited when used as a weapon. Inhalation causes a burning sensation, and fluid can accumulate in the lungs resulting in suffocation.

Then, on May 8th, reports surfaced from the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPWC) that unexplained traces of sarin and VX nerve agent had been found at a research centre in Damascus. Suspicions that Syria had failed to declare all its facilities first arose in 2014 when the regime suddenly added four new sites to the list it handed over in 2013.

Few believe the regime’s claims that the rebels are responsible for the chemical attacks, including the one in the summer of 2013 that left hundreds dead. The physical evidence points the other way, too. Chlorine is usually delivered in barrel bombs dropped by helicopters, which only the regime possesses. All have been targeted at rebel-held areas. More recently, the attacks have been concentrated on Idleb, the north-western province where the regime is losing ground.

The international community is deeply troubled. Some members broke down at a recent UN Security Council session when they were shown graphic video images of the aftermath of one attack and heard testimony from doctors who were at the scene. On March 6th the Council passed a resolution expressing ‘extreme concern’ about the attacks and authorising the UN to use chapter VII (military action or sanctions to enforce its decisions) against anyone found responsible.

The UN is now setting up a commission to determine who is carrying out the attacks rather than just whether they actually happened, as has been the case in past investigations. The OPCW and Human Rights Watch are satisfied that chlorine was used in at least three of the several reported instances. Diplomats from America, Britain and France are convinced that the Syrian leader is still using chemicals as a weapon. Assad’s regime is the only government in the world to do so since 1988 when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in Halabja in northern Iraq.

However, there is unlikely to be much more than public censure. It is probable that Russia would veto any chapter VII action, and the appetite by Western countries’ for ousting Assad has greatly diminished since the emergence of Islamic State.

Throughout this long and protracted civil war the regime has carefully calibrated its actions to deliberately avoid triggering western intervention – the sarin attack in 2013 is reckoned to have been far bigger than the regime planned, and only a handful of people have died in the recent chlorine attacks. Using an alternative to conventional weapons also suggests a calculated choreography. Bashar al-Assad is getting away with saying one thing whilst clearly doing another.

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Climate Change, Syria

Study reveals that climate change may have triggered the civil war in Syria…

SYRIA, CIVIL WAR & CLIMATE CHANGE

Intro: Severe drought may have contributed to the uprising. Research conducted by scientists at Columbia University in New York say that the influx of people into cities that has caused rising poverty and unrest was a major contributory factor that led to the civil war which started in 2011.

Drought caused by climate change may have pushed Syria towards the devastating civil war currently ripping the country apart, according to researchers.

A new study has found that many parts of the country were hit by a record dry period between 2006 and 2010 which may have propelled the uprising against the Syrian regime in 2011.

The drought, which scientists say was likely made worse by climate change, destroyed much of the agriculture in the north of the country, driving farmers into cities.

The conflict has since escalated into a complex war involving extremist Islamic groups including ISIS and forces from other nations including the US.

An estimated 200,000 people have now been killed and an estimated nine million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of the war.

Dr Richard Seager, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, said: ‘We’re not saying the drought caused the war.

‘We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict.

‘A drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.’

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the 2006-2010 drought was the worst and longest on record compared to those in the 1950s, 1980s and 1990s.

Particularly hard hit was the Fertile Crescent that spans Syria, Turkey and Iraq.

Since 1900 the area has undergone warming of between 1 degree C and 1.2 degrees C and rainfall in the wet season has fallen by 10 per cent.

The researchers said the trend matched that predicted by models of climate change caused by human carbon dioxide emissions.

They said that the wind patterns bringing rain from the Mediterranean weakened while higher temperatures caused greater evaporation of moisture from the soils during the summer.

This caused agricultural production to plunge by a third in Syria.

Combined with a growing population –from four million in the 1950s to 22 million now – this led to increasing levels of poverty and pressure within the country’s urban areas.

The researchers said that Bashar al-Assad’s regime also encouraged water intensive crops like cotton for export while illegal drilling of irrigation wells rapidly depleted groundwater.

In the worst hit north east areas of the country, livestock herds were practically obliterated, cereal prices doubled and nutrition-related diseases among children increased dramatically. This led to 1.5 million people moving from the countryside to the cities.

Writing in the journal, the authors said: ‘Rapid demographic change encourages instability.

‘Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.’

It is the first study of its kind to look at how climate change has played a role in a current war.

Professor Solomon Hsaing, a public policy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said similar climatic changes had triggered the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the region 4,200 years ago following a drought lasting several years.

However, Marshall Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University, said: ‘There were many things going on in the region and world at that time, such as high global food prices and the beginning of the Arab Spring, that could have also increased the likelihood of civil conflict.’

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