Archivo de la etiqueta: Jordán

Assad is winning war in Syria

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SYRIA-CRISIS/ T

Assad is winning war in Syria

Mahir Zeynalov, SundaysZaman, May 11, 2013

Twenty-six months into the bloody uprising and there is no clear victor in the war in Syria that has left tens of thousands of people dead. To the delight of Assad and his cronies, the Syrian army has made significant progress through military gains in the past month.

Assad started to smile when his brutal army made some gains in Idlib. Following weeks of intense offensives in Aleppo, Idlib and Damascus suburbs, government forces outflanked the opposition forces and broke through the opposition line that ringed the Wadi al-Deif and Hamidiya military bases in Idlib province on April 14. This enabled the Syrian army to bolster its groups fighting in northern Syria. The successful assault in Idlib also opened up a strategic highway to Aleppo — a business hub deadlocked over battles between rival forces.

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Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra

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jabhat-3-635x357 Jabhat al-Nusra fighters in training. Photo credit: wikicommons

Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra

The well-resourced organisation, which is linked to al-Qaida, is luring many anti-Assad fighters away, say brigade commanders

 and , The Guardian, Wednesday 8 May 2013

Syria‘s main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organisation with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad‘s regime.

Evidence of the growing strength of al-Nusra, gathered from Guardian interviews with FSA commanders across Syria, underlines the dilemma for the US, Britain and other governments as they ponder the question of arming anti-Assad rebels.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said that if negotiations went ahead between the Syrian government and the opposition – as the US and Russia proposed on Tuesday – “then hopefully [arming the Syrian rebels] would not be necessary”.

The agreement between Washington and Moscow creates a problem for the UK and France, which have proposed lifting or amending the EU arms embargo on Syria to help anti-Assad forces. The Foreign Office welcomed the agreement as a “potential step forward” but insisted: “Assad and his close associates have lost all legitimacy. They have no place in the future of Syria.” Opposition leaders were sceptical about prospects for talks if Assad remained in power.

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Ospreys to Israel in Major Arms Deal

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Ospreys to Israel in Major Arms Deal

by RICHARD SISK, DT – Defensetech,  April 19, 2013

Israel will receive the MV-22 Osprey in the first foreign sale of the tilt-rotor aircraft as part of major arms deals with Mideast allies to guard against the threat from Iran, senior Defense Department officials said Friday.

The Ospreys were the “most significant” assets in the total arms package and were “for the first time being made available for Israel to purchase,” a senior DOD official said in a background briefing on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s upcoming Mideast trip.

Israel has not yet decided on how many of the troop-carry Ospreys, made by Bell Boeing of Fort Worth, Texas, will be purchased, DOD officials said. Bell and the Marine Corps have been negotiating with the United Arab Emirates for more than a year on Osprey sales, and the discussions were continuing, the officials said.

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West embargoes arms to Syrian rebels over their resale to al Qaeda

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map-syria-rebels-arms-pipeline An Arms Pipeline to the Syrian Rebels
More than 160 military cargo flights for Syria’s rebels, mostly from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have landed in Turkey and Jordan since January 2012.
By Sergio Peçanha – The New York Times

West embargoes arms to Syrian rebels over their resale to al Qaeda

DEBKAfile Special Report, March 30, 2013, 2:45 PM (GMT+02:00)

The Western arms pipeline to the Syrian rebels fighting Bashar Assad is starting to run dry since the discovery that some of the weapons are being resold and used by al Qaeda in its conquest of southern Syrian and takeover of positions on the Jordanian and Israel borders. French President Francois Hollande for this reason reversed his government’s policy. “We will not do it [send the Syrian rebel arms] as long as we cannot be certain that there is complete control of the situation by the opposition,” he said Friday, March 29.

That day too, Ankara announced that Turkish authorities had impounded 5,000 shotguns, rifles, starting pistols, gunstocks and 10,000 cartridges in the village of Akcakale before they were sent across into Syria.

Debkafile’s military sources: These steps are effectively putting in place a Western embargo on arms supplies to the Syrian rebels and not only the Assad regime. Saudi Arabia and Qatar remain their only sources of weapons.

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Circassia: Struggling To Return Home

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Circxasianos_Day_National Circassians venerate Day of Commemoration, june 2011. Below is an article published by OnIslam

Circassia: Struggling To Return Home

The conflict in Syria has shown to have a large impact on Circassians and their renewed claims to return to their homeland

The increasing flow of Syrian refugees once again sharpened the Russia so-called “Circassian problem.” This issue comes up from time to time in the Russian public space and makes the Kremlin nervous.

In the 19th century, and after the end of a long and bloody war that resulted in the Russian occupation of Caucasus, the majority of Circassians committed hijra (migration) to the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire.

For this reason, today, 90 percent of Circassians live outside Russia, in countries such as Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Kosovo, and even Israel. About 700,000 Circassians live in Russia, with an estimate of several million others living overseas.

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