MESOPOTAMIA KURDISTAN DAILY INDEPENDENT NEWSSERVICE
Mezopotamian Development Society (Registered) GERMANY
THE MOST REQUESTED DAILY & ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWSSERVICE ON KURDISTAN FOR THE HIGHLY INVOLVED PEOPLE – email : mesop@online.de – Watch our website : www.mesop.de
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MESOP TODAYS QUOTATION : ONLY THE WESTERN LEFTIES ADORE PUTIN & MOSCOW / AS BEFORE IN STALINIST ERA
Russians’ Trust in Govt Sinks to 5-year Low
- Russia. – 15 Oct 2016 – http://news.s3.webdigital.hu/latest/russians-trust-in-govt-sinks-to-5year-low
MESOP TODAYS RELEVANT TWEETS & SHORT CUTS
avatar KRG – @KurdistanRegion
RT @masoud_barzani: The time has come to begin the liberation of Mosul
http://www.presidency.krd/english/articledisplay.aspx?id=q+oIpBh7BG4=
avatar Phillip Smyth – @PhillipSmyth
Very interesting. — “Did a Russian Ship Cut Syria’s Internet Cables?” via @thedailybeast – Networks in Syria have a history of going down in sync with regime offenses.
avatar Liz Sly – @LizSly
More futile diplomacy on Syria in Lausanne this weekend. “No hope of a breakthrough”. By @CMorelloWP – https://www.washingtonpost.com/instart-auth-talkback/world/kerry-in-switzerland-for-talks-about-syria/2016/10/15/112a5c2c-909b-11e6-bc00-1a9756d4111b_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_kerry-0530am%3Ahomepage%
MESOP SITUATION REPORT SYRIA BY CHARLES LISTER
Charles Lister @Charles_Lister
Heavy fighting ongoing between #Turkey-backed FSA & #ISIS in Sawran (6km from #Dabiq). FSA’s Hamza Division is using US-provided Humvees.
Charles Lister @Charles_Lister – After more consultations, White House has decided to give #Syria talks another go [Try again & again, hoping result will change = insanity]
Charles Lister @Charles_Lister – #pts: Multiple opposition grps have sent forces to #Idlib to bolster Suqor al-Sham’s defenses, in anticipation of a Jund al-Aqsa/JFS attack.
Charles Lister @Charles_Lister – #pt: Ahrar al-Sham, Suqor al-Sham, Fastaqm Kama Umirt & Jaish al-Mujahideen have formed an alliance to combat Jund al-Aqsa, if necessary.
Charles Lister @Charles_Lister JFS militants attacked a Suqor al-Sham base in Ariha, #Idlib – likely in response to an earlier Suqor al-Sham raid on Jund al-Aqsa fighters.
Charles Lister @Charles_Lister – Acc. to @TheStudyofWar, #Russia continues to fight terrorism by almost entirely avoiding #ISIS territory in its #Syria airstrikes.
MESOP TODAYS COMMENTARY FROM AL HAYAT / Clausewitz in Syria By Yezid Sayigh
Op-Ed – October 14, 2016 – Al-Hayat – Summary: For the Assad regime, the strategic aim of continued violence is to secure the economic and financial assets it will need in order to survive the transition from war to peace.
19th century Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz is famously quoted as saying that war is “the continuation of politics with other means.” This is certainly true of the dramatic escalation of violence in Aleppo and other parts of Syria since the breakdown of the partial truce on September 19. At the most immediate level, Russia seeks to help the regime of President Bashar al-Assad make irreversible military gains and place it in an unassailable political position ahead of any attempt by the incoming U.S. administration to resume diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in Syria. Read all http://www.mesop.de/?p=79146
MESOP INTEL : Necessary crooks & thugs: U.S. counterterrorism cooperation with the developing world
Ian Merritt Friday, October 14, 2016 – Research Assistant – Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution
The United States cooperates on a range of counterterrorism activities with many unsavory or incompetent partners, particularly in the developing world, as Daniel Byman (senior fellow in Brooking’s Center for Middle East Policy) argues in a new article. There have been increasingly public debates over U.S. support for many of these authoritarian governments—in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike are questioning traditional security relationships with longstanding U.S. partners like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. This is an understandable reaction to the difficulties and limitations of counterterrorism cooperation in the developing world. Read all http://www.mesop.de/?p=79124
SOUTH KURDISTAN (IRAQ)
MESOP “One to watch”: The Road to Fallujah
15 Oct 2016 – MESOP / JOEL WING – As Iraqi forces and their allies – majority Shia militias and Kurdish fighters – heard towards Mosul, there is growing concern about the security screening that has become routine in the country as areas are liberated from so-called Islamic State. There have been allegations of torture and summary executions by militias dealing with suspected collaborators, and it’s generally a rough and tumble affair with little oversight. This five minute clip from a longer VICE News film is not new, but it has just been named as a finalist for the Rory Peck Awards and is as relevant as ever. It peeks inside a village in Anbar Province just after IS has been ousted, and watches as Iraqi special forces ask villagers to vouch for (or snitch on) their neighbours. Suspects are blindfolded, put in the back of a truck, and sent away. There are thought to be more than a million people in Mosul, and before the city’s fighting age men can head to camps or elsewhere, they will be vetted. There’s little reason to believe the screening process this time around will be orderly or safe, but some humanitarians are doing their best to seek out improvements in the system. www.mesop.de
!KNOW BETTER WITH MESOP! – ISIS’ Retreat to Mosul Reveals Extensive Tunnel System
By Hollie McKay – Fox News – 2016-10-15 – ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF MOSUL, Iraq — As the noose tightens around the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, there is a flurry of activity in the city’s surrounding villages, where the black-clad jihadist army’s retreat has revealed destruction, booby traps and underground warrens where terrorists cowered under coalition airstrikes. FoxNews.com recently toured the various frontline villages of Mosul, where around 30 families of the minority Shabak and Kakayi people have returned four months after their homes were liberated from ISIS. Like other villages on the Nineveh Plains just miles from the city’s center, the longtime inhabitants are trickling back in to rebuild their homelands — and lives. Even though that means their families — including their young children — are living on the frontlines amid one of the most highly-anticipated battles to recapture a city from jihadist hands. Read all http://www.mesop.de/?p=79136
MESOP INDEPTH : TONY BLAIR’S FORECAST – What Comes After the Defeat of ISIS in Mosul?
By Mardean Isaac – Tony Blair Foundation – 2016-10-15 – In the run up to the operation to recapture Mosul from ISIS, the indigenous communities of the Nineveh Plain are the victims of a competition over who controls the region.
The campaign to liberate Mosul from ISIS is frequently depicted by both political leaders and media outlets in primarily negative terms: as an endeavour to expunge the group as an end in and of itself. But along with the campaign to dislodge the group from its last remaining strongholds in Nineveh, the status of several of Iraq’s territories, and the very existence of communities and peoples within them, are at stake. Read all http://www.mesop.de/?p=79140
MESOP INSIDER: MOSUL – LIBERATION & EXODUS ? – Battle for Mosul Must Navigate Ethnic Rivalries
By Hugh Sykes – BBC – 2016-10-15 – (BBC) — Plans for the recapture of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, from the so-called Islamic State are fiendishly complicated.
Ethnic rivalries, as well as sectarian and religious sensitivities, will have to be respected if the offensive is not to go horribly wrong.The Iraqi army which scattered and fled as IS fighters drove and rode into Mosul in 2014 was mocked as I.R.A.Q. or I Ran Away Quickly.But the soldiers may have been running not only from IS.The mostly Sunni Arabs of Mosul resented the domination of the central Baghdad government by Shia Muslims.Junior ranks in the Iraqi army were afraid that they would be attacked by Sunni Arabs in Mosul as well as IS, taking revenge for the transformation of Iraq into what they perceived to be a Shia state. Read all http://www.mesop.de/?p=79142
MESOP “PUTIN’S INTEL WATCHES ERDOGAN – What’s Behind Turkish Deployment of Forces to Northern Iraq
Sputnik News – 2016-10-14 – Turkish service personnel are said to have been invited to the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq by local authorities to train Peshmerga and Turkmen fighters in counterterrorism operations ahead of an operation to free the Daesh-held city of Mosul, but Ankara could have an ulterior motive, Aydın Selcen, Turkey’s former envoy to Erbil, told Sputnik.Aydın Selcen, who served as Turkey’s consul general in the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan since 2010 until 2013, specifically mentioned Atheel al-Nujaifi, the former governor of the Nineveh province, and the leadership of Iraqi Kurdistan as those who asked Ankara for assistance. Read all http://www.mesop.de/?p=79138
WEST KURDISTAN (SYRIA))
MESOP ANALYSIS : Syria’s Not So Civil War Explained – Neither in 2011 Nor a Sectarian War – Qatar-Turkey Gas Pipeline Design – 14 Oct 2016 01:35 PM PDT – By Dr. Koohzad: Kurdistan Tribune
Many mainstream media reports, and even scholarly research works, mistakenly call the War on Syria a “Civil War.” They also believe that the war began in 2011, and is a sectarian conflict mainly between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam. None of these three claims is true. The following arguments and documents should shed further light on the three subjects. It will be argued that the Syrian conflict is not a civil war, it did not begin in 2011, and it is not sectarian. The Syrian conflict, the world’s bloodiest conflict, does not fit into any classical-conventional definition of warfare. The war actually began in 2009 and the main reason was the Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline design. Read all + watch MAP – http://www.mesop.de/?p=79128
EAST KURDISTAN (IRAN)
MESOP Features – Revolutionary Guard’s Financial Corruption Playing to Iranian Rift / By Adel al-Salmi – 15 Oct 2016 – Asharq al Awsat
The tale of exposed corruption carried on striking Iran’s public, as major authority figures are turning out to be beyond compromised. Early September, despite the story on oversized paychecks cashed by corrupt politicians is still headlining news in the cleric-led country, another earth-shattering exposé shows the rift widening within Iran’s ruling system. Reported by Iran-based media outlets such as kayhan, President Rouhani’s government has refused to continue financing the Revolutionary Guard special division “the last of prophets”—the Revolutionary Guard are a military force answering solely to orders of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Read full text : http://www.mesop.de/?p=79148
MESOP SPECIAL : Russian influence evident in Palestinian militia in Syria
By AMIR TOUMAJ – Defense of the Democracies – amir@defenddemocracy.org | 15 Oct 2016
Photo 1. Russian officer, middle, with Quds Brigade chief Mohammad al Saeed, right, and operations commander Mohammad Rafi, posted in October 2016.
Senior commanders in the Sunni Palestinian Quds Brigade, known as the Liwa al Quds or the Syrian Arab Army Fedayeen, have been photographed receiving medals from Russian military officers for battlefield action. The latest interaction further indicates the deep level of Russian involvement and impact they are having on the Syrian civil war.
The pro-government militia is drawn from the Palestinian diaspora in Aleppo province, and has openly operated as an auxiliary to pro-regime forces there since 2013. The unit numbers in the several hundreds. CLICK FOR PICS & FULL TEXT – http://www.mesop.de/?p=79132
MESOP “HYPOCRITE” – JUST FOR SHOW – WEIL CEM Ö. GENAU WEISS, DASS NIEMAND EINE FLUGVERBOTSZONE DURCHSETZEN WIRD, KANN ER SIE GEFAHRLOS FORDERN- WOHL WISSEND, DASS SEINE EIGENE KLIENTEL NICHT EINMAL EINE DEMO VON EINEM DUTZEND LEUTEN FÜR SYRIEN AUF DIE BEINE BRINGT / HEUCHLER!
Grünen-Chef Özdemir “Assad & Putin bomben Syrien zurück in die Steinzeit”
Grünen-Bundeschef Cem Özdemir fordert den Westen zum Eingreifen im Syrienkonflikt auf: “Nichts tun ist die schlechteste Option.” Russland macht er schwere Vorwürfe.
Volltext http://www.mesop.de/?p=79134
MESOP: DAS MILITÄR-ARSENAL PUTIN’S IN SYRIEN / IRAN LIEFERT DAS KANONENFUTTER
Syrien Die Völkerschlacht von Aleppo – Von Rainer Hermann (FAZ) 15 Okt 2016
Die Großmächte sind sich uneinig über mögliche Lösungen für den Krieg in Syrien. Aber auch an der Front wird die Lage immer unübersichtlicher. Längst kämpfen nicht mehr nur Syrer gegen Syrer.Als die Schlacht um Aleppo am 19. Juli 2012 begann, standen sich auf dem Schlachtfeld noch überwiegend Syrer gegenüber. Heute geben auf beiden Seiten aber externe Akteure den Ton an. Die Schlacht um Aleppo zeigt zweierlei: Der Krieg in Syrien ist kein lokaler Konflikt mehr, sondern ein internationaler Stellvertreterkrieg. Und der Graben zwischen den Akteuren verläuft nicht mehr entlang ideologischer, sondern entlang konfessioneller Linien: Volltext http://www.mesop.de/?p=79150
!KNOW BETTER WITH MESOP! – Peter Neumann (ICSR) LONDON – Sicherheitslage in BRD problematisch
Weniger Ausländer beim IS
15 Okt 2016 – MESOP – Die Zahl ausländischer Anhänger auf dem Territorium der Terrormiliz „Islamischer Staat” (IS) im Irak und in Syrien ist 2016 offenbar deutlich gesunken. Das geht aus Schätzungen des Internationalen Zentrums für Studien zur Radikalisierung (ICSR) am King’s College London hervor. „Wir gehen davon aus, dass sich noch 1700 bis 2000 Westeuropäer im Kerngebiet des IS in Syrien und im Irak befinden”, sagte ICSR-Direktor Peter Neumann am Freitag . Volltext http://www.mesop.de/?p=79152