Explainer: What diplomatic power does a pope really have?

By Luke Cahill, University of Bath

Pope Francis is part of the way through his much-anticipated visit to Cuba and the US, which he is visiting for the first time. He is following in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who visited Cuba in 2012 and expressed his opposition to the US trade embargo.

Now Cuba and the US have dramatically thawed their relations, Francis’s visit to Cuba may well have included a behind-closed-doors push to edge the Castro regime toward greater political, economic and especially religious liberalisation.

The current pontiff has been credited as a central figure in the negotiations that ultimately restored US-Cuba relations. Pope John Paul II had called for the lifting of the embargo, but nothing was done at the time; other religious and humanitarian organisations pressed for the ending of the US embargo but to no avail.

It was probably Obama’s decision to accept the mediation of Pope Francis that allowed the Holy See to help broker the deal.

There were plenty of incentives for both sides to accept the Holy See’s mediation. Perhaps Obama thought he needed to piggyback on the pope’s popularity to break through; the president has mentioned Francis’s role twice, once in his December 2014 Cuba speech and again in his January 2015 State of the Union.

This is hefty stuff indeed, and a measure of the pope’s unique diplomatic position.

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How Syrians came to fear the sky

Martin Fletcher writes: For three years President Assad’s regime has relentlessly pounded the rebel-held tracts of the city with barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, missiles fired by fighter jets, ground-launched rockets called “elephant missiles” because of the noise they make and snipers’ bullets fired from the Citadel, the hilltop fortress in the heart of Aleppo.

It has hit some districts so heavily that they have been abandoned. It targets markets, hospitals, bakeries, mosques — anywhere that people gather. It often bombs a site twice in quick succession so rescuers are killed too. “They target every living thing, everything that moves,” [Zaina] Erhaim says.

Erhaim, 30, is a former BBC Arabic journalist who returned to her native Syria early in 2013 to help the revolution by training citizen journalists, especially women. She recently won a prestigious international prize for courageous journalism. She used to love the sky. She once hoped to use the Arabic word for sky as a name for a daughter, but not any more.

“My biggest dream is for the sky to stop being as horrific as it is, for the sky to be the sky again and not a source of fear, a source of inevitable and unavoidable death,” she says. Back in London this summer to see her employers, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, she was walking down Tottenham Court Road when she saw some people staring upwards. They were merely inspecting a new building, but momentarily she panicked.

Erhaim is a tough young woman. She has been almost literally tempered by fire. Yet even she briefly crumples and cries as she names more than a dozen friends who have been killed — some by the regime, others by zealots of Islamic State who control territory surrounding Aleppo. Hamoudi died filming on the front line. Obaida was seized by IS and never seen again. Maen was killed by a bomb. Hassan was tortured to death by the regime. Bassel died in a shelling. She still posts messages on their Facebook pages, refuses to delete their names from her phone and leaves food on their graves. [Continue reading…]

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Russian escalation in Syria — context and consequences

Paul Salem writes: Internationally, Putin has been seeking to roll back the West’s weakening and isolation of Russia that occurred after the end of the Cold War. The war in Georgia in 2008 and Crimea and Ukraine in 2014 flew in the face of the West’s attempts to bring NATO all the way to Russia’s doorstep. And the move to rebuild a strong military presence in Syria is a response to two and a half decades of U.S. monopolization of war and peace in the Middle East. Russia’s new presence in Syria indicates that it is not just a regional power in Eastern Europe and the Arctic but also a global player that is able and willing to project military power in areas well beyond the Russian motherland.

Regionally, Russia might also be in the process of rebuilding a regional alliance it lost decades ago. The conclusion of the P5 +1 deal removes the taboo of working with Iran and enables Russia to move forward with open strategic and military coordination with Iran, particularly in Syria. The deal might also have encouraged Russia’s move into Syria in that Russia, like Turkey and other countries in the Gulf, could not rule out an Iranian-American rapprochement after the deal that would again have left Russia sidelined in the Middle East. Russia’s move revives an old Soviet-Syrian strategic and military relationship that had lapsed over the past decades.

In Iraq, for the time being, the United States remains the main global military partner of the Iraqi armed forces, but with closer Iranian-Russian ties, it is possible that Iraq could drift steadily away from Washington and closer to Moscow. It is no coincidence that Iran used its influence in Iraq to weaken and sideline the Pentagon-trained national army, and Iran is uncomfortable with any major U.S. role in rebuilding the national army. So either the national army will remain weak, or it will have to find another global partner. Russia could step into that role. Indeed, the new Russian presence in Syria is a strong signal to Baghdad that Russia is back in the Middle East and willing to rebuild old alliances. [Continue reading…]

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Russia, Iran seen coordinating on defense of Assad regime in Syria

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia and Iran have stepped up coordination inside Syria as they move to safeguard President Bashar al-Assad’s control over his coastal stronghold, according to officials in the U.S. and Middle East, creating a new complication for Washington’s diplomatic goals.

Senior Russian and Iranian diplomats, generals and strategists have held a string of high-level talks in Moscow in recent months to discuss Mr. Assad’s defense and the Kremlin’s military buildup in Syria, according to these officials.

The buildup is continuing: On Monday, U.S. defense officials said Russian surveillance drones have started flying missions over Syria, and Moscow has sent two dozen more fighter jets to Syria. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Rebels who have inflicted big losses on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad say Russia’s intervention in support of its ally will only lead to an escalation of the war and may encourage the rebels’ Gulf Arab backers to pour in more military aid.

Russia’s deployment is prompting a reassessment of the conflict among insurgents whose advances in western Syria in recent months may have been the catalyst for Russia’s decision. U.S. officials say Russian forces are already arriving.

Rebels interviewed by Reuters say they have already encountered stronger government resistance in those areas – notably the coastal heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect – and now predict an even tougher war with Russian involvement.

Some see an opportunity in the Russian deployment, predicting more military aid from states such as Saudi Arabia. That signals one of the risks of Russian involvement: a spiral of deepening foreign interference in a conflict already complicated by a regional struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. [Continue reading…]

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As frustrations build in Libya, so do calls for help

The New York Times reports: For more than a year, Libyans have been watching their politicians shuttle between foreign capitals on rounds of peace talks, workshops and conferences in search of a solution to the worsening chaos at home. At one recent event in the Tunisian capital, frustrations at the slow progress were evident in the heartfelt questions and statements from the Libyan refugees in the audience.

“We are a small country, and we need help,” Ahmed Werfalli, a businessman and activist, told the American ambassador during one panel discussion. “We were united against dictatorship, and now we are killing each other.”

Libyans are struggling with a problem that typically emerges after a bloody regime change: how to reassemble a functioning country after its brittle, autocratic and repressive government has been fractured and replaced with warring factions.

Many Libyans have taken refuge in neighboring Tunisia, forced out by the violence and doubting that the main protagonists will end their power struggle, even if a United Nations-sponsored peace agreement is signed soon. They are calling for greater international involvement to help end the conflict. [Continue reading…]

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Mother Angela: Merkel’s refugee policy divides Europe

Der Spiegel reports: We can do it. That’s the message Chancellor Angela Merkel has been giving her country ever since she pledged in late August to provide refuge to anyone coming from Syria in addition to others seeking protection from violence and warfare. The initial euphoria in the country was significant, with tens of thousands of everyday Germans joining the army of helpers to try and cope with the huge influx of needy refugees.

But there have since been signs that the initial elation is fading. The most obvious, of course, was Berlin’s reintroduction of border controls on the German frontier with Austria a little over a week ago. But there have been others as well: Frustration in German states about insufficient federal assistance; grumbling within Merkel’s party about her open door policy; and conflicts with the Social Democrats within Merkel’s governing coalition.

Indeed, Germany is struggling to maintain its composure and to ward off panic despite all the rising doubts.

Can it be done? [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: After weeks of indecision, the European Union voted on Tuesday to distribute 120,000 asylum seekers among member states, a plan meant to display unity in the face of the largest movement of refugees on the Continent since World War II.

Instead, the decision — forced through by a majority vote, over the bitter objections of four eastern members — did as much to underline the bloc’s widening divisions, even over a modest step that barely addresses the crisis.

Nearly half a million migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe this year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a number that is only expected to rise. [Continue reading…]

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The resignation and resilience of Syrian refugees stuck in Zaatari

The New York Times reports: As the West grapples with a new flood of asylum seekers bursting across Europe’s borders, the vast majority of Syrian refugees remain in the region: 1.9 million in Turkey, 1.2 million in Lebanon and 630,000 registered here in Jordan. Underfunded aid agencies and overburdened host countries have been struggling for years to support them.

With the World Food Program having cut vouchers this month to 229,000 Syrians living in Jordanian cities — where it is illegal for them to work — the once-reviled Zaatari (pronounced ZAHT-ah-ree) is increasingly seen as the most stable spot for refugees. While growing numbers yearn to join the exodus to Europe, many in the camp have all but surrendered to a life of limited possibilities.

Until recently, virtually every family imagined an imminent return to Syria as soon as President Bashar al-Assad fell. Now, many see their beloved homeland as lost, and grudgingly accept that Zaatari is somewhere they will be a while.

Refugees have planted vegetables, flowers, even trees that will not bear fruit for years in their compounds cobbled from corrugated tin and trailers. Unicef is spending $37.7 million to install water and sewage systems and Germany $20 million to build a solar field. A recent United Nations report estimated that residents run 2,500 shops — scores of new ones repair bicycles — generating $14 million a month.

“We’ve become used to a system here, and a way of life,” explained Ola Mahmeed, 26, a mother of five who was applying for a two-day “vacation” to visit relatives in nearby Irbid. “There’s order, in terms of security, in terms of services. Anything I can think of I can find now in the market.”

Zaatari’s occupants say they would still jump at any chance to leave. Complaints are rife about electricity, which since June has been available only at night; rationed water; and, especially, the dismal quality of the schools. Last year, classes in the camp were crammed with up to 90 children; of those who took Jordan’s 12th-grade exam, 3 percent passed. [Continue reading…]

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Why should we care about Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S.?

By Massimo Faggioli, University of St. Thomas

The papal trip to the United States that Francis will begin on September 22 is the most difficult of his pontificate so far.

This is because of what I call the pope’s “American problem” – a cultural and ideological distance between the more socially minded Jesuit from Argentina and the more conservative leadership of the American Catholic Church.

Francis is not only the first non-European pope. He is also the first pope since Vatican II – the council that “opened the church to the world” – who has never set foot in the US, even before becoming pontiff. And, finally, he is the first pope from Latin America – a fact that presents American Catholics with a particular kind of challenge to their tendency, evident in the writing of George Weigel, for example, to identify themselves as the youngest and most energetic Church in global Catholicism, and to see American Catholicism as representative of the rest of the world.

A Latin American challenges these tendencies because Latin American Catholicism represent a mix of “global south” and of European Catholicism very different from North American Catholicism.

But why should non-Catholic, non-Christian, non-experts care about Pope Francis coming to America? What does this media fascination in the papal trip (just look at the latest issues of Newsweek, Time, People and The New Yorker) say about our world?

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The people’s pope

Christopher Dickey writes: God bless the common sense of this very uncommon pope. Pope Francis’s first address in the United States, given on the White House lawn, could not have been simpler, more straightforward, and more genuine had he used that phrase dear to Americans, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

There is no question his remarks will be seen by some as a kind of progressive manifesto because of his pleas for economic justice and sane environmental policies, yet within the context of his church and his teachings, and his understanding of what makes the United States a great nation, his logic was unassailable.

“Freedom,” he said, “remains one of America’s most precious possessions,” calling on everyone in this country to “preserve and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten of compromise it.”

Of course he emphasized religious freedom — potentially a difficult question when the state imposes rules and edicts on believers, whether making institutions pay for birth control, or bureaucrats issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But the core of the pope’s message, the heart and soul of it, was tolerance.

“Together with their fellow citizens, American Catholics are committed to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive,” Francis told some 15,000 people invited to hear him speak on the South Lawn. Catholics, as he sees them, and would lead them, are committed “to safeguarding the rights of individuals and communities, and to rejecting every form of unjust discrimination.” [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: He may be the world’s foremost Catholic, but to his fans, Pope Francis is more Martin Luther King Jr. than Pope Benedict XVI. He speaks, and millions listen — whether they are Muslim or Baptist, Hindu or atheist.

“I believe he’s a world leader more than a religious leader,” said Sasha Datta, a practicing Hindu who is planning to try to see Francis in Washington. “His openness, his ability to not shy away from real issues — I see a lot of hope when I see people like Pope Francis.”

Two years after his papacy began, Francis — the pontiff with the common touch and the tolerant embrace — is a lodestar to both the spiritual and secular worlds, a global celebrity to those who admire his warmth and a rudder to those who share his concerns about climate change, social justice, poverty and more. [Continue reading…]

“Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires in 1936 as the first child of a middle-class immigrant family that left Italy fearing for the life of his grandmother, who was highly involved with the movement Catholic Action during the early rise to power of Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement,” writes Inés San Martín: Buenos Aires boasts the sixth largest Jewish community in the world — not to mention the only McDonalds selling kosher food outside of Israel — and also a big Muslim community, the result mostly of a wave of Syro–Lebanese immigration.

The resulting blend of faiths and peoples produced some unique contradictions in the Argentina of Bergoglio’s youth, including the surreal reality that at times, children of Nazi concentration camp survivors attended public school with the children of Nazi war criminals, both groups that sought refuge in the country.

Argentina is also among the few countries in Latin America that also features an important presence of historic Protestant churches, such as the Lutheran, Methodist, and Anglican confessions.

Bergoglio savored the coexistence among Christians, Jews, and Muslims when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, and took it with him to the Vatican. Two of Francis’ closest advisors on inter-faith affairs are friends from Buenos Aires: Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Muslim leader Omar Abboud. [Continue reading…]

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The weakness behind Israel’s power

Saree Makdisi writes: It’s no wonder that this video clip went viral earlier this month. It shows a masked Israeli soldier throwing a sobbing Palestinian child to the ground, holding him in a headlock, squashing him, and then grappling with an assortment of women and girls as he tries — and ultimately fails — to wrest the terrified boy away from his mother.

Those few moments of footage revealed for all the world to see the sordid reality of Israel’s everyday war against the Palestinian people. An army that is equipped and ostensibly prepared to take on other armies — but that was last tested against a real army over four decades ago — continues to be unleashed against a largely defenseless civilian population. And it continues to fail abysmally at its assigned task of bringing that population under control and breaking its will to resist. Indeed, in political terms, the ending of the video is as instructive as the beginning: as the child is finally freed, the Israeli soldier, stripped of his coward’s facemask, is forced ignominiously to slink away, defeated — though not before sullenly and gratuitously flinging a parting stun-grenade into the faces of the child and his family, having, for all his brutality, accomplished precisely nothing.

The scene sums up on a small scale the past decades of Israeli violence, and it captures the lesson that the Israelis seem incapable of getting into their heads once and for all: that the sheer capacity for brute force — at which they admittedly excel—does not, in itself, translate into political gain, and can, indeed, backfire politically to produce the opposite result from what was intended: courage instead of fear; steadfastness instead of collapse; defiance instead of submission. [Continue reading…]

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Bible Belt atheist

Jason Cohn and Camille Servan-Schreiber: Growing up in Los Angeles and Paris, we both were raised secular and embraced atheism early and easily. It’s not that we didn’t ponder life’s mysteries; it’s just that after we reasoned away our religious questions, we stopped worrying about them and moved on. When we learned about the former pastor Jerry DeWitt’s struggles with being an “outed” atheist in rural Louisiana, we realized for the first time just how difficult being an atheist can be in some communities, where religion is woven deeply into the social fabric. [Continue reading…]

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Why I oppose Keystone XL

Hillary Clinton writes: When I was secretary of state, the department began reviewing an application to build a pipeline that would bring Canadian oil sands crude across the border, run more than a thousand miles through the American heartland, and terminate in Nebraska  —  Keystone XL.

As the secretary who initiated the review, I refrained from commenting on the pipeline after I left the federal government. I didn’t want to get ahead of President Obama while the process was still underway — — because the decision was and is his to make.

Since the application was filed, the effects of climate change have grown more acute. More than 8 million acres have burned in the United States so far this wildfire season. California is in the fourth year of a historic drought scientists say has been made worse by climate change. More severe storms and extreme heat waves have wreaked havoc around the world. [Continue reading…]

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Al Jazeera journalists freed from Egypt prison

Al Jazeera reports: Jailed Al Jazeera journalists Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed have been released from prison following a presidential pardon in Egypt.

Dozens of activists have also been released as part of a pardon marking the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday that starts on Thursday, Alaa Youssef, a spokesperson for the Egyptian presidency, has told the al-Ahram newspaper. [Continue reading…]

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Pope Francis’s reception in the U.S. from the left and the right

Gerard O’Connell writes: Pope Francis comes to embrace all the people of the United States and is likely to encourage them to renew their devotion to family life and their understanding of the demands of solidarity as well as the responsible use of their global power.

As we have read in his programmatic document, “The Joy of the Gospel,” and as he spelled out clearly in the encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” this Jesuit pope from Argentina is calling Christians to a new simplicity of life and a depth of spirit that replaces materialism, hyper-individualism and the pursuit of constant pleasure with an integrity that knows what it is to sacrifice, to live in compassion and solidarity, to work for the common good, to care for creation, to show mercy and to attempt to pattern our lives after Jesus himself. His radical message is clear, simple and firmly rooted in the Gospels, which he never tires of encouraging people to read. [Continue reading…]

Jesus said to Rush Limbaugh, “Go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when Rush heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property. (Matthew 19)

Jesus wouldn’t have been welcome on Fox News. Indeed, as an undocumented Palestinian, he wouldn’t have even made it through U.S. Immigration.

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Israel and Russia agree to coordinate military operations in Syria

Haaretz reports: The Israeli and Russian militaries will form a joint committee to coordinate their activities in Syria, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot and his Russian counterpart Valery Gerasimov agreed in a meeting in Moscow on Monday evening.

The committee, which will be headed by the countries’ deputy chiefs of staff, would coordinate both naval and aerial activities, as well as electro-magnetic activities, to avoid interference in electronic warfare, a senior Israeli officer told reporters.

“There’s aerial activities to the north of the country that may or may not overlap with the Russians’ activities there,” the officer said.

The two deputy chiefs of staffs are set to meet in two weeks, though it has yet to be decided whether the meeting will take place in Israel or in Russia. The officer said the frequency of the meetings would be decided later on.

​The officer refused to say whether the United States was briefed regarding the coordination between the two militaries. [Continue reading…]

In a commentary highlighted by the news editors for the UK’s Stop the War Coalition last week, Simon Jenkins wrote: “The only intervention likely to work in Syria just now is from Moscow.”

This is a sentiment which seems to resonate in those quarters of the anti-imperialist camp that still resolutely see the ills of the Middle East all rooted in Western interference.

Are we to now view Vladimir Putin as a peacemaker-in-waiting who will help resolve the worst conflict of the twenty-first century?

As Russia moves in advanced jets and deploys 2,000 military personnel to its new air base outside Latakia in the “first phase of the mission there,” what happened to the voices of anti-interventionism? As usual, the only interventions worth denouncing, must emanate from Western capitals.

The axis of foreign powers propping up the Assad regime — Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah — have a common interest, but evidently that won’t preclude Russia giving an occasional green light for Israel to bomb Hezbollah.

Still, I don’t imagine this turn of events will surprise anyone inside the so-called axis of resistance, because ultimately, each of its members has the same interest: self-preservation. Zionism — the nominal target of their resistance — merely provides a distraction behind which they each consolidate their own power.

In his meeting with Israel’s prime minister, Putin downplayed Netanyahu’s fears of a widening threat from Hezbollah by pointing out that Syria is in no position to expand the conflict.

“We know and understand that the Syrian army and the country in general are not in a condition to open a second front. The Syrians are busy fighting for their own statehood,” Putin said.

“Israel and Russia have common goals – to ensure stability in the Middle East,” Netanyahu noted, and as vacuous as that statement might sound, it seems true — depending on how you define stability.

In the eyes of many observers these days, the only reliable guarantors of stability in the region are its authoritarian regimes. Thus Israel welcomed General Sisi’s ascent to power in Egypt and likewise sees in Assad, a better known devil than the unknown or worst-feared alternative.

A region that has been ripped apart by the effects of decades of corrupt and brutal rule must now be protected by rulers cast in the same mold. But really: how’s that supposed to work?

Stephen Walt, whose anti-interventionism comes wrapped in some ritualistic self-criticism, remains convinced that a no-fly zone in Syria couldn’t accomplish much.

“Remember that the United States operated ‘no-fly zones’ over Iraq throughout the 1990s, and Saddam Hussein remained solidly in power until we invaded in 2003.”

True. But Walt neglects to note that the beneficiaries of one of those no-fly zones — Iraq’s Kurds — were, under its protection, able to establish what became and continues to be the most stable part of Iraq, notwithstanding the current threat posed by ISIS.

As much as the West has become afflicted by a loss of faith in democracy, a pervasive cynicism, and the sence of political impotence experienced by ordinary people as they witness unaccountable interests exercising power, the thing we mustn’t forget about our oftentimes sad system of governance is that within a predictable span of time, each of our elected leaders leaves office.

Consider, for instance, the battery-powered vice president whose destructive impact on the world is hard to overstate.

Dick Cheney might still meddle in politics, but having left office, he lost his power. No doubt it’s a shame that instead of getting thrown in jail, he’s still offered a podium to sound off as a talking head on cable networks. Even so, he and his neoconservative cohorts are mostly a spent force — as demonstrated with their failure to block the Iran nuclear deal.

The most problematic leaders in the world continue, without exception, to be those with an unyielding grip on power.

As much as U.S.-backed efforts at regime change have proved disastrous, that doesn’t mean everyone’s better off when such regimes are left in place.

If a remedy for cancer proves ineffective or counterproductive, the remedy gets ditched — not the fight against cancer.

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Russia is expected to soon start bombing Syria

The Daily Beast reports: Russian combat operations on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are likely to begin “soon,” three U.S. officials told The Daily Beast. And Russian drone flights to spot targets for potential airstrikes are already underway.

That concession by U.S. officials of growing Russian influence marks a shift from previous statements by officials who said they weren’t sure whether Russia intended to use force in Syria and enter into the country’s long and brutal civil war. There already are early signs that Russia plans to target moderate forces that threaten the Assad regime, not the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which has been the focus of a year-long U.S.-led air campaign.

And yet, the recent Russian moves, which threaten to undermine U.S.-led efforts over the last year, were met with hardly a shrug in some circles in Washington.

“There are not discussions happening here about what this means for U.S. influence on the war against ISIS,” one defense official told The Daily Beast. [Continue reading…]

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Russia expands its military presence in Syria, satellite photos show

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian forces appear to be expanding their military presence in Syria through the development of two additional bases, according to new satellite imagery viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The expansion near Syria’s Mediterranean coast is the latest sign Russia is preparing to inject its military forces into the country’s chaotic civil war, creating new challenges for the U.S.-led coalition trying to force President Bashar al-Assad from power and defeat Islamic State militants.

Until recently, the Russian buildup in Syria was largely focused on an air base south of the port city of Latakia. Moscow has shipped more than two dozen combat aircraft to the airfield, where Russian surveillance drones have started flying, according to U.S. defense officials. Russia has also sent tanks, air-defense systems, armored-personnel carriers and enough housing for 2,000 people, officials have said.

Now, satellite images from IHS Jane’s, a defense-intelligence provider, show an additional, previously undisclosed, Russian military expansion.

The images from mid-September show development of a weapons depot and military facility north of Latakia, suggesting that Russia is preparing to place troops in both places, according to Robert Munks, editor of IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Russia has sharply increased the number of combat aircraft at an air base near Latakia, Syria, giving its forces a new ability to strike targets on the ground in the war-stricken country.

Over the weekend, Russia deployed a dozen Su-24 Fencer and a dozen Su-25 Frogfoot ground-attack planes, bringing to 28 the number of warplanes at the base, a senior United States official said on Monday. Until the weekend, the only combat planes there had been four Flanker air-to-air fighters.

The deployment of some of Russia’s most advanced ground attack planes and fighter jets as well as multiple air defense systems at the base near the ancestral home of President Bashar al-Assad appears to leave little doubt about Moscow’s goal to establish a military outpost in the Middle East. The planes are protected by at least two or possibly three SA-22 surface-to-air, antiaircraft systems, and unarmed Predator-like surveillance drones are being used to fly reconnaissance missions.

“With competent pilots and with an effective command and control process, the addition of these aircraft could prove very effective depending on the desired objectives for their use,” said David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

In addition, a total of 15 Russian Hip transport and Hind attack helicopters are also now stationed at the base, doubling the number of those aircraft from last week, the American official said. For use in possible ground attacks, the Russians now also have nine T-90 tanks and more than 500 marines, up from more than 200 last week. [Continue reading…]

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