News - World News Assad and Russia use banned cluster bombs, killing and injuring dozens of civilians

 47 cluster munition attacks that killed and injured dozens of civilians in rebel-held areas

BEIRUT (AFP) - Human Rights Watch accused the Syrian regime and its ally Russia on Thursday of extensively using banned cluster munitions in their offensive against rebels in the war-torn country.
The New York-based watchdog said it had documented 47 cluster munition attacks that killed and injured dozens of civilians in rebel-held areas in three provinces since May 27.
Many of these attacks took place north and west of Aleppo, as Russia-backed regime forces sought to besiege the opposition-controlled part of the northern city, it said.
Russia in September launched a campaign of air strikes in support of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
'Since Russia and Syria have renewed their joint air operations, we have seen a relentless use of cluster munitions,' said Ole Solvang, deputy emergencies director at HRW.
'The Russian government should immediately ensure that neither its forces nor Syria's use this inherently indiscriminate weapon,' he said.
HRW in December said it had documented the use of cluster munitions on 20 occasions since Russia launched air strikes on September 30.
'Although Russia and Syria are not members of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, they are still bound by international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, which prohibits indiscriminate attacks,' HRW said.
Cluster munitions contain dozens or hundreds of bomblets and are fired in rockets or dropped from the air.
Widely banned, they spread explosives over large areas and are indiscriminate in nature, often continuing to maim and kill long after the initial attack when previously unexploded bomblets detonate.
More than 280,000 people have been killed in Syria since the war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Source: AFP, 28 July 2016

Turkey's Instability would embolden Iran to interfere in region's countries: Arab League

Arab countries say Iran is meddling in their affairs

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Abul-Gheit has voiced hope that Turkey's stability will not be affected by a failed coup attempt in the country.
'Turkey is a major country and it's important to remain stable,' Abul-Gheit said during a TV interview with an Egyptian satellite channel on Sunday.
'If stability in Turkey is shaken, it will affect stability in Arab countries as Syria and Iraq,' he said.
On Friday night, renegade elements within Turkey's military attempted to stage a coup against the government.
Although the coup was soon put down by the country's legitimate authorities and security apparatus, 208 people were martyred in the ensuing violence.
Abul-Gheit, a former Egyptian foreign minister who took office as the new head of the pan-Arab body earlier this month, warned that instability in Turkey would embolden Iran to interfere in the affairs of the region's countries.
Arab countries accuse Iran of meddling in their affairs.
In recent months, tension escalated between the two sides since Saudi Arabia cut its diplomatic ties with Tehran earlier this year after two of its diplomatic missions in Iran were attacked by
Saudi Arabia and Arab allies accuse Tehran of arming Yemen's Houthi group, which overran capital Sanaa and other provinces in 2014.
The conflict in war-torn Syria has further worsened Arab-Iranian relations.
Iran is a major backer of the Assad regime, while Saudi Arabia supports the Syrian opposition.

Syrian opp.: Assad regime and Iran stoking sectarianism in the region

Hijab says Assad regime has evaded from discussing political transition during UN-mandated talks in Geneva

ANKARA- UN-brokered talks at resolving the six-year conflict in Syria have reached a dead end due to refusal of the Syrian regime to discuss political transition in the country, an opposition negotiator said.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Riad Hijab said that the Bashar al-Assad regime has evaded from discussing political transition during recent UN-mandated talks in Geneva.
“With every round of negotiations, the regime begins to escalate its bombardment and commit massacres against the [Syrian] people,” said Hijab, the coordinator of the High Committee of the Syrian opposition in negotiations.
Hijab said that the Syrian opposition has suspended its participation in the UN talks due to massacres committed by the regime against Syrian civilians.
“Any return to the negotiations would require creating a favorable climate, which currently does not exist,” he said.
“The Syrian people are still suffering,” he said, citing a recent escalation in attacks by the Assad regime.
“We have seen an unprecedented escalation by the regime and its allies Iran and Russia against the Syrian people, using banned weapons as phosphor and napalm bombs,” he said.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.
UN-mandated talks between the Syrian regime and opposition to look into ways of resolving the six-year conflict collapsed in late April.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday that the international body will not hold another round of Syrian talks until both sides agree the parameters for a political transition deal, which has an August 1 deadline.
'I have informed the Security Council just a few days ago ... The time is not yet mature for the official third round of the intra-Syrian talks,' de Mistura said.
Hijab further accused the Assad regime and allied Iran of stoking sectarianism in the region.
He also criticized attempts by Russia – which began airstrikes against Assad’s opponents in September -- to designate the opposition Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham groups as “terrorist” organizations.
“The two groups are defending the rights of the Syrian people and are working to remove the regime,” he said, going on to call on the international community to “show a real resolve to guarantee political transition” in Syria.
Source: Anadolu Agency, 13 June 2016

Iranian children join the war in Syria

 

Iranian mullah training children

The Iranian opposition group  ( NCRI ) released a translated video it says was produced by the Tehran’s Bassij Music House and was shown over several days on state-run television this month.

The selling pitch to youngsters: You will be defending sacred Shiite shrines in Syria and will position yourselves to invade Israel, whose destruction is an Iranian regime priority.

The Iranian regime, faced with a crisis in recruiting fighters to defend Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, have now embarked on a propaganda campaign to recruit youngsters to join the war in Syria.
The state media of the Mullah's regime, in the past few days, has released a promotional clip - ‘Martyrs who defend the sacred shrine’ – in an effort to persuade children to participate in the war.
Bassij Music House, the producers of the video, is the propaganda arm of a branch of the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) – the paramilitary Bassij.
The video shows young children singing the following: 
“Let’s rise up to save the sacred shrine.
I have joined [Imam] Hossein’s army division.
… I have a warrant from the [Imam Ali] to defend the sacred shrine.
On my leader [Ali Khamenei’s] orders I am ready to give my life.
The goal is not just to free Iraq and Syria;
My path is through the sacred shrine [in Syria], but my goal is to reach Jerusalem.
… I don’t regret parting from my country;
In this just path I am wearing my martyrdom shroud.
… From Mashhad [north-east Iran], I will walk on foot to Damascus.
I am like the bird that flocks to the sacred shrine.”
There are similarities, for example the images and slogans used in the video, that remind us of the regime’s efforts to recruit during the Iran-Iraq war. The regime was faced a public backlash when they tried to recruit soldiers, so instead the mullahs “used Iranian children as human waves to clear the minefields”. Their efforts were fruitless at the time and Khomeini had no choice by to accept a ceasefire – or a “chalice of poison” as he called it.  

In the Iranian regime’s lexicon, ‘defending the sacred shrine’ is the equivalent of deploying the forces of the IRGC and more recently the regular army to Syria to defend the Assad regime as he massacres the people of Syria. This is while the majority of the Iranian regime’s casualties are near Aleppo which is several hundred kilometers away from the holy Shiite shrines near Damascus.

Even after trying to deploy various units including the IRGC forces and foreign militias, the regime is now seeking to recruit children to fight in the war.
This “disgraceful and inhumane act” will not resolve the deadlock situation, just like it didn’t work in the Iran-Iraq war. This time, he said, the regime is in an ever more fragile state.

Syrian Regime Air Strikes On Aleppo kill 14 Civilians

 

More than Twenty civilians were killed in government strikes on eastern parts of Aleppo

ALEPPO - Air strikes on rebel-held neighborhoods in Syria’s second city Aleppo on Friday killed at least 14 civilians and wounded more than a dozen others, the local civil defense told AFP.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime warplanes carried out the air strikes and gave a toll of 10 dead.
An AFP correspondent in the opposition-held eastern part said several neighborhoods were targeted and that the wail of ambulances could be heard throughout the morning.
A fragile ceasefire in Syria is in grave peril without urgent action, the UN top envoy to the war-ravaged country warned Friday, as violence surged on the ground.
In Bustan AL-Qasr, one of the most heavily-populated neighborhoods, a strike hit a five-story apartment building, shearing off part of an entire floor.
Civil defense volunteers were climbing into the building to search for families trapped in the rubble, according to the AFP journalist.
Seven civilians were killed and 10 wounded there, a civil defense member said.
Two other people were killed and eight wounded in Al-Mashhad district, the source said.
And in the opposition-held Salhin neighborhood, a strike killed five civilians, he added.
The Britain-based Observatory said the air strikes targeted Bustan al-Qasr and other Aleppo neighborhoods, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens more.
'The number of martyrs is expected to rise because many of those wounded are in critical condition,' said the monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its reports.
Syria truce ’in great trouble’
The truce 'is still in effect, but it is in great trouble if we don’t act quickly,' Staffan de Mistura told reporters, adding that peace talks in Geneva would continue through Wednesday. The truce 'is still in effect, but it is in great trouble if we don’t act quickly,' Staffan de Mistura told reporters, adding that peace talks in Geneva would continue through Wednesday.
Once Syria’s commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.
Nearly all warring parties in Syria -- the regime, rebels, jihadists, and Kurds -- have carved out zones of control in war-torn Aleppo province.
A ceasefire took effect in Syria at the end of February but the country has been rocked by fighting in recent weeks, particularly around Aleppo.
Syria’s conflict erupted in March 20 11 with anti-government protests, but has since spiralled into a multi-front war that has left more than 270,000 people dead.

A Strategy Necessary to Push Iran Out of Syria

                                        Iranian Mullahs  are  taking over Syria  

The Iran nuclear deal is a good one as far as it goes, and if Obama administration officials actually implement it. But Washington has to show it will stand up against Tehran’s regional designs. The place to do that is Syria, The Daily Beast reported.
News from the Middle East has been dominated by two separate sets of issues in recent months.  First, there is Iran and the contentious debate over the nuclear agreement with Tehran, known more formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The other has been Syria, with its refugees overflowing into Europe, a new Russian military build-up, and Washington’s admission that its initial, half-hearted effort to build up a moderate opposition had failed. 
In actuality, these narratives are much more closely intertwined than the coverage would have you believe, because how the United States handles Syria could have a profound effect on the long-term implications of the Iranian nuclear agreement.
As with the product of any difficult negotiation, the deal is far from perfect. The limited duration of some of the most important constraints on Iranian nuclear development leaves people uneasy
Whether one supported or opposed the JCPOA, at this point all Americans have an interest in ensuring that it is rigorously and successfully implemented to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons.
Our greatest concern with the Iranian nuclear deal is an issue that is only just starting to get the attention in the public debate that it deserves: its potential impact on the Middle East itself.  In truth no one—including the Israelis and the Saudis—feared that the Iranians would start lobbing nukes at them as soon as they got them.  Instead, everyone’s (legitimate) fear was that an Iranian nuclear arsenal would enable and encourage greater Iranian efforts to destabilize the region by subversion or even outright aggression.  The deal itself will take that particular worry off the table for 10-15 years if not longer, but does not mitigate the pre-existing problem of Iranian efforts to overturn the regional status quo by force, terrorism, insurgency, and other unsavory methods. 
In fact, that’s what all of America’s allies are most afraid of. That, coupled with the fear that the United States will use the nuclear deal to further disengage from the region. Understandably, they fret over a post-nuclear-deal future in which the United States is making even less of an effort to play its traditional role as regional stabilizer, and its very absence further incites Iran to greater aggressiveness.
The Obama Administration insists that it does not plan to disengage from the Middle East after the Iranian nuclear deal, but America’s Middle Eastern allies remain unconvinced. Across the board in private, Gulf officials damn the Administration for its disdain for the Middle East and particularly its weak response to Iran. But the reality is that in the absence of American engagement, leadership, and military involvement in the region, the GCC states (led by the Saudis) get frightened, and their tendency when frightened is to lash out. 
The GCC military campaign in Yemen is a perfect example of this.  It represents a dramatic departure from past practice: the Gulf States had never intervened directly with their own armed forces against another country, except a part of a massive American-led force, as in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.  It drives home the point that in the absence of a strong American role in pushing back on Iran, the GCC’s default mode is to attack on their own
Here there are three possibilities, but ultimately only one conclusion.  Yemen is the wrong place for the United States to confront Iran.  Yemen is simply not consequential enough to justify making any American investment there; in fact, Washington should be doing everything it can to help the Saudis and the GCC end their own intervention in Yemen, not reinforce it.  Iraq is also the wrong choice too.  
That leaves Syria.  If the United States is going to push back on Iran in the aftermath of the nuclear deal to demonstrate to both Tehran and our regional allies that we are not abandoning the field and allowing (or enabling) the Iranians to make greater gains, Syria is the place to do it.  Syria is a genuinely contested battlefield with high stakes for both Iran and the GCC states and one where increased American action could tip the scales in the midst of a prolonged stalemate.  This is not the place to describe in detail how the United States might mount such an effort, but we can sketch out some of the broad contours, to highlight what should and could change.
First and foremost the Obama Administration needs to abandon its self-defeating focus on Daesh (the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL) as the only target of its strategy and adopt a comprehensive approach that deals with the Syrian civil war as a whole.  The Administration’s single-minded approach fails to recognize that Daesh is nothing but a symptom of the wider malady of the Syrian civil war. Even if the U.S. could somehow vaporize Daesh, if the civil war continues to rage, new extremist organizations will simply emerge to replace it.  This is exactly what happened with al-Qaeda in Iraq.  Daesh’s predecessor was virtually extirpated in Iraq by 2011 until the civil war in neighboring Syria provided it with a new refuge and lifeline.  Resolve the civil war, however, and the source of Daesh’s strength and appeal disappears.
There are 4 million Syrian refugees already, and millions more to follow if the war keeps raging. The only way to truly end that crisis is to end the Syrian civil war.
Ending the Syrian civil war will mean creating a Syrian opposition army capable of effectively threatening all of the other warring factions, including those backed by Iran as well as Sunni extremists, and forcing them to come to the bargaining table to work out their differences politically, rather than simply pursuing a military strategy.  This was ultimately how NATO engineered the Dayton Accords, helping to build a Croat Army (backed by NATO air power) able to defeat the Serbs on the battlefield, thereby forcing Milosevic and Karadzic to sit down with Richard Holbrooke or else have the Croats overrun the rest of Serbian Bosnia. 
Until the same happens in Syria, no negotiated agreement will be worth the paper it is written on.  Since the Sunni states of the Middle East (with limited American and European covert aid) have clearly failed to create such a force, only a much greater effort by the United States—assisted by its regional and European allies—could do so. 
Of necessity, that will mean devoting far more effort toward building a new opposition military capable of dominating the battlefields of Syria.  It will also mean using American leverage and its investment in this new force to get our regional partners on board and asking them to shift away from supporting extremist groups inside Syria.  Meanwhile, the United States should continue to provide support to other existing groups inside Syria who have already proven effective, including the Southern Front and the Kurds, with the intention of eventually integrating them into a wider coalition force built around the new opposition army. 
Such an approach would also significantly ease recruiting challenges, as few Syrians have been interested in joining a force unwilling to take on Assad.  That is the primary reason that the initial U.S. train and equip program produced only a few dozen fighters despite thousands of would-be volunteers.  However, it also means taking on slightly greater risk, because it would mean scrapping the cumbersome vetting standards the Administration has so far employed.  These have successfully kept out anyone who might prove to be a terrorist agent, but they have also excluded the vast bulk of Syrian opposition fighters, virtually all of whom want to fight the Assad regime as well as Daesh, leaving a miniscule force that numbers in the dozens rather than the needed thousands.  
The approach thus far has focused on actively proving that each and every individual to be trained and armed by the United States is not an extremist, instead of using the training itself to identify the extremists and cull them out as the U.S. did successfully in Iraq in 2007-2009.  
This bass-ackwards burden of proof has dramatically slowed the process. The reality is that unless we were to abandon the train-and-equip program altogether, some American arms are going to end up with bad guys no matter how cautious we are.  But this is a commonplace in all civil wars, and it has never proven decisive or even terribly meaningful, even if the stories are always embarrassing to the provider.
The plan outlined by the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, in September 2014 remains a reasonable approach to building a new, professional, conventional Syrian opposition army, one that—with American advisers, weapons, intelligence support, and massive air power—would have a good probability of defeating the regime’s Iranian-supported forces as well as those of Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra, to make clear to all of them that victory was not possible and convince all of Syria’s warring communities to opt for a power-sharing agreement instead. 
In another critical departure from the current, failed train-and-equip mission, the right way to muster a new Syrian opposition army would be to build it in Turkey or, better still, Jordan, and to keep it there until it is ready for the Syrian melee.  The 5,400 fighters per year originally envisioned by the Administration seems entirely appropriate, as it would enable such a force to take on Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra, the Assad regime and any other challengers.  But it is critical to hold it back until it is properly armed, trained and sized to ensure that it has every chance of success to create psychological momentum in its favor.  (In addition, a force of this size will be able to occupy territory sufficient to enable the UN and NGOs to set up humanitarian relief and governance mechanisms to succor the populace in the liberated space and encourage other Syrians to join the cause.)
If the United States and its regional and Western allies are willing to properly build and support such a force, there is good reason to believe that it will be able to do in Syria what the rebuilt Croat army did in Bosnia, threaten all of its rivals with catastrophic defeat, thereby making them amenable to the compromises of the Dayton Accord.  In Syria, we should seek a similar end state, with a power-sharing arrangement that decentralizes authority and resources to the constituent communities; provides for the creation of a small, professional military representing the entire polity; and establishes equal treatment and protections for all Syrians. 
It is important to note that while Bashar al-Assad should, could and likely would go in this scenario, the Alawi community that he currently leads must get a seat at the table as well as political and economic influence equal to its demographic weight.  That is also the best way to assure that Iran (and Russia) would ultimately acquiesce, just as Russia ultimately acquiesced to the Dayton Accords (as well as Serbia’s defeat in the 1999 Kosovo war).  Indeed, at various points, whenever it has seemed that the United States would adopt this approach, the Iranians have been quick to signal that they were glad to jettison Assad in return for the Alawis getting their fair share in any future political settlement.
The new Russian military build-up obviously adds yet another complicating factor, but there is no reason it needs to be a deal-breaker.  The United States has conducted military campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo, Korea and Vietnam while Russian “advisors” and “volunteers” were present on the other side and it never led to a superpower war.  In Syria, it is hard to imagine Putin wanting to tangle with the United States if Washington makes clear that it is serious about victory, again, as was the case in both Bosnia and Kosovo. 
Moreover, as with the Iranians, there is good reason to believe that the Russians won’t fight if the United States makes clear that its goal is not to sacrifice the Alawis to Sunni extremists, but to protect them by engineering a new power-sharing agreement among all of Syria’s warring factions with appropriate guarantees for the safety of Syria’s minorities.  Ultimately, if the United States is determined to prevail in Syria, there is little that Russia can do to stop it, and such a negotiated settlement would be the best Moscow could hope for.
In the end, a serious American effort to tip the scales in Syria and bring the civil war to an end would send a powerful signal both to our Arab allies and to Iran.  It may also set the table for a new regional order where, in the aftermath of a negotiated agreement on Syria as well as the nuclear issue, there is a precedent set for greater engagement and diplomacy between the United States, Iran and the Arab States to solve the region’s problems.  But it is yet another of the paradoxes of the Middle East that before those more positive scenarios can come to pass in the aftermath of the Iranian nuclear deal, finally executing the Obama Administration’s proclaimed strategy for Syria and increasing American involvement may be the best and only way to regain control over the dangerous confrontation escalating between Iran and America’s Arab allies.  
All of which brings us back to the news from Syria.  Debating whether to take 10,000 or 100,000 refugees does not address the reality that there are 4 million Syrian refugees already, and millions more to follow if the war keeps raging.  The only way to truly end that crisis is to end the Syrian civil war. The history of the past 20 years has repeatedly demonstrated that that is possible, but only if the U.S. is willing to lead a coalition to do so, and that will require a much more serious effort than what we have tried so far.  Our strategic interests and our humanitarian impulses are finally beginning to mesh, and they all point toward taking such a greater role in Syria.
What was it that Churchill once said?  “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, but only after they have exhausted all of the alternatives.”  We’ve exhausted all of the alternatives.  It’s time now to do the right thing in Syria.

News - Maryam Rajavi Messages Iran opposition leader hails Iran human rights session at UK House of Commons

Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi

The following is the text of a message by Iranian opposition leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi , President-elect of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, to a meeting on human rights in Iran at the United Kingdom House of Commons sponsored by the all-party British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom.
Maryam Rajavi’s message to a meeting on human rights in Iran at the UK Parliament
September 15, 2015
We call on Britain, Europe and all the world to stand by human rights, freedom and the Iranian Resistance and respect the Iranian people’s desire for regime change. There is such power and influence in this struggle that the world needs
The British Human Right Session,
The honorable members of the British Houses of Commons and Lords,
Dear friends,
I salute you and appreciate your attention to the issue of Iran and its victimized human rights and freedoms, particularly, the prominent parliamentarians Messrs. David Jones and David Amess, the sponsors of this meeting.
It has been years that human rights and freedoms in Iran have comprised a common struggle for the Resistance movement and for the honorable members of the British Houses of Parliament in the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom.
The people of Iran must have the right to freedom from arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial executions.
They must have the right to enjoy personal freedoms and security and be equal to others before the law. They must have the right to be heard in fair trials before the courts. They must have the right to have their house and private life and their manners of clothing and their movements protected against attacks. They must have the right to freely express their opinions, freely write and read and freely form any gathering they desire. They must have the right to have free elections.
How much longer must the Iranian people only dream of enjoying their most basic rights? How much longer must Iranians give their blood and lives to gain a miniscule part of these rights?
Unfortunately, the issue of human rights and freedoms in Iran were overlooked more than ever in the past two years while the nuclear negotiations and its ultimate agreement were ongoing.
Taking advantage of western governments’ ignorance and irresponsibility, Iran’s ruling mullahs stepped up their suppression and clampdown on freedoms over the past two years. According to Amnesty International, the number of executions in the first half of 2015 amounted to nearly 700 which is highest record of executions in the past quarter of a century. The number of executions in the two years of Rouhani’s tenure has exceeded 2000.
During this period, the record of human rights has deteriorated in all areas. Teachers and workers’ protests are responded to by expulsions from work. The rights and freedoms of lawyers, human rights defenders, web bloggers, reporters, new Christian converts, Bahaii’s, Sunni youths, Kurds, Baluchis and more than anyone, the women and youths of Iran are trampled every day.
In the meantime, the mullahs’ oppressive hand has extended beyond its borders and tightened the siege onCamp Liberty, the seat of Mojahedin members. So far, 27 people have lost their lives due to lack of prompt and timely access to medical treatment.more