By Adam Garrie
Source: The Duran
Local Kurdish language media in Syria have reported that both the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Arab Air-force have bombed positions of the Kurdish led US proxy militia SDF, in Deir ez-Zor, as originally reported in English by Al-Masdar.

While the reports are not yet confirmed by Syria or Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry recently stated that if the Kurdish led US proxy militia SDF continues to attack Syrian and Russian positions, Russia would not hesitate to target the SDF. Syria has also said that they will target the SDF as an enemy force if they continue to prevent the liberation of Syrian territory by the Syrian Arab Army.

Today’s unconfirmed reports from Kurdish media also comes less than 24 hours after the Russian Defense Ministry released photos showing battlefield collusion between ISIS, SDF and US special forces in Deir ez-Zor.

Yesterday, Russia confirmed the death of Lieutenant-General Valeriy Asapov, who was martyred in Deir ez-Zor after his position was shelled by ISIS terrorists.

While the story of Russia and Syria targeting the SDF is still unconfirmed, the story is similar to a previous report wherein, Russia shelled ISIS positions in Deir-ez Zor and hit SDF fighters. This was yet another sign of battle field collusion between the SDF and ISIS. The only way that SDF fighters could have been hit in the previous attack, is if they were in the same positions as ISIS fighters. Today’s events could be a similar scenario.

Russia shines light on the shady anti-Syrian coalition of the US, Kurds and jihadists
Russia has made a statement with only two logical conclusions: Either the US and its Kurdish proxies are lying about the nature of an alleged strike on SDF positions or otherwise, the Kurdish led SDF is embedded among ISIS.

Russia has rejected claims from the United States and their Kurdish led proxy militants SDF that the Russian Aerospace Forces along with the Syrian Arab Air force targeted an SDF position in Deir ez-Zor East of the Euphrates.

Legally speaking, the entire argument it moot as Syria has declared the SDF an illegal group and therefore a legitimate target as Syria works with its legal partners to liberate Syria. Syria has said openly it will fight the SDF if necessary in the battle to liberate Syria from all illegitimate forces. Hence the notion of some sort of agreement between the SDF and Syria, tenuous as it always was, can now be confirmed as ‘fake news’ or perhaps better put, wishful speculation by pro-Kurdish elements.

However, in practical terms, it highlights the very real possibility that as ISIS continues to dwindle as a formidable military force, Syria and Kurdish militants may very likely come into increasingly intense conflicts in a ‘rush for territory’ in formerly ISIS occupied parts of what is legal Syrian territory, even as Russia seeks to prevent further clashes without directly interfering in Syrian affairs. In this sense Russia’s ability to stop such clashes is self-limiting due to Russia’s respect for the realities of international law. More

By Anna Jaunger
Source: Information clearing House
As the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) progresses towards Deir Ezzor, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), mostly made up of Syrian Kurds, began to prepare for a military offensive on the Syrian city in order to prevent the government forces from re-establishing military control over the oil rich-territory.

Despite all promises that the U.S. doesn’t intend to extend its presence in Syria after defeating ISIS, Washington continues to increase the number of American military and set up new bases in Syria.

Yesterday, Gulf News reported that the U.S.-led Coalition had dropped off an elite squad in the eastern part of the province of Deir Ezzor. According to many experts, its prior goal is to gather intelligence and prepare staging ground for the SDF’s offensive in Deir Ezzor.

This position is proved by Ahmed Abu Khawla, a SDF official. Khawla said, the SDF could start its assault on Deir Ezzor “within several weeks” in parallel with an ongoing battle for nearby Raqqa city. Khawla also added that all military plans were absolutely ready.

Besides, according to sources close to the SDF, the U.S.-backed forces intend to conduct assault from the province of Al-Hasakah, where the U.S. Special Forces troops were dropped off.

Considering the U.S. and the Coalition have illegally invaded Syria’s territory, there is only one way for Washington to remain in Syria – to establish full control over Deir Ezzor. In this case the United States are helped by the Kurds, who are also interested in seizing oil fields.

In his turn, Talal Silo, spokesman of the SDF, said that Washington had “a strategy policy for decades to come.”

Obviously, the U.S. actions in Syria are unlikely to be limited by fighting ISIS. Perhaps, it is only a part of the plan to destroy urban infrastructure and overthrow Assad’s government in Syria. Now it is extremely important for the SAA not to let the U.S.-backed forces to seize the initiative in Deir Ezzor. The future of the country and geopolitical strategic equation will depend on who will control the strategic region of oil rich-territory in Syria.

By Ibrahim Joudeh
Source: Al-Masdar News
A Syrian Arab Army (SAA) military source has just announced the full liberation of al-Sukhnah town [North East Palmyra] in eastern Homs Governorate.

Last night, the Syrian Army and its allies entered the strategic town from its southern and southwestern axes. Amid heavy clashes with ISIS terrorists, pro-government forces managed to crush the last ISIS defense lines inside the city and advanced deep towards the northern districts before fully liberating it.

SAA ordinance disposal teams have started work on clearing al-Sukhnah of mines and improvised explosive devices (IED).

By this advance, the SAA is now 55 kilometers from the western Deir Ezzor provincial border and 110 kilometers away from the city of Deir Ezzor itself (via the al-Sukhnah axis).

By Sharmine Narwani
Source: The American Conservative
In July, the White House and Pentagon requested authority from Congress to build further “temporary intermediate staging facilities” inside Syria in order to combat ISIS more effectively. This request, it must be noted, comes in the wake of devastating ISIS defeats in Syria, mostly by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied forces.

Shortly afterward, the Turkish state-owned Anadolu news agency revealed previously unknown details and locations of ten U.S. bases and outposts in northern Syria, several of them with airfields. These are in addition to at least two further U.S. outposts already identified in southern Syria, on the Iraqi border.

When asked about these military bases, a CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) spokesman told me: “We don’t have bases in Syria. We have soldiers throughout Syria providing training and assist to the SDF (the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the north of the country).” How many soldiers? “Roughly 1,200 troops,” says CENTCOM.

Yet when questioned about the international law grounds for this U.S. military presence inside Syria, CENTCOM didn’t have a response on hand. They referred me to the Office of the Secretary of Defense whose spokesman obstinately cited U.S. domestic law—an issue quite irrelevant to Syrians. He, in turn, referred me to the White House and State Department on the international-law angle. The State Department sent me back to the Department of Defense, the White House pointed me in the direction of the National Security Council (NSC), and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel blankly ignored my repeated requests.

It isn’t hard to conclude that official Washington simply doesn’t want to answer the “international law” question on Syria. To be fair, in December 2016, the Obama administration offered up an assessment on the legalities of the use of force in Syria, but perhaps subsequent ground developments—the SAA and its allies defeating ISIS and Al Qaeda left, right, and center—have tightened some lips in the nation’s capital.

The map of U.S. bases in Syria is confusing. For starters, it reveals that many of the US outposts—or “staging facilities”—are nowhere near ISIS-controlled areas. This has generated some legitimate suspicion about U.S. motives in Syria, especially since American forces have begun to attack Syrian military targets with more frequency. This summer saw U.S. strikes against Syrian allied forces, drones, and a fighter jet all in the space of a few weeks. And most memorably, in September 2016, Coalition fighters killed over 100 SAA troops fighting ISIS in Deir Ezzor, paving the way for a brief ISIS takeover of strategic points in the oil-rich province.

It appears that U.S. intentions may go beyond the stated objective of fighting terrorism in Syria—and that Washington’s goals are also territorial and political and seek to retain post-conflict zones of influence within the country: in the south, north, and along the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Former Obama White House and NSC senior legal official Brian Egan believes the coming challenge for U.S. policymakers—in terms of international law—will be to justify clashes with Syrian forces and their allies.

“I think the harder international law question to defend is with respect to use of force against the [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad regime,” warns Egan. “For example, the U.S. strike in response to the [alleged] chemical weapons attack. There’s no self-defense justification, there’s no UN Security Council resolution. It’s an open question what the U.S. depends on in terms of international law.”

“Theories that might be applicable against terrorist groups like ISIS don’t appear to apply for U.S. military ops against Syrian forces. The more that U.S. forces are in-theater in Syria, the greater the chance of conflict between the U.S. and Syrian forces, which makes it essential that [this administration] explains its justification for potential operations in Syria,” emphasizes Egan.

But it’s not only Syrian forces and military targets that have come under American fire. In a stream of letters to the UN Security Council this year, the Syrian government asserts U.S. air strikes have also “systematically” destroyed vital infrastructure and economic assets throughout the country for months, and complains that the attacks are “being carried out outside the framework of international legality.” The Syrians claim that these infrastructure targets include the Ghalban oil collection branch station, Umar oilfield, wells and facilities, electrical transformer stations, Tanak oil field and facilities, Izbah oil field and installations—all in Deir Ezzor governorate—a gas plant and bridges and structures of the Balikh Canal in Raqqa, buildings and facilities belonging to the General Establishment of Geology and Mineral Resources in Homs, Furat and Baath Dam facilities, the Euphrates Dam, the Tishrin Dam and their reservoirs, irrigation and power generation facilities, and many other vital sites across the country.

With U.S. legal arguments supporting military presence in Syria unravelling, the Pentagon’s untenable position has become noticeable, even within its own ranks.

“Here’s the conundrum,” explained U.S. Special Operations Command Chief Army General Raymond Thomas to an Aspen gathering last week, in response to a question about whether U.S. forces will stay in Syria, post-ISIS: “We are operating in the sovereign country of Syria. The Russians, their stalwarts, their back-stoppers, have already uninvited the Turks from Syria. We’re a bad day away from the Russians saying, ‘Why are you still in Syria, U.S.?’”

The Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and other allied Syrian forces are in Syria legally, at the invitation of the UN-recognized state authority. The United States and its coalition partners are not.

At the moment, the latter are trying hard to ignore that elephant in the room. But as ISIS collapses, the question “why are you still here?” is going to rise in volume.

When the U.S.-led coalition first launched overt military operations inside Syria in September 2014, various western governments cited both the recently-passed UNSC Resolution 2249 and Article 51 (Iraq’s invitation for “collective self-defense”) as their legal justification for doing so.

Neither of these justifications provided legal grounds for use of force in Syria, however. There are basically only three clear-cut international law justifications for use of force: a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution providing Chapter 7 authority, self-defense against an act of aggression by a territorial state, and an invitation by the legitimate authority of a sovereign state for foreign troops to act within its borders—“consent of a territorial state.”

While UNSC Res. 2249 called upon member states to “take all necessary measures” against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, it explicitly stated that any such measures must be “in compliance with international law, in particular with the UN Charter”—which requires consent of a territorial state, in this case, the Syrian government.

And while Iraq did invite the Coalition to militarily engage ISIS within its territory, its “collective self-defense” argument does not justify the use of force inside Syrian territory—because Syria did not attack Iraq.

To make up for the gaping holes in its international-law arguments, the U.S.-led Coalition performed some legal acrobatics. The “unwilling and unable” theory posits that the Coalition could engage militarily in Syria because the legitimate government of Syria was either unable or unwilling (or both) to fight ISIS.

An onslaught of media articles and carefully-framed narratives were employed to set the scene for this theory. Recall, if you will, the slew of articles claiming that ISIS controlled around 50 percent of Syria—areas which were outside of Syrian state control—all meant to guide us to the conclusion that Syria was “unable” to fight ISIS. Or the narratives that insisted, until ground evidence proved otherwise, that the Syrian government aided ISIS, that it never fought the terror group, that it only targeted “moderate rebels”—all intended to persuade us that Syria was “unwilling” to target ISIS.

In fact, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have fought ISIS throughout this conflict, but were often distracted by more urgent battles against U.S., Turkish, British, French, Saudi, UAE and Qatari-backed Islamist militants in the western corridor of the country, where Syria’s main population and infrastructure hubs are located. ISIS-controlled territories, it should be noted, were mostly in the largely barren, sparsely populated and desert regions in the north-east and east of Syria.

The NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council strategy appears to ping-pong Syrian troops from east to west, north to south, wearing them down, cleverly diverting them from any battle in which they were making gains. And it was working, until the Russians stepped into the fray in September 2015 and sunk the Coalition’s “unwilling and unable” theory.

As Major Patrick Walsh, associate professor in the International and Operational Law Department at the US Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Virginia, wrote that October:

“The United States and others who are acting in collective defense of Iraq and Turkey are in a precarious position. The international community is calling on Russia to stop attacking rebel groups and start attacking ISIS. But if Russia does, and if the Assad government commits to preventing ISIS from attacking Syria’s neighbors and delivers on that commitment, then the unwilling or unable theory for intervention in Syria would no longer apply. Nations would be unable to legally intervene inside Syria against ISIS without the Assad government’s consent.”

The UK’s leading security and defense analyst firm IHT Markit observed in an April 2017 report that during the time period in which ISIS suffered its most crippling defeats, Syrian allied forces fought the terror group two and a half times as often as U.S.-backed ones. With the Russian air force providing Syrian allied troops with game-changing air cover, the battle against ISIS and other terror groups began to turn decisively in Syria’s favor. And, with that, out went even the “theoretical” justification for U.S. military intervention in Syria.

As ISIS and Al Qaeda are beaten back in Syria, the American conversation about what comes next is missing a most critical point. In terms of international law, Washington has gone rogue in Syria. Will the world take notice?

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics, based in Beirut.

Source: RT
Syria wants the US and its allies to pay for the destruction of Syrian infrastructure and to bear legal responsibility for “illegitimately” bombing civilian targets, Damascus has told the UN, demanding that the American-led coalition strikes stop.

The Syrian “Government insists that these attacks must come to an end, and that the members of this illegitimate coalition must bear the political and legal responsibility for the destruction of infrastructure in the Syrian Arab Republic, including responsibility for compensation,” the Permanent Mission of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations said in letters addressed to the UN Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council.

Stating that the ongoing US-led anti-terrorist airstrikes “continue to claim the lives of hundreds of innocent Syrian civilians,” Damascus claimed that the bombings had led to a “near-total destruction” of homes and vital infrastructure, including the “utter destruction” of oil and gas facilities.

The attacks, along with US and EU-imposed economic restrictions on Syria “are impeding the maintenance of those economic facilities and jeopardizing the prospects for development and reconstruction” in the country, the letters, written last week, said.

To support their claims, Syria’correspondence referred to two recent cases where the coalition’s jets destroyed oil and gas facilities. Damascus also said the May 27 bombardment of Hasu Albu Awf village in the Hasakah governorate, “completely” destroyed many homes and killed at least eight civilians, “most of them children.”

On Friday, the US-led coalition announced the demolition of a number of oil and gas facilities in various parts of Syria which allegedly belonged to the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group.

Targeting the terrorists’ illegal oil trade and jihadist infrastructure has been a cornerstone of both American and Russian strategies in Syria. But while Moscow coordinates its strikes with the Syrian government, the Washington-led operation has been harshly criticized for its indiscriminate bombing practices and doing so without communicating with Syrian government forces.

Damascus’ letters to the UN once again underlined that the American air campaign is being conducted in violation of international law, as it lacks any form of consent or authorization from the Syrian government.

Raqqa, known as the stronghold of IS, has been the main focus of the US operation in Syria, where Washington is guiding and supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

While the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve this month confirmed a total of 603 civilian deaths in the US-led air campaign in Syria and Iraq, Airwars, a UK-based group that monitors airstrikes and civilian casualties, claimed this week that it tracked “more than 700 likely civilian deaths” in Raqqa alone – even before the battle for the city began in June.

Source: Fars
Local sources reported a series of blasts at the positions of Tahrir al-Sham Hay’at (the Levant Liberation Board) and Ahrar al-Sham in Idlib’s countryside, adding that the explosions escalated tensions and insecurity across the region.

The sources said that 15 people were killed and several more were wounded in an explosion caused by a bomb-laden car in the Central part of the town of al-Dana.

In the meantime, a bomb-laden vehicle was detonated near al-Dana chechpoint, killing and wounding several people.

Also, another bomb went off at a bazaar in al-Dana.

The sources went on to say that another bomb blast rocked the al-Zabit neighborhood West of Idlib city, while a fifth explosion caused by an explosive-laden motorbike hit the Northern countryside of Idlib.

Another road-side bomb was blown up on the main road to the town of Kafroumeh West of Ma’arat al-Nu’aman, while, another bomb blast killed a number of people in the township of Tal Hadeh in Northern countryside of Idlib.

News websites affiliated to terrorists confirmed the blasts, saying that the targeted regions are now in a state of chaos.

Terrorist groups are accusing each others starting a fresh round of blasts and insecurity.

Reports said on Tuesday that the terrorist groups intensified assassination operations in Idlib after Doha and Riyadh displayed their differences and darkened relations.

After differences between Saudi Arabia and Qatar surfaced, Abdullah Muhammad al-Muhaysini, the commander and Mufti (religious leader) of Tahrir al-Sham Hay’at (the Levant Liberation Board), called on other terrorist groups to merge with al-Nusra Front (also known as Fatah al-Sham Front or the Levant Liberation Board) under this pretext that Riyadh wants to withdraw support for the militants and will surrender all of them to the US at the end.

He also asked Yasser Abdolrahim, one of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) commanders, to join al-Nusra but he didn’t comply with the demand.

Abdolrahim escaped an assassination attempt after rejecting al-Muhaysini’s proposal and threatened him of revenge.
Field sources also underlined that the terrorist groups in Idlib are facing a deplorable situation as assassinations have increased, adding that al-Nusra is using the darkened ties between Doha and Riyadh and wants to persuade other terrorist groups, including the FSA, to merge with al-Nusra by annihilation of opposition groups.

According to reports, Muhaysini has himself escaped death in two attempted assassinations in recent days, as the assassination operations against terrorist commanders has intensified in Idlib.
News websites affiliated to the opposition groups reported earlier this month that the car carrying al-Muhaysini came under attack near Ma’arat al-Nu’aman in Idlib on June 7 and he received a bullet in his foot.

Ten days later, al-Muhaysini narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt which resulted in death of one of his bodyguards.

In an attempt to assassinate al-Muhaysini, a suicide bomber blew up himself beside his car near Abuzar Qaffari Mosque in Idlib city center, but the mufti of Tahrir al-Sham Hay’at escaped death while his bodyguard was killed.

Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar, and suspended air and sea communication one week after the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, accusing Doha of supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East.
Later, Libya, Maldives, Mauritius and Mauritania joined that list of nation to break off diplomatic relations with Doha.

Jordan and Djibouti have also announced that Amman and Djibouti decided to reduce their diplomatic status after studying reasons behind the tension between Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Manama with Qatar.