Free Republic

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian Kurdish forces and the Damascus government have reached an agreement for the Syrian army to enter the Afrin region to help repel a Turkish offensive, a senior Kurdish official said on Sunday. Badran Jia Kurd, an adviser to the Kurdish-led administration in northern Syria, told Reuters army troops would deploy along some border positions and could enter the region within the next two days. The deal underscores the increasingly tangled battlefield in northern Syria, driven by a web of rivalries and alliances among Kurdish forces, the Syrian government, rebel factions, Turkey, the United States and Russia.

ublic Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) warned that Iran is poised to supplant ISIS across Syria following the Islamic State’s military defeats over the past year, and urged the US to intervene to prevent Tehran from cementing its foothold in the war-torn state. Speaking at the Conference of Presidents’ 42nd annual Leadership Mission to Israel in Jerusalem on Monday, Erdan warned that while ISIS had been weakened militarily, Iran is positioning itself to reap the benefits. “Iran will replace ISIS,” said Erdan. “There’s a need for greater American involvement in making sure that Iran does not turn Syria into a...

QAMISHLI - US Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis on Saturday said that an attack by Turkey in Afrin, launched on 20 January, has no valid justifications in one of the strongest comments the US has made on Afrin up until date.  “While we understand their legitimate security concerns, as I've mentioned several times, that does not align with us concurring with attacks into areas that were not sources of violence before the attack into Afrin, for example,” he told reporters en route to Washington.    “We concur with Turkey on the need for locals taking control of the liberated areas, and...

MANBIJ, Syria — The large section of northeastern Syria once occupied by the Islamic State is now a rare safe area in the war-ravaged country, thanks to an American-backed coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. The coalition’s fighters, who with American help drove the Islamic State from the region, are Arabs and Kurds, men and women, young and old. Many are veterans of multiple battles and have been wounded, but returned to the fight again and again. Here are a few of them.

Speaking about Turkey's invasion attack on Afrin, Syriac journalist Jacob Mirza said that the Ottoman Empire launched similar kind of attacks before its fall. In an interview with ANF Turkish service, Jacob Mirza, a prominent Syriac journalist working for Suroyo TV, criticized Turkish attack on Afrin and said that the main reason behind the attack is Erdogan's loss of power. "Despite all the oppression, the arrest of the opponents and critics of the regime, Erdogan cannot stand in front of the popular opposition. Even the polls of Erdogan show that he won't win the elections in 2019" Mirza said. According...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian Kurdish forces and a monitoring group said the Turkish military carried out a suspected gas attack that wounded six people in Syria’s Afrin region on Friday. There was no immediate comment from the Turkish military, which has previously denied accusations of hitting civilians in its Afrin operation. Birusk Hasaka, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia in Afrin, told Reuters that Turkish bombardment hit a village in the northwest of the region, near the Turkish border. He said it caused six people to suffer breathing problems and other symptoms indicative of a gas attack.

Iran’s president has strongly criticized the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and urged Muslims to support the Palestinian cause. Hassan Rouhani also lashed out at the United States for imposing a ban on travelers from six largely Muslim countries. He was addressing a congregation after Friday prayers at Mecca Masjid in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad during his three-day visit to India. Rouhani called for unity between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam. …

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — The United States and Turkey pulled back from the brink of a potentially disastrous crisis on Friday, agreeing to normalize badly strained relations over Syria and other issues that had threatened the NATO allies' longstanding ties. However, details of the rapprochement were vague as the two sides agreed in principle only to form working groups that will begin meeting within the month to examine points of contention and try to resolve them. After talks in Ankara, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced the creation of new "mechanisms" to improve...

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Photo: Wikicommons. The US administration’s work on a new Middle East peace plan is “fairly well advanced” and President Donald Trump will decide when to announce it, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday during a visit to Jordan. Tillerson also signed a five-year aid package that extends US support to Jordan, a key regional ally, despite Trump’s threat to withhold support from states opposed to his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Commenting on the peace plan, Tillerson said: “I have seen the plan. … It’s been under development...

About 300 men working for a Kremlin-linked Russian private military firm (Wagner Group) were either killed or injured in Syria last week, according to three sources familiar with the matter. ...A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said last week that a force aligned with Assad, backed with artillery, tanks, rockets and mortars, had on Feb. 7 attacked fighters with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces near Deir al-Zor. U.S. special forces were accompanying the SDF forces that came under attack, officials in Washington said. The U.S.-led coalition in Syria retaliated, killing about 100 of the pro-Assad forces, according to...

Three days after Israel’s first direct confrontation with Iran on its northern border, concern remains over the growing danger posed by the Islamic Republic's growing foothold in the neighborhood. “Winter is coming from the north where we have a concrete threat,” Orit Perlov, a social media analyst for the Institute for National Security Studies, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview just days before an Israeli F16I was downed over the country by Syrian air defenses. “We know that Iran is trying to build an advanced weapons factories in Lebanon, to consolidate their power in both Syria and Lebanon and...

It was inevitable. Russian “mercenaries” attacked a forward base in Syria where they knew American advisors were stationed. It was a test. And our military passed. Let’s hope the administration passes, too. The most important thing about this attack on our troops is that it couldn’t have happened without Vladimir Putin’s personal approval. Nye vozmozhno. The core of the attacking force came from the Wagner Group, Russia’s version of the American thugs who worked for the company formerly known as Blackwater. But while the media refers to the Russians as mercenaries, the Wagner Group functions as an auxiliary of the...

F-16 jet was shot down on Saturday over northern Israel, prompting retaliation Israeli forces launched a series of bombardments against bases in Syria But Benjamin Netanyahu backed down after a call from Putin, it is reported Putin warned him against escalating the conflict in the region after Russia has spent years propping up the Assad regime Vladimir Putin warned Benjamin Netanyahu to back off from military strikes in Syria after an Israeli warplane was shot down in the region on Saturday. The Russian President told Netanyahu in a phone call on Saturday evening to avoid a course of action that...

Yelena Matveyeva was eagerly awaiting what she hoped would be her husband's return to Russia from Syria, where he had been allegedly fighting for months as a mercenary alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Spirits buoyed that he could be home in weeks, she decided to buy a new dress. While in a store in Asbest, their hometown in Russia's Sverdlovsk region, east of Moscow, she got a call from a friend. Matveyeva said her friend asked her if she had heard anything from her husband or Igor Kosoturov, another military contractor from Asbest. "I said, 'I haven't...

In recent weeks, rescue workers, aid groups and the United States have accused Syria of repeatedly using chlorine gas, which it possesses legally for uses such as water purification, as a chemical weapon against civilians in Ghouta and Idlib. France, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has struggled to wield influence on Syria. Critics who accuse Macron of inaction say he has not given a clear definition of whether use of chlorine would for him constitute a chemical attack. On Tuesday, the vice-president of the Syria Civil Defence, or “White Helmets”, volunteer force said France should stop talking...

Russian fighters were among those killed when U.S.-led coalition forces clashed with pro-government forces in Syria this month, former associates of the dead said on Monday. A U.S. official has said more than 100 fighters aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad died when coalition and local coalition-backed forces thwarted a large attack overnight on Feb. 7. Russia’s Defence Ministry, which supports Assad’s forces in the Syrian civil war, said at the time that pro-government militias involved in the incident had been carrying out reconnaissance and no Russian servicemen had been in the area.

Adviser to Khamenei says aid collectors for Palestinians sought to deploy reptiles whose skin 'attracted atomic waves' ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The former chief-of-staff of Iran’s armed forces said Tuesday that Western spies had used lizards to “attract atomic waves” and spy on his country’s nuclear program. It was the latest in a long line of incidents of Western countries, including Israel, being accused of deploying secret agents from the animal kingdom. Hassan Firuzabadi, senior military adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was responding to questions from local media on the recent arrest of environmentalists. He said he did not know the...

Sometimes when there’s bad news you just have to grit your teeth and bear it. Unfortunately, that’s what the U.S. has to do when it comes to the Syrian intervention underway from our erstwhile NATO ally Turkey. The good news is, Turkey’s meddlesome ambitions are sharply constrained — not just by the U.S. and its allies, but by America’s adversaries, too. Turkey, which continues to lurch further into authoritarianism and nostalgia for its bygone Ottoman Empire, recently chose to exploit the messy situation in Syria in hopes of gaining a big military advantage. The Kurds, who alone managed to break...

The Conflict Intelligence Team found the Russians "may have fought alongside pro-Russia separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine prior to joining the fight against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and other insurgents challenging Assad's rule in Syria." The group also found Russians killed "appeared to have joined the Wagner Group, a private paramilitary company, before traveling to fight in Syria. Last October, ISIS released a video showing two Russian-speaking men the militants claimed to have captured, and subsequent research showed the two men were likely Wagner Group members fighting in Syria." "While the total number of 'Wagner' operatives killed in...

Putin mentioned the call with Trump at the start of his meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Monday. He said: "Naturally we spoke about the Palestinian-Israeli settlement" and told Abbas: "I would like to convey to you his best wishes." Putin met Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu exactly two weeks ago in Moscow. Russia has managed to maintain robust relations with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority government, as well as Israeli rivals Syria and Iran.