position:military advisors

Russia can mediate a grand bargain on Syria – Indian Punchline
By M K Bhadrakumar – July 6, 2018
▻http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2018/07/06/russia-can-mediate-a-grand-bargain-on-syria

The prevailing impression is that Russia plays a hugely influential role in the Syrian conflict. But it is equally the case that there are serious limits to what Russia can do and/or is willing to do to influence the future trajectory of the conflict.
Russia and the US have managed through joint efforts to bring the conflict in southwestern Syria to an end. This has been possible because the Syrian government forces undertook the operations against extremist groups in Daraa province without involving the Iranian military advisors or Hezbollah (overtly, at least.) In turn, this provided Israel with a a face-saving pretext to swallow the bitter pill – namely, accept the fait accompli of the decimation of its proxy groups in the border region with Syria.
However, Israel still swears that it will ensure the rollback of Iranian presence in all of Syria. PM Netanyahu is meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 11 to discuss the subject ahead of the Helsinki summit on July 16 between President Trump and Putin.
What are the prospects of Russia playing ball with Israel and Trump to “evict” the Iranians from Syrian soil? Frankly, “zero”. When asked for comment on the subject at a media interaction in Moscow on July 4, this is how Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded:

Let us first agree on some basic things. There are many non-Syrian forces in Syria. Some of them stay there with the agreement of the legitimate Syrian government, a UN member-country, while others stay there illegally, in violation of the principles of international law.

Latakia Is Assad’s Achilles Heel - The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
►http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/latakia-is-assads-achilles-heel
Fabrice Balanche maintenant dans un think tank américain, The Washington Institute (une boite proche de l’AIPAC, il va devoir batailler pour faire valoir ses idées, le garçon...) ►https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Institute_for_Near_East_Policy)

Over the past few months, the Syrian army has grown weaker and lost many positions, a development that explains Russia’s recent deployment of troops. Previously, Russia had sent only military advisors and technical staff to support the Syrian army. Another key question, however, involves why these troops are being sent to Latakia and not Tartus, site of the official Russian military base. Indeed, this new, strong Russian presence along the northern Syrian coast can be explained by the Assad regime’s weakness in the area, where Alawites no longer constitute a majority.

#Syrie #Lattaqieh

In devising a plan in Iraq, U.S. looks to its Yemen model
▻http://www.chicagotribune.com/site/la-fg-obama-iraq-yemen-20140622,0,4478205.story

As they plan their response to the crisis in Iraq, President Obama and his top aides are hoping to replicate elements of an often-overlooked and relatively successful U.S. military operation in another war-ravaged Middle East nation: Yemen.

[…]

Obama cited Yemen as a model when he sketched out plans Thursday to send up to 300 military advisors to Iraq to help its struggling security forces beat back Sunni Muslim militants from an Al Qaeda splinter group who have overrun parts of the country.

[…]

“Yemen so far has worked,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former intelligence director at the Pentagon now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s not stable. It’s not clear what direction it is moving in, but the U.S. has exercised considerable influence there.”

Yet limits of the Yemen strategy are clear.

Despite an influx of military aid and nearly 100 drone strikes, plus about a dozen reported attacks with cruise missiles, since Obama took office, the U.S. effort has not eradicated the militant threat in Yemen, only contained it.

Political changes that might address the root causes of the unrest have been slow and uneven, despite a compliant and cooperative leader.

It is likely to prove more difficult in Iraq.

Why the ’Yemen model’ may not work in Iraq — or Yemen | Public Radio International
▻http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-06-25/why-yemen-model-may-not-work-iraq-or-yemen

Middle East watcher Gregory Johnsen thinks that’s a bad idea; he’s not even sure what Obama is seeing in Yemen should be called success.

“It just seems that the US doesn’t have a very good grasp of what’s happening on the ground in Yemen or what’s happening on the ground in Iraq, or how to solve either of these problems,” he says.

Johnsen says the US military strategy used to hunt al-Qaeda members in Yemen has been ineffective, or even counterproductive.

“About four-and-a-half years ago, when the US started this program of drone strikes, special forces advisors on the ground, al-Qaeda in Yemen numbered about 200 to 300 people. Now today, there are several thousand people. So what the US is doing in Yemen isn’t working.”

He notes that US drone strikes on al-Qaeda targets, in sparsely populated regions of Yemen, have led to civilian deaths and engendered ill-will among Yemenis. 

“The problem for the US is that if they can’t even hit the right targets in Yemen, when the targets are isolated, how do they hope to hit the right targets in Iraq, when the targets are sort of cheek-and-jowl with the civilians there,” Johnsen says.