Ukraineaccusesrebelsoffiringonfleeingcivilians

Ukraine accuses rebels of firing on fleeing civilians as gov’t forces advance

posted at 4:41 pm on August 18, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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It’s been a tough summer for Ukrainian separatists. They finally got some heavy artillery from Russia and promptly shot down a civilian airliner after mistaking it for a military transport from Kyiv. They have had their forces divided and cut off in the eastern provinces as the Ukrainian military has gained the upper hand against their Moscow-supported uprising, while Russians dawdle on the other side of the border. Today, Ukraine accused the pro-Russian separatists of firing on a convoy of civilian refugees, killing women and children attempting to find a safe haven from the fighting in Luhansk:

An unknown number of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in an attack on a caravan of refugees in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, the Ukrainian military said Monday.

The civilians were trying to escape fighting between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian military but were not in an established humanitarian safety corridor when they came under fire, a military representative said.

The civilians were being escorted by the Ukrainian military from the towns of Khryaschuvate and Novosvitlivka when they were attacked at 9:40 a.m. local time (2:40 a.m. ET), the Kiev-recognized Luhansk Regional Government said.

A government representative confirmed that there had been “heavy gunfire” in the area and that the victims had been unable to call for help as mobile phone towers were down.

The rebels answered Kyiv in very familiar terms, to those who followed the Malaysia Air 17 story. The rebels denied that they had the technology to conduct the attack and accused Kyiv of being behind it, all while denying that an attack on a civilian convoy had taken place at all:

A rebel leader denied his forces had the military capability to conduct such an attack, and accused Kiev forces of regularly attacking the area and also using Russian-made Grad missiles.

“The Ukrainians themselves have bombed the road constantly with airplanes and Grads. It seems they’ve now killed more civilians like they’ve been doing for months now. We don’t have the ability to send Grads into that territory,” said Andrei Purgin, deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

Another rebel spokesman denied any civilian convoy had been struck, challenging the Kiev authorities to produce evidence.

Kyiv now says it controls the center of Luhansk, having taken control of the police station seized by rebels months ago. That has pushed the rebels to the brink, as Luhansk is their primary communications route:

Ukrainian forces have raised their national flag over a police station in the city of Luhansk that was for months under rebel control, Kiev said on Sunday, in what could be a breakthrough in Ukraine’s efforts to crush pro-Moscow separatists.

Ukrainian officials said, however, the rebels were fighting a desperate rearguard action to hold on to Luhansk – which is their supply route into neighbouring Russia – and that the flow of weapons and fighters from Russia had accelerated. …

If confirmed, the taking of the police station is significant because Luhansk has for several months been a rebel redoubt where Kiev’s writ has not run. Separatists still control sections of the border linking Luhansk region to Russia.

The news for Ukrainian rebels in Donetsk isn’t much better. Kyiv announced the seizure of small neighboring towns and the encirclement of another important rebel bastion. These advances have broken the morale of rebel leadership, according to multiple reports, and rebels may start trying to fade back into normal life rather than stand against the Ukrainian military:

Officials also said that Ukrainian forces have encircled the town of Horlivka and taken over smaller towns near the contested city of Donetsk. “The settlement points of Malaya Ivanivka and Andrianivka have been fully cleared [of rebels]. The settlement of Alchevsk is now completely isolated. Horlivka is totally blockaded,” a government statement said, according to Reuters. …

The government’s comments suggest it feels it has turned the tide in its fight to regain control of its eastern territory. The rebels do seem to be in some turmoil, according to various media reports. The Guardian writes that three senior rebel leaders have left their posts and the conflict zone in recent days. Both Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov, and Alexander Borodai stepped down from their leadership positions, and Mr. Borodai returned to Moscow, while Mr. Strelkov’s whereabouts are unknown.

The changes in leadership and advance of the Ukrainian Army have caused many rebel fighters to abandon their fight and return to civilian life.

The loss of morale may have to do with the curious lack of response from Russia. Vladimir Putin has been happy to supply weapons and infiltrate forces into eastern Ukraine, but rebels apparently expected Russian troops and columns of Russian armor to rescue them. If that was coming, though, it would have to be very soon, or not at all; Ukraine’s forces are recapturing ground and pushing the rebels into flight, and with that their claim to legitimacy.

Right now, the Russians can’t even get their aid trucks across the Luhansk frontier, although they’re still trying:

A convoy of Russian trucks destined for eastern Ukraine remained stalled near the border here on Monday, as the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany reported that talks in Berlin had yielded no progress toward a cease-fire or a long-term political settlement.

The lack of progress on a diplomatic resolution came as the Ukrainian military continued to press its crackdown on pro-Russian militants in eastern Ukraine, who now retain an increasingly tenuous hold on the regional capitals of Luhansk and Donetsk, which shares a name with the smaller Russian city where the convoy is now parked. …

With the rebels’ defeat seeming increasingly inevitable, Russia has repeated its demand that President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine order a cease-fire. Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Monday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, called on the United States and its allies to pressure Kiev to pull back its forces.

Later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that Russia and Ukraine had reached an agreement on transmission of the aid, but not on a cease-fire, and certainly not on a Ukrainian retreat. Nor will they get one, not with the current status of the rebel forces being near collapse and leadership “churning,” as the Christian Science Monitor puts it. Russia appears out of options in this war short of a complete invasion, but the longer they wait, the more obviously an invasion any military incursion will look. Putin gambled on getting eastern Ukraine on the cheap, and it looks like the gamble didn’t pay off. He may just be looking to cut his losses at this point and stay satisfied with annexing Crimea and securing his naval access to the Black Sea port in Sebastopol.

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Tags: aid, Donetsk, Luhansk, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

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Video:UkraineinspectsRussianaidconvoy—as

Video: Ukraine inspects Russian aid convoy — as armored vehicles cross the border

posted at 8:02 am on August 15, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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For the past week, Russia has insisted that its convoy of hundreds of trucks contained nothing but humanitarian aid for the people trapped by the civil war in Donetsk and Luhansk. At the same time, though, they had refused to engage the aid through the Red Cross, as Ukraine demanded as a condition of allowing the convoy to enter the country. Late yesterday, Russia relented and allowed the government of Ukraine to inspect the vehicles in advance on Russian territory near the border:

Russia let Ukrainian officials inspect an aid convoy on Friday and agreed to let the Red Cross distribute the aid around the rebel-held city of Luhansk, easing tensions and dispelling Ukrainian fears that the aid operation is a ruse to get military help to separatist rebels.

In violation of an earlier tentative agreement, Russia had sent the convoy of roughly 200 trucks to a border crossing under the control of pro-Russia separatists, raising the prospect that it could enter Ukraine without being inspected by Ukraine and the Red Cross. Ukraine vowed to use all means necessary to block the convoy in such a scenario, leading to fears of escalation in the conflict.

Adding to the tensions, a dozen Russian armored personnel carriers appeared early Friday near where the trucks were parked for the night, 28 kilometers (17 miles) from the border.

But the two sides reached agreement Friday morning, and 41 Ukrainian border guards and 18 customs officials began inspecting the Russian aid at the border crossing, defense officials in Kiev said in a statement. Sergei Astakhov, an assistant to the deputy head of Ukraine’s border guard service, said Red Cross representatives would observe the inspections.

Both sides also said that the aid deliveries themselves would be carried out exclusively by the Red Cross.

But was that just a sleight of hand, a trick of misdirection? Reporters on the ground confirmed that they saw Russian armored personnel carriers — not with the convoy but actually crossing the border, CNN reported this morning. Ukraine points out that they have been complaining about that for months, but this is the first independent confirmation:

U.S. and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russia of supplying weapons to the rebels and building up troops along the border.

A number of Russian armored personnel carriers were seen crossing into eastern Ukraine overnight, Leonid Matyukin, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Counter-Terrorist Operations (CTO) told CNN on Friday.

The vehicles didn’t constitute a Russian invasion of Ukraine, but their sighting supports what the Ukrainian government has been saying has been happening for months.

Technically it would be an invasion, but Kyiv’s point is that the invasion began months ago. They have claimed all along that the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is as authentic as the uprising in Crimea was, which was a wholly-owned operation by the Russian Federation. Some of the fighters come from Ukraine itself; there is little doubt that the Kyiv government is unpopular in the eastern provinces, but not to the point of rebellion for most Ukrainians, which is why the rebellion has failed. Most suspect that the leadership and much of the rank and file of the rebellion come from Russia, though, and the big surface-to-air missile system that shot down Malaysia Air 17 last month was definitely a Russian import.

The West and Kyiv worried that Russia would use the convoy as cover for a military incursion; this just looks like another way to use it as cover, by misdirection rather than camouflage. The convoy has another potential use as a way for Vladimir Putin to claim the necessity of protection if it enters a war zone. That’s why Ukraine wanted the convoy to come through an established government checkpoint, or at least to enter under Red Cross control. So far neither of those conditions have been granted, and it’s likely we won’t have heard the last of this convoy after they drop their cargo in Luhansk and Donetsk.

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Tags: aid, Red Cross, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

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Greatnews:Russian“aid”comingtoeasternUkraine

Great news: Russian “aid” coming to eastern Ukraine

posted at 10:41 am on August 12, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming — to eastern Ukraine, or at least their humanitarian aid is on its way. Ukraine and the West objected when Russia first proposed to send hundreds of trucks across the border into Luhansk and other combat zones during a momentary pause in the fighting. Russian television showed the fleet of shiny, white, and innocuous-looking trucks being loaded with food and other goods while diplomats fought over what Moscow’s true intentions are with this move.

What exactly are the words to “Convoy” in Russian anyway, tovarisch?

Earlier today, Ukraine refused to allow any of the trucks to enter, worried about a Russian pretext for war. Later, though, Ukrainian officials agreed to the transmission of aid — but only under strict conditions, which the Russians have not yet met:

A convoy of 280 Russian trucks reportedly packed with aid headed for eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, but Kiev said it would only allow the goods through under the close supervision of the international Red Cross.

A Ukrainian security spokesman said the convoy of vehicles was being managed by the Russian army and that it could not be allowed into the country.

The humanitarian crisis provoked by fighting between government troops and pro-Russian separatist militants in eastern Ukraine has reached a critical point in recent days and heightened the urgent need for intervention.

But Ukraine and the West have voiced concerns that Russia could use the aid initiative as a cover for sending troops into separatist-held territory.

“This convoy is not a certified convoy. It is not certified by the International Committee of the Red Cross,” said Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. “No military structures have the right to escort humanitarian aid convoys, especially into another state.”

The Red Cross has no idea what’s in the trucks. Russia did not involve them in the project, and the ICRC did not have the opportunity to inspect the cargo holds of the vehicles. Ukraine, which also insists that the aid has to come through a border checkpoint controlled by Kyiv — preferably as far away from the fighting as possible — said any attempt to bring the vehicles into Ukraine without government approval would be considered an attack:

“This cargo will be reloaded onto other transport vehicles (at the border) by the Red Cross,” Ukrainian presidential aide Valery Chaly said.

“We will not allow any escort by the emergencies ministry of Russia or by the military (onto Ukrainian territory). Everything will be under the control of the Ukrainian side,” he told journalists. …

The U.S., French and Australian governments voiced concern that Russia, sole international supporter of rebels in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east, could use the humanitarian deliveries to carry out a covert operation to help fighters who appear to be on the verge of defeat.

With Ukraine reporting Russia has massed 45,000 troops on its border, NATO said on Monday that there was a “high probability” Moscow might now intervene militarily in Ukraine.

The Washington Post editorial board urged the Obama administration and the EU to have another set of sanctions at the ready if Vladimir Putin’s convoy breaches the Ukrainian border:

RUSSIA AGAIN appeared on the verge of invading Ukraine over the weekend, this time in the guise of a “humanitarian operation.” President Obama and other Western leaders sounded the alarm, warning that the prospective intervention “is unacceptable, violates international law and will provoke additional consequences,” as a White House statement put it. For his part, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko agreed to a non-military relief operation under the auspices of the Red Cross that would allow for Russia’s participation.

Whether that would be enough to deter Russian ruler Vladi­mir Putin wasn’t clear on Monday. According to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, tens of thousands of Russian troops remained poised on Ukraine’s border; he said “there is a high probability” of invasion. Though a vacationing President Obama is already overseeing U.S. air strikes in Iraq, the United States and its allies must be prepared to act quickly if Russian military forces cross the frontier. …

Mr. Poroshenko is still offering a peace plan that involves a cease-fire and political dialogue on the condition that Ukraine’s border is sealed to further infiltrations of Russian weapons and fighters. That could perhaps provide a face-saving exit for Mr. Putin, but it’s one Moscow is unlikely to embrace unless its proxy forces are on the verge of defeat. That’s why the Ukrainian military operation should continue with Western support, including fresh aid for the army, and why the United States and its allies should do everything possible to deter Mr. Putin’s “humanitarian” invasion. What “additional consequences” can Moscow expect if it crosses the line? A robust package should be readied and telegraphed to the Kremlin.

The convoy doesn’t even have to include military supplies to produce the kind of provocation Putin has clearly desired for months. They can set themselves up as “observers” once inside Ukraine and block Kyiv from further military action against the rebels. If the Ukrainian military does proceed, then Putin can send in his troops in order to protect his “humanitarian” mission.

Whatever happens, it’s going to happen quickly. The West had better be prepared to shut Russia down economically when it does — and it would be best to “telegraph” that intention to Putin now, as the WaPo’s editors advise, in order to avoid the situation altogether. If Putin wants to donate aid, let him work through the Red Cross. Anything else is a thinly-veiled provocation for a European war that only the Russian media would miss.

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Report:U.S.airdropstostrandedYazidislackedparachutes,

Report: U.S. airdrops to stranded Yazidis lacked parachutes, exploded on impact

posted at 11:21 am on August 11, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Fun fact, per Michael Warren: The Jonathan Krohn who wrote this piece for the Telegraph appears to be the same Jonathan Krohn who spoke at CPAC five years ago as a 13-year-old conservative firebrand. Five years later, he’s a fellow for a Kurdish media company and eyewitness to ISIS’s most visible atrocity (so far).

Anyway. C’mon, we didn’t really forget to attach parachutes to the food and water we’re dropping, did we?

I was on board an Iraqi Army helicopter, and watched as hundreds of refugees ran towards it to receive one of the few deliveries of aid to make it to the mountain. The helicopter dropped water and food from its open gun bays to them as they waited below. General Ahmed Ithwany, who led the mission, told me: “It is death valley. Up to 70 per cent of them are dead.”

Two American aid flights have also made it to the mountain, where they have dropped off more than 36,000 meals and 7,000 gallons of drinking water to help the refugees, and last night two RAF C-130 transport planes were also on the way.

However, Iraqi officials said that much of the US aid had been “useless” because it was dropped from 15,000ft without parachutes and exploded on impact.

Krohn’s piece was also published today at the Daily Mail. The opening is identical to the opening of the story quoted above but the detail about U.S. aid without parachutes is missing. WaPo’s account of what’s happening on Mount Sinjar also mentions nothing about missing parachutes and exploded aid, but does have this:

Airdrops of food and water — which apparently went awry — were followed by airstrikes, including four on Friday that targeted Islamic State positions around the mountain…

The family took refuge on a barren patch of land, and for the last three days of their ordeal they survived by sharing bottle-cap amounts of water from the last of their meager supplies. Food dropped by U.S. warplanes landed between their sanctuary and the Islamic State positions and could not be reached. For three days, they did not eat.

That’s more plausible. My best guess is that American planes were forced to fly higher than they would have liked for fear of ISIS targeting them from the ground, so that when they released the aid, some of it drifted off course and maybe got smashed apart when wind blew it against the mountain. Veterans are invited to share their own, much better informed theories in the comments or by e-mail. In any case, the point of Krohn’s and WaPo’s pieces isn’t that the delivery was inept, it’s that it was too late. People were already dying in droves; the White House mulled humanitarian relief for days before acting. In fact, it was American airstrikes against ISIS positions around the mountain, not American airdrops, that ended up saving what’s left of the Yazidis. The ones who aren’t too weak to walk now have a path down Sinjar and into Kurdistan. The ones who are too weak to walk are also almost certainly too weak to avail themselves of any new aid that ends up being dropped on the mountain. They’re going to die there.

This also helps explain why Maliki’s coup is good news for the Kurds and Yazidis, though. Until now, the White House has clung to the idea that Iraq should remain unified and that all aid, especially military aid, should go through the central government in Baghdad. That’s one reason why the Kurds are undersupplied; Maliki’s going to siphon off whatever he gets from the U.S. for Shiite use. Now that he’s betrayed Iraqi democracy, though, the White House can cut him loose, refuse to recognize his legitimacy, and deal directly with the Kurds. That means arms (and maybe military advisors?), and that means a Kurdistan that’s secure from ISIS. If Maliki wants southern Iraq to be a Iranian protectorate there’s little we can do to stop him, but we can help build a counterweight in the north. Let’s get on with it.

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Tags: aid, Army, humanitarian, Iraq, ISIS, military, relief, sinjar, yazidi

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RandPaul:I’veneverproposedcuttingoffaid

Rand Paul: I’ve never proposed cutting off aid to Israel

posted at 8:41 pm on August 4, 2014 by Allahpundit

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I knew before reading the story that that was untrue because I remembered the clip where he talked about it. Alllll the way back in January 2011, right after Paul was sworn in as a senator, he floated a budget proposal that would have cut $500 billion in federal spending — in one year. That was his way of raising the bar after all the attention lavished on Paul Ryan for his “roadmap” to entitlement reform. If you want to see fiscal restraint, Paul seemed to be saying, get a load of this. It was a smart bit of branding, introducing himself as the tea party/libertarian hybrid who’d be willing to push the Overton window further right than any of the business-as-usual types already in Washington. And as the Overton window moved, so too would America’s approach to foreign aid. No more aid to anyone, Paul demanded. We simply can’t afford it. Does that include Israel, asked Wolf Blitzer? Watch the first clip below, from late January 2011, for the answer.

Yahoo News asked him the question again today. Result:

“I haven’t really proposed that in the past,” Paul told Yahoo News when asked if he still thought the U.S. should phase out aid to Israel, which has been battling Hamas in Gaza for weeks. “We’ve never had a legislative proposal to do that. You can mistake my position, but then I’ll answer the question. That has not been a position—a legislative position—we have introduced to phase out or get rid of Israel’s aid. That’s the answer to that question. Israel has always been a strong ally of ours and I appreciate that. I voted just this week to give money—more money—to the Iron Dome, so don’t mischaracterize my position on Israel.”

He’s never supported cutting aid specifically to Israel, I think he means to say, but yeah, he’s most certainly supported turning off the tap to the world at large, Israel included. You can understand why his memory might be “foggy” on that: Foreign policy is his biggest liability in the primaries and there’s no foreign-policy litmus test within the GOP as important as support for Israel, something Paul’s been at pains to demonstrate since he was a candidate. We’re close enough to the 2016 campaign now, I guess, that rather than try to explain his 2011 position with a “yes, but,” he’s opting for a clear if misleading “hell, no.” In fact, 2011 wasn’t the last time he supported ending all foreign aid, including to Israel; Dave Weigel’s catalogued a few other comments from over the last few years. Sometimes he frames the question in terms of Israel being wealthy enough to pay for its own defense, other times he uses the more hawk-pleasing argument that cutting aid would actually free Israel to hit its jihadi neighbors like Hamas and Iran as hard as it wants without meddling from the United States.

Either way, he no longer holds this view. Watch the second clip below from last week (via MFP) and you’ll see that he supports funding for Iron Dome. Maybe that’s because purely defensive weapons are more copacetic with his view of foreign entanglements or maybe it’s because, having tried and failed to convince conservatives that cutting aid could be good for America and for Israel, he’s decided to give in before 2016 rivals like Ted Cruz start paying attention to this issue. I tend to think he realized at some point that his larger project of cutting all foreign aid would face much greater resistance within the GOP if it included Israel, so by bowing to them on that point and building up some credibility with hawks now, they might be willing to support cutting aid for everyone but Israel later. Whatever the answer, though, if you’re skittish about Paul’s foreign policy you can take some comfort in the fact that, unlike his old man, he apparently can and will bend towards majority Republican opinion if crossing it imperils his career. In fact, read Leon Wolf’s post at Red State noting that this isn’t the first time Paul has flip-flopped on an issue for apparently political reasons. For most politicians, that would be a black mark. For Paul, who’s busy flipping towards mainstream conservatives, maybe it’s reassuring to the voters he needs.

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Tags: aid, Budget, cut off, Egypt, end, Israel, Rand Paul

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JoeScarborough:GlennBeckisfollowingJesus’splaybook

Joe Scarborough: Glenn Beck is following Jesus’s playbook in providing humanitarian aid to young illegals

posted at 7:21 pm on July 10, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Via the Blaze, I’ll leave the WWJD debate on this one to the non-atheists. Do note, though, that it’s not just centrists like Morning Joe who are backing Beck up. Erick Erickson:

I am a citizen of the United States and I appreciate people are yearning to breathe free in America. But I am a citizen of the United States and want our laws enforced, our borders secured, and these illegal aliens — some not yearning to breathe free, but here with other motives — sent home.

I am also a citizen of the Kingdom of God. And I want these people, particularly the children, to know Christian charity and love and to go home understanding that we are willing for them to come — but to come legally and lawfully through secure borders.

What Glenn Beck is doing is the kind thing to do. He is using his own money, while calling on the government to enforce the law. Conservatives and Christians can both want American borders secured and our laws enforced. But we should also be willing to show personal and private grace, mercy, and charity to the many troubled souls who have come here as they have.

The Dallas judge who agreed to house 2,000 illegal children in the county said this to MSNBC:

“I think that people need to put their partisan politics aside. If you want to listen to a leader, go ask your faith leader what you should do in a situation where children are alone and feel abandoned and are terrified in overcrowded conditions; where there are thirty children in a glass holding cell, pressing their faces against the glass so they can see their brothers and sisters who are moved away from them; where there are babies crying for their mother while being changed by border patrol agents and it smells like body odor because the children aren’t bathed more than every few days. And ask yourself: what’s the right thing to do? What does your Bible tell you? What do the words on the Statue of Liberty tell you? What do your American values tell you? If we stop looking at these children as others and invaders and aliens and we look at them as children and as human beings, then we’ll know how to handle this humanitarian crisis.”

Beck’s critics are mad because, in theory, the more comfortable we make it for illegals to come, the more likely they are to make the trip. All markets respond to incentives and the illegal immigration market is no exception. How much incentive is he really adding, though, by sending soccer balls and candy bars or whatever to the border? The feds are providing most of the humanitarian relief while these kids are in BP custody and there’s no plausible presidential candidate from either party who’d change that. You could clone Ted Cruz, run him on both halves of the ticket, and the most draconian thing he’d end up doing would be to push Congress to bring back summary deportations by reversing the law that entitles kids to stay here while they’re awaiting a hearing. The fact that, right now, they can stay (“permiso”) is the core incentive. Beck may be increasing that incentive, but marginally. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the amnesty shills in the White House and Congress who refuse to change that law for political reasons. The thought that her kid can play with a Beck-brand soccer ball for a few hours after crossing the border before he’s put on a plane right back to Tegucigalpa isn’t going to encourage a mom in Honduras to hand her eight-year-old over to a coyote. Believing that he’ll have de facto amnesty if he makes it to Texas might.

A better knock on Beck, I think, is to say that he should be doing this in a low-key way. He has an enormous megaphone, and this week that megaphone’s being amplified by media segments like this one by admiring centrists and lefties. If that filters through to Mexican and Central American media, that rich Americans are mobilizing to help the kids coming across, it really might add some marginal extra incentive on whether to make the trip. Better to provide the aid under the radar so that it attracts less attention. But the answer to that, I guess, is that Beck’s aiming for more than just his own private donation here; he wants to inspire his listeners to be charitable too, and he wants it known for political purposes that even big-name righties who support stronger borders aren’t the heartless caricature that lefties make them out to be. That’s fine, but the price of that is the added incentive to cross the border. Let’s not kid ourselves.

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Tags: aid, beck, border, central america, humanitarian, illegals, immigrants, Mexico, scarborough, security

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Report:Top“moderate”U.S.-backedSyrianrebelgeneralchased

Report: Top “moderate” U.S.-backed Syrian rebel general chased out of the country by jihadis

posted at 8:31 pm on December 11, 2013 by Allahpundit

So that explains that mysterious BuzzFeed report yesterday about the U.S. abruptly halting non-lethal aid to northern Syria. BF noted that jihadi rebels had overrun several Free Syrian Army installations near the Turkish border, including an HQ and some warehouses, but it wasn’t instantly clear why losing those facilitate would require suspending aid to the entire northern part of the country.

Now it’s clear. They weren’t just any buildings, they were the headquarters of the FSA’s top officer — and America’s man in Syria — Gen. Idris. The FSA has now deteriorated to the point where they can’t protect their commander on their own turf. Thus, presumably, ends the White House’s dream of building a “moderate” Sunni counterweight to the Nusra Front in Syria.

Salim Idris, the top Syrian rebel commander supported by the West, was run out of his headquarters in northern Syria over the weekend and fled to Turkey and then Doha after Islamist fighters took over facilities run by Western-backed opposition, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The Obama administration is still trying to determine the circumstances under which Islamist fighters in a group called the Islamic Front took over warehouses and offices belonged to the Supreme Military Council, or SMC, the moderate rebel umbrella group that coordinates U.S. aid distribution, officials said.

“He fled as a result of the Islamic Front taking over his headquarters,” a senior U.S. official said.

The U.S. is urging Gen. Idris, who left Syria for Turkey then Doha over the weekend, to return to Syria, the officials said.

The U.S. has supplied him with only small arms so far, or so we’re told. I guess we’ll wait to see what goodies from the warehouse the jihadi rebels start parading around with on the inevitable cell-phone YouTube vids to come. If you’re unfamiliar with Gen. Idris, he’s the guy who’s name-checked in every soundbite from McCain as the man who could make Syria safe for democracy if only we’d give him the resources he needs to win. And if you’re expecting Maverick to back off from that now, think again: The beauty of his brand of super-interventionism is that setbacks can always be blamed on America’s failure to intervene more aggressively. The lesson here isn’t that Idris is an unreliable or incompetent commander, overrun in his own HQ and then so reluctant to return that he needs the White House to beg him to come back. The lesson is that we should have armed him to the teeth ages ago, before jihadis began to dominate the rebel side. Whichever way you come out on that, though, the window for doing so now has clearly closed. Which means our choices in Syria at the moment are backing Al Qaeda or Iran’s boy Assad.

Semi-serious question: Are we now officially neutral? Or are we actually, if tacitly, pro-Assad? He’s been kinda sorta complying with demands that he give up his chemical weapons, for whatever that’s worth, and we’ve committed to six months of dialogue with his patrons. If, miraculously, Iran agrees to some comprehensive nuclear deal, it’s a cinch that our efforts to oust their man in Damascus are over. That’s why, I assume, the U.S. is nervous about Idris bugging out: Even if he can’t win, simply having him in the field is a bit of leverage that could be conceded to Iran as part of a nuke bargain. If we’re willing to look the other way at Iranian ballistic missile tests, surely we’d be willing to pull the plug on Idris and the FSA. Now that he’s been run out of the country, Obama won’t have the chance.

Tags: aid, Army, assad, fsa, general, idriss, jihad, lethal, mccain, Syria

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