MAR-MSY-RU:160205:(05-FEB-16 D):Putin Shapes Chechen-Style Regime for Syria after Assad’s Exit 1
MAR-MSY-RU-US:160205:(05-FEB-16 D):US & Russia Prepare to Massively Obliterate ISIS in Syria. 2
MAR-MSY-RU:160205:(05-FEB-16 D):“Little Syria” Awaits Bashar Assad in Moscow Exile. 5
IS-RU:160205:(05-FEB-16 D):Some Israeli Generals Are Strangely Prone to “Russification”. 6
The two men who bear the heaviest responsibility for the five years of bloodletting in Syria are poised to flee the country – a bitterly ironic development revealed here by DEBKA Weekly.
Bashar Assad, his extended family, his brother the general, and a drove of close cronies in high positions, have started packing their bags ready to relocate to Moscow. In another part of Syria, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed Caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is set to abandon his bloody realm and flee to more hospitable climes – either AQAP turf in Yemen, or AQIM-controlled regions in the Sahara Desert. (More about this in another article) Damascus is buzzing with President Vladmir Putin’s plan to force the Assads and their hangers-on to depart the country by mid-2016 – or thereabouts – and go into exile in Russia. And another historic irony finds Russia’s FSB and GRU intelligence services helping the Assads prepare their departure, 37 years after a team of CIA agents secretly assisted the Shah of Iran and family to wind up his affairs in Tehran and flee Ayatollah Khomeni’s Islamic Revolution that was overrunning the country. Moscow was Assad’s final, but not only, choice of exile. He declined a recent invitation from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to settle down in Tehran. Unlike previous offers, our Iranian sources report, this time, Khamenei was willing to allow Assad to engage in political activity from Tehran. The supreme leader had decided that the exiled Syrian ruler would be useful for countering Russia’s approaching takeover of the levers of power in Damascus. His machinations would also silence circles in Tehran, starting with the Revolutionary Guards generals, who had long warned that giving the Russians too free a hand in Syria would boomerang against Iran’s interests and national security. Since the Russian and US presidents started colluding on a plan for ending the Syrian war, influential Iranian sources circles maintain that Tehran paid too high a price for the nuclear accord extracted from Iran by the US. Having settled on Moscow as Assad’s place of exile, the Russians and his underlings are make every effort to make his exit from the Syrian stage organized and dignified – not like the abject flight of a ruler on the run. An estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Syrians will go into exile with him – cabinet ministers, Baath party politicians, military commanders (in fear of war crimes trials), secret service chiefs, and tycoons whose wealth derives from their Assad connections. The absconding Syria ruler stipulated as a condition for leaving that a portion of the national financial reserves be transferred in his name to banks of his choosing. Western spy agencies are tracking those transfers to monitor his preparations for departure. In his new home, Assad will be barred from political activity – but not from engaging in international business transactions. A suburb of Moscow, dubbed “Little Syria,” has been set aside for these “refugees.” But in case the Moscow location doesn’t work out for some reason, Russia’s secret services are also preparing an alternative venue for the Assad clan in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. |
IS-RU:160205:(05-FEB-16 D):Some Israeli Generals Are Strangely Prone to “Russification”Debka 05-Feb-16 |
The Obama administration, concerned by the possible Kurdish secession from Syria and fall under Russian influence, dispatched a key official to the war zone of northern Syria last weekend.
Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama’s envoy to the coalition against ISIS, visited northern Syria from January 31 to February 1. His delegation, which included British and French officials, first toured the Kurdish enclave of Kobani on the Syria-Turkey border. They then met with leaders of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG militia, which has taken on the Islamic State in successful battles. McGurk was the first American official to set foot in Syria since the US launched air strikes against ISIS targets last year. But, according to DEBKA Weekly’s intelligence sources, the war on the Islamic terrorists was not the delegation’s focal point of interest, but rather to find out how far Syrian Kurdish chiefs were willing to cooperate with the post-Assad regime, which Russian plans to install in Damascus later this year with US backing. In other words, will the Kurdish enclaves remain part of Syria? Or will they secede and link up with the Kurdish autonomous republic of Iraq, to form an independent Kurdish state? As an incentive to refrain from secession, McGurk assured Kurdish chiefs they would be granted a measure of autonomy under the future regime in Damascus. The visitors were also concerned to find out if the Kurds had accepted the offer coming from a Russian delegation to stock their arsenals with the weapons systems American had so far withheld under pressure from Turkey and Iraq. Russian officials made this offer last month while visiting Qamishli, just a few kilometers from the Turkish border The Kurdish question holds the seeds of a potential schism between Obama and Putin, whose accord for ending the Syrian war is still in its early stages of implementation. McGurk, who led the US negotiators for shaping this accord, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, Putin’s special envoy for the Middle East, had agreed to give Moscow a free hand for lining up Syria’s mixed minorities, in the interests of government stability in Damascus. In those interests, preserving the framework of central government and maintaining Syria’s territorial integrity are deemed paramount in Washington. To ensure stability in the post-Assad era, the Russians need the Kurds (a minority of three million which account for 15 percent of the population) to participate in the new government, or at least offer guarantees not to disrupt it. But the Syrian Kurdish leaders are refusing this commitment for three reasons: 1. Neither Washington nor Moscow promises them a seat on the future ruling council in Damascus. The PYD and YPG were not invited to the Geneva conference this week, even through Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said they would be. 2. The Kurds are not sure President Obama will protect them from the ire of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his army. PYD leader Saleh Muslim accused Ankara of blocking the invitation and facing no resistance from Washington. 3. President Masoud Barazani, of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq (KRG), advised his Syrian compatriots not to trust either the Americans or the Russians. He said that cooperation between the two communities was the key to reaching their goal of independence. And both big powers need the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and the Syrian YPG to drive ISIS out and capture its strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa. Given this standoff, Washington’s main concern now is that Russia will move fast to give the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish armies the tanks, missiles, helicopters and planes which the US has withheld from them. This step may well accelerate the rise of a pro-Russian Kurdish state of 12 million inhabitants across northern Iraq and northern Syria. This prospect not only scares Ankara and Baghdad, but would also jeopardize future plans for Damascus. |