Detailed Lebanese & Lebanese Related LCCC English New Bulletin For September 12/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/newselias18/english.september12.18.htm

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006

Syrian War: Uneasy Calm in US-protected Kurdish Enclave
Jonathan Spyer/The Australian/September 11/18
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/syrian-war-uneasy-calm-in-us-protected-kurdish-en
The Syrian-Turkish border area in the early morning hours is calm and almost serene. Driving from the town of Kobane to the border crossing at Semalka one may get the impression that there is not much of a war remaining at all in the country.
Every few kilometres, to be sure, one runs into a checkpoint of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces or the Asayish security police.
But their close presence on the ground, for anyone who knows Syria, is reassuring rather than disturbing. It is evidence of solid central authority. Such authority is the best guarantee against the arbitrary activity of armed bands that for a while constituted the chief danger to foreigners travelling through northern Syria.
The forces staffing these checkpoints were partners of the US and the West in its almost completed bid to destroy Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The successful prosecution of that war led to the present reality in which the US and its partners are the joint de facto sovereign of a large, resource-rich swath of Syria.
The calm, however, and indeed the solidity of the authorities in whose name the check­points on the Kobane-Semalka route are staffed, is illusory. The Syrian situation is in flux.
Northeastern Syria, in which Kobane and Semalka are located, remains the largest part of the country outside the control of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. It is controlled by the SDF and its US and French allies.
The Assad regime has effectively defeated the rebellion launched against it in March 2011. The independent rebel enclaves in Deraa and Quneitra fell last month. Russian and regime forces are assembling for an offensive against the final area of independent rebel control in Idlib province in the northwest.
Once Idlib is secured, this will leave the regime in control of about 65 per cent of Syria. This area will include the capital Damascus, the city of Aleppo and another eight of Syria’s 14 main cities.
The SDF-controlled area east of the Euphrates river will remain the second largest area of control. There is also an area of the northwest likely to stay for now under direct Turkish supervision. This zone contains the remnants of the rebellion — Sunni Islamist militias now effectively working for Ankara.
The situation is not stable. Assad is determined to reunite Syria in its entirety under his rule. In May he said he would first seek to negotiate with the representatives of what he called the “temporary structures” in eastern Syria. But if talks failed, “the Syrian army will be forced to liberate areas occupied by the SDF, with the Americans or without the Americans. This is our land, it’s our right, it’s our duty to liberate these areas and the Americans should leave. Somehow, they’re going to leave.”
The authorities in the SDF-controlled enclave take this threat seriously. Their response, however, appears not yet fully crystallised. In the main, clarity is prevented by the larger ambiguity of US regional policy, American air power being the main guarantor of the enclave against an ­assault by Assad’s forces.
Are the Americans staying or going? What will be the results in either case? And what are the hopes and aspirations of the inhabitants of this small but strategically important corner of Syria as the war in their country enters its eight year? In late July, Inquirer travelled to the SDF-controlled part of Syria seeking answers to these questions.
The emergence of the Kurdish-dominated enclave east of the Euphrates is one of the least likely success stories of the Syrian war.
Before the civil war, Syria’s Kurds were among the most severely oppressed, and among the most invisible minorities, of the Middle East. Numbering between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of the pre-war Syrian population, they were prevented from educating or even naming their children in their native language. A section of the Kurdish population was deprived of travel and passport rights. Some, the so-called maktoumeen (unrecorded), lacked even citizenship and access to education.
The emergence of a de facto Kurdish enclave following the withdrawal by the Assad regime from a swath of the county’s north in 2012 changed all this. The enclave successfully defended itself against an early attempt by the rebels to destroy it. In 2014 the Kurds formed a de facto alliance with the US and the West in the war against Islamic State. This war, along with the regime’s (and Russia and Iran’s) war against the rebels, now is in its closing stages.
“The Syrian crisis has passed out of the hands of the Syrian people and is now in the hands of outsiders,” Manbij Military Council spokesman Shervan Darwish tells the Inquirer.
Darwish is speaking in his dilapidated office in a base in Manbij town. We have just witnessed a group of US special forces soldiers leaving a meeting. (Our Kurdish hosts told us to stay out of sight: the Americans are camera-shy and disapprove of civilians coming on the base.)
Manbij is a good place to begin to take the temperature of northern Syria. It is the farthest point west that the area of de facto Kurdish and US domination reached. Just west of the Euphrates, it is one of the points at which the rival camps now operating in Syria nudge up against one another. Darwish, with a laugh, describes it as “the Bermuda Triangle.”
“On one side, Euphrates Shield and the Turks; another side, the regime and Iran. And another side, the Americans and us. The situation is complicated,” he says.
Manbij was liberated from Islamic State by the SDF in a bloody fight in 2016. So far it remains under SDF control. The regime is just to the south, in al-Khafsa. The Turks and their rebel clients, meanwhile, are just to the west. The Turks regard the Kurdish ­forces as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is in an insurgency against Ankara. As a result, under US tutelage, in a complicated arrangement, the Kurdish armed element has withdrawn from the town. The non-sectarian Manbij Military Council is responsible for security. The Turks patrol a line to the town’s north jointly with their US-NATO allies. Assad’s forces and their allies wait to the south.
In the meantime, the town has come back to life. There is little damage visible a year on. The covered market is flourishing and crowded at midday. The civic council is noisy with good-natured bustle. One would not suspect that just behind all this normality a complicated and combustible international stand-off is brewing.
For as long as the Americans are patrolling the Sajor line, no one — neither Assad and the Iranians nor the Turks and the rebels — is going to seek to break in. But are the Americans staying? In March, Donald Trump vowed to bring home American troops within the year. There are 2000 declared US special forces personnel in the SDF-controlled area. The real number is probably twice that.
The US President’s statement added to the sense of insecurity. SDF officials and their civilian counterparts in the Syrian Democratic Council remain, at least for public consumption, optimistic about the possibility of a long-term US presence to underwrite their enclave.
Aldar Khalil, one of the top officials in the enclave, tells Inquirer: “It is not logical that the US will leave immediately or soon: after ISIS (Islamic State), the US will fight Iran. And they will fight Iran within Syria.”
From this point of view, the SDF enclave would be “folded” into an emergent US strategy to contain and push back the Iranians. “Many projects are in Syria — that of the Turks, of the Russians, of the Iranians. The Americans see us as the least dangerous, the most moderate,” Khalil says.
Mustafa Bali, chief media officer of the SDF, concurs: “US interests require them to be here,” he tells Inquirer, speaking at a dusty SDF base in the town of Ein Issa. “The US is concerned by the Iranian crescent” — that is, the desire of the Iranians for a contiguous line of control stretching from the Iraq-Iran border via Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea.
As SDF spokesman Nuri Mahmoud notes: “We have been in coalition with the US since the Kobane battle. There has been media speculation regarding imminent withdrawal. (Russian President Vladimir) Putin also once said that his forces were leaving, but the opposite took place. Syria today is a place of international confrontation in which all forces seek to strengthen their allies on the ground. The US will not leave Syria without stability on the ground. And we see no evidence of imminent withdrawal.”
These sentiments are to a degree supported by the latest statements of US officials. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, speaking in early June, said: “As the operations ultimately draw to a close, we must avoid leaving a vacuum in Syria that can be exploited by the Assad regime or its supporters.
A report on July 27 in Britain’s The Times, meanwhile, cited “Gulf sources” as confirming that Trump declared in his meeting with Putin in Helsinki that US troops would remain in Syria until Iranian forces withdrew.
The Times article also noted that national security adviser John Bolton told US network ABC that US forces would remain “as long as the Iranian menace continues throughout the Middle East”. All this sounds like a commitment that ought to offer reassurance to Washington’s Kurdish allies.
Actions, however, are a better guide than sentiments. And it ­appears the SDF-SDC leaders remain sceptical regarding long-term US plans. Last week, the first direct negotiations took place in Damascus between their representatives and those of the Assad regime.
All SDF and SDC representatives who spoke to Inquirer were at pains to point out they did not seek to partition Syria permanently. The talks with the regime, according to regional media, focused on practical arrangements in the fields of health, education, water and electricity provision, and the maintenance of the Euphrates Dam, captured by the SDF from Islamic State in 2016.
Ilham Ahmed, who led the SDC delegation in Damascus, told Inquirer: “We want to start with service negotiations and then move on to political negotiations.”
But while the prospects for practical co-operation seem real, the broader visions of the Assad regime and the SDC are entirely irreconcilable. Ahmed says SDC demands in the negotiations include “a decentralised state, federalism, democratic autonomy, all to be reflected in a new Syrian constitution. Also language rights, also oil to be distributed to all Syrians, not specific to this or that ethnic group.”
All this flies in the face of the far grimmer vision of the Assad regime, according to which the entirety of Syria is to be returned to its exclusive and dictatorial rule.
According to a report on the pro-Assad Al Mayadeen television channel, regime representatives in Damascus dismissed these demands out of hand when they were raised by the SDC delegation.
Al Mayadeen reported that regime representatives proposed a minor strengthening of existing laws regarding local representation and emphasised that only Assad’s military — the Syrian Arab Army — would be permitted to carry arms. Accession to such demands would represent a wholesale surrender of the SDC. But the regime’s positions as ­reflected here are entirely unsurprising and in line with its publicly known stances.
So the uncertainty remains. Ordinary people in the SDC areas are acutely aware of it, even as they go about their daily lives in relative security. Ali, an Arab fighter with the SDF, begins by dutifully repeating the official line, telling Inquirer: “There’s no way the regime’s coming back here. Of course not.” Then he adds: “Well maybe, just to provide services and so on, but not in force.” Before concluding, with a smile: “Well, if they do come back, I’ll need to get out of here pretty fast anyway.”
According to Hogir from Kobane: “People just don’t want another war. And they’d like to be able to travel throughout the country, to go to Damascus and the coast, to study in university.”
The effects of eight grinding years of conflict, not yet concluded, are there just below the surface. People tell, hesitantly at first, stories of the terrible summer of 2014, when Islamic State and other jihadis swept across the countryside.
This author was there at the time and the details of such stories are familiar. It is nevertheless astonishing to remember in detail the extent of Islamic State cruelty and barbarism: the public executions that families were forced to watch; the severed heads impaled on spikes at Raqqa City’s central intersection. Islamic State now has gone. In its aftermath, the prospect of capitulation or potential further conflict appears to be the unpalatable choice facing the residents of the SDC-administered 30 per cent of Syria.
Ultimately, all this shows once again the extent to which the “Syrian” war is no longer mainly about Syrians. Larger conflicts are being played out on Syrian soil. The Assad regime depends on Iranian involvement on the ground and Russian support in the air to move forward. The SDC is watching anxiously for the US decision that will make the difference between inevitable surrender and the possibility of resistance. To the west of its enclave are Turkey and its Sunni Islamist allies.
For now, at least, the action is to be conducted in negotiating rooms while the situation on the ground remains static. That is unlikely to remain the case for long. After eight years of bloody conflict, the normality of the market scenes in Manbij and the quiet on the road from the Semalka border crossing to rebuilt Kobane are deceptive. The crisis in Syria remains far from resolution.
**Jonathan Spyer is a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Strategic Studies, and a columnist at the Jerusalem Post. He is the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict.

Idlib assault may escalate Syrian conflict to new level
Maria Dubovikova/Arab News/September 11/18
The weak alliance between the three guarantors of the Astana process — Russia, Turkey and Iran — is being tested over Idlib following Friday’s summit in Tehran, with Moscow and Tehran rejecting the cease-fire Ankara called for. It is clear Idlib will become the apple of discord not only for the three guarantors, but for the whole Syrian peace process in general.
Idlib is the last stronghold of Syria’s opposition fighters, who are mixed up in the province with terrorists and civilians. There is an estimated 3.5 million people there, half of them displaced from other opposition strongholds taken by the Syrian government in the past two years. They all fled to Idlib after every truce that was reached throughout the country. This permitted Damascus to regain terrain and mass the remaining militant factions in one area.
International efforts, including those of the UN, to separate the internationally recognized terrorist gangs from the militant opposition have proved to be ineffective. This became the reason why all the fighters fled to Idlib together.
A political solution for Idlib appeared not to be in the plans of Damascus, Moscow or Tehran, with Russia’s stance being to eliminate the terrorists massed there as the first priority. Neither Tehran nor Moscow are talking about the inevitable mass civilian casualties in Idlib, unlike Turkey. But Ankara is concerned about Idlib through the prism of its own interests rather than through compassion for the Syrian people. Turkey expected to have a hand in the political settlement of the Syrian crisis thanks to the opposition groups it backs, whose fighters are also located in Idlib. Turkey hoped to achieve some compromises from Damascus, particularly as the assault on Idlib will mean an inevitable new influx of refugees across the border, adding to the severe burden on the Turkish economy.
At the end of the press conference following the Tehran summit, Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged his colleagues to include a cease-fire in the text of the communique, but that was rejected by both of his fellow leaders.
Though Russia, Iran and Turkey reaffirmed the idea that the Syrian conflict can only be settled politically, it seems such a solution might be buried under the ruins of Idlib.
Apparently the Russian tactics will be the same as in previous assaults on opposition strongholds: First to attack, then impose a temporary cease-fire and allow the opening of humanitarian corridors for any civilians willing to leave, followed by further assaults until all the fighters either die or surrender. However, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has asked the Russian leader to give more time to Turkey to separate terrorists from within the population of Idlib and mobilize civilians for evacuation. But his appeal will hardly be heard, as all previous attempts to extract terrorists from other masses have failed. Extremists are adept at using other fighting factions and civilians as a shield and they have no interest in surrendering, preferring to die in battle than be hanged or shot by firing squads for their atrocities.
It is true that Turkey is willing to eliminate terrorists in Idlib, whose presence is endangering the Free Syrian Army fighters it backs. Ankara would love to see extremists from groups such as Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham surrender to the FSA, but this has already proved to be impossible.
On Saturday, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey was “working hard” to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Idlib. Two days later, it was reported that a Turkish military convoy had arrived at Reyhanli, close to the country’s border with Syria’s Idlib governorate. The Turkish military presence on the border with Syria has significantly increased recently and it looks like Turkey is ready to halt any advance by the Syrian army and allied forces on Idlib. Ankara has already 12 military observation points within Idlib province, which were established in the framework of the earlier de-escalation agreement.
The international community is also opposing any military assault on Idlib, covering up their purely political interests and concerns with raised voices about preventing a humanitarian catastrophe — a favorite card played by the West when it needs to win a media war. But Western nations ignore such issues when they might work against them, such as in Raqqa and Mosul. US officials claim they have evidence that the Syrian government is preparing to use chemical weapons, while Russia has warned that it is the terrorists in Idlib who are preparing a chemical attack in order to blame Damascus and give Western powers a pretext to intervene. The West says Russia would be held responsible if a massacre occurs.
The trilateral meeting in Tehran had been perceived as a final chance to prevent a large-scale battle in Idlib, but everything has failed. Though the joint communique following the summit reaffirmed the adherence of the three countries to the idea that the Syrian conflict can only be settled politically, it seems the political solution might be buried under the ruins of Idlib.
We are standing on the brink of an enormous escalation that might result in a full-scale war involving not only regional, but global players too. One provocation might result in an explosion that could bring the conflict to a level of violence and bloodshed not seen before.
*Maria Dubovikova is a prominent political commentator, researcher and expert on Middle East affairs. She is president of the Moscow-based International Middle Eastern Studies Club (IMESClub). Twitter: @politblogme

UNRWA needs support amidst US' assault on refugees
Gordon Brown/Arab News/September 11/18
The decision by US President Donald Trump’s administration to stop funding the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has politicized humanitarian aid, threatens to add yet more fuel to one of the world’s most combustible conflicts, and jeopardizes the futures of half a million Palestinian children and young people.
Originally created to deliver basic assistance to refugees displaced during the creation of the Israeli state, UNWRA has provided healthcare, employment, and emergency food and shelter for displaced Palestinians since 1949. Today, nearly 2 million refugees receive emergency food and cash assistance from the organization, and each year millions use the 143 UNRWA-run health clinics.
But the majority of UNRWA’s budget goes toward educating children and young people, half of them in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and the rest in Gaza and the West Bank. UNRWA runs nearly 700 schools, serving more students than any other UN organization. Some 75 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip receives some form of UNRWA assistance, and 60 percent of Gaza’s children from first to ninth grade attend UNRWA schools.
Without aid from the US, however, UNRWA’s ability to deliver its most valuable service will be severely diminished. This directly contradicts the commitment made by world leaders, as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, to ensure that every child is in school by 2030.
Though UNRWA has more than 100 donors, almost a quarter of its total budget — nearly $400 million annually — previously came from the US. In fact, for nearly 70 years the US has been UNRWA’s most generous and reliable donor, with both Republican and Democratic administrations recognizing the organization’s value. Now, UNRWA’s other donors are under pressure to bridge the funding gap. And some donors are already stepping up.
In Germany, UNRWA’s third-largest funder, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas recently announced that the government is “currently preparing to provide an additional amount of significant funds” to the organization. Similarly, the UK has just added £7 million ($9 million), bringing its total contribution for the current year to £45.5 million.
US defunding of UNRWA politicizes humanitarian aid, threatens to add yet more fuel to one of the world’s most combustible conflicts, and jeopardizes the futures of half a million Palestinian children.
Sweden recently committed $206 million of non-earmarked funding over the next four years. The EU, UNRWA’s second-largest donor, has provided an advance on this year’s funding and pledged to maintain its contribution in 2019 and 2020. Other donors — such as Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, and Switzerland — have also agreed to front-load their funding.
This is good news, but we will need to do more to offset the coming loss of US support at a time when budgets are already strained by the fast-increasing humanitarian needs of the world’s other 60 million displaced people, including more than 20 million refugees (a post-World War II record). Likewise, the Education Cannot Wait fund, established in 2016 to help children and young people affected by wars and emergencies, must now consider 40 separate emergencies and protracted crises. As yet, the organization, led by Yasmine Sherif, lacks the necessary funding to help close the huge financing gap.
Beyond substantially reducing UNRWA’s capacity to deliver basic services to Palestinian refugees, the shortage of resources will also threaten the already tenuous stability of the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. As Maas put it, “the loss of this organization could unleash an uncontrollable chain reaction.” Kids would be pushed from UNRWA classrooms on to the streets, where they would be more vulnerable to dangerous scenarios such as recruitment efforts by terrorists, who will surely jump at the chance to argue that, if we can’t keep our aid promises, peaceful coexistence with the West is impossible. Child marriage, child labor, and child trafficking would rise. A generation of children and young people would be lost in a region more unstable than ever.
The Trump administration has offered a number of imaginative but unconvincing justifications for its decision. For example, it claims that other countries should have been paying more for a long time. But, even if that were true, it would hardly justify the sudden elimination of all support. The administration also asserts that UNRWA is inflating the number of Palestinian refugees, not all of whom deserve the “right to return” (a major sticking point in peace negotiations with Israel), and that the organization has outlived its usefulness. But, again, the argument is not convincing.
To be sure, UNRWA has long been criticized by some for passing down refugee status across generations since 1948. The Trump administration is now considering a proposal to restrict the right of return from five million Palestinians to a few hundred thousand. But, in response, it is argued that the practice of defining refugees’ descendants as refugees themselves is in accordance with international conventions governing refugee rights, as well as with international human rights and humanitarian law and the approach taken by the UN Refugee Agency.
The fact is that, since UNRWA was created, the UN General Assembly, including the US, has not only renewed its mandate every three years, but also extolled its performance. An overwhelming majority of UN member states, recognizing the unique role UNRWA plays in a volatile region, have consistently recognized the need to provide it with robust financial support.
As the world continues to seek an agreement for lasting peace in the Middle East, UNRWA (under the reforming leadership of Pierre Krahenbuhl) is an important stabilizing influence and humanitarian force that advances the cause of peace. Palestinian refugee children are already deeply disadvantaged. If UNRWA is not given the support it needs, these children and their societies will pay an even heavier price.
*Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, is United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity. He chairs the Advisory Board of the Catalyst Foundation. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2018. www.project-syndicate.org