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Comment by r721 | Hacker News Reader

The better link is the whole project page:

https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/

>Since the outbreak of war in Syria, weapons from Central and Eastern Europe have flooded the conflict zone through two distinct pipelines – one sponsored by Saudi Arabia and coordinated by the CIA, and the other funded and directed by the Pentagon.

>A series of investigations by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) have brought to light these multi-billion-dollar weapons deliveries -- exposing the misleading and potentially illegal documents on which they rely, the shady dealers at its heart of the trade, and the governments that have profited from the war.

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Anyone got a tl;dr about the motive behind all this? What does the US government gain by flooding the middle East with weapons?

Broadly, America has traditionally supported Sunni leaning states, most notably Saudi Arabia. Russia has traditionally supported Shia Iran, and both the powers are competing for influence within the region.

In the course of the Arab Spring, the legitimacy of many ME leaders/dictators was questioned, among the most notable of these was the rule of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. A popular local outpouring of resentment against his regime was coopted and inflamed by hardline Sunni extremists, many of these being veterans of the Iraq War or younger generations of recuits. This escalated into a full civil war, which quickly turned into a proxy battle for control over Syria, which heretofore had been a Russian proxy state, with a large air base.

While the United States has been arming anti-Assad (who also are notably anti-American) forces, Russia has been targeting civilian population centers (with both conventional and chemical weapons) to first create then inflame the Syrian refugee crisis, driving political instability first throughout Turkey then the EU - both sides seeking to ratchet up the pressure on terms favorable to them.

The tl;dr is a civil war turned proxy war is creating some of the most acute human suffering present in our world today.

Oh wow.

The refugee crisis unfolded years before Russia even entered the conflict. Accusing them of creating it now is silly. Nor did Russia have a large air base in Syria until last year. Nor did the Russians supply or use chemical weapons. In fact, they earnestly tried to do the opposite - take Assad's chem weapons away (though they obviously failed).

The thing about Russia targeting civilians is curious to me. Is Russia killing civilians in Syria? Sure. Are Russians doing it on purpose, as part of their strategy? That I am not so sure about. I suspect it has more to do with urban nature of the conflict, low-precision bombs, bad intel, and yes - I have to admit - the traditionally lower value Russians place on human life (including their own). But as a part of some grand genocidal strategy that Western press attributes to the Russians? Probably not.

Case in point, when US aviators were bombing Mosul, they were also killing hundreds of civilians in the process (see links below). Despite the fact, no one has accused the US of specifically targeting civilians. All civilian deaths were chalked up to mistakes, rather than evil intent.

But in Russia's case, it's a strategy. Beats me why.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-syr...

[2] https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-13/were-high-civilian-ca...

>The refugee crisis unfolded years before Russia even entered the conflict. Accusing them of creating it now is silly. Nor did Russia have a large air base in Syria until last year. Nor did the Russians supply or use chemical weapons. In fact, they earnestly tried to do the opposite - take Assad's chem weapons away (though they obviously failed).

Correct, I misspoke earlier - the Russians did not create the refugee situation - but they have certainly inflamed and weaponised it. In addition to targeting civilian population centers with indiscriminate munitions, they have also shut down legal asylum from Syria into Russia, claiming that Syria is safe for its residents. Again, it does this so the refugees are forced to flow eastward into turkey then Greece, despite Syria being a proxy state and Russia owing some form of assistance. They've compounded these issues by spreading disinformation in Europe, planting stories of fake rapes and murders by Syrian refugees in European media, again to sow distrust and create political instability. And I'm thoroughly unconvinced about the efforts of Russians to find and confiscate chemical weapons - they only agreed to the deal in the first place to mitigate the chance of Americans opening direct military operations after the red line violation, and as you've alluded to, there have been plenty of chemical weapon attacks since then.

And to fend of further misrepresentations of my words, I never said Russia's goal is to kill civilians - again their goal is to destroy their homes and communities, so that they are forced to become refugees. By closing its own borders it's making sure other countries have to bare the burden of its operations - this is what the NATO commander meant when he said Putin is trying to use Syrian refugees to break NATO.

"A popular local outpouring of resentment against his regime was coopted and inflamed by hardline Sunni extremists"

I seem to remember the Assad regime continuously arresting, torturing, and even outright shooting peaceful protestors for a number of months, which directly lead to the armed rebellion. Obviously, Sunni extremists would later hijack the opposition, but I feel that far too many gloss over Assad's role in starting the entire conflict.

"Russia has been targeting civilian population centers (with both conventional and chemical weapons)"

citation needed

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/27/499578650/...

"This year, UNICEF "said it has verified at least 38 attacks on schools around Syria, whether in government-held areas or rebel-controlled territory. Before Wednesday's attack, 32 children were killed in 2016 in attacks on schools," as the group's regional chief of communication, Juliette Touma, told The Associated Press.

"A total of 60 attacks were recorded on schools in 2015," she told the AP, adding that 1 in 3 schools in the country have been rendered unusable by the conflict."

"At least 96 children have been killed and 223 injured in eastern Aleppo in the past week, UNICEF said Thursday, with some left to die on the floor of hospitals due to lack of medical supplies. Syrian and Russian forces have been bombarding rebel-held areas of the city for five straight days in what has been described as the most intense bombing campaign to hit the city since the war in Syria started six years ago."

https://news.vice.com/article/un-slams-russia-syria-for-kill...

The reporting about Aleppo was a bit ridiculous (Aleppo must have more hospitals than any other city) compared to how our Media reports about Mossul and Raqqa. Go look up the numbers of how many civilians were killed by the anti-IS Coalition forces (btw it dramatically increased since Trump is in power). Only because the media is not reporting it in the same extent as in case of Aleppo doesn't mean it doesn't happen. War sucks. Plain and simple.

Also of note is the attacks on hospitals, al-Assad's very deliberate strategy of gassing civilian populations, Russia's use of non discriminatory weaponry such as barrel bombs, and especially their advocacy of political instability in Europe, including planting false stories of rape and genocide by muslims, and their cooperation with Erdogan in promoting said instability.

There's also the pipeline angle, which isn't a mainstream narrative, though I haven't noticed anyone trying to debunk it. Article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.:

https://www.ecowatch.com/syria-another-pipeline-war-18821805...

This is what people mean by strategic interest. But trying to say the Syrian proxy war is over a pipeline is saying the tail is wagging the dog.

The article says they are theoretically only arming groups that are fighting against ISIS. I'm pretty sure if they can defeat them on the ground without committing American troops (airstrikes can only do so much) and only spending $1 billion dollars they are going to consider that a big win.

The sentiment of this question explains why even further. ISIS does very bad stuff and is a major problem, and we can all wonder why the west doesn't do more to stop them because they clearly have the ability to do so. But then the moment the US gets really involved, everyone is going to shift blame to them for everything. I don't condone secretive actions like this myself, but considering the US's global influence and capability, if they weren't doing something about ISIS the question could easily be restated "What does the US government gain by allowing extremists to rape and pillage the middle east?"

"only arming groups that are fighting against ISIS"

Yeah, a lot of "moderate rebels" (that are slightly less theocratic than ISIS)

Unfortunately, the US military has transferred the Cold War strategy of "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" to radical pseudo-Islamic militant groups. That's not going to work so well because you might have two groups that have exactly the same beliefs except they gave allegiance to a different imam so they consider each other to be kuffar.

Yea. I think every employee of a 3 letter agency should be required to write a scholarly paper on the term "blowback" and have it peer reviewed before they get to spend any money.

The US already has troops on the ground, at least a few members of the special forces are working with the SDF/YPG on the front lines.

The war in Syria is a proxy for a battle between two countries: Iran on the one side, which supports Assad's regime, and Saudi Arabia on the other side, which supports the Sunnite rebel groups ISIS and Al Qaida.

Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US and Iran an enemy, so therefore the US supports the rebel groups that fight Assad's regime. What's more, US's close ally Israel is right at the border of Syria and Israel is a long time enemy of Iran as well.

Assad is also Russia, that's a pretty big deal. Its worth noting how this conflict also draws in people linked to Hamas and Hezbollah. Its suspected that part of ISIS's emergence was due to Turkey as they expanded towards the Kurds (a key demographic that Turkey is keen on subduing) so it really is a clusterfuck before we even start to consider US/Russian involvement.

Syria is also home to a large Russian airbase and contains strategically/economically important warm water ports - Syria is a very valuable Russian ally, probably why the prospect destroying that relationship is so enticing.

It's western policy to prevent any unified arab state to emerge from the middle east.

...not that the middle east needs the help dividing itself, but a pan-arab superstate would probably be bad news bears for the Med region

The answers to the question "what is there to gain?" are fairly obvious, don't you think?

No, otherwise I wouldn't ask.

Shitting on Russia's projection of power?

Proxy war against Russia and Iran.

This is the reason Syria was destabilized by the US. Natural gas to Europe. Period. This is not about Assad, the US is simply demonizing him to justify their destruction of another secular soverign country. Russia supplies Europe with almost all of its natural gas. This is unacceptable to the west. What the west wants is to drag nat gas up from Qatar through Syria to the med and north into Europe breaking Russia's strangle hold on their nat gas. The problem? Assad wouldn't play ball. He refused to allow the pipeline to go through Syria. That made him a target the US had to demonize with fictitious stories of savagery he committed against his people just like with every other leader in the Middle East the US murdered.

So the US government declared him a savage animal and wanted to overthrow him. The problem? Russia was Assad's ally. And they refused to allow that to happen. They have deep ties with Assad. As well as naval bases in Syria. So that resulted in a proxy war. The US aiding, arming, and training savage barbaric monsters aka Isis, aka Islamic barbarians to fight for them to take over Syria. And the Russians, who actually are on the right side, who are supporting Assad and fighting these monsters.

This is all about energy folks. Natural gas and Russia's strangle hold on europes nat gas supply.

When you understand this, the level of barbarism the US is engaging in puts the fedgov in a whole new level of depravity in most people's eyes.

do you have any sources for these claims?

http://armedforcesjournal.com/pipeline-politics-in-syria/

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/its-all-about-pipeline...

That took longer than it should have because of the stupid throttling at HN regarding posts. It's hard to carry any kind of discussion when you are limited to three? Replies per hour?

I wouldn't be too surprised if this is true. The USA wants to ensure that all energy deals are done using their "petro" dollar.Assad could have/is threatened to trade using euro , much like Saddam did(Iraq made a windfall from that decision when euro went up) before the Iraq war.Many people say that was one of the motivations behind the Iraq war.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/competing-gas-pipel...

Any better sources? ZH is notoriously sensationalist and often completely wrong.

Funds?

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