Russia sets up air base in Qamishli, challenges US/Israeli air force control of northeast Syria

DEBKA 

The arrival this week in Qamishli of 50 Russian military trucks, 300 troops and hardware confirmed the revised US intelligence regarding Moscow’s military intentions in Syria, as DEBKA Weekly 869 first revealed on Nov. 8.

Until recently, US strategic experts estimated that Moscow’s interests focused on expanding its Mediterranean coastal footholds up to Libya, for which the Khmeimim air base was designed. This US assessment changed abruptly two weeks ago, when the first Russian military delegation arrived in Qamishli, capital of the Kurdish cantons in northern Syria.  

The delegation was first thought to be looking for accommodation for the Russian troops taking part in joint patrols with Turkey along a 10-km deep strip on the Syrian-Turkish border.  But when Russian officials were photographed closely examining Qamishli airport and asking Syrian and Kurdish officials technical questions, warning signals flashed. Moscow was now seen to be eying Qamishli airport for conversion into a major military airfield to compete with expanding US military involvement in the region.

The Russians were then discovered negotiating a 49-year lease for Qamishli airfield with local Kurdish authorities. That contract was to keep part of the area in civil aviation use, while a large section was to be closed off as a Russian military facility.

The deal is evidently now in the bag. DEBKAfile’s military sources report. Substantial Russian military forces have since arrived at Qamishli: 50 trucks with 300 soldiers, consisting of a combat contingent for securing the new Russian air base and an engineering unit to build it; Mi-35 and Mi-8 assault helicopters have also landed, as well as Pantsir-S air defense systems for stationing around the facility.

Loud explosions emanating from the site in the last few days indicate that construction work has begun for expanding the small Qamishli airport into a large air base able to accommodate the landings of Russian fighter jets and large air freights. Moscow has clearly decided against allowing the US military to play unchallenged on the strategic playing field of northeastern Syrian and negotiated a counter-bid with America’s own Kurdish allies.

November 17, 2019 | 2 Comments »
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  2. Trump’s buddy who was just the White House is still at it.

    Erdogan’s ethnic cleansing of the Kurds is still happening now – and we have Trump to thank

    Making life impossible for a civilian population can take other effective but less dramatic forms than the use of white phosphorus or roadside killings

    Mass expulsion or the physical extermination of an entire ethnic or religious community – ethnic cleansing – is usually treated by the media in one of two different ways: either it receives maximum publicity as a horror story about which the world should care and do something about, or it is ignored and never reaches the news agenda.

    It appeared at first that the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey after its invasion of northern Syria on 9 October would belong to the first category. There was angry condemnation of the forced displacement of 190,000 Kurds living close to the Syrian-Turkish border as Turkish soldiers, preceded by the Syrian National Army (SNA), in reality ill-disciplined anti-Kurdish Islamist militiamen, advanced into Kurdish-held areas. Videos showed fleeing Kurdish civilians being dragged from their cars and shot by the side of the road and reporters visiting hospitals saw children dying from the effects of white phosphorus that eats into the flesh and had allegedly been delivered in bombs or shells dropped or fired by the advancing Turkish forces.

    People wonder why armies with complete military superiority should resort to such horrific weapons that are both illegal under international law or, at the very least, guarantee the user a lot of bad publicity. The explanation often is that “terror” weapons are deployed deliberately to terrify the civilian population into taking flight.

    In the case of the Turkish invasion of Syria last month, the motive is not a matter of speculation: William V Roebuck, a US diplomat stationed in northeast Syria at the time, wrote an internal memo about what he was seeing for the State Department. The memo later leaked. It is one of the best-informed analyses of what happened and is titled: “Present at the Catastrophe: Standing By as Turks Cleanse Kurds in Northern Syria and De-Stabilise our D-Isis [sic] Platform in the Northeast.”

    Roebuck, with access to US intelligence about Turkish intentions, has no doubt that Ankara would like to expel the 1.8 million Kurds living in their semi-independent state of Rojava. He says: “Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll, represents an … effort at ethnic cleansing, relying on widespread military conflict targeting part of the Kurdish heartland along the border and benefiting from several widely publicised, fear-inducing atrocities these forces committed.”

    Continue article at http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=147525&fbclid=IwAR1Nildihj2dE38uCOq1LGmSDs2U8fr4t9szlF_NQhjAH5hNDdiRNSPffio