February 20, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - Russia has called
Turkey's bluff of a wide ranging attack on
Syrian government forces. The Turkish president
Recep Tayyip Erdogan will now have to find a way out
of the Idleb trap he set himself in. His
excellent Syria adventure is coming to an end.
Meanwhile we learn that the British military
intelligence ran another large dis-information
campaign that brought 'Syrian voices' into the
'western' press.
Erdogan continues with his
wild rhetoric over Syria.
#ERDOGAN: "#Turkey cannot be confined within the
780,000 km2 border. #Misrata, #Aleppo, #Homs & #Hasaka
are outside our actual borders, but they are
within our emotional & physical limits, we will
confront those who limit our history to only
90yrs."
The Turkish talks with Russia have not gone well.
Russia had
proposed the following points:
1- 16-km border strip in Idlib under Turkey
control
2- Russia controls crossing between Idlib strip
and Afrin
3- M4 and M5 opened under joint Russian-Turkish
supervision
4- Retreat of observation points to border strip
Some ten of Turkey's observation points are
currently surrounded by the Syrian army. If Turkey
starts to escalate they will be in a dire situation.
bigger
Turkey
rejected the Russian proposal:
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Feb. 19
that talks with Russia on the northwestern
Syrian region of Idlib were far from meeting
Turkey's demands and warned that a military
operation there was a "matter of time".
"As with all [previous] operations, we say
'we could suddenly come one night.' In other
words, an Idlib operation is a matter of time,"
Erdoğan said. He was referring to the previous
three Turkish operations to northern Syria since
2016.
"We are entering the last days for the
[Syrian] regime to stop its hostility in Idlib.
We are making our final warnings," he added.
“Turkey has made all preparations to carry out
its own operation plans in Idlib."
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Russia
called a Turkish attack the worst case
scenario:
The Kremlin spokesman added that "if it is an
operation against Syria’s legitimate authorities
and armed forces, it will definitely be the
worst scenario."
Russia will continue contacts with Turkey in
order to prevent the situation in Idlib from
escalating further, according to Peskov.
"We are determined to continue to use our
working contacts with our Turkish counterparts
to prevent the situation in Idlib from
escalating further," he said.
Two hours after it published the above the
Russian agency TASS also published
this:
Two Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3 strategic bombers
have performed a scheduled flight over the
neutral waters of the Black Sea, Russia’s
Defense Ministry said in a statement on
Wednesday.
"During the flight, the crews covered a
distance of about 4,500 km and stayed in the air
for more than five hours," the statement runs.
Fighter jets of Russia’s Southern Military
District escorted the bombers during the flight.
The Tu-22M3 can fire
long range cruise missiles. The Turkish military
will understand that warning.
The Russians are also prodding Erdogan with
reports about U.S. weapon deliveries to
PKK-Kurds in east Syria:
“The US command in the region is intensively
saturating the territory east of the Euphrates
river with weapons and ammunition. Since the
beginning of 2020, 13 military convoys have
arrived from Iraq to Syria, which included over
80 armored vehicles and more than 300 trucks
loaded with various types of weapons, ammunition
and materiel”, Rear Adm. Oleg Zhuravlev said in
a daily briefing.
Reports now speak of more than
a million refugees in Idleb even as the pre-war
population of Idleb governorate never exceeded 1.5
million. Many of those already fled during the early
war either to government held areas or to Turkey and
beyond. Where are the million reported now supposed
to have come from?
The 'western' media is again practicing tear
jerking about these refugees in Idleb. But its
reports
forget to mention that al-Qaeda rules Idleb and
that it prevents the people from crossing the line
into Syrian government held areas:
In yet another lengthy, expensive, lavishly
illustrated story about Idlib, the NYT once
again failed to make any mention of the politics
of what is happening in that enclave of
northwestern Syria– namely, the fact that
well-armed jihadist/takfiri fighters from all
around the world have controlled it for the past
several years, while Syria’s government forces
have been battling to regain control.
In that latest article, as in all of the
lengthy, one-sided tearjerkers it
has published about Idlib over the past
year, the NYT has no actual journalists or
photographers on the ground reporting the story.
It is wholly reliant instead on
“stories” and footage it gathers from
unverifiable sources inside the enclave–
sources who notably never include any
mention of the jihadi armed groups that control
all aspects of life there.
Today we learn that many of these unverifiable
sources have been on the British government payroll
since at least 2012:
A number of leaked documents seen by Middle East
Eye show how the propaganda initiative began in
2012 and gathered pace the following year,
shortly after the UK parliament refused to
authorise British military action in Syria.
Drawing upon British, American and Canadian
funding, UK government contractors set up
offices in Istanbul and Amman, where they hired
members of the Syrian diaspora, who in turn
recruited citizen journalists inside Syria.
...
During 2015, Free Syria, Syrian Identity and
Undermine were funded in both British pounds and
Canadian dollars, with the equivalent of around
£410,000 ($540,000) being spent each month.
These 'sources' which were hired and instructed
by the UK government are the ones quoted in
'western' papers. The whole scheme, like the British
organized 'White Helmets', was run by military
intelligence officers:
Individuals familiar with the project say that
around nine companies were invited to bid for
the contracts. They included a number of firms
established by former British diplomats,
intelligence officers and army officers.
Although the contracts were awarded by the
UK’s foreign office, they were managed by the
country’s Ministry of Defence, and sometimes by
military intelligence officers.
These companies set up offices in Amman,
Istanbul and, for a period, at Reyhanli in
southeast Turkey. From here they would employ
Syrians who would in turn recruit citizen
journalists inside Syria, who were under the
impression that they were working for the media
offices of Syrian opposition groups.
The British intelligence also
hired journalists to write 'Syrian rebel'
propaganda stories. Britain also organized and
directed the opposition's spokespersons:
Meanwhile, other leaked documents seen by MEE
show that the British government had awarded
contracts to communications companies, which
selected and trained opposition spokespeople,
ran press offices that operated 24 hours a day,
and developed opposition social media accounts.
British staff running these offices were told
that their Syrian employees were permitted to
talk to British journalists – as spokespeople
for the Syrian opposition – but only after
receiving clearance from officials at the
British consulate in Istanbul.
One of the responsibilities of the press
offices set up covertly by the British
government under the terms of these contracts
was to “maintain an effective network of
correspondents/stringers inside Syria to report
on MAO [moderate armed opposition] activity”.
In this way, the British government
was able to exert behind-the-scenes influence
over conversations that the UK media was having
with individuals who presented themselves as
Syrian opposition representatives.
It wasn't just UK media who cited those persons.
The whole 'civil opposition movement' was, like the
'White Helmets', a well organized and paid British
government front. But when Turkey increased its role
in Syria the British dis-information operation began
to shut down:
British government enthusiasm for much of the
work appears to have begun to wane as it became
increasingly clear that the Assad government and
its Russian and Iranian allies were winning the
civil war, and funding for contracts began to
dry up.
Early in 2019, the Free Syrian Police, a
British-backed organisation, finally
ceased operations following a militant
takeover of Idlib province, much to the dismay
of civilians and civil society activists.
The Turkish government is also said to have
become less tolerant of the propaganda
initiatives being co-ordinated from its
territory.
One British contractor is understood to have
been expelled after the Turkish authorities
discovered she had entered the country on a
tourist visa.
That Turkey's government became less tolerant to
the British operation may also explain
the death of the British military intelligence
officer who ran the 'White Helmets' propaganda group
from his apartment in Istanbul.
This article was published by "Moon
Of Alabama"-
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