LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
February 14/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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The Regional Dimensions of the Syrian Conflict
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/February 13/18
The Russian-American dispute in Ukraine and other areas of competition can also be seen in Syria. Iran’s project to control the Arab north all the way to Turkey’s border is going as planned, just like it’s been warned.
Turkey’s worry that the crisis will spill over into its territories led it to shift its defensive policy to an offensive one by launching an operation in Syria’s Afrin. Israel has also become a major party in the war there.
It is normal for the region to be affected by the quick developments and the power struggles in Syria. The neighboring countries or Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, as well as the Arab Gulf and Iran are likely to suffer the consequences of the conflict.
The Iranians have intentionally opened the Yemeni front against Saudi Arabia to weaken and get it out of the conflict in Syria so they can easily win there. We must admit that they succeeded at that.
Yemen’s developments are a result of the severe regional conflict and they show that letting Iran take over Syria, Lebanon and Iraq will not simply end there. Iran’s control over Lebanon enabled it to take over Syria by using “Hezbollah,” which it nurtured to be its regional force. Iran also used some Lebanese institutions to support its operations in Syria and it used Lebanon to support its Yemeni proxy, the Houthis.
The conflict in Syria is open to all possibilities as the recent clashes can either serve as a positive factor that forces all major parties to agree on solutions that avoid direct wars and minimize losses or they can have negative results and expand the conflict.
The latter scenario is more likely to happen. Although the US secretary of defense reiterated that they are militarily present in Syria to confront ISIS, this does not deny the fact that fighting terrorism calls for confronting Iranian and Syrian powers that used organizations, like ISIS, to justify their military activity against civilians. They have even allied themselves with terror groups against Syrian rebels.
I think when controlling the conflict between Russia, the US, Iran, Turkey and Israel fails, then Iraq will be the most vulnerable to danger. It is still recovering from its many battles with ISIS, the Kurdish secession bid and the increased divisions between sectarian powers, which include Shi’ites, Sunnis and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). These divisions are like a time bomb that threatens the central authority.
Turkey is also more vulnerable to danger if it engages in battles against the Syrian regime’s allies or if it insists on pursuing Kurds who are allied with the US. Israel is in the eye of the storm as well, but it has enough power and alliances that make it less vulnerable to threats despite the blow it was dealt with the downing of one of its jets and the Iranians’ infiltration of its airspace.
We cannot discuss the repercussions of the conflict in Syria without stating that Iran itself is vulnerable to danger. Iran resembles a glass house following the protests, which erupted in dozens of cities and raised slogans demanding its withdrawal from Syria and suspend financial and military support to regime allies, the Lebanese “Hezbollah” and the Hamas Movement in Gaza.
The expansion of the war in Syria threatens the Khamenei regime in Tehran because it will lead to more bloodshed, money and defeats. The Iraqi war in the last decade proved that the entire region is vulnerable to conflict and divisions no matter how much it looks like it is controlled by clear rules of engagement.
Guaranteeing the security and stability of countries that are surrounded with war lies in believing in collective security and putting an end to greedy and expansive political projects.

The Odds of Fixing US Infrastructure Just Got Better
Barry Ritholtz/Bloomberg/February 13/18
After all the complaints I have made about the need for a big improvement in American infrastructure, I am genuinely excited by the prospect that something might happen this time.
My optimism isn’t the result of President Donald Trump’s claim in last night’s State of the Union address that he’s interested in an infrastructure program; history teaches us that the speech offers little guidance in whether future projects come to fruition. 1 Rather, my optimism springs from a schism between two of the major players on the political right, who disagree about things like taxes, spending and the role of government.
On one side is Tom Donohue, president of the US Chamber of Commerce; on the other is Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. Both have unimpeachable conservative bona fides.
Two weeks ago, Donohue proposed a big infrastructure plan, including a 25-cent-a-gallon increase -- phased in over five years -- in the federal tax that supports the Highway Trust Fund. The chamber has made a substantial push for this, issuing position papers and even setting up a separate website, letsrebuildamerica.com. Just as an aside, the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon isn’t indexed to inflation and hasn’t been raised since 1993. In today’s dollars, the tax is equal to about 10.8 cents.
Norquist opposes this tax increase along with any and all others, and has expressed opposition to states that want to raise their own gas taxes.
Norquist has helped to kill every infrastructure bill proposed for more than a decade. That is why I have suggested in the past that you should be sending your auto repair bills for flat tires, broken axles and other damage resulting from neglected infrastructure directly to him.
The Chamber was at best lukewarm in its past support for a big infrastructure bill, suggesting “increasing the federal gas tax as the simplest, fairest and most straightforward way to raise more money for projects.” The new position is a much bigger, bolder and more vocal proposal. Such taxes are opposed not only by Norquist, but also by the influential Koch political network. Koch Industries, by the way, is a major energy producer, so I guess it’s not too surprising that it opposes tax increases on one of its main products.
The Chamber’s positions on climate change, minimum wages and the fiduciary rule for retirement-savings accounts have been woefully out of step with America’s business community. As I’ve said before, the Chamber often look more like a conservative think tank than an advocate for business interests. And yet businesses generally support infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. So this shift seems to be a realignment of the Chamber with its members’ interests.
The Chamber’s proposal strikes me as particularly enlightened. In addition to raising the tax by 25 cents a gallon by 2024, the Chamber also calls for it to be indexed to inflation. The failure to do this originally is one of the reasons the Highway Trust Fund has been running out of money the past few years. In total, Donohue’s proposal would raise about $400 billion over the next decade. That’s not enough to fix everything that needs to be repaired, but it’s certainly a good start.
If the U.S. wants to stay competitive with China and other advanced or even developing countries, it needs a modern, robust transportation system; efficient mass transit; an advanced electrical grid, broadband, cellular networks; and a state-of-the-art shipping and port system. Despite pioneering many of these public-sector programs, the U.S. has fallen far behind other industrial nations and will fall even further behind unless dramatic reforms are adopted. It is long past due that America modernizes its infrastructure. We may have a glimmer of a shot at it this time.

How Elon Musk Beat Russia's Space Program
Leonid Bershidsky/Bloomberg/February 13/18
Nowhere did Tuesday's launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket echo as powerfully as in Russia. The private US company continues to produce technical feats on which the Russian space industry has given up: First the consistent reuse of rockets, and now the successful launch of a rocket with as many as 27 engines.The Soviet Union tried something similar in the 1960s and early 1970s. Sergei Korolev, the rocket designer who launched the first satellite and the first man into space, began the development of what came to be known as the N-1, a 30-engine superheavy rocket capable of taking a 75-ton space station to orbit and perhaps to the Moon, Mars and Venus. Finished after Korolev's death in 1966, the N-1 was test-launched four times. Each of the launches failed, largely because of the difficulty of running so many engines at the same time. Now SpaceX has pulled off a similar task, and even though it's not clear yet who will contract for the Falcon Heavy's services, SpaceX founder Elon Musk now has the most capable missile in the world: It can deliver up to 64 tons into orbit. Russia's plans to build such a rocket, capable of flying to the Moon or to Mars, aren't even complete yet, and certainly not fully funded, though Igor Komarov, head of Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, has promised a first launch in 2028. Even China is likely to have a superheavy launch vehicle before Russia. But it's the success of upstart Musk that smarts. Roskosmos has the full power of the state behind it, after all. And yet here's this boyish-looking showman launching his roadster into space, David Bowie blasting from the car's speakers and "Don't Panic" -- a quote from Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" -- lit up on the central console.
The corniness didn't make it less bitter. Russians laugh when it hurts and there were plenty of Russian memes that gamely acknowledged defeat by suggesting what Russia could have launched into space in place of a Tesla Roadster:
But the undertone is serious. Vitaly Egorov, spokesman for Dauria Aerospace, a private Russian satellite manufacturer that works with Roskosmos, posted bitterly on Facebook:
In fact, Musk hasn't done anything fantastical. Korolev has done this kind of thing, and so did [rocket engine designer Valentin] Glushko. Soviets did it, and Russians can do it too. But now we're onlookers and we see it as the stuff of fantasy. Many people have asked me: "Could we replicate the success of SpaceX?" Technically, we can. In the final accounting, landing a stage or making a superheavy rocket is a mathematical task, and we aren't out of mathematicians. What we are out of is dreamers. To know how to fly and where to fly, we need to know why we're flying.
Musk, with his crude salesmanship and nerdish cultural references, has a dream, described in a white paper he published last year: To colonize Mars. Musk admitted in the white paper that was his only motivation for getting rich.
Russia doesn't really have a dreamer to match. It has Dmitri Rogozin, the nationalist deputy prime minister in charge of the defense and aerospace industry, who publicly squabbled with the Roskosmos management after the latest launch failure in November. Roskosmos officials hired a private Gulfstream jet to fly to the launch from a new pad in Russia's Far East, but the Soyuz rocket, carrying 18 satellites, burned up in the atmosphere. Rogozin then accused Roskosmos of programming the Fregat upper stage for a launch from a different pad. "One tailor sews the pocket, another the lapel, but the suit doesn't work as a whole," Rogozin said. Roskosmos denied making the error. But, after a series of criminal investigations in the Russian aerospace industry -- with cases including the improper use of cheap components in building rockets -- not even the silliest explanations are out of the question.
Ever since the Soviet Union's collapse, the Russian space program has been run pragmatically for cash. Using time-tested technology, Russia seized leadership in the commercial launch market. But SpaceX's persistence and ingenuity, and its success in bringing down costs by reusing rockets, made it the likely market leader last year and possibly even profitable. The Falcon 9 was certainly the most successfully launched rocket in the world.

Dozens of Russians Are Believed Killed in U.S.-Led Syria Attack
Ivan Nechepurenko, Neil MacFarquhar and Thomas Gibbons-Neff/New York times/February 13/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/62561
MOSCOW — Four Russian nationals, and perhaps dozens more, were killed in fighting between pro-government forces in eastern Syria and members of the United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, according to Russian and Syrian officials.
A Syrian military officer said that about 100 Russian soldiers had been killed in the fighting on Feb. 7 and 8, but news about Russian casualties has dribbled out only slowly, through Russian news organizations and social media.
American forces came under attack on those two days, near Al Tabiyeh, Syria. “Coalition officials were in regular communication with Russian counterparts before, during and after the thwarted, unprovoked attack,” according to Col. Ryan S. Dillon, a spokesman for the American military. “Russian officials assured coalition officials they would not engage coalition forces in the vicinity.”
Colonel Dillon said the military was not aware of any direct United States strike on Russian forces. He said the toll from the two days of fighting was not yet clear. Then, on Saturday, American forces struck a Russian-designed T-72 tank in roughly the same location as the previous fighting.
“The tank had been maneuvering with coordinated indirect fire on a defensive position occupied by Syrian Democratic Forces and coalition advisers,” Colonel Dillon. “The defensive position was within effective range of the hostile weapons systems. Coalition officials maintained regular contact with Russian counterparts via established deconfliction lines to avoid misperceptions and miscalculations that could endanger each other’s forces.”
The Kremlin — seeking to play down its involvement in the fighting in Syria and seemingly hoping to avoid escalating tensions with the United States — has sidestepped questions about the episode.
It has stressed repeatedly since last Wednesday that no members of the Russian armed forces were killed, and that any Russians fighting alongside the Syrians were mercenaries.
“We only handle the data that concerns Russian forces servicemen,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said at a news briefing on Tuesday. “We don’t have data about other Russians who could be in Syria.
The Kremlin said much the same about the nature of the forces in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, claiming they were volunteers and men on vacation, only to admit later that they were regular soldiers.
Mr. Putin has said at least three times since 2016 that combat operations in Syria were winding down, including once during a surprise visit to a Russian air base in Syria last December. Yet there are hundreds if not thousands of contract soldiers in Syria, however, which the Russian government has never acknowledged.
They were deployed both to help keep the official cost down and to try to avoid the Afghanistan scenario, when ordinary Russians soured on the intervention there in the 1980s due to the rising toll of young soldiers. Even though the Kremlin changed the law during Ukraine crisis in 2015 to make battlefield casualties a secret, the funerals for regular soldiers killed in combat need to be more official than those for mercenaries.
Also, even if President Vladimir V. Putin made Russia a player in the Middle East again by sending his miliary into Syria in September 2015, the intervention has never been particularly popular at home. Mr. Putin, running a re-election campaign that he is sure to win, has sought to take the spotlight away from overseas issues and to stress that his main concerns are domestic.
But individual Russians have begun speaking out. Some announced the specific names of victims, others claimed “scores” of Russian fighters died in an American airstrike near Deir-el Zour, between the Euphrates River and the Iraqi border.
Aleksandr Ionov, a Russian businessman working in Syria, offering security and other services, said his associates in several private military organizations had estimated heavy losses of possibly more than 200 killed.
Aleksandr Averin, a member of the Other Russia nationalist party, confirmed that Kirill Ananiev, a party member who left for Syria about a year ago, was killed in the airstrike, noting that there were other “substantial losses.”
Mr. Ionov said not all those killed were Russian, some of the paid fighters came from other countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. “More than 200 is the current estimate, we cannot know the exact number yet, but most of them were Russian,” he said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Ionov said he was speaking out, like a growing number of opposition and other voices, because he wants the Russians killed to be officially recognized for their sacrifice.
“The truth has to be told,” he said. “If people died, then this should be recognized and respects should be paid to people who fought against terrorists.”He called on the government to give a fuller version of events, adding, “People are outraged because they want to know the truth.”
What exactly sparked the battle also remains unclear. Some reports suggested that the fight was over control of a gas field. Mr. Ionov said he believed that it was some manner of the fog of battle, with the American-backed Kurdish troops interpreting the movement of government ground forces as an attack to control an oil field and calling in an airstrike.
Other sources like Mr. Averin have also suggested that many Russians died.
“I can confirm that Kirill died on Feb. 7 in Syria, near the Euphrates River, as a result of a strike by the American coalition,” Mr. Averin said in an interview, adding that he was aware of “substantial losses” suffered by “paramilitary structures with ties to Russia.” He refused to elaborate.
Another victim, Vladimir N. Loginov, died “in an unequal fight on Feb. 7 in the area of Syria’s Deir al-Zour,” according to a statement published online by his paramilitary organization.
“He died, heroically defending our motherland in the far reaches against the invasion of maddened barbarians,” the Baltic Cossack Union in Kaliningrad said in the statement.
Mr. Loginov, 51, has been a member of the local Cossack group, a pro-government paramilitary organization, since 2014.
In another case, Lubava Kocheva, a Russian woman from central Russia, said in a brief online chat that two of her male friends in Syria, Igor Kosoturov and Stanislav Matveev, also died in Syria on Feb. 7.
“We don’t know anything, whether they will bring them or not,” said Mrs. Kocheva, 41, referring to the men’s corpses. “This is very difficult and frightening.”
The names of most of the victims identified so far were first reported by the Conflict Intelligence Team, a group of Russian investigative bloggers. The exact circumstances of their deaths could not be established by The New York Times.The Russian Defense Ministry, which supports President Bashar al-Assad in the ongoing civil war, said none of its servicemen were involved in the clash and that only 25 pro-government Syrian insurgents were wounded. It took pains to distance itself from the battle.
“The reason for the incident was lack of coordination between the reconnaissance movements of the Syrian insurgents and the Russian operative command,” the ministry said in its statement on Thursday.
The number and exact nature of private Russian security firms operating in Syria is unclear, although there have been persistent reports in the Russian media that some militiamen who fought on the side of the Russian-backed separatists the war in eastern Ukraine later deployed to Syria.
The main attention has focused on the so-called Wagner Group, a name drawn from the nickname of the retired Russian officer who leads it. The Russian paramilitary organization, with murky and unconfirmed ties with the Kremlin, has been operating in Syria in various capacities, including protecting some oil fields, according to multiple reports by the Russian media. The organization’s leaders have reportedly received awards in the Kremlin and its mercenaries are trained at the Russian Defense Ministry’s facilities.
Grigory A. Yavlinsky, a veteran Russian opposition politician, who is running for president in an election next month, called on President Vladimir V. Putin to disclose the number of Russians who died in Syria.
“I demand an explanation as to why Russian nationals take part in ground military operations in Syria, despite the statements by the president and defense minister that Russian military formations will be withdrawn from this country,” Mr. Yavlinsky said in a statement. “I also think there needs to be a public report about relations with the U.S., as there is a growing threat of an accidental or deliberate direct military clash between Russia and America.”
The official Kremlin stance is that its military deployment in Syria is now centered around two permanent bases, one for the air force and one for the navy, there by invitation from the Syrian government.
Russian political analysts said that Russia’s reluctance to confirm that its citizen died as a result of a U.S.-led airstrike is actually a sign that Moscow does not want to further worsen the already fractured bilateral relations with Washington.
“This is a very rare case, where the positions of Russia and the U.S. got closer,” said Aleksei V. Makarkin, a leading expert in the Center for Political Technologies, a think tank in Moscow. “No one wants to take steps that will do irreparable damage to the already broken Russia-U.S. relations.”
**Ivan Nechepurenko and Neil MacFarquhar reported from Moscow, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff from Washington. Oleg Matsnev and Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Moscow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Khamenei And Clerics Starting To Show
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab Times/February 13/18
Cracks between ‘pharaoh’ Khamenei and clerics starting to show
Several Farsi news outlets last week focused on the arrest of the son of a famous Shiite cleric in the city of Qom. Hussein Al-Shirazi, the son of Grand Ayatollah Sadiq Al-Shirazi, was arrested for pointing out that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is similar to a “pharaoh.” He also compared the governance of the Iranian regime to that of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Intriguingly, comparing governments or political figures to pharaohs has been mostly used as an analogy by Khamenei himself. Most recently, he called the United States and Israel “today’s pharaohs.”
The term pharaoh in the Persian language is equated with tyranny, dictatorship and injustice. Hussein Al-Shirazi also criticized the regime for human rights violations, such as oppressing and mistreating dissidents, protesters and political prisoners, as well as ruling the nation through a religious dictatorship. The well-known Shiite cleric stated: “The (regime’s) leaders justify the death or injuries of millions of people by stating that it was for the sake of ‘holy defense.’ This nation has been wasted and ruined; it has moved 50 years backwards when it comes to the economy and standard of living; millions of people have become paralyzed; and then the regime states that their achievements were linked to the holy defense.”
There exists a misconception in viewing Iran’s clerical establishment and leadership as monolithic, but Hussein Al-Shirazi’s statements highlight the deep divisions within the leadership.
Many high-level Iranian clerics question the underlying legitimacy of the Iranian regime’s rule. One of the fundamental differences is linked to the concept of “Velayat-e Faqih” (the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist), which was introduced into Shiite theology by Khomeini and Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri. Montazeri’s view of Velayat-e Faqih held that a qualified Islamist Jurist should only play the role of an advisor, not an executive role in the government. However, Khomeini took the concept to a different level, directly entering the Shiite clerics into political affairs and giving the Faqih (the representative of the Hidden Imam, Al-Mahdi) custodianship over people. This revolutionary concept continues to be criticized by other powerful Shiite clerics, who believe that religion should remain separate from political affairs until the return of Imam Al-Mahdi.
The Iranian regime has always strongly attempted to depict its clerical establishment and leadership as a united front with one voice and one opinion, but the arrest of Al-Shirazi reveals that divisions have reached an unprecedented level.
Another issue is that, even among some of those clergies who believe that a Shiite Islamist Jurist must rule the nation, Khamenei is viewed as unqualified to be Iran’s supreme leader. This is partially due to the fact that Khamenei was not a grand marja (high-level religious authority) or an ayatollah when he succeeded Ruhollah Khomeini. Montazeri, who was supposed to be Khomeini’s successor, was replaced with Khamenei at the last moment due to the former’s criticism of the establishment.
Furthermore, some clerics question the foreign policy of the regime and its hemorrhaging of billions of dollars to keep dictators such as Bashar Assad, and proxies such as Hezbollah, in power. They believe that the government should focus on the nation’s desperate economic needs.
It is also worth noting that the arrest of Hussein Al-Shirazi shows that the regime is sending a robust message to the ordinary people and Qom’s clerics that opposition and criticism will not be tolerated, no matter the background of the individual concerned. The Iranian regime has previously detained and arrested high-level officials, such as Iran’s ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the daughter of the late ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic.
For almost four decades, the Iranian regime has strongly attempted to depict its clerical establishment and leadership as a united front with one voice and one opinion. It has tried to show that the clerical establishment believes in the regime’s revolutionary principles, the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih and the current system of governance. Nevertheless, the latest developments reveal that the division between Iran’s clerics has reached an unprecedented level. This could pose a grave threat to the hold on power of the Iranian regime and bring about fundamental changes within it.
• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. He serves on the boards of the Harvard International Review, the Harvard International Relations Council and the US-Middle East Chamber for Commerce and Business. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

US, Turkey could be on collision course in Syria
Metin Gurcan/Al Monitor/ February 13/18
ARTICLE SUMMARY
Neither side is backing down as Ankara and Washington exchange tough talk over potential confrontations in Syria.
As the situation in Syria heats up among all players — including Israel — Turkey and the United States so far have limited their exchanges to a war of words. However, signs aren't encouraging that it will end there.
Decision-makers in Ankara have toughened their rhetoric against the United States, and many senior figures in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are hinting at the possibility of armed confrontation between Turkish and US soldiers.
“If US soldiers wear the garb of terrorists and hang around with them, and if they attack Turkish soldiers, no doubt we will not have a chance to distinguish between them,” Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said last week.
In a Feb. 6 speech before AKP parliamentarians, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, speaking to the United States, “Get out of Manbij. We will come there to deliver the land to its true owners."
Turkey started its assault on Afrin in January to drive out the Kurds, specifically the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Ankara appears insistent on expanding the Afrin offensive to Manbij, about 60 miles east, after gaining full control of the area west of the Euphrates River.
The United States, for its part, sounds determined not to abandon Manbij, even though it has no permanent military outposts there. As Ankara hardened its stance, a coalition team including Lt. Gen. Paul Funk and Maj. Gen. James Jarrard visited Manbij on Feb. 7 and had plenty to say.
“We’re very proud of our positions here, and we want to make sure everybody knows it,” said Jarrard, the special operations commander for the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria.
“You hit us, we will respond aggressively. We will defend ourselves,” Funk added, raising the stakes.
An armed confrontation Feb. 7 between US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and President Bashar al-Assad's forces — backed by Russia — escalated to a major battle in Deir ez-Zor, an oil-rich town in eastern Syria. War planes were involved — yet another sign the United States intends to hold on to the territory it has brought under its control in the post-IS setting.
Is an armed confrontation in Manbij between Turkish and US soldiers really a possibility? The key consideration here is whether Turkey is genuinely willing to challenge the United States militarily in Syria. Or is Ankara’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric just part of its effort to deter the US military from working more closely with the YPG in Manbij?
The situation on the ground now seems very similar to the one that led to the notorious “hood incident” in July 2003, which ended with US forces based in Kirkuk, Iraq, capturing Turkish special forces personnel operating in Sulaimaniyah in Iraq's Kurdish region.
The 2003 incident began when an unmarked building in Sulaimaniyah used by Turkish special forces operating secretly in Iraqi Kurdistan was raided by American soldiers on the pretext of stopping an alleged assassination plot against the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk. Turkish special forces were detained with hoods over their heads and were questioned for days at a Kirkuk air base. During the interrogation, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan militants misled the American soldiers and provided false translations, thus stalling the Turkish soldiers' release for days. The resulting crisis of confidence became a major trauma that still has a place in Turkey’s strategic culture.
As a former special forces officer, I was assigned as a liaison team commander of Turkish special forces with the US 173rd Airborne between November 2003 and May 2004. Today I shudder, sensing the same operational environment at Manbij.
Exactly as in the April-July 2003 period, Turkish and American soldiers are moving all over Manbij in the same operational environment without coordination, practically as hostile forces on the ground, again guided by local forces and translators. In a Jan. 25 Al-Monitor article, I had described Turkey’s Afrin offensive as an “effect-based operation” that targets US cooperation with the YPG forces east and west of the Euphrates River.
This is why Ankara will keep pressure on the United States as much as it can over Manbij. How long will US decision-makers resist this pressure? I think we will get some indicators of the US response with the visits to Ankara of US national security adviser H.R. McMaster last week and by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week. From developments, I sense the United States is trying to stall a showdown by using a good cop/bad cop tactic. But it's also obvious that strategy doesn’t work with Ankara.
At the end of the day, special forces that serve in chaotic areas like Manbij have to rely on the guidance of local forces and translators. As happened during the hood incident, if the local guides and translators want to ignite a conflict, they can easily do it — which is the dynamic that frightens me now. The blood feud between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) elements that provide guidance to Turkish troops and the Kurdish YPG elements that do the same for the Americans are well-known. Because of that all-consuming feud, even if Turkish and American soldiers try to avoid direct contact, they can be manipulated well by a process of which they are not even conscious.
The harassment-fire exchanges between the FSA and YPG at Manbij could get out of control and escalate to a major clash that will reduce the distance between Turkish and American soldiers and put them in range of direct fire from tanks and anti-aircraft guns, and indirect fire of artillery, mortar and rockets. The best method to minimize these hot contacts would be to deploy US liaison teams with Turkish troops and to set up a joint operations center to coordinate their moves. Such a mechanism doesn’t exist today, but I hope one would be set up before we experience another traumatic event like the 2003 hood incident. We all hope a decision is made soon to set up this mechanism. If that can’t be done, I would suggest getting ready for another hood incident.
But this time, those captured and hooded may not be Turkish.

The metastases of Syrian crisis
Christian Chesnot/Al Arabiya/February 13/18
With Israeli F-16 being shot down by Damascus anti-aircraft defenses, two Turkish helicopters downed by the Kurdish Peshmerga of Afrin, Idlib rebels shooting down a Russian MIG with an air ground missile: it is safe to say that Syrian skies are seriously dangerous for anyone who ventures there.
In any case, these three recent aerial incidents show that the Syrian crisis is mutating into a regional conflict. Similarly to what happened during the Lebanese civil war, everyone – major and regional powers – want to put their two cents, push their pawns and, ultimately, play a role in the final denouement.
In doing so, the risks of confrontation will increase considerably, because it is no longer an internal crisis but an entanglement of wars with different agenda and dynamics. The loss of an F-16 is a major turning point for Israel. During the so-called “33 days” war in Lebanon in 2006, the Hebrew state had encountered serious difficulties on the ground, with heavy losses in armored vehicles. One of its ships had even been damaged by a missile fire from Hezbollah. It is a proxy confrontation between Israel and Iran which happens to be between the Golan Heights and the Mediterranean
Air supremacy
But, at the time, Israel retained air supremacy. Today, the destruction of F-16 is a warning shot. From now on, Israeli bombers will have to take even greater precaution before venturing into Syrian skies. The absolute control of the sky by the Jewish state is partly called into question.
It is not so much the regime of Bashar Al-Assad that scares the Israeli state but Hezbollah and especially Iran’s striking force. Indeed, Tehran dreams of bringing the front line to the gates of Israel. The Hebrew state is waiting for any suspicious convoys or installations that could pose a threat, either in southern Syria or in southern Lebanon. To summarize, it is a proxy confrontation between Israel and Iran which happens to be between the Golan Heights and the Mediterranean. In this very tight game, it is up to Russia to play the referees. In other words: reassure the Israelis and dissuade the Iranians from provocation. Because in the end, it is the Russians who control the airspace of Syria. However, no one is immune to other incidents in air or in land, even though no one has interest to ignite fire.
The metastases
Further north, the Syrian crisis has also developed its metastases. It revived the old conflict between Turkey and the Kurds. We suspected that this would happen, but the operation “olive branch” triggered by Recep Tayip Edorgan, is not a long quiet river.
On the contrary, all indications point to the fact that the Turkish army is getting bogged down and missing a decisive victory. The loss of two helicopters in the space of a few days does not bode well for the generals of Ankara. Turkey has opened a front that closing again victoriously will prove to be a difficult task.
As for Russia, the dominant power in Syria, it is probably time for reconsideration. The failure of the Sochi conference, the loss of a Mig, and especially the American presence in the east of the country alongside with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a somewhat Arab-Kurdish militia, show that Moscow still has a lot of work to do to find a way out of the crisis. But the strength of Russia is that whenever it sets a goal, it does so with patient and tenacity. Russia is now at the center of the game, which also involves responsibilities.We will see in the coming weeks and months, if Vladimir Putin is able to impose and enforce the “Pax Russia” in Syria to different regional and local actors (Turkey, Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, the Kurds and Al Assad’s regime). Behind the scenes, red lines will be drawn for each player. This is probably also why, each of the protagonists are showing their muscles to establish a favorable balance of power on the ground. With all the risks of a possible deterioration.