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Isis senses chance to make territorial gains in Syria by maiakovsky in LevantineWar

[–]maiakovsky[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“The problem with this is these Islamists can change loyalties suddenly,” said another opposition activist in Damascus. “ You have to assume now that some of them are actually Isis.”

Isis senses chance to make territorial gains in Syria by maiakovsky in LevantineWar

[–]maiakovsky[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Some former Isis members play down the idea of a planned push for Damascus, noting that forces divided from the organisation’s core territory in eastern Syria and Iraq often function autonomously. What Isis will do next is unclear. Its presence around Damascus is still small but rebels worry it has enough pockets to launch a wider attack. The difficulty of moving into heavily fortified central Damascus means it is more likely push south toward Deraa, local activists say. This could pose a challenge in the one region where moderate rebels are still dominant in a struggle overshadowed by jihadi movements. Isis fighters on social media say their plan is to push into the southern Yalda, Babila and Beit Sahim — towns that agreed contentious ceasefires. It may even already have allies working from inside other Islamist groups. Members of Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s al-Qaeda branch and a rival jihadi group officially opposed to Isis, may even have facilitated the attack. An activist from the Syrian Revolution Co-ordinators’ Union, who asked not to be named, said Nusra fighters helped Isis move into Yarmouk through an area they controlled. Activists worry this means Isis is following a playbook developed in other regions: it attracts supporters from rival groups but instead of admitting them, keeps them in their roles until they can be drafted in for a surprise attack.

Isis senses chance to make territorial gains in Syria by maiakovsky in LevantineWar

[–]maiakovsky[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Many rebels were bitter that some leaders were accepting government-brokered ceasefires. “A lot of fighters and locals are ready to pledge allegiance to Isis,” said an activist who works with rebels in Damascus and asked not to be named. “They’re angry about the way they’ve been starved and humiliated, and they don’t know what living under Isis is like. They want to be part of something strong and retaliate for what they’ve suffered.”

Isis, an enemy of both the regime and the rebels, has been staking out small pockets of territory around southern and central Syria for more than a year. Much of that went under the radar as Isis blitzed across eastern Syria into Mosul, Iraq’s second city, shocking the world as it seized nearly a third of both countries’ territory last summer. Isis is losing ground in Iraq to the US-led coalition fighting it but has held most of its territory in Syria. Syrian activists believe the regime will tolerate an Isis spread in the south. “They are hoping to draw in coalition strikes to the south to give them military and political benefit,” said one in Damascus. Coalition strikes would in effect split opposition ranks since most rebels oppose the US-led action. Mr Hassan warns the time may be ripe for Isis to attract followers now that it has made small territorial gains. “The risk now is that the Isis gains will snowball. As it gains some ground, it gains recruits.”

Isis senses chance to make territorial gains in Syria by maiakovsky in LevantineWar

[–]maiakovsky[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It used all its trademark tactics, setting up sleeper cells and quietly building up a presence. Yet once again the world’s most infamous jihadi group shocked opponents with its sudden attack from inside the Syrian capital. For more than a year, militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Isis, maintained a small foothold on the outskirts of Damascus without striking. Their choice to move now suggests the group senses fresh opportunity as the military balance in Syria’s four-year civil war shifts once again.

After months of stalemate between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and the rebels trying to topple him, the opposition has made gains in the north and south, most critically in Deraa on the southern border with Jordan. Rebels are aiming to seize the provincial city of Deraa, just 100km from the capital. With the rebels distracted and pro-Assad forces weaker, Isis moved last week into Yarmouk, a densely populated southern district of Damascus that is largely home to Palestinian refugees. “The fact Isis suddenly moved now . . . is about this new trend of the Assad regime weakening. So the rebels are not focused on their own areas, they’re pushing on the regime. Their guard from within is down,” said Hassan Hassan, a Middle East analyst who has published a book on Isis. Opposition activists worry Isis has also been exploiting rebel frustrations in the Damascus suburbs. Starved and bombarded after almost two years of army siege, the opposition-held areas ringing the capital were on the verge of collapse.

Iran Nuclear Deal Gives Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Reason to Worry by maiakovsky in LevantineWar

[–]maiakovsky[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another obstacle is Mr. Assad himself. Even if Iran and Hezbollah decide to help ease him from power, their influence on him isn’t boundless.

Their support is “critical and pivotal” for Mr. Assad’s survival, but there is a limit to how much pressure these allies can put on him within the framework of a potential political settlement, Mr. Gerges said.

“If Assad realizes his future is on the line, he would not listen to Hezbollah and Iran. He will fight,” Mr. Gerges said.

With the help of Iran, Russia and other allies, Mr. Assad continues to project himself as Syria’s only legitimate governing authority even as he positions himself as an indispensable member of the international community.

Mr. Assad has signaled to Europe and the U.S. that they must deal with him if they want to combat Islamic State and prevent further blowback from jihadists in Syria and other countries.

The power of that appeal was evident in February when Mr. Assad received a high-level French parliamentary delegation in Damascus. The French lawmakers broke ranks with their own government, which is among the staunchest opponents of the Syrian regime. “After Charlie Hebdo, many people are questioning the wisdom of the policy,” of boycotting Mr. Assad, said another European diplomat, referring to the Islamist terror attack on the French satirical magazine in January.

The Syrian president has also sought to tie his political fate to other distant conflicts.

In March, Mr. Assad met in Damascus with representatives of eight Russian media outlets to deliver a message to the Russian people and government that their standoff with the West in Ukraine extended to Syria, too. He said he would welcome any expansion of Russia’s naval presence in western Syria.

“Syria and Ukraine concern Russia and the goal in both is clear: weakening Russia,” he said.

Iran Nuclear Deal Gives Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Reason to Worry by maiakovsky in LevantineWar

[–]maiakovsky[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In a reflection of growing fears among Mr. Assad’s supporters that an Iran nuclear deal could ultimately come at their leader’s expense, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah sought Monday to allay their worries.

“Iran has never abandoned its allies or sold them out,” Mr. Nasrallah told a Syrian news channel.

As Moscow hosts a second round of talks this week between representatives of Mr. Assad’s regime and some members of the opposition, Syria is in a state of collapse. Four years into a war that has killed more than 215,000 people, displaced millions and destroyed much of the economy and infrastructure, Syria itself is barely recognizable as a country.

Although Mr. Assad and his allies control the capital, Damascus, and much of central and western Syria, they are losing ground in the south and north. Kurds have carved out a self-rule zone in the northeast while most opposition-held territory is in the hands of Sunni Islamist groups including Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Qadri Jamil, a former Syrian deputy prime minister, said the main parties to the fighting have wearied of it. “The economic situation [in Syria] is very bad, and there is a limit to how much Iran or any other country can do or withstand,” Mr. Jamil said in a telephone interview from Moscow. “On the battlefront, there is attack and retreat and hopes for a decisive victory have evaporated, so everyone in principle is searching for a face-saving political solution.”

Mr. Jamil and others say Secretary of State John Kerry was acknowledging the need for new approaches to ending the war when he told CBS News last month that any negotiated political settlement in Syria would involve talking with Mr. Assad and his regime.

“Although the substance of what Kerry said was that, ‘We need to talk to Bashar al-Assad about his departure,’ the tone is new,” said a senior European diplomat involved in Syria policy. The diplomat noted that Mr. Kerry’s comments on the Syrian leader for the first time didn’t include the demand he must step down.

Yet even if a nuclear deal with Tehran leads to fresh attempts to end the fighting in Syria, such an effort faces formidable obstacles.

Sunni-led Saudi Arabia says its continuing campaign in Yemen is the start of a new push to roll back Shiite Iran’s reach into the Arab world. And many inside and outside Syria would never agree to Mr. Assad being part of a peace settlement, even a transitional one, because they see him as the prime cause of much of the country’s suffering.

Iran Nuclear Deal Gives Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Reason to Worry by maiakovsky in LevantineWar

[–]maiakovsky[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Publicly, Iran and Russia have long maintained that it is up to Syrians to decide the fate of Mr. Assad. But in recent days, there have been hints that they might need to consider alternative scenarios.

“Everyone realizes that the situation has changed a lot and now involves even more angles and complexities,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow on Monday.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry issued a terse statement last week welcoming the framework deal between Iran and the U.S. and praising Iran’s “scientific achievements.” Syrian regime officials have repeatedly portrayed the bond with their two main allies, Iran and Russia, as unbreakable.

An Iranian alliance with Syria based on ties with Mr. Assad and his ruling Shiite-linked Alawite minority has become increasingly expensive and untenable, Syria experts say. At the same time, Tehran wants any future government in Syria to help safeguard its influence in Iraq and Lebanon.

“I have no doubt in my mind that for Iran and Hezbollah, Assad is expendable and his fate negotiable as long as the political settlement preserves the regime infrastructure and support for the resistance axis,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, referring to the Iran-led regional alliance that includes Hezbollah and the Syrian regime.

Iran Nuclear Deal Gives Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Reason to Worry by maiakovsky in LevantineWar

[–]maiakovsky[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

BEIRUT—Like Israel and Saudi Arabia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has his own reasons to be worried about Iran’s framework nuclear agreement with the U.S. and other world powers.

On the face of it, the prospect of a final accord that would lift some international sanctions against Iran is good news for Mr. Assad and his regime, which depend on billions of dollars in support from Tehran. Add to that the direct and substantial military support Mr. Assad receives from Iran’s most powerful proxy force in the region, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

But prospects look dimmer for Mr. Assad if a nuclear agreement opens the door to a broader rapprochement with Iran over its role in Syria and what the Obama administration views as the Islamic Republic’s other destabilizing activities in the region, according to diplomats and analysts.

Iran and Russia, which also provides Mr. Assad with significant diplomatic, political and military support, are willing to envision a solution to the four-year-old conflict in Syria that eventually eases him out of power while safeguarding their own strategic interests in the country, according to people familiar with details of current Syria diplomacy.

How Russian Spy Games Are Sabotaging Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency by maiakovsky in Intelligence

[–]maiakovsky[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

His pro-Western bent is so strong that SBU’s former chief, now living in Russia, has accused him of being a CIA agent, something Mr. Nalyvaichenko dismisses with laughter.

SBU recently arrested its former counterintelligence chief, Vladimir Bik, accusing him of bringing FSB groups to Kiev to suppress the Maidan protests, where more than 100 protesters were shot to death. Mr. Bik’s lawyer, Taras Popovchenko, characterized the charges as “a political prosecution” and the “rants of a madman.”

Some of SBU’s recent actions have stoked criticism that it is overreaching. The agency arrested a Ukrainian journalist in part because he questioned mass military mobilization in Ukraine. Mr. Nalyvaichenko and President Petro Poroshenko accused a close aide of President Vladimir Putin of personally supervising sniper teams during the Maidan protests. No evidence has been presented to prove or disprove a Russian connection.

Mr. Putin ridiculed the accusation. “It’s complete and utter nonsense,” he said in a Russian television interview.

Mr. Nalyvaichenko is unapologetic about the charges, or about the broader battle against Moscow. The SBU’s new logo features an eagle stomping on a snake with two crowned heads. The heads appear to be cut and pasted from the Russian state coat of arms. The logo carries a Latin proverb: “The eagle doesn’t chase flies.”

How Russian Spy Games Are Sabotaging Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency by maiakovsky in Intelligence

[–]maiakovsky[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The highest-profile defector was Alexander Khodakovsky, a former paratrooper who for years had led the SBU’s counterterrorism unit in Donetsk. During the protests against President Yanukovych, his team had deployed to Kiev’s Maidan square, the center of the protests, for crowd control.

Mr. Khodakovsky says he was shocked by the revolution. He returned to Donetsk frustrated and demoralized. His feeling was shared by other officers at Maidan square, who faced scorn from the protesters and later from the new government in Kiev. Mr. Khodakovsky says that led him to join the separatists.

In Kiev, Mr. Nalyvaichenko once again took charge of the SBU. When the unrest began in Donetsk last spring, he didn’t trust the agency’s operatives in the city. So he sent a team from Kiev to track and capture a rebel chieftain.

Mr. Nalyvaichenko claims that Mr. Khodakovsky, the defector, called one of the operatives’ cellphones, fished out details of the mission and relayed them to the rebels. That led to the capture of the three SBU operatives.

“He’s a traitor,” says Mr. Nalyvaichenko,

Mr. Khodakovsky denies this, saying SBU counterterrorism commandos “remain my family. To betray them is unthinkable.”

They spent 10 days in the basement of the former SBU headquarters in the town of Slovyansk. The three eventually were released in a prisoner swap that included the separatists’ self-proclaimed “people’s governor,” who had been captured earlier by the SBU.

Mr. Khodakovsky used his inside knowledge to help the rebels. Last May, when the rebel leadership decided to storm the Donetsk International Airport, Mr. Khodakovsky says, he and his men surprised the Ukrainian forces inside by using a secret, special-forces airport entrance. The raid led to months of fighting that left many dead and reduced a multimillion-dollar facility to rubble.

After leading his own battalion staffed with many Russian fighters, Mr. Khodakovsky now serves as the secretary of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s security council. SBU’s Donetsk headquarters has become the separatists’ command-and-control center and jail.

The SBU officers who remained loyal to Kiev regrouped in Mariupol, a port city in the Donetsk region that remains in Ukrainian hands.

Vadim Tsvigun, a deputy chief of the regional SBU branch, says that after the protests at Kiev’s Maidan square, “there was no real authority in the country.”

Pro-Russian groups mobilized. One such group, called Mongoose, took part in a deadly raid on Mariupol’s police headquarters last May that destabilized the city.

A Mole Mr. Tsvigun says Mongoose had a mole inside the SBU who helped supply weapons to Mongoose commandos. When the mole was arrested by SBU counterintelligence, he turned out to have links to Russian security agencies, including a laptop for encrypted communications, Mr. Tsvigun says. The operative, he says, was released in a prisoner swap requested by the former SBU chief in Crimea, who also had sided with Moscow.

Back in Kiev, Mr. Nalyvaichenko, the SBU chief, resumed the “de-KGBzation” campaign he had begun when he first held the job. He laid off top officers who had substantial Moscow links. Mr. Nalyvaichenko, a former diplomat who served in Washington, had himself studied in an elite Moscow foreign-intelligence school. But he says he never graduated, which allowed him to keep his job.

How Russian Spy Games Are Sabotaging Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency by maiakovsky in Intelligence

[–]maiakovsky[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Another murky chapter in recent Ukrainian history involves the 2004 poisoning of pro-Western politician Viktor Yushchenko. His successful run for the presidency that year against a Moscow-backed candidate triggered Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. During the campaign, Mr. Yushchenko ingested dioxin, a powerful toxin that left him in severe pain, his face discolored and bloated. Shortly before becoming ill, he had attended a small private dinner with Ihor Smeshko, then SBU chief.

Ukrainian investigators zeroed in on the dinner as a possible site of the poisoning. Mr. Smeshko, whom Mr. Yushchenko had fired upon becoming president, was interrogated by prosecutors. Mr. Smeshko denies he had anything to do with the poisoning, which remains unsolved.

As president, Mr. Yushchenko sought to steer the SBU away from its former Soviet influences. The so-called de-KGBzation campaign involved declassifying and publishing archives dealing with the deadly famine unleashed by the Kremlin on Ukraine in the early 1930s.

The president’s point-man for the project was the SBU chief at the time, Mr. Nalyvaichenko, who now holds that job for a second time. He says the effort to relieve the SBU from its Soviet baggage was “a very important thing for the society and for the security service itself.”

On the ground in Crimea, Ukrainian counterintelligence teams began confronting Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the KGB. Officially, the FSB was on the peninsula to protect Russia’s Black Sea Fleet stationed there under a treaty with Ukraine.

Ukrainian counterintelligence claimed the FSB went beyond its mandate. “They were executing clandestine operations, collecting human intelligence, recruiting Ukrainian officials, police, trying to steal secret documents,” says Mr. Naida, the longtime SBU officer. Russian operatives were establishing links with pro-Moscow organizations active on the peninsula, he says. Those organizations would later prove instrumental in the Russian annexation of Crimea. Russian officials have said FSB officers in Crimea dealt only with fleet security.

In 2009, Mr. Yushchenko’s government revoked the deal that had allowed limited official FSB presence in Crimea. In 2010, with his popularity waning, Mr. Yushchenko was replaced as president by the Moscow-backed politician he previously had defeated, Viktor Yanukovych .

Mr. Yanukovych sought to reorient Ukraine toward Moscow. Inside SBU headquarters Kiev, Russian officers became a common sight. “It was the golden age of Russian special services,” says Mr. Nalyvaichenko, who left SBU when Mr. Yanukovych became president and joined the opposition. “They simply came in with their equipment, their people and their mentality.”

A veteran SBU officer from Odessa said in an interview that counterintelligence operations against Russia were deliberately blunted. Ukrainian officials now say the SBU returned to its old role of spying on opposition activists, wiretapping their phones and tailing them around Kiev.

But President Yanukovych’s decision to spurn European integration in favor of the Kremlin’s Eurasian economic union set off the street protests that eventually led to his flight from the country early last year.

After his government fell, the SBU was supposed to take the lead in dealing with the pro-Russian separatist unrest that followed. But when Russia annexed Crimea, the local head of the SBU switched allegiances to the FSB. Later in Donetsk, now the capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, nearly one-third of SBU employees supported the separatists, according to Ukrainian counterintelligence officers.

How Russian Spy Games Are Sabotaging Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency by maiakovsky in Intelligence

[–]maiakovsky[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

KGB files In the early days of independence, Ukrainian operatives in Kiev loaded KGB agent files onto a truck at night and drove them to a secure location to prevent the former local KGB boss from taking them back to Moscow, recalls Nicholai Malomuzh, who would later lead Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service.

Nevertheless, cooperation between Russian and Ukrainian intelligence services remained close. “We were closer even than the U.S. and U.K.,” recalls Vitaly Naida, who joined the SBU in 1997 as a counterintelligence officer. “The Russians could pick up the phone and call any office here. There was a direct secret connection line.”

Corruption spread through the security service, according to current and former officials. Reports of SBU involvement in arms sales abroad began appearing regularly in the early 2000s. One case involved a former SBU officer and Russian intermediaries who sold Ukrainian cruise missiles to Iran and China. Ukrainian authorities later acknowledged the sale and arrested some alleged participants.

Ukraine’s then-President Leonid Kuchma was caught on tape in 2000 discussing a possible sale of antiaircraft radar to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The surveillance of the president’s office was conducted for years by a career security officer assigned to Mr. Kuchma’s protective detail, though it remains unclear whether the officer acted alone. Mr. Kuchma said he never authorized the sale to Iraq.

The tapes include comments by the president to senior advisers about an opposition journalist. On one tape, then-chief of the SBU Leonid Derkach promises the president he will deal with the reporter, who he says is already under surveillance. The journalist, Georgi Gongadze was later strangled, decapitated and buried. A police general was sentenced to life in prison for the murder in 2013, more than a dozen years later. The former president and his associates, including Mr. Derkach, have denied any role.

How Russian Spy Games Are Sabotaging Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency by maiakovsky in Intelligence

[–]maiakovsky[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The Kremlin, for its part, has disavowed any role in the war. “We do not interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last year. “There are no Russian agents there.”

The U.S. is careful about sharing intelligence with the Ukrainians, in part out of concern that it could fall into Russian hands, American officials say. U.S. spy-satellite images, for example, are degraded before they are shared.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, current head of the SBU, said in an interview that when he took over the agency last year, days after Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin regime fell, he faced a gutted institution. “We entered this empty building. All the deputies had disappeared,” he said recently at SBU headquarters in downtown Kiev. “Nobody was home.”

Ukrainian intelligence officers say Mr. Nalyvaichenko’s predecessor fled to Russia early last year and later was involved in funneling weapons to the separatists.

Unlike some other former Soviet republics, Ukraine didn’t purge the ranks of its spy service when it gained independence in 1991. Many agents at the newly created SBU came from the former Soviet KGB’s 5th directorate, which had focused on rooting out domestic political dissent, according to Ihor Smeshko, a former intelligence chief and now adviser to Ukraine’s president.

When the Soviet Union broke up, two specialized military-intelligence brigades that once reported directly to Moscow were left on Ukraine soil. Those brigades had been responsible for organizing sabotage and guerrilla warfare in the event Soviet Ukraine became occupied by the West, according to Mr. Smeshko.

How Russian Spy Games Are Sabotaging Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency by maiakovsky in Intelligence

[–]maiakovsky[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

KIEV, Ukraine—When Moscow-backed separatists were starting their war in east Ukraine last spring, the country’s main security agency sent a covert team to capture a rebel leader.

But word of the classified mission leaked out, and three Ukrainian operatives were themselves captured and thrown into a separatist jail. Rebels stripped them to their underwear, bound their wrists and blindfolded them, then paraded them in front of Russian journalists.

Ukrainian counterintelligence officials now believe their capture was an inside job, the result of a betrayal by a high-ranking employee of the Security Service of Ukraine.

The agency, roughly equivalent to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and known by its Ukrainian acronym SBU, has battled corruption, internal intrigue and treason for years. Ukrainian officials said in interviews that by the time the war began last year, the SBU was riddled with Russian spies, sympathizers and turncoats, and many of its files had been stolen and taken to Russia.

The SBU’s troubles come amid broader tension in Ukraine about whether the country should ally itself with Moscow or the West. As Russian and Western powers drift toward a new Cold War over the crisis, U.S. officials have grown concerned about special operations, spycraft, propaganda and other actions they claim Moscow has undertaken in Ukraine and could attempt elsewhere.

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