California Wildfires: Meet Climate Whiplash.

I'd lost track of the number of days the massive Delta fire had been raging so I went to Wikipedia, which reported that the fire ignited on September 5. Then I went to a report at The Los Angeles Times, Firefighters make progress on massive Delta fire in Northern California, published yesterday morning Pacific Time, for news on how fighting the Delta fire has been going.

The fire was only 28 percent contained as of the report's publication although firefighters had caught a break from cooler and more humid weather, which allowed them to gain some ground against the fire. It could be a short break, and fire officials estimate the fire won't be fully contained until late this month.  

The allover situation with California wildfires has become steadily more troubling. California has always had two fire seasons but recently the wildfires have been striking virtually year round. Californians are up against a shift in demographics that leaves virtually all towns in the heavily populated state vulnerable to a sudden catastrophic wildfire brought on by a boom and bust weather pattern. 

So while 'climate whiplash,' as a climatologist quoted in the following report terms it, is not new or unique to California, it's hitting the state very hard. And it may be the new normal there. 

From Marissa Clifford's June 5 report for LA Curbed, In California, it’s always fire season now:
   

[...]

As the climate changes, Southern California will receive less rainfall in autumn and spring with a more pronounced wet season in winter. That means a longer dry season, one that will potentially overlap with fall’s notorious Santa Ana winds, a combination that fueled last year’s Thomas Fire—which burned for six months, destroying over 1,300 structures and claiming the lives of 22 people in the ensuing mudslides.

Those conditions are also believed to have fanned the Creek Fire in the foothills of Angeles National Forest.

But a longer dry season and rising temperatures aren’t the only factors that could contribute to 2018’s potentially devastating fire season. The sudden transitions back and forth from really wet years to really dry years, what Swain calls “climate whiplash”—which characterizes the swing from wet 2017 to dry 2018—and development all contribute to increased wildfire risk across the state.

Last year’s Skirball fire in Bel Air was sparked by a stove in a homeless encampment along the LA River. As Californians expand into high-risk areas, often areas that are desirable because of their ocean views and picturesque vegetation, developers and regulators are being forced to consider what building in fire zones means. Especially since the mix of wildland-urban areas make fires harder to fight.

”It’s not just put a line on the ground and the fire is contained,” Jonathan Cox, Cal Fire’s battalion chief, told the Washington Post. “You have essentially a jigsaw puzzle of fire and homes and infrastructure, all mixed together, and then you add in topographical features like slope and hills and trees.”

Because of the many factors contributing to a fire’s ignition and burn-time, McLean confirms that predicting with certainty how fires will affect Southern California is futile.

“There’s no way to determine that,” he said of our ability to forecast what 2018’s fire season will look like. “The weather is starting out the same [as 2017]. Things are matching. I can tell you at the end of the year.”

Fire season by name or not, Sacramento has been quick to respond after last year’s disasters.

The state has approved more than $1 billion to prevent and prepare for wildfires this season, $100 million of which will go to buying a new fleet of helicopters. Controlled burns are scheduled across the state, and Cal Fire has pushed staffing up by two weeks in anticipation.

Soon, Wireless Emergency Alerts, known as WEAs, will be enhanced with geo-targeting and informational hotlinks in the hopes that they’ll be more effective.

It’s important that Cal Fire and other agencies are as prepared as possible to fight and prevent wildfires, but McLean stresses that it’s the public’s responsibility to educate themselves as much as it is Cal Fire’s to provide support.

“It’s a 360 degree thing,” he said. “We’re still in the same conditions as last year, so we just need to all work together.”

I wish Californian's luck in combating the wildfire threat, but the bottom line is that California has become a tinder box, where even a spark from a car exhaust pipe can set off a conflagration. At the time of a San Francisco Chronicle editorial's publication on July 30, wildfires were burning across the entire state:

What’s especially alarming about this year’s fire season is how difficult it’s been for fire crews to contain the blazes. The Carr Fire, for example, grew from relatively manageable flames into a war zone overnight.

To return to the LA Times report on the Delta fire:

This part of Northern California has been hard hit by wildfire recently. The Hirz fire to the east, which joined with the Delta fire, grew to 46,150 acres before it was completely contained. In July, the Carr fire, which started in the same cluster as the Delta and Hirz fires, grew to 229,651 acres. Three firefighters died and more than 1,000 homes were destroyed in that blaze.

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The complexities of a dispute over water between Texas and New Mexico

"The issue is that, despite the state border, they're still drawing water from the same aquifer."

"Like lakes and rivers, underground springs and aquifers don't respect politically imposed borders and boundaries – the same body might lie beneath not only neighboring landowners but neighboring states, supplying water to both."

The quotes are from the following clearly written and highly informative report about a dispute between two American southwestern states over water drawing rights to the Pecos Valley Aquifer. (The author specializes in writing about U.S. criminal justice and law enforcement issues.)

The situation described in the report has implications for many water disputes in the USA and around the world. As groundwater becomes scarcer the very complexity of many such disputes, which can make them intractable, portends escalation of water disputes into outright conflicts that can cross state/provincial and national boundaries.    

A War Over Water in the Southwest
By Alan Neuhauser, Staff Writer

August 30, 2018

Breakneck development and oil and gas production are draining aquifers shared by two states.

FEW LAWS EMBODY THE frontier spirit – the mythos of rugged individualism and government non-intervention – quite like the Texas "rule of capture."

Any landowner in the Lone Star State, the measure declares, can use or sell as much oil, gas, water or other resource that lies beneath his or her land – regardless how the deposit might spread across property lines.

It's a law that has some in neighboring New Mexico seething.
Like lakes and rivers, underground springs and aquifers don't respect politically imposed borders and boundaries – the same body might lie beneath not only neighboring landowners but neighboring states, supplying water to both.

One such underground source of water, the Pecos Valley Aquifer, is at issue in New Mexico:

Oil and gas companies are drawing water from the aquifer for hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – to develop wells in eastern New Mexico. The operations use huge volumes of water to blast oil and gas from porous rock and bring the fuels to the surface.

New Mexico, however, has struggled to manage a dwindling supply of water. It has strict laws limiting how much can be used to feed the water-intensive process. Texas, with its rule of capture, does not.

As a result, instead of complying with New Mexico's water laws, some companies that have fracking operations in eastern New Mexico are simply running long lines of hose across the state border, connecting them to water wells on property they've leased from ranchers in Texas and pumping as much water as they can – tax- and regulation-free.

The issue is that, despite the state border, they're still drawing water from the same aquifer. And the practice is stoking fears from New Mexico landowners – and New Mexico Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn in particular – that a crucial source of water for rural landowners and farmers in New Mexico will soon run dry.

Dunn says he's found at least seven hoses on public lands draped across state lines, carrying potentially millions of gallons of water a day from an underground aquifer to oil and gas operations. More are believed to be on private land outside Dunn's jurisdiction.

"You can throw a rock from the border where these wells are," Dunn says "The usage of this freshwater for fracking is just unbelievable how much they're using."

One hose running from New Mexico to Texas, for example, was drawing water from Loving County, which is on a list of counties seeking federal drought assistance.

According to officials in Texas, more than 80 percent of the water that's pumped from the aquifer goes toward agriculture, the rest toward supplying homeowners, industry, municipal uses and power generation. It's a more complicated question where oil and gas operations fit into that equation, since the amount of water that's being pumped across state lines isn't included in the tally.

Lone Star State landowners and some policy experts see little reason to make a change. Gabriel Collins, an attorney and professor at the Baker Institute for Public Policy's Center for Energy Studies at Rice University, has contended that oil and gas companies aren't stealing New Mexico's water. On the contrary, he wrote in an op-ed this month, New Mexico is benefiting from the arrangement:

"Oilfield water imported from Texas supports New Mexico's state budget by allowing more and bigger fracs – and thus higher levels of oil and gas production – than would be possible with local water supplies alone," Collins wrote in the Midland Reporter-Telegram. "The state of New Mexico reaped more than $1.7 billion in fees, royalties, and taxes from oil and gas activity in fiscal year 2017, enough funds to cover about 30 percent of the state's operating budget during that period."

There's enough water in the Pecos Valley Aquifer to cover 323 million acres in a foot of water, according to Texas water officials – smaller than Lake Erie, which holds 393 million acre-feet of water but larger than the next-largest lake by volume in the U.S., Lake Tahoe.

Texas officials estimate that about 420,500 acre-feet can responsibly be pumped each year. However, given the varying topography of the underground water body, with portions that are shallower and deeper, longtime residents of New Mexico remain concerned that the oil and gas operations could soon cause their wells to run dry. Running out of water is no mere abstraction, especially as water levels drop across the Southwest, a consequence of droughts made longer and more severe by climate change and economic development that's continued to strain what water resources are left.

In 17 states across the West, including New Mexico, one in 30 wells has run dry, according to a study published last year in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The Ogallala Aquifer, which runs through eight states and abuts the Pecos Valley Aquifer, has seen its water levels fall especially quickly. In 2013, warnings went out to nearly 300 drinking water systems in New Mexico that were deemed vulnerable to running dry.

And it's not the only place where the rule of capture is grating on residents.

Dunn, a Republican-turned-Libertarian whose bio photo shows him wearing a cowboy hat and bolo tie, has made common cause with a diverse coalition of landowners, activists, lawyers and local politicians across the state border and 400 miles away in the vacation town of Wimberley in Central Texas, where local water resources are also under threat.

There, locals contend that their town faces perhaps an existential threat from a proposed project put forth by a pumping company called Electro Purification, which initially sought to withdraw and sell as much as 5 million gallons a day from the region's aquifer to support new housing developments in eastern Texas.

The Wimberley region is home to watering holes that attract tourists from across the state, and local business owners, politicians and green activists fear that Electro Purification plans will ultimately dry up these natural attractions, erasing a central industry and environmental treasures.
"We just don't believe that our resources right now can handle the type of pumping that's proposed with this one project," says Lon Shell, a Republican commissioner in Hays County, which includes Wimberley. "That's what scares us: We're going to be back in a drought one way or another, and our resources are maxed out. We're one of the fastest growing areas in the country with a lot of demand on all our resources. We just want to protect our water resource, because if it's gone, we know we'll never get it back."

Water disputes are hardly new to the Southwest or Texas in particular. There was Comanche Springs in Fort Stockton, for example, which dried up in the 1950s after farmers pumped too much water from the aquifer that supplied the waterway.

The chances of a political solution – on either side of the border – are slim at best. The rule of capture is settled law that neither Democrats nor Republicans in Austin seem interested in revisiting.

Even among some Texans who support reforms to the system, the prodding from across the border in New Mexico comes off as hypocritical.

Ironically, New Mexico is fending off a mirror image of the dispute, with Texas having sued New Mexico and accusing farmers there of using too much water from the Rio Grande River. New Mexico contends that an 80-year-old compact governing how states use the Rio Grande River never explicitly stated just how much water they could use – creating, in effect, another rule of capture, with farmers entitled to take as much as they'd like.

"To have a commissioner from a neighboring state who's arguing against the same principles and the same laws that are allowing ranchers from Texas take essentially New Mexico's water, at the same time that Texas is suing New Mexico over the Rio Grande water use," says John Brown, a documentary filmmaker and local activist in Wimberley, "the hypocrisy is beyond comparison."

The residents and politicians in Wimberley managed to convince Electro Purification to begin drawing water in phases, monitoring each step of way to ensure that the local aquifer doesn't sink too low. But they remain wary that the agreement still won't effectively protect the region's water resources.

"In the Hill Country, it's less about how much water is in the aquifer and more about how much you can pump before the pressure is reduced, because once that happens then the springs stop flowing," says Vanessa Puig Williams, executive director and general counsel for the Trinity Edwards Springs Protection Association, which has been working to limit Electro Purification development plans.

They also persuaded the state legislature to expand the bounds of a nearby groundwater conservation district, a regulatory body that oversees local underground water resources. The rezoning has granted them at least a measure of control over how much water Electro Purification can pump from the reservoir. The company has since agreed to roll back its plans, phasing in its operations to 0.5 million gallons per day and ramping up to 2.5 million gallons per day.

Even if Dunn could rally support for such an arrangement in the West Texas region where wells are feeding New Mexico fracking operations, it would likely be for naught. In Texas, oil and gas operations are exempt from local oversight by groundwater conservation districts.

That has left Dunn with few options.

While it wouldn't stop oil producers from drawing on wells across state lines, his office tried to limit the drain on water resources by compelling the state's Office of the Engineer, which oversees water use in the state, to stop issuing new permits for wells that draw small amounts of water. That would address another issue in which oil and gas firms, exploiting a loophole, had been obtaining multiple such permits that allowed them to drill a number of small wells while skirting regulations and fees associated with drilling a single large well.

But even that effort failed, with a state court stating it will quash Dunn's request.

"We lost," Lisa Henne, the attorney for the New Mexico State Lands Office, put it simply.

In calling attention to the issue – and pointing the finger at oil and gas, one of New Mexico's most powerful lobbying groups – Dunn says he's found himself politically isolated. Elected as a Republican in 2014, he switched to the Libertarian party this year, which he says he did after coming under fire from GOP lawmakers.

He launched an ill-fated bid for Senate, ultimately stepping aside to make way for Libertarian mainstay Gary Johnson.

"I was attacked by the Republican legislature for this issue," Dunn says. His goal, he insists, wasn't to quash the oil and gas industry – the fees that his office collects for oil and gas operations on public lands, he points out, are a crucial source of funding for the state's education budget. "One of my jobs is to create income for the schools, and 94 percent of our income comes from oil and gas. So we need to do it responsibly, we need to produce income for schools, but the Republican Party as a whole went after me for this issue."

But more urgently, he says, the water supply needs to be preserved or the people of his state will suffer.

"Even on my ranch, I could end up losing my wells," Dunn says. "Hopefully I can drill them deeper. But if I can't, I lose the ability to run cattle on the ranch. So if the aquifers are depleted, the people will no longer be able to stay there."

[END REPORT]

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"Mexico City Keeps Sinking As Its Water Supply Wastes Away"

By Carrie Kahn
September 14, 2018
NPR 

[see NPR website for Carrie Kahn's photos]

It's the rainy season now in Mexico. Between May and September, on most late afternoons, thick clouds roll into Mexico City's mountain-ringed valley. The skies darken and then an amazing downpour ensues.

Despite the rainfall, for five months of the year, many of the metropolitan area's more than 20 million residents don't have enough water to drink. Nearly all that rainwater runs off the streets and highways into the city's massive drainage system built to stave off perennial flooding.

Drinking water increasingly comes from a vast aquifer under the metropolis. And as that water table drops, the city sinks.

So why put a capital city more than 7,000 feet above sea level, in a mountain-ringed valley, that fills like a plugged-up bathtub when it rains?

"It's a historic mistake the city has had to pay for more than 500 years," says Ramón Aguirre Díaz, who has run Mexico City's municipal water system for more than a decade.

The ancient Aztecs first picked the spot. They built their city atop the huge lakes that filled this valley, leaving the natural freshwater supply intact around them. The city flooded back then too, but the Aztecs, probably the last civilization to properly manage this watershed, built a system of dikes to control the problem.

The "historic mistake" kicked in around the 1600s, when Hernándo Cortés and his band of conquerors arrived. To make room for their expanding empire, over a few hundred years they slowly but surely drained all the valley's lakes.

By the 20th century, long after Mexico's independence from Spain, the fresh surface water was mostly gone and the hunt for new sources had taken over. Hundreds of miles of pipes now bring in about 30 percent of the city's water needs from faraway rivers and lakes. The rest comes from the valley's vast underground aquifer.

Today, Aguirre says, twice as much water is pumped out as is put back in.

"We are depleting volumes of water that took hundreds, thousands of years to store. Sooner or later it will run out," he says.

When exactly that is, no one really knows. But for those living in the poorer eastern stretches of the city, like 52-year-old Marco Marquez, it feels like now.

"Look," he says, as he spins his water tap. "Nothing — not even a drop."

During the rainy season, Marquez gets about an hour of water a day. His little patio is crammed with different sizes of storage containers filled with water. During the dry season, he can go two, even three months without water. He says sometimes the government will send in a water tanker truck, known as a pipa, which literally means pipe.

"The quality of the water the government provides is really bad quality, it's disgusting," he says. "You can only use it to flush the toilets or wash the sidewalk."

Marquez says sometimes he and some neighbors pool their money to buy a private pipa with water from better wells.

He needs clean water to run his fresh fruit stand. He has named the small storefront, run out of a street-facing room in his house, the Oasis.

The city's underground pipes, half of which are at least 60 years old, fail at an alarming rate. It could take at least 50 years, and hundreds of millions of dollars, to replace all the old, ruptured pipes, according to one official estimate.

That means the water tankers are in high demand.

Twenty-two-year-old Juan Flores stands on top of a 2,600-gallon tanker. He guides a huge hose connected to a pipe pumping water directly out of the aquifer into the truck.

"I'll take this to fill up tanks at schools and hospitals around this district," which borders Mexico City's airport, he says.

In many ways sending trucks all over the sprawling capital is a more efficient system than the city's pipes, which are so prone to breaks and leaks that nearly 40 percent of the drinking water running through them is just wasted, according to a government study in 2010.

That inefficiency, along with urban sprawl and hotter weather due to climate change, has put even more demand on the overused aquifer. And as the water table drops, so do many parts of the city — by as much as 15 inches in a year in some areas.

As the ground sinks, it leaves buildings tilting — most notably, the iconic cathedral in Mexico City's historical center — as well as roadways breaking apart and pipes rupturing or buckling backward.

María Estella Isla, 42, is on her patio, where she has just started a load of laundry. She hasn't had water in days, so she has to fill her washing machine with water she scoops out of a big blue plastic storage barrel.

"Just look at my patio — it's full of cracks," she says. A large fissure in the ground runs right through her property, out the gate and down the street. One half of the block has sunk. It's at least a foot lower than the other side. The underground sewer line connected to her house now tilts upward and floods her patio, especially on rainy days.

Since last century, Mexico City has spent billions of dollars on flood control. A major tunnel project launched almost a decade ago has been plagued with delays and enormous cost overruns, with a budget now topping $2 billion. It is not helping the city's water shortage or sinking problems. The system moves rainwater and sewage out of the city quickly, but little is recycled or used to recharge the aquifer.

Anthropologist Dean Chahim, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford, is studying Mexico City's water woes. He says water managers must find a more balanced approach to the city's water supply to rely less on groundwater. There is a need for more water recycling, rainwater catchment and recharging of the aquifer. Many of these are being done, but on a very small scale.

"And we have to redistribute the water. At the end of the day, it can't be that people in one part of the city [the richer neighborhoods] are drinking 400 liters [106 gallons] a day and others [the poorest] are drinking 40 [11]," says Chahim.

The World Health Organization says a person needs between 50 and 100 liters of water a day (13 and 26 gallons) to meet basic needs.

Water administrator Aguirre says there have been a multitude of studies and solution recommendations.

He says what's needed now is the political will, and more money, to make changes.

"The city won't make it to the 22nd century if we don't resolve [the water problems] soon," says Aguirre, who leaves office at the end of November.

A new city government takes over Dec. 1.

Mayor-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, a University of California, Berkeley-educated scientist, says getting more reliable water supplies to more people in the city is one of her top priorities.

Last week, she said she will inject an additional 7 billion pesos (about $370 million) to the annual budget for Mexico City's water department, about a 50 percent boost over this year.

Sheinbaum said on Twitter she will work to bring more water to more people.

Millions of residents are counting on her.

[END REPORT]

See also NPR's June 25 report by Carrie Kahn, Meet Mexico City's First Elected Female Mayor

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"The bottom line: Florence’s rains are likely to bring catastrophic flooding to a large region along the track of the storm".

Helpful background on the storm. In Florence's Grip, No Relief for North Carolina; Weather Underground, 9/13 - 10:57 PM EDT

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Syrian War during past 24 hours

FARS
September 13, 2018

Sweida

The army men stormed ISIL's strongholds in the depth of Eastern desert of Sweida, imposing control over more points in the rocks in Toloul al-Safa region.

In the meantime, the army's artillery and missile units and aircraft pounded ISIL's movements and positions in Toloul al-Safa, inflicting major losses on the terrorists.

A field source pointed to the tightening of the army's siege on the ISIL in Toloul al-Safa, adding that the army units have now imposed control over a large rocky region with a number caves and hideouts of the ISIL terrorists.

The source further said that other units of the army repelled ISIL's heavy attack Northeast of Toloul al-Safa to lift government forces' siege on the terrorists.

ISIL suffered heavy casualties in the failed attacks and pulled the remaining pockets of fighters from the battlefield.

Idlib

Syrian sources revealed Turkey's demand from Damascus, via Russian channels, again to further delay the army's military operations in Idlib.

The Arabic-language website of Sputnik quoted informed Syrian sources as saying on Wednesday that Ankara has asked the Syrian army's command center, with Moscow's mediation, to provide the country with more time to separate those who it calls as "moderate dissidents" from Tahrir al-Sham (the Levant Liberation Board or the Al-Nusra Front) and the ISIL terrorists.

Based on the report, the Turkish side has admitted dispatch of military equipment to several regions of Idlib province in the past few days, saying that if Tahrir al-Sham rejects leaving the regions occupied by the "moderate dissidents", it will use military power against them. Turkey has not mentioned where the terrorists could retreat to after leaving Idlib.

The sources said that if Syria and Russia agree with Turkey's demand, it will be the last deadline given to Ankara to act upon its undertakings based on the Astana conference.

Earlier reports said that Damascus has extended its deadline for two days upon Turkey's demand to delay military operations in Idlib province.

Also on Wednesday, the terrorists stationed in Idlib warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that they will attack and occupy the country's lands if Ankara gives up support for them.

The Arabic-language al-Mayadeen news channel reported on Wednesday that a notorious terrorist commander in Northern Idlib, bordering Turkey, has warned Erdogan that they will gain control of the town of Reihaniyeh in Turkey within 2 hours if he "sells Idlib" and desists from supporting them.

The terrorists who had been transferred from Eastern Ghouta of Damascus to Idlib are now warning that the militants will pass the cement walls built at the borders and enter Reihaniyeh region by digging tunnels.

Hama

The pro-militant White Helmets Organization, directed by its foreign supporters, are planning to transfer poisonous materials to new locations in Hama province as terrorist groups are trying to stage a false-flag chemical attack, an Arab media outlet reported on Wednesday.

The Arabic-language al-Mayadeen TV channel quoted a well-informed source in Jisr al-Shughour as disclosing that the White Helmets are planning to transfer a large volume of poisonous materials to Qala al-Maziq and Kafr Naboudeh in Northern Hama as requested by their foreign backers.

It went on to say that the terrorists and the White Helmets are planning to make a ten-minute video of a fake chemical attack to send two copeis of the video to the United Nations, adding that a meeting which was to be held over the release of the video of the fake chemical attack has been postponed.

Also on Wednesday, the Syrian army's artillery and missile units opened heavy fire at the positions of Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at in Northern Hama, destroying terrorists' bases and positions used as missile launchpads.

The artillery and missile units targeted a base of Tahrir al-Sham near Qala al-Maziq in Northern Hama, inflicting major casualties on the terrorists.

Other artillery units further pounded terrorists' strongholds in the town of al-Latamina, damaging several positions used as missile launchpads to target regions that are under government forces' control.

Deir Ezzur

The Syrian Army units continued storming ISIL in different flanks on Wednesday, driving the terrorists out of more areas in the Eastern desert of Deir Ezzur.

The army soldiers engaged in fierce clashes with ISIL in several flanks in a large region from the Eastern deserts of Deir Ezzur to Homs province, taking control over vast areas of land.

In the meantime, the country's Air Force carried out several rounds of combat flights over ISIL's movements in al-Sukhnah deserts, near Aweiraz Dam, in T2 Oil Pumping Station in Southwestern Deir Ezzur and at Deir Ezzur border with Homs province in the Eastern Deserts, destroying a number of bases and positions and killing a number of terrorists.

Other units of the army discovered a large depot of arms and ammunition in one of the hideouts of the ISIL in al-Sukhnah desert.

Hasaka

The US Forces have started setting up two more military bases in Qamishli region in Hasaka province amid tensions between civilians and the Kurds, an Arab media outlet reported on Wednesday.

The Arabic-language al-Manar news website reported that the US-led coalition has resumed building two more military bases in the village of Jam'aya East of the town of Qamishli as well as areas West of the town.

It further said that the US military has set up a base at the Eastern entrance of the town Qamishli and also established a permanent base in the small town of Himo at the Western entrance of the town.

The website reminded that a sum of 13 Syrian soldiers were killed in an ambush operation by the Kurdish militias in Qamishli recently.

Raqqa

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) suffered casualties on Wednesday after two bombs went off at their bases in Raqqa province.

A bomb went off at SDF's base in al-Nour street in the Northwestern part of Raqqa city, injuring a number of SDF members.

In the meantime, fierce clashes were also reported between the SDF and the attackers after the bomb explosion.

Also, a bomb went off near Ibn Khaldoun school in Raqqa city, killing two SDF militias.

The SDF has arrested over fifty young men in the villages and towns in Northern Raqqa under a forced recruiting plan.

[END REPORT]

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"Syrian Army unleashes big assault across Hama-Idlib axis"

Breaking News
AMN
September 13, 2018

BEIRUT, LEBANON (2:10 P.M.) – The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) unleashed a big assault across the Idlib-Hama axis this afternoon, following a rather quiet morning in northwest Syria.

Led by the Tiger Forces, the Syrian Arab Army began the attack by heavily targeting the Islamist rebels near the Masasneh Checkpoint.

According to a military source in Damascus, the Syrian Army managed to eliminate an entire group of Jaysh Al-Izza fighters, including two snipers.

Following this attack, the Syrian Arab Army began targeting Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham’s trenches around the western axis of Tal Wast.

The Syrian Arab Army was able to destroy at least three trenches belonging to Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham before they shifted their attention to the Idlib Governorate.

Using surface-to-surface missiles, the Syrian Arab Army heavily shelled the town of Tamanah, hitting a number of jihadist installations in the process.

The Syrian Arab Army is now focusing most of their attack on the towns of Tamanah and Sukeek, which are both located in the southern part of the Idlib Governorate.

[END REPORT]

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Robert Fisk looks for massed SAA troops at Idlib battlefront, finds massed herds of sheep. And some camels.

Robert Fisk and his cameraman and taxi driver actually did run into 200 troops, as he noted two days ago while filing a report for the Independent (I will save my commentary for a subsequent post) -- 

[...]  

But there were no armoured vehicles, no Iranians, no Hezbollah, no Russians, no convoys of field artillery – though I had seen the photos of the Syrian convoys a couple of weeks ago – and the only massed forces I came across were vast herds of sheep and, close to Aleppo, a string of camels. Not a single soldier was carrying a gas mask. Which would surely be a sure sign of an imminent chemical attack anywhere on the front, whoever was dropping the stuff.

Now this doesn’t mean the massed army wasn’t there. Perhaps far behind the front lines or far above Aleppo, waiting in faraway fields for zero hour, they may be passing their time.

The Syrians have loudly announced their intention of crushing the last Islamist bastion in Idlib – and I can confirm that Syrian jets took off from the Hama air base on Saturday morning at around 8.30 because I could hear their roar a mile away over breakfast – but I saw no smoke clouds drifting down from Jisr al-Chougour or east of Idlib a couple of hours later as I watched from that all-too-smashed security-supply route up to Aleppo.

A lone, low-flying Russian-made Syrian helicopter came thudding over the desert near Abu Adh Dahour, whose own air base was recaptured by Syrian troops last year. Just one. 

So here’s what I did find on my 300-mile tour around the frontier of Idlib. At the old Kassab border crossing, the Turks are still building a massive concrete wall along the Syrian frontier, topped with barbed wire and arc lights below a cloud-shrouded mountain on which stood, just visible, a range of reconnaissance aerials. From there, a Syrian captain told me, Nato watched Syria and could probably listen to Syrian communications – although the Syrians could apparently not listen to Nato.

I climbed the staircase of a broken house, its former Nusrah Islamist forces’ graffiti painted out on the internal walls – and stared across the Turkish border. There was even a bust of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the Turkish side of the frontier station.

Then a sense of déjà vu. A group of Syrian security agents walked sullenly towards us to ask the Syrian army what we were doing. There was an altercation – an instructive moment – between the two Syrian forces before we moved away. Interesting. But exactly two years ago, the same Syrian army had been confronted by the same security men at the same spot asking the same question about my presence. Not a bad repeat performance.

And when I drove further east, those guns began firing across the forest, yet – again, exactly two years ago, at this very spot – the Syrian artillery – quite probably the very same guns – had lobbed off shells over our heads at the same distant Nusrah-held hillsides. Plus ça change, I suppose.

And then, near Kansafet, I climbed the crumbling steps of a shell-scarred villa where the Syrian front line troops manned sand bags above a smashed mosque and a smashed church and a bullet whacked past us from the Nusrah snipers above.

When I suggested to an obliging Syrian officer that I thought there might be no great offensive – just a slow gnawing away at the boundaries of Idlib’s mini-caliphate while “reconciliation” talks dragged on between the Syrians and the Russians and the Turks and the armed groups and, hopefully, the tens of thousands of civilians trapped there – the soldier nodded and told me I was “50 per cent correct”.

It was an eerie journey. A vast empty motorway – its blue Aleppo, Lattakia and Damascus road signs proving it to be the old international M4 highway cut off by the Idlib fighters; a towering railway viaduct captured by the Syrian army; and a massive but still incomplete concrete river dam whose equipment, so the Syrians say, was stripped by Nusrah and sold to the Turks. 

[Pundita note: Maybe the M4 crossed a border a long time ago but it's the M5 that's the international highway -- parts of which were liberated by the SAA just this year, making it once more 'international.' M4, however, has been and remains a 'strategic' highway during the Syrian war. ]

 And thousands and thousands – and thousands more — abandoned, crushed houses and cattle sheds and huts destroyed over the past three years of fighting. Nusrah had tried to bring down a motorway bridge, but their charges – exploded long ago – appeared to have blasted downwards rather than upwards, and the structure still stood.

It was around this time that I realised the purpose of the Syrian army’s presence in this sector. Not, I suspect, for an offensive against Idlib, rather to fight off opposition fighters if they were under air bombardment and tried to escape west and cross the walled Turkish border. If there is to be a last battle, Syria’s armed enemies are not supposed to slip away this time – unless, of course, the Russians and the Iranians and the Turks, basking in the aftermath of the only slightly successful Tehran talks last week – can still work out a peaceful settlement.

So this was no launching pad for an attack against Idlib. “This place is so full of mountains, valleys, hills and rocks, it would need six divisions to fight here and we’ve only got one,” a Syrian officer vouchsafed.

In any case, I asked myself, how can you start an attack with massed tanks through a forest? And you can forget historical memories of the Ardennes. These forested hills are far more difficult to cross, let alone plunge down – in the style of Byron’s Assyrians – like the wolf on the fold.

On the further mountains, a clutch of elderly T-62 tanks of Warsaw Pact vintage nestled beside the road amid 80 mph winds. The military road east of Idlib province, cratered and lined with the same shattered villages, was marked only by the now familiar red, white and black flagged Syrian checkpoints and flanked by vast basins of desert.

Save for the lone helicopter, there was no sign of imminent catastrophe for the people or the defenders of Idlib. The sand appeared to be that cliché of all war reports – a deserted desert – and the horizon was 15 miles away. Could Syria’s legions be out there in the shimmering heat, waiting to strike? Quite possibly, but I thought I should have spotted some of them. Out of Aleppo, six heavy duty supply trucks, new imports from Russia, ground up a hill. They were all empty.

The villages along this tour of the front lines were as miserable as they were depressing. Largely abandoned, several, on the last stage of the journey, still boasted the remains of Nusrah’s illicit oil pumps – a mass of broken ironwork with black stains around them – but a few stores had reopened, closer to Aleppo. But who would want to return here when the last successful Syrian offensive in Deraa had ended with a mysterious Isis incursion in which scores of Druze civilians were slaughtered?

I took a return journey down the supply route. Forty soldiers in a corrugated iron shed coffee shop, five helicopters – one reconnaissance – hovering around the recaptured airbase – a longstanding radar position – and four covered non-military trucks. Not much evidence of “Operation Dawn of Idlib” as the Syrian army are now officially calling it.

Well, you can’t have a war without a war. However true or illusory the reports are of heavy air raids in Idlib – and it remains a fact that not a single Western journalist reporting them is, so far we know, in Idlib itself – it would be ridiculous to suggest that the Russians and Syrians are not bombing the province and its cities. They are. Touring the front on military roads, as I have just done on the Syrian side of the line, does not mean that I can see every valley and wadi or spread of desert. It is a fact that there are several Russian observation posts here – but I did not see them. And one Turkish post, installed under the Russian “de-escalation” agreement, which I could not find.

My guess is that the “last battle” is still a while away. It must happen, surely. The Syrian government has said repeatedly that it will not permit its enemies to stay in a province of 6,097 square kilometres – warning, even THAT statistic might be a trifle too high! – but Syria does not want to go to war with Turkey.

Will the Turks, who allowed so many of these men into Syria, survey the future battlefield and be intimidated by the massed Syrian army (for they can assuredly survey it better than me)? No, I don’t think Turkey will be intimidated. But with Vladimir Putin’s hand on his shoulder, the Sultan Erdogan across the border might be a little more accommodating.

Perhaps someone will take back the foreign fighters. Or send them to fight and die in another country. Libya, perhaps? Yemen? These men – and their families — have moved around the Middle East quite a lot these past years. There’ll be more negotiations, I suspect, between Putin and Erdogan and Assad and – through Putin – perhaps with the Saudis?

Meanwhile, our leaders huff and puff and froth and roar and – across that little valley, be sure Syria’s guns continue to fire this morning. It’s not all quiet on the northern front, then. But not yet war.

[END REPORT]

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The Refugee Industry panics as Syrian reverse diaspora gears up

TASS reported yesterday that 242,295 Syrian refugees have returned from abroad since the Syrian government's refugee return campaign has gotten underway. In addition,1,230,342 internally displaced Syrians have returned home. 

There is more good news from the press briefing today by the head of the Russian National Defense Management Center,  General Mikhail Mizintsev, who is keeping a precise tally, but first his bad news:

Attempts are being made to discourage refugees residing in Syria’s neighboring states from returning to their home country, he added.

According to him, special questionnaires allegedly sponsored by a United Nations high commissioner are being used for that purpose.

"These questionnaires are aimed at raising doubts in the minds of Syrians who have decided to return home and make them eventually change their decision," the Russian general said.

"We do not rule out that these questionnaires are used by forces not linked to official United Nations agencies," he added.

Alexander Morozov, an academician with the International Academy of Psychological Sciences noted the questionnaire's list of questions prove that those compiling the questionnaires were not trying to remain impartial by using neutral words but sought to exert psychological pressure on refugees.

Now what forces would those be? Suspects would include every government intent on making a quagmire in Syria for the Russians and bringing down the Syrian government, so right there is a long list of suspects. But the prime suspect would be the very profitable refugee industry, which includes the Mafia:

In the past twelve months, Italian mafia groups have turned illegal migration into one of their main sources of income, according to a report released by Italy's Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (DIA), or the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate.

The Italian news network TG24 cited the report as saying that endorsing clandestine migration remains one of the most profitable criminal rackets. [...]

The refugee industry has also made windfall profits for Turkey's business sector and EU companies importing textiles and clothing from Turkey. From Frederik Johannisson's investigative report, "Hidden child labour: how Syrian refugees in Turkey are supplying Europe with fast fashion," published in January 2016 by the Guardian:

[...]
There are no figures on the informal Syrian labour force in Turkey but there are almost 2.3 million registered Syrian refugees living in the country, according to the UN, with about 9% of them in refugee camps. The rest have to provide for themselves with no financial support from the state.

An expert from the Centre for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies has suggested around 250,000 Syrian refugees are working illegally in the country, with a recent Human Rights Watch report claiming child labour is “rampant”.

Many reports of illegal working come from the garment sector, Turkey's second largest industry.

The country's giant textile industry is a major supplier to Europe but remains largely unregulated, an estimated 60% of the total workforce is unregistered, meaning they work informally, usually without a contract or any employment benefits. Syrian refugees make up a particularly vulnerable section of the workforce. Visiting Syrian workers in textile workshops in three Turkish cities – Istanbul, Mersin and Adana – I encountered child labour, poor working conditions and low pay.

Turkey’s policy until this month had been to treat Syrians as temporary guests, with no right to work, meaning refugees could only work illegally. The landscape is shifting, however. As part of a deal with the EU, the Turkish government last week announced new regulations that will allow any Syrian who has been in the country for six months to apply for a work permit.
[...]
Many European brands import from Turkey as it is close and known for the quality of the work. Turkey is the third largest supplier of clothing to Europe, after China and Bangladesh. In 2014, Europe imported €13.7bn (£10.4bn) worth of textiles and clothing from Turkey.

[...]

But a dive in those profits if Syrian workers return home would be small chips next to what the Germans stand to lose if the Syrian diaspora reverses. Low-skilled and often illiterate Syrians refugees aren't any use to German manufacturers but with training the refugees are just what they need:

[...]

Even as Germany’s economy has thrived in recent years, industry has warned of a looming Fachkräftemangel, or skilled worker shortage.

Without significant immigration, the working-age population will likely decrease from roughly 49 million in 2013 to somewhere between 34 and 38 million in 2060, according to a government estimate published in July.

The government’s efforts to lure highly-skilled foreigners have largely fallen short.

Faced with those pressures, finding ways to put the refugees to work quickly has become a top priority for Angela Merkel’s government.

“We have more than 1 million vacancies, we have a need for qualified personnel, and more than 50 percent of those who come to us are younger than 25,” Labor Minister Andrea Nahles said in a recent interview with German public television. “This could really work out.”

[...] 

It could indeed work out; Syrian refugees have demonstrated in Turkey's cloth industry that they're hard workers. But imagine after the German government plugs a fortune into literacy and vocational education that the recipients turn around and say, 'Danke, jetzt kehren wir in unser Land zurück.'

There would be another suspect when it comes to fiddling with questionnaires: the United Nations itself, under pressure from the Usual Suspects to discourage Syrian refugees from returning to their country.   

But to return to the good news from Gen. Mizintsev's presser:

He pointed out that more countries were joining the efforts aimed at facilitating the return of Syrian refugees. In particular, Morocco’s authorities have expressed readiness to pay the travel expenses of those willing to return to their home country and provide the refugees with the financial assistance of $150 per person.

Mizintsev also said that Armenia had been providing assistance to Syria on a regular basis, planning to carry out another humanitarian mission in the province of Aleppo in the near future.

The general pointed to the ongoing work to reconstruct Syria’s infrastructure facilities. "Over the past week, 143 residential dwellings, two schools, two medical facilities, two kindergartens, two bakeries, seven water supply stations, three power substations, three motor bridges and 14 industrial facilities were rebuilt," Mizintsev said. The reconstruction of schools, pre-school facilities and other infrastructure facilities continues in 160 Syrian settlements.

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9/11/01 Flight 93 crash site: The wind flipped the Bible open to Psalm 23

Site: "United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11 after passengers attempted to regain control of the aircraft. There were no survivors."

SHANKSVILLE (KDKA - 9/6/11) — One of those who will be in Shanksville this weekend is Lillie Leonardi, a first responder to the scene on that dark day.

What she saw and experienced has haunted her for a decade.

It has also given her personal insight into the triumph of the human spirit.

“In that moment – again, you’re standing there going, ‘Oh my God! Oh, my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Do I have to be here?’”

On Sept.11, 2001, Lillie Leonardi, arriving in a mobile command truck, knew that the field near Shanksville, Somerset County, was as bad as bad could be. She could see it reflected in the eyes of firefighters.

“The first thing that hit me was the smell,” she recalled. “It was a combination of [airplane] fuel and the pine.

The second thing that hit me was we’re in the middle of the wilderness and there’s no sounds of birds.”

On that day, Leonardi was with the Pittsburgh division of the FBI as a community affairs coordinator.

Aside from the blackened forest and smoldering crater, she says she saw something else – a rising mist with shapes inside and silver flickers.

A devout Catholic, Lille wondered if they were angels or even the 40 heroic souls of those on United Airlines Flight 93 who’d fought their hijackers to the end.

Then she, and two men with her, spotted a Bible, barely singed.

“Again, I’m praying, and all of a sudden I said, ‘God just give me a sign that I haven’t lost my mind.’

“And all of a sudden this huge wind came out of nowhere and flipped that Bible open and I remember it flipped open to Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd…’ ”

[...]

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.

For Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies

Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over.

 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

And I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

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