 Hello, and welcome to News Clicks International Roundup. This week, we look at key developments in Syria and North Korea. To talk more about this, we have with Prabir Pulkai sir, Adrian Chief News Click. Hello, Prabir. So, two key developments took place in the military situation in Syria over the last 10 days or so. So, on the one hand, there was the American bombing of del Azor, which led nearly 40 deaths, although the exact nature of the operation wasn't very clear. And the less known incident was the Syrian defeat of the ISIS and al-Saffa. So, how do you see both these operations and the results of these? See, it's interesting if we take our first al-Saffa case that you were talking about. Sometime back, ISIS had actually suddenly attacked certain villages and it abducted people from there. There was a lot of resentment, at least the international press talked about it, amongst those villagers that the Syrian army had not protected them. There is also a regional ethnic divide over there because they are largely Druze villages. And there was the other argument, the Druze had not aligned with the Syrian government that strongly, they wanted to be neutral. And that is why also that the Syrian army didn't take their plight seriously. The reality is, it's very difficult to protect in this kind of region if suddenly, quote-unquote, guerrilla forces who are not occupying territory suddenly spring up and launch an attack. And this is really one of that. There were a large number of deaths, villagers killed and abducted. Children and women abducted who were being held as hostages. So, the Syrian army couldn't attack them. The first step was actually the Syrian army's command operations by which they rescued the villages. Once the villagers were rescued, then it became easy for the Syrian army to go into action and clean the place out. The interesting issue is once they have cleaned the place out, some of the ISIS groups seemed to have fled to Al-Tanaf, which as you can see in the map that this is, Al-Tanaf is where the Americans have an enclave over there which they are holding. Now, why they fled to that area where they've been protected by the American forces? Is there a tacit understanding between the ISIS operative or ISIS groups operating in that section and the US forces there? We don't know. But it's also true that Al-Tanaf is a large area. So, the American troops are holding that area very lightly. So, in fact, the main thing over there is they will not let the Syrian army enter Al-Tanaf enclave. And that's what is the reason also which why the ISIS forces can take shelter there. Of course, it also raises the problem. If they take shelter there, do they conduct hit and run operations in and around that place? What will be the American forces? Shall we say response be to that? We have to see. But interesting that the ISIS forces on being attacked, some sections went into Al-Tanaf. The second other issue about Al-Tanaf and that's also the, shall we say, the reason why the American forces are still there in Al-Tanaf which does not have otherwise any military significance in their so-called battle against ISIS. And I'll come to little later why I'm calling this so-called battle against ISIS is the fact that it blocks Syria and Baghdad, Iraq from linking up because that road leads actually from Syria and connects to Baghdad. So, essentially the American forces are sitting on that road, preventing this road to supply basically between Damascus and Baghdad. This is one major highway that connects it to that's being blocked. The strategic military move to keep Syria and Iraq separate in terms of the strategic connections. As somebody put it, it's really one way of seeing that Iran does not supply Lebanon through Syria and Iraq. So, this is really one part of it. When you come to the other issue that you have raised, Derasaur and the attack by the Americans on that, this has been one of the great mysteries of the war. Why is it that there are very few strikes against the ISIS by Americans who seem to be threatening Syrian forces quite regularly? But why is it that they have not struck at ISIS? Particularly if ISIS is in the Derasaur area sitting on the other side of the Euphrates, which they are not allowing the Syrian forces to cross. This is really the area occupied by what is called the Syrian Democratic Forces, the SDF, which are in alliance as you know, the Kurdish forces. So, why is it that ISIS has not been bombed more regularly? Because the whole territory is an open ground. So, that seems to be very easy to bomb. Why they have been bombed so lightly has been a mystery. This time the bombing was a response of the ISIS forces going and capturing some Humvees from the SDF forces, the Humvees which have been donated by the Americans to the SDF forces. As you know, the Humvees were the ones which are used by the initial ISIS forces moving into Syria after the fall of Mosul earlier when the Iraqi army had withdrawn from Mosul. So, they had really got hold of a large number of Humvees. The Americans had given the Iraqi forces and moved in a convoy into Syria. So, the same thing seems to happen there. Humvees being recovered or captured by the ISIS. And the Americans wanting to recover the Humvees or at least disable them bombed the ISIS forces. One of the reasons of course for the bombing is that the Humvees also have their self-location. Also, it's easy to find them in this territory. So, the American response seems to have been more, the loss of Humvees that really bombed the ISIS. So, that's the other part. And let's not forget the other strategic issue over here. That there are sort of links up again to Iraq and again it links up to Baghdad through the road which is there. You can see that road. And therefore also the second road which is links Damascus, Aleppo to Baghdad being blocked in there by ISIS and also SDF in the border. So, that's the interesting part of what we see. That the militarily the stalemate of trying to keep Syria and Iraq apart still continues. And ISIS is not the major force here. But the major force seems to be how to contain the Syrian army, not to strategically gain control of the areas by which they can link up to Iraq. And on a connected note, there have been certain noises shall we say from the rest of the Arab countries. Both Jordan and Kuwait have indicated the softening of stance, so to speak, towards Syria. And there are speculation that Syria might soon be inducted back into the Arab League. So, how do we also see these questions at a time when the Syrian army is also looking at an assault on Idlib, the final area that is left for them? You see, this whole scenario in the Arab world has changed dramatically. We must also see that the Arab world has at least, if we take the Asian part of it, leave out the North Africa part of it, which is also a big part of the Arab world. But if we take the Asian part of it, really the West Asian part of it, that Arabs are one set of players. You have Turkey with 80 billion people, another set of players and Iranians who are also about 80 million, the third set of players. Now, Saudi Arabia punched well above its weight and so did the United Arab Emirates and so did Qatar because of the huge oil reserves that they had. And that, the fact that it is easily convertible into dollar and the number of people there are not many meant they had what would be called disposable wealth. And that's what gave them the power by arms, parking it to the American and British and French banks. So, they got a lot of play because of that. But intrinsically, the strong power in the Arab world was really Syria, Iraq and Egypt by virtue of its size. So, these are the ones who don't have power but have money, which is really Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, of course, in which Saudi Arabia is a certain size. But again, it's not really a large country. The Yemenis are the large country. As you know, it doesn't have oil reserves. So, it's been sort of being at the mercy of Saudi Arabia for quite some time. So, the Americans have been trying to put together an Arab NATO. And that Arab NATO, the fault lines today run much deeper. Of course, Qatar was the first one that Saudis tried to grab Qatar would have probably marched and grabbed their oil except for the fact that they sought Turkish protection. So, you have the Islamic Brotherhood being blessed as it were by Qatar and Turkey. And therefore, this is a long-term player. If the monarchies fall, then Islamic Brotherhood would move into the space rather than the, shall we say, the secular forces, the secular Arab nationalist forces, which have weakened considerably. The fact that Syria and Iraq are in that sense sort of back into play as countries, they are not obviously monarchies, I think is interesting. But it does show that this whole attempt to keep Syria out and use an Arab NATO to really fulfill the ambitions of the United States, Israel, and the linchpin of the Arab NATO would be Saudi Arabia. That has really fallen apart completely. So, yes, Turkey is a player, Iran is a player, and Syria and Iraq are also players. And so is Saudi Arabia. But all the others are really bit players. It's Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates are really bit players. And of course, the other big player in the region is America, United States, France and Britain, and now Russia. So, external players, internal players, it will say, one of our friends described all of this as a kaleidoscope. A little shake changes the configuration completely. But I think it's very clear that the Syrian war has been won by Assad, and his government is now in power. How Idlib plays out between the Kurdish forces, the Turkish forces, and Syrian forces we have to see, which side the Kurds go to. Do they actually say we are a part of Syria and we want autonomy, or they want to fight for independence, blessed by the Americans? We'll have to see that play. But it's very clear that the larger play of breaking up Syria and getting Saudis to create an Arab NATO, that's now over. So, moving on to North Korea, the last week saw the New York Times to start with. And then a lot of American and global media outlets talked about a betrayal by North Korea, in which they revealed that this missile testing site was active as opposed to what they claimed was North Korea's promises that it would close everything. And later, of course, all of this was disproved because it was evidently shown that the existence of this site does not really in any sense violate North Korea's assurances. But we see that this again marks yet another attempt by the American establishment and its allies in the media to kind of subvert the process which is already going through a slightly rough phase right now. You know, the Americans have never kept any agreement that they have signed. So therefore, to think that they will, because they have signed a statement which Trump had with Kim, the Singapore Declaration, would really hold was perhaps expecting too much. And we have always said that it's a balance of forces of the ground that will determine what happens in North Korea and South Korea. And the real important issue in the Singapore Declaration is not Trump, not the United States, but really South Korea emerging as a player. And whether the South Korea is able to maintain its political line, its international line independent of United States or not, is the issue because South Korea has always been under the thumb of the United States. And even though it has approached North Korea, tried to have shall we say normalization of relations, it is always founded on the fact that the Americans have pulled the plug and brought back shall we say a more authoritarian right-wing government, each of these instances. So the can the South Korean, North Korean thought-out hold, will that lead to peace? What is China and Russia going to do because they are neighbors and Japan? I think that's going to determine the fate of the Singapore Declaration. Not really good wishes in the Americans, which as we said from the beginning, we have to discount. It gives certain breathing space, which is what North Korea got. On the question of the 13 sites, there are well-known in international circuits who deal with this issue, strategic issues. There are about 20 undeclared missile sites of North Korea. There is nothing any country has to do in terms of declination of missile sites. Nobody declares missile sites. I don't think the United States also declares even which ships carry what weapons, including nuclear weapons. It's a policy of all ships, nuclear naval ships, that they will not declare what they have on board. So these are things which are what would be called strategically things that you do keep secret. Of course, today we know the eye in the sky. The global satellites have a resolution of about a couple of feet on the ground. So anything on the ground is actually known. You can camouflage it to a certain extent. But of course, the militaries of each country knows what the other countries have. And particularly the American eyes in the sky obviously know what the sites are there in North Korea. What they've got is from open source data. People have put together images to say these are the possible missile sites. And as you said, in the declaration North Korea had had with the United States, the Singapore Declaration. There is no mention of either declaring sites, missile sites or halting them. Missiles are not nuclear missiles. Missiles are missiles. Every country has missiles to protect its borders. So I have not understood what the anger was that the New York Times was mentioning. That apparently if North Korea today moves a finger, it's somehow in violation of the Singapore Declaration. Of course, it is going to continue with its conventional missile defense. Whether this missile defense will lead to what level of missiles being deployed, that depends completely on the kind of peace the United States reaches with North Korea at the moment. The three steps that were supposed to be taken. North Korea has taken some steps. The only step the US has taken was supposed to be not having military exercises near the border. So that still is in the flux. We keep on hearing they would have exercises again and again and again. So that's the first step. North Korea's first step was stop the nuclear tests, stop missile tests. They have done that. What about the second and third? That's a peace. And the end to the war. And end to the war, which still continues. And then the question of denuclearization. But there is no nothing on record which says that missile launchers will be disabled. It's basically again asking for a declaration of surrender by North Korea. They seem to forget that even in 1950 they didn't get a surrender by North Korea. Even at that time it had been bombed to the stone ages. Nothing was left standing as their own generals testified in Senate and Congressional hearings. So this is really a patent fabrication. But you know, at the end of it, Goebbels is very much alive. And unfortunately, Goebbels' propaganda is being done by papers which are supposed to be the papers of record, which are supposed to be not the ones who peddle fake news. Yes, they don't peddle fake news in the sense. They don't state facts, shall we say, in an obviously wrong way. But look at the context. Look at the way they're placing all this. It's amazing that the American media or the U.S. media gets away with all this. And I think it's a testament to the short memory of people today that we let them get away with it. Thank you. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching Newsclick.