Russian S-400 missiles turn most of Syria into no-fly zone, halt US air strikes/Putin orders sanctions against Turkey/Life Returns to Syrian Town after IS Ousted

 Russian S-400 missiles turn most of Syria into no-fly zone, halt US air strikes
DEBKAfile Special Report November 28, 2015
The deployment of the highly advanced Russian S-400 anti-air missiles at the Khmeimin base, Russia’s military enclave in Syria near Latakia, combined with Russia electronic jamming and other electronic warfare equipment, has effectively transformed most of Syria into a no-fly zone under Russian control.
Moscow deployed the missiles last Wednesday, Nov. 25, the day after Turkish warplanes downed a Russian Su-24. Since then, the US and Turkey have suspended their air strikes over Syria, including bombardments of Islamic State targets. The attacks on ISIS in Iraq continue without interruption. Turkey is now extra-careful to avoid flights anywhere near the Syrian border. Both the US and Turkey are obviously wary of risking their planes being shot down by the S-400, so long as Russian-Turkish tensions run high over the Su-24 incident. Friday, a US-led coalition spokesperson denied that the absence of anti-IS coalition air strikes had anything to do with the S-400 deployment in Syria. He said “The fluctuation or absence of strikes in Syria reflects the ebb and flow of battle.”However, debkafile’s military sources confirm that neither the US, Turkey or Israel have any real experience in contending with the Russian S-400, which uses multiple missile variants to shoot down stealth aircraft, UAVs, cruise missiles and sub-strategic ballistic missiles. Its operational range for aerodynamic targets is about 250 km and for ballistic targets 60 km. The S-400 can engage up to 36 targets simultaneously. Thei range covers at least three-quarters of Syrian territory, a huge part of Turkey, all of Lebanon, Cyprus and half of Israel. Since the downing of their warplane, the Russians have put in place additionally new electronic warfare multifunctional systems both airborne and on the ground to disrupt Turkish flights and forces, Lt. Gen. Evgeny Buzhinksy revealed Friday. Turkey has countered by installing the KORAL electronic jamming system along its southern border with Syria. An electronic battlefield has spread over northern Syria and southern Turkey, with the Russian and Turks endeavoring to jam each other’s radar and disrupt their missiles. In this, the Russians have the advantage. With the Americans, Russians and Turks locked in a contest over Syria, and the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of action restricted by objective conditions, some comments made at week’s end by Israeli military and security officials sounded beside the point.Thursday, Nov. 26, a senior Air Force officer remarked that Israel is being careful to avoid friction with Russia, despite that country’s expanding military presence in Syria. “Russia is now a central player and can’t be ignored. But we each go our own way, according to our own interests,” the officer noted. “Our policy is not to attack or down any Russian plane. Russia is not our enemy.” The officer said that Israeli and Russian officers maintain telephone contact. “We don’t notify or ask for anything; we just do our jobs,” he said. According to debkafile’s military sources, this is not a true picture. Israel does get in touch with the Russians when their planes get too close to Israeli aircraft. There was no need to state that Israeli won’t shoot down Russian planes, as though this was self-evident, because in the current volatile situation, circumstances may change in a trice. Is it in Israel’s interest to fly into air space loaded with electronic warfare waves? But what if Russian warplanes come over the Golan as part of a blitz to destroy Syrian rebels in southern Syria, some of which are backed by Israel?

Putin orders sanctions against Turkey
Associated Press/Published:11.28.15/Ynetnews
Decree bans Turkish goods and clamps down on labor contracts for Turks and tourism; Erdogan expresses regret for downing of Russian plane, but falls short of apologizing. ANKARA – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday called for sanctions against Turkey, following the downing this week by Turkey of a Russian warplane. The decree published on the Kremlin’s website Saturday came hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had voiced regret over the incident, saying his country was “truly saddened” by the event and wished it hadn’t occurred. The decree includes a ban on some goods and forbids extensions of labor contracts for Turks working in Russia. It doesn’t specify what goods are to be banned or give other details, but it also calls for ending chartered flights from Russia to Turkey and for Russian tourism companies to stop selling vacation packages that would include a stay in Turkey. Erdogan’s expression of regret Saturday was the first since Tuesday’s incident in which Turkish F-16 jets shot down the Russian jet on grounds that it had violated Turkey’s airspace despite repeated warnings to change course. It was the first time in half a century that a NATO member shot down a Russian plane and drew a harsh response from Moscow. “We are truly saddened by this incident,” Erdogan said. “We wish it hadn’t happened as such, but unfortunately such a thing has happened. I hope that something like this doesn’t occur again.”
Addressing supporters in the western city of Balikesir, Erdogan said neither country should allow the incident to escalate and take a destructive form that would lead to “saddening consequences.” He renewed a call for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a climate conference in Paris next week, saying it would be an opportunity to overcome tensions. Erdogan’s friendly overture however, came after he again vigorously defended Turkey’s action and criticized Russia for its operations in Syria. “If we allow our sovereign rights to be violated … then the territory would no longer be our territory,” Erdogan said.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also said he hoped a meeting between Erdogan and Putin would take place in Paris. “In such situations it is important to keep the channels of communication open,” he said. Putin has denounced the Turkish action as a “treacherous stab in the back,” and has insisted that the plane was downed over Syrian territory in violation of international law. He has also refused to take telephone calls from Erdogan. Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Friday that the Kremlin had received Erdogan’s request for a meeting, but wouldn’t say whether such a meeting is possible.
Asked why Putin hasn’t picked up the phone to respond to Erdogan’s two phone calls, he said that “we have seen that the Turkish side hasn’t been ready to offer an elementary apology over the plane incident.” After the incident, Russia deployed long-range S-400 air defense missile systems to a Russian air base in Syria just 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the border with Turkey to help protect Russian warplanes, and the Russian military warned it would shoot down any aerial target that would pose a potential threat to its planes. Russia has since also restricted tourist travel to Turkey, left Turkish trucks stranded at the border, confiscated large quantities of Turkish food imports and started preparing a raft of broader economic sanctions. On Saturday Turkey issued a travel warning urging its nationals to delay non-urgent and unnecessary travel to Russia, saying Turkish travelers were facing “problems” in the country. It said Turks should delay travel plans until “the situation becomes clear.”

Life Returns to Syrian Town after IS Ousted
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/November 28/15/Outside her home in a town of northeast Syria, four-year-old Baydaa scribbles on a leaflet of religious rules left behind by the Islamic State group as they fled earlier this month. Her face is adorned with make-up of the sort banned by the jihadist group, which was expelled from Al-Hol by a new U.S.-backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab forces that overran the area on November 12. The town was once a key waystation for IS between the territory it holds in Iraq and Syria, and its capture was a strategic victory for the new Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) coalition. But it is also a chance for residents to breathe easy again. “My little daughter Baydaa has put kohl on her eyes and make-up on her face, which was forbidden when the ‘organization’ was here,” said Baydaa’s father, Hamdan Ahmed, referring to IS. “I’m so happy not to see them in our village anymore,” the 39-year-old told AFP. When IS seized Al-Hol two years earlier, Ahmed refused to leave his home in the Al-Shallal suburb of the town. As a result, he was forced to abide by the group’s strict rules based on their harsh interpretation of Islam. Women were forced to cover up completely, and men to keep their faces unshaved. Parents were ordered to send children under the age of 12 to religious schools run by IS “to avoid punishment or being whipped”, the father-of-nine told AFP. Elsewhere in the suburb, on the dusty sandy outskirts of the town, 42-year-old Mariam fed a small herd of sheep by a row of mud houses, including her own modest home. “We left the village during the fighting after shells landed in our food store. We lost grain for the sheep, lentils and flour and were left with nothing to eat,” she said.
Even though the jihadist group is now far from her home, Mariam is still afraid they may return and covers her face with her headscarf when speaking to strangers.
She wears a long colorful dress that is traditional in the conservative region, but would not have met the strictures of IS. “When IS was here, any woman who left home without a face veil and black robes would face whipping,” she said. With IS gone, local residents who survive mostly on agriculture and livestock, are trickling back to check on their homes and their land. “For two years, I couldn’t sow my land because Daesh prevented us from leaving the areas under its control to get what we needed, like seeds and oil” for agricultural machinery, said 44-year-old Hamid Nasser, using the Arabic acronym for IS. The capture of Al-Hol and the surrounding villages was the first major victory for the SDF, an alliance of the powerful Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Arab and Christian armed opposition groups. The alliance is backed by the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS, and has received air drops of American weapons to support its fight against the jihadists. Al-Hol in particular was considered a strategic win for the group, severing a key route used by IS between its territories in Iraq and Syria. In the town, IS’s slogans and strictures can still be seen, particularly those encouraging religious practice and the wearing of the veil. “Sister in niqab, how wonderful and beautiful you are in your chastity,” reads one. On barber’s shops, signs still hang reading “Dear brothers, shaving or trimming the beard is forbidden”. And on walls are slogans including: “In the Caliphate, there are no bribes, no corruption and no nepotism.”For the SDF, the challenge now is to secure the approximately 200 towns and villages, some of them home to no more than a dozen people, that it has captured from IS in recent weeks and set up a new local administration. While the SDF is dominated by Kurdish fighters, the region where the force is advancing is majority-Arab, raising potential sensitivities. Elsewhere, the YPG has faced charges of discrimination against Arab residents, with Amnesty International last month accusing it of “war crimes” in north and northeast Syria. The rights group claimed Kurdish forces had carried out a “deliberate, coordinated campaign of collective punishment of civilians in villages previously captured by IS”.The YPG dismissed those claims and has pointed to its strong ties with some Arab militias to ridicule allegations of discrimination. SDF spokesman Talal Ali Sello told AFP that civilians were being allowed to return to captured areas after they were cleared of explosives, which IS frequently sows in areas before it retreats. He said his forces are working “on the creation of a political body tied to a military entity that will oversee the liberated areas in the coming period.”