Operation Oil Theft: Month 12, Week 3 , Day 1.

With my Internet connection not working last week and my brain not really working this week I have little idea what's been happening in Libya. So instead I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about Syria instead.

Yesterday (3/3/12) the Syrian foreign ministry sent letters to the United Nations Secretary General and the Chair of the United Nations Security Council accusing foreign powers of arming the insurgents and accusing the insurgents of using those weapons to kill civilians in order to make it look as though the Syrian government are carrying out massacres. These accusations are not without basis.

On Friday (2/3/12) Syrian insurgents claimed that the Syrian army attacked a peaceful protest with mortars killing 13 in the Al-Rastan district of Homs. They released this video to support their claims; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bIzvPddKL4&feature=related It shows a protest in a barn/industrial building when suddenly an airborne object with an exhaust trail enters the building in the top left of the screen. People then rush out of the building and the camera pans towards the back of the building where presumably the camera operator saw the object land. You can seen one or possibly two building lying on the ground presumably injured.

Now I'm not a weapons expert but I'm assuming the type of mortar that's alleged to be being used is closer to a M1937 82mm type mortar rather then a much larger M43 160mm mortar. You can see a similar US 81mm being used in Iraq in this video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TS09c0HGYg As you can see when the mortar bomb hits it's target it does so without an exhaust trail and falls almost vertically as nothing but gravity pulls it to the the target. The mortar bomb also generates a lot of smoke and flame as it explodes. By contrast the object in the Syrian video is moving more horizontally with an exhaust trail and doesn't seem to produce any explosion. Therefore the only thing I can think it is is a RPG-7 which can be seen here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2ZS2PFQ6p4 which fails to detonate either because it's faulty or because the firer failed to pull the priming pin.

The only problem is that the RPG-7 only has an effective range of around 300m and there weren't any Syrian soldiers that close to Al-Rastan at the time of the incident. So either the other residents of Al-Rastan had decided they'd had enough of the insurgents and opened fire on them or the insurgents opened fire on their own protest in order to create an atrocity.


Oh and the one thing I do know about Libya is that today (5/3/12) video has emerged showing British world war two war graves in Benghazi being desecrated. I know this because the story is on the front page of almost every British newspaper. What's happened is quite obvious - British agents in Benghazi have desecrated some war graves in order to pressurises Libya's NTC into dialogue. Since the fall of Qaddafi the NTC have upset the British by trying to run the new Libya for the benefit of the Libyans rather then British oil companies which was not the original plan so they need a jolly good talking too.