And next, Syria?

[inva]

cheers, I wasn't sure if it was that or about the Aleppo siege.

 

[butchersapron]

Nah, the practical breaking of the siege of aleppo in the south, flipping the siege the regime thought they had imposed on the rebels into a siege on them, Just few streets to take and it's finished. This is the most important military action since the regime collapse in the idblib province early last year. Similar collapse today showing they have ran out of committed manpower, unable or unwilling to fight, even to fortify defensible positions - and now utterly reliant on an overstretched nutter-jihadi militia, iranian nutter-mercenaries and afghan and pakistani conscripts and the russian airforce. Who will be stepping up their murderous civilian and civic structure targeting airstrikes now.

The darra barrel bombing has been going on for all of the last week, they're trying to burn them into surrender.

 

[butchersapron]

Btw the prsion thing seems to have resulted from the regime attempts to hasilty execute four people - it wouldn't surpise me if they were punishment/revenge executions for their utter military collapse in south Aleppo.

 

[inva]

Btw the prsion thing seems to have resulted from the regime attempts to hasilty execute four people - it wouldn't surpise me if they were punishment/revenge executions for their utter military collapse in south Aleppo.

I did see some suggestion that they were prompted to storm the prison due to local people trying to come and liberate it but I can't find it again so can't vouch for reliability

e2a not that I'm personally in much position to vouch for it anyway but you know what I mean

 

[butchersapron]

I did see some suggestion that they were prompted to storm the prison due to local people trying to come and liberate it but I can't find it again so can't vouch for reliability

Yes, i saw that too somewhere last night - which if true, and if the execution one is true, they were trying to off people with some serious local clout, not just some poor bloke who cheeked the shabiha.

 

[inva]

Nah, the practical breaking of the siege of aleppo in the south, flipping the siege the regime thought they had imposed on the rebels into a siege on them, Just few streets to take and it's finished. This is the most important military action since the regime collapse in the idblib province early last year. Similar collapse today showing they have ran out of committed manpower, unable or unwilling to fight, even to fortify defensible positions - and now utterly reliant on an overstretched jihadi militiam iranian nuter-mercenaries and afghan and pakistani conscripts and the russian airforce. Who will be stepping up their murderous civilian and civic structure targeting airstrikes now.

yes the Syrian army really does seem to have almost totally crumbled away as a distinct force.

current fighting in Aleppo looks to be around an air force facility of some sort just beyond the artillery academy and that is pretty much all that is in the way of a link up now.

 

[butchersapron]

I did see some suggestion that they were prompted to storm the prison due to local people trying to come and liberate it but I can't find it again so can't vouch for reliability

e2a not that I'm personally in much position to vouch for it anyway but you know what I mean

From here (not an endorsement)

 

[teqniq]

 

[teqniq]

Syria rebels turn tables on regime as IS loses bastion

 

[butchersapron]

Pretty much everyone now reporting the siege is broken.

 

[inva]

Seen reports of the final breakthrough at Ramouseh having been made due to an attack by the FSA from inside Aleppo. I saw one report identifying an Islamist faction of the FSA as being responsible in particular. I suppose this is potentially good news from the point of view of whatever remains functioning of local councils/committees retaining influence in the city, though obviously this has overall been a big win for the JaF aligned Islamists and another opportunity for them to establish themselves further as the most effective opposition and who can most be relied on.

But then that is the situation that Assad, Putin, the US etc have conspired to create.

Latest I've read is of a 2-2.5km corridor being forced through the regime lines around Ramouseh and the artillery academy. Whatever control the Assadists have over the Castello Road (which as far as I know they still hold anyway) must now be looking precarious, and the loss of it would see them cut off in turn.

 

[teqniq]

Jeez

 

[teqniq]

 

[Pickman's model]

Jeez

please to take screen grabs

 

[Pickman's model]

 

[inva]

though from what I read it's still too dangerous to get supplies through on the scale needed

 

[teqniq]

please to take screen grabs

View attachment 90444

Sorry about that I did start doing so not sure why I stopped actually. Probably laziness. You can't see tweets in Tapatalk as they just show up 'unsupported media' which in and of itself is a good enough reason to do screenshots.

 

[inva]

Hassan Hassan on Jabhat al Nusra's rebrand as Jabhat Fateh al Sham in the context of the Aleppo campaign (link):

Notwithstanding what happens next in Aleppo, JFS has already made its entrance. Inside and outside Syria, support for the group appears to have risen. Many seem to be comfortable with showing support for a group that is supposedly no longer part of Al Qaeda, while others support it for its lead role in the continuing counterattack. This normalisation and show of support are at the heart of the group’s reconfiguration – and the Aleppo offensive was partly designed to achieve that.

The social goodwill that the group has gained over the past two weeks should not be taken lightly. The way the situation looks for anti-regime Syrians is that, while the world stood by as nearly 300,000 civilians were under siege by the regime, and in violation of an understanding between Moscow and Washington not to support such a siege, it was extremists who again won the day. Also, despite the involvement of Russia, Iran and foreign Shia militias fighting under their command in Syria, those forces could overrun a well-secured regime base and break a siege within a few days.

For JFS, Aleppo is the first attempt to embed itself further within rebel-held areas. The group’s objectives should be clear: mainly the consolidation of its gains inside Syria and the building of a coalition that shares its goal of implementing Sharia and forming an Islamic entity in the country. The group is unlikely to rush into the formation of such an entity by itself. Instead, it will seek to entrench itself in areas where it operates and bring people closer to it.

 

[Knotted]

Victory was only ever achievable when the rebels united meaning a front dominated by jihadis. Not just Islamists fucking jihadis.

Some rebel groups refer to the Aleppo battle as the "Ibrahim al-Youssef Offensive", a reference to a Sunni army officer said to have led a massacre of cadets at the Artillery College in the late 1970s. The cadets were predominantly from the Alawite sect of Bashar al-Assad and his late father and predecessor as president, Hafez al-Assad.

Intense fighting as Syrian rebels break through Aleppo siege

And thus Syria has been liberated.

I feel the same despair as when the regime forces were making advances. The only positive is that this looks like the beginning of the end for the civil war.

 

[inva]

Victory was only ever achievable when the rebels united meaning a front dominated by jihadis. Not just Islamists fucking jihadis.


Intense fighting as Syrian rebels break through Aleppo siege

And thus Syria has been liberated.

I feel the same despair as when the regime forces were making advances. The only positive is that this looks like the beginning of the end for the civil war.

a quote from Robin Yassin-Kassab from before the siege was lifted:

Facing suffocation and defeat, with no-one coming to their aid, revolutionaries and fighters have now decided to unify their energies. For the last four days rebels have fought to lift the siege, attacking from multiple directions on a 20-km-long front. Demonstrators, meanwhile, are marching in support of the battle, and citizens are organising their own inpromptu No-Fly Zone, burning hundreds of tyres to cloud the skies and protect the advancing fighters. These include Free Army and Islamist battalions from across Aleppo and northern Syria. To the south of the city, the vanguard force is Jaish al-Fateh, comprising Ahrar al-Sham and the jihadists of Jabhat al-Nusra. Jaish al-Fateh is close to breaking the siege.

America watched or actively collaborated as Aleppo was driven into the abyss. Nusra, on the other hand, came to the people’s rescue. What message does this send?

But while the JFS etc are the most effective forces on the opposition side and this has given them a major boost, it's not over yet. They don't have the power or control they'd need for it to be over. It is grim, that's the way things have been pushed ever since 2011. Some spirit of the revolution still exists and it was there in Aleppo even if it's been badly weakened.

The siege has been broken, and that was hundreds of thousands of people trapped in there. Assad, Putin, Iran and arguably the US have suffered a serious setback. These are positives. Can we say it would have been either better or just the same if the siege had continued? No I don't think so.

I'm sort of with you really, except I've made the mistake of writing Syrians off before and I shouldn't have done. Maybe we can't do much more than wait and see.

 

[inva]

reports and footage going round of phosphorous/incendiaries from Russian jets hitting Idlib city

 

[Knotted]

a quote from Robin Yassin-Kassab from before the siege was lifted:

But while the JFS etc are the most effective forces on the opposition side and this has given them a major boost, it's not over yet. They don't have the power or control they'd need for it to be over. It is grim, that's the way things have been pushed ever since 2011. Some spirit of the revolution still exists and it was there in Aleppo even if it's been badly weakened.

The siege has been broken, and that was hundreds of thousands of people trapped in there. Assad, Putin, Iran and arguably the US have suffered a serious setback. These are positives. Can we say it would have been either better or just the same if the siege had continued? No I don't think so.

I'm sort of with you really, except I've made the mistake of writing Syrians off before and I shouldn't have done. Maybe we can't do much more than wait and see.

Well it looks like West Aleppo is going to be under siege from the rebels now.

I'm sure many if not most Syrians take a dim view of both the government and the rebels. But how is it possible to organise any force for the better under these conditions?

 

[TomUS]

The only positive is that this looks like the beginning of the end for the civil war.

Really? You think Assad & his allies are eventually going to give up trying to take the areas controlled by non-regime forces?

 

[inva]

Well it looks like West Aleppo is going to be under siege from the rebels now.

Yeah. It's going to be yet more terrible suffering for civilians. Let's hope that with the siege lifted on FSA aligned that their hand might be strengthened in relation to the JaF at least if the regime was to fall completely in Aleppo.

I'm sure many if not most Syrians take a dim view of both the government and the rebels. But how is it possible to organise any force for the better under these conditions?

I don't know if ultimately it will be possible, but many Syrians have been trying to do so for years now. Assad has got to go hasn't he? The longer it drags on the more advantage is given to JFS and co, yet as long as there's ordinary people there trying to live without them and without the dictatorship, organising themselves, then there's still people trying to build something better.

 

[inva]

reports and footage going round of phosphorous/incendiaries from Russian jets hitting Idlib city

according to Charles Lister this was thermite submunitions, not phosphorous - which I take it means it's from cluster bombs or something like that? From the pictures and what I've read, it was dropped on dense populated urban streets. some terrible images.

 

[butchersapron]

according to Charles Lister this was thermite submunitions, not phosphorous - which I take it means it's from cluster bombs or something like that? From the pictures and what I've read, it was dropped on dense populated urban streets. some terrible images.

They're RBK-500 ZAB-2.5SMs. Russia was caught on footage they broadcast and then uploaded to YT showing them mounted on Ruaf aircraft. They then edited the YT footage and denied they ever broadcast any such proof. The use of these on civilian areas or military targets within civilian areas is a war crime under the Convention on Conventional Weapons that Russia is signed up to.

So what we have here is a revenge war crime targeting this area because it is where the families of the people who made the artillery base breakthrough live. Which is, in itself, a as clear as an example of the regimes wider approach as you can get - and exactly why there will be no peace as long as it remains:





+

 

[inva]

thanks butchersapron that makes it clearer

still bombing Daraya too

 

[butchersapron]

thanks butchersapron that makes it clearer

still bombing Daraya too

Yes, 30+ barrel bombs every day. They are desperate to break any not NW resistance right this minute because they are terrified that if the Jordan based Military Operations Center turns the weapon flow back on again they are going to be fighting on canvas they just don't have the manpower to cover - esp with what's happened in the NW this last week.

 

[butchersapron]

if you want proof fisk has lost his mind:

Middle East expert Robert Fisk says the army look likely to take power in Syria: “There is, within the Syrian army now, a fighting force that works.

“They like fighting, which usually means, they won't give in.

“And I think the Syrian army will decide the future of Syria.

“I think the Syrian army will have to rebuild Syria and they will end up by deciding its future.

“Ultimately, the west is going to have to deal with them.”

The is barely a SAA left you rum-faced winger.

 

[frogwoman]

if you want proof fisk has lost his mind:

Middle East expert Robert Fisk says the army look likely to take power in Syria: “There is, within the Syrian army now, a fighting force that works.


The is barely a SAA left you rum-faced winger.

Fisk has been Pro Assad for quite some time hasn't he?