And next, Syria?

[butchersapron]

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

Since the start. But to say the SAA that has utterly collapsed, that is now forced to offer prisoners amnesty to fight for it given that 50% of its forces have deserted, left the country or joined the FSA, that actually is just follows around sectarian iranian funded NDF militia, lebanese shia jihadis and afghan pakistani conscripts (illegal immigrants to iran offered citizenship to fight) is the one force left fighting, and the one the country is going to reconstructed around is bonkers bruno of the first water. It's so off target. Unless he means there's going to be an internal regime removal of assad - problem with that is that he's made that near impossible, and that still leaves them with near no-army.

 

[Knotted]

Fisk is possibly the worst journalist writing on Syria and he's up against some pretty stiff competition for that title. I don't care if he's pro-regime or pro-rebel, it's little moral difference in my book. But just on the basic duty of holding true to some sort of basic journalistic standard, he's truly shocking. I'd estimate that over half of what he says is untrue ie. the disinformation actually exceeds the information. I gave up on him about 4 years ago.

 

[Knotted]

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 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.

I dunno. I sincerely hope the FSA lose as well. The FSA are basically soft Islamists plus assorted Sunni sectarians. You may as well hope Hezbollah hold the key to victory. OK like Hezhollah they aren't jihadis, and they aren't takfiris. But if that's the standard we hold ourselves to then we may as well not bother with standards.

 

[inva]

I dunno. I sincerely hope the FSA lose as well. The FSA are basically soft Islamists plus assorted Sunni sectarians. You may as well hope Hezbollah hold the key to victory. OK like Hezhollah they aren't jihadis, and they aren't takfiris. But if that's the standard we hold ourselves to then we may as well not bother with standards.

Hezbollah are backers of and some of the main fighters for the regime and the regime has to go - as butchersapron said a few posts back, there can't be peace until it's gone (and there wasn't peace even before Assad made this a war). So I wouldn't put them on an equal footing with the FSA in that sense, they have a different significance. My comment on the FSA was in the context of Aleppo - if the regime is defeated there I would rather that the JaF (JFS etc) had a rival for dominance, and that might give whatever survives of the councils and the ability to resist of ordinary Syrians some breathing space.

I'll just type out a quote from Robin Yassin-Kassab & Leila Al-Shami's very good book Burning Country which I'm reading at the moment (I saw it recommended on this thread and it's well worth picking up if you haven't already):

First, there was nothing inevitable in the counter-revolution's victory. Had Assad not received such solid military and economic support from aboard, had the Free Army, the Coalition and the grassroots organisers not been in various ways abandoned and betrayed, it's possible that the regime would have fallen in 2013. Even then it would have been immensely difficult to establish a more democratic and socially just society, but Syria would have been spared the rule of ISIS and the ongoing destruction of its cities. Second, very many decent, forward-thinking Syrians still have stomach for the fight - even if many are in exile. There's reason to hope that when the bombs finally stop falling, when ISIS and regime checkpoints no longer threaten death, these people will return and raise their voices for a better future.

I'm only a spectator, not living through it and having to make decisions over who to work with, what to prioritise and how to survive, so for myself I don't feel like I can just throw my hands up and say well there's no good outcome now while there's people there still working and fighting for one.

 

[Casually Red]

Fisk is possibly the worst journalist writing on Syria and he's up against some pretty stiff competition for that title. I don't care if he's pro-regime or pro-rebel, it's little moral difference in my book. But just on the basic duty of holding true to some sort of basic journalistic standard, he's truly shocking. I'd estimate that over half of what he says is untrue ie. the disinformation actually exceeds the information. I gave up on him about 4 years ago.

Was that when he was saying the Syrain army and government weren't going anywhere ..and this war would last years , that the rebel ranks were actually full of the worst sectarian monsters going from all over the globe ? Because unlike virtually every other journalistic source he was proven right. Everyone else was proclaiming game over month in month out...just a matter of time..and just a few bad apples on the rebel side .
This threads chock full of it .

 

[Casually Red]

Hezbollah are backers of and some of the main fighters for the regime and the regime has to go - as butchersapron said a few posts back, there can't be peace until it's gone (and there wasn't peace even before Assad made this a war). So I wouldn't put them on an equal footing with the FSA in that sense, they have a different significance. My comment on the FSA was in the context of Aleppo - if the regime is defeated there I would rather that the JaF (JFS etc) had a rival for dominance, and that might give whatever survives of the councils and the ability to resist of ordinary Syrians some breathing space.

I'll just type out a quote from Robin Yassin-Kassab & Leila Al-Shami's very good book Burning Country which I'm reading at the moment (I saw it recommended on this thread and it's well worth picking up if you haven't already):


I'm only a spectator, not living through it and having to make decisions over who to work with, what to prioritise and how to survive, so for myself I don't feel like I can just throw my hands up and say well there's no good outcome now while there's people there still working and fighting for one.

Who was it " betrayed and abandoned " this crew ? Which foreign backers ? How many countries ? their " betrayal and abandonment " consisted of little more than a failure of these foreign powers..including the US, France and Britain..to launch an Iraq or Libya style military assault/ invasion and install them into power over the heads of the Syrian people .
Those Saudi , Qatari and western swine pumped billions into Syria to foment this bloodbath . That so called " free army " openly invited daesh and crews of similar stripe to flock to Syria . Fought side by side with them. Deserted en masse and joined them in many cases . The videos of them doing just that are on this thread .
Peace will return to Syria as soon as those foreign powers moving tonnes of munitions into Syria either desist or are prevented by sealing the borders .

Jaf have a rival for dominance. Namely daesh, their erstwhile former ally .

And it's currently looking more and more like the jihadists have badly overextended themselves with this kitchen sink offensive . They've withdrawn so many forces from other areas the Syrian Army have just made more massive gains in Latakia and rolled over their fortifications with ease . A string of their positions eere overrun just in the last24 hrs .
Meanwhile it's a certainty thousands of troops and militia are being amassed for an Aleppo counter offensive and that those recent gains could well be thrown back before long . Russian air power has cranked up considerably . Rebels currently hold barren ground that's pretty useless for moving supplies in. Bombed from above and under attack from either side . There's a long way to go in that battle yet .

 

[Pickman's model]

Who was it " betrayed and abandoned " this crew ? Which foreign backers ? How many countries ? their " betrayal and abandonment " consisted of little more than a failure of these foreign powers..including the US, France and Britain..to launch an Iraq or Libya style military assault/ invasion and install them into power over the heads of the Syrian people .
Those Saudi , Qatari and western swine pumped billions into Syria to foment this bloodbath . That so called " free army " openly invited daesh and crews of similar stripe to flock to Syria . Fought side by side with them. Deserted en masse and joined them in many cases . The videos of them doing just that are on this thread .
Peace will return to Syria as soon as those foreign powers moving tonnes of munitions into Syria either desist or are prevented by sealing the borders .

Jaf have a rival for dominance. Namely dash, their erstwhile former ally .

And it's currently looking more and more like the jihadists have badly overextended themselves with this kitchen sink offensive . They've withdrawn so many forces from other areas the Syrian Army have just made more massive gains in Latakia and rolled over their fortifications with ease . A string of their positions eere overrun just in the last24 hrs .
Meanwhile it's a certainty thousands of troops and militia are being amassed for an Aleppo counter offensive and that those recent gains could well be thrown back before long . Russian air power has cranked up considerably . Rebels currently hold barren ground that's pretty useless for moving supplies in. Bombed from above and under attack from either side . There's a long way to go in that battle yet .

and of course that's before it ink-blot-like spreads

 

[Casually Red]

and of course that's before it ink-blot-like spreads

A map outlining the Syria armies string of advances in the last 24 hours against jihadist positions in Latakia



And a nice quote here from a certain general welcoming Aleppos new arrivals. The same general whs men liberated the Kweires airbase siege, Palmyra and a string of other hard fought victories .

 

[Pickman's model]

A map outlining the Syria armies string of advances in the last 24 hours against jihadist positions in Latakia



And a nice quote here from a certain general welcoming Aleppos new arrivals. The same general whs men liberated the Kweires airbase siege, Palmyra and a string of other hard fought victories .

i was thinking more of the way this will spread partly through the international links daesh have established and partly through the way this is but one front in a series of proxy wars, in addition to which it will be interesting to see which way parties to the conflict who at present have a limited role in the action will jump should the assad regime look on the verge of collapsing completely. will russia pick up its naval base and go home?

 

[Casually Red]

Also worth remembering here that if the Syrian Army fail to regain the initiative in Aleppo then the Kurdish enclave is marked for annihilation. The rebels have been indiscriminately shelling their district for a very long time now . Even using chemical weapons on them just recently . They'll go all out to destroy them .

 

[Casually Red]

i was thinking more of the way this will spread partly through the international links daesh have established and partly through the way this is but one front in a series of proxy wars, in addition to which it will be interesting to see which way parties to the conflict who at present have a limited role in the action will jump should the assad regime look on the verge of collapsing completely. will russia pick up its naval base and go home?

As I've said before if Syria falls lebanons next . The entire region itself will be in flames . To prevent that occurring I believe both Russia and Iran will commit much more heavily . The governments in no danger of falling though .

 

[Casually Red]

Seems they had plenty of foreign backing for this offensive as well

https://www.ft.com/content/da076830-5d77-11e6-a72a-bd4bf1198c63

 

[inva]

it may have already been posted about as it has been happening for a while, but protests in Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province have been going on for about 148 days now against al-Nusra/JFS as well as against the regime, and also in support of the local FSA 13th Division.
link

This time, however, the crackdown was not by the Syrian government, but by al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its allied factions. In response, residents launched a “civil resistance campaign” against the group’s militant rule that has now lasted more than 100 days, making it one of the longest protests of its kind since 2011.

“Civil resistance in Syria is one of the most under-reported parts of the conflict; outsiders have this narrow view of the conflict as just a few armed groups killing each other,” Mulham Sameer, a Syrian activist and a co-organizer of the campaign, told Syria Deeply. “But the truth is, there are thousands of Syrians who still strongly believe in peaceful resistance. That is the spirit of our uprising.”

“We have enemies on all fronts now; our enemy is anyone who tries to suppress the Syrian people’s call for freedom and dignity,” Sameer said, “and just as we made the Syrian government realize that its warplanes and rockets can’t kill our hunger from freedom, it’s now al-Qaida’s turn to realize that.”

So far, the campaign has been granted only one of its demands. The last three demonstrators were freed earlier this week, more than four months after their arrest, Sameer said, but demonstrators have now taken on a bigger goal. “It’s no longer about the detained protesters or the killed 13th Division Fighters. We don’t want al-Nusra or any of its allies in our town, and the campaign will only end when all al-Qaida-affiliated factions leave,” Sameer said.

link

Protestors and FSA fighters got into a street brawl with al-Nusra militants.
link

some pictures from various times over the course of the protests:

'The people are the strongest faction'

'The free people will bring down Assad and Russia and Iran'

'When we unite against injustice we win... When we disagree because of the parties and factions we are defeated'
I take it this is an FSA fighter with a flag of the FSA 13th Division behind him.

As you can see from the dates written on the protest signs, this one from just a couple of days ago, the protests are still running.

I like this quote to emphasise voices that are too easily silenced as we follow the military conflict:

You're more afraid of JaF al-Sham than the small town of Maarat Numan in Idlib. +2 weeks ago Jund Al-Aqsa was kicked out of the town after a street battle. I trust the Syrians and their stamina, coz they stopped being victims of media and ideologies

link
link

From what I can tell, Jund Al-Aqsa was one of the factions working with Al-Nusra/JFS as part of the JaF Islamist alliance in the town.

So it's not all over yet.

 

[teqniq]

Airstrikes destroy MSF hospital in Syria and leave 13 people dead

 

[teqniq]

 

[butchersapron]

Lucky there's not a bunch of beardie foreign jihadis being brought into the country eh?

 

[butchersapron]

A map outlining the Syria armies string of advances in the last 24 hours against jihadist positions in Latakia



And a nice quote here from a certain general welcoming Aleppos new arrivals. The same general whs men liberated the Kweires airbase siege, Palmyra and a string of other hard fought victories .

What an astonishing post to make after berating others for not posting propaganda about the fsa-rebel breaking of the aleppo siege. Nothing happened Nothing to see.

 

[butchersapron]

View attachment 90508

This is what they can look forward to:

Hezbollah fighter in "leaked tape":
We were abandoned
"They (fellow pro-regime fighters) all left us, the Iranian, Afghans and Syrians… all of them left us," the unnamed fighter complained in the audio message.

"They (fellow pro-regime fighters) all left us, the Iranian, Afghans and Syrians… all of them left us," the unnamed fighter complained in theaudio message, which began circulating on social media Sunday after opposition forces broke through government lines in the Ramouseh area in southwestern Aleppo, relieving the siege on the eastern half of the city.

"We are like dummies, we don't know anything, we are fighting alone," the alleged Hezbollah combatant—who had a southern Lebanese accent—said in the frantic message in which he slammed the battlefield conduct of pro-regime fighters in the flashpoint front.

He added that even when regime forces counterattacked against the advancing Jaysh al-Fatah coalition insurgents to retake positions, they would "lose it in the night" or the following morning.

"That's it… a lot of fleeing soldiers, you bring them back from their houses, and then they flee again, it's the same [story]."

 

[teqniq]

Yeah I saw something about this in relation to the defence of the artillery school .

 

[teqniq]

Petition

TO SECRETARY JOHN KERRY AND PRESIDENT OBAMA,
The repeated targeting of healthcare workers and hospitals by the Russian and Syrian governments are war crimes. We call on you to give Syria’s heroic healthcare workers and the communities they serve a zone free from bombing to ensure their protection. The international community has agreed the bombs need to stop. The resolutions are in place. They simply need to be enforced.

We are in an emergency. Hospitals are being attacked every 17 hours in Syria.

 

[butchersapron]

Foreign forces to have open ended involvement/war crimes in Syria. Imagine if they had beards.

 

[Casually Red]

Petition



We are in an emergency. Hospitals are being attacked every 17 hours in Syria.

Petition to shoot down the RUAF and start world war 3

 

[butchersapron]

This is Syria - where we do what we want.

 

[teqniq]

Petition to shoot down the RUAF and start world war 3

As you have absolutely no intention of answering any of my questions, just fuck the fuck off, and when you've done that fuck of a bit more as that wasn't far enough.

Incidentally btw I've never considered this 'my' thread nor have any intention of doing do. Once someone posts a thread on here it belongs to everyone really imo. If you wish to post shit on here, lie and evade then obviously that's entirely up to you.

 

[Casually Red]

View attachment 90508

Those are actually SAA regulars , which you'd know if you posted the original tweet from the SAA were they posted their own pics . Instead of using that jihadi twitter account that lifted the photos and stuck their own headline on them .

another tweet from that punter boasts about the amount of heads..and even ears...the jihadis will be cutting off in their Allepo offensive . And other tweets of his glorify the mutilation of the dead bodies of a Russian heli crew. While making sectarian comments about priests and holy water . Right charmer you've picked as a source there .

 

[butchersapron]

Those are actually SAA regulars , which you'd know if you posted the original tweet from the SAA were they posted their own pics . Instead of using that jihadi twitter account that lifted the photos and stuck their own headline on them .

another tweet from that punter boasts about the amount of heads..and even ears...the jihadis will be cutting off in their Allepo offensive . And other tweets of his glorify the mutilation of the dead bodies of a Russian heli crew. While making sectarian comments about priests and holy water . Right charmer you've picked as a source there .

Note the lack of link to SAA account.

 

[butchersapron]

Nice to see they managed to find some SAA regulars though - must be a real boost.

 

[teqniq]

Casually Red It was retweet from this guy @GissiSim who seems to be a fairly unbiased source. It was he who tweeted about the guys who beheaded the Palestinian kid fighting in the Aleppo offensive that I posted upthread. The ensuing conversation he had with others makes for quite interesting, if depressing reading. You on the other hand quelle surprise have provided none.

 

[butchersapron]

Casually Red It was retweet from this guy @GissiSim who seems to be a fairly unbiased source. It was he who tweeted about the guys who beheaded the Palestinian kid fighting in the Aleppo offensive that I posted upthread. The ensuing conversation he had with others makes for quite interesting, if depressing reading. You on the other hand quelle surprise have provided none.

Don't take his word for it. He needs to link to the account that says they are SAA regulars. There are reports all over the proper news of 2000 pro-regime foreign fighters being sent to aleppo.

 

[teqniq]

'Take is word for it' LOL as if.