And next, Syria?

[CrabbedOne]

...
In August, rebels in Aleppo named their attempt at breaking the siege of the city after Ibrahim Youssef. He was one of the militants of the Fighting Vanguard group, which, alongside the Muslim Brotherhood, led an Islamist insurrection against the Syrian regime in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Youssef headed the group that seized the Aleppo Artillery School in June 1979. At the time he separated the Alawite and Sunni cadets, before executing up to 83 of the Alawites.

Piece on the echoes of the revolt that ended bloodily with the massacre at Hama in 82. Both sides old atrocities are now used for propaganda value.

The defeat at Hama was very significant to the Salafi-Jihadi movement. It's more widely remembered as a MB revolt but it's the Fighting Vanguard's kindred brand of militancy that more attracts today's radical beards.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

What an odd thing to write, even odder form someone whose forum name is Joan of Arc!

Why is it an odd thing to write? And what does my forum name have to do with it? It's just a stupid play on words with my middle name, came up with 10 years ago when I signed up to the forum cos my big sis kept going on about how great this urban75 website was/is.

Please be gentle with me. Im going through an opiate detox, and using copious amounts of illegal narcotics to get me through the pain. My judgement is affected, to put it mildly.

 

[J Ed]

Why is it an odd thing to write? And what does my forum name have to do with it? It's just a stupid play on words with my middle name, came up with 10 years ago when I signed up to the forum cos my big sis kept going on about how great this urban75 website was/is.

Please be gentle with me. Im going through an opiate detox, and using copious amounts of illegal narcotics to get me through the pain. My judgement is affected, to put it mildly.

I didn't mean it in a bad or harsh way, in fact I can see that it must have come across as a bit dickish and I apologise for that, it's just that for a lot of people they find that they are quite often ashamed of Britain's role in the world. I was just poking fun at the of Arc thing because Joan of Arc is a quintessentially anti-English figure!

Good luck with the opiate detox, know that many people have experienced what you are experiencing and have come out the other end of it, I found that a good thing to think about while withdrawing from drugs when things were very difficult.

 

[Pickman's model]

Just woke up to hear this one. Was this us again? Or was it the Russians/Syrians?

Whatever, the bombing of Syrian troops has made me feel ashamed of my country for the first time in my life. I'm not a massive patriot or anything, but I do like living in this country. A lot. I know we've got more blood on our hands from more centuries of foreign invasion than virtually any other country going. But this is the first time in my life when the utter horror of what our military gets up to has really hit home and made me sick to my stomach.

A bad day to be a Brit.

Never heard of amritsar, derry or what happened in those maumau concentration camps then.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

I didn't mean it in a bad or harsh way, in fact I can see that it must have come across as a bit dickish and I apologise for that, it's just that for a lot of people they find that they are quite often ashamed of Britain's role in the world. I was just poking fun at the of Arc thing because Joan of Arc is a quintessentially anti-English figure!

Good luck with the opiate detox, know that many people have experienced what you are experiencing and have come out the other end of it, I found that a good thing to think about while withdrawing from drugs when things were very difficult.

Cheers for the explanation, and no worries about the dickishness (not the word I would have used - first rule of don't be a dick club being don't call other people a dick. Second rule is you do not talk about fight club. I'll come up with the rest of the rules when im less drugged up. Or perhaps more drugged up...).

 

[Jon-of-arc]

Never heard of amritsar, derry or what happened in those maumau concentration camps then.

Mate, there's an awful lot I haven't heard of!

"I used to know a little, but a little was too little, so a little got more and more
Now I know a little and a little bit more and more"

Copyright guns n roses/Jon of Arc!

 

[Pickman's model]

Mate, there's an awful lot I haven't heard of!

"I used to know a little, but a little was too little, so a little got more and more
Now I know a little and a little bit more and more"

Copyright guns n roses/Jon of Arc!

Not sure bloody sunday obscure.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

Not sure bloody sunday obscure.

Mr Brownstone. Cracking track. Possibly the best song about heroin use ever.

 

[Pickman's model]

Mr Brownstone. Cracking track. Possibly the best song about heroin use ever.

Yes, I recognised the lyricks

 

[Jon-of-arc]

Yes, I recognised the lyricks

So what was the bloody Sunday reference? Explain it to a dullard, please...

 

[Pickman's model]

So what was the bloody Sunday reference? Explain it to a dullard, please...

It's to do with the British army killing people and my suspicion you have heard of bloody sunday in Derry. It has nothing to do with guns n roses.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

It's to do with the British army killing people and my suspicion you have heard of bloody sunday in Derry. It has nothing to do with guns n roses.

I've heard of it, but will have to Wikipedia the history. So much I know nothing about....

 

[butchersapron]

Ahh, thanks. Pretty shitty, either way. How the fuck do you mistake an aid convoy for Isis? .

They're not trying to bomb ISIS - they're trying to bomb anti-regime, anti-ISIS rebels and the civilians in areas they control - in support of the regime, the regime carrying out the barrel bombing, airstrike and so on. There is no ISIS in Aleppo. I think you may need to have a bit of a closer look at what's happening -at who is bombing who, why and where.

 

[CrabbedOne]

From The Washington Institute The U.S. Strike in Deir al-Zour: Implications on the Ground

...
On Saturday, various Arabic media reported that a fierce battle took place between the Syrian army and IS forces that were trying to seize Jabal Turdah from the south. The coalition strike took place that same day, and although U.S. military accounts are unclear about whether the Syrian forces were regular army personnel or irregulars, the result was unmistakable: the regime contingent withdrew from the position after the strike, which allowed IS to seize it. To be sure, the victory was only temporary, since the army retook Jabal Turdah the next day thanks to huge reinforcements from Damascus and intense regime and Russian airstrikes. But the incident nevertheless highlighted the fragility of Assad's position in Deir al-Zour -- and of the recent U.S. "cessation of hostilities" deal with Russia, which may be unraveling amid reports of renewed regime bombing in the Aleppo area.

According to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) statement issued after the operation, "Coalition forces believed they were striking [an IS] fighting position that they had been tracking for a significant amount of time before the strike." But the statement raises several questions. For one, how did the coalition mistakenly bomb a fixed position of the Syrian army? Jabal Turdah has been continuously occupied by the army with the exception of January-March 2016, when IS briefly seized it. CENTCOM also stated that "the location of the strike is in an area the coalition has struck in the past," but its past statements make it difficult to confirm this. For some months -- including in recent weeks -- the coalition has officially announced a number of strikes "near Deir al-Zour," but exact locations have generally not been given; in at least one case where information was made available, the location was more than ten miles from the site struck Saturday. More important, the coalition has never intervened in the regime vs. IS battle for Deir al-Zour before, so why would it begin to do so this weekend?
...

Compares Deir's situation to the French air head at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.

I read elsewhere seven pro-regime Pal militiamen died in this airstrike.

Points out this probable cock up came at just the right time to facilitate regime/Russian foot dragging over the ceasefire deal.

Why Assad would want aid convoys going into areas that are carefully besieged and starved by loyalist forces escapes me. I heard some silly blether about the Syrian regime reinventing the medieval siege. This old strangulation tactic works for the regime but is hardly unique to it. The routine use of starvation and thirst is a feature of most conflicts. British blockades of Germany, U-Boat warfare, Stalingrad, Sarajevo, the Saleh-Houthi siege of Taiz are just some modern examples. GCC blockaded Yemen is nothing but a huge siege currently a gnats cock away from turning into a Biafra like situation and the use of malnutrition as a cudgel is just as methodical. I doubt folk in Raqqa and Mosul are eating well as we chip away at their supply lines. I don't recall many demands from us that IS held Fallujah be fed during its long encirclement. Famine and war are still riding together.

And then, whoops, the Russians light up a whole UN aid convoy just to show they can make a "mistake" as well.

 

[teqniq]

Ahh, thanks. Pretty shitty, either way. How the fuck do you mistake an aid convoy for Isis? Fucking amateur hour in the rusky airfarce. Not that our lot did any better with their drone killing Syrian troops. Fucking clownshoes.

It was entirely deliberate, including a 'double tap' second strike targeting the first rescue respondents. Moreover the aid convoy was travelling from regime-held territory to rebel-held territory in the west, so it isn't like they wouldn't have known about the convoy and it's contents. The coalition strike was inexcusably stupid, this was just inexcusable.

 

[teqniq]

..The UN humanitarian aid agency has said all convoys in Syria have been suspended in the wake of the attack....

from here

I am thinking that this is exactly what the regime wants and a quick look at Twitter confirms I am not the only one

 

[Pickman's model]

from here

I am thinking that this is exactly what the regime wants and a quick look at Twitter confirms I am not the only one

Yeh, it means no fucker will ever try to take an aid convoy through again

 

[teqniq]

If they weren't blatantly taking the piss before they are now

 

[CrabbedOne]

In TNI What the Soviet Defeat in Afghanistan Tells Us about Syria

Goes into some depth on the Muhj war and al Haq's military unification of the disparate Muhj factions to eventually take Kabul. Posits there is some parallel to Syria and a rebranded AQ affiliate emerging as the possible unifier of the revolt. And the US should hold its nose and act as a broker not a kingmaker.

Sees merit in neglecting the political and focusing on simple military victory (which made sense in a US anti-Soviet context) but the various Muhj warlords did then plunge into a savage civil war. The Taliban emerged who the ISI and Saudis ended up backing as their proxies were defeated and Kabul fell to Mullah Omar. Over a million people were killed far more displaced and the it has remained riven by war ever since including a pretty expensive failing intervention of ours. This I can't see as a success story. I see rather disturbing parallels in Syria but they are more to do with lack of foresight.

You do have to ask yourself what is our objective after half a decade of war in Syria? We'd like Assad to go but we fear a messy collapse of the sort that happened in Afghanistan and we want IS and their ilk gone. We weren't backing the Muhj for humanitarian reasons but as pawns in the fight against Godless Communism and essentially did not give a damn how Afghanistan ended up. This isn't the Cold war; I think poking the Kremlin in the eye has its attractions but isn't the primary thing here. Building an ever bigger pile of skulls in Syria isn't our goal either. The unsavoury Assad regime is tenacious clearly has substantial domestic support and committed allies. The fact is the revolt is a fragmented set of largely provincial risings and large Salagfi-Jihadi parts of it we don't want running anything.

We just had IS hijack a second Sunni rising in Iraq and then developing a monopoly of force within it. AQ is doing something rather more insidious in Syria but the revolutionary intent is basically the same. Revolutions are not usually a matter of popular consent but diligent subversion and coercion. Power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Most Syrians don't want to be ruled by a Taliban type regime in an Emirate that the powerful Salafi factions are coming to favour but neither did most Afghans. I'm afraid the obvious course is much the same as with IS: to try to kill off AQ and any rebel chums that cling to them before they get a serious grip. Then we see how the dust settles. That will probably aid Assad but hoping to untangle AQ at a later stage of their strategy is probably folly. We never should have supported groups who relied on them.

 

[Casually Red]

On SST Deir al-Zor: Was it really an accident?

Col Lang doubts this as regime forces were in these positions for some time and US targeters could not plausibly have not known that.

I'm not seeing any logic in the Pentagon after all this time deliberately hitting a regime outpost that's held out against IS. Not with twitchy Russian S-400s in theatre. Accidents do do happen even with clearly indicated Iraqi forces getting hit by US air support they are used to collaborating with but this is usually because it's very close CAS. The Pentagon has also occasionally appeared to support Iraqi Hashd ops this way while both parties denied it.


Perhaps the simplest explanation.

The remarkable thing is US air strikes have killed so few regime forces in this war of tangles of indistinguishable bearded militia men often operating their enemies kit which suggests there is very active deconfliction going on.

The US led coalition has supplied literally billions in armaments to an array of jihadists for the express purpose of killing as many Syrian troops as possible for years now . Leading directly to the deaths of tens of thousands of those troops. That seems to be a very important point that's missing from your logic . The Syrian army are an enemy of the coalition. The coalition are claiming they dropped bombs on their enemy by mistake. I'd say it's not very likely a scenario .

 

[Casually Red]

He's got a point, Assad and Russia have for months have relentlessly bombed civilians but the coalition hits a military target ( possibly, and I stress possibly by mistake) Assad and a Russia take this as an opportunity to resume hostilities and end the ceasefire, a ceasefire neither of them wanted, but they went through the motions to satisfy the usual 'useful idiots'
And in the meantime aid convoys sit on the road and innocents die by the hundreds.
The whole situation is a crock of Shyte but one thing is clear, most on the coalition/rebel side would honour a ceasefire, but Assad and Russia aren't interested, they scent total victory, and bugger the suffering.
While I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, a .50 in the centre of Assads smug pyet would be a welcome relief to many.
Some people don't deserve to live.

You can fuck off and all . Cancer , pussy..ffs. That's not a point it's just shit talk from a no class skip rat .

 

[Casually Red]

Haven't you got cancer yet shitcunt? You'll get that quicker than you get any pussy.

]

Stay classy

skip rat .

 

[Casually Red]

The whole situation is a crock of Shyte but one thing is clear, most on the coalition/rebel side would honour a ceasefire, but Assad and Russia aren't interested, they scent total victory, and bugger the suffering.
While I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, a .50 in the centre of Assads smug pyet would be a welcome relief to many.
Some people don't deserve to live.

That's a crock of shit . Name some rebel groups that supported the ceasefire. Go on . Name 2 even .

 

[Pickman's model]

Haven't you got cancer yet shitcunt? You'll get that quicker than you get any pussy.

Russia attacks UN aid convoy, unconfirmed killed Syrian director of Red Crescent.

Who was that poster who was always wishing cancer on people? Oh yes, Awesome Wells

 

[Casually Red]

From The Washington Institute The U.S. Strike in Deir al-Zour: Implications on the Ground
Compares Deir's situation to the French air head at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.

I read elsewhere seven pro-regime Pal militiamen died in this airstrike.

Points out this probable cock up came at just the right time to facilitate regime/Russian foot dragging over the ceasefire deal.

Why Assad would want aid convoys going into areas that are carefully besieged and starved by loyalist forces escapes me. I heard some silly blether about the Syrian regime reinventing the medieval siege. This old strangulation tactic works for the regime but is hardly unique to it. The routine use of starvation and thirst is a feature of most conflicts. British blockades of Germany, U-Boat warfare, Stalingrad, Sarajevo, the Saleh-Houthi siege of Taiz are just some modern examples. GCC blockaded Yemen is nothing but a huge siege currently a gnats cock away from turning into a Biafra like situation and the use of malnutrition as a cudgel is just as methodical. I doubt folk in Raqqa and Mosul are eating well as we chip away at their supply lines. I don't recall many demands from us that IS held Fallujah be fed during its long encirclement. Famine and war are still riding together.

And then, whoops, the Russians light up a whole UN aid convoy just to show they can make a "mistake" as well.

Your examples are small fry . In the 1940s the Brits managed to account for 3 million Bengalis . Very deliberately starved to death on a hateful racist whim of churchills . His final kick at a " beastly " people he utterly loathed before their inevitable independence . Even turned Canadian aid ships away .
Then in the 90s the Brits and yanks managed to account for around a million Iraqis , half of them children , by deliberately depriving them of the essentials of life . Like when they prevented them having access to the means for treating their sewage and drinking water , which is a bit harsh for people who live in a desert . What with all those high temperatures and sand flies and all that untreated sewage and wrecked infrastructure they weren't allowed repair . And then banned them from access to vaccines and stuff, to fight the diseases the blockade was responsible for. Both of those are pretty genocidal actions . What's more against people they weren't even at war with and who posed no threat whatsoever .

 

[coley]

Your examples are small fry . In the 1940s the Brits managed to account for 3 million Bengalis . Very deliberately starved to death on a hateful racist whim of churchills . His final kick at a " beastly " people he utterly loathed before their inevitable independence . Even turned Canadian aid ships away .
Then in the 90s the Brits and yanks managed to account for around a million Iraqis , half of them children , by deliberately depriving them of the essentials of life . Like when they prevented them having access to the means for treating their sewage and drinking water , which is a bit harsh for people who live in a desert . What with all those high temperatures and sand flies and all that untreated sewage and wrecked infrastructure they weren't allowed repair . And then banned them from access to vaccines and stuff, to fight the diseases the blockade was responsible for. Both of those are pretty genocidal actions . What's more against people they weren't even at war with and who posed no threat whatsoever .

Yada Yada fucking Yada, let's look at the 'debatable events' of long dead politicians and the cock ups of of blatantly stupid warmongering politicians of the nineties rather than than the genocidal buggers of the here and now.
Blair and Bush have been loudly denounced many times on here, ditto Cameron for his Libyan fiasco. Yet you and one or two others defend Assad and Putin no matter what.
Just waiting to hear from you how the attacks on a UN relief convoy were somehow the fault of the coalition, I have absolutely no doubt you will come up,with some conspiracyloonry to defend the attacks.

 

[coley]

That's a crock of shit . Name some rebel groups that supported the ceasefire. Go on . Name 2 even .

Sod off, I said would " honour a ceasefire" they mebbes didn't particularly want one, but for various reasons most of them would have one along with it, even just to give themselves breathing space and a chance to regroup, something the regime certainly didn't want.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On SST “US Special Forces sabotage White House policy gone disastrously wrong with covert ops in Syria” - TTG

On discontent among the guys training Syrian insurgents in Jordan. Reckons, hilariously, most of the vetting of trainees is done by Turkish intelligence not the most picky of folk. It occurs to me that might add a useful lair of deniability for Langley.

I'm reminded of the Muhj war again where the Pakistani ISI didn't even allow the hapless CIA in country. The ISI armed the most extreme elements of the insurgency despite these guys having a lousy record fighting the Soviets. That might be more explained by the Saudis providing half the funding than the ISI's own ideological preferences. Bit of a feature of Langley ops since the Church Committee.

Article reckons the CIA is still clinging to the original regime change mission and not awfully interested in IS or AQ in Syria. Of course the Pentagon's main mission is now IS. I'd assume parts of the sprawling US intelligence system has the same focus as well. I think the Obama administration is not in one place about these things either. Bureaucratic in fighting is something of an American tradition in these things.

I'd say though at back of this is a stark reality: short of hunting the bugger down with JDAMs if you want Bashar gone the only way that's going to happen is working with not against radical Salafi in Syria. You hold your nose and tactically embrace the beards as the Assad clan's regional enemies do. Then you better have a plan to kill the righteous ones in the traditional Saudi way. Though this can prove to be the tricky bit.

 

[CrabbedOne]

I do wonder how CENTCOM could fail to notice Syria has rather a lot of loyalist militia men riding technicles?

 

[CrabbedOne]

...
• TEV-DEM should be cognizant of the dangers associated with overreach. It would do better to focus on strengthening the local administration in areas it already controls rather than continuing to expand into areas of Sunni Arab majority. Such expansion threatens to sow the seeds of ethnic conflict and place unmanageable burdens on TEV-DEM capacities and resources. Over-reliance on the support of the anti-ISIS coalition would be unwise given the fickle support of the United States to date for its allies on the ground in Syria.
...

TEV-DEM i.e. PYD-led Rojava Movement for a Democratic Society. The PKK launched a self defeating war in SE Turkey last year. There are signs of an even greater tendency to hubris in Syria. Like IS just making too many enemies.

Interesting paper stressing the fragility of Rojova and pointing to a good deal of reliance on Damascus. Has some quotes from Syrian officials not unhappy with Kurdish autonomy working within the Baathist state. I have some doubts if that pragmatism lasts if the Syrian Arabs ever stop fighting each other whoever rules the capital. Has some good words for TEV-DEM in terms of governance even if it is a teensy bit authoritarian. The bar is very low in Syria. The accusation that in government buildings they've just taken down Bashar's portrait and put up Apo's is a little cruel.