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And next, Syria?

CrabbedOne said:
In JPo Assad, like Hitler, would manipulate elections
Well I assume Kerry thinks supervised elections could be held as they were in Egypt when the MB to took power. Egypt also has a tradition of despots winning 90%+ of the vote that was recently revived. Of course cynicism is appropriate in Syria were everything in civic life is bent.
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The problem in Syria is that Assad does have a lot of supporters even though he is a despot. It is a tridal thing. Assad is an Alawite arab and so has a lot of support from Alawite Syrians. He is using the age old tactic of divide and rule. i.e. he gives privileges to his favoured tribe while keeping others down. Saddam did it in Iraq favouring the Sunni muslims and oppressing the Shia muslims and Kurds.
 

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 Access to potable water remains limited despite service resumption of one of the water stations and repairs of water network
 Civilian casualties reported in both parts of the city despite a limited reduction in the number of airstrikes
 Medical items, such as anaesthetics, IV fluids, ICU supplies, surgery and trauma supplies are urgently needed in eastern Aleppo
 Distribution of remaining food rations will be split in half to increase coverage
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And the bombing has now escalated again.
 
On CMEC The Prospect of a Superpower War in Syria is Hardly Far-Fetched
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Meanwhile, in Syria, the situation has grown much more precarious. The end of US-Russian peace efforts has emboldened those forces seeking a military solution. The Russian military is probably gambling that the outgoing administration in Washington will not start a war against Damascus in what remains of the Obama presidency. Thus, defeating the rebels and what was Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s former franchise, in Aleppo is possible and, with it, a decisive turn in the Syrian war.

The gamble may or may not pay off. Should the rebel forces acquire the capability of shooting down Russian aircraft, the situation may change, as it did in Afghanistan in the 1980s. However, unlike in Afghanistan, retribution might follow soon. Syria, for most of 2016 the site of US-Russian collaboration, could easily turn into a battlefield between the two — with the proxies first taking aim at the principals, and the principals then shooting back not at the proxies, but at each other.

This is an exceptionally disturbing prospect that should keep people in Moscow and Washington awake at night. But the new highly asymmetrical relationship between the two powers leaves almost no room for mutual respect.

“Putin’s Russia” is increasingly treated in the western media the way America’s old adversaries were dealt with — from Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to Muammer Gaddafi’s Libya. As Boris Johnson, the UK foreign secretary, has put it, Russia is in danger of becoming a rogue state. Meanwhile, in eastern Europe there are cheers for US fighter aircraft taking on the Russians — and winning.
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From what I've read the role of MANPADs in Afghanistan's Muhj war has been greatly exaggerated. Soviet airframes just flew higher and the Russians accepted the losses as a cost of doing business. The Russian response in Syria would probably be to rely increasingly on high altitude area bombing. The US has been against MANPAD proliferation in Syria but then the Americans like the Russians have little real control over some of their allies. Indeed it's sometime hard to tell who is the organ grinder and who is the monkey.

After kicking around various tinpot regimes for a few decades with little thought to the consequences I don't think are current crop of European leaders are mentally equipped to cope with a nuclear armed peer competitor getting in their well fed faces. It's the Pentagon advising caution around the Russians while the likes of Boris rattles his sabre assuming that will only lead to the Septics doing all the necessary heavy lifting.
 
Matchbox said:
The problem in Syria is that Assad does have a lot of supporters even though he is a despot. It is a tridal thing. Assad is an Alawite arab and so has a lot of support from Alawite Syrians. He is using the age old tactic of divide and rule. i.e. he gives privileges to his favoured tribe while keeping others down. Saddam did it in Iraq favouring the Sunni muslims and oppressing the Shia muslims and Kurds.
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There are similarities and differences with the very divisive and much more sectarian Saddam. Saddam really hated the Shia and distrusted Kurds. Though both could advance in the Baath party. Christians were over represented in his administration. He only really favoured his own Tikriti tribe and hangers on. Though being a jumped up street thug he casually killed a fair few of them. He deliberately worked to divide Sunni tribes. Also after the Iran-Iraq war the officer corps.

The SAA is split up into rival divisional commands to prevent a coup. Graft also pervades the Syrian state system as a form of reward. Like Saddam's Iraq Baathist Syria is a Stasi society thick with informants, prone to brutal torture on a whim and deeply paranoid. But the Assad clan is tight knit professional business and rarely kills its own. It's also not been that great for their own sect the Alawites. They have an easy path into the officer corps but that means living in barrack slums on very low pay until you ingratiate your way into higher ranks and have a license to steal. These days its also a very dangerous lifestyle choice. Where Saddam was suicidally grandiose in his ambitions and a real threat to his neighbours Bashar was more of a wimpy passive aggressive with a keen sense of brinksmanship policing the Golan for the IDF while aiding HA.

I see more similarities between Assad and a later Iraqi leader Maliki. He also bought off large parts of the Sunni Arab elite while battering other parts of it and made Iraq even more corrupt. A great loot of petro-dollars went to the better sort of chap in Baghdad. He also like Assad displayed a great deal of disregard for the lot of the lower orders. Even neglecting his own impoverished home town in Southern Iraq. He then faced Arab Spring troubles as a consequence which he failed to put down decisively as Saddam would have. He was criticised by supporters for lacking brutality. He became more and more reliant on Iranian support. That all developed into a large Sunni Arab revolt. In Iraq there was moral centre of Najaf to pressure Maliki to stand down. Also a survivor Maliki remains unlike Assad a canny political bruiser currently angling to be PM again.
 
On Brookings Moscow gambles on raising the stakes—in Syria and across the board
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Russian forces in Syria (estimated at about 4,500 troops) are vulnerable to tactical strikes and have already taken casualties, and they are also prone to technical failures causing air crashes. Newly heightened tensions could bring the situation to a disastrous brink. Earlier in the conflict, Putin saw Russia’s readiness to take greater risks—particularly relative to Europe—as an important political advantage. Now, he has to think very seriously about where this propensity to climb the proverbial “escalation ladder” could really take him.

The Obama administration has shown no interest in competing with Russia in the military arena in Syria, and now probably sees that there are few areas where Russian and American security interests coincide. No initiatives in nuclear arms control are gaining any traction in Moscow, and it pays only lip service to nuclear non-proliferation matters (Russia is of no help, for example, in managing the North Korean problem, where itdutifully follows China’s lead, or in following up on the P5+1 deal with Iran). It is irrelevant for keeping war-torn Afghanistan from collapsing or for sorting out the violent mess in Yemen. Syria was the only burning war zone where cooperation once appeared possible, but Moscow has proven that it is not. The indefatigable John Kerry may have to accept the sad fact that, for now, the options for constructive engagement with Moscow have been exhausted.

DE-ESCALATING WITHOUT BACKING OFF

This leaves the outgoing U.S. administration with the tricky task of rescuing Aleppo from further humanitarian catastrophe without triggering a
military clash with Russia. Washington might discover that many stakeholders in the Syrian calamity—including Jordan and perhaps even Turkey—have a greater sense of responsibility than Moscow. They have been rather anxious about the narrow monopolization of the post-conflict deliberations by the failed Kerry-Lavrov show. The Obama administration could find it more worthwhile than skeptics believe to engage more closely with these parties, who have a lot to lose from a stagnating war—or indeed from Bashar Assad’s victory.
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The US really has no obligation to risk getting on the “escalation ladder” with the Russians over East Aleppo. The rebels are not a treatied up NATO ally indeed some of them have been US Public Enemy #1 very recently. The Oval Office could choose gamble on Russian reactions but it would do so almost entirely without public support in the US. This incumbent won't act in more a unilateral manner than his very reckless predecessor without clear US interests at stake. What Obama has a mandate for is pursuing terrorists in Syria and that requires some level of collaboration with the Russians not seeking conflict.

Obama was morally blackmailed into action in Libya where the US also didn't have a clear interest before by irresponsible coves and clearly regrets being a saviour of Benghazi. Confronting Russia over Syria would be a far riskier proposition. Next year the new President may take a different position but the shrinking pocket's situation looks hopeless and it will probably have capitulated by then. That pivotal defeat will likely change the nature of the negotiations with hopefully some realism entering rebel calculations and limiting what have been just as maximal demands as Assad's.

Civil wars in which everybody goes away happy are rare. Usually the killing subsides when one side loses. That's what happened in Iraq last time with the Sunni Arab insurgents collapsing into in fighting. In this the side we picked has developed very serious flaws that are getting hard to ignore. The side we don't like (largely because it's Iran's) has seriously committed allies with a great deal more resources they might apply. And we don't want an all out war with puny 3rd world Iran let alone still pretty formidable Russia. These things once engaged can run away from the belligerents best interests.

Not that many care but Obama also doesn't have a mandate for supporting the escalating "violent mess" in Yemen that he might have deescalated at a pen stroke. We will soon lay siege to Mosul and are poorly prepared for the flight of its population from our bombs. We should perhaps be looking to our own house there rather than emoting over another humanitarian crisis in Aleppo.
 
In Der Speigel How Syria Became the New Global War
According to Abu Yazen, a scout for the rebel group Levant Front who is stationed a couple of kilometers outside the siege ring, Syrian Arabic dialect no longer gets you very far on the front lines surrounding Aleppo.

Every group participating in the murderous fighting around the city is trying to listen in on the radio communications of their opponents. "But to understand Assad's troops, I would have to be multilingual," Yazen said over Skype during a recent moment of calm, when no bombs from the regime or from Russia were falling on the city.

In the "Afghan sector" near Khan Tuman southwest of the city, Dari is spoken, a dialect of Persian common in Afghanistan, Yazen says. In the "Hezbollah sector" in the south, Arabic with a Lebanese accent can be heard. The Iranian officers, meanwhile, speak Persian. And nobody, the scout continues, understands the Pakistanis when they speak Urdu. He says that the Iraqi militias surrounding Aleppo tend to speak with the strong accent prevalent in southern Iraq, "but we've gotten used to it." The only reason they don't hear much Russian, he says, is because the pilots flying overhead "only use frequencies that are difficult for us to intercept."
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In parts a quite misleading piece e.g. only a small part of Aleppo is being devastated about 20% of a largely regime held city. The regime has signifiant Sunni support, while short of man power it isn't purely dependant on minorities. The Iranian population far from being apathetic appear little phased by losses in Syria and the Teheran IRGC is flooded with volunteers wanting to fight in Syria. A long list of IRGC officer dying in combat are publicised as being martyrs. The numbers given for foreign IRGC militias deployed at anyone time in Syria appears far too high at 60K though I have seen that number in Saudi sources. It might be half that. The rival Jihadi international on the other side does not fight solely for IS as you might infer from the piece but are dying in large numbers with the rebels perhaps being half their combatant dead according to some NGOs.

It's still worth reading as it's rather typical but does explore some unusual angles.
 
On Reuters Aleppo will eventually fall, but Syrian war will go on
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Sarkis Naoum, a leading Arab commentator, predicted a protracted conflict and the de facto partitioning of the country. But he suggested countries in the region would opt to increase their arming of rebel groups.

"The Gulf states are not pleased with the way things are going. They're willing to repeat the experience of Afghanistan," he said in reference to the 1980s when they supplied arms for the Mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union.

"For them this is the war of the century."
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And that's the thing, the East Aleppo pocket will probably fall, the Turks may be distracted by the PKK but the wealthy Gulfies will fight to last Syrian to thwart Iran's attempt to prop up the status quo in Damascus.

In Afghanistan the Muhj was politically fragmented often close to collapsing but the revolt against the Soviets was kept on life support by mule trains of supply and secure rear basing in Pakistan. Given the latter its very hard to defeat an insurgency. Half of it was funded by the KSA, half by the US. Under Gorbachev the Soviet staged a last surge that pressed the rebels hard but facing a dip in oil prices the 40th Army finally declared a tactical victory and withdrew. This proxy war was not without consequence in Pakistan which became a theatre for Saudi-Iranian competition with both backing sectarian militants. Afghanistan short a million souls after the brutal attentions of Russian ordnance then descended into a new chaotic civil wars as the rebel warlord fought each other for control. The Taliban led by Muhj veterans eventually backed by Pakistan and the Saudis took Kabul but never really subdued the Northern rebels. At one point after a Taliban massacre of Shia and some of their diplomats the Iranians nearly invaded Afghanistan. The Northern rebels are the folk we allied with fifteen years ago to oust the Taliban who fled along with many AQ folk into the arms of Pakistani intelligence. They then fought a war against us funded to a large extent by the GCC donors (according to a rather apologetic State Department report I read years ago) and once more with Pakistani rear basing. The Taliban is currently threatening to overrun Helmand province. Again Pakistan bore some costs for fighting a proxy war. The war with us spilled over into a ferocious, little reported, terrorist war in Pakistan's cities that's killed about 40K. Its mass casualty attacks often have sectarian motives. I've expected it to overspill onto British streets for sometime; there have been a few incidents.

Turkey's role in Syria has some parallels with Pakistan's in Afghanistan. You could also see echoes the Pakistani obsession with gaining strategic depth against its enemy India in the Saudis paranoid fear of Persian advancement. Afghanistan also provides an example of a protracted conflict greatly extended by foreign involvement via both conventional and proxy warfare. I would fear that something similar may be Syria's fate.

I've read the Syrian rebel cause quickly distracted Gulf donors from the old war in Afghanistan hitting Terry funding in a way the war against the American project in Iraq did not. Humanitarian outrage, the memory of Hama, direct tribal relations, Damascus's special place in the Muslim imagination, sectarian bigotry and a deep loathing of the Assad clan's Persian allies appealed more than the doings of Deobandis in far away Khorasan.

Many of the Brits who emigrated to Syria to join IS or fight Assad under other banners have roots in Pakistan. Afghan Shia often refugees in Teheran play a significant part in the IRGC militias in Syria. So do Pakistani Shia. Despite having a PM who is practically a Saudi asset and being heavily obliged financially to the KSA the Pakistani parliament, in a moment of surprising good sense not echoed in London, refused to significantly participate in the House of Saud's Yemeni adventure. That was partly because they didn't like the sectarian tensions that might increase in their already troubled country or relish the consequences of poking their neighbour Iran in the eye. Sophisticated groups like Ahar al Sham and the style of governance practiced in Idlib have also been compared with the Taliban. AQ in Syria promotes Taliban rule as a political model event urging allegiance be made to its leader.

There have been other examples but you might think of Afghanistan and Syria as rather connected: World Jihad I & II.
 

(Palestinian readers, PLEASE sign the petition linked at the bottom) We, the undersigned Palestinians, write to affirm our commitment to the amplification of Syrian voices as they endure slaughter and displacement at the hands of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. We are motivated by our deep belief that oppression, in all of its manifestations, should be the primary concern of anyone committed to our collective liberation. Our vision of liberation includes the emancipation of all oppressed peoples, regardless of whether or not their struggles fit neatly into outdated geopolitical frameworks.
We are concerned by some of the discourse that has emerged from progressive circles with regards to the ongoing crisis in Syria. In particular, we are embarrassed by the ways in which some individuals known for their work on Palestine have failed to account for some crucial context in their analysis of Syria.
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Well that's rather consistent, decrying the oppression of the Israeli occupation looks a bit blinkered if you are willing to ignore the quasi-fascist Baathists thrashing the Syrian people into submission next door. The Syrian regime was always awful with a busy torture gulag but Assad and his allies have now killed somewhere over 200K Syrians in just over half a decade and that's if you don't count the poor bastards conscripted into the SAA meat grinder. In all the wars including 48 of the regional minority led regime next door about 90-120K have died. What happening in Aleppo may in someways resemble a punitive IDF incursion into Gaza but the Israelis get embarrassed by all the telegenic dead and stop after a couple of months. The R+6 whose offensive edge is now mostly foreign just goes on and on with little sign of compromise or the bloody relief a conclusive victory brings.

Of course there are Pals fighting for and against the regime in Syria. Hamas distanced itself from Iran to back the ideologically kindred Syrian Muslim Brothers in the revolt though they retained a relationship with HA. Pals were also reported to be fighting for IS a group that in Syria often resembles a colonial project, gleefully burns Pal flags and does a pretty thorough job of oppressing Arabs.
 
On TNI What Boris Johnson Should Have Said About Syria
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Here’s what he should have said.

The debate taking place now in Western discourse is whether or not we should intervene in Syria to save civilians caught in the crossfire. That is a flawed premise. The bigger question is whether we can, and what discernible Western interest would it serve. Let’s assume Britain and United States opt for a no-fly zone. A standard war simulation would need us to knock out Syrian forces’ C4ISR capabilities. The Syrian forces are of course no match for Western air power, so they delegate the air defense to Russian forces or Russian-backed antiair operations. The Russians then come with fighter escorts, or worse, the Russians knock down a Western bird. These are all statistical possibilities. The Russians can also deny that their forces knocked out a Western jet, and instead claim that it was done by rebels and proxies, and cloud the scenario further, as they did in Ukraine with a civilian airliner.

What would the West do in that situation? The choice in active confrontation quickly turns binary, and it would then involve either in counter-escalation or a climbdown. In a counter-escalatory spiral, any effort would entail direct attacks against possible Russian or Iranian manned antiair batteries, or worse, air-to-air combat with Russian jets. Is the West willing to go that far, especially for Syria? The other alternative scenario would result in an ignominious climbdown, which will then be a huge propaganda victory for Russia and Iran. In an escalatory spiral, the course of conflict depends on the perception and resolve of the other side as well, and there is no evidence that the British and American military, as well as the majority of the Western population, are in any way interested in any kind of brinkmanship with the Russians over Syria.
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Instead in a signature Boris moment he felt Aleppo's pain, rattled his sabre while showing some sense by not actually being eager to use it against the Russians. Well until the Oval Office adopts yeehaw as a foreign policy again and the Brits scurry on board in order to secure leverage in DC for no discernible purpose.
 
The Russians are sending an aircraft carrier to the Syrian coast . They already have a number of ships bristling with missiles performing air defence duties along the Syrian coastline . Not just doubling down but trebling . They've heavily expanded their own air defences in Syria while upgrading Syrias capabilities . Any proposed NFZ will have to take all of that out . On land, sea and air . It will involve killing thousands of Syrians ...military and civilian alike..as well as Russians . It would entail all out war . As well as taking into consideration the very real ability of the Russian and allied forces to retaliate. They can retaliate very strongly indeed .

And taking cynicism to new depths , an interesting but depressing back story has emerged as regards that iconic photo of a distressed Syrian child covered in concrete dust that has featured heavily in the Western MSM as a propaganda backdrop to the sabre rattling . Turns out the photographer who took it recently took another photo. A selfie were he's standing grinning alongside a number of Syrian militants. Turns out a few of them are celebrities in their own right . They were the very same " moderates " who dragged a Palestinian child from his hospital bed and beheaded him for the camera just last month .

CqRG54nXgAA6NYZ.jpg


Western countries just can't wait to be these guys airforce by the sounds of it . Chains well and truly yanked .
 
On LWJ Russian influence evident in Palestinian militia in Syria
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Russia is known to cooperate with forces allied with Bashar al Assad, such as the Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG) that also receives U.S. support. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) passes intelligence to Russia for airstrikes. There are, however, indications of more intimate Russian support of the Quds Brigade: the open commendations of the Quds Brigade militia by senior Russian officers for battlefield achievements, the presence of Russian military advisers among combatants, and Russian media coverage of the militia.

The Quds Brigade vows to continue fighting in Syria in support of the Syrian government, and has aspirations towards Jerusalem. On the anniversary of the foundation of the militia, which occurred on Oct. 6, a pro-militia account posted the following on social media: “Today (October 6th) is the anniversary of the Liwa Quds founding, the honorable and proud Liwaa. We promise you of liberating Al-Quds and all of Palestine after cleansing our country dear Syria from the terrorist filth. A country you don’t protect, is a country you don’t deserve to live in.”
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Well the name does mean Jerusalem Brigade not that that seems particularly high on their agenda lately. On the other side the very militant AQ splinter Jaish al Aqsa displays no signs of their barmy army ever getting to the Al-Aqsa Mosque instead they've been butting heads with Ahar al Sham over turf. AQ which relies heavily on anti-semitic propaganda in recruiting but its guys have been spotted chatting amicably to IDF officers by Druze up on the Golan. The uber-sectarian IS are quite frank about the hated Joos being much lower on their hit list than kufr tainted Muslims like Hamas or chaps serving in the Lebanese army. With Syria swarming with radically bigoted types to some extent the Arab-Israeli conflict is on hold.

Liwa al Quds were associated in the press with that lad that got beheaded by Zenki but upset his family by denying he was one of their fighters. Being Pals they are a useful propaganda asset though sites like LWJ just see them siding with the butcher Assad and cuddled up with the evil baby burning Russkis as more evidence of perpetual Pal infamy. I haven't noticed Russians pinning any tin on the IRGC's Afghans. That probably would not play as well back home.
 
Casually Red your 'Interesting but depressing story' seems to be from August and is only to be found on alt-right/libertarian websites from searching the image you posted as you have failed to provide a link as usual (funny that). Who on here has claimed the people involved in the beheading are 'moderates'. Not me, I too thought it was disgusting. Meanwhile the photographer refutes the allegations directed at him, also from August:

“Aleppo boy” photographer responds to allegations of beheading involvment
 
teqniq said:
Casually Red your 'Interesting but depressing story' seems to be from August and is only to be found on alt-right/libertarian websites from searching the image you posted as you have failed to provide a link as usual (funny that). Who on here has claimed the people involved in the beheading are 'moderates'. Not me, I too thought it was disgusting. Meanwhile the photographer refutes the allegations directed at him, also from August:

“Aleppo boy” photographer responds to allegations of beheading involvment
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Your claims...surprise surprise.. are as much bollocks as his . That article is all over the Internet regardless of any sites affiliation .
The US state department class them as moderates , as do the western MSM . The yanks used this classification to arm and pay them .

U.S.-Backed ‘Moderate’ Rebels Behead a Child Near Aleppo




The photographer refuting the allegations Facebook page is plastered with his personal support for suicide bombers as well as more selfies with them too . Refute that .

It's jihadi propaganda , straight from the jihadi source. Chains well and truly yanked .
 
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But still you fail to provide links with regard to the story about the photographer and they are not my claims you dishonest prick. :)
 
From The Washington Institute Iranian Casualties in Syria and the Strategic Logic of Intervention
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ASSESSMENT

A number of conclusions -- some necessarily speculative -- can be drawn from these findings. First, Iran has never committed more than the minimum force necessary to keep Bashar al-Assad in power, so one cannot say that it has been militarily "all in" when it comes to supporting its Syrian ally. Except for the relatively small Qods Force, Iran has deployed only a tiny slice of the 100,000-man IRGC Ground Forces and the 350,000-man Artesh. (By contrast, about a third of all U.S. Army and Marine units were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan at times in the last decade.)

What are the reasons for this approach? Whenever possible, the Islamic Republic will limit its own exposure and losses by fighting to its last non-Iranian proxy, even when its own personnel would be more effective. Using proxies also enables Iran to deepen its ties with the societies these fighters are drawn from and expand its options for projecting influence in the region. In addition, Tehran may be trying to minimize the potential for domestic backlash -- while polls of Iranians show strong support for fighting the Islamic State, there is less robust support for propping up the Assad regime.
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Useful piece from the Spring.

The contrast with the massive US commitment in Iraq is informative. Iran's strategy in Syria like Russia's is to commit a small sustainable presence and grow its relationship with proxy forces. Iran's is essentially a revolutionary strategy not simple war fighting. They see the Syrian crisis as both a vital interest and a window of Khomeinist opportunity. Iran has grown its Jihadist international considerably and that is an end in itself.

Unlike the Russians there is little sign of casualty aversion among the Iranian public brought up in a vast cult of martyrdom gloomily celebrating the cannon fodder hurled at Saddam's army. Even opposition activists express patriotic enthusiasm for the war against the Takfiri as the Iraqi and Syrian conflicts are often styled in Iran. Syria with less than thousand Iranian dying there so far is often compared by Teheran with that great slaughter where estimate of Iranian losses run from 200-800K.

Revolutionary Iran is both a confident Persian Imperialist and a puny 3rd World nation. It has always worked through proxies. The first was Badr in Saddam's Iraq. The Syrian war and the rise of IS brought it's hand out of shadows. As Assad weakened Iran has committed not just the covert specialists of IRGC-QF but IRGC line officers and lately even a small part of its conventional army special forces.

Iranian regime opinion on Aleppo was pretty clear last month:
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Key takeaway: Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary Ali Shamkhani vowed that a “forceful confrontation” will determine “Aleppo’s fate” as the Syrian regime launched a ground offensive in the eastern part of the city.

Shamkhani stated that the fate of the besieged city of Aleppo and “other Syrian battlefields” will “only be determined through a forceful confrontation with the takfiris.” Shamkhani also dismissed the possibility of an international political settlement in Syria, stating, “The only solution to ending the violence in Syria is strengthening negotiations among the Syrian people in order to arrive at an agreement.” President Hassan Rouhani, meanwhile, pledged the continuation of Iranian support to the Syrian government during a meeting with Syrian Parliament Speaker Hadiya Khalaf Abbas in Tehran. Pro-regime forces supported by Russian air-cover and Iranian advisors launched a new ground offensive on rebel-held positions in eastern Aleppo on September 27, more than a week after the breakdown of the Russia-U.S. brokered ceasefire.
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The Iranians unlike the Russians are not much interested in having a peer relationship with the Great Satan. Khomeini's revolution was about getting what he saw as malign great power actors out of the Muslim world and the Iranians leading it. They got quite upset when the Russians arrogantly revealed their bombers were using an Iranian air base. They were naturally very unimpressed with all the endless Russian-US gum flapping which largely excluded Syrians. For them that's just superpower preening. The Iranians perhaps saw more merit in brutally crushing the East Aleppo pocket first and then seeing what disheartened rebels might seek terms short of Assad's abject surrender. It's likely not what the mouthy Russian prima donna's wanted but fits more with Assad's view at least in the former aspect.

The first article describes Iran as enlisting Russia in Syria as a "great power proxy" and this may be better way to understand how the Persians view it. They are using the Russians and reliant on them but with some wariness. It's not actually the Russians who are prepared to bleed for Syria even in the so far small way Iran has.
 
Casually Red said:
Your claims this story is only to be found on right wing websites are a crock of shit .

The man behind the viral 'boy in the ambulance' image has brutal skeletons in his own closet [IMAGES] | The Canary

The photographer is a jihadi supporter and propagandist . That's who's yanking chains, for propaganda purposes
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My claim is based on the image you provided which I had to use to perform a search on Google images as you as usual had provided no link. It only provided links to far-right sites and the one refuting the claim. As for the Canary they have been guilty in the past of recycling other people's stuff as new 'news' (apparently it is part of their business model and was first bought to my attention by people on here). It might be interesting to know where The Canary got it's material from. What interests me is how this is suddenly presented as 'news' by you when it was doing the rounds in August as also evidenced by The Canary article. Would you care to provide the tweet you got the image from and also the guy's facebook page and let us judge for ourselves?
 
teqniq said:
My claim is based on the image you provided which I had to use to perform a search on Google images as you as usual had provided no link. It only provided links to far-right sites and the one refuting the claim. As for the Canary they have been guilty in the past of recycling other people's stuff as new 'news' (apparently it is part of their business model and was first bought to my attention by people on here). It might be interesting to know where The Canary got it's material from. What interests me is how this is suddenly presented as 'news' by you when it was doing the rounds in August as also evidenced by The Canary article. Would you care to provide the tweet you got the image from and also the guy's facebook page and let us judge for ourselves?
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Twat
 
What??? :D So I am seeing very little evidence here. Now I am not entirely discounting that the photographer may have connections to extremist loons, indeed he says this in the article I linked to:

Raslan said; “I would never work with any group that disagrees with my personal beliefs, but sometimes we have to take pictures with them,” adding “I normally take hundreds of selfies with whoever I see on the fronts. We who work in press take hundreds of pictures that we keep in our archives.”
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However I am drawn to the conclusion that you are posting a story from August right now to somehow discredit the photo and the story of the boy caught up in the ongoing bombing of Aleppo by the regime and the Russians, something that has rightly been described as war crimes.
 
Zenki I read got through vetting but lost US funding sometime ago. It seems the CIA outsourced vetting to Turkish intelligence. Zenki recently joined Jaish al Fateh which also includes AQ Syria which suggest a more radical alignment. But then JaF has been the revolt's winning alliance and that may be just good military sense.

I can live with the odd beheading, Assad will never be beaten by just backing boy scouts, if you are going to back the revolt you can't be picky. The Russians hold their nose and fight alongside HA. HA is by most assessments the world's most capable terrorist group. They practically ran both the CIA and KGB out of Beirut back in the day with a very brutal campaign. The Russians do so while reassuring the Israelis who are HA's main targets at the moment that the IAF can still bomb them. It's a matter of path dependency and pragmatism not ideology.

My bottom line would be are we supporting groups in Syria that can win quickly, that we'd like to hold power or at worst that we can kill off and replace. With the likes of JaF I'd say that maybe in half a decade more with a lot of support they might win. However these aggressive beards running Damascus could be worse than Assad. And they would not be easy to get rid of. We'd probably be trying replace them with rehabilitated regime figures which isn't far off our approach in Libya.
 
CrabbedOne said:
Zenki I read got through vetting but lost US funding sometime ago. It seems the CIA outsourced vetting to Turkish intelligence. Zenki recently joined Jaish al Fateh which also includes AQ Syria which suggest a more radical alignment. But then JaF has been the revolt's winning alliance and that may be just good military sense.

I can live with the odd beheading, Assad will never be beaten by just backing boy scouts, if you are going to back the revolt you can't be picky. The Russians hold their nose and fight alongside HA. HA is by most assessments the world's most capable terrorist group. They practically ran both the CIA and KGB out of Beirut back in the day with a very brutal campaign. The Russians do so while reassuring the Israelis who are HA's main targets at the moment that the IAF can still bomb them. It's a matter of path dependency and pragmatism not ideology.

My bottom line would be are we supporting groups in Syria that can win quickly, that we'd like to hold power or at worst that we can kill off and replace. With the likes of JaF I'd say that maybe in half a decade more with a lot of support they might win. However these aggressive beards running Damascus could be worse than Assad. And they would not be easy to get rid of. We'd probably be trying replace them with rehabilitated regime figures which isn't far off our approach in Libya.
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Zenki, including some of the guys involved in the beheading showed up at the liberation of Jarabulus which chimes well with the Turkish angle.
 

...
But the regime has lost most of these resources and levers in the course of the conflict. It has only maintained its hold by encouraging loyalist networks to embed themselves deeply in the war economy, developing alternative modes of income generation and recreating pre-conflict patterns of collusion between security agencies, state bureaucrats, and Ba’th Party cadres and black economy actors. At the same time, the regime has directed Iranian credit lines and commercial contracts towards privileged business cronies, again replicating long-established patterns and intensifying them.

None of this will be sufficient to keep the regime afloat once the conflict ends, unless it can tap into sizeable new sources of capital and reconnect the domestic economy to significant external markets. The regime expects to emerge dominant, whether through a negotiated political settlement or outright military victory, but will rule a devastated economy and shattered markets. It will have few means of generating the capital needed to undertake physical reconstruction of housing, economic facilities, and public infrastructure, let alone repatriate refugees or reabsorb internally displaced persons, restore education and health care and other public services, and rebuild external trade links.
...
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Smart article this, the hollowed out Baathist state really needs a big flow of external capital. Article has Damascus engaged in a frantic surge of legislation to pimp itself out for new investment. There are some incentives for that to happen but we do tend to be very bad losers.

It's quite possible Assad's allies could effectively win the war for him in Useful Syria but then have him lose the restless peace that follows harried by economic problems, international hostility, cancerous growths of substate actors within the regime side and a lingering insurgency.
 
CrabbedOne Incidentally you might be able to live with the 'odd beheading' but imo it makes them no better than the regime they are supposedly seeking to overthrow - I say 'supposedly' as their allegiances seem somewhat fluid and contingent on the goodwill of Turkey who have just done a gas pipeline deal with the Russians. Moreover when they were pulled on it they attempted to gloss over it by saying that he was a young man rather than a child as if somehow that made it OK.
 
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teqniq said:
What??? :D So I am seeing very little evidence here. Now I am not entirely discounting that the photographer may have connections to extremist loons, indeed he says this in the article I linked to:



However I am drawn to the conclusion that you are posting a story from August right now to somehow discredit the photo and the story of the boy caught up in the ongoing bombing of Aleppo by the regime and the Russians, something that has rightly been described as war crimes.
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The photographer is an opposition activist . He describes himself as such on the Facebook page . By any definition he is a propagandist . A propagandist who spreads propaganda for armed jihadist factions by the use of photography and a news narrative he provides to western media organisations through bylines and interviews. You have no idea at all how that kid even came to be in that hospital. A number of things might have happened . His jihadi chums for example are chucking around artillery , tunnel bombs and huge car and truck bombs with gay abandon in Aleppo on a daily and nightly basis . Causing massive destruction . We simply don't know the background to the photo and most definitely can't trust the account of the source . An apparent jihadist propagandist .

You though are happy to take the word of a man who , despite taking a very keen interest in the media aspect of the war, it being his job, claims he had no idea he was taking a selfie with people in his neighbourhood, leaders of a very well known jihadi group, who just a fortnight earlier went viral while filming themselves chopping a child's head off and causing a worldwide outcry . that despite knowing full well he was taking a photo with Al Zinki just didn't recognise them, hadn't the faintest clue despite their mugs being all over the media and Internet in an extremely shocking story ?
The mans a blatant liar . And a blatant hypocrite . Who stood grinning with child beheaders whilst simultaneously trying to instil sympathy and support for them by publicising an apparently traumatised child in order to manipulate western media audiences .
 
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