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And next, Syria?

Only in your opinion. And so far all you have provided to support your claims are joke shop links.

As for blatant liars and hypocrites, 'people in glass houses etc...'
 
teqniq said:
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 pipleine 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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The US state department and the western media highlighted Zinkis " apology " as well as their claim these people would be arrested and held to account . Basically apologised for them .The selfie a fortnight later showing them standing about grinning inadvertently exposed this as a crock of shit.

And despite that they're still running about. Channel 4 were lionising them as moderates in their report here just a few weeks ago



They've now rather ashamedly, but with no explanation deleted their video from their news feed after a great many people spotted who their subjects actually were .
 
And? I know they were never arrested/detained by the al Zinki command as they should have been. Strangely it is one of the very few things that we agree upon. But if you are somehow trying to use this story to distort or detract what is actually going on in Aleppo with regard to the indiscriminate bombing by the regime and the Russians you are on to a massive loser.
 

Interesting IRGC priorities. In the past they've had a pretty short rotation cycle for units in Syria. Some have suffered quite a lot of attrition. The militias are often lead by IRGC officers who have been dying at a high rate.

Turkish involvement around Mosul has become a very hot potato in Baghdad. Erdogan was very arrogantly insulting PM Ababi. Al Sadr has been threatening Erdogan over the TSK training presence in the area building a Sunni milita. Al Haq is a splinter faction of Sadr's Mahdi army that went over to the IRGC. Both the KDP Pesh and the Shia Hashd are meant to stay out of Mosul which currently is 85% Sunni Arab and scared to death of both of them. Their role would more be a holding op round the city in areas where they are hoped to be more welcome. A likely flashpoint is Tal Afar West of the city where the Shia Hashd where said to heading and the Turks had expressed an interest in as well.

The Americans have been getting nervous about this. After all the Turks appear to have cocked up their plan for Raqqa.

Syrian factions have also been trying to get involved so it might not just be the Turks that is aimed at.
 
On War On The Rocks ARE WE ALL INTERVENTIONISTS NOW?
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But that’s misleading, only part of the story. When America changes course, so will other players, including Russia, Iran, and the government of Syria. A different style of intervention from the one America is pursuing now could save some lives, which is no small accomplishment. And finally, while it’s not only about America, (or about Syria), an escalation in Syria that is designed to send messages to American rivals and contain the strategic fallout could, if well executed, produce yields in surprising places, as America’s deterrent stock rises and a renewed belief in American activism and engagement restores the U.S. role as global ballast.

We are not all interventionists yet, no matter how shrill the protests from the camp that has tried to defend every twist and turn of Obama’s Middle East policy and now finds itself suddenly on the losing side of the debate. But it is not foolish to hope that somewhere between the destructive overreach of George W. Bush’s militaristic foreign policy and Barack Obama’s pursuit of balance and restraint, there exists a happier medium where America’s never-ending engagement with the most troubled parts of the world yields better results.
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Explores the growing chorus for greater US intervention in Syria from the foreign policy establishment. Accuses Obama of having a "Goldilocks notion of the “just-right” intervention".

Well I'd say that hasn't changed and this is just wanting to try the hotter porridge even if the likely outcome is that that prolongs the war and gets even more Syrian killed. Only for us to wander away to poke more novel hornets nests just we did from the pile of Afghan skulls and rival rabid beards spawned in the Muhj war, Iraq and Libya.

I have to blame Syrians mainly for this war and particularly the bungling Bashar Assad but outsiders have certainly made it worse. On our side the motives are hazy, the desire to poke Iran in the eye by taking down a member of the axis of evil, a constant public obsession on entirely tactical humanitarian objectives with no real desire to actually take responsibility backing that urge up. Obama's policy in Syria was initially to encourage its reluctant regional allies like Turkey into intervention by proxy in what was a fairly low level civil conflict in which less 10K souls had perished. Then it joined in itself via Langley's rebel T&E program. This rather large multi-national but leaderless intervention tended to fragment a patchy provincial revolt that already lacked political cohesion. The agenda of various Salafist groups tending to come to the fore over time. After the fall of Mosul the US then mainly moved on to damage control: dealing with the side effect of IS developing rear basing in Syria by backing the PKK. It dragged behind it a conflicted legacy policy of supporting the revolt that now looks more like an attempt to tamp down a fire that's getting out of control. On the other side HA entered the war, then increasingly Iranian personal and finally it conjured a fairly a small direct intervention by Iran and Russia that then slowly escalated. And only at that point did we show any real interest in seeking terms of peace more complex than the regime's abject surrender.

Now it is clear this hasn't worked but its not just bungling. In part it's the high price of Obama being bullied into being a briefly feel good saviour of Benghazi which after Iraq collapsed US public support for R2P. It's a disaster even if the hollowed out Baathist state was removed or collapses. The current intervention just laid the grounds for another phase of civil war in Syria. Between the rival strands of rebels, between the rebels the Turks and the PKK and even within the rotten Baathist state itself if it crumbles. It's produced a long bloody stalemate. Iran's influence has expanded greatly in Syria and is only likely to be constrained a little by that of Russia. The rebel side(s) we've backed strategic tipping point with their foothold in Aleppo being crushed, areas around Damascus falling and the Southern revolt defanged by Jordan throwing in the towel. But Assad is so weakened he may struggle to control Useful Syria and be an Iranian puppet permanently dependant on growing Russian basing. As IS fades AQ rises within the revolt. The only real winner is the PKK and their land grab has stalled as the TSK feints towards it. Syria is probably doomed to be a terrorist nesting ground with a Med coast and Israeli border.

Soon we'll have a new President that some see as a magic wand. However a more direct US intervention clearly now bears much higher risks because of Russian commitments. There is still no plan that looks beyond an unlikely transition process or is willing to invest signifiant resources over the longterm. In confronting Russia we may finally just deny Assad control of territory and enable the likes of AQ not force a conclusion. We may not like were an escalatory spiral goes with Russia and Iran and back down as our public political support for intervention in Syria is very shallow compared to theirs.

Any plan needs to look beyond immediate problems and "doing something" that may cause great harm. We probably need to face up to the fact that slightly hotter porridge may make Syria a bigger problem. A better President might look to shape a coherent agenda with US allies in Syria that aims at deescalation rather than the opposite. The same could be said in Yemen. The Ankara-PKK peace process urgently need US attention on a par with Israel-Palestine. Rojova is a US created regional problem that could be developed into something useful in Syria if there was a reconciliation. I suspect all that's politically practical in Syria is a US CT program like that in Yemen and that will require some Russian collaboration because the Iranians will welcome it no more than they do in Iraq. Clinton's promised civilian surge in Iraq never happened after Obama's perhaps hasty withdrawal. A vast reconstruction project is needed in the Sunni Arab cities of a still fragile Iraq. Diplomatic attention is needed to the fractious politics of Baghdad and Irbil. The US might be better directing resources to where they might actually do some good.
 
On Syria Comment Labawat al-Jabal: A Druze Female Militia in Suwayda’ Province
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Labawat al-Jabal is by no means a major militia force in Suwayda’ province, which, according to one source in Bayraq Al Kiwan who spoke with me in May this year, is now host to more than 35 factions. Nonetheless, it offers an interesting case study of female militia mobilization and its political connections within regime-held Syria. Whatever resentment there might be towards Labawat al-Jabal among those who lack the regime loyalist inclinations, full-blown war between the Suwayda’ factions remains a remote prospect, as no one side would emerge decisively victorious. In addition, incidents such as the Qadisiya al-Janub rebel offensive in Quneitra province last month that pushed towards the area of the Druze village of Hadr only served to draw attention away from internal quarrels as forces mobilized to defend Hadr out of Druze solidarity, whatever assurances might have been made that the intention was not to capture Hadr itself. According to a media director for Rijal al-Karama who spoke with me, this mobilization to defend Hadr included fighters from Rijal al-Karama though not going under this name on account of problems with the regime’s intelligence apparatuses. In any event, hopes of the ‘revolution’ coming to Suwayda’ remain a long way off.
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That's Lionesses of the Mountain, a defensive female loyalist militia that's an auxiliary of the SAA.

Rijal al-Karama (Men of Dignity) is a Druze group advocating for regime reform, tackling corruption and opposing forced conscription. Regime intelligence was suspected of assassinating one of their leaders. They have been mistaken for a rebel group in the past. In fact its more a dynamic emphasising local defence within the umbrella of the regime. They are clearly very conservative finding ladies with guns an affront to male dignity.

It was hoped Bashar would be a reformer but he just turned up the Baathist kleptocracy a notch pouring favours on regime cronies. I've made unkind comparisons with Tony Blair in the past but the disappointment in Syria was massively greater. Many minority activists joined the early protests but it only took a few months for most to become disenchanted with the revolts sectarian direction. The demographic reality reported by Balanche is most minority folk have fled rebel held areas.

Fear of conscription has led to a proliferation of loyalist NDF militias at the expense of SAA recruitment. Unfortunately they've just added another layer of corruption to the rotten Baathist state. The lack of reform movements on the pro-regime side is probably more to do with that being a very dangerous lifestyle choice in a brutally repressed society as this Druze example demonstrates.

Druze mostly side with the regime but have also fought it particularly when attempts are made to pressgang their youth into the SAA for distant campaigns they are uninterested in. The above solidarity of Druze factions in face of external aggression is typical.
 
CrabbedOne said:
On War On The Rocks ARE WE ALL INTERVENTIONISTS NOW?
Explores the growing chorus for greater US intervention in Syria from the foreign policy establishment. Accuses Obama of having a "Goldilocks notion of the “just-right” intervention".

Well I'd say that hasn't changed and this is just wanting to try the hotter porridge even if the likely outcome is that that prolongs the war and gets even more Syrian killed. Only for us to wander away to poke more novel hornets nests just we did from the pile of Afghan skulls and rival rabid beards spawned in the Muhj war, Iraq and Libya.

I have to blame Syrians mainly for this war and particularly the bungling Bashar Assad but outsiders have certainly made it worse. On our side the motives are hazy, the desire to poke Iran in the eye by taking down a member of the axis of evil, a constant public obsession on entirely tactical humanitarian objectives with no real desire to actually take responsibility backing that urge up. Obama's policy in Syria was initially to encourage its reluctant regional allies like Turkey into intervention by proxy in what was a fairly low level civil conflict in which less 10K souls had perished. Then it joined in itself via Langley's rebel T&E program. This rather large multi-national but leaderless intervention tended to fragment a patchy provincial revolt that already lacked political cohesion. The agenda of various Salafist groups tending to come to the fore over time. After the fall of Mosul the US then mainly moved on to damage control: dealing with the side effect of IS developing rear basing in Syria by backing the PKK. It dragged behind it a conflicted legacy policy of supporting the revolt that now looks more like an attempt to tamp down a fire that's getting out of control. On the other side HA entered the war, then increasingly Iranian personal and finally it conjured a fairly a small direct intervention by Iran and Russia that then slowly escalated. And only at that point did we show any real interest in seeking terms of peace more complex than the regime's abject surrender.

Now it is clear this hasn't worked but its not just bungling. In part it's the high price of Obama being bullied into being a briefly feel good saviour of Benghazi which after Iraq collapsed US public support for R2P. It's a disaster even if the hollowed out Baathist state was removed or collapses. The current intervention just laid the grounds for another phase of civil war in Syria. Between the rival strands of rebels, between the rebels the Turks and the PKK and even within the rotten Baathist state itself if it crumbles. It's produced a long bloody stalemate. Iran's influence has expanded greatly in Syria and is only likely to be constrained a little by that of Russia. The rebel side(s) we've backed strategic tipping point with their foothold in Aleppo being crushed, areas around Damascus falling and the Southern revolt defanged by Jordan throwing in the towel. But Assad is so weakened he may struggle to control Useful Syria and be an Iranian puppet permanently dependant on growing Russian basing. As IS fades AQ rises within the revolt. The only real winner is the PKK and their land grab has stalled as the TSK feints towards it. Syria is probably doomed to be a terrorist nesting ground with a Med coast and Israeli border.

Soon we'll have a new President that some see as a magic wand. However a more direct US intervention clearly now bears much higher risks because of Russian commitments. There is still no plan that looks beyond an unlikely transition process or is willing to invest signifiant resources over the longterm. In confronting Russia we may finally just deny Assad control of territory and enable the likes of AQ not force a conclusion. We may not like were an escalatory spiral goes with Russia and Iran and back down as our public political support for intervention in Syria is very shallow compared to theirs.

Any plan needs to look beyond immediate problems and "doing something" that may cause great harm. We probably need to face up to the fact that slightly hotter porridge may make Syria a bigger problem. A better President might look to shape a coherent agenda with US allies in Syria that aims at deescalation rather than the opposite. The same could be said in Yemen. The Ankara-PKK peace process urgently need US attention on a par with Israel-Palestine. Rojova is a US created regional problem that could be developed into something useful in Syria if there was a reconciliation. I suspect all that's politically practical in Syria is a US CT program like that in Yemen and that will require some Russian collaboration because the Iranians will welcome it no more than they do in Iraq. Clinton's promised civilian surge in Iraq never happened after Obama's perhaps hasty withdrawal. A vast reconstruction project is needed in the Sunni Arab cities of a still fragile Iraq. Diplomatic attention is needed to the fractious politics of Baghdad and Irbil. The US might be better directing resources to where they might actually do some good.
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It's opening sentences made me do a huge one of these :facepalm:

It didn't get much better after that . Not even a single mention of the massacre of Syrian troops in DEZ . Which when one considers it was the seminal event that killed the ceasefire stone dead...as well as a very likely indicator of what a Syrian and Russian response to US aggression will be..escalation and defiance rather than submission....it makes for a woefully inept article and argument all round . Very poor stuff indeed. Can't be arsed looking into who's paying the writers wages but I'll safely assume its the usual rogues gallery .

Advocating utter insanity .
 
What I don't get is the policy maker drumbeat for continued escalation has always been there but there is so little support for arming the opposition. From WaPo in August.
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In total, 72 percent of Americans were found to favor conducting airstrikes against violent Islamist extremist groups, and 57 percent supported sending Special Operations forces into Syria to fight these groups — two military actions that have already begun under the Obama administration.

However, there was less support for new measures. A slim majority, 52 percent, said they favored a no-fly zone that would include the bombing of the Syrian regime's air defenses, but only 42 percent favored sending ground troops in to fight violent Islamist extremist groups in the region. In addition, just 26 percent favored sending arms to anti-government groups, but a similarly low 31 percent wanted the United States to help negotiate an end to fighting that would keep Assad in power.

In general, supporters of both major political parties were fairly in line with each other, with Republicans slightly more in favor of military action than Democrats — more than half of Republicans (53 percent) favored sending ground troops in to fight extremists, for example, whereas just 42 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of independents agreed.
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My bold.

The US government doesn't even have popular support for having a fat Brigade of boots on the ground in Iraq and I suspect few Americans realise it is there. Langley's rebel T&E program is a bit less popular than Trump in California.

Nobody has really explained to them that a US NFZ here may mean a clash with Russia that could get a few Americans fried. I think Russian public will is also very casualty averse in this but Iran's isn't and they can unleash all sorts of asymmetric chaos. There are a bunch of IRGC backed Iraqi militias just itching to have another crack at Great Satan troops in Iraq.

In these things when the US is edging into a conflict you usually want to see support in the 70s. That was true for both Vietnam and Iraq. Only 18% of Republicans care enough about Syria to consider the US taking in refugees. With a lukewarm 56% Dems thinking that's a good idea.

What there is support for is bombing angry beards. You could probably find more Republicans in favour of joining the Russians in bombing the rebels on the off chance of taking out some AQ folk or just because they are uppity Ayerabs. About 80% of GOP voters are backing a rather obviously Putin friendly candidate who tends to judge folk by the shape of their nose and might well. I doubt Clinton's base's support for a NFZ would hold up if things go pear shaped.
 

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Losing access to Syrian territory, in other words, would undermine Iranian deterrence and make it more vulnerable to Israeli and U.S. coercion. As one former official with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) put it, Syria is so strategically important that Iran considers it to be its “35th province.” It would be better for Iran to lose its oil-rich southwest province to adversarial forces (as had happened in the Iran-Iraq war) than to lose Syria, he reasoned. “Because if we hold Syria, we would be able to retake Khuzestan [province]; yet if Syria were lost, we would not be able to keep even Tehran.”

From its perspective, the Islamic Republic has little reason to support any variation of regime change on offer in Syria. The country’s Sunni rebels have displayed a strong bias against Shiites. Jihadi groups like the Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Islamic State advocate a virulently anti-Shiite worldview. The Islamic State has put that ethos into practice through massacres of Shiite Alawites in Syria and mainstream Shiites in Iraq. Iran assumes other rebel groups would act similarly if given power in Syria and that such Sunni extremism would quickly spill over into Lebanon and Iraq, threatening Shiites in those countries. Iran also has its own problem with Sunni sectarian militants, particularly within its western and southeastern provinces.
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Which is a fair description of the Iranian position in Syria and it's stupid to have rated the boastful Russians as more influential in Damascus. Air power diplomacy can only get you so far. Real influence is bought on the ground and if anyone can bend Assad it's Iran. But as in Iraq I doubt the Iranians are interested in anything but excluding US influence and advancing their own.
 
CrabbedOne said:

Which is a fair description of the Iranian position in Syria and it's stupid to have rated the boastful Russians as more influential in Damascus. Air power diplomacy can only get you so far. Real influence is bought on the ground and if anyone can bend Assad it's Iran. But as in Iraq I doubt the Iranians are interested in anything but excluding US influence and advancing their own.
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Real stupidity is assuming either Russia or Iran were remotely agreeable to the western demand for " regime change " to begin with . That they wouldn't regard it as anything other than arrogant , insolent enforcement of their will and dictates . Real stupidity is the belief that western demand had an ounce of validity in the first place . And the rest of the stupidity just flows on from there . Assad " bending " means giving swathes of his country up to foreign backed jihadis and letting western and gulf states dictate who's allowed to stand for election or lead the country. In effect to write the Syrian constitution as they see fit . Telling them all to fuck off was absolutely the right thing to do .

If they got away with it in Syria it'd be Iran and even Russia next . In fact not just next. They've already been trying it on as it is .
 
On TNI Syria: The Case for Interest-Based Diplomacy
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U.S. efforts that have prioritized ideology over core interests have mostly yielded disastrous results. In the early stages of the Syrian revolt, the U.S.insisted that Assad must go, an unacceptable condition to him and his allies. This Pollyannaish stance arose from the “Washington playbook” derided by President Obama, which calls for bold proclamations followed by militarized responses, often with no consideration for national interests at stake. This policy not only encouraged opposition groups to take up arms with a mistaken expectation of direct U.S. assistance, but also led the regime’s allies to escalate their support in challenge to America’s stated goals.

That same year, the U.S.-led coalition went beyond its UN mandate in Libya to prevent a massacre in Benghazi and instead toppled Muammar Gaddafi’s government. This ultimately proved disastrous. Since 2011, the various rebel militias have fought each other for power, rendering Libya a failed state. The aftermath of this seemingly successful operation should stand as a warning about the folly of idealistically expecting to remake the Middle East by helping the “good guys” win internal struggles.
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Think about what incentive structures that created for the rebels.

The patchy risings in Syria had no political imperative to unite to defeat the government. America and its mouthy allies had judged Assad illegitimate and promised the risen victory. Their backers were free to pursue different agendas. The Qataris did so in an almost whimsical way; US officials have described their role as a vanity project. Exactly the same Arab Spring course had even been followed in friendless Libya with the eccentrically awful despot Qaddafi. America had no obvious interest in Libya but had acted anyway more triggered by spin in the NYT and guilt over "acts of genocide" Rwanda than reality. They'd even come after the call to Jihad attracted a Salafi-Jihadi international. And now as the US baulks Assad's fall bringing Somalian chaos or the possibility of a sort of AQ friendly Taliban ruling Damascus the rebels feel betrayed.

Yet in that reality the Obama administration faced real constraints and was essentially bluffing on a weak hand. There was little public support for an R2P intervention in Syria. Any costly endeavour would require a hostile Congress to open the purse which limited the scope of engagement. There could be no great reconstruction project as in Iraq. There could be no substantial US force of boots on the ground. And without that no US ally was willing to commit resources. The US could only smash the infrastructure of the Syrian state with airpower and pray something better would emerge. The President had run on a platform of "not doing stupid shit" promising withdrawal from Iraq and only maintaining a hawkish stance on Afghanistan.

The Assad regime had powerful allies in Iran and Russia. The latter is a great power that holds a UN veto making the legality of intervention problematic. Iran was also an important actor in the new Shia dominated Iraq. The US was compelled by long Israeli demands to impede Iran going nuclear. Assad also had support of a large wedge of the Syrian population especially in the cities. The ugly Baathist regime had a record of ruthlessly crushing substantial revolts and was in fact well prepared to weather another. It did not simply fall to history's inexorable march to a globalised Mall America world.

The US's traditional reasons for action in the ME did not apply. The Israelis were lukewarm and divided over Assad only briefly advocating for his fall. Substantial energy interests were absent in Syria. Only terrorist threats presented a useful motivation and until IS emerged this was a hard sell. In reality that was only workable pitch once the Iraqi led terror group took Mosul and then became a distraction from Assad as the US had invested much blood and treasure in Iraq. The US in fact would only intervene in Syria against IS once deliberately provoked by them when beheadings outraged the US public.

The US then perversely assumed the rebels against their own interests would fight IS on its behalf just because they were bad and scared Americans. The US ended up aligned with the Syrian PKK. A rival revolution to the main revolt threatened by IS and in practice aligned with Assad. A group set on territorial conquest all the way across Arab turf to Afrin. Awkwardly also to the North in Turkey and East well into Iran. And this would run out of steam when the Turks following their clearly stated interests invaded and the PKK's contradictory interests were no longer served.

In a world of clearly stated interests rather than the judgemental whims once permitted by a vanished unipolar world actors are at least somewhat predictable. Frameworks for understanding can be constructed and the often unpredictable use of military force rationed. Behaving much like the irresponsible, short sighted Qataris only with a multi-trillion dollar military may produce more problems than it solves.
 
On BuzzFeed News Air Force Investigating Outage Of Classified Computer System At Key Drone Base
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Creech, in Nevada, is considered the heart of the US’s “targeted killing” program. From there, Air Force pilots operate the armed “remotely piloted aircraft” — drones — via satellite links over Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere, and fire missiles at alleged al-Qaeda or ISIS figures. The Predators and Reapers, known as MQ1’s and MQ9’s, are also used for surveillance and intelligence gathering.

Within weeks of the network crash at Creech, there were a series of airstrikes that went terribly wrong. Those incidents, which resulted in scores of deaths in Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, are still under review and investigation. But “if there are any issues on a SIPR network, it would not disrupt flight operations” of Predator and Reaper drones, said Air Force spokesperson Singleton.

On Sept. 17, just one week after the computer disaster, 62 Syrian soldiers positioned at a base, were accidentally killed by US airstrikes in the middle of a ceasefire. The case is under investigation, a CENTCOM official told BuzzFeed News. There has been no official explanation for the targeting snafu though the US expressed its regrets quickly after the incident.

In Afghanistan, 15 civilians were reportedly killed in a US drone strike on Sept. 28, according to the United Nations. A Pentagon official said the incident is under review.

Also on Sep. 28, in Somalia, 22 Somali soldiers were reportedly killed in US drone strikes. Somali authorities say none of them were al-Qaeda and it was a case of “misdirection.” That incident, a separate Pentagon official told BuzzFeed News, is also being reviewed.

BuzzFeed News learned of the network crash from a contracting notice posted by the US government posted in early October, which says: “On 9 September 2016, the SIPRNet system currently in operation at Creech AFB failed and critical services were impacted. The services were somewhat restored with the use of multiple less powerful devices,” according the notice, and “there is currently no other backup system.”
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Targeters suddenly working with a degraded system. You'd have thought there be a failover system at another campus but it is the Pentagon.
 
On ISW Russia Advances its IADS in Syria
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U.S. officials, including presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, have suggested establishing a no-fly zone in parts of northern Syria. This would mean using U.S. aircraft to patrol Syrian airspace in order to prevent Russian and Syrian planes from carrying out strikes. Russian expansion of its IADS network means that U.S. coalition aircraft risk being shot down while operating within Russia’s A2AD envelope. A shoot-down of a U.S. coalition aircraft would force the U.S. to either drastically escalate in order to answer Russia’s provocation, or to downscale or cease operations in Syria. Russia aims to present the U.S. with these two undesirable options on the assumption that the U.S. would choose to avoid any potential conflict. By establishing this expeditionary IADS in Syria, Russia aims to establish a de facto no-fly zone for US and coalition aircraft over much of Syria.
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An Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), so the US faces a well coordinated, resilient, mobile set of Russian air defences in and off the coast of Syria.

There's all that expensive US stealth technology available but its not actually invisible just sneaky. I assume this IADS can be taken out but it would be more like attacking a 1st world nation. It sounds like it would require lots of sorties.

Russian personnel man all this kit. I expect hundreds would be in harms way. The Russians have not just an IADS but retaliatory capability. You could find their cruise missiles directed at US basing for instance. If anybody wants to stand up in The Commons and make a 45 minute claim about UK basing on Cyprus go right ahead.

The Iranians will have killings and kidnappings of US personnel planned in detail. Their assets will be all over the Iraqi forces serving alongside US troops. That could be open season like back in the day in Beirut. Much of Baghdad's political class are unhappy with the level of US presence already.

Even if this goes well and Putin just folds you are going to have a very angry Russia and Iran looking for payback. If they escalate on the ground in Syria does the NFZ then escalate into a No Drive Zone as it did to save Benghazi. Or say after a small exchange of casualties everybody sensibly backs down rather than pressing an escalatory spiral.

Where might that leave the main US interest? That's US CT campaign against IS that's so reliant on unstealthy ageing airpower and collaboration with Iraqi forces? Lacking an invite or UN permission US actions in Syria are all a technically illegal violation of Syrian sovereignty. US jets and drones striking IS are often within range of Russian SAMs if any are in theatre. The bullheaded Turks weren't risking many airframes in Syrian air space once they shot down that Russian bomber. They mainly relied on artillery unless the US was managing deconfliction. After a year Ankara only just managed to make nice enough with Moscow in order to pursue a far more vital national interest of stopping the PKK's unification of Rojova. Even with the IADS totally destroyed, Syria blockaded to prevent reconstruction you still have the problem of deconfliction with Iran in Iraq which could hamper the US CT campaign there as it did in the past.

This is all pretty unpredictable except in one respect it won't end the Syrian war. Assad is weak but resilient. The rebels fundamental problems are political fragmentation and that in some critical cities much of the population may not love Assad but is hostile to them. This is how they ended up trapped in a small pocket of some sympathy in East Aleppo.

At best a NFZ may reduce the carnage but an awful lot of casualties in this war are not produced by air power. The NFZs in Iraq stopped Saddam killing some Kurds in the North (who did have a minor civil war) but not him filling mass graves with Shia in the South. Idlib is heavily bombed but the Sharia court systems much of it lives under are not exactly our idea of freedom's march. If an NFZ ends up like Pakistan FATA in the Muhj war or our recent turn up there, i.e. as secure rear basing for something like Terry, it may just prolong the killing.

Which will leave a guilt driven US President on a slippery slope to deeper involvement as NFZs always have. In Libya Clinton was basically booted down one by the insistent French already with birds in the air heading to trash armour and then chivied on to regime change only to see it turn into something worse than the Somalian chaos she predicted if the US didn't "do something". A quarter century of US bombing of Iraq has not yielded much but different kinds of trouble. But she is a great one for under learning lessons.
 

Well the news there is the BBC is reporting it.

From what I've read in several papers East Aleppo is somewhere between Khandahar than Kabul. Terry always had support in the former, sometimes called their spiritual birthplace, while it was alien Southern invader in the latter. There does seem to be strong support for the revolt from a large part of the civ pop in East Aleppo. In these situations you have to pick a side and a lot of people will have been compromised. The Salafists came in from outside and got a genuine foothold in the disenfranchised urban poor in some ghettos. A good few would regard democracy as entirely kufr. The likes of Ahar al Sham only flirt with it tactically. Even the MB do tend to aspire to a one party state based on Sharia. It's now key terrain of the revolt attracting lots of fighters from elsewhere. The revolt is however alien to general city of Aleppo which it completely failed to get a grip on as has been the case in nearly all predominantly loyalist areas.

Indeed it's easy to foresee the problems the rebels would have trying to rule Aleppo or Damascus permanently without facing heavy resistance or expelling much of the population. I get the impression Syria's rather sophisticated big urban centres especially would not take to the Taliban like ways of large parts of the revolt. This could prove even less popular than brutal and very corrupt Baath. Indeed that's what underlies much regime support and Assad's resilience: the fear of something even worse.

The Taliban did rule Kabul. They were even initially welcomed after the Muhj warlords but eventually with an iron fist like the Communists. You might compare it to IS in Mosul were they clearly have some support in the Western burbs but rule an unwilling population via increasingly violent state terror. The Taliban never stilled the expelled warlords of the Northern Alliance and even conservative Afghan's actually were quite keen to try democracy after their fall. With a lot of these things there's buyers remorse after a while.
 
On LAT Why thousands of Iraqi fighters have poured into Syria to aid Assad
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“For us, the primary battle is in Syria. If it is not dealt with, then we will pay the price here,” said Aws Khafaji, head of the Iraqi subsidiary of the Abu Fadl Abbas Brigade, a Shiite faction that emerged in Syria in 2012 and whose membership is dominated by Iraqis.

“We already paid the price once and we lost three provinces to Islamic State,” Khafaji said, referring to the extremist group’s audacious blitz campaign in June 2014, when the jihadists crossed the Syrian border, overran wide swaths of Iraq’s northern and western provinces and announced their caliphate from the northern city of Mosul.

The fight in Syria, however, goes beyond a pre-emptive strike on an imminent threat. It has become the main battlefield between Islam’s two major denominations, pitting the Shiite-majority militiamen of the PMUs, who fight alongside pro-Assad troops, against the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
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To which you might say but you are not doing much fighting against IS in Syria. You are fighting mostly Sunni Arab rebels with some Takfiri amongst them. And while IS still hold Mosul your guys are dying for despot who is an unpopular milquetoast version of Saddam and not even a proper Shia.

However consider the second rising in Iraq. Shia Baghdad went from facing a largely defeated diverse Sunni insurgency to having it recur dominated by the genocidal IS and prowling around the Baghdad belts. This didn't happen overnight but the rising against Assad might well look like the first phase of their own Sunni insurgency.
 
On SWJ Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield: An Exemplar of Joint Combined Arms Maneuver

It would be interesting to apply the same sort of analysis to the Iranian interventions in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq that has featured limited use of armour. In Syria its involved line IRGC officers commanding diverse militias with fire support from the SAA and all under Russian CAS. Both have involved limited objectives and a very parsimonious use of the resources available. In both cases Iran has no exit strategy rather you might think of it as a permanent revolutionary subversion strategy of governments that are basically allies.

Of course the model for Euphrates Shield is not new for the TSK. So far it's not unlike their sweeping interventions in Iraq against the PKK except with a thin beard of Beards. These are facilitated by a land border relatively short GLOC. The "It Could End Badly" section at the end is well argued. Turkish objectives do not appear to have been well defined. Retired Turkish Generals have pointed out al Bab could turn out to be a very hot potato.

At least of the FSA eigits that strolled into Dabiq were talking about al Bab being a step towards breaking the siege of Aleppo. That may be what TSK officers are telling them but the whole thing will fall apart if the Russians see it that way and move on their operation. The SAA is about 10km away from al Bab and they might even do that with PKK help.
 
On War On The Rocks THE PERPLEXING PROBLEMS OF SOLVING SYRIA
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As Thanassis Cambanis wrote in this space last week, the devastation in Aleppo has increased the calls for American intervention in Syria. The “failure of the hands-off approach” is abundantly clear, but even as the devastation continues, the policy community remains bereft of ideas to stop it. This is not a failure of leadership or the result of misbegotten retrenchment, but rather the hard realities of devising a plan that simultaneously serves U.S. strategic interests, restores Washington’s moral standing, and relieves Syrian suffering without burdening Americans with another potentially decade-long fight in the Middle East. This is an extraordinarily difficult task made worse but the multilayered nature of the fight in Syria. Lister and others deserve credit for tackling this issue. They believe that there is a solution to the war in Syria. But if there is one, it is not the one Lister has put forward.
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Cook makes the point that to do other than provoke a Russian counter-escalation you probably need to be prepared to use far more force and accept a deeper US involvement in Syria than Lister was suggesting.

Actually you need to be very clear that a shooting war in which we might quickly suffer substantial casualties is just dandy if that's the way they want to play it. You'd need to run at it like a bull and accept the consequences. Clinton is a reckless hawk but not that reckless. I can only see an erratic, thin skinned President Trump taking that gamble after his hero Putin calls the overgrown twelve year old bully out as a pussy.

It's that the US as a polity really doesn't want to commit to Syria in the way Iran has or the US did in Iraq that's the fundamental problem for interventionists in Syria. It always has constrained intervention options even before an obvious risk of getting into a shooting war with Russia. If this war had presented itself before the expensive US disaster in Iraq that might be different but it did not.
 
On TNI Is War in Syria in America's Interest?
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If it is solely for humanitarian purposes, the United States will abstain every day of the week. It is necessary, thus, to determine what America’s interests are in the Syrian civil war, which remain unclear. Obama’s failure is not in that he has refused to intervene, but that, after five years of war, he has yet to clearly articulate what America’s interests are in this war. The egg cannot hatch before it is laid.

Obama is correct, however, in approaching the Syrian war with caution. This is not a war Washington started, nor is it in a country of great strategic value to the United States. At present, the war poses no existential threat to the United States, and has certain benefits from Washington’s perspective. That it has severely weakened Syria, a traditional adversary to American interests in the Middle East, is a positive result for Washington. That it is bleeding Hezbollah and Iran financially and militarily—the Iranians have lost dozens, including high-ranking generals, thus far—is an added bonus. That its enemies are slaughtering each other—Iran, Assad and Hezbollah on the one hand, and Sunni jihadists on the other—is also a welcome scenario in Washington.
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Issa goes on to contemplate the terrorist fallout and basically write that off as pretty negligible. Issa's less sure if an uppity Russia is getting its way requires a slap from the global policeman. It's essentially correct to say no compelling US national interest case has been presented just preferences.

If you put a cynical Israeli hat on the Syrian Civil War can be seen as nothing but a self mowing lawn in which regional enemies degrade each others capabilities. The threats can be framed as being likely to manifest only when it stops. This isn't what Issa is saying but it does occur to me reading the above snip. It's probably a miscalculation as Syria was already a very feeble enemy and the Iranians, IS and AQ have turned the Syrian crisis into something of an opportunity but bad math is common in these things. The militarily powerful Israelis have been by far the least active neighbour intervening mainly to hit HA in their routine manner.

Dangling the hope of a decisive US R2P intervention that will hand the rebels Damascus isn't actually a bad way to keep the blades of war spinning for over half a decade. Pleading for peace but only effectively for maximal terms just short of Assad's abject surrender. Escalating a little when the balance of the bloody stalemate tips Assad's way. Now that might be how the Iranians see the Great Satan's motivation. I think the reality in Washington is more that of being conflicted with the humanitarian impulse running repeatedly into a hard wall of serving national interest as Issa says. I'd add with their being strong desires lurking to poke enemies opportunistically in the eye not always with much thought to the consequences. There's a whole industry of lobbyists paid to promote other nations interests and those often are at odds with any rational calculation of Uncle Sam's.

And then there's Libya and Yemen in which the US appeared to break Issa's rules simply to oblige demanding allies. Two shitty little wars in which US interests were slim. Here needy clients took the lead and essentially promised to own the situation and were given considerable US assistance. Then basically failed to live up to the promise leaving a rather large mess because the tricky bit comes after knocking down the enemy. Even the Turks have baulked at getting deeply into Syria without the US leading the way and owning the consequences which Uncle Sam sees little reward and now great risks in doing.
 
On CMEC Constructively Ambiguous
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Indeed, virtually all of Clinton’s advisers oppose an outright military-led ousting of Assad and many seem to think that the road to peace in Syria runs through Moscow, one way or the other. For example, in an address to the Asia Society last May, Sullivan repeated calls for U.S.-imposed safe zones in Syria, but also stated that there was ultimately “no solution that didn’t involve the U.S. and Russia working together.”
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Lund casts his eye around Team Clinton finds some diversity of opinion. He suspects despite the Wilsonian hawkery any shift in Syria will be incremental and cautious.

The most telling approach I thought was from Tamara Cofman Wittes which emphasised limiting Iranian influence in Syria. Clinton is a very good friend of Israel surrounded by more of the same and that might well be her tack. And after all if the US has a dog in this fight it's not actually in it but warily watching the Golan. Any policy framed in terms of Israeli security can play well with US voters who are instinctively rather hostile to Arabs and can have Congress clapping like Energiser Bunnies. I'd bear in mind the Russians appear to have sold both the Jordanians and Israelis that Moscow's military assistance to Assad will give it the clout necessary to stop Teheran dominating any Syrian peace. I suspect that's largely a crock but it is an attractive fiction when you are trying to avoid direct conflict with a faded superpower.
 
On The Washington Institute How the Russian Military Reestablished Itself in the Middle East
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ENTER THE KUZNETSOV

Putin's decision to dispatch his lone aircraft carrier to the region may seem strategically insignificant at first glance. After all, the Kuznetsov is old, prone to onboard fires, and hardly a match for America's ten operational carriers, which have been well honed by heavy use in nearly every international conflict since World War II.

Yet the deployment matters a great deal, for both symbolic and military reasons. America's use of naval power has proven to the world that an aircraft carrier is the floating embodiment of assured access and military support for national interests. And as the Pentagon's Operation Odyssey Lightning against Islamic State forces in Libya has shown, even a single amphibious assault ship -- which carries fewer aircraft than Russia's carrier -- can create an important military advantage in the region. Once Moscow begins ordering strikes from the Kuznetsov's rusty flight deck, it will take its place alongside the United States, France, and Britain as the world's only projectors of significant power ashore since the end of the Cold War.
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Some naval wonks regard even the mighty US carriers as relics in an age in which submarines rule. Well carriers are as much about imperial display as anything. The French defiantly tow their one about the Med with tugs and that that works well enough.

Calculates Russian forces in Syria compared to what the US can deploy recommending reinforcement even though their obviously great superiority. You might be better thinking about all the Russian kit that's now encircling of Turkey and how DC might need to up its deterrence to deal with that.
 

Well the Russians obviously do regard Grozny as a success story. The Chechen war is practically the basis of Putin's domestic wasta and we showed very little inclination to interfere. It was sold as part of the GWOT but was really just a state doing population management in its Old Skool 20th century way. The main criticism that's made of Chechnya by COIN experts is it displaced radicals to other places not that it was ineffective. The Russians are not appalled by Assad because his methods of dealing with an insurgency are just a very poorly executed version of theirs.

Methods that fail to force a conclusion but maintain a bloody stalemate are barbaric in a different way. Assad Pere's crushing of the last series of Syrian revolts at Hama may have killed 10-40K in a month but it at least ended the slaughter. The Syrian MB was broken and expelled never to recover. His weak son's war drags on killing far more people.
 
333 Squadron RNoAF got some pics of the Kuznetsov.

425842bbafe5222c60132470fbb9e7c1


3 x Helix, 3 x Flanker and 3 x Fulcrum and a fire engine(?) on deck. It'll all be over by Xmas.
 
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