Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

And next, Syria?

On ISW Syrian Opposition Launches Second Operation to Break Aleppo Siege
...
Turkish-backed opposition forces north of Aleppo City may join the operation to break the siege. Turkish-backed group Nour al Din al Zenki announced the formation of the “Victory Bloc” Operations Room under the Turkish-led Operation Euphrates Shield. Zenki’s statement declared the opposition’s intent to “alleviate pressure on Aleppo City” and included vague references to targeting pro-regime forces. There is no indication that Turkey has authorized Zenki or other groups in Operation Euphrates Shield to participate in the operation to break the siege. These Turkish-backed forces would need to advance through Syrian Kurdish YPG-held terrain north of Aleppo City in order to reach a front line with pro-regime forces. Zenki’s statement may indicate that it and other rebel groups north of Aleppo City may nonetheless shell pro-regime held areas, further suppressing pro-regime forces inside the city to enable opposition groups to break the siege.
Ankara keeping it deniable or its rebels going off reservation?
 
ON LWJ IRGC commander killed on eve of Aleppo battle
...
A high-ranking former IRGC commander was killed in Syria on Oct. 26 during an “advisory mission” in Aleppo. according to Iranian media. He was buried in Mashhad, Iran, today along with two Afghan Fatemiyoun Division combatants killed in Syria this past week. The IRGC Qods Force deputy commander Brigadier General Esmail Gha’ani, who delivered remarks at the deceased commander’s funeral, said “the blood of martyrs strengthen the foundation of the Islamic Republic system.”

Qolam-Reza Samai was a retired commander with the rank of Brigadier General or Brigadier General Second Class who had volunteered to fight Syria, and will be buried in his home province of Khorasan. A veteran of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), Samai held several command posts in artillery, intelligence, and operations capacities in several provincial Ground Forces units.

The IRGC has tapped into its retired and active duty Ground Forces, and special forces officer corps to augment the efforts led by the Qods Force in Syria and Iraq. The deployment pattern of Ground Forces commanders depends on the mission need and crisis at hand. For example, there was a surge of commanders in Iraq following the incursion of the Islamic State in mid-2014, and most were called back when the IRGC-backed Shiite militias were able to better manage the situation.

The IRGC Ground Forces have been present in Syria since as early as 2011. Their numbers have increased as the war deteriorated, peaking in Oct. 2015 as Iran deployed significant numbers of its regular forces in coordination with Russia’s military intervention, before spiking again in Feb. 2016 during a major offensive north of Aleppo. More than a dozen senior Guard commanders were killed in Syria during the past year, with the overwhelming majority in Aleppo. Fatalities and causalities of high-ranking officers have continued as the Guard has reduced regular Iranian forces since May and has relied more on Shiite proxies. Contrary to the insistence of the IRGC, commanders are engaged in more than just advising: they design and lead operations for the Iranian-led Shiite expeditionary forces.

The high fatality rate of Iranian commanders is explained by the tactically risk-tolerant and egalitarian culture of the Guard, which values martyrdom in battle as the highest honor and takes pride in fighting on the frontline. Whereas the IRGC is tactically risk-tolerant, it is strategically risk-averse and prefers to limit Iranian exposure, as discussed in depth by Ali Alfoneh and Michael Eisenstadt in The Washington Institute.
...
It's not surprising the IRGC has lost a lot of junior officers and NCOs in Syria. They've been leading platoon and company sized militia units that often are at the tip of the spear in offensives on short two month tours. They are dropped into an unfamiliar unit that often does not speak good Parsi and they are expected to lead from the front. It's a hybrid warfare experiment that's been going on for a while. That's a way to get some command into rag tag militia units and a lot of officers combat trained but a formula for martyrdom.

Losing a dozen very senior officers in what is a small deployment is another matter. Generals and Brigadiers may be out and about but are usually coordinating with lesser ranks electronically. I recall reading the British Army in all of WWII lost around 80 very senior ranked officers. The trenchocrat culture of the IRGC bred in the WWI like atmosphere of the Iran-Iraq war is certainly part of it. Very fluid fronts may also partly explain it. Large SAA and NDF units have a tendency to run away en masse when attacked by determined forces. The diverse forces the regime deploys aren't very cohesive. There's limited trust between all these different kinds of units. Most SAA soldiers are reluctant conscripts anyway. Some regime militias are more like bandits hoping for loot. And the enemy is frightening and often fanatical. A small IS counterattack sent thousands scurrying back to safety during the disastrous Tabqa offensive. In the last AQ led Aleppo rebel offensive only HA really stood their ground. That could make a forward command post rather dangerous.
 
Turkish warplanes to not fly into Syria after threat by regime - MIDEAST

Turkey’s Air Forces have been unable to carry out aerial campaigns in Syria as part of the Euphrates Shield operation since Oct. 22, as Syria has activated its air defense systems over the flight of Turkish warplanes into Syrian airspace.

The Turkish Air Forces launched their last airstrike in Syria on Oct. 22, targeting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) positions. Since then, Turkey has not launched further strikes as Syria’s Russian-made air defense system was activated to cover the region under the Euphrates Shield operation, a Turkish official told the Hürriyet Daily News on condition of anonymity. Coalition forces have also decreased the number of their flights in northern Syria, the official said.

On Oct. 20, the Syrian military warned that it would bring down any Turkish warplanes entering Syrian airspace, in response to airstrikes carried out by Turkey overnight in Maarrat Umm Hawsh in northern Aleppo....
 

...
Bashar Assad’s economic reforms solidified support for the regime among the urban elites and middle class, but at the expense of rural areas. UK-based Syrian journalist Malik al-Abdeh characterized the uprising as a “revolution of the rural Sunni working classes against the Alawi-dominated military elite and the urban bourgeoisie (both Muslim and Christian) that has profited from the Assad dictatorship.”82 It was not religion that triggered their decision to rise up to the regime after years of quiet obedience, but the “demonstration effect” of watching Egyptians, Tunisians, and Libyans overthrow their own governments.

Early in the uprising, observers sympathetic to the opposition argued that “there are few traces of radical Islamism in Syria” and that, should the Assad regime fall, “the chance of Syria turning into an Islamic state is almost nil.”83 But the secular democratic orientation of the uprising steadily eroded as the violence escalated and prospects of a peaceful solution evaporated.84 This was partly because the regime had little trouble suppressing protests in non-Sunni and mixed towns and neighborhoods, where demonstrations were never large enough to give safety in numbers. In Sunni majority areas, in contrast, demonstrations “were 20 to 30 times larger [and] organized under the semi-inviolable protection of mosques.”85 For ordinary Syrians contemplating whether to protest in the streets, ironically, it was much safer to be a Sunni than to be an Alawi.

Moreover, while it may have been the case that a majority of Christians, Druze, and Kurds – perhaps even Alawis – supported demands for political reform and human rights, they were much less willing than devout Sunnis to take greatest personal risks in challenging Assad. Consequently, regime repression further tilted the demographic composition of uprising by weeding out minorities and those of little religious faith.86 As the country rapidly slipped into full-blown civil war in early 2012 and it became a question of whether to stand up and fight the regime, the revolutionaries on the ground were almost exclusively Sunni. Sunnification was followed by Islamization as most emerging rebel groups adopted explicitly Islamic names and iconography.

Some attribute this Islamic awakening to the fact that donations from the Arab Gulf states and private Arab donors outpaced assistance from the West. According to such “resource mobilization” explanations,87 the influx of cash from Salafi donors not only strengthened jihadist forces vis-à-vis the FSA, but also led relatively secular groups within the FSA to adopt Salafi dress and customs.88 Many rank and file fighters of Salafi-jihadist militias are devout Sunnis with no firm extremist convictions. “Size, money, and momentum are the things to look for in Syrian insurgent politics—ideology comes fourth, if even that,” notes Lund.
...
Useful bit of background.

This snip is rather revealing. The Syrian risings really weren't heavily Islamist at the beginning. Poorer parts of the minority populations had very similar complaints about Bashar's excluding neoliberal reforms and the suffocating oppression of the Baathist state he was expected to slacken. That state stomped on unrest in the big cities easily controlling minority dissent. It's the minorities and mercantile Sunni elites in Syria that had been the previous agents of post-colonial change. The peripheral Sunni masses were harder to suppress. But most of the organised opposition was Islamist and Salafists of various kinds would become prominent in the armed revolt. The savage Iraqi civil war had triggered a regional embrace of a new Sunni victimhood. The revolt facing brutal state repression rapidly started to become sectarian in character. Foreign meddlers picked favoured flavours of Beard as winners as they had in Afghanistan. GCC funds poured in via Kuwait. The SNC backed by the US and Turkey was grey men in suits but heavily MB influenced. The Saudis backed ultra-conservative Salafi hoping to crowd out levelling Salafi-Jihadis. Even some secular FSA outfits adopted the Salafist mode in search of funding and a fighting identity. This made much of the rebellion as it evolved increasingly unacceptable to the minorities and many Sunni in the big urban centres. As it polarised the revolt was actually losing all chance of solid popular support across the country despite the ugly regime it opposed. In fact even the Islamist parts fractured into different ideological currents with the militants increasingly dominant. Which leaves the Syrian people trapped between a rotten regime and risings that went off the rails in 2012 all propped up by foreigners focused mostly on ruthless games of state.

This is often the way with revolts they don't end up as the people who started them expected.
 
In The Intercept THE U.S. AND RUSSIA ENSURE A BALANCE OF TERROR IN SYRIA
...
Despite the failure of revolution everywhere but Tunisia, outside powers seized with alacrity on Syrian dissent to bring down a regime whose cardinal sin was its affiliation with Shiite Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. While Syrian protestors sought relief from a security system that inhibited their basic rights, the outsiders who rallied to them, notably Saudi Arabia and Qatar, hardly stood as models of freedom and elected government. Syrian activists at first demanded reforms within the system and later a change of leadership without destroying, as the U.S. had done in Iraq, the state itself. The sheikhs of Riyadh and Doha, however, wanted to replace Bashar al-Assad with someone from the majority Sunni community who would enforce a style of dictatorship closer to their own Wahhabi beliefs and hostile to Iran.
...
Review of The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East.

Not a mention of the heart of US ME policy interests Israel. I would not have predicted Israel would take so little interest in Syria but they've been a rather rational actor in this so far. The American policy community has a habit of imperiously knowing what is good for Israelis while wildly misreading the dangerous region they live in and this new Levantine nation. While Obama saw the inevitability of freedom's march triumphing the Israelis were always deeply cynical about the Arab Spring. Wary of what it might bring as they know the Jewish state is less popular with the Arab Street than easily bribed dictators. It took about a year for Bibi to tilt against Assad and then half heartedly. That was mainly provoked by the long passive aggressive Assad failing to police the Golan. They've since gone very cold on regime change. Friends of Israel in the Obama administration were well ahead of Tel Aviv in calling for regime change in Arab Spring Syria. They've not been much moved by the pragmatic Israelis backing away from the mess once Russia intruded. Ironically the neocons of the Bush team had some difficulty selling the Iraqi adventure to Israelis as likely to benefit them. Bibi was onside but the Israelis security establishment tended to see Sunni Baghdad's fall as likely to benefit Iran. Few thought the path to peace in Jerusalem ran through Baghdad as Mr Blair once said. In Syria their old enemy Russia seems to have sold its intervention to both Israel and Jordan successfully as an aid to containing Iran's obviously growing influence in Syria. Israel's main worry in Syria is still the HA-Iran axis but they have no desire to face a perhaps newly belligerent Damascus under Salafi rebels or in thrall to equally antisemitic Khomeinists. The Israeli vision on how Arab population control is best achieved are actually closer to Moscow's cowed into submission Grozny than Washington's dreamy kumbaya Baghdad: a great deal of stick and very little carrot.
 
In Military Times In Syria, the U.S. may need more troops to manage shaky alliance
...
Yet Anthony Cordesman, a defense exerts with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Raqqa operation's success will ultimately depend on whether the U.S. and its allies can muster enough combat power on the ground.

“If we do not have a decisive ground component, it is not enough to deal with a problem like Raqqa,” Cordesman told Military Times recently.

He suggested that the U.S. military could quietly surge hundreds of additional U.S. special operations troops into Syria without a public announcement by categorizing them as “temporary duty” personnel, a status officially known as “TDY.”

“TDY," Cordesman said, "is the magic acronym.”

The size of the American force may also have an important psychological impact on the fight for Raqqa's city center, said Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat who now lives in Washington and advocates for Syrian rebels groups.

“The more Americans are involved, the more it will send a message that this is a serious fight," he said. "If people in Raqqa see that the American are coming, you are encouraging them to make revolution against [ISIS] inside the city."
I'm guessing there's about three times the number of US personnel on the ground as the Pentagon's admitting to even before they surge in more.
 
Why would Israel do anything all its enemy's are killing each other and it's borders are secure
Well you could say the same about the USA safe between two shining seas with a large part of the population eager to build a wall.
 
According to this videos commentary the Palestinian Liwa Al Quds, which has scored some notable successes in Allepo in recent times has gained some additional popularity among non typically Palestinian recruits . Even some Kurds . Some pretty intense scenes here on the front lines ( no gore etc ) . Woefully under equipped though . Just one old rusting tank that has to be seen to believed . And firing grads vertically into buildings , one a time as improvised artillery . Seem utterly fearless as well in some of these scenes as they advance .

 
And here the beards launch yet another Allepo offensive this weekend . Suicide bombers and the usual indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas nobody could give a toss about . Residential districts and markets . Not a word about that it he western msm or among the dedicated hand wringers on here .
unsurprisingly .
But this footage clearly captures it .

 
On LWJ Jihadists and other rebels launch new offensive in Aleppo
...
Wealthy businessmen from throughout the region have contributed significant funds to the campaign, according Dr. Abdullah Mohammed al Muhaysini, a pro-al Qaeda cleric who is the most senior ideologue in Jaysh al Fath. In a video released on one of his official Twitter feeds, Muhaysini mentioned businessmen in Syria, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia who had donated to the jihadis’ cause. At the end of the same video, Muhaysini oversaw the launching of 100 “Elephant Rockets,” which he says Jaysh al Fath’s wealthy benefactors made possible.

During the first hours of the battle, a Dutch member of JFS known as Abu Saeed al Halabi tweeted: “JFS and other factions prepared this assault in great detail and synchronized their forces in an unprecedented manner.” He added: “JFS played an instrumental role in preparing this offensive and will commit most of its resources and inghimasi fighters.” Inghimasi fighters are jihadists who are willing to die in battle. These well-trained guerrilla fighters have stormed several positions during the battle in Aleppo.
...
AQ Syria (JFS) taking every opportunity to big themselves up again. Muhaysini is basically putting a little thanks out to their GCC sponsors.

LWJ give a rundown of the structure of the rebel forces involved in The Battle of the Hero Martyr Abu Omar Saraqib. Amateurs, that operational title is a bit long for PowerPoint.
 
In Time Dozens Dead as Syrian Rebels Keep Up Their Offensive on Western Aleppo
...
The attacks raised the death toll in the three-day old offensive to at least 41 civilians, including 16 children, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group that has a network of activists in rebel and government controlled areas in Syria. The Observatory said hundreds of mortars were lobbed.

United Nations Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said he was “appalled and shocked by the high number of rockets indiscriminately launched” on civilian suburbs of government-held Aleppo.

“Those who argue that this is meant to relieve the siege of eastern Aleppo should be reminded that nothing justifies the use of disproportionate and indiscriminate weapons, including heavy ones, on civilian areas and it could amount to war crimes,” De Mistura said.
...
I find it hard to see how you'd expect the rebels to break the siege without killing civilians. They have to fight through the hostile territory of regime supporting West Aleppo. There's over a million people in the way.

I suspect that's a lot of newly supplied Grads etc levelling the killing field. That sort of unguided rocket artillery is notoriously inaccurate but when concentrated will soften up areas held by loyalist fighters; that's what it is for. The rebels have a long record of retaliatory bombardment of civ pop in any case. They just lack the R+6's pounding air power and tube artillery. The only precision ordnance they have is suicide bombers.
 

Well that seems to match other reports.

Looking at the detailed map a very thick layer of Afrin PKK/Regime held territory is developing between the TSK backed rebels and besieged East Aleppo. Any attack on al Bab by the rebels or PKK risks being flanked by the other. The East Rojova PKK isn't that far away either and the SAA is sniffing at al Bab from the South.

IS is well dug in al Bab apparently and has local support. I suspect this is likely to be a stalemate unless IS pullout to reinforce elsewhere. I doubt they will. It looks like this PKK-Turkish standoff is buying time for Raqqa at a low cost.
 

And Baghdad OK'd the Iraqi Hashd going to Tal Afar blocking the easy exit the Pentagon was leaving for IS to the West of Mosul.

There were conflicting stories of IS reinforcing Mosul via this route or fleeing. They may have been doing both with combat forces moving in and management out. There was also a large unexpected flow of refugees headed to Syria to PKK camps unprepared to deal with them. The Hashd being in the way may stem that as it's probably fear of the rough but known KDP Pesh that made folk run that way.

Some were not best pleased.

IRGC backed Hashd groups have been telegraphing they were going to go to Tal Afar for months of course. At least one group withdrew its beards from Aleppo specially. Erdogan has rather enabled it by dissing Abadi over Mosul and affronting most Arab Iraqis of every sect in the process.
 
Little development next door that the US has been trying to head off.

Meanwhile in the Arab Occupied parts of Washington DC fuses are blowing but it's the way Lebanon was trending.


Gives a more reasoned assessment.
 
On TSG The Enormous Challenge of Nation-Building
...
The undeniable failures in building sustainable infrastructure and governance in Afghanistan and Iraq—despite the allocation of massive resources—should temper assessments regarding the eventual rebuilding of Syria. The fighting in Syria has shown no signs of slowing, and any diminution in the level of fighting substantial enough to allow reconstruction projects to begin is unlikely to be deep enough to allow such projects to be completed. Afghanistan and Iraq serve as poignant examples of the futility of trying to reconstruct countries still experiencing destruction and war.

International reconstruction efforts consistently stress the empowerment of local actors, yet depend on regional and foreign partnerships for funding and implementation. Reconstruction plans formulated in the West do not always reflect the realities on the ground in remote villages in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Afghanistan should serve as a cautionary tale as international stakeholders begin plans for the eventual reconstruction of Syria. It is unlikely Syrian reconstruction efforts will receive the same level of funding Afghanistan and Iraq did from the outset, and geopolitical complications in Syria dwarf those seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the current focus in Syria is to bring a halt to the fighting, the enormous difficulty of what happens next cannot be overstated.
This is the part that doesn't get much talked about in Syria. There very little apparent will to do it. Interventionists mostly focus on an inshallah operation to degrade the regime. These days rhetorically mostly to get Assad to talk terms rather than outright topple hime. That once glittering prize has lost its sheen in Obama's DC.

The affront of Assad likely hanging on means Damascus is likely to be viewed unsympathetically by most rich nations. Europeans might in time see it in their interest to make Syria's cities habitable again as they often fear Syrian refugees. The Turks are essentially pragmatic and might seek to develop their back yard.
 

Afrin PKK pushing Westward a couple of more kms. The 15km line from al Bab is obviously a bit shorter than the other one.
 
In TDS All sides may be committing war crimes in Aleppo, UN says
...
The U.N. estimates 250,000-275,000 civilians are trapped and 8,000 rebel fighters holed up in the eastern part.

"All parties in Aleppo are conducting hostilities that are resulting in large numbers of civilian casualties and creating an atmosphere of terror for those who continue to live in the city," Shamdasani said.

Over the weekend, the U.N. documented the deaths of more than 30 civilians, including 10 children, as well as dozens of injuries, resulting from strikes by mortars, rockets and other improvised explosive devices on western Aleppo, she said.

"The reported use of ground based missiles, along with the use of armed vehicles loaded with explosives, used in an area containing more than 1 million civilian inhabitants, is completely unacceptable and may constitute a war crime," Shamdasani said.

The high number of civilian casualties suggested the rebels were ignoring the "fundamental prohibition" on indiscriminate attacks and the principles of precaution and proportionality, she added.

The U.N. did not have detailed enough information to attribute the attacks to specific groups, she said.
...
Huge vehicle bombs and showers of Grads on one side bunker busters and barrel bombs on the other. Well the UN HQ in regime held West Aleppo did get hit by a tank shell which might cause a fit of objectivity. That must remind them of working in proximity to the IDF.
 
On Oryx Blog Hide and Seek, the story of Jaish al-Islam's 9K33 Osa SAMs
...
Altogether, opposition fighters in Eastern Ghouta had captured at least five 9K33 Osas and two 9T217BMs. Of these vehicles, only three 9K33 Osas would prove to be of any use for Jaish al-Islam. As it remains unclear if the transfer of the 9K33 Osa battery to their new location included the transfer of reloads, and if the six missiles of 9K33 Osa '275198' were also encountered, the amount of 9M33 missiles captured by opposition fighters remains a topic of debate, and ranges from eighteen to forty-eight.

At least six of these missiles are confirmed to have been launched at SyAAF helicopters flying over Eastern Ghouta, resulting in the destruction of one Mi-17 and one Mi-8/17, and the damaging of another Mi-8/17, and a Mi-25. While additional launches and shootdowns are sometimes reported (and are indeed likely to concern this system), these events cannot be independently confirmed.

While allowing rebels to capture such sophisticated weaponry was a critical blunder, the complete absence of any efforts to track and destroy these systems shortly after their capture serves as a painful reminder of the incompetence of the regime's military apparatus. When looking at the capture of dozens of weapon depots since, one can only come to the conclusion that little to no lessons have been learned from these repeated failures.
...
The long story of JaI's ground mobile SAM systems.

A lot of Ortx Blog's content is about vast amounts of SAA kit captured by other parties when they ran away.
 
On Syria Direct March on Douma: Regime captures strategic high ground after 50-day ‘scorched-earth campaign’
...
Pro-regime media outlet Damascus Countryside Now highlighted the government’s artillery targeting of “terrorist positions” across Douma and East Ghouta on Monday while praising the Syrian Arab Army’s “tightening stranglehold” on East Ghouta following their capture of Tal Kurdi and Tal Sawan.

“The end of the East Ghouta armed militias is fast approaching,” the outlet announced on their Facebook page yesterday. “They may be trying to hold out, but it’s too late for East Ghouta; their defeat is imminent.”

East Ghouta’s rival Islamist faction Failaq a-Rahman made no mention of the rebel withdrawal. Regime and allied forces have been largely successful at seizing control over portions of East Ghouta by exploiting deep—and at times violent—divisions between the area’s leading rebel groups.

Hundreds of East Ghouta residents protested in late October against deep divisions and a lack of coordination between East Ghouta’s two predominant rebel groups—Failaq a-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam—following months of assassination attempts and arrests, Syria Direct reported.

“Fear is endemic in East Ghouta today,” resident Ayman Abu Anas told Syria Direct on Tuesday. “Residents have witnessed the regime’s scorched-earth tactics, and people worry that their towns will be the next ones to come face to face with the regime’s hellfire.

“If the rebel factions don’t come together, towns will crumble one by one, and East Ghouta will fall.”
The revolt in a nutshell.
 

So we have 37% of Americans for getting rid of Assad, a signifiant rise. 35% supporting the status quo of fighting IS and Assad must go. But it's clear IS is what the US public is focused on. The group of scary brown beardy men you've seen on YouTube ranks as the US public's No 1 concern dwarfing even immigration. I'd conclude an Assad first policy is a dog that don't hunt for US voters.

60% of Septics would also rather join forces with Russia to fight IS in Syria, 36% against that. Given traditionally cold US views on the Russkis that's a change.

That more than half of Republicans hate Barack and Hillary more than they do the leaders of Russia and N.Korea isn't surprising. Assad came sixth on a list of hate figures.

Historically support levels in the 70s are a solid basis for sustained US war fighting.
 
Back
Top Bottom