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And next, Syria?


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Unofficial estimates discussed by journalists and activists close to the regime indicate that in Lattakia province alone there are about 800,000 people displaced from Aleppo, with tens of thousands in Tartous — exceeding a million people in both provinces.

These displaced people are divided into three classes. The first is the class of investors, factory owners and capital owners who have resumed their work on the coast including in small and medium sized projects. The second class includes regular people who have moved to live and work there, while there are displaced people who have mostly concentrated in the Lattakia Sports City Stadium and the camps set up for them in Tartous.

Large and medium-sized factories have moved from Aleppo to Lattakia in two ways: First through direct theft by regime loyalist militants, in accordance with what has become known as “tafeesh” (looting), as militias have broken up a number of factories and transported them to Lattakia. Aleppan industrialists, with help from the regime, have also moved their factories voluntarily to the Syrian coast.
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Add onto that rebels carting plant off for sale in Turkey.

Folk worried the Russian's, Iranians and "regime militants" will take over a lot of the property in Aleppo. I've read elsewhere the always on the make "revolutionary" Iranians have been buying up a lot of real estate in Damascus.

Chap at the end of the article insisting he's not a regime loyalist just an economic migrant to Latakia who didn't fancy being mortared in West Aleppo by the rebels or bombed in East by the regime; probably a common story. Also complaining of being ripped off by opportunistic Latakians. There are so many ways to get robbed in Syria.
 

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Nearly 50 Turkish soldiers have been killed in its Syria operation, most of them since the al-Bab assault began in mid-November — including 14 killed in a single day. The militants have dug in, surrounding the town with trenches, lining streets with land mines and carrying out painful ambushes and car bombings against the besieging forces. Each time Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters have thrust into the city, they've been driven out. More than 200 civilians are believed to have been killed since the attack began Nov. 13. Mud and cold rain have only made it more of a slog.

"The battle for al-Bab has been mostly about killing civilians and destroying the city, whether by Daesh or the Turks," said Mustafa Sultan, a resident of al-Bab and a media activist who has been covering the fight. He used the Arabic acronym for IS.

"The town is almost half destroyed. Daesh takes cover in hospitals, schools and these end up getting targeted," he said. The Turkish military says it takes great care not to harm civilians, halting operations that could endanger non-combatants.

Capturing al-Bab is essential to Ankara's goals in Syria.
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Both IS and the TSK seem to be killing a lot of civilians. The Turks are not noted for their gentleness in these things. According to this "the primary ground force" the rebels have withdrawn and its Turkish commandos doing the fighting. TSK deployment at 4K I've seen 8K estimated elsewhere now heavily outnumbering the 2-3K of rebels. This really is looking like a fast sucking quagmire of Erdogan's making.

It also suggests there are 3,000 defenders of al Bab. This would make it an IS defensive operation not much smaller than Mosul. I've read elsewhere IS has just a few hundred guys in al Bab which is more plausible as this little orbital Aleppo city is certainly not comparable in value to the Caliphates commercial capital. However IS are skilled at making their forces look bigger than they are and it seems to be an area of traditionally high Salafi-Jihadi support so it's hardly impossible some locals joined in. It's also possible they've been reinforced as the TSK has failed to surround the city.
 

That CENTCOM is posting up SDF denials that it has links to the PKK doesn't really add to their credibility. This is nearly as good a porky as CENTCOM insisting IS started off in Syria rather than having its roots in post-Saddam Iraq as they were doing last year.
 
CrabbedOne said:

That CENTCOM is posting up SDF denials that it has links to the PKK doesn't really add to their credibility. This is nearly as good a porky as CENTCOM insisting IS started off in Syria rather than having its roots in post-Saddam Iraq as they were doing last year.
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"Not part of" - carefully worded...
 
On Jamestown In Brief: A Snapshot of Two Rebel Commanders Vying for Survival in Damascus Governorate
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Ali al-Omar and Issam Khalid al-Buwaydhani are two of the most powerful, non-JFS, non-Islamic State, militant Islamist leaders remaining in the Syrian civil war. HASI and JAI engage actively in the international diplomatic process to end the Syrian civil war, and both organizations are viewed, for the time being, by many state supporters of the Syrian opposition as a better alternative to JFS and the Islamic State to represent the Sunni fundamentalist current within the Syrian revolutionary movement (Radio Al-Kul, July 9, 2016; U.S. Department of State, June 28, 2016; Saudi Arabia Ministry of Foreign Affairs, December 31, 2015). Both al-Omar and al-Buwaydhani were elected by their respective large and complicated organizations to maintain organizational unity and cohesion of command, which will be the most demanding challenge that they will face over the next year. Ali al-Omar, in particular, may face the outright division of his organization, a split that would be caused by some constituent groups deciding to join JFS. This would be one of the most important, and gravest, crises within the Syrian armed opposition movement to date.
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HASI- Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, often shortened to Ahar.

Ahar al Sham is twinned with the Taliban here. It's was a notable part of the recent agreement with Turkey that Russia acknowledged Ahar al Sham as an actor it could work with rather than bracketing them with AQ. The Americans often regard them with much more suspicion as they clearly have close links to AQ. Jaish al Islam is more acceptable to the US but this may have more to do with GCC backing than ideology. Both groups are regionally focused like the Taliban but pretty radical. Both have been large rather successful revolutionary entities in an unimpressive revolt.

Douma where Al-Buwaydhani comes from is a nerve centre of radical Salafism and KSA influence in Syria at one time cultivated by the regime. Baathist Iraq also flirted with Salafism as a means of diffusing it as a threat.
 


The fate of smaller, less well organised and radical rebel groups than Ahar and JaI.

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When referring to Aleppo, the Free Syrian Army is often put in the same category as that of Al Qaeda without mentioning that they were the first force that fought Al Qaeda and IS back in 2013 in eastern Aleppo. Most of today's so-called experts are blind to this fundamental historical point.

In late 2013, over 30 activists and rebels were killed in IS jails in Aleppo. A whole group of medics, documented by name, were excuted by Islamic State fighters before Syrian rebels seized their military bases. Human rights organisations covered this, but only a fraction of mainstream media outlets paid any notice.

The rebels later continued to Idlib, forcing IS to withdraw to Raqqa, Bab and Manbij. IS also lost their territory in Aleppo and the outskirts of Lattakia; causing Raqqa to become the 'capital' of their caliphate. It's very important to remember that the first battle against IS took place in eastern Aleppo, and that the first victory against IS by the rebels took place there.

However, for some reason, the mainstream media gives a disproportionate amount of coverage to the PKK-affiliated YPG and Kobane when describing early battles against IS.

The Free Syrian Army and the activists who were detained and killed are, once again, out of the equation.
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That might be because the MSM can operate in Rojava relatively free of fear of kidnap and being sold on to Takfiri.

The Syrian PKK might point out when the FSA(SRF) drove IS back to Raqqa it did so in close alliance with AQ and some FSA groups were not adverse to allying with IS at times. It was such an alliance with AQ that lost Raqqa to IS in the first place. Some of these rebels would end up in the SDF fighting alongside their old Kurdish enemies who are prone to call all hostile Arab rebels Daesh.

It would be a mistake to see these as happy choices made by the rebels. It's more akin to the specy kids siding with the school bully for protection. Very uncomfortable alliances are common in Syria.
 
On ISW The Campaign for ar-Raqqah: January 12, 2017
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The nascent U.S. anti-ISIS strategy for ar-Raqqah City remains susceptible to potential spoilers seeking to disrupt the U.S.’s alliance with the majority-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and NATO member state Turkey. Turkey and the SDF will continue to position themselves to shape the formation of U.S. anti-ISIS strategy in and the future of northern Syria through kinetic and political means. The U.S. must therefore consider slowing the SDF advance on ar-Raqqah or risk bringing about an Arab-Kurd war on the sidelines of Operation Euphrates Wrath. The battle for ar-Raqqah presents opportunities beyond the anti-ISIS fight, although victory in ar-Raqqah and the establishment of stable governance outside the influence of Salafi-jihadist groups will be measured in years, not months. The U.S. must not sacrifice long term stability for a quick victory against ISIS in ar-Raqqah City.
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Meanwhile Sec-Def in waiting Mattis talks of accelerating the push for Raqqa. I doubt his boss would see much value in strategic patience.
 

Lister's uncomfortable response to this is a very plausible one. Zenki has changed in a way he didn't predict.

He perhaps should be clearer on these things being a huge gamble on unreliable actors. It would be essentially dishonest to claim the trajectory of the Syrian revolt has been towards moderation rather the reverse. That's despite a great deal of external support which probably hasn't helped the political cohesion of the revolt which is its basic failure.

Moderation of differing kinds in the Syrian revolt was perhaps more of a foreign sponsored vice than a virtue. It was a poor lifestyle choice for a rebel warlord when faced with powerful radical Salafi groups and a rather eccentric one given the brutal Baathist response to a well armed revolt. It'll probably be a profitable theatre for Takfiri regardless of what we do. What can be predicted is keeping the war going, as Landis accurately says we have been doing, will get even more Syrians killed.
 

I think Trump will want Raqqa taken before the Mid-Terms in two years. Probably only going with the existing arrangements can do that. Erdogan has already bitten off more than the TSK backed rebels can chew with al Bab but he's still in a position to bugger that up. The great deal maker really needs to do what Obama failed to and reconcile the PKK and Ankara.
 
On SWJ The Other Side of the COIN: The Russians in Chechnya
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Yet in spite of this, Western scholars have seemed reluctant to engage with Chechnya as a COIN success. Such hesitancy may be partly due to the extreme unpalatability of Russian tactics, as well as a sense of consternation and bewilderment at their efficacy. Russian counterinsurgency methods in Chechnya read like a checklist of ‘Bad COIN Practices’, as defined by the RAND Corporation’s ‘Counterinsurgency Scorecard’. The Russians used ‘both collective punishment and escalating repression, there was corrupt and arbitrary personalistic government rule’ (RAND 2016, p. 3) and much of the local population was swiftly alienated. These methods stand diametrically opposed to the Western fixation on ‘hearts and minds’, as framed by the 2014 US Military Counterinsurgency Manuel (FM 3-24, chapter 7.8). Numerous Western theorists have underlined the foundational importance of winning and retaining the goodwill of the indigenous population (Thompson 1966, Kitson 1971, Nagl 2005, Kilcullen 2009). David Galula presciently foreshadowed much of this theory when he stated that ‘The soldier must then be prepared to become a propagandist, a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a boy scout’(Crandall 2014, p. 187).

In defiance of such a position, several Western theorists have outlined a more coercive approach to counterinsurgency. In their seminal study ‘Rebellion and Authority’ (1970) Leites and Wolf outlined their ‘systems approach’ which modelled counterinsurgency as a competing system of inputs and outputs which dictate the success or failure of rebellion. According to this framework, coercive force is a valuable tool because ‘the contest between R [Rebellion] and A [Authority] is often as much a contest in the effective management of coercion as a contest for the hearts and minds of the people’ (Leites and Wolf 1970, p. 155). This approach came to be known as the ‘cost/benefit’ theory which framed the population as ‘rational actors’ whose cooperation could be won by a combination of coercion and reward, or ‘carrots and sticks’ (Long 2006, p. 25). Following in a similar vein Stathis Kalyvas in ‘The Logic of Violence in Civil War’ argues that ‘Irrespective of their sympathies (and everything else being equal), most people prefer to collaborate with the political actor that best guarantees their survival’ (2006, p. 12). These theoretical paradigms suggest that the authoritarian model of counterinsurgency can prove highly effective if the population is convinced that their best chance of survival lies in complying with the counterinsurgent.

One of the best illustrations of the ‘authoritarian model’ is provided by Russian experience in Chechnya and several other conflicts. Russian counterinsurgency practitioners have consistently flouted Western counterinsurgency best practices while continuing to enjoy considerable success in quashing insurgencies. Yuri Zhukov notes that Russia has successfully defeated 18 out of 21 insurgencies fought since the start of the 20th century, the vast majority of which occurred within the territory of Russia (Zhukov 2010, p. 12). Chechnya seems to be no exception to this trend and in spite of the brutality of the Russian campaigns, the republic is now firmly under federal control. Whatever the failings of Putin’s Chechnya policy, it is clear that the insurgency of the 1990s has been decisively defeated and that the secession of Chechnya is highly unlikely in the near term.
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Rather relevant to Syria.

Looking at Afghanistan, Iraq and the GWOT in general there is a fair bit of evidence that Western Counter Insurgency practices really don't work in any sustainable way. Syria provides a test for a far older school of COIN based on bluntly terrorising the population. It will be a tough one.

The section on "Geography" points out Chechnya is bumpy, favouring insurgents in the same way as NW Yemen or Afghanistan, but also goes into the overwhelming force ratios the Kremlin used to crush Chechen insurgents after a long war, almost 50:1. Not a luxury available in Syria.

The author seems to think Chechen terrorists have not been active outside Russia. This rather ignores IS's "Chechens"; a term applied in Syria to all Russian speaking Muslims. To some extent an FSB export and the group's most effective shock troops in Iraq and Syria. There's also evidence that these emigrants brought tactical lessons learned in Chechnya that were adapted by the very eclectic IS. AQ Syria also benefitted.

One key aspect mentioned was the policy of ‘indigenization’ converting the conflict into a civil war between increasingly radical Muslim Chechens. The "Kadyrovtsy" brutal Spetznaz trained units manned by Chechens under their Russian strongman leader Kadyrov. The article points out this is now a 30K strong rather Jihad friendly force and Putin's puppet may not in the end prove so reliable a vassal. Which does beg the question: who actually won here? The role of Revolutionary Iran in Syria is perhaps a similar fly in the ointment.

It ends appropriately:
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Indeed, given the republic’s past history, the current uneasy compromise seems untenable in the long term. The fall in gas prices will squeeze the generous government subsidies that Moscow hands over to Grozny, while Kadyrov is increasingly viewed with distrust by Russia’s security establishment or ‘siloviki’. The Russians have succeeded in putting down every Chechen rebellion since the region was annexed in the 18th Century. Yet they have never succeeded in stopping the insurrections in the first place and today’s shaky settlement looks fragile at best. As the Chechen prover goes, ‘Ши мостагl цхьана тхов кlел ца тарло’ – ‘Two enemies cannot live under the same roof.’
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Labib al-Nahas, the chief of foreign relations for Ahrar al-Sham, who led negotiations in Istanbul, said Tehran was seeking to create areas it could control. “Iran was very ready to make a full swap between the north and south. They wanted a geographical continuation into Lebanon. Full sectarian segregation is at the heart of the Iranian project in Syria. They are looking for geographical zones that they can fully dominate and influence. This will have repercussions on the entire region.

“[The sieges of] Madaya and Zabadani became the key issue to prevent the opposition from retaking Fua and Kefraya, which have exclusive populations of Shia. Hezbollah consider this a security zone and a natural extension of their territory in Lebanon. They have had very direct orders from the spiritual leadership of Iran to protect them at any cost.”

Iran has been especially active around all four towns through its Hezbollah proxies. Along the ridgelines between Lebanon’s Bekaa valley and into the outskirts of Damascus, Hezbollah has been a dominant presence, laying siege to Madaya and Zabadani and reinforcing the Syrian capital. Wadi Barada to the north-west, where ongoing fighting is in breach of the Russian-brokered ceasefire, is also part of the calculations, sources within the Lebanon-based movement have confirmed.
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Actually an orderly population swap between the four villages doesn't sound like a bad idea.

According to Balanche who studies the demographics minorities have generally fled rebel held areas. The regime has also displaced pockets of resistance to it which have been pretty uniformly Sunni. The war is more complex than a simple clash of sects but this sectarian sorting out has been happening for years; it's unfortunately typical of Civil Wars.

But there's a distinct whiff of sectarian paranoia about there being an Persian plan to drive all the Sunnis away from the delivery end of its GLOC to HA. Not least because Lebanon and the route from Anbar is also full of millions of Sunni Arabs only a fraction of whom are liable to give the IRGC and HA trouble. A fair few Syrian Sunni are rather more hostile to the Taliban admirers of Ahar. Unless, that is, the Iranians tried to do something as strategically nonsensical as this.
 

As JaN split away from it's parent Iraqi IS organisation this is an easy mistake to make.
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The truth is that jihadi groups had a head-start in organisational skills. They had experience in spreading propaganda and creating a support-base for themselves. They were also extremely efficient when it came to the allocation of resources. They were rarely short of money in a conflict where money mattered – and because of that, they had an advantage. The FSA, on the other hand, was consistently cash-strapped and had to spend much of its time and resources seeking funds. All this weighed heavily on its ability to form the grassroots movement needed to support them.

Jihadist groups, regardless of their different affiliations, were very good at collaborating, setting aside their differences and working together, while the FSA quickly became a proxy army for different nations and that impaired its ability to function as one. People noticed that and this cost them much support as it made the jihadi groups appear more powerful and more capable of getting the job done.
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A huge amount of resources was directed to support FSA flagged groups. But it was often a stop start affair with donors changing their minds. The Qatari approach to funding has been described as a "vanity project". The Saudis pulled funding at crucial moments getting very leery of Islamists at some points. The CIA outsourced vetting to the Turks and often went cold on groups. GCC donors who had long supported the Taliban often favoured similarly radical Salafists. But I think the root cause is more political: like the PKK the radical Salafists had a well worked out revolutionary agenda.

Blames the rise of Syrian AQ on Assad's brutality. Well that certainly can't have endeared the regime to Idlibis. But then many places had a prior history of hostility to the Baath and the Salafist base in parts of Idlib precedes the revolt. In a largely Baathist first rising against Shia Baghdad many Iraqis also finally gravitated towards Salafi-Jihadism as a fighting ideology.
 
On ISW Russian Airstrikes in Syria: December 6, 2016 – January 11, 2017
...Russia will likely exploit the exclusion of JFS from the ceasefire in order to continue its targeting of acceptable opposition forces that cooperate and collocate with JFS out of military necessity. Russia also conducted airstrikes against ISIS-held terrain in the vicinity of Palmyra in eastern Homs Province from December 20 – January 11 in order to defend the nearby T4 (Tiyas) Airbase, its main base of operations in central Syria. The primary target of the Russian air campaign during this period remained the acceptable opposition, however, demonstrating that the U.S. cannot rely upon Russia to invest heavily in anti-ISIS operations even when the jihadist group threatens core pro-regime interests.
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Well that would be predictable the "acceptable opposition" remains a greater danger to Assad than IS. They have bigger fish to fry. I suspect rebels being colocated with AQ Syria may not be viewed so tolerantly by the next US administration.
 
In TDS ISIS launches new assault on besieged eastern city in Syria
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ISIS has tried to capture the government-held neighborhoods of Deir el-Zour and the city's suburbs over the past months without much success.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday's offensive was the most intense since mid-January 2016, when the group killed dozens of people, most of them pro-government militiamen, in wide-scale attacks on the city that saw the group make significant advances. Most of those casualties took place in Baghaliyeh and the killings - many people were shot dead or beheaded - were some of the worst carried out by the extremist group.

The Observatory said the group has recently brought in reinforcements, including large amounts of ammunition and fuel, in preparation for the battle. It said at least 32 people were killed in Saturday's fighting, including 12 soldiers and allied militiamen and 20 ISIS fighters.
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On TDS If US wants Kurds at Syria talks, invite ISIS too, Turkey says
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Turkey calls the PYD a "terror group" for its links to Kurdish separatist militants in Turkey and has blasted the US repeatedly for working with the group on the ground in Syria.

A comment by a US State Department spokesman this week that Washington believes the PYD would "have to be a part of this process... at some point" infuriated Ankara.

"If you are going to invite a terror group to the table then you might as well invite Al Nusra and Daesh," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters, referring to the former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front, known previously as Al-Nusra Front, and ISIS.

"We do not deny the US role and contribution (to the talks), but we expect the following from the new US administration: it must stop co-operating with terror groups," he said.

"The current (US) administration is making serious mistakes," he said.
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Touchy.
 
On MEE Don't buy Assad's talk of compromise: The regime will not share power
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Ready to share power?

Even if the Syrian government’s delegation in Astana was to prove faithful to Assad’s promise to discuss “everything”, it is unlikely it would eventually agree to significant concessions on anything.

The first reason to expect such intransigence is precisely the somewhat relaxed tone of Assad’s comments to French journalists. For the Syrian president, discussing what was once a taboo in Syrian politics has become all the more unproblematic since recent battleground dynamics and their consequences on regional alignments have relieved him, and his allies, of any real pressure to compromise.

With the reconquest of Aleppo and steady elimination of rebel pockets around Damascus, and with Turkey’s abandonment of its ambitions of regime change in Syria, Assad rightly sees that a political solution is no longer needed to salvage his regime - the military solution has worked well to that effect.

Even in the absence of any immediate pressure on the regime, the optimists say, its allies, in particular Russia, might believe that measures of political inclusion are required to stabilise the country in the long term.

The problem is that Syria’s power architecture does not rely on institutions, but on the personal networks of the ruling clan. Therefore, any weakening of the latter would put the regime’s survival in jeopardy, which means that even if Moscow was willing to enforce even unambitious forms of power-sharing upon its protégé in Damascus, the latter would fiercely resist them.
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Points out Hafez al-Assad after brutally putting down the much smaller MB rising at Hama faced an attempted coup by his brother and that there's some signs of internal dissent within the regime. Baathist Syria is a family business.
 
Kerry, on leaked tape, says U.S. watched ISIL’s rise in Syria and hoped to ‘manage it’
“The reason Russia came in is because ISIL was getting stronger, Daesh was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus and so forth. And that’s why Russia went in. Because they didn’t want a Daesh government and they supported Assad,” Kerry said in a meeting with anti-Assad Syrian activists at the UN last fall. The meeting was secretly taped and leaked to the media.
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“And we know that this was growing. We were watching. We saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage it and that Assad would then negotiate. Instead of negotiating, he got Putin to support him,” Kerry said.
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Any comments on the reliability of this report?

 
mikey mikey said:
Kerry, on leaked tape, says U.S. watched ISIL’s rise in Syria and hoped to ‘manage it’
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I cited it up thread as an example of Kerry's bumbling about a week ago.

Kerry's boss until Mosul fell described IS as the JV team. They got closer to causing state collapse in Baghdad even after that IS never was a plausible threat to Damascus that came from the rebels. Bashar was pretty dismissive of IS off in the empty NE. More often IS fought and incorporated rebel groups benefiting the regime to the extent that rebels often alleged complicity between the two. The initial risk was more they'd unite the rebels under their black banner in the way they had subverted the second rising in Iraq. By 2015 it was becoming clear AQ were more successful at gathering Syrian support within the revolt. Kerry appeared to be continually in denial about the radicalisation of the rebels.

The Russians were invited in by the IRGC because Idlib fell to JaF backed heavily by members of the Coalition. The rebel Salafist alliance that includes AQ had kicked IS out of Idlib before this. Idlib was only the second provincial capital to fall to the rebels and a bigger blow to the regime than the loss of the first: Raqqa. Idlib provence's fall threatened the SAA Officer Corps heartland in Latakia, sea supply lines to Damascus and Russian basing at Tartus. In retrospect this was a pretty disastrous moment for the rebellion and US policy in Syria. SAA morale was low but even this blow was unlikely to lead to a rapid collapse. Some sources reckon the Russians assessed the SAA, their main institutional foothold in Syria, would soon have been past saving if they didn't up their assistance. Though what undermined the SAA was the growth of regime militias and Iranian influence as much as severe attrition at the hands of the revolt. Kerry also continually overestimated Russian influence in Syria despite clear signs it was weak. More wishful thinking.

Russian airstrikes if not rhetoric reflect this threat assessment. Like the regime itself the Russians have rarely targeted IS. There has been much focus on NW Syria and East of Damascus where Jaish al Islam were the dominant actor. This was even more underlined recently when the Russians rapidly abandoned Palmyra their only significant front against IS. Russian regional diplomacy initial focused on reassuring the very dangerous Israelis and Jordan. The latter effective dropped its support for the Southern rebels attempt to topple Assad. This removed more direct threats to the capital from the revolt.
 
On Al Monitor Syrians express 'deep anger' at Turkey for war
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Tastekin discovered “that the Russian military police sent to Aleppo were mostly Chechen. All 250 of them were said to be loyal to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.” Tastekin said his knowledge of the Caucasus facilitated his conversations with a Chechen soldier. “I asked him, 'Ah, you were serving under Shamil Basayev.' He panicked and signaled me to shut up. From 1992-1993, Basayev was tolerated by Russia and had recruited volunteers from the Caucasus and participated in the battles of Abkhazia. Basayev later emerged in the battles for Chechnya's independence and fought against the Russians. In the second Chechen-Russian war, Basayev's forces split; some joined Kadyrov, and those continuing to resist Russia set up the Caucasus Emirate. These two groups became dedicated enemies. Some from the Caucasus Emirate joined Jabhat al-Nusra (now Jabhat Fatah al-Sham) and the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Now Basayev's former soldiers were allied with the Syrian regime to confront their former comrades. It was not wise to share a hotel with these soldiers: Finding another hotel became the first task of the next day.”

Tastekin’s account offers firsthand testimony from Syrians about the role of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and other armed groups, a perspective often left out in the simple "government vs. rebels" narrative in much mainstream reporting on the conflict. “I was terribly shaken by what I saw in Aleppo. It became meaningless to ask who was responsible and why,” Tastekin writes.

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The Kadyrovtsy come to Damascus.
 
On War Is Boring In Syria, Russia Sure Is Worried About Looking Like a War Criminal
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The blatant atrocitiescommitted by the Syrian and Russian governments during the battle for Aleppo clearly show that the Obama administration’s communications strategy has not changed the reality on the ground.

However, the strategy does seem to have caused the Syrian and Russian governments to spend a huge portion of their propaganda trying to improve their image.

The functional reason for doing so remains unclear. It’s possible each side fears charges of war crimes, or they fear losing legitimacy among their publics.
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I don't think this has much to do with war crimes charges.

There's an article posted above on Russian COIN in Chechnya:
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Most COIN practitioners agree that winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the population is crucial to winning the conflict. The Russian authorities seemed to agree with this idea but reinterpreted the rulebook by focusing on winning the hearts and minds, not of the Chechen population, but of the Russian domestic audience (Ucko 2016, p. 39). During the First Chechen War there had been few press restrictions and many Chechen rebels who were willing and able to broadcast their version of events to win over Russian viewers, as well as international sympathy. By contrast, the Soviet era army of the 1990s was not used to media coverage and largely ignored it, meaning that the rebels were handed a platform from which to broadcast their message. Unsurprisingly, there was a good deal of sympathy for the rebels at home in Russia and abroad and widespread condemnation of the ineptitude and brutality of Russian forces, as atrocities were widely reported by journalists and human rights groups.

When the Second War erupted, the media coverage was much more stage-managed. Russian General Staff swiftly adopted an ‘airbrushing policy’, dismissing claims of atrocities by Russian troops and suppressing the number of soldiers killed by insurgents (Garwood 2002, p. 83). NGOs and journalists were excluded from the contact zones and the Russian government was highly successful in deftly manipulating public perceptions so that Chechnya quickly came to be seen as an outpost of international terrorism rather than an aspiring nation state (Miakinkov 2011, p. 648). By conflating the War in Chechnya with the Global War on Terror, the Russian authorities won support at home and abroad and Putin even managed to induce the US to add Chechen groups to international terror lists in exchange for Russian support (Schaefer 2011, p. 208). Moreover, in an article for European Security Stephen Shulman has analyzed the Russian government’s success in smearing Chechen secessionists as ‘criminals’ and ‘gangsters’, thereby denying them democratic or national legitimacy in the eyes of the ethnically Russian population (Shulman 2001).

Moreover, the string of terrorist attacks within Russia in 1999 hardened the population’s attitude (Hodgson 2003, p. 75) and any Russian liberal sympathy for the Chechen cause vanished after Beslan. The lack of political freedoms in Russia and a pride in the armed forces were instrumental in allowing the Russian forces to continue the bloody and protracted war in Chechnya. In the words of one scholar, ‘an authoritarian semi-democracy can more easily manipulate the media’ and Russian society remains accepting of ‘brutal counterinsurgency methods’ (Miakinkov 2011, p. 674).
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I've also read on US public support for the brutal COIN war in Vietnam that this was very high (70%+) even after Tet. A crucial element is maintaining hatred (and fear) of the enemy.

This might seem unnecessary in an authoritarian society like Putin's Russia. Putin is a popular leader with an 80%+ rating. In some polls 20%+ of Russian women want the old KGB dog to fuck them. However it's not as closed and controlled as the USSR which faced a good deal of dissent over the Muhj war and in fact public support levels for the Syrian campaign appear to be rather low (~50%). It's important to Putin that Russians don't feel bad about his wars. He's needy for international respect and wants to recreate an aura of national greatness on the cheap. Not easy with a high defence spend and low hydro-carbon prices.

Bashar Assad has a similar problem to a degree. The Baathist police state isn't North Korea. It's power is maintained by influence peddling to diverse Syrian power brokers as much as a hard working torture gulag like a South American fascist junta. The family business is broke and the slush fund is drying up just like water supplies. He's fighting a very divisive war in a very brutal way with limited support. Even people who fear the opposition may blame the blundering Baathist state to some extent. Outright supporters often claim the regime has been far too soft. There are often also large problems of military incompetence to cover up. He must massage regime supporters egos over the insidious role of Iran. His main enemy the rebellion has very active hasbara with a lot of international support. He must consider the Russian public. In Iran another semi-open authoritarian led society Syria's main ally support for the war in Syria has dropped and is low (30%+). Information Operations directed both internally and externally are very important. Syrians are never going to buy the SAA being the "most moral army in the world" like their Israeli neighbours but illusions must still be maintained.
 
On War On The Rocks THE MOSCOW SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS: KEY PILLARS OF RUSSIAN STRATEGY
...
At the outset of Russia’s intervention in Syria, White House officials began convincing themselves that Russian forces would end up in a quagmire, absolving the United States of any need to rethink policy beyond sitting back and watching Moscow fail. U.S. officialdom was engaging in self-deception to justify its own policy predilections in the conflict. American hubris is eminently pliable. As long the United States thinks you can’t win, there’s a window of opportunity. Frankly, Russia does not need to feign inferiority to be convincing, as American elites rarely require encouragement to display arrogance.

The balance in coercive credibility — the sum of capability and resolve — has not been in Washington’s favor in most of these showdowns. Russian leaders don’t need face-saving measures and off-ramps. When the president lectures them about being a weak regional power in decline, that arrogance comes with a pair of strategic blinders. Russian pride will recover, but the American position in the international system might not. Note the heavy breathing in the press over the hacking scandal is little different than the panic which followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea over two years ago. In a case of Groundhog’s Day the president once again assures us that Russia is weak, in decline, doesn’t manufacture anything of worth, and so on.
...
Click to expand...
Problem here is DC assumed Russia unlike Iran hoped to stage a brief no-strings intervention in Syria of the sort frustrated DC think tankers often advocated the US should indulge in. This was what the Russians said they were doing. It may be how the IRGC sold them on it.

The prediction that they would get stuck was actually correct. What wasn't anticipated is like Iran they'd settle on keeping a relatively low cost permanent footprint in Syria. They'd not get dragged into a repeat of the Muhj war as the US with its vastly greater resources and Blob of belligerent liberal interventionists might well have done. What we have instead is an apparent revival of Soviet ME policy done on the cheap. That may not have been the original intent but it worked so far. Folk tend to focus on the airpower but it was really a diplomacy led campaign keeping the US off balance in pointless peace talks while the important people Israel, Jordan and finally Turkey were brought round to see things Russia's way. The big flaw is the Iranians and the Assad clan.

After Desert Storm every US adversary decided a conventional war with the US was daft and started looking at other more devious approaches. This article catches the new Russian way of doing business rather nicely. Not so much grand strategy as a series of low cost opportunistic start-ups, fail fast, fail cheap, and adjust. It's not unique to Russia: consider the IRGC seed corn operation in Yemen producing a major KSA strategic distraction at just the right time or their careful use of militias. The Russians don't quite have the 3rd world Iranians patient long game but they've a lot more muscle and add a rather more effective creeping barrage of bullshit.

And now they have Trump eager to trash years of careful US institution building and eager to gargle down Putin's PR offensive as a fair chunk of gullible GOP voters in love with his strongman schtick have. Creative chaos favours the sneaky rather than the strong as this century should have taught us.
 
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