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And next, Syria?


Lister has an interesting series of Tweets on this. Basically Turkey wanting it's guys to move to N.Aleppo-Azaz.

But it does sound more to me like Turkey prioritising Euphrates Shield over other interests.
 
On dpa international Powers carve out Syrian battle lines, as Turkey weighs its next moves
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Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is supported by Russia, is using his elite Tiger Force to surround al-Bab from the southern side.

The trajectory of the government's advance indicates an intent to box in Euphrates Shield, ensuring Turkey cannot gain more Syrian territory to the south. Damascus already dubs the Turkish presence an occupation.

Russia clearly wants to prevent direct clashes between Turkey and al-Assad's forces, which means they would have to settle on a frontline. Moscow's view on the other players is still not clear.

President Vladmir Putin acquiesced to the Turkish invasion of Syria which began in August and has so far seized some 2,000 square kilometres of land. However, he did not give a blank cheque to Turkey.

"Russia would not support an escalation of the conflict, particularly over Minbij," said Nabi Abdullaev with Control Risks, a Moscow-based global risk consultancy group.

Rather, Russia would be interested in continuing the war to the west of Aleppo, in rebel-held Idlib province. That area is almost entirely controlled by two hardline Islamic groups, including one linked to al-Qaeda.

"Idlib represents the last significant threat to al-Assad's heartland on the coast, where Russian military facilities are also present," said Abdullaev.

If Idlib falls to the government, the rebels will end up only with whatever Turkey secures for them in Euphrates Shield. The upcoming peace talks in Geneva this week are not expected to lead to any breakthroughs on territorial control.
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My bold, from what Lister was saying up thread the Turks are prone to move their rebels East into Azaz and away from conflict with AQ types. Is that Turkey getting them out of the way of the Russians or preparing to throw them at the PKK. I tend to think the latter.
 

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The entrance to the dam was already damaged by airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition, it said.

"For example, on 16 January 2017, airstrikes on the western countryside of Ar-Raqqa impacted the entrance of the Euphrates Dam, which, if further damaged, could lead to massive scale flooding across Ar-Raqqa and as far away as Deir-ez-Zor."

The town of Deir-ez-Zor, or Deir al-Zor, is a further 140 km downstream from Raqqa, and is besieged by IS. The U.N. estimates that 93,500 civilians are trapped in the town, and it has been airdropping food to them for a year.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are undertaking a multiphased operation to encircle Raqqa, and have advanced to within a few kilometers of the dam. The SDF has previously said air strikes are not being used against IS near the dam to avoid damaging it.

As IS, also known as ISIL, retreats, its fighters have deliberately destroyed vital infrastructure, including three water stations and five water towers in the first three weeks of January, the U.N. report said.

"ISIL has reportedly mined water pumping stations on the Euphrates River which hinders the pumping of water and residents are resorting to untreated water from the Euphrates River."
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On MEE Syrians face toxic time-bomb of radiation, poison and pollution
Syria faces public health catastrophes that will linger for decades due to toxic rubble dust, oil fire pollution and the US-led coalition's use of depleted uranium weapons on Islamic State targets, campaigners have warned.

The US last week admitted it had fired armour-piercing DU ammunition in its war against IS, and had hit not only military targets but also un-armoured civilian targets such as oil trucks, and despite promising otherwise.

Meanwhile, health and environment experts say rubble and dust produced by years of bombing and fighting in built-up areas could have huge health impacts, as fine particles thrown into the atmosphere cause numerous respiratory illnesses, and add to pollution caused by the bombing of oil infrastructure.
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On SWJ Exploring the Primordial Foundation of the Syrian Civil War: Incentives for Ethno-Religious Group Mobilization in Conflict
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A secondary component to instrumentalist approach should consider both the proximity of Sunni majority population centers to the regime’s coercive capabilities as well as those populations’ overall participation in regime institutions. This line of thought would indicate that those who had the most to lose in terms of social status or economic position, as well as those who were most likely to be killed early would naturally not revolt. The instrumentalist arguments offer critical insights into incentive based decision making and affiliations, but they must also be coupled with latent durable identities that predated the conflict. In a sense, the formation of political-military organizations rooted in primordial like ethno-religious identities was possible because both the shared conception of these identities existed and the social incentives were in place for them to be fully realized.

Mobilization can therefore be explained as a result of a cocktail of contingency. Latent primordial identification had pre-imposed understandings of kin and kinship, a lack of national loyalty while governmental disenfranchisement made and maintained conceptions of that group. The use of violence threatened that group and incentivized mobilization, and finally the association of the regime with other primordial groups hardened in-group and outgroup associations. The formation of Sunni political military organizations against the state in the northwest sent reverberations across the country, increasing the salience of boundaries between some ethno-religious groups, and diminishing others.

Group mobilization incentivizes further mobilization by other groups, both in response to potential competition but also from the increasing costs for the failure to mobilize. In the instance of Syria, the mobilization of a Sunni group against the state incentivized the counter mobilization of the Kurds as a means of securing their own interests.[xiii] In the Kurdish majority parts of the country this mobilization in turn yielded further counter mobilization, with the formation of National Defense Forces, not unlike the isolated pockets of Shia in Syria’s northwestern cities of Nubl, Kafarya, al-Zahra and al-Fauh.[xiv]
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My bold, rebels actually moved out of these areas because the situation there was hopeless from the start.

Article gives a little historical background explain the frailty of Syrian identity. And some insight into while the revolt is mostly Sunni Arab not all of this demographic rose.

I think you do have to put this in a wider context. Regional Salafi currents had been growing since the 80s. The crushing of the last series of risings at Hama was a focal point of radical Salafi rage and an unhealed wound. The in some ways more horrific and sectarian civil war that followed our toppling of Saddam really had serious effects on Sunni Arab populations. It sowed doubt and fear that that Sunni Arabs could safely live alongside other groups. Kinship connections and large inflows of Iraqi Sunni Arab refugees made this very real. A new Sunni victimhood based identity emerged that was a mirror image of the oppressed Twelvers way of seeing themselves. Something new was in the wind and it wasn't Syrian Arab identity but something more exclusive. Salafi-Jihadis were mobilised by the Iraqi insurgency sometimes encouraged by the Syrian state. Ratlines ran into the Iraqi insurgency and finally would run in reverse bringing in IS who JaN would spit from when the parent organisation tried to reabsorb them. The brutish regime can also be blamed for instrumentalizing sectarian fears but this isn't mostly why it fell into this sectarian shape. Many people in Syria wanted something different from the cruel Baathist rentier state that had only become more resented with Bashar's crony fattening neoliberal reforms. In Syria the Arab Spring really became a revolt built mostly around Sunni religious conservatives and Salafi of various hues. Actually a minority in Useful Syria with it's rather lax urban populations. With the rebels mostly advocating for a purified state based on Sharia as opposed to a secular one. Not actually a popular vision especially in its more extreme forms and not without its own tendency to authoritarianism.

Ironically the white US population may be undergoing a similar process of alienation from out groups.
 
On TCF Participatory Democracy and Micropolitics in Manbij
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Conclusion

Manbij’s democratic experiment was not to last. The rending forces of war proved too strong. During my first visit in June and July 2013, the RC was dominating political life in the city while the Islamic State (at the time, known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) was marginal. By December 2013, when I went for a second visit, the Islamic State had become the dominant group and controlled most vital institutions, and the RC had almost ceased operating because the lives of its president and members were constantly threatened. As the opposition fought the Islamic State in northern Syria in 2014, Manbij fell in and out of the extremist group’s hands. After being involved in some activities to resist the Islamic State, including a daring general strike, the RC was ultimately expelled and began operating in exile from Azaz, a city more than one hundred kilometers to the west, near the Turkish border. In August 2016, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party drove out the Islamic State; the RC seems to have grown much closer to Turkey since the country’s military intervention in Syria that same month, and has lost its independence. It has not returned to Manbij.
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Complex tale of the rising in Manbij that was getting on rather well until external forces intervened. This was despite complex clan rivalries, a proliferation of FSA bands, multiple courts and lingering regime support amongst the elites.

The author sees a big mistake in finally adopting too narrow a definition of who was revolutionary leaving a lot of people feeling excluded. That left a gap that Ahar al Sham, AQ and the Islamic State butted in and now its under the PKK with what's left of the old Revolutionary Council aligning with Turkey. And now it's not unlikely the Turks will try to take it back.

The problem with the Syrian revolt has not been that it could never get its act together at a parochial level. Risen Syrians often did that fairly successfully but that greater national cohesion eluded it. Syria's patchwork society made this difficult. Foreign hands made this worse. As such the rebels were always vulnerable to a cohesive revolutionary vanguard like IS.

After all that's a similar revolutionary model to the Syrian Baath, not majoritarian but just the strongest minority party in the 63 military coup. And consider how that narrowed: in 66 another internal coup that disposed of the Baath civilian wing leaving the Military Committee effectively in charge. Finally Hafez Assad seized power in 1970 and it's been a family firm ever since. His alliance with the Damascene bourgeoise secured he'd gradually discard the redistributive trappings of Baathist "national socialism" producing an authoritarian consolidation that locked in Syrian elites and a really nice little earner. Bashar as patron with his embrace of neoliberalism perhaps just took all that a bit too far.
 
Fom The Syria Institute No Return to Homs: A Case Study on Demographic Engineering in Syria.
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Conclusion

The Syrian military and affiliated sectarian militias systematically displaced more than half of the population of Homs city between 2012 and 2014. Their tactics included: detention, torture, rape, massacres, full-scale military assault with ground and air assets, siege, and the targeted destruction of civilian infrastructure. Displaced people from Homs city describe the widespread intimidation by government-affiliated militias and overtly sectarian violence that they experienced.

The military’s disproportionate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure suggests that the government had motivations beyond just dislodging armed opposition groups or fighting “terrorism.” The HRC reporting has determined that the strategy of denying food and medical supplies to certain areas by the Syrian government was not just aimed at controlling armed groups, but also at forcing the displacement of the population.101 Unless there is an imperative military or security reason to do so, “Ordering the displacement of the civilian population for reasons related to the conflict,” constitutes a war crime under Article 8(e)viii of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.102 Given the widespread and systematic nature of the forcible displacement of civilian populations in Syria, these crimes may rise to the level of crimes against humanity.

More than a dozen targeted neighborhoods were fully or partially destroyed. These were mainly Sunni majority neighborhoods, in addition to the Christian Hamidieh neighborhood. Sunni residents living in Alawite-majority neighborhoods were also selectively targeted for expulsion, although the neighborhoods themselves remain populated and largely intact, incurring nominal damage from opposition shelling. The pattern of destruction closely resembles pre-war plans for an urban redevelopment project called ‘“Homs Dream,” which intended to build modern shopping malls, parks, and skyscrapers where densely populated Sunni neighborhoods stood. The aim of this plan appeared to be redistribution of the population to strengthen the economic and physical control of the city by the pro-government Alawite community. The conflict has given the government the opportunity and means to implement, accelerate, and expand pre-war demographic changes goals.

Since the final residents were forcibly transported out of the besieged Old City in May 2014, the Syrian government has enacted new bureaucratic and legal barriers to prevent the displaced from returning to reclaim their homes, notably around property ownership. These new restrictions reinforce the existing physical barriers – the destruction, violence, and intimidation – to ensure that few unwanted residents attempt to return. Further barriers to return exist beyond even those identified by respondents, notably unexploded remnants of war such as landmines and cluster munitions, whose usage has been widely documented in Syria.104 Unexploded landmines or cluster munitions primarily kill long after a conflict has ended.

The Syrian government has used Homs as a blueprint, repeatedly employing the same pattern of siege, starve, destroy, and transfer across the country. Notable examples from 2016 where the Syrian government followed the same pattern as in Homs include the city of Darayya in Rural Damascus in August, and Eastern Aleppo city in December. The same challenges and concerns identified in this study of Homs are highly relevant to these newly depopulated areas and displaced civilians. They are also relevant for the UN agencies and international actors that participate in the population transfers and the post-siege rehabilitation efforts. Lessons learned from the siege and destruction of Homs and developments in the aftermath should be applied to these and other future cases.
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My bold, never waste a crisis innit.
 

That's because fighting IS isn't like fighting a predictable old enemy like the PKK. Who like the Pesh are tough but not exactly a learning organisation. The Kurdish militias rely on masses of US air support when fighting IS. IS fighting in Company or Battalions sized units can be a very nasty surprise in comparison. They are very dangerous in the offensive willing to attack dug in numerically superior forces and often over running them. The veteran Beards fighting for IS have a lot of deep experience in urban defence. They have the industrial capacity to produce dense IED fields that can only be cleared slowly and patiently. They use vehicle bombs very well. They've capture ample quantities of heavy kit. The most experienced local group fighting them the Iraqi CTS are still trying to keep up with their innovations. You add to the tactical sharpness a pretty able staff that sometimes seems to outthink strategically very smart senior US officers. The TSK is leaning this the hard way with limited air support.
 
On Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi's blog The Formation of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and Wider Tensions in Syria's Insurgency
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Despite some arguments offered by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham supporters denouncing analysts who would see the new group as essentially al-Qa'ida,21 there appears to be little distinction in reality. Jabhat Fateh al-Sham likely constitutes the largest single component of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, with al-Julani rumored to be the military commander of the new entity.22 Regardless of whether some elements of what was Jabhat al-Nusra/Jabhat Fateh al-Sham have rejected joining the new entity (e.g. the Jordanian Sami al-Oreidi)23 for whatever reasons, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham fits in with the al-Qa'ida vision of integrating more deeply into the wider Syrian insurgency to establish a broader popular front and pushing for the end goal of an Islamic emirate or government project as a stepping stone to reviving the caliphate. Incidentally, it may be the case that this dynamic of continuing to seek popular support prevents a Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham campaign to bring down Ahrar al-Sham, thus reinforcing a strategic stalemate between Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and the wider insurgency.

At this stage, few if any good options remain for the Syrian insurgency. But throwing in one's lot with Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham essentially amounts to a final death blow to any viable trends in the insurgency espousing a more 'moderate' vision. The airstrikes will continue, and merging with Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham will simply make such groups that do merge additional targets for those strikes, besides resulting in isolation from whatever wider international backing remains for the Syrian insurgency. In such a scenario, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham would be dragging down the wider insurgency into oblivion alongside it. Survival, not fantastical notions of victory over the regime, seems to be the name of the game now and for the foreseeable future.
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The fighting between Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham appears to have died down.

AQ's with HTS now leads a force more than 30K beards strong. If CIA estimate were to be believed this is bigger than IS. It's also much better embedded in the Syrian population. It maintains the principle struggle against Assad.

The other Northern alliance Ahrar al-Sham is about the same size. It has Turkish backing but increasingly looks like a puppet of Ankara. Just as the Southern Front has become a strategic instrument of Amman. Both are tools for containing militants in Syria and countering Iranian influence. The Jordanians are reconciled to Assad's survival. The Turks have not lent that far yet but have been backed down by the Russians and now prioritise the existential threat of the PKK over their war of choice with Assad. It's not hard to imagine this hardening into a long Turkish security zone that includes the top of Idlib and a Ahar hudna of some kind with the regime.

With Trump slumped in the Oval Office dreaming of Putin so far little has changed. The US now is a pretty irrelevant with a war out in the dusty NE. It's a side effect from taking off the ball in Iraq during the Arab Spring and effectively a rear area to the larger conflict with IS there. Uncle Sam's greatest significance in Syria is now as a sponsor of the Syrian PKK. Indirectly US support for the PKK has helped divide the Sunni Arab rising by redirecting Ankara's hand against away from toppling Assad towards containing the PKK. Raqqa may fall but IS will likely continue to be a lasting infestation in the Euphrates valley for years. With Turkey and the KRG Ankara's vassal the alienated the PKK only really have Assad as a viable bulk customer for the hydrocarbons they've seized.

AQ has survived a long US war against it in the Hindu Kush. In Yemen's civil war it's most potent branch AQAP thrives despite a decade of GWOT attention. In Syria now leading a just if futile Jihad against a vile despot has far more popular support than IS. AQ may actually be far more dangerous than IS. War on the Assad's will remain a popular cause among Salafi-Jihadis and the US betraying the revolt will be another string to their bow. And where there are Takfiri the insidious Iranians will remain and expand using their threat as cover and as a revolutionary recruiting cry.
 
On Al Monitor What's really happening in Syria's al-Bab?
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For instance, Gen. Hulusi Akar, the chief of general staff, is the highest Turkish official in uniform. As he was traveling Feb. 15 with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Qatar, Akar announced that the operation in al-Bab was over. He said Turkish forces and their Free Syrian Army (FSA) allies had retaken the town. There was every reason to believe the statement, since it was a military matter and the statement came from the highest military authority of the country.

Yet the next day, Defense Minister Fikri Isik said in Brussels that al-Bab “is not taken, but is under the siege” of Turkish forces.

Turkey's highest general says one thing in Qatar; his civilian superior says something else the very next day in Brussels.

Further compounding the disarray among senior Turkish officials about the actual situation in al-Bab was Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who said in his Feb. 19 address to the Munich Security Conference that Turkey was “about to take back” al-Bab.
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Very confused.
 

And that's after the organisation was judged "strategically defeated" just under a decade ago.

Consider this from 09 when AQI was reduced to a shadowy terrorist nub of what IS is now.
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What is actually occurring is that AQI has suffered some small setbacks in terms of interrupted finance and some key leaders being captured/killed, but they still clearly maintain the ability to influence the local populace. Although the military apparatus’ ability to conduct attacks is degraded, we see clear indicators that the security and media lines are operating at near full capacity. With these parts of the organization functioning, all AQI needs to do is continue to pick off effective government and security leaders (with assassination and intimidation) and conduct a slow but steady stream of spectacular attacks (which will then be effectively captured and distributed by various media products) to maintain their relevancy and delegitimize the Iraqi government. Additionally, we are likely to see an uptick in politically motivated attacks designed to target candidates for the 2010 national elections as inflame the already simmering Arab-Kurd tensions that form the underlying cause of insecurity and ineffectiveness in Mosul and N. Iraq.

If we’re not careful and we let up the pressure too quickly, we could easily see a return to what Mosul looked like when my unit assumed our battlespace on the East side of the Tigris River in January 2008 (foreign fighters were embedded in a multitude of military battalions across the city, multiple VBIED and catastrophic IED attacks every week, and AQI forces essentially controlling terrain in some parts of the city with the tacit support of almost the entire local populace).For more details on this, read the excellent report “The Fight for Mosul” from the Institute for the Study of War.
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Victory in Iraq was declared and US combat operation ended in August 2011. Two years later IS was very visibly back on its feet again breaking out its strategic reserve of fighters from Iraqi prisons while the Whitehouse fixated on Syria. It was shortly before the fall of Mosul in 2014 that the IRGC started pulling Iraqi their militias back from Syria but nobody expected the audacious expansion that followed.

And it was a group IS sent into Syria in 2012 to explore possibilities there that finally broke with them and swore loyalty to AQ. Thanks to its strategic patience now owns Idlib city and heads half the NW revolt. The part that's still after Assad's head rather than just a puppet of in foreign hands. Some experts anticipate AQ slipping insidiously into IS's place even in Iraq. IS clearly does not intended to curl up and die but fight on from shadows until the time is right again to raise the black banner.
 

Well Tump did promise to bomb the shit out of IS. Implicit in that is lots of dead civilians and probably angry kin that may bear a grudge against the US and their helpers.
 
On MEE Dozens killed in car bomb blast close to Syria's al-Bab
A car bomb in a village near al-Bab in Syria struck Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State early on Friday, killing at least 45 people and wounding dozens more, Al Jazeera reported.

The Turkey-backed rebels on Thursday drove Islamic State from al-Bab, the group's last significant stronghold in northwest Syria, along with two smaller neighbouring towns of Qabasin and al-Bezah, after weeks of street fighting.

The car bomb on Friday morning struck military and security offices in Sousian, which is behind the rebel lines about eight kilometres northwest of al-Bab, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said.

On Thursday, several Turkey-backed rebels were killed by a mine in al-Bab while clearing the town of unexploded ordnance after Islamic State retreated, the Observatory said.
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IS Sleeper unit probably.
 
On Al Monitor GOP divided over calling out Assad war crimes
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Seven of the 11 Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee declined to sign on to a bipartisan letter on the issue spearheaded by Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and ranking member Ben Cardin, D-Md., to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson dated Feb. 22. All 10 Democrats on the panel signed the letter, which urges Tillerson to “ensure Assad, Russia and Iran are made to answer for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria.”

Citing a recent Amnesty International report about mass hangings at a Syrian prison and the release three years ago of thousands of photos of alleged executions, the letter asserts that “sufficient documentation exists to charge Bashar al-Assad with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has lost legitimacy as Syria’s leader.”

The letter goes on to accuse Russia and Iran of being “complicit” in war crimes.

“As you review US policy toward Russia and participate in the administration’s planning to defeat [the Islamic State], Russia’s role in the tragic deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians must be considered,” Corker and Cardin wrote. “We also ask that you provide an update on the steps the [Donald Trump] administration is taking to document war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria, and planned US support to the accountability process that must be part of a political agreement to end the war.”
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There's really no doubt quite grave war crimes were and are being committed and only a third of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee declined to accuse the R+6 of war crimes.

It must have been troubling waving away implicating Iran in support of a pro-Russian President's perhaps even more confused Syria policy. Trump actually seems to be hoping to end up just as complicit but not with the Iranians as they are "bad hombres".
 
On ISW The Campaign for Ar-Raqqah: February 24, 2017
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Turkish-backed opposition groups acceptable to the U.S. likely [DS1] cannot seize ar-Raqqah City without additional support from prominent Salafi-Jihadist group Ahrar al Sham. Turkey used Ahrar al Sham during the offensive on al Bab to seize territory when other Turkish backed opposition groups proved unable to effectively combat ISIS in and around the urban terrain. Turkey will likely utilize Ahrar al Sham in a leading role in a Turkish offensive on ar-Raqqah City. Ahrar al Sham’s seizure of the city would likely allow the group to dictate the composition of ar-Raqqah City’s governance structure, effectively trading control of ar-Raqqah from one Salafi-Jihadist group to another. A governance structure established by Ahrar al Sham is antithetical to U.S. strategic interests in Syria.

A U.S. failure to prevent conflict between its Kurdish- and Turkish-led partner forces in Syria could jeopardize the anti-ISIS mission in Syria. A Turkish attack on Manbij City or an attempt to bisect Kurdish territory could instigate a wider armed conflict that would distract both major U.S.-partner ground forces from the anti-ISIS fight in ar-Raqqah City. The U.S. must also set conditions to prevent the resurgence of Salafi-Jihadism after the seizure of ar-Raqqah City by ensuring that the city is governed by representatives of its population rather than another Salafi-Jihadist group or a Kurdish puppet.
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PKK based campaign going OK militarily apart from that. Given Trump's short timelines the Turks taking Raqqa seems an unlikely option.

Politically Manbij which was meant to be a prototype for Raqqa. It does rather look like it's in the hands of an Apoist Arab puppet regime. The old rebel Ruling Council which had some legitimacy is aligned with the Turks. The PKK has a fairly good record of holding territory in Syria but it's getting over stretched and I do wonder about the sustainability of this strategy. Not that there's much alternative apart from slowing down and consolidating which Trump does not want.

It does occur to me Ahrar al Sham being in charge of large parts of Syria does seems to be the Turkish plan whether that is "antithetical to U.S. strategic interests" or not. Ahar is a potential partner available on the ground against a 30K strong Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham AQ led rebel force in Idlib. The alternative is the R+6 and that means largely the IRGC backed forces and SAA as Russian ground assets are slender.

It would not surprise me if the PKK were talking to the regime about collaborating in the longer term over holding formerly loyalist Raqqa and regime held Deir. IS are going to be a lingering presence in the middle Euphrates and Rojova will have the TSK-Ahar breathing down its neck.
 

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Putin defended the controversial operations. They had, he said, “dealt a blow to international terrorism.” Russia stood alone in this fight, Putin added, hampered by resistance from “so-called partners” in the West.

Later on Thursday, the president announced that he had plans to strengthen Russia’s military further.

The priorities for new investment would be strategic nuclear defense and aerospace defense forces, he said.
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He forgot the Iranians but maybe that doesn't actually play that well in Russia.
 
On War Is Boring Hundreds of Civilians Killed During the Turkish Capture of Al Bab
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Disproportionate toll

If 300 civilians or more were killed in Al Bab since December, it would represent a major toll proportionate to Raqqa and Mosul, where hundreds of thousands more civilians continue to reside, and where the coalition is now releasing thousands of bombs each month.

Al Bab is much smaller than both cities, and was defended by at most several hundred I.S. fighters — possibly fewer than the number of civilians killed. The coalition was but one actor in Al Bab — but it was unclear to what extent they are communication with the Turks with an eye to protecting civilians.

Reports in the days before Al Bab’s fall indicate the Trump administration may be willing to lessen support to the SDF, favoring long-term stability with Turkey. According to Aaron Stein, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, that decision to appease the Turks could prolong the campaign to take Raqqa.

Indeed, Turkey has made clear it intends to move not toward Raqqa, but Manbij.

“The flash points, however, would be Al Bab, Manbij, and Tabqah,” Stein wrote in a recent assessment of U.S.-Turkish interests in northern Syria. “In this scenario, Washington would have to assume the risk of Kurdish-Turkish escalation in favor of the broader effort to appease Ankara while also ousting the Islamic State from Raqqa with a Turkish-backed force.”

Choosing Turkey over the better-poised SDF could stretch the fight for Raqqa into 2018 — ample time for hundreds more air strikes.
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And Airwars fears the larger Manbij currently under PKK control might get the same treatment.

There was very little reporting of this aspect of al Bab in contrast to the emoting over East Aleppo.
 
On SWJ Will There Be A “Great Raid” Into Syria?
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Only America is capable of liberating Raqqa without turning the struggle into the kind of Stalingrad-like slugging match that the Battle of Mosul has become. If the Russians thought they could do it, they would have tried. We have the ability to retake the city and destroy the standing ISIS army that is occupying it much more quickly than it will take the Iraqis to recapture Mosul; but, then, we should leave. Keeping a large conventional force in Syria is a recipe for disaster. If we have learned nothing else from the experiences in Lebanon, Somalia, and Iraq; it should be that foreign forces can solve immediate problems but they soon create another problem by their very presence.

What is needed in Syria is a punitive expedition aimed at a limited objective. This essentially a very large raid aimed at accomplishing a specific set of objectives. We Americans have a precedent in the 1916 expedition into Mexico against Poncho Villa. In many ways, Poncho Villa’s guerilla army was the ISIS of its day. Its depredations into the United States were unacceptable to President Wilson who authorized the expedition under Brigadier General John “Black Jack” Pershing. The force never captured Villa himself, but it destroyed his capability to threaten New Mexico and Texas. There was no intention of overthrowing the weak Mexican government or to solve the problems of what had virtually become a failed state. The Mexicans eventually came to short-term solutions to their own immediate problems once Villa’s combat power was eliminated as a conventional threat. Similarly, we will not likely capture or kill the would-be ISIS Caliph, al Baghdadi; that would be a bonus, but it should not be the stated mission of the expedition.
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I'm reminded of the butcher and bolt concept as chaps used to talk about on NW frontier. This might appeal to Trump with his dismissal of Mosul as lacking the element of surprise. It also fits with his dangerous lack of strategic patience.

This sort of thing can be done but think of it as Mowing The Grass as the Israelis do but as a model that hasn't worked great for IDF in Lebanon. Because IS or something very like them will likely be coming back to the Middle Euphrates. Because IS are just a symptom of Sunni Arab discontent. You have to weigh this not in terms of the map of IS territorial control but their ilk's footprint on the psyche of the local population. Will it make people fear IS less and not share the Salafi-Jihadi view of an America at war with Islam? If so then maybe.

Then there's selling it to the US voter too easily terrified by IS but currently adverse to anything but a no skin in the game air war. Will they happily accept even the level of Turkish casualties at al Bab? Actually US voters rather like the Obama's administration's idea of using the PKK's happy band of campers as canon fodder. And you need a largely non-US holding force with at least substantial local roots. The main fault with the Obama model is the PKK or for that matters Turkey's rebels may be a more regionally disliked army of occupation than the US Marine Corps eventually was in al Anbar.
 
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