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And next, Syria?


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FSA forces "captured the villages of Tal Turin and Qara east of Al-Bab after violent clashes with the separatist YPG militia", according to a statement issued by Hiwar Kallis, an opposition faction and a member of the Euphrates Shield campaign,

A top US general, meanwhile, said Russian warplanes on Tuesday bombed American-backed fighters in several small villages near Al-Bab after they mistakenly thought Daesh forces were in the area.

"We had some Russian aircraft and regime aircraft bomb some villages that I believe they thought were held by ISIS (Daesh), yet... actually on the ground were some of our Syrian Arab Coalition forces," Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend told reporters in a video call from Baghdad.
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They'll be calling him Baghdad Steve soon. US advisors embedded with the SDF were about 3 miles away at the time.
 
On Syria Deeply To Work in Douma, Men Must Join Militants of Jaish Al-Islam
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Fighting for a Living

For Mohammad – whose name has been changed for security reasons – fighting with Jaish al-Islam was one of the more profitable employment options. The 29-year-old, who recently left the group’s ranks, earned nearly $100 a month fighting – more than he could scrape together in his previous job as a street vendor in the war-battered city.

Higher-ranking fighters get better pay, but opportunities to climb the ranks are largely dependent on personal relationships and familial ties with the group’s military officers or spiritual leaders, Mohammad said.

He decided to quit after becoming disenchanted with the group’s objectives. “When I joined Jaish al-Islam, I thought that I was going to liberate Syria from tyranny,” he said. “But later I later discovered that Jaish al-Islam is no different from the Syrian regime.”
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Note the disappointment both ideological and economic.

Mentions being a tout for the Religious Police pays twice as much as being a JaI fighter. This is a pretty poor rate; I read a couple of years ago AQ in Syria pays a fighter a basic of about $400 a month.
 

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GEN. TOWNSEND: Well, actually I was -- I think I was referring to the area around al-Bab. And, Michael, as you know, and many of you in the room there probably know, that around al-Bab all the forces that are acting in Syria have converged literally within hand-grenade range of one another.

Just this week, we have seen -- last week, we saw Turk and Turk proxy forces fighters converge with Syrian regime and Syrian proxy fighters, ISIS being in the mix there. We have YPG, Syrian Democratic Force fighters, and Syrian Arab Coalition fighters also right bumping up against each other there. And then here in the last 48 hours, we've seen Syrian regime forces advance through ISIS-held villages to essentially rifle-range or hand-grenade range with Syrian Arab Coalition fighters holding the area around Manbij.

Meanwhile, yesterday we had some Russian aircraft and regime aircraft bomb some villages that I believe they thought were held by ISIS. Yet, they were actually -- on the ground were some of our Syrian Arab Coalition forces. They had seen ISIS move out of the area in advance of the – as the regime and the Turks' advance. The ISIS fighters withdrew, and the Syrian Arab Coalition fighters advanced into those villages.

So, I just described -- tried to describe a very complicated battlefield situation where essentially three armies and an enemy force have all converged within the same grid square. It's very difficult and complicated.

And so I'm just trying -- that was my attempt to say everybody should keep their sights focused on ISIS and that's what we ought to keep our efforts focused on and not fighting deliberately or accidentally with one another. That's what I meant.

Q: Quick follow-up, sir, what were the villages that the Russian bombed? Were there any U.S. or coalition advisers with the Syrian Arab Coalition in that vicinity when they were bombed? And have there been communications with the Russians about this?

GEN. TOWNSEND: I don't really recall off the top of my head. I think you maybe asked me what the name of the village was. I don't remember the name of the village. They're just a bunch of little villages in the area there. It's south and east of Al-Bab.

There were U.S. forces in the area. Not that close; they were four or five kilometers away because remember, we're not fighting, we're not at the front, we're advising at command echelons a little bit farther back. So they were back, they observed these strikes. It became apparent that the strikes were falling on some of the Syrian Arab Coalition positions and some quick calls were made to our deconfliction channels and the Russians acknowledged and stopped -- stopped bombing there.

And so we worked out an arrangement, a deconfliction. This is something that goes on daily in the air. Not every day on the ground, but daily in the air there's a deconfliction arrangement with the Russians. And we used that mechanism and it worked.
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A more complete quote. Reading this whole thing really raises more questions than it answers.
 
On TCF Syria’s Former al-Qaeda Affiliate Is Leading Rebels on a Suicide Mission
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The mark of Cain on the Nusra Front—or the Fateh al-Sham Front or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or whatever new mix-and-match name it adopts—is indelible. Foreign states are determined to crush it, either through direct action or by aiming local proxies against it.

And not every rebel wants to run up the black flag. Tahrir al-Sham has little apparent compunction about asserting its dominance and making clear it plans to assimilate the entirety of the northern rebellion. But many rebels who don’t want to be press ganged into a jihadist army seem likely to move to Euphrates Shield or abandon the battlefield entirely. Tahrir al-Sham will increasingly have to shoulder a military burden it can’t bear, not alone, and not if Idlib becomes too radioactive for international support.

Foreign military support to rebels in the northwest has reportedly been cut since Fateh al-Sham’s January show of force, although that may be temporary. What will happen to the cross-border humanitarian and stabilization assistance that sustains the area’s civilians is unclear.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s founders thought they could change the rules of international diplomacy on Syria and halt the opposition’s slide toward sub-revolutionary compromise, or just survival.

But they couldn’t. Instead, they’ve launched themselves—and the Syrian opposition along with them—on one last kamikaze charge.
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It may be rather a long suicide mission as this is likely to transform into a Iraq style insurgency.
 

Interesting interview with some biographical background. Includes reflects on living through Lebanon's civil war and how it became so quickly and surprisingly sectarian like the Syrian war. Landis ties together Bush's tilt against Syria and the Hariri assassination. Talks about living in Damascus in 82 as Hama rose under the MB. Talks a lot about the divided Alawite family he married into part Baath part anti-Baath. Expected the regime to crush the rising like it had its prototype at Hama. He clearly feels our intervention in Syria simply made the war far worse.
 
On Reuters U.S.-allied militia agrees to hand villages to Syrian govt
A U.S.-allied militia in northern Syria said on Thursday it would hand over villages on a front line where it has been fighting Turkish-backed rebels to Syrian government control, under an agreement with Russia.

The villages will be surrendered to the Syrian government in the coming days, an official in the Manbij Military Council told Reuters. An earlier statement by the council said the villages would be handed to Syrian border guards.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara the report was false, but added there was an agreement with Russia that Syrian government and opposition forces should not fight each other in that area.

The villages west of the city of Manbij have been a focus of fighting between the Turkish-backed rebels and the Manbij Military Council, the U.S.-allied militia, since Wednesday.
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Smart.
 

Or you might say PKK overreach changed Turkey's priorities. Helping the revolt against Assad became much less important than stopping the PKK unifying Rojava's cantons. Of course the Russians also bullied the Turks into standing down but without the PKK coming East across the Euphrates it would have all been an all stick and no carrot gambit.
 
teqniq said:
It has been blatantly obvious where Turkey's interests lie for quite some time tbf.
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Syria has always been to a large extent about the PKK for the Turks. Like other terrorist groups Syrian intelligence occasionally used the PKK for leverage. The Adana Agreement between the Assad Clan and Ankara in the late 90s that led to Apo capture and the once promising peace process.

Erdogan's anger at Baathist atrocities against the rising changed their realist calculations for a few years. It's not surprising how things ended up. The PKK very quickly fell out with the SNC accusing them of being agents of Ankara. Damascus released hundreds of PKK fighters who headed to the NE to fill spaces left by the regime consolidating its defences in Useful Syria. The PKK-Regime hudna that arose out of the Arab Spring was Damascus welching on the deal with Ankara. The PKK energised by gains in Syria won with the assistance of US airpower restarted their old war in SE Turkey. Now having jumped the Euphrates and Turkey's red lines finally giving back to Assad a chunk of Syria. So PKK held Manbij is safely behind SAA that the TSK can't cross without a Kremlin OK.

Because for the Turks the PKK is a longterm existential threat to their state's integrity while the Salafi-Jihadis we fixate on are an annoyance. Decades of trouble with a fairly effective and rather deadly revolutionary movement really shapes Ankara's perspective. Like Israel's attitude to HA it's an entirely rational threat assessment. Getting carried away by the Islamist Arab Spring next door was the emotive blip.
 
On Rudaw Rojava Peshmerga deployed to Syrian border, no plans to enter Rojava
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The Rojava Peshmerga in Snune also tried to enter the neighbouring town of Khanasoor, but were stopped by forces affiliated with the ruling Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), Rudaw’s reporter in the area said. Both sides have said they are going to negotiate the deployment peacefully and through dialogue.

Relations between the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (PDKS), the political wing of the Roj force, which is largely supported by the KRG, and the PYD in Rojava have remained strained as the PYD-led government has so far refused entrance for the PDKS Peshmerga forces into the Kurdish enclave in Syria.

If permitted entry into northern Syria, the Roj force may be stationed in the Rojava canton of Jazira, bordering the Kurdistan Region with Qamishli as its capital city.

PDKS senior official Kawa Azizi told Rudaw in January that the full deployment of the Peshmerga unit to Rojava could take place as early as June this year when the formation of the troop is completed.

“For the moment we have around 7,000 Peshmerga fighters in the unit which includes both male and female forces but it will be deployed to Rojava when another 7,000 troops are added,” Azizi said.

Azizi’s remarks were made days after President Masoud Barzani told Rudaw in a joint interview that the Rojava Peshmerga have not been sent back to northern Syria in order to avoid bloodshed among Kurds, but he warned that there are limits to his patience.

"Not yet,” President Barzani said when asked whether the KRG had opened the doors for the Rojava Peshmerga to go back to Syria. “I have said it time and again that Kurdish blood should never again be shed by fellow Kurds. Otherwise we would have sent them back a long time ago. But everything has its own limits. Like Arabs say 'even patience has its limits’."
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My bold, that's a threat.
 
If the jihadis are an 'annoyance' then why has the Turkish government been affording them safe haven/passage and colluding in the oil smuggling business?

E2a also see post #7908 - yes I know they are useful allies against the PKK but subsequently there is a whole lot more to the relationship than an 'annoyance'.
 
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teqniq said:
If the jihadis are an 'annoyance' then why has the Turkish government been affording them safe haven/passage and colluding in the oil smuggling business?
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Because the PKK are actually real trouble for the Turks so anyone who is fighting them is basically good news. That included IS until IS actually staged a string of attacks in Turkey and worse spooked the PKK into restarting their war in the SE which has been pretty devastating causing big movements of population and thousands of casualties.

Like the regime the PKK have tended to smear all rebels opposed to them as being radicals unfortunately this is increasingly true. You can't effectively support what's always been a revolt of religiously conservative Sunni Arabs without giving to some extent "Jihadis" haven and safe passage. This doesn't work. It's why our efforts backing the rising a little more selectively (though Turkish intelligence did the vetting for the CIA) largely failed. What we were doing in any case was proving fire support for Salafi-Jihadi fronted offensives like the one that took Idlib city which is now effectively ruled by AQ. The CIA needed a bit more deniability. The Turks are less fussy have ended up working mainly through radical Salafi like Ahar al Sham who they don't really see eye to eye with but at least are popular and fairly effective. Neither AQ or IS have ever openly admitted working with Ankara directly and collaboration does seem to be limited.

The oil smuggling business predates the civil war and just about every armed actor in Syria takes a piece of it. Turkey is just where most of it goes to get refined. The alternative customer is Assad who has been happily taking a lot of IS's oil. And that probably means Assad will have a lot of leverage over the Syrian PKK unless they cut a deal with Turkey for alternative refining arrangements for the wells they've seized. Otherwise they'll be broke and just end up as mercs taking the Yankee Dollar.
 
So, not an 'annoyance' then. Also define 'limited' when it includes arms shipments to jihadis overseen by Turkish intelligence, medical facilities provided for IS fighters and fellow travellers and Erdogan's son connected to the oil smuggling business.
 
teqniq said:
So, not an 'annoyance' then. Also define 'limited' when it includes arms shipments to jihadis overseen by Turkish intelligence, medical facilities provided for IS fighters and fellow travellers and Erdogan's son connected to the oil smuggling business.
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There have been very big shipments of arms being delivered to rebel groups via Turkey. Tens of billions of dollars worth of kit. Including masses of TOWs and heavy equipment. There's really no evidence of anything on that scale going directly to AQ or IS. The TOWs in particular are rarely seen in their hands. I can only recall that one fairly small arms shipment being detected and that dates from a time when IS held several cards against Ankara. Lots of passive looking the other way as IS nearly destroyed the PKK in Syria but given the bloody history this wasn't surprising.

The Israelis have also provided medical aid to rebel groups and were not picky about that involving JaN fighters. The regime has certainly had expedient relationships with Takfiri. Even the Iranians were working with what became AQI before Saddam fell. In these things you often hold your enemies close. Given the Turks preoccupation with the far bigger threat of the PKK it's surprising how little hard evidence there is of active collusion with IS against them.

The oil smuggling business is pervasive and not exclusive to Salafi-Jihadis. It's often associated with tribal actors who controlled it before these guys arrived. The Salafi-Jihadis often came in as muscle in the East after the regime receded. So did the PKK. A large part of of IS's oil was recently reported to be flowing to the regime. There's a whole smuggling economy between the rebels and the regime as well that even includes arms trades. It is just a business participation does not suggest alliances let alone sympathy.

These conspiracy theories are widely believed but it is mostly naked agitprop demonising the enemy. For the PKK the Turkish state is the font of all evil. Even pretty obvious IS attacks in Turkey get blamed on Ankara. Most Iraqis also insist the Americans are in league with IS just as the rebels always claim the regime is.

Undoubtedly the strongest case for Takfiri collusion in Syria is with the Baath. Instrumental involvement in AQI's insurgency that set up ratlines into Syria, a series of prisoner releases, tactical alignments and smuggling deals. It gets steadily less substantial across time and the SAA getting frequently clobbered by IS suggests a different main narrative.

That's never amounted to as the hotly denied collaborative relationship as the PKK has had with their horrible Baathist frenemies in this civil war. The SAA shielding Manbij is just one of many examples.
 
On CMEC Eastern Expectations: The Changing Dynamics in Syria’s Tribal Regions
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Arab fears of the Kurds in al-Hasakeh Governorate have combined with fears of a Shammar resurgence to drive support for the Assad regime. Tribal members in the area, notably those of the Jubour, Sharabiyya, and Tayy tribes, fear the Shammar will use their growing strength to return to previous patterns of domination and establish Shammar predominance in the region.62 That is why few tribal leaders have broken with Damascus, and many have established militias closely allied with the Syrian Army, such as the National Defense Force or the Popular Committees.

For instance, a leader of the Tayy tribe in Syria, Mohammad al-Fares, gave a speech in September 2015 in al-Hasakeh publicly thanking “al-Hajj Jawad” for funding a Tayy militia called the Commandos (al-Maghawir).63 Hajj Jawad is the nom de guerre of an Iranian military figure in Syria whose true identity remains a subject of speculation, known for his role in mobilizing militias. Many similar militias, organized on a local basis and associated with the Syrian army, have sprung up in the area.64 The Assad regime is also drafting more tribal members from Deir Ezzor and al-Hasakeh into the regular army.65

To the PYD, the Syrian regime, and the Islamic State, who are struggling against one another for dominance in Syria’s northeast, dealing with the populations of Arab tribal background poses challenges. Some form of alliance with powerful elements of the community is indispensible, but the fear of tribal unity directed against outsiders has pushed them to engage in selective alliances. Such a multifaceted approach has only enhanced the fragmentary nature of tribal realities in Syria’s eastern regions.
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Long piece on the fragmentation of the tribes in the East rich in examples.

Basically the regime sowed division as a mean of control backing different figures in tribal elites and backing that up with muscle. This left tribal leaders somewhat divorced from their people and reliant on Damascus as was intended. Oil is often a key area of dispute with the early rising often looking more like entrepreneurial looting. With the retreat of the regime other actors move in to fill a very similar role: AQ, IS and the PKK. What follows is often intra-tribal conflict and further decay of social cohesion.

This looks to me like a badly broken society that's going to be very vulnerable to repeat occurrences of Salafi-Jihadi risings. Similar to al Anbar and perhaps worse.
 
On Reuters Syria's Kurdish-led administration sees end to economic 'siege
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The war in northern Syria has accelerated in recent weeks with the Russian-backed Syrian military launching an offensive against Islamic State in the same area. This week, the army reached territory that falls under the sway of the Kurdish groups for the first time since early in the conflict.

"The opening of a corridor between us and Aleppo will have a great positive impact," said Saroukhan, the head of the Kurdish-led administration in the northeast. "It is like an artery that will feed part of the Syrian body," he told Reuters in an interview.

It holds out the prospect of a big boost to a region that is home to rich agricultural areas and oil fields but which has little in the way of its own manufacturing base.

Syria's Kurdish region is bordered to the north by Turkey and to the east by the Kurdish government of northern Iraq. Both are hostile to the YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish militia. Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is waging an insurgency in Turkey.

Islamic State meanwhile controls areas to the south.

NEW CHANCE FOR TRADE

Saroukhan said recent Syrian government advances in rural areas east of Aleppo had led to tensions with the YPG in some areas. Asked if there were contacts with Damascus over trade, he said there were none and such talk was premature.

But he saw the prospect of private commerce with Aleppo, Homs and other government-held cities.

"Our expectations are that we can reach understandings with everyone in the other provinces," said Saroukhan, head of the biggest of three Kurdish administrations in northern Syria.

The people of northeastern Syria - Kurds, Arabs and other groups - were particularly in need of medicines and construction materials to rebuild from the YPG's conflict with Islamic State.

Northeastern Syria could in turn sell surplus agricultural output to other parts of the country, though Saroukhan said poor rainfall meant there would be no wheat for sale this season.

He also said surplus oil output from the region was looking for "exits, ways, crossings" to other parts of Syria, describing the area as the "oil well that supplied Syria for 65 years" and that "we can cooperate" in this regard.

He added that while the oil was under YPG protection, it was a national resource whose status should be determined in a final settlement to the Syria crisis.
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My bold, well they've little choice there having pissed off the Turks and the KRG being an effective vassal of Ankara. Interesting point on who owns the oil and who is its keeper.

And the main pipeline runs right through the heart of the Syrian Caliphate. IS are going to be blowing that up for the next decade.
syria_map.png
 

Well that's probably symptomatic of the Tahrir al Sham - Ahar al Sham split with the latter being in Ankara's corner.
 
CrabbedOne said:
These conspiracy theories are widely believed but it is mostly naked agitprop demonising the enemy. For the PKK the Turkish state is the font of all evil. Even pretty obvious IS attacks in Turkey get blamed on Ankara. Most Iraqis also insist the Americans are in league with IS just as the rebels always claim the regime is.
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I am not talking about conspiracy theories thankyou. I am talking about assistance directly provided by the state reported on by actual reporters on the ground rather than some bunch of wingnuts somwhere out there on the net. The articles are on this thread somewhere, I may have posted at least one of them.
 

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Another coalition of pro-Kurdish groups, the Halkların Birleşik Devrim Hareketi (Peoples’ United Revolutionary Movement, HBDH) contains exclusively Turkish communist groups. HBDH battalions include Stalinist, anarchist, Marxist-Leninists, and Leninist organizations. The Türkiye Komünist Partisi/Marksist-Leninist (Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist, TKP/ML) is a political party that operates within Rojava and has created an armed wing called the Türkiye İşci ve Köylü Kurtuluş Ordus (Liberation Army of the Workers and Peasants of Turkey, TIKKO).

Among the IFB are units that are explicitly comprised of volunteers from Western countries. These include Επαναστατικός Σύνδεσμος Διεθνιστικής Αλληλεγγύης (Revolutionary Union for Internationalist Solidarity, ΕΣΔΑ). Εσδα is a Greek Anarcho-Communist group in Rojava. The Antifascist Internationalist Tabûr (International Antifascist Battalion, AIT) is made up of Western members from a multitude of countries, led by an Italian. Brigade Henri Krasucki (Henri Krasucki Brigade, BHK) is a French volunteer force named after a French labor rights activist. BHK is modeled after the Bob Crow Brigade, a British volunteer force also named after a labor rights activist. All four of these brigades have pledged allegiance to IFB and coordinate directly with the YPG in Rojava. The remainder of the foreign volunteer forces are from Turkey.

Conclusion

Compared to the YPG, foreign volunteers fighting on behalf of the YPG (especially Western volunteers) remain few in number. For now, foreign volunteers represent a set of poorlytrained but ideologically-willing fighters and a significant international media boon for the Syrian Kurdish political cause.
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I imagine Salafi rebel jaws dropping in disbelief at the dense diversity of kufr.
 
On ISW Syria Situation Report: February 24 - March 2, 2017
...Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) - the successor of Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham - conducted simultaneous attacks targeting two regime intelligence branches in Homs City with gunfire, IEDs, and SVESTs on February 25. HTS Military Emir Abu Mohammad al-Joulani stated that the attacks aimed to undermine the ongoing Geneva Talks on the Syrian Civil War...
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I'd missed Joulani being that explicit. Not that any of the peace talks have been going well.
 
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