http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22728798
Some nice unimpartial coverage there from the BBC. Ooh "dozens" of reinforcements, I bet Assad's shitting his pants. Meanwhile today Russia announced that they'd be sending
10 Mig-29 fighter jets to Syria as per a previous arms agreement. This has been timed for after Assad's speech last night where he said previous deals with Russia would be honoured. This is quite significant because it gives away what Russia's aims are and how they're posturing themselves for Geneva. Syria uses the older and close to obsolete mig-23 and mig-25 fighters from the 1970's for bombarding rebels. According to wikipedia the Syrian Air Force has a small number of mig-29's already, but these have been used sparingly in the conflict. The Mig-29 is a much more modern fighter jet, with the ones being sent to Syria are the most modern updated
M variant that's meant for matching the F-15 and F-16 strike aircraft. These aren't there for bombing runs on lightly-armed rebels, but to be a deterrant on further western intervention. It's saying to Israel in the short-term "don't try bombing Syria again" and it's also sending a message for the US not to start thinking about turning up on the Syrian coastline with any of those aircraft carriers.
Right now the Syrian Arab Army are the ones with the momentum in the fighting. This offensive that's been launched is part of strengthening it's position in any discussions at Geneva. With the momentum in the ground fighting on Assad's side, and with continued Russian support, it will be impossible for the Western powers to redraw the map of the region without accommodating him as they no doubt would like to. The Syrian Arab Army strategy has been quite successful following their initial failures that led to the revolt in the first place. He withdrew the regular army into the key metropolitan areas and gave swathes of strategically less important ground over to the rebels. The Syrian army withdrew to these key areas to be reinforced and Assad used the Mig fighter jets to bombard the rebels from distance to keep them at bay. They've now called up as many men as possible to participate in the counter offensive, along with Hezbollah, a tactic which is called "turtling" when you do it in Command and Conquer 2: Red Alert. Despite losing ground in the east, and on the Turkish border North of Aleppo, the Syrian Arab Army now has been reinforced with large force body of men, backed up with T-72 tanks and air power, that is slowly counter-attacking and carving govt controlled corridor between Damascus and the Alawite coastal areas that constitute Assad's base. Here's a some maps to show this.
EDIT: Liveleak doesn't like hotlinks. Click
here to see maps. Bottom one is most reliable.
Maybe they were expeting the Syrian Army to collapse with defections as happened in Iraq, and that did look a possibility at first, but I think the Syrian army has surprised the western analysts with it's discipline and it's ability to continue fighting. Sadly such discipline hasn't been exercised when it comes to the risk of harming civilians, as is the case with the Shabiha death-squads that were used at the beginning of the revolution to crackdown on protests. Whilst these still exist, and still committ atrocities, they've been slowly brought under the control of the regular Syrian Army, and used to reinforce it for this counter attack, alongside the Hezbollah re-inforcements.
The rebel militia's that control of many areas after the SAA's tactical withdrawl have ransacked and looted everything of value from the civilian population they ended up in control of and disgraced themselves in the process. What support they may have had at one time from the population appears to be dwindling. Many have fractured and split off to become armed criminal gangs that survive by simply robbing the populace. The most coherent and effective rebel group right now is Jabhat Al-Nusrah - which would appear to be mainly foreign Jihadi fighters with many from Al Queada in Iraq. These are the kids who grew up in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion and subsequent sectarian war. They are not radical islamists because they come from backward primitive culture, their fundamentalisation is a product of how they were caught up in global power politics. It's a shame. It's not known who funds them, but I would reckon wealthy individuals in the Gulf States and perhaps even the state's themselves are responsible. The Free Syrian Army doesn't seem to exist in any meaningful sense, and certainly the secular elements of Syrian society seem to have rallied round the regime to some extent rather than the opposition.
I saw this interview with a Sunni Muslim who supports Assad:
Interesting. I suspect that the jihadi's even if they succeed in removing Assad will not succeeding in replacing him with any government actually capable of getting the consent of the general population. As in Libya and Tunisia, these were predominantly secular societies and I don't think a Taliban-style state based on a Salafist literalist interpretation of Shariah Law is going to be able to survive, with or without the backing of the Gulf States.
And finally - a British man was killed in Syria yesterday, along with an American woman, a white American convert.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...the-rebels-against-assads-regime-8639051.html He was a muslim, but it's not known if he was acting independently or if he was part of our "non-military aid" to the rebels. It's quite galling that, when you think about it.
Anyway I might make another post later on about Turkey and the Kurds role in this. Erdogan's a real fool, a vain and dangerous one at that.
