Aleppo. Assault or no assault?

"Anti-regime guerillas have battled to stave off an onslaught by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo on Sunday as the government claimed it had defeated a rebel assault in Damascus. Despite days of heavy skirmishes in the south-west of Syria's second city, a decisive battle is yet to begin.

The rebels are in control of a crescent-shaped area, from the east to the south and centred on the suburb of Salahedine. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) has set up a network of checkpoints in the neighbourhoods it controls, run by young militia fighters, many of them extremely nervy. It remains encamped in much of the hinterland to the north of the city, which it entered on 20 July, and troops are using anti-regime villages in these areas to move reinforcements into Aleppo." Guardian”  

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Two days old but still interesting, a decision point for the Syrian government is whether or not they should assault and clear the city quickly or "sweat" the opposition forces out over some time in the hope of not destroying the economic value of the city.  The Sunni business community there as well as the Christian minority are all assets that Assad will not want to ruin.

IMO he will decide on a fairly long siege.  pl

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/29/syria-unrest-assad-forces-aleppo

Comments

[Kunuri]

"Two days old but still interesting, a decision point for the Syrian government is whether or not they should assault and clear the city quickly or "sweat" the opposition forces out over some time in the hope of not destroying the economic value of the city. The Sunni business community there as well as the Christian minority are all assets that Assad will not want to ruin."

Albayim, the beautiful city of Aleppo id already ruined.

There is no such thing as a "community" anymore.

There is no more economic value to that city for years to come.

Assad forces can not resupply, the roads, leading to border points are contolled by the rebels. (I love using the term, I am a UNLV alumni)

The rebels in Aleppo so far, have been indiginous, they are being reinforced by over thousand from the surrounding areas.

Defections from the Syrian Army are biting.

Rebels morale is sky high.

Several para military-police HQs have faleen in Aleppo central.

Several pushes by Syrian Army in suburbs have been stopped.
The Syrian regualar forces can now see first hand that "their" country will never be the same.And that they are not fighting against Islamists, terrorists, or foreigners, but their fellow Syrians since the fighting is in such close quarters.

Telling that Syrian infantry is unwilling to go into hot spots on foot, prefer armor protection, and so armor is always sent in front alone, and cut to pieces, like primitive men hunting down mammoths in ice age.

That helicopters and fighter bombers are of no use above them in alleys, or in roads out in the country.

Ans so on...

And the population has largely cleared the urban areas, giving the rebels an advantage...

To me, time is on the side of the rebels, Assad had had his forces concentrated for a decisive attack days ago, but its too late now.

I expect the airport and the old citadel falling into rebel hands soon, and Assad forces pulling back to Damascus for refit.

[Kunuri]

Also, Guardian is a step behind regarding developements in Aleppo, I follow misinformation from quite a few rag tag sites, youtube volunteers, regular citizen journalists. After all, misinformation still has information in it.

[turcopolier]

kunuri

"the beautiful city of Aleppo id already ruined. There is no such thing as a "community" anymore" no. That is incorrect. pl

[Kunuri]

Albayim, I will gladly take being incorrect on those two points. Sorry for the misspelling though.

[fatsamurai]

Kunuri,

"And that they are not fighting against Islamists"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_m0NqL7Ulc

the man clearly says that Bab Al Hawa is now an "Islamic Emirate" and the Al-Qaeda flag is also seen clearly.

As for
"or foreigners"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV9p3aKk_1M&feature=plcp

this was a Saudi Imam killed in the fighting there are many instances of Libyans and Tunisian Jihadists killed in the fighting and I would be happy to provide you with more videos.

[Matthew]

Col: Kunuri is also peddling one-sided propaganda. If he cared about the beautiful city of Aleppo, his Jihadi trash friends would not be using its civilians as human shields and its historic architecture as a battlefield.

[D]

Syrian army clearing streets, not sure of city. In terms of military performance, not the worst I have seen but not the best. Looks like a mix of regulars and some kind of militia (not in proper uniforms). No indication of indiscriminate killing "of their own people".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ovxQFGWlYwg#t=87s
I doubt FSA have ammunition to hold out for very long. Perhaps the FSA etc plan is to have UN stop the fighting under the guise of stopping a massacre.

[hamster]

There certainly is considerable destruction in some parts of Aleppo. Today i witnessed jet aircraft dive rocketing the city - wasn't close enough to tell which neighborhood exactly but it was the south west. Don't know why jet has to nosedive in order to fire rockets??

As for community spirit - those who had it still do and those who didn't still don't.

There are certainly thousands of displaced people - public parks, schools and the university dorms are teeming with refugees from the stricken areas. They are being fed and clothed by generous people.

[turcopolier]

"considerable destruction in some parts of Aleppo. Today i witnessed jet aircraft dive rocketing the city - wasn't close enough to tell which neighborhood exactly but it was the south west. Don't know why jet has to nosedive in order to fire rockets??" Considerable destruction, eh? Welll, there is destruction and then there is destruction. I have been looking at combat damaged cities snce I was eight ywars old. Bremen, Frankfurt, Hamburg - now those were considerably destroyed. i lived in those towns in the late forties. Vietnam? There were a lot of towns that had substantial damage when I was there. They were all provincial towns out in the country. There were buildings with bullet ad shell holes in them, but the towns were quickly functioning soon after fighting stopped around them. Saigon, Nhatrang, Bien Hoa, An Loc, Pleiku, etc., were pretty much untouched in spite of being repeatedly rocketed with 122 mm. artillery rockets. Hue was the site of an extended pitched battle in the citadel. Outside the citadel in this large town the damage was minimal. I was in Iraq during their war with Iran. Baghdad had been repeetedly bombarded with Iranian HE SCUDs. I was present whihin a few hundred feet when SCUDS impacted. This happened once when I was in a night club, the Khan Marjan. The building shook, and then the music started again. When we went out there was a two story building missing across the street, but traffic was flowing normally. My point? Don't get your underwear in a twist over opposition claims and the bleats of Hemingway wannabes in the foreign press. Oh, yes, the rockets go where the nose of the airplane is pointed when it fires them. pl

[turcopolier]

D

"In terms of military performance, not the worst I have seen but not the best" That pretty much sums up my extensive experience of the Syrian armed forces, but, how good do they have to be? As TTG said, this must be quickly eating up the FSA's limited supply of ammunition. pl .

[Tore]

Colonel. If Assads troops fight it out in house to house fighting, would not this provide ample oppurtunity for soldiers to desert. My impression is that only a few divisions worth of troops are willing to fight for Assad, the rest fight because they don't want to be excecuted by their officers.

If Assad sends those units that he can rely on, who will be left to defend Damascus from reinfiltration by the rebels?

[turcopolier]

tore

"My impression is that only a few divisions worth of troops are willing to fight for Assad" IMO your "impression" is massively incorrect. This war is not about Bashar Assad's personal rule. It is a civil war between the more traditional Sunni Arabs, the Alawis, the Shia and the Christians and Sunni jihadis both home grown and foreign. The military is full of the anti-rebel groups. The religious fanatice were purged in the past as they became known. The government forces see their role as that of protection of "moderism" in Syria. Their attitude is simple. They would rather die on their feet than llive as dhimmis. When masked rebel commanders in the streets of Aleppo denounce the "infdel" regime, they mean just that. pl

[Matthew]

Col: The FSA propaganda is getting really tiresome. Words have meaning. For example, General Patton wasn't joking he when talked about "removing" whole towns in Germany and Austria. See http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Genral+Patton+on+you+tube&mid=D33F5C6AA56AF3D2F66CD33F5C6AA56AF3D2F66C&view=detail&FORM=VIRE6 (Watch at 2:09).

BTW, this is another instant classic: "...the bleats of Hemingway wannabes in the foreign press."

[Bill H]

"This war is not about Bashar Assad's personal rule."

This is an important point about which the American media does not have the faintest clue. CBS News is constantly harping about the "popular uprising against the Assad dictatorship" even as they admit that it is a civil war.

[fatsamurai]

Syrian ally Iran has warned their common neighbour Turkey that it will meet a harsh response should Ankara carry out any strikes inside Syrian territory, a pro-Damascus daily reported on Monday.

"Any attack on Syrian territory will meet with a harsh response, and the Iranian-Syrian mutual defence agreement will be activated," the Al-Watan newspaper said.

"Turkey has received very strong warnings in the past few hours and the following message -- beware changing the rules of the game," the paper added.

From Ahram english

[hamster]

Point taken regarding level of destruction - I recall a cousin of mine who lived in Homs saying that the snipers were worse than the artillery..

[D]

Tank allegedly captured by FSA and used for random city bombardment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6tjZT_AIjM&feature=plcp
Might need gun barrel realignment!

Also of note: Christians are forming armed militias:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/120731/aleppo-christians-islamists-jihadis-al-qaeda-iraq-sectarian-conflict

[Kunuri]

Matthew,

Please get a grip and avoid ad hominems and false accociations to make a point.

Thank you.

[David Habakkuk]

Much recent comment on Syria and the United States puts me in mind of the history of Zacarias Moussaoui. After this sometime frequenter of the Finsbury Park mosque in London – then well-known as a breeding-ground of Islamic extremism – was picked up by the Minneapolis FBI in August 2001, an associate told them that he followed a ‘prophet’, Ibn al Khattab.

Variously reported to have been born in Saudi Arabia or Jordan, Khattab had fought in the Afghan war and other conflicts, before becoming a leader of Chechen insurgents. It was the interest Moussaoui had expressed in learning how to fly an airliner which had brought him to the attention of the Minneapolis FBI. And capable agents there both concluded that it was likely that a terrorist operation was involved – and, despite a lack of cooperation from the British, rapidly acquired evidence from French and other sources linking Khattab to Osama bin Laden.

However, they could not get permission to search Moussaoui’s laptop. A crucial official in the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit believed that the Chechen insurgents were only dissidents engaged in a civil war, and not hostile to the U.S.

The give-away here is the use of the word ‘dissident’ – as though Moussaoui was simply following in the footsteps of some Chechen equivalent of Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov. In fact, the politics of the Caucasus and Central Asia, even more perhaps than that of the Middle East, is full of labyrinthine complexities. And, as elsewhere, there are an abundance of people who are very happily play to our congenital propensity to reduce complex and ambiguous situations to a simple drama of ‘good guys’ versus ‘bad guys’, ‘white hats’ versus ‘black hats’ – with our own blameless selves always unambiguously on the side of virtue.

[David Habakkuk]

There are useful links to a lot of stories on the possible assassination of Bandar on the Fabius Maximus site.

(See http://fabiusmaximus.com/2012/08/01/41440/ )

The situation still seems opaque -- but if there was no smoke whatsoever behind this fire, one would surely have expected to see a more convincing rebuttal by now.

[Tore]

Thank you for your assesment colonel. I think the longer the killing continues the more you will be correct. However I still think a secterian civil war has not yet started, and is avoidable. I should perhaps have used the regime instead of Assad, since he is part of a larger structure, and him alone leaving is unlikely to stop the fighting if the regime remains in place.

IMHO the sunni rank and file concrips are unwilling participants in this war and using them in close quarter fighting presents a bigger risk of them deserting. As I have no millitary experience, I need your input on this. Would pitched engagements in a city like Aleppo make desertion easier for the soldiers? Somehow crawling away after dark?

As for the religious element, I see increased relgiosity as an essential part of war. Living with so much death around you means that one is likely to seek comfort wherewer it can be found. The question in Syria is how much extremists will benefit from this. The longer this continues the more people will go over to the dark side. But I believe that the modernist elements of the Syrian opposition is still very strong.

I guess I'm an optimist still. However I am not one of those who has to prepare for the worst.

[turcopolier]

tore

IMO you completely misread the situation . I have answered all your points previously. You will believe what you wish to believe no matter what I write. pl

[turcopolier]

DH

Yes. By this time the Saudis should have provided proof of life. pl

[fatsamurai]

http://www.youtube.com/user/SyriaTruthNetworkENG/videos

Tore look at the various beheadings perpetrated against Pro Assad.

"the modernist elements of the Syrian opposition is still very strong"

I beg to differ

[Matthew]

I think I have a grip. If you support an insurgency that contains Al Queda, that is your choice. Just don't simultaneously wail about vandalism in Syria.

Thank you.