"More than they can chew" Economist

"A MONTH after rebel forces launched a blazing attempt to capture Aleppo, Syria’s second city, they are starting to wilt. The regime claims to have routed them from their main stronghold in the Salaheddin district. Clashes continue in the southwest of the city and around the airport, but the best that rebel commanders can now hope to achieve is to draw the regime into a quagmire. Whole streets have been reduced to rubble in the country’s commercial hub of 2.5m people. This is hardly the outcome the rebels were looking for, but it is not surprising either. Commanders have long acknowledged that they find it difficult to hold cities. With the recapture in February of the Baba Amr district in Homs, Syria’s third city, the regime showed it has no qualms over using heavy weapons to kill as many as necessary to regain control. At the end of July, with the battle in Aleppo under way, it brought out fighter jets for the first time. With little more than harsh words to fear from the outside world, the regime keeps using ever more powerful weaponry. A bombing from the air in Azaz, north of Aleppo, on August 15th left scores dead. America tried to put an end to the escalation of force when President Barack Obama declared on August 20th that use of chemical weapons could trigger an American military intervention, not least to keep them out of the hands of third parties, including Islamist terror groups." Economist

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Looks like the economist can still think and analyze. The decision to engage decisively in cities was fatal.  Insurgencies begin in the coutryside.  The insurgents should have read their "Mao, Giap, Lawrence and Guevara."  Lesson 1 for the insurgents.  First control the rural population, then 2- using the "sea" of the people cut the communications between towns, 3- Isolate the government land and air forces in the bases.  4- Then seek battle with larger and larger government forces based on an experience of success.  Oh well, better luck next time.     pl

 

http://www.economist.com/node/21560919

Comments

[E L]

When I was in the Marine Corps in the late 50's, the libraries at Camp Lejeune and Quantico did not have one book by Mao, Giap, Lawrence and Guevara. When I asked a colonel at the Quantico why, he said: "What do they know about war? They're all Commies." Sic transit....

[The Twisted Genius]

E L,

I think the whiz kids were preaching that the "Bomb" was all we needed to know about the military art back in those days. One Marine sought to fill that void. I grew up on Samuel Griffith's 1963 translations of Mao Tse Tung on Guerilla Warfare and Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Between those works and the lessons taught by a leathery faced, steely eyed Special Forces SFC, I was getting a good start to my professional education in ROTC in the early 70s.

[jonst]

lesson 5. Understand, exactly, which way the wind is blowing in the power centers of the US and Israel on this issue. Don't put too much stock in the bleeps and slogans from " the ambitious, but all accommodating women careerists, the young know-nothings and obamases and the surviving sycophants of officialdom".

Somewhere, someone, among the real powers that be made a decision...Assad stays. For the moment.

My guess is the surfacing of AQ--real and imagined--spooked Washington. Spooked them politically. Here in DC.

[Babak Makkinejad]

That decision of the Powers-that-Be, first articulated in Dr. Kissigner's Op-Ed on Peace of Westphalia, was an acknowlegement of the limits of the power of the "Coalition of the Willing".

[Tyler]

Out of honest curiousity, I ask the scholars of war here: What are good books about guerilla warfare?

[JustPlainDave]

I have a feeling that Mao goes by the wayside when one is hoping external players might do one's heavy lifting if they see the right signs...

[The Twisted Genius]

Well, you could reenlist and go for the Q Course to get a good basic education in guerrilla warfare. Seriously though, here's a few that I like:

Watch "The Battle of Algiers." We watched this during the first week of SFOC. My team used it in our guerrilla operations in urbanized terrain course that we taught other teams in 10th Group.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca3M2feqJk8

Samuel Griffith's 1963 translations of Mao Tse Tung on Guerilla Warfare
http://marines.mil/news/publications/Documents/FMFRP%2012-18%20%20Mao%20Tse-tung%20on%20Guerrilla%20Warfare.pdf

"Total Resistance - Swiss Army Guide to Guerrilla Warfare and Underground Operations" by Major H. von Dach Bern

Human Factors Considerations of Undergrounds in Insurgencies
DA Pamphlet No. 550-104, September 1966

I'm sure Colonel Lang has a more complete and scholarly list, but this is a good start.