Thoughts on Syria - 7 June, 2016

 

1.  Unless the US JCS are once again "off the reservation" and talking to the Russians behind the backs of the Obamanites, I don't think there is much effective coordination between the US and Russia over Syria other than the flight de-confliction regime.

2.  The flight de-confliction regime works well.  We haven't shot each other down yet, so ...  We now have the USS Harry Truman battle group standing inshore off Syria to launch attacks in Syria and Iraq.  This very likely requires passage through Russian controlled airspace within their air defense umbrella.  So ...

3.  Raqqa will be heavily defended.  IS cannot afford to give the place up.  there are probably quite a few Arab Sunni "civilians" there who support IS.  That has proven to be true at Fallujah.  As the R+6 force proceeds after the taking of Tabqa air base, resistance will get stiffer and stiffer.  We will see how well they do against that.  We will also see if the SDF really wants to sacrifice a great deal to capture this large city.  Their American "minders" are urging them forward, but, we will see ...

4.  The Russians evidently thought they could make an honest deal with Kerry/Obama.  Well, they were wrong.  The US supported jihadis associated with Nusra (several groups) merely "pocketed" the truce as an opportunity to re-fit, re-supply and re-position forces.  The US must have been complicit in this ruse.  Perhaps the Russians have learned from this experience.

5.  In the "truce" the Turks, presumably with the agreement of the US, brought 6,000 men north out of the non-IS jihadi defended area along the Turkish border.  This is the area around Azaz and to the east.  They trucked them around and brought them through Hatay Province in Turkey to be sent back into the Aleppo Province and to the city of Aleppo itself.  These men have been used in capturing Khan Touman SW of the city and in driving the YPG Kurds out of the part of the city that they held.  It will cost a lot of men to restore these situations.  Someone said to me that the border crossings from Hatay are under surveillance.   Well, so what!  That does not prevent the Turks supplying the jihadis through these crossing points.

6.  The same someone said that the result of the "cease-fire" positions Putin well in peace negotiations.  Yawn!  As I have said repeatedly, most sensible people know that you have to win on the battlefield unless you are Kerry and the girls at the WH.  There will now be more blood rather than less because of the Kerry/Obama attempt at cleverness.

7.  In a wonderfully clear proof of an absence of coordination between IS and the AQ linked groups (Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, etc.) IS launched a major offensive into the area from which the Turks removed the 6,000 men now in the Aleppo area.  IS has now taken most of that area and are nearly at the gates of the town of Azaz. 

Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.  pl

Comments

[bth]

probably do to a few unfortunate typos on my part.

[turcopolier]

bth

IMO there is no deal to be had. The Sunni triumphalists in
Saudi and Turkey will never rest until Syria is a Sunni sharia state. pl

[bth]

Smoothiex12, do you see Russia wanting to reduce the anxiety of its western neighbors or do you see Russia wanting to keep the scare up as a matter of self defense?

If Russia wants to reduce the anxiety level, how would she go about it? What tangible indicator would a western observer experience?

I'm not asking you to justify Russia's position and she has legitimate concerns of her own. But if she wanted to reduce the anxiety level and demonstrate it with tangible actions; what would they look like?

[bth]

But didn't Assad's dad successfully put down several Muslim Brotherhood revolts? 1985? His approach if I remember was to surround a city, level it for a few weeks with artillery, then send in the goons to haul off the survivors and their families. His reign of terror lasted for some decades in this manner.

One might ask, is it better to follow the Assad father's approach - surround, level with massive conventional barrages and then round up the survivors for persecution. Or as the current approach, precision bombing one at a time times several thousand which soon degrade to barrel bombs and let the rebels booby trap houses with IEDs use human shields.

In either way, it seems like a bloody mess resulting in civilian casualties plus destroyed cities. One being short and the other being long protracted. Yet the father's regime remained in power for a long time and the son's has not.

[David Habakkuk]

As a Brit, I am in no position to judge whether it is actually that, as ‘bth’ suggests, a U.S. President must ‘acknowledge’ – which appears to mean simply accept – the Turk and Saudi condition that Assad must go.

But precisely the suspicion that this kind of thing is the case – that the American government is a kind of large ‘dog’ wagged by a range of ‘tails’, prominently among them Saudi and Israeli, but also Turkish, which largely accounts for the way opinion is changing in this country.

It appears to be a fixed conviction among Western élites that the very evident changes here and elsewhere in Europe are the product of diabolically clever Russian propaganda. Actually, this is largely irrelevant. The ‘information wars’ between Russia and NATO consist largely of the latter scoring ‘own goals’.

[The Beaver]

@ Babak
The ministers of Defense of Russia, Syria and Iran are meeting in Tehran tomorrow whilst the SAA and Hizb'Allah are making in roads in Deir Ezzor after the SyAF bombed the ISIS local HQ two days ago.

[The Beaver]

@ bth

Ain't going to happen. Watch the speech of Assad from yesterday:
President Bashar al-Assad in his speech today addressing to the People’s Assembly of the 2nd legislative term noted that the fascist regime of Erdogan was focusing on Aleppo because it is the last hope for his Muslim Brotherhood project.

“Aleppo will be the grave where all the dreams and hopes of that butcher will be buried”

From the FB page of Tiger Forces:
https://www.facebook.com/Tiger.Forces007/

[Babak Makkinejad]

I agree.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Not at all, it was stupid for Fins to try to get into NATO and stupid for US and other NATO states to even consider it.

Just as it was stupid to admit the 3 Baltic states into NATO.

[Les]

Israeli jets strike Syrian military targets in Homs

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.723701

Israel has previously been accused of striking targets in Syria belonging to the Syrian military and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

[jld]

Ah! But blatant propaganda and constant mendacity is a bit wearing.
Could you, for instance, give us the references/sources which makes you think that
Lavrov is "trying to convince them that the hungry Bear only eats Ukrainians"?

[jld]

Yup!
Kinda difficult to fit someone else shoes...
:-D

[Linda Lau]

Reminds me of Muhammad Ali and the Mamelukes at the Citadel.

[David Habakkuk]

bth,

To be blunt, a very significant body of opinion in ‘Middle Britain’ regards the notion that because Putin was not prepared to see Ukraine – including Sevastopol – incorporated in NATO, he may be contemplating invading Finland, or Poland, or indeed the Baltics, as complete BS.

So the question such people are asking themselves is: Are people who talk such tripe fools, or knaves, or both?

On the changes in opinion in Britain, I have provided relevant links to comments in the British media – particularly the ‘MailOnline’ – time and again. And I have done so once more on this thread.

If people like you want to completely to destroy the legitimacy of American leadership of the West, you are going the right way about it.

A very large body of opinion in Britain is – for good reason – deeply concerned about the effects of mass immigration, and about terrorism.

More and more, the intelligent elements of this current of opinion see figures like Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Petraeus, and Ashton Carter, as enemies.

This is nothing to do with being 'anti-American' – for such people, the 'enemy within' – Blair, Cameron, and Merkel – is simply another version of the 'enemy without'.

But, increasingly, such people do not see Putin as the 'enemy without'.

They see him as a friend – one of us.

[The Beaver]

Would have thought that , by now, he would know when to shut up. However , reality is that he is a hypocrite and blaming others, whilst awaiting for the Chilcot report:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/08/tony-blair-accuses-jeremy-corbyn-of-standing-by-as-syria-is-bombed

“I’m accused of being a war criminal for removing Saddam Hussein – who, by the way, was a war criminal – and yet Jeremy is seen as a progressive icon as we stand by and watch the people of Syria barrel-bombed, beaten and starved into submission and do nothing,” Blair said.

[Daniel Nicolas]

Many of the problems in Syria are a direct result of insane practices by The United States. "Nobody" wants to:
- stop the practice of USA supplying terrorists with weapons and money to destabilize countries in the middle east?!?
- end the mass migration of refugees caused by said war in destabilized countries?
- defeat IS completely?
- establish friendly relationships with nuclear Russia, rather than isolating and antagonizing them to the point of sparking world war 3?

These are not extreme positions held by only a few. Do you mean Nobody in the current USA administration? I will agree to that.

[The Beaver]

Colonel,

A bit OT:

After threatening the US, now the chihuahua Saudi FM is blackmailing the UNSG wrt CAAC:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/08/saudi-arabia-united-nations-blacklist-yemen-ban-ki-moon

Ban ki-Moon is w/o spin since he has nothing to lose - he is on his last few months as UNSG but one wonders sometimes - may be he has been told that South Korea would lose somehow.

[different clue]

mbrenner,

I believe the DC FedRegime/Borg Industrial Complex is most of all trying to impose a new Cold War on the American public. They want to get us back under fear-based obedience and discipline. They want the Trump/Sanders eruption to go no further. They want to prevent any more such eruptions from ever occurring.

[different clue]

Earthrise,

Zbigniew Brzezinski has long wanted Russia destroyed. Does he want that for Anglo reasons? Zionist reasons? Or other reasons of his own?

[turcopolier]

bth

Are you really the same "bth?" Your version of Syrian history is a cartoon that ignores the sectarian malevolence of revolts against the Syrian government (a multi-confessional government) over the decades. The reduction of much of Hama to ruins followed unrelenting Sunni Muslim Brotherhood suicide car bomb attacks in Damascus and across the country as well as the mass murder of graduating cadets from the Syrian air force academy in Aleppo. What was the government supposed to do, roll over and surrender to the jihadis as you seem to want them to do now? You appear to have gone over altogether to the dark side and to now be a supporter of Borgist policies of regime change, support for the jihadis and their swinish Gulf supporters. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

That is very much my impression too; Erdogan behaves like a man who has been betrayed and is no exacting the price of that betrayal.

On the other hand, did someone instruct the PKK leaders to pick a fight with him?

[MRW]

bth,

Are you calling mbrenner hyperbolic?

If so, you need to listen to this, because you have missed the point.
https://audioboom.com/boos/4667614-anakonda-16-on-the-russian-frontier-stephen-f-cohen-nyu-princeton-eastwestaccord-com

If I have misunderstood your comment, my apologies.

[charly]

Sweden neutral? Their policy hyper Nato

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

The Kremlin’s attention has to be on Ukraine first.

The Syrian stand down confirms Russia’s willingness to negotiate and the West’s unwillingness to give peace a chance. The wild card is the “New World Order”. The outsourcing of jobs, the influx of migrants, austerity and the constant war are creating a pressure cooker with the white working class in despair:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/07/the-incredible-crushing-despair-of-the-white-working-class/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_wonk
Men with nothing to lose man barricades.

There is a full blown religious war underway in the Middle East. This is a natural response to a quarter century of war, over population, ethnic cleansing and theft of resources. It will not end until Turkey, Israel and the Gulf Monarchies are brought to heel. A change of the governments in the USA, UK, France and Germany will be required before an alliance can be formed with Russia and China to eliminate the danger from the Islamic State. Until then, the holy war will continue for years or until there is no one left.

[Thomas]

"So the question such people are asking themselves is: Are people who talk such tripe fools, or knaves, or both?"

Neither, they are malevolent destroyers of human society, a publicly proclaimed goal of this Creative Reality Cult.