East Idlib Pocket - 19 January, 2017

 

 "On January 19, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, captured the village of Qaital west of Umm Salasil in southwestern Aleppo, according to the Hezbollah media wing in Syria.

Currently, only one village – Umm Tinah – separates the SAA in the southwestern Aleppo countryside from the Tiger Forces’ positions around the Abu Duhur airbase in the eastern Idlib countryside. Once Umm Tinah is captured by the SAA, members of ISIS and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) remaining in the northeastern Hama countryside will be besieged by the SAA and its allies from all directions.

Meanwhile, the pro-government blog al-Masdar News reported that the 128th Brigade of the Republican Guard has been redeployed from the Qalamun Mountains to the southeastern Idlib countryside in order to reinforce the Tiger Forces there.

The Republican Guard’s 128th Brigade will likely take part in the final assault on the Abu Duhur airbase that should begin once the SAA reaches the airbase from the eastern and northern directions.

From its side, HTS and its allies have not conducted any notable defensive operations against the SAA recently. This could mean that the armed groups are again preparing for another large counter-attack against the SAA and its allies in southern Idlib or Aleppo." SF

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Looks like R+6 is going to close the mouth of the bag.  IMO that is not the best practice in this situation.  If they do that the surrounded HTS/IS force (increasingly the same thing due to defections) will form a hedgehog defense and fight until they run out of ammunition and suicide bombers.  That will cost R+6 more men and materiel than necessary.

I hope that a lot of air is applied to reduce the cost to R+6.  "Nape and nails" (napalm and high drag fragmentation bombs) are an excellent response to troops in these open farmlands.  Strategic air with thermobaric ordnance would be another.  pl  

https://southfront.org/syrian-army-tightens-siege-on-abu-al-duhur-airbase-militants-in-northeastern-hama/

Comments

[Annem]

What is going on with Russia taking its observers out of Afrin and according to the Turks, OK'ing their drive into Afrin against the PYD? Seems the Turks consulted Iran as well. This, of course, follows the US "reinterpretation of its plans" in northeastern Syria.

Is this the way that Russia tells the Kurds that their salvation is by cutting a deal with the SAG through Russian mediation on condition the US exits Syrian territory? Checkmate?

[Peter AU]

In the past, I have noticed Syria/Russia close the bag when not much is left inside.

With the Idlib offensive there seems a lot of conflicting or wrong reports from various sources, perhaps due to rapidly changing frontlines.
I found found Yusha Yuseef at Muraselon to be generally accurate, and also Syrian Civil War Map.

[Jony Kanuck]

Annem,
According to SF,Russian troops have not left Afrin but have, in fact erected several observation posts.

Colonel,
I wonder if the SAA & Russian air are in a hurry to liquidate the HTS/IS pocket because they are not sure how much mischief the Turkish army will get up to. I've heard the Turkish military appreciation of the situation is that taking Afrin with air support is do-able but without air, it's dicey. That hasn't kept the Turks from slipping heavy weapons to their pet jihadis in their area. And so far, the Kurds don't seem to be willing to let the SAA into Afrin. Also, this is the run-in to the Turkish Presidential elections in 2019 (?). Erdo can't come on as anything but the 'law & order' candidate.

[turcopolier]

Jony Kanuck

Combat aircraft and artillery are rarely attached to a ground force committed to action. Air and artillery deliver fires from their base locations against a variety of targets on a centrally directed basis. So, the same RuAF and Syrian aircraft can attack targets in East Idlib one day and over Afrin he next. pl

[turcopolier]

Peter AU

It is "murasiloon" in Arabic meaning correspondents. I looked at the site. Not a lot of analysis. pl

[ISL]

SST: For those (like me) who did not know, high drag fragmentation bombs are designed to prevent damage to the dropping aircraft for low deployments so that the bomb doesn't explode too close to the airplane.

The Russian version is the OFAB-500U

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/168346/russia-details-weapons-used-in-syria-airstrikes.html

[J]

Colonel,

The R6 could use their ground guided weapons systems, and pound the hamburger out of the HTS/IS liver eaters.

Load the ordinance, place it on auto (LOL) and sit back and listen to A'Studio – «Тик-так» (Фестиваль «Жара 2017») while the HTS/IS lights go out permanently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDMtsY2mBJI

[Peter AU]

Just reporting rather than analysis. Yusha Yuseef used to work as a reporter for AMN/Leith Fadel. Some sort of a falling out some time ago over something another reporter for AMN had posted on social media in the past. Seeoms to have gone out on his own with Muraselon since then and reporting seems conservative but accurate.

Appreciate your translations of Arabic to English. From the local reports from Syria and Lebanon to MSM, wikimapia and google maps, all spellings in translation are often different. Makes it difficult for me at times to locate a town/location on a map.

[turcopolier]

Peter AU

There really is no universally accepted system of transliteration of Arabic into English script. Arabic is the tongue of the angels and everything about that reflects that status. pl

[Bandolero]

Peter AU

You said: "With the Idlib offensive there seems a lot of conflicting or wrong reports from various sources..."

I agree with that. And as far as I understand there won't be anything immoral if, for example the SAA, would hold back some information on what they really have for a while. A lot of stuff what was reported from the east Idlib subpocket seems quite hard to believe for me.

Take the map above in the corner of this SST article and the information that Umm Tinah is the last HTS/FSA enemy position separating "the SAA in the southwestern Aleppo countryside from the Tiger Forces’ positions around the Abu Duhur airbase." Just have a look at Umm Tinah on a satellite map:

http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=35.701917&lon=37.222366&z=17&m=b

How many HTS/FSA enemies are in Umm Tinah and the surrounding area? 5, 10, 50? I find it hard to believe there are any enamies left there. Umm Tinah is a hamlet likely under fire control from at least four sides. If the SAA decides it's theirs I can't imagine any HTS/FSA elements could survive there longer than one hour. I would find the assumption more plausible that a SAA recon group was already there and found the village Umm Tinah empty of any human being already a while ago, but the SAA just didn't publish that information for the reason of not disencouraging people leaving the east Idib subpocket by telling them the SAA has already full control of the northern mouth since a while ago.

The whole story with the ISIS group in the east Idlib subpocket smells even more fishy. Who are these guys waving ISIS flags obviously headchopping their way forward like a wandering cauldron? Legend has it that this ISIS group was a small and largely forgotten subgroup in the ISIS Uqairibat pocket in Hama, suddenly managing to brake through SAA lines into the Idlib pocket, something what much larger ISIS groups never managed before despite trying hard.

And what are these ISIS guys going to do with there control of the east Idlib subpocket that they now seem to have? Are these guys going to make a last stand there or where and how do these guys are going to go from there? Are there going to try to go to west Idlib?

And then I saw pictures of a "big refugee wave" from the east Idlib subpocket, people on heavily loaded trucks and tractors with furniture on top. And then, there were some women and children to see on these images, but also cleanly shaved males in fighting age. Of course, that there were cleanly shaved, means, these guys were refugees and not ISIS or AQ fighters relocating. ISIS and AQ guys can't shave? And what's beyond the furniture on top of these overloaded trucks? On the pics I have seen in the media beyond the furniture on top of the trucks there could be anything, even large artillery pieces. I'm not saying that this is the case, but I'm highly sceptical that the public, and even those following the situation closely, have a correct understanding of what's really going on there.

The more closely I follow the "news" from the east Idlib subpocket the more question marks I have.

[turcopolier]

Peter AU

"The more closely I follow the "news" from the east Idlib subpocket the more question marks I have." Ah, you are learning something about the nature of the combat intelligence business. Information is always incomplete. Information is often conflicting. Information often is mutually conflicting. To make sense of this is the task of the commander and his staff. If you can't do that you deserve to lose your job as a combat intelligence officer. Some people have a gift for this. In the 19th Century someone who had that gift was usually called an "outpost officer." There have been numerous attempts to devise systems that reduce this process to a mechanistic weighing of indicators in accordance with a set of rules. such systems always fail because the human race does not function that way. What is actually needed is an encyclopedic knowledge of warfare and the effects of various weapons system and terrain. If you have that, then you still have to be intuitive. In other words, you guess. pl

[blowback]

The SAA hasw closed the pocket and captured the air base according to the Syria page on the Live Map website. This site seems to be pro-jihadist so when they report progress by the SAA, it generally really has happened.

http://syria.liveuamap.com/

There are both ISIS and HTS forces trapped inside the pocket and since they both seem to hate each other more than they hate the SAG perhaps we will see ISIS and HTS attacking each other first until one of them controls the whole pocket.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Well may be. But there is a well-known hadith, that the language of Paradise is Persian.

[johnf]

"Syria: Turkey war planes launch strikes on Afrin"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-42759944

[Adrestia]

There have been numerous attempts to devise systems that reduce this process to a mechanistic weighing of indicators in accordance with a set of rules. such systems always fail because the human race does not function that way. What is actually needed is an encyclopedic knowledge of warfare and the effects of various weapons system and terrain. If you have that, then you still have to be intuitive. In other words, you guess.

I totally agree. Intuition is knowledge you've forgotten. It takes a huge amount of work and experiences to achieve that.

That's why the blind faith in Artificial Intelligence and the likes is believing in miracles. I've just scanned the subjects of the World Economic Forum and the faith is still very present. AI and the fourth and fifth industrial revolution will be our salvation and the second coming.

We humans are very primitive and rigid in thinking. Especially in larger social and organizational structures.

[Kooshy]

Russians, Iranians and Syrians are seating back eating popcorn and are laughing their asses off watching Turks run over the main US allies (you read pawns) in Syrian meaning the poor desperate Kurds. Like the lessen Barazanis got a few months ago was not enough. The R+6 love to show the world and specially the US allies, how unreliable and useless alliance with US, Israel and the rest of western team are.

[Kooshy]

Is this the reason they say Persian is sugar? (Speaking Persian is sweet, like sugar it melts in mouth)

[Cortes]

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V is supposed to have observed
“To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse - German.”

[turcopolier]

Cortes

Ainsi soit-il. pl

[turcopolier]

Adrestia

"Intuition is knowledge you've forgotten. It takes a huge amount of work and experiences to achieve that." Perfect. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Arabi kamel, Farsi asal.

[Babak Makkinejad]

No, intution is not the knowledge that you have forgotten, it is a knowledge that you cannot justify solely on the basis of prior knowledge that you may have acquired. It is a species of insight. Women are born with a sense of intuitive realism, men, not so much.

[outthere]

:Intuition is knowledge you've forgotten. It takes a huge amount of work and experiences to achieve that.
That's why the blind faith in Artificial Intelligence and the likes is believing in miracles"

I used to believe that, and I used to play go too, a lot.
But recently a computer has defeated the best go player on earth. The computer did it with experience, it was programmed to play more games in a hour than a person could play in a lifetime, and remember them all.

So I still respect human intuition, but AI deserves a lot of respect too. Ignore that at your peril.

[turcopolier]

outthere
Were you any good at "Go?" pl

[turcopolier]

Babak

IMO you are not making the necessary distinction between intuition and instinct. pl