Let’s state the obvious bits and get them out of the way:
- The rebels are basically Al-Qaeda;
- They are supported by Turkey, Israel and the US;
- The Syrian army barely fought during the initial attacks and it was very embarrassing;
- Aleppo fell in a couple days. It may take a couple years to take it back;
- The timing is intended to take advantage of Hezbollah’s being weakened and tied down by Israel.
Syria was losing the previous war until Hezbollah and Russia intervened. It may well lose this war if Hezbollah and/or Russia don’t send troops, but both of them have other enemies they need to worry about.
If Syria falls, Russia loses its Mediterranean naval and air bases and thus a great deal of its military reach. Hezbollah loses its main supply line to Iran.
The big mistakes that lead to this were playing footsie with Turkey/Erdogan and tolerating a frozen conflict. Syria, with Russia and Hezbollah’s support could have conquered Idlib, but Russia decided not to, leaving enemies with a foothold in Syria. Those enemies waited till the best time, then re0-openned the war.
If you’re winning a war and can win the war, then frozen conflicts are a bad idea. They remain a knife near your throat. Russia made this mistake in 2014 as well, when it could easily have fully defeated Ukraine and imposed a peace.
Hopefully they’ve learned the lesson. They do have enough reserves left to send sufficient troops to Syria. This time, win the war.
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bruce wilder
U.S. policy in Syria has long been to promote chaos: the U.S. backs factions opposed to each other (pro-Türkiye and pro-Kurd) as well as fundamentally hostile to the U.S. itself (Al-Qaeda). This borders on insanity — not even a banker backs opposing sides in a war for long — and is deeply immoral.
Daniel Lynch
Agree that it was a mistake to allow Syria to continue to be illegally occupied.
On the other hand, the Russian people have limited tolerance for foreign wars, and while Russia is OK with aiding its allies, it probably doesn’t want to do all the fighting for them. Syria does not seem to be pulling its weight. Now, maybe there are legit reasons — the economic sanctions, the stolen oil, years of civil war, the lack of social unity due to the different religions. I don’t know, since I have never set foot in Syria. My long distance impression is that Assad is smart and has good intentions, but nonetheless he has not been able to turn things around. I’m sure that is being discussed in Moscow and Tehran.
Feral Finster
The problem is not sending troops to Syria, but supplying them.
The Russian leadership has shown itself to be dithering and indecisive, and Russian intel keeps getting caught with its pants down.
marku52
Major league f*ck up. I see Russia sacked the general in charge, and replaced him with the guy that defeated the “rebels” back in 2015.
And of course the US is supporting the head choppers. There is an unconfirmed report that US A10’s attacked a column of Iraqi soldiers coming to support the Syrian Army.
Yes, the frozen conflict idea bit Russia in UKR, it just gives one side time to re-arm. In the Syrian case, lots of the army got de-mobilized. Bad mistake. And now the head choppers have UKR assistance with drones and EW stuff. They are even wearing the UKR colors as armbands.
Pick any conflict in the globe, and the US will be on the wrong side of it.
And Genocide Joe, after declaiming for months that he wouldn’t do it, pardoned his crack head son. Rumor is, Hunter threatened to write a tell all book if Joe didn’t’ do it. Who knows, there is certainly enough crime in that family to be worth covering up. Joe really is throwing an “Angry old man mad at the world” finger at us all.
Going to be a very dangerous next 6 weeks.
Curt Kastens
I am here reports that large numbers of Shia Iraqi military forces are pouring in to Syria. If this is true this could be a blessing in disguise. There forces will then be on the border of Israel. Hurray!!
It has been widely reported that the rebels number only 15,000 with no air force. That means that their efforts to topple Assad will soon run out of steam. It may be difficult to drive them back to where they came from.
But once these traitors to Islam can be boxed in, in Northern Syria, kept in Check by Russian allied Mercenaries (South Azorian Troops pherhaps) the bulk of the Iraqi forces along with the bulk of Assad’s forces can be placed along the Israeli border to make an invansion of northern Israel a feebul threat.
Soredemos
What actually happened seems to still be very confused. As best I can tell there was a combination of Syrian army troops simply being bribed to leave their positions, and hits on Syrian communications causing Syrian officers to make the understandable decision to fall back rather than fight without clear communications, which if true means lost territory but preserved soldiers. Either way, only some of the elite Tiger Forces units consistently held their ground.
Russian led airstrikes seem to be inflicting heavy losses. If true, maybe this will be a case where the attackers have great early success but get stuck while suffering huge losses. Syria’s big problem is the lack of quality infantry. Iraq and perhaps Iran could fix that defect. Really they just (‘just’) need to resolve to come up with a strategic plan to resolve the Idlob problem once and for all. Definitively remove the cancer. Russia and Iran can probably devise and run the plan, Russia can provide air support, Iran and Iraq can do the bulk of the ground fighting. Likely Syria would be a junior partner fighting in its own territory.
Also it’s likely the Ukrianian Nazis providing drone support are going to take a heavy toll on Syrian armor. Syria lacks the holistic set of defenses needed to counter that next-gen type of threat.
mago
Let’s retire the word “rebel” fergodssake and replace it with the accurate term “terrorist””.
That’s what the presstitutes do when propagating the empire managers’ lies, after all.
The white hats are rebels; the black hat terrorists behead babies, then rape their mothers against unplugged incubators, and if you disagree you’re a pinko.
There are two truths: the relative and the absolute. That’s it. We live in the relative world where black is white and might is right.
Yeah, it’s a shit show . . .
someofparts
I imagine there are plenty of reasons why Putin cannot just dismiss Erdogan or swat him out of the way, but he must be so very very aggravated by the man’s serial treachery.
Exactly what is the issue with the Kurds for the Turks? I got the impression that this is part of the backstory on why the Turks are jacking the Syrians around like this.
someofparts
NC has a good post on all of this.
Also, is it just me, or is Erdogan being super foolish to side with US/Israel against Russia/China/Iran/his own people? I’ve gotten used to jaw-dropping stupidity from US misleadership, but admit to being a bit surprised to see a foreign head of state be as short-sighted as the doodle heads running this place.
bruce wilder
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) are officially terrorists but the Media are dutifully telling us that they have reformed and are now the legendary “moderates” that the U.S. is forever seeking to arm and train. No longer gangster warlords in Idlib, they are now technocratic administrators.
Occasional Commentator
@Daniel Lynch
>My long distance impression is that Assad is smart and has good intentions
Assad and his family are notoriously corrupt and more interested in providing a luxurious lifestyle for themselves and their cronies than they are in running Syria effectively. The fact that Aleppo fell so quickly and the invaders met with almost no resistance speaks to this. A smart leader with his country’s interests at the forefront would have kept his eyes on the “rebels” in Idlib and had a plan of action ready in case they decided to make a power move.
It also can’t be denied that the Assad family is despised by a significant number of Syrians for its extraordinarily vicious methods of dealing with even relatively minor dissent over the decades. It has a serious legitimacy problem and Syria’s enemies exploit this to the hilt. A transition of power to a successor that doesn’t have the Assad family’s baggage is all but impossible because it is basically a dynasty and if the family falls so does Syria. Both Russia and Iran have in the past expressed frustration at Assad’s inflexibility and incompetence but given the leadership structure in Syria they are unfortunately stuck with him.
Without Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Iraqi PMU militias in the fight Assad’s goose would have been cooked in 2015 but today most of these actors are weakened or occupied elsewhere. The Syrian population has suffered under war, sanctions and bad leadership for over a decade and its not clear how many in 2024 are willing to go into the meat grinder again to keep the Assad clan at the top of the food chain while they continue suffering in poverty in a broken country.
An uncomfortable truth is that when Israel went full nazi psycho, Iran and Hezbollah clearly did not live up to their fighting rhetoric and let Israel hammer them repeatedly without seriously fighting back. They might have had a rational reason for this (avoiding total war and mass death and destruction in their respective countries) but it has made them look weak. The assassination of the entire Hezbollah leadership, top IRGC commanders repeatedly killed in Syria and Ismail Haniyeh killed in the capital city of Hamas’s main state sponsor have dealt the resistance and its credibility a serious blow. The attack on Aleppo is a direct consequence of this.
With Sunni/Shia animosity blowing up again, the Syrian army caught on the back foot, a complacent Assad incapable of mustering a native fighting force and Trump and his fanatically anti-Iran cabinet taking office next month… it’s not a good situation in Syria right now.
Tallifer
Syrian Christians and Druze are in for a terrible time if the Jihadists beat Assad.
Feral Finster
“Also, is it just me, or is Erdogan being super foolish to side with US/Israel against Russia/China/Iran/his own people?”
Erdogan craves American carrot and fears American stick. His own people never come into the equation.
“Only about 25% of the population of Turkey can really be called human beings….” A Turkish banker acquaintance. That pretty much sumes the mentality up.
KT Chong
Thank goodness BRICS rejected Turkey’s application to join. Never though I’d say this… it was actually India that rejected Turkey, (Russia and China would have welcomed Turkey into BRICS;) in 20/20 hindsight, India has saved BRICS from being sabotaged/undermined from within by Turkey.