The Influence of Air Power upon Syrian History
Here are some recent videos of Russian bombings of Islamic state oil infrastructure (LOL at the guy getting out of Dodge at 0:25).
And a bombing of a nicely arraigned line of oil tankers:
All of which raises a rather obvious question: If this is easy as easy as shooting fish in a barrel – and it sure looks like it – why are there still any such installations and orderly truck columns in the empty desert to bomb in the first place?
The US military claims that such attacks were “minimally effective.” Considering that this was not the case even in 1944, when Allied (primarily US) bombing crippled German mobility despite Germany’s formidable IADS and the much more primitive surveillance and targetting technology of the time, this is implausible. At least the US has since started doing the same thing, after getting named and shamed into doing so at the UN by Putin. (And attempting to attribute Russian strikes on ISIS oil infrastructure to themselves. I wonder if in two generations’ time most Westerners will come to believe the US played the most important role in defeating ISIS, as happened with WW2).
The Daily Beast’s coverage of Russia’s Syria intervention by neocon Michael Weiss.
The reason is that the strategy has always been not to decimate Islamic State, but to “funnel” it away from “moderate” rebels towards the SAA. Had that not been the case, ISIS would have never been able to travel across the hundreds of kilometers of open desert to take Palmyra. To add insult to injury, neocon propagandists continually claim (actually: Project) that Assad is in a functional alliance with ISIS, a characterization that was extended to Russia when it waded in.
To be sure there were plenty of Whac-a-Mole type of strikes, but these by themselves are militarily meaningless. Offing individual scumbags such as “Jihadi John” makes for good propaganda, but those guys are a dime a dozen in ISIS. Ultimately, victory lies in regaining ground from the terrorists, and on that front the tide seems to have turned decisively in favor of the SAA.
This is where the Russian Air Force can hopefully make a big difference. Even the fighters already in place will allow the Syrians to effectively double their number of sorties, and Russian fighter pilots are much more skilled and have more modern armaments than their Syrian counterparts. Effectively, this translates to a tripling or quadrupling of Syrian air power that can be concentrated in support of SAA ground operations. Air power can seriously degrade the combat power of enemy formations that do not have adequate AA counters to it (that describes both the FSA/Al Nusra and ISIS). Whereas a front might have once been in equilibrium, due to roughly matching combat power on either side, a sustained air campaign could begin to systemically swing the advantage over to the SAA and eventually enable the reconquista of Syrian territorities currently under renegade Islamist control.
That is pretty much exactly what seems to have happened at Kweiris Airbase, finally relieved after a 2.5 year siege by an SAA armored thrust supported by Russian air power.
The Aleppo-Raqqa Route. Click to enlarge.
And the doubling of the Russian air contingent in Syria proper – together with the introduction of strategic bombers (the Tu-160 Blackjack has been used in anger for the first time ever) – has now for all intents and purposes amplified the air power available to the SAA relative to before the Russian intervention by an order of magnitude.
The pace of ground operations is likewise only going to pick up from here. With ISIS shattered around Kweiris, a further thrust through Deir Hafir to Jirah Airbase (captured by ISIS last August) would cut off the northern part of the organization from its capital at Raqqa; the last remaining connection, via Tishrin Dam, could be easily plugged with the air power now at the SAA’s disposal.
Palmyra would be the other obvious target, and indeed activity seems to be heating up there as well. That said, it would probably be worthwhile to wait for a few months before starting any assault. With air control, and the vast expanses of open desert between Palmyra and the Islamic State heartlands, it would make sense to starve the Palmyra defenders of supplies first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skp3tzgNTIA
In the meantime, ISIS is beginning to bleed dry. Not helped by its flashy policy of mass POW executions, which has predictably resulted in their opponents starting to fight to the death, they wasted a bunch of fighters in a last ditch attempt to capture Kweiris before its relief, and have continued to mount extremely costly frontal assaults against Deir ez-Zor (DEZ).
With ISIS now getting rolled back in both Syria and even more spectacularly in Iraq, it makes sense that it would want to focus on consolidating its internal communications lines, which the heavily fortified DEZ bisects. But that outpost is guarded by some of the SAA’s most elite units and commanded by the legendary Issam Zahreddine (see right). Having held out for years, the chances of it falling now with the arrival of Russian air power are much reduced.
So it will continue serving as a meatgrinder, admittedly largely for the hapless and judging from the rate of executions for desertion not overly enthusiastic conscripts that Islamic State increasingly has to rely upon.
A Geopolitical Coup?
From a geopolitical perspetive, Russia’s involvement is beginning to look like a coup of the first order.
Three weeks ago, in Syria and the Three Wars, I identified a few possible pitfalls as well as advantages that could accrue from this. To date, Russia hasn’t fall into any of the pitfalls, and lapped up all the advantages.
Possible pitfalls
Afghanistan-like quagmire – Nope. Still no ground intervention on the horizon. One suicide, zero direct military casualties. (Though the Saker does identify incipient mission creep).
Will enable “Putinsliv” (abandonment) of Novorossiya – Contra Prosvirnin & Co.’s fears, there is no indication that this is happening either. (At the moment tensions are beginning to heat up again there. Considering the multitude of false war scares we’ve had there, however, chances are it will continue to remain frozen for the foreseeable future).
Advantages
Provide RL training – Is happening.
“Politely” demonstrate Russian military power – This plan was not just fulfilled but overfulfilled, with many second-rate Western analysts apparently shocked – shocked! – that Russia with its decades-old Orc Tech built a functional air base from scratch within a few month from which it maintains extremely high fighter sortie rates that put the USAF to shame, and flings cruise missiles from thousands of miles away with pinpoint precision. Even observers otherwise familiar with Russian military capitabilities were impressed by the magnitude of the improvements since the South Ossetian War. Incidentally, and exactly as I suggested, this also makes a mockery – in the most graphic and explicit terms possible – of the Ukrainian junta’s tall tales that it was “at war” with Russia and beat back Pskov paratrooper brigades and Buryat divisons by the dozen.
Further Advantages
That I hadn’t spelled out in detail, but which are becoming increasingly evident.
Very good PR both for the Russia Stronk! crowd and beyond – To be fair, at least until the Paris Attacks, this was limited to Putin’s usual Western fans – i.e., those not under the spell of neocon “Assad killing his own people” propaganda (i.e. a decided minority). But nice to have nonetheless. The world defender of Christian civilization, and not just in word, as was the case before, but in deed.
And the “only one” such, according to a remarkable recent statement by Assad (this does make one wonder if there is anything to the rumors that Alawites are actually crypto-Christians).
The Russians are now getting called crusaders by Islamists, an honor previously reserved for just the US and its allies (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that). Here is an inspirational video on this “Holy Crusader Order” theme by a Russian “patriotic trolling” group:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4dPBfJrYg0
Western narrative shift after Paris? – It was clear that Russia was going to be at loggerheads with the US and its allies/satraps once it waded into Syria. Indeed, some of the crazier neocons and US Republicans were calling for the US to establish a no fly zone (which would have been a direct act of military aggression against Russia), though I never expected anything to come out of that since it was inevitable that the hotheads would be set straight by the hard realists at the Pentagon if things ever went that far south. Nor was I expecting anything particularly game changing in the wake of the Paris Attacks (in the bleakest version, if anything, the Western elites would merely use them as a cynical ploy to double down on their anti-Assad stance).
But in the event, things appear to be surprising to the upside, and in a very major and unexpected way. Hawkish Hollande, more American than the (post-Bush) Americans in his zeal for intervention, has finally admitted that ISIS is France’s prime enemy, not Assad. Not perfect, but good enough. The Russian military in the Levant has been told to treat the French soldiers incoming on the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier as allies. Although speaking of any wider rapprochment in West-Russia relations is very clearly premature, the worst outcomes now appear to be ruled out and things are looking up. Obama has even called Putin a “constructive partner” in the Syria talks, which would have been unimaginable just a year ago when he was the butt of Western opprobrium at the Brisbane G20 summit. Considering that Putin remains constant to his position – the same as that proposed by Kofi Annan at the 2012 Geneva Conference – that Assad must be included in any negotiations between the regime and (truly) moderate factions about political transition, the apparent dropping of the removal of Assad as the West’s Number One priority in Syria basically implies that the Western political elites have been forced come round to the point of view of their worst international bugbear.
These political developments are getting reflected in the Western media. Even the neocon rag The Daily Beast has gone from “Russia’s Giving ISIS an Air Force” to “Russia Pounds ISIS with Biggest Bomber Raid in Decades.”
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/666756472093679616
Irish journalist Danielle Ryan has a very good article on the diplomatic aspects of this development at The BRICS Post:
Before the Paris attacks, some analysts had been worriedly warning that Putin was winning the “PR war” in Syria. In the aftermath, Moscow’s articulation of its position looks less like PR and more like an appeal to common sense.
To risk an understatement, it’s depressing that 132 innocent people had to die in Paris before Obama, Cameron et al realized that Russia could be an indispensable partner in the fight against ISIS, and that disagreements over the fate of Assad should not be “the altar on which the country of Syria is slaughtered”.
If only this realization could have been made in 2010, when the Syrian government offered Western powers a chance to join up and fight ISIS together. Or in 2012, when Russia is rumoured to have offered the West a proposal which would have seen Assad step down as part of a broad peace deal.
Shady actors hurrying to tidy themselves up – So very conveniently soon after the Paris Attacks, Qatar arrested 6 men who had been supplying arms, including MANPADS, to Islamic State.
Their provider? Ukraine.
Perhaps the Ukrainians took Interior Ministry bigwig Anton Geraschenko’s injunction to “help ISIS take revenge on Russia by the canons of sharia” a bit too literally. So pathological is Maidanist village hatred for Russia that many of them lack the self-awareness to comprehend that ISIS and their own Western sponsors don’t exactly see eye to eye. (Ironically, it is not altogether impossible that this was because they took conspiracy theories from the more unhinged elements of the Russian nationalist scene about how the Americans control ISIS at face value). Certainly the Maidanist types have never had any compunctions about allying with people who ultimately despised them just to spit in Russia’s soup, from the Nazis in WW2 to Islamist fanatics today.
The alternative, less exciting but admittedly far more realistic possibility, is that this is a mere consequence of Ukraine’s failed state status.
If the SAA is doing so great, why has it only been able to increase it’s territory by 0.4% since the start of Russian bombings?
There’s also an uptick in the iranians, afghans and lebanese being killed, which calls into question just how “arab” the syrian arab army is now.
Btw, nothing against those men who are martyred. They are brave men and deserve to be memorialized. But why so many deaths, for a successful intervention?
Maybe, but one of my pet peevs with Russia is that Geopolitics really is dead and anyone that plays that game too hard automatically becomes a loser. There is too much of an either-or leviathan mindset among the Russian elite caused by being too beholden to a military industrial complex and natural resource extraction(and yes, listening to too hard to the globalists and neo-cons who too are interested in Russia’s natural resources).
Geopolitics is for fools… Biopolitics is the future. Russia would be far better off becoming more like Switzerland(or actually, a widely mobilized nation with almost no force projection outside of the nation) and focusing hard on it’s birth rates(and trying to make that as eugenic as possible).
Biopolitics is indeed the future. And IQ is the only thing that matters. Which is why I’m focussing on creating a plan to increase the IQ of my country Turkey, by a secret sterilization program.
I invite all those who have knowledge of policy to aid me in this endeavour.
The only Jihad that matters is the eugenics jihad.
Slaughter all those with IQ less than 110!!!
Don’t make it so easy for me, Kamran. I like more of a challenge.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3321624/France-launches-wave-bombing-raids-Syria.html The Russians are claiming to have killed 600 in a twin missile strike. The strikes are on Raqqa, Aleppo and Idlib. There are mainly civilians being killed no doubt, it is impossible for civilians leave Raqqa which is being “flattened”, but I don’t suppose people who herded their own civilians through German minefields (as Soviets later acknowledged to US officers) to clear them worry too much about that. Incidentally the The ISIS leadership and their families have all left Raqqa of course, and Russians must be congratulated to their remarkable ability to hit only civilians … sorry IS fighters.
I have mentioned the Free Syrian Army, led by officer defectors from Assad’s forces and their battle in the Syrian Stalingrad in the face of Assad and now Russian airstrikes aiding ISIS to attack the FSA on a reversed front oround the crucial route to turkey that Aleppo is strategic for before, but just to confirm my analysis of who is is the target in Allepo (ie who Assad’s forces are taking territory from) read this please:-
A bunch of bloody foreigners killing people in their own country. Good luck with fighting a country of 22 million with a grab bag of foreign units. Funny how Assad can’t find anyone willing to die for him except non Syrians.
Then they started stirring up some Armenians, with unpleasant consequences for all Armenians. A minority cannot rule over a growing majority of a different religion without it ending badly. Assad started with a huge army with heavy weapons (one that had fought the Israeli’s let us not forget) a ruthless security apparatus and the grudging acceptance of western powers. If Israel wanted to overthrow him now it could do so with a flick of its eyebrow, or even by by exerting indirect military pressure through a build up on the Golan Heights. If the US wanted to bomb Assad’s front line it could easily do so and just lie about it. The pilots wouldn’t know who they were hitting.
Ukraine’s failed state status was a consequence of them acting as if the world was a mutual assistance society and, trusting in guarantees by Russia and the West, renouncing nuclear weapons. As Mearsheimer says “such … behavior [by leaders] invariably has negative consequences”, because policy that assumes good faith in the future does not seek survival above all else, and amounts to “foolish behavior”.
.4% may be true, but only on net. Since the start of the Russian airstrikes, the SAA has lost Mahin, but has gained lots of villages in South Aleppo. If they didn’t lose Idlib this year, they might already be reunifying their gains around Taftanaz, hurting the rebels severely. But, since Idlib is lost, that’s not gonna happen for at least a year. I’m not as bullish on the SAA as AK is.
And, come on, AK, the more unhinged conspiracy theories make sense.
[Funny how Assad can’t find anyone willing to die for him except non Syrians.]
Projection. It’s not just a way of showing movies.
“The world defender of Christian civilization, ”
Eh, don’t you think that is a bit silly? I’m not opposed to Russia’s intervention in Syria and think it might have positive effects, but all that “crusader” stuff…might be more appropriate for some LARP or online game nerds (and didn’t you state in the past that most Russians aren’t that pious, despite Orthodoxy’s superficial comeback?).
Well, if all leaders of formerly Christian countries think themselves qualified to say what is, and what is not, true Islam, why shouldn’t Bashir al-Assad determine the nature of Christian civilisation?
Because Bashar is the lion of islam, sal allahu aleyhi wa sallam!
“A bunch of bloody foreigners killing people in their own country. Good luck with fighting a country of 22 million with a grab bag of foreign units. Funny how Assad can’t find anyone willing to die for him except non Syrians.”
Except for the SAA, which, I understand is composed mostly of Sunni Syrians, which makes sense when you consider Syria is mostly Sunni. Assad couldn’t survive if all he had to rely on was Alawites.
“If Israel wanted to overthrow him now it could do so with a flick of its eyebrow, or even by by exerting indirect military pressure through a build up on the Golan Heights. If the US wanted to bomb Assad’s front line it could easily do so and just lie about it. The pilots wouldn’t know who they were hitting. ”
Wouldn’t that be a bit delusional now that Russia has supplied Syria with S-300’s? Maybe that’s why Putin decided to bring in those anti-aircraft missiles, don’t you think?
As far as Ukraine goes, do you really think that backward country had the capacity to maintain, much less use, such nuclear weapons? I don’t think there is any doubt that the world is a safer place without nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
@kamran
The 0.4% figure is false and was only floated around by an American think tank to diminish the achievements of the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance. Even accounting for losses, net gains are a multiple of that, and netting gains and losses is misleading as it says nothing of the number of encounters and battles won: the Khanasser road was assaulted by a combined assault from ISIS and AQ and then swiftly regained, but such figures of territorial changes would say nothing of it.
And of course hard won gains in strategic Kweires, along the Damascus-Aleppo highway and in Latakia’s heights bordering Turkey represent some of the “best” of these percents, if I may say in keeping with this sort of foolish accounting.
““A bunch of bloody foreigners killing people in their own country. Good luck with fighting a country of 22 million with a grab bag of foreign units.”
I don’t think France had any problems with the Americans and Brits fighting in France during WWII in order to free France from German occupation. For that matter, I don’t believe France had any objection to the U.S. entering WWI in 1917, where all the fighting of the Americans took place on French soil, as I recall. Nor did the incipient U.S. of A. have any objections to the French entering their war of independence from Great Britain back in the 18th century in order to secure its liberty.
Not safer for Ukraine, because they did not look out for their own interests, though Mearsheimer publically warned them.
Aleppo is the key to cutting the of the US and land route through Turkey for the Syrian free Army rebels, who represents the majority of the population of the country. ISIS ‘s has unofficial routes through Turkey, which leaves them alone because Turkey hates the ISIS enemy (Kurds) more than Assad.
Assad cannot win because the mass of the population will never accept him. There are enough Alawites to have sizable units, but actually mounting determined assaults on enemy positions where the danger is so great that no level of compulsion in Assad’s army is going to work is something the mass of Alawites are not too keen on. The fact that there are a variegated bunch of largely foreign infantry units at the critical points proves the Alawites who were willing to die for Assad are all , er, dead.
Assad has to defend Syria against Israel whatever happens, all Israel had to do is build up on the border as if it was going to attack and Assad would have had to reduce pressure on the rebels. Israel could have done that several months ago or immediately the Russians started preparing their base system in Syria to receive the task force.
If it came to war Israel is on a par with US forces, who have super advanced planes invisible to radar. Israel has that capability too, they have inside info on everything the US uses. Anyone switching on those Russian AAA radars to try and lock on Israeli planes would be inviting death. If Israel wanted Assad toppled they would have when they could have done it easily, the west hated Assad not so long ago remember. Assad has created a monster in ISIS and according to Martin van Creveld there are some beginning to toy with using chaos in Jordan to transfer the West Bank Palestinians. If Jordan starts to collapse, Israel may take a hand. They are not scared of the Russians.
Anatoly, is that a saker he’s holding? 😉
First of all you should get rid of the high fertility Kurdish areas, then work on increasing female labor force participation, especially in the lower classes. That will lower low class fertility and thus massively decrease the “dumbing down speed”.
“If Israel wanted Assad toppled they would have when they could have done it easily”
Why would they bother, when all they have to do – as they have been doing all along – is to get the USA to do their dirty work them?
Perhaps some in the USA enjoy being the stooges for the criminals in Tel Aviv. I don’t.
About 70% of Syria is useless desert, so 0.4% is actually more like >1% of real territory, and included the area around Kweiris – which had hosted one of the biggest concentrations of ISIS forces anywhere.
Operational tempo has increased, so of course casualties will too. But according to all the accounts I’m reading terrorist casualties now greatly outnumber SAA ones.
Biopolitics will end all fitnah, inshallah.
Yes this makes sense. Need to collect more maps+data….
But the .4% figure I mentioned I think I saw as the increase of SAA territory compared to SAA territory BEFORE russian intervention. So that’s not .4% as in .4% of total syrian territory.
Also there’s barely any syrians left in SAA, they’ve all either gone to europe or sort of given up. Just iranians, iraqis and hezbollah. The iranians are seriously kicking ass. Whoever invented the “cowardly persians” meme was an idiot. But oh well, c’est la vie. Lose once to 300 gay greeks, and you get stuck with the association for the rest of eternity.
Will Russia’s intervention in Syria be a repeat of the Russian intervention in Afghanistan? It would be interesting to read Mr. Karlin’s views on the following
This Is How Paris Fits into ISIS’s Long-term Strategy
an analyst answered to this
https://twitter.com/EjmAlrai/status/668085663426863109
https://twitter.com/EjmAlrai/status/668086931184590848
Lol. Only a cretin like you would take a cretin like McMeekin seriously.
Are you suggesting that Lebanese are not Arabs?
The truth is that they are much closer to Syrian Arabs than the Gulf Arabs who fund the rebels.
There is no Free Syrian Army.
You are such a consistently brazen liar. Have you no shame man? You must be really stupid to think that your outrageous, ass-backwards lies will work in a forum like this. All you are achieving is justifying the already overflowing hate and contempt for your ilk.
Assad’s army is composed of native syrian christians, sunnis, shias, alawis etc. It is a truly secular, syrian army. On the other hand the enemy they are fighting against is an international gang of sunni extremist/salafi/takfiri terrorists who have proven that they are the enemies not only of the secular syrian regime but of everyone who does not subscribe to their primitive ideology.
Why do you respond to Hasbara dolts like Sean? Just ignore the lying idiot.
You are right. Look at the map here: http://www.janes.com/article/56134/syrian-government-territorial-gains-just-0-4-since-russian-military-intervention#.VlCKsN1XX9E.twitter
It indicates that kuweires airbase was taken, but misses a lot of land gained around Aleppo and Idlib.
http://www.albawaba.com/loop/why-does-russia-keep-claiming-meet-fsa-766390
Tell Russia the FSA does not exist.
They are willing to die, and there are a lot of them. Legendary commander eh? A hawk safe from the battleis a bit different to being in a fire team ferreting out people who are all set up and waiting in prepared positions and willing to fight to the death, because they live there.
Assad has some soaring hawks but hardly anyone left is willing to be a ferret, and that is why is using a collection of foreigners for actually trying to take territory
People fighting to defend their homeland fight harder than foreign adventurers. this is Syrians against a minority of Syrians with a majority of the foreign backing, although it is true Jordan is backing the FSA the Israelis are not. If Russia’s intervention destabilizes Jordan then Israel will benefit, because it could use general war and chaos to expel the West bank Palestinians. The US could have crushed Assad with one air massive airstrike, there was no appetite for doing that among US military figures , or Israelis (because US involvement in Syria would stymie an attack on Iran). Israel’s wants the Palestinians in the West Bank to give up and go away but Iran is still supporting the Palestinians. Iran comes first. By attacking Jordan’s ally the FSA, and aiding ISIS attacks on the FSA in Aleppo and elsewhere, the main effect of Russia intervention is to make ISIS stronger, which could lead to an ISIS destabilization of Jordan and an opportunity for Israel to expel the Palestinians. It would not bother me if Israel did.
As you can see (IS)Syrian infrastructure after few years of war and many bombings is superior to Russian.
You do not need to bomb Russia.
All you need is just chopping down 2 energy poles and whole Russian Province loses electricity.
https://www.rt.com/news/323012-crimea-blackout-lines-blown-up/
What a farce.
A state that due to incompetency and corruption is not able to lay electricity cable thru Kerch Strait ventures abroad.
This cable was supposed to be built by June 2015! And it monkey’ job, but building proved too difficult for Russians.
Russia claimed to be civilized, and appears to be just some Kongo-Bongo of North.
Hint for Russians. You would be better off, if instead of destroying infrastructure in foreign countries, Russia focused on building infrastructure for its own citizens.
Heym Anatoly, aren’t you exaggerating?
The BBC says that it is around 930 miles. (1500 Km).
Maybe they are lying. I dunno.
Russia better scale back and be careful.
With plummeting oil prices and sanctions, Russian economy is on the ropes.
Russia has limited resources and must try to achieve its goals fast in Syria and get out.
Playing geopolitics is expensive, and Russia must not fall into that trap.
Think like in Kagemusha.
Mountain doesn’t move.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzR87VBlaoo
There’s no such thing; it’s just a fairytale created to milk government contract money. The radars from the Battle of Britain can see any “stealth” airplane that’s ever been made.
” The fact that there are a variegated bunch of largely foreign infantry units at the critical points proves the Alawites who were willing to die for Assad are all , er, dead.”
The Alawites are not dying for Assad, they are dying for their community. They know they face genocide if the Sunni rebels win. The Christians are also allied with Assad. It last year I believe that a delegation of Christian Syrians came to the US to implore US leaders not to support the rebels and topple Assad.
“Assad has created a monster in ISIS “
Assad didn’t creare ISIS. ISIS used to be called Al Qaeda in Iraq under Abu Musab Al Zarqawi the Jordanian. Afterwards Al Bagdadi who was imprisoned by the US co-opted former Baathists and Saddam Loyalists with Islamist sympathies to create ISIS.
You forgot to mention that the people who dropped those towers (Right Sector and fascist Tartars) also blacked out Kherson province in Ukraine and are refusing to allow anyone to effect repairs. The IQ level in Ukraine has dropped a bit since the Maidan coup.
Your first paragraph describes this and previous administrations of the United States to the T.
I’ve read your figure before; it leaves out 400 km2 which have also been liberated.
In addition, the initial going was tough, because the fronts were so hardened. Things are more fluid now. But I agree that SAA is in a dismal shape. Most of the heavy lifting is being done by Hezbollah and its Shia affiliates. I’ve watched many SAA vids, what struck me was that many do not wear helmets or flacks, and they often just mingle in groups, without any coordinated movement, much like the rebel militias. That’s a recepy for high casualties. So far the only real professionals on the ground are Hezbollah. But their numbers are limited.
It’s the most extreme ethnocentric group with a higher-than-average IQ that is at the heart of unrest and discord around the world, especially in the Middle East. Granted, they lack Christian virtue but still.
Brigadier General Ali posted this on Col. Patrick Lang’s blog:
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2015/11/intrique-in-rojava-ttg.html#comments
FB Ali said…
Of much more significance to the overall situation in Syria, and the future, is what is going on North of Aleppo near the Turkish border. Turkish SF (masquerading as Syrian Turkmen) have taken a couple of Syrian villages, with the attack supported by Turkish and US planes. Meanwhile the Syrian army, supported by Russian planes, has captured some Turkmen villages in the same area.
http://tinyurl.com/oz3cbot
http://tinyurl.com/pr945zy
http://tinyurl.com/ngzfp7h
It seems that Erdogan has taken advantage of the Paris attacks to renew his attempt to establish a “safe no-fly zone” in Syria. The US is taking a big risk in backing him (they are probably doing this as payback for his not making an outcry over their backing the YPG). It could lead to a confrontation with Russia (perhaps that is a secondary US motive). Very strange!
coup
ko͞o/
noun
noun: coup; plural noun: coups; noun: coup d’état; plural noun: coups d’état; plural noun: coup d’états
A very interesting piece. Use of the word “coup” however does not work due to definition number 1.
Dream on.
No need to make explicit the obvious degeneracy of your attitude. Thankfully, the world at large would be more than a little bothered by that remote possibility.
It is amusing that you showed those shots of Russia bombing ISIS oil infrastructure, because it seems that PBS thought they were of the US bombing the same installations:
https://www.rt.com/usa/323070-pbs-isis-video-russian/
However, the interesting thing in there is this tweet:
https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/657758433391697920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Perhaps that tells us more about what this is about and why the US did not heretofore bother to bomb ISIS’ oil infrastructure.
These are the algorithmic steps you are endorsing:
Are you insane?
“Assad has created a monster in ISIS”
Only in neocon fantasy world could anyone blame Assad for creating ISIS. Here in the real world, the creation of ISIS was a direct result of the (most unfortunate for Iraqi Christians, among others) overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Looks like an effective plan for saving Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The Palestinians turned down a genuine proposal for a final agreement in 2000, the settlement expansion in the West Bank means the basis for that deal no longer exists. Nothing they are ever going to get in the future will be a good as Ehud Barak’s offer. It is not my country. If Israel ceases to be a Jewish state that does not help me one bit. On the other hand if Israel transfers the West Bank Palestinians out, it is not my problem. Even if there is a more general ME war it will still be up to the Israelis to decide if transfer is worth the opprobrium, and the political leadership dismissed the idea once, although it is beginning to be toyed with again. In my opinion it would very difficult and best for Israel in the long term to transfer the West Bank Palestinians, because the Palestinians can’t be denied the vote or a state forever. The only alternative is an Apartheid solution, which cannot work better for Jews than it did for Boers.
No, too late and the West would not do that anyway, but it might enable mass replacement immigration to be halted more easily if Israel did something so drastic.
I wish not to steer the discussion away from Anatoly’s article. Another forum, another day.
This is what Israel has been up to, softened up in the pro-Israel Western media:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/22/sharri-markson-journalist-at-the-australian-in-run-in-with-israeli-security
That’s not saying much.
The Myth of the Generous Offer
Like the Armenians in WW1, the Alawites have sided with Russia.
They cannot be expected to accept any offer of a state they could get now, and the West Bank Palestinians are never going to be given the vote. It cannot go on forever, the end of a Jewish state is inevitable on current trends. If the moment comes when transfer is possible during a general war, it will come only once.
{Like the Armenians in WW1, the Alawites have sided with Russia….}
What do you mean “like Armenians in WW1” ?
Are you a nomad, denialist IslamoFascist Uyguroğlu ?
Well they did try to retreat and mind their own business and engage with Europe but the Empire and its Wolfowitz Doctrine trumped that and now theRussians have NATO on their doorstep. Takes two to tango.
Thanks for providing us with a window into your soul, Mr. Rediger.
If population transfer is the solution, why not just transfer the newcomers instead?
“Perhaps that tells us more about what this is about and why the US did not heretofore bother to bomb ISIS’ oil infrastructure.”
Well, there are these troubling facts we have to account for in assessing Obama’s pledge to “degrade, defeat, and destroy” ISIS in Iraq and Syria:
The U.S. failed to attack ISIS as it built up its forces to attack Palmyra on the only road available to ISIS because they didn’t want to be seen as assisting Assad, as if Assad represented any threat to the West and ISIS was supposed to be the dire threat to the West, as recently demonstrated in Paris.
After the Russian entered the Syrian war on Assad’s side, the U.S. dropped tons of military equipment in the Syrian countryside so that anyone could use it, including Al Qaeda and ISIS forces, or anyone else in dire need of an anti-tank missile.
There are others, but those are the main ones which has convinced me that our “war against ISIS” is a complete sham and our actions in Syria amount to criminal acts by my country.
Those are all well and good, but what is the end game here?
Could it be to drive the price of oil down to where Russia collapse like Venezuela and the former USSR?
Then some people can have a looting good time again.
What pleads for the accuracy of Anatoly’s analysis is the unusual intensity of the hasbartchik trolls attacks, from the silly (Biopolitics is the future. Russia would be far better off becoming more like Switzerland – or actually, a widely mobilized nation with almost no force projection outside of the nation – and focusing hard on it’s birth rates – and trying to make that as eugenic as possible), to the idiotical (Russia claimed to be civilized, and appears to be just some Kongo-Bongo of North), to the pathetic (If Israel wanted to overthrow him now it could do so with a flick of its eyebrow). Not to mention their insistence on inserting the Palestinian problem into the equation.
The range of Kalibr NK (NK stands for Nadvodny Korabl’-surface ship) or 3M 14 missile is 2,500 kilometers, which is about 1,500 miles (or about 1,350 nautical miles). These missiles were launched from missile corvettes of the Red Banner Caspian Flotilla. If to consider that Russian naval strike group launched from the Northern Part of the Caspian Sea–we may talk about 900-950 miles. However, Russian strategic aviation, namely TU-160 strategic bombers, launched X-101 cruise missiles from several widely separated positions, including from Mediterranean (after navigating around Europe) and from somewhere in Russian air space. The range of X-101 cruise missile is 5 000+ kilometers (some sources put it as high as in excess of 6,000 kilometers), that gives us ranges between 3,400 and 3,700 miles. As per:
Most (not all) what comes out of English-language “media” about Soviet/Russian military is BS and, indeed, lie. In fact, since events in Crimea (in reality, earlier) so called “western” “expert” community has shown itself utterly incompetent and not having the touch with the reality.
Very encouraging.
@Sean
Well, there is ‘nothing’ which is invisible to radar. True, there are ways to reduce the signature and both US and Russia are already working on it – but not invisible. Moreover, the Russian Electronic and Radar capabilities have been proven to surpass the West and has been proved by the incident on the Black Sea as well as in Syria. Russian planes with jamming equipment managed to totally overwhelm the Aegis Class warship which caused massive consternation in the Pentagon since the Aegis is the foremost technology with the West. As regards Ukraine, I have friends and acquaintances in the Western part and let me tell you that they are not happy with the current government in Keiv which is actually illegal having come to power in a coup. Remember Nuland? They are so afraid of the neonazis that they just shut up and keep off the radar so save their families. Ukraine has been looted by its own. If only the politicians in the West can get and use some common sense. But I think common sense has become rather uncommon.
@Sean
Remember something called propaganda??? Goebbels ??? “A lie told umpteen times comes to be perceived to be the truth”???
You, Sir, need to be more aware of the situational facts and not blindly believe the media.
Remember the media always has an agenda and is already bought – I am an insider and I know very very well how it all works. It is the free media like The Saker, Southfront, UNZ, TomDispatch and such others who generally depict the other side of the balderdash spewed by the Mainstream Media in the West and we see the truth as it is.
Otherwise, Dream On.
Geopolitics? Maybe, but it looks like Putin is helping a Russian buddy out.
@Remember something called propaganda??? Goebbels ??? “A lie told umpteen times comes to be perceived to be the truth”???
It is taken for granted that the Big Lie propaganda technique is the invention of Goebbels or Hitler. Let’s see what Hitler and Goebbels really said. It’s all in the Wikipedia (Big lie).
Later, Joseph Goebbels put forth a slightly different theory which has come to be more commonly associated with the expression “big lie”. Goebbels wrote the following paragraph in an article dated 12 January 1941, 16 years after Hitler’s first use of the phrase. The article, titled Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik (English: “From Churchill’s Lie Factory”) was published in Die Zeit ohne Beispiel.
The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”…
The phrase was also used in a report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler’s psychological profile:
” His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
The technique was so successfully applied that everyone is convinced now that Goebbels invented it. And that six million (out of five) went up in smoke.
How else would you suggest the European homeland be saved for Europeans?
You call it silly. I call it sensible and a suggestion quite fitting with the political goals of many people on this site, which boils down to peace, prosperity and affordable family formation, now and forever.
Do you really think that a) hasbara types exist and b) that they’d give a crap about a site so out of the mainstream like this?
If you are concerned that Europe will be overrun by Muslims, stop bombing their countries in an effort to make the jungle safer for the villa.
But that won’t stop the immigration nor persuade the immigrants already here to leave. Indeed it could just as easily increase it as diminish it. We don’t bomb Bangladesh in the UK yet there are many, many more Bangladeshis here than Iraqis or Syrians.
So let me ask again: How else would you suggest the European homeland be saved for Europeans?
If they are legally there, they have a right to remain there. As far as illegal immigration is concerned, they should be returned to their country of origin.
btw – I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis and Syrians are there because of the bombing of their countries.
Your assurance is not worth much. The Syrians and Iraqis arrive via Turkey. We are not bombing Turkey yet these guys choose to move on to Europe regardless.
Until the law changes…but I don’t think that’s what you’re implying.
So let me me rephrase my orignal question as a statement: you think Europeans should give up our homelands and that it is morally wrong for us to to resist this catastrophic disposession.
In other words, you are an implacable proponent of European genocide.
You draw interesting conclusions, Mr. Rediger.
Please have the decency to be more honest in the future. You want Europeans to abolish ourselves so that your middle eastern peoples can ‘win’ and take our stuff.
All of your points about Israel are just efforts towards that aim.
LOL
Geokat says ‘let my cousins colonise your countries and kill your children otherwise you are Zionist racist Hasbara scum.’
The use of the term “Ukrainian junta’s ” is hilarious. Not because the term is funny, but because the mentality behind is so stupid and uninformed. Putin has been trying to turn Ukraine into a puppet state and has failed miserably. The Ukrainians remember all to well what Russians have done in the past, and they want nothing to do with it.
If you want look for a Junta, Moscow is far richer environment. A mafia controlled Junta does live there.
If you perused some of my previous comments, you would have noticed that I am neither Jewish nor Muslim.
Yes, and yes. When you’re fighting a war, you try to take the enemy’s territory, especially if he only has a little left. Every space that has free speech on the JQ is both very prominent, and very attractive, to Jewish hegemonists. In fact, I suppose the very rarity of such spaces causes the ones that still exist to drive them nuts.
There’s anti-Israeli sentiment in a lot of places, like The Guardian, The Independent and the entire Muslim world, if I ran a program like that I would focus there…also, how much would this program cost?!?!
Most of them work for free. And yes, you have a point, there is a much wider space for the substantially less robust criticism coming from the anti-Zionist movement, and that is where the Hasbarists probably tend to focus their efforts.
McMeekin takes the Turkish view seriously and perhaps the Russians should too, if they don’t want more of their planes shot down
You seem to think the Russians will not retaliate?
I am not sure that is a healthy belief.
I’ll be generous and say that you are mistaken about who wants to be the puppet master.
@A mafia controlled Junta does live there.
The Big Lie Hasbara continues unabated.
Putin is right to call Erdogan an accomplice of terrorists, for it is no secret that Turkey has been aiding and abetting the worst terrorist group of all: ISIS. Since Turkey is a NATO nation that means the NATO Alliance is guilty by association (and turning a blind eye).
Since Turkey finances the ISIS to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by buying it’s oil and since Turkey is also in cahoots with turkic terrorists abroad (ask China), it is likely that this:
Here are some recent videos of Russian bombings of Islamic state oil infrastructure…….And a bombing of a nicely arraigned line of oil tanker
led to this:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/country-404-vs-crimea/
various Crimean Tatar and far right batallion “activists” blew up the transmission towers carrying electricity to Crimea, plunging the peninsula into a blackout that looks set to last weeks.
The crimean tatars are a turkic people with strong ties to Turkey and many grievances against Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatars
The escalation from the intervention is well underway…..dangerous times lie ahead.
What’s funny is that from NY to Miami, from Haifa to Tel Aviv, almost every Jew except for a handful of Multi Kult Weirdo “Academics” are terrified and flabbergasted at European Suicide via Islamic Importation. I have yet to meet a fellow Jew who thinks the Islamification of Sweden or France or the UK is a wonderful thing.
The idea that Jews or Israelis are going to somehow benefit from a Sunni Muslim Europe is just plain nuts. If Europe becomes Islamic, Israel is completely surrounded and easily chocked off from the outside world entirely as the Med becomes a Sunni Sea.
The European Suicide is entirely done by Neoliberal Multi Kultis largely indigenous to those countries.
I don’t know how Judeophobes do it. On one hand, they condemn Robert Spencer or Pamela Geller as evil anti-Arab genocidal maniacs who control America; on the other hand, they blame a handful of Multi Kult Jews like Barbara Spectre, who are small fish in a sea of Multi Kult Europeans like Junker – for “Arabizing” Europe.
Get your story straight – either the Zionists are terrified of an Islamic Europe or welcome it. The word for this is “Cognitive Dissonance” – specifically related to your desire to see the Jews as some Magical Grey Alien/Illuminati force that is playing both ends against the middle, and all of the millions of Jews are “in on it”.
re: “then suddenly the U.S. threw all caution to the wind and started attacking those trucks too”
Department of Defense Press Briefing by Col. Warren via DVIDS from Baghdad, Iraq
Press Operations
Operation Inherent Resolve Spokesman Colonel Steve Warren
November 18, 2015
[emphasis added]
http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/630393/department-of-defense-press-briefing-by-col-warren-via-dvids-from-baghdad-iraq
Excellent point. Here’s the explanation as to why the goy are a little confused:
Let me restate what you wrote without any of the nonsense:
Some Jews advocate one set of politics and then 80 years later another set of Jews advocate another set of politics and the difference aligns with how one might perceive their interests.
“And the “only one” such, according to a remarkable recent statement by Assad (this does make one wonder if there is anything to the rumors that Alawites are actually crypto-Christians).” – Assad needs all hands on deck, now would be a terrible time for the Christians to back out. of course it would be terrible for them as well.
Ukraine is useless without Crimea. I’m sure Putin is sighing with relief knowing that cesspool of Europe is someone else’s headache.