Military Events in Syria and Iraq Thread #4

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Yazata, Apr 12, 2017.

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  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    You trust many claims from particular sources, and none from others, based entirely on comparing their feeds as competing propaganda - without reference to physical reality.
    But that's not what you did, with those claims from those sources.
    Yes, in your usual slippery innuendo you suggested exactly that, in your claim that your ignorance had significance in the matter.

    The entire example of Hun Sen in your reasoning you posted as part of your explanation for why you consistently favor strongman authoritarian over other governance, and rightwing versions over leftwing, and fascistic rightwing over other rightwing.

    This came up from your backing of Assad in Syria, and Russian support for Assad over other.
     
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  3. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    YMMD. Assad as the example of a fascist right-wing strongman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Socialist_Ba'ath_Party_–_Syria_Region
    These are the places where I conclude that your use of "fascism" is completely arbitrary.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Not in my posting.
    Certainly not in that quote, and I don't think anywhere else either.
    The places where you invent my use of the term, some way I didn't use it. Yep. I've been noticing that from you, frequently.

    Btw: I may have been careless somewhere, not paying attention or muddled in the middle of something, and referred to Assad's government as fascist - if so I concede slipshod and embarrassing error, and will correct my post and apologize. But I don't recall ever doing that - and the subject has come up: the US, especially when under the influence of Republican administrations since Reagan, has a track record of backing fascism in strongman allies and opposing other kinds, especially left-leaning. That seems to have been a factor in the US hostility toward Qaddaffi and Saddam and Khomeini and Chavez, as well as Assad - and I disapprove.
     
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  7. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Assad's not a socialist. Taking care of your own tribe and ignoring the other 90% while allowing local and foreign corporate interests to dictate your agenda, all while running a market economy- that's fascism.

    The Nazis called themselves "socialists" too, guess by Schmelzer's standards that means they couldn't have been fascists. The Kremlin must be instructing its minions to have some real quality conversations these days...
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Schmelzer accepts something called "fascism from the left" or "leftwing fascism" - being socialist and fascist both is apparently possible in his universe.

    Here's a book he thought made a lot of good points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Fascism
     
  9. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    If it doesn't involve capitalism exercised to the benefit of the society's elites, it ain't fascism. I agree with you that Schmelzer likes to play word games and incorrectly assign labels to certain ideals and movements so as to cast them in a negative light, while simultaneously refusing to correctly apply negative labels to the leaders, ideologies and ethnic nationalities he favours.

    All the same, I don't see why you'd concede on the idea that Assad isn't a fascist, even if you correctly label his foreign supporters as such. Syria under the Assad dynasty is a dictatorship with a market economy dominated by Alawite elites, it manufactures ultranationalist propaganda based on a fake national identity created by French colonists, and even the concept of "Arab socialism" draws close parallels to the Nazis' "national socialism", not to mention the sympathies their leaders expressed for Hitler during WW2. The Baath party is a fascist regime, and through his posts Schmelzer consistently advertises himself as a fascist Russian Orthodox white supremacist.
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Near the Idlib/Aleppo/Hama border there is a lot of fighting. The Syrian army has reached a quite big breakthrough against Hatesh South-West of Khanasser:

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    The fighting between Hatesh and Daesh continues too, Hatesh has obviously taken some forces from other fronts to stop the Daesh offensive against them, and indeed seems to have stopped it. Possibly the breakdown of their defenses near Khanasser is connected with the corresponding weakening of Hatesh elsewhere.
    In the almost encircled region there are yet some Daesh fighters - even enough to try an attack against Al Sukhna. The attack was without success, but, nonetheless, it shows that there is yet something to do.

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  11. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Not much news during the last days. The Syrian army is making some advance from the North along the Euphrat toward Abukamal to close the encirclement:

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  12. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Looks like the remaining parts West of the Euphrat valley have been taken now:

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  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    There are news that the Beit Jinn pocket is giving up. This is the pocket near the Golan heights which has been supported all the time by Israel (whenever the Syrian army has made some advance, Israel made a heavy attack, officially justified by some accidental shooting which reached the Israel-occupied part, which allowed Al Qaeda to revert the gains.

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  14. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Israel promised its domestic Druze population that it wouldn't allow terrorists to attack and overrun the Druze populations on the Syrian side, and the Syrian army/Hezbollah are attempting to capitalize on this promise by launching their own attacks while Israel's hands are tied. There are multiple factions fighting Assad along the Golan border, many supported by Israel, but no evidence of Israel providing direct support to Islamist terrorist groups in Syria except medical treatment which is offered to all Syrians along the border without regard for the factions they may or may not support.

    Meanwhile, I hear your boss in Moscow is trying to bypass the UN in order to dictate his own resolution to the conflict, which seems strange for someone who whines all day about the US not respecting international law. Good thing the US doesn't appear ready to leave Syria any time soon; human beings actually live there, it's not your personal playground for asserting Mongol-Slav Rus Viking supremacy. Merry Murder-mass to you too.
     
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    That's really interesting news: To start negotiations with other participants of some conflict contradicts some international law? Which one? The US-controlled UN negotiations are simply useless, the US can only "negotiate" if all the participants have to submit to US power, but once Assad does not have any reason to follow US "Assad must go" cries, nothing can come out of such "negotiations".

    That you think that it is good that the US occupies foreign territory is what can be expected from a ...... like you. Probably you will also like to hear that the US also continues to train terrorists, mostly former ISIS fighters, in their bases, in particular, Al Tanf. I don't think Russia will do something in near time against this - this has to be used, first of all, to discredit, no, not the US (it is already completely discredited among the Arabs after the Jerusalem story), but those terrorists as supported by the US.
     
  16. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    The Syrian army has started during the last days a more serious offensive in Northern Hama / Idlib. Here a map from two days ago:

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    Yesterday Atshan, Abu Umar have been taken, today there is fighting in Khywayn (first it was taken, then a counterattack it was retaken, but actually it seems the counterattack has been repelled and the town was taken again, we will see, such things can be repeated several times.
    If Sukayk has been taken is not clear, probably only some Tal Sukayk - a nearby hill - was taken.
     
  17. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Reports coming in that Russia lost at least 7 planes in a recent rebel/terrorist artillery attack at Russia's Khmeimim airbase, the very same location Putin visited a week ago to declare "victory".

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/03/syria-russia-planes-rebel-shelling

    Also Russia is reporting that a combat helicopter recently crashed due to a technical fault with the accompanying loss of its pilots, which if true would be far from the first such occurrence since they entered the war (Russia has not yet admitted to the recent losses stated above, which would constitute by far its most devastating combat losses to date). Nothing cheap about this war for Russia even without the massive subsidies they've been forced to provide for Assad, especially when you factor in the hidden costs such as the hundreds of "voluntary" Russian mercenaries who've already lost their lives fighting on the ground without so much as a peep from the Kremlin.
     
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    The official statement of the Russian MoD is that there has been an attack by a mobile group with minesweepers. This resulted in two deaths. Claims about lost planes and so on have been explicitly rejected as false. Source (Russian). Given that there seem to be no video proofs and so on, this seems plausible. What has been presented up to now are two pictures, showing some damaged airplanes, both do not seem to look like damaged by minesweepers. An interesting aspect is that no terrorist organization has claimed to have made this attack. This, together with the point that the information became available to Russian pro-Western media (the source of the claim is the Russian paper Kommersant, known as a pro-Western propaganda source), supports the idea (which has been openly expressed by the Russian MoD) that this is the work of some Western special forces.

    About the costs: You forget about the hidden advantages of the war. Destruction of terrorist infrastructure and terrorist forces, which, if they would have won the war, would have started to attack Russia and neighboring countries. Then, the training of the Russian forces. Now essentially all the airforce has real combat experience. Same for the command structure. There has been a lot of rotation, as among the flight personnel, as among the advisors. Then, testing various weapons in real combat. All this not only makes the Russian military much stronger, it gives also direct profit on the weapon market.

    If there are really hundreds of dead in Russian private security forces is speculation.

    BTW, victory was declared against ISIS, not against all the terrorists. Moreover, nobody thinks that ISIS is yet unable to organize various terror attacks. It is one thing if some organization holds military control over some territory and a completely different one if it has to operate undercover everywhere. Moreover, the pro-Western and Al Qaida terrorists have yet control over a lot territory, even if this territory is already smaller than at the start of the Russian operation. And became smaller even more during the last days:

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    This advance is the work of the Tiger forces, those specialists for attacks who have made a lot of work of fighting ISIS during the last year.
     
  19. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    The Tiger forces continue their advances in Southern Idlib, they are now close to Sinjar, which was considered to be a more serious bastion of joepistole's friends. Judging from pictures posted by "SAA spies" or so, the town itself seems empty, but this may be faked. The Tiger forces attack on a quite wide frontline:

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    (The whole dotted area taken today, the red circle is only the latest news today.) This is an indication that the resistance is actually nothing but serious.

    All this is already obtaining a strategic importance. So, here is a larger map:

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    which shows the potential danger of a cut of the Idlib region - the largest region in Syria controlled by joepistole's friends - into two parts. With taking Sinjar, the Syrian army would cut one of the two remaining big road connections. This would seriously endanger the communications. Given that the airforce makes communications a big problem for joepistole's friends, this is a quite serious question.

    The other serious battlefield is Harasta, part of East Ghouta (the East of Damascus). Here, joepistole's friends have started a few days ago a quite serious and coordinated (that means, several factions of them have started to cooperate instead of fighting each other) attack, and have been able to reach some success, encircling a sufficiently important position (an army base, together with a garage or so). The Syrian army has sent some serious reinforcements, and yesterday they have started to counterattack. Now they are quite close (50m to 300m or so) to breaking the encirclement. But, given that this is inside a town, these remaining 50 m or so maybe a quite hard job. We will see.
     
  20. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Comrade, as always I think it goes without saying that anything bad that happens to Russia is either Israel's or America's fault, usually both. Or maybe the KGB just isn't as competent as it wants you to believe; one or the other.

    I personally find such reports highly credible, far more so than the typical Russian denials and story changes that inevitably follow. Kommersant was the first to announce the attack, the Russian Ministry of Defence said nothing about it for half a week. The MoD claims it was a minor attack with no damage caused to any planes, but there are at least 3 photographs of damaged planes with markings, background scenery and weather all consistent with the claimed attacks. The claims of extensive damage seem highly plausible to me given the evident way Russia still hasn't learned from Soviet times not to park all your assets in one place and bunch them up. The reported damage has been updated to include a total of 9 planes, 1 helicopter (not including the one which recently crashed) and the destruction of a weapons storage depot, with only 2 planes currently back in service.

    As to no one taking responsibility for the attack itself, that's actually quite smart at this stage; it denies Russia and its allies a chance to abduct the families of the perpetrators for easy retaliation and capture.

    By that logic, the US made a "profit" in Iraq by killing tens of thousands of terrorists who arguably would have otherwise been pre-occupied with attacking American interests elsewhere. You're also left with a $200-300 billion bill for Syria's reconstruction which the US and Europe are most certainly not going to pay; you can either pay up or be left with your ally buried in its own rubble and dependent on your charity for decades to come, while rebellions will continue to pop up everywhere the populace has been abandoned. You'll also need to rebuild Syria's domestic armed forces which will cost you many billions more, unless you plan to leave the country under Iranian control and lose most of your influence there.

    It may be speculation, but that "speculation" is based on monitoring the social media posts of Russian mercenaries and soldiers who deploy to Syria, whereas virtually every controversial claim you've ever made here is based on unverifiable speculation supported by mainstream Russian government-approved media. That you have any interest whatsoever in an honest, truthful conversation here is in itself purely unverified speculation.
     
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, the information was late, usually, the time between the event and the information is shorter. I would accept here the New Year holidays as an excuse. About the pictures, the weather was indeed consistent, but not the damage.

    And why aren't your friends that smart usually, why the exception? Usually, they are very proud of everything they destroy and declare that openly, with video proofs, why not in this case? Ok, I can offer you a theory: The usual video proofs have a purpose, namely to show their Western supporters that they have really destroyed something with the weapons given by the CIA, but in this case, there were some special forces working, no need for such proofs.
    Except that Saddam Hussein was not a terrorist supporter like the Saudis.
    These are not bills but contracts. This part of neocolonial management Russia as well as China have already learned from the West, don't worry.
    First, this is, in fact, the main job what the Russians are doing there. The airbase and the training flights in real combat conditions are important, but what is decisive is the support they give to the Syrian boots on the ground. Which includes delivery of a lot of weapons of mainly Soviet time but upgraded weapons and ammunition (essentially for free, there is even economy of costs for storage and utilization of outdated weapons), but the main problem is education.
    Except that I have not taken maps here from any mainstream media, neither Russian nor NATO, and the same holds for the other information. With a few exceptions, if the medium is the original source (say, about what Putin has said, one better refers to Putin's speech in the original, which is, of course, usually from government media).

    Here is another map about the front where the Tiger forces are attacking and what they have taken yesterday:

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  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, the Tiger forces seem to take whatever they like. In the following map (sorry for the Russian letters):

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    the fat black line (below the red dotted line) is the street which is yet completely green on the maps in #416 and #418. So, not only the street itself and several villages on this road have been taken, no, they continue to advance. This seems possible only if there is no serious defense at all. In the global picture, this is half of the way toward Abu Duhur in one day:

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    The Abu Duhur airbase is the gray rectangle in the middle. It has a history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Abu_al-Duhur_Airbase - there was three years long siege by joepistole's friends until they succeeded taking it and murdering the prisoners of war they have succeeded to take, but also with a lot of them succeeding to survive. So, taking it back (in less than a 3 years siege) would be a serious moral victory for the Syrian army too.

    Given this history, it is clear that Abu Duhur can be quite seriously defended, so that joepistole's friends may have decided to give up the rural area and to concentrate on the defense of the airbase. One can also expect that, at every moment, a serious counterattack will be started. The wings are now quite long and seem vulnerable, given that there was simply no time to arm them. We will see.

    Let's also note another point: The strength of the Tiger forces is that they have learned to cooperate nicely with the Russian airforce as well as with artillery support. So, this is the place to check if there was some serious decrease in Russian airforce support. Actually, it doesn't look like the Tiger forces miss air support.
     
  23. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    It looks like the army base in Harasta has been deblocked, the number of sources seems enough. There is already news that some of the reinforcements send to Harasta are leaving the region. So, it looks like this region has low priority for the Syrian army now, and interested here only in a preservation of the status quo, at least for some time. Else, they would not leave the situation in such a way:

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    which invites attacks on the connection, but clear at least a greater region around the connection.

    In Idlib, a large number of villages has been taken, but mainly in the Eastern direction. Roughly one village along the whole Eastern flank. According to the following map in the Northern direction too:

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    but comparing it with the other maps it looks in the Northern direction more like a correction of overoptimistic claims of yesterday. Whatever, with a similar temp of advance, Abu Duhur is near future.

    An interesting side point is that yesterday there was information about civilians hissing Syrian flags and Assad portraits in regions yet controlled by joepistole's friends, and these were the villages taken today. This also looks like these villages have been simply given up, and all this based on some agreements. It is well-known that the Tiger forces are able to take regions in a temp by two-three villages a day against Daesh, we have seen this, but, sorry, not 11 villages as in the map, even if the enemy is weak and runs away. So, it seems quite plausible that there really is a decision to give up the whole area, on whatever base, and that the Syrian army at least knows about this decision and simply takes what has been left alone by joepistole's friends.

    The media of joepistole's friends are full of accusations of each other of treason, betrayal, being bought by the Syrian side and cooperating with them, which includes even Al Qaida as cooperating with Assad. (This is second-hand information, I don't read them.) The interesting part of this is that they talk about giving up the whole Eastern part, as well as Abu Duhur, which has not yet even been attacked. Ok, it is now some 10 km or so away, and the reconnaissance of the Tiger forces has been there and found nothing better to do but to post videos of an almost empty place into the net.
     
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