Military Events in Syria and Iraq Thread #4

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

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  1. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Today there already have been already claims that the pocket has been closed, and Khan Sheikhun liberated completely. But both news I would not consider as 100% certain. What is certain is that the Tiger forces are inside Khan Sheikhun and have taken the Northern part, without meeting any resistance, have already started demining in the Northern part, and that the important hill Tal Teri has been taken on the Eastern side, so that everything is certainly under fire control. Hatesh (Al Qaida renamed) claims they have given up the Northern part and will defend only the Southern part. So, today two maps, the first of what is certain:

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    the second of what has been claimed, already by several different sources, but nonetheless not completely confirmed:

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    The situation around the Turkish observation point East of Morek is unclear, and what will be done with it is part of political games between Turkey, Russia, and Syria.
     
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  3. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    It is now confirmed that the pocket has been closed yesterday. In fact, both maps above have been accurate, the first one for the situation in the morning, the second for the evening.

    Actually, the Syrian army moves slowly to clean the whole area - there is no need to do this very fast, given that there are a lot of mines and so on, and one cannot know how many suicide fighters are hidden somewhere. The number of fighters inside the pocket has been estimated as 1800 based on what was visible to drones. They seem to be localized around the Turkish observation point, probably in hope that this will give them protection. There is unconfirmed information that the Syrian army has entered Kafr Zita from the West, as shown in the following map:

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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    The pocket has been reduced to the Turkish observation point, in other words, has been essentially liberated completely, given that the observation point will not be attacked. Some remaining terrorist fighters seem to be inside the observation point. What will happen with this point is essentially a political question.

    Actually there is some fighting around Kabana, in Latakia.
     
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  7. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    And also on debka.com it was reported that Turkish F-16's were warned off by Russian aircraft and nearly got into a dogfight. This would be a fantastic time to piss Turkey off, I'm sure NATO would love to get its hands on an S-400 and see just what it really can and can't do, away from all the rustards online who think it can shoot down UFO's because Putin said so.
     
  8. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    There is not much news, simply further confirmations that the only thing which remains is the Turkish observation point, which is surrounded.

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    Jaysh al Izza, which is mentioned because it is close to giving up completely, had its main power base in North Hama, and it has lost all its heavy technique and most of its fighters.
    Additionally, the M5 is now opened up to Khan Sheikhun even for civilians. So, clearing the whole area was surprisingly easy.
    The Russians know, of course, that the NATO will be able to get their hands on the export variant of S-400. And those who buy it know very well what it can do and what it can't do. From a Russian point of view, this is not a big problem - S-400 is for defense, and Russia does not plan to attack Turkey. Instead, the Turks know very well the Russian position, and that they have no right at all to be there because it is Syrian territory.
    So, I don't think this is more than Erdogan trying to test what he can do without meeting resistance and what will be not allowed. Flying over Syrian territory simply because there is some Turkish observation point which was not yet evacuated is not allowed, that's all. Turkey has, diplomatically, officially accepted that there has to be Syrian control over the whole territory.
     
  9. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Turkey has also said that Bashar Assad is a war criminal who must step down. Their definition of what constitutes "Syria" is not the same as yours. You also seem to think that they're going to accept another 3 million refugees flooding their border and not do anything about it.
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    After some silent period, there have been again some "minor border skirmishes". It is official and acknowledged by both sides that one hill and two villages have been taken by the Syrian army as shown in this map:

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    Unconfirmed claims go beyond that and claim the village Sakiyat and the town Taman'ah have been taken too, but that there is actually a counterattack to retake Taman'ah. This would look like here:

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    So, it looks like there will be no immediate ceasefire. Erdogan has been in Moscow, they have had a nice meeting, officially there was nothing which sounds like yet another ceasefire, and, as we see, the "small border skirmishes" have been restarted.

    And they also have been best friends making family photos together. This is something which can change again. Turkey has tried conflict with Russia but now prefers not to have such a conflict. This is what counts.
    Nonsense. They know how to reduce the number of such refugees, if necessary to zero: Shooting them if they try to go through the border. They may decide differently because refugees give them power against Europe. Because they can allow refugees to enter Europe, and explain to them how to do it.
     
  11. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    "Minor border skirmishes" continuing: That Tamanah was taken is confirmed now, the counterattack was not successful, and now some hills around the town have been taken so that it is secured now.

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  12. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    If Turkey shoots 3 million refugees or tries to dump them in Europe, very bad things will happen to them as a consequence. Since their army is much stronger than Russia's within the region, and Russia is scared to draw NATO into a nuclear war, the least painful option for Erdogan would be to confront Putin and bomb Khmeimim out of action if necessary. You're lucky Erdogan is almost as stupid as the typical Muscovite or he would have already done that. Try dumping 3 million refugees in Israel and see what happens, if you think it can't be done.
     
  13. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    If they actually do know what they're talking about, then it's a shame they don't talk about how Russia just nuked itself or how none of their flashy weapons actually work under realistic conditions, and they won't work any time soon because Russians have neither the money nor the brains to make it happen.

    America only has like 2,000 troops there and still no one is strong enough to drive them out. 2,000 troops would have been plenty for Iraq too if they bombed all the homes and hospitals like your cousins do. Why would the Arabs ask America to leave just so they can be tortured to death in Damascus?

    Uhm it's pretty obvious America is not there at your invitation, nor Assad's, nor Putin's. Can't wait 'til the US starts freedom of navigation exercises in Ukrainian waters too, they don't need your invitation for that either. It only takes 1 missile to knock out an S-300 radar or battery, you think it's designed to stop alien invasions? I don't know what you think is so amazing about these antiquated missile systems, you act like they were made in the US or UK or Germany or something. Assad will probably never be allowed by Putin to use that system, because as soon as he does, all its weaknesses get exposed and then it won't just be India cancelling purchases of crappy Russian equipment.

    It costs the US about $100 million to replace that drone, it costs billions to replace all the missiles, warehouses and militias that the US and Israel have been steadily blowing up for the last 3 years. Israel is in Syrian airspace all the time, you don't know about it because:

    1) Assad doesn't want to openly brag every time Israel hits a target and Putin can't do a damn thing about it, it's not good to embarass your suzerains.
    2) Russia doesn't have the technology to detect most Israeli flights, especially the F-35. You guys are simply out of your league on that one, you won't have a working combat capable stealth aircraft even in 50 years, although you might manage to create a sweet looking mockup that could be useful in a film blaming America for all your problems.

    I'm sure you're used to hundreds and thousands of US soldiers running away from you time after time after time in various video games, but those games aren't based on accurate premises. What we do know for a fact based on recent events is that Russia is mortally terrified of schools and hospitals, and won't engage on the ground until they've all been flattened. Meanwhile I'm glad the US uses its air supremacy over Russia to its advantage, because the lives of their soldiers are worth thousands of times more than the vodka-soaked peasants Russia throws onto the field, and we don't want to see US soldiers unnecessarily proving their bravery when less hazardous methods are available. Russia on the other hand can afford to sacrifice more on the ground, because the people they send to Syria were a net drain on their society before they did the world a favour and tried attacking a US base.

    Almost 9 years of fighting and Russia still can't win even after bombing every school and hospital in sight and creating 11 million refugees. No wonder the rebels prefer fighting in Idlib rather than the east, plus they know the US isn't interested in killing them just to look powerful and trying to compensate for the inadequacy of its own civilization.

    "Poddubnyy also revealed that his interview with the boy and his father had not been recorded in Douma, but in Damascus, the Syrian capital, near the Dama Rose hotel. When asked directly if the piece had been filmed on the grounds of the Syrian Army Officers Club, which is next door to that hotel, Poddubnyy said that it had not."

    And here's the conversation where it's established why the reporter lied about his filming locations and contacts:

    "No, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. There is no way to film on those grounds with permission, it is part of the club. How much time have you spent making television around military facilities in a police state at war?"

    https://twitter.com/RobertMackey/status/988821241875320833
    It was filmed on the grounds of the Officers' Club, which are not accessible to the general public without explicit permission. That's why they have gates and fences blocking it off. There is no reason to take a boy across the street to interview him on the restricted grounds of a military facility where only army officers are permitted, and then not to openly disclose all of that information immediately upon being asked. The report which first presented this interview used film footage from 2016 as attempted proof the attacks were faked, does that not strike you as a serious credibility issue? And why are you so open to forming your entire world view based on like two or three staged interviews backed by misrepresented footage, but you don't find it the least bit strange when teams of international inspectors are denied access to the attack site after they've already made their own security arrangements, and when they conclude that sarin gas was used but Putin says no, you assume that Putin knows more about bombs and chemicals than they do?

    If Putin drops a feather and a cannonball from the same height, and the cannonball hits the ground first, you'd doubtlessly take it as proof that Newton was wrong about gravity all along.

    Somewhere in Germany there's a guy pretending to be a purebred Hessian noble while calling for his host country to get trampled by Russian jackboots.

    Your internet sources do nothing but push the same story already published by Russian state-owned mass media. Your hypocrisy has actually given me a great idea- since western societies lack the resources to gainfully employ all the criminals, why don't we do what Russians do and make our criminals the judges, police and bailiffs instead?
     
  14. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    But maybe Schmelzer you really are right about Russia shutting Syrian airspace off to the US and Israel. Maybe it only costs $50 to build a whole army base and stuff a bunch of warehouses with thousands of missiles and soldiers to protect them- after all, before the Russian ruble started tanking it already cost less than 15 cents to get a BJ from the finest Moscow has to offer. Maybe Iraq just recently closed off its airspace because they fear a Martian invasion or a bombing attack from Venezuela, and maybe Iran keeps whining about Russia not protecting their assets in Syria because Israel secretly paid them to embarass you and Putin.
     
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    There is, of course, no need to shoot 3 millions, it is sufficient to shot those who try to break through the border, this will be no more than some dozens until the others have learned the lecture. BTW, they have already started this, some tried to break through the border, one shot dead and some twenty or so wounded as the result. To try to dump those already in Turkey is easy, it has been already done, with the result that Europe now pays Erdogan not to repeat this.
    What would be the point of doing such a stupid thing? Attacking Khmeimim would lead to immediate retaliation, even if the US would do this themselves. The US knows this, else they would have done it. Nobody in NATO would start a war against Russia if it would destroy Erdogan in retaliation. Erdogan has tried confrontation with Russia shooting a Russian plane, and learned the lesson. BTW, the NATO has offered support for Turkey if they do this, but not delivered. Wars are started by NATO only if the US likes to start a war, the promise of defense of other nations against possible aggression is nothing but an empty promise.
    Israel would shoot them too, no problem. And nobody in the West would even squeak about it.

    BTW, there seems to be nice cooperation on the ground. The Russians and Syrians have declared a one-sided ceasefire, and not flown over Idlib at all. Then, a strange thing happened, namely a US attack against a leadership meeting of the terrorists. There is talk that even Juliani, the leader of Hatesh, is among the dead.
     
  16. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    A lot of the usual boastful rubbish of CptBork, not worth to be answered, except for a part where I can give some useful information about the general limits of air defenses:
    Which alien invasion? S-300 is there to defend the Syrian airspace against invasions.

    If a single US plane will be shot, while clearly over Syrian territory, the US will not start a war. As they have not even retaliated against Iran shotting that drone. They will simply stop flying over Syria. And, in fact, the Russians will insist that the information about the plane will not be published, at least not from the Russian/Syrian side. The US reaction will be similar - there will be information about an accident during a training flight somewhere in Iowa, to explain the dead US soldier flying that plane, that's all. So that losers like CptBork will not even learn about this, and there will be no public pressure to shot back, it will be known only to those who have to know about this. (Iran shotting down the drone was made public by those who tried to force Trump to start a war with Iran, but Trump nonetheless refused to start it.)

    And, no, you need much more missiles to knock out air defenses. There should be simply more than the air defense is able to shoot at the same time. This is what the Palestinians have done with the Israeli "Iron Dome", except that they have not used cruise missiles but cheap ballistic rockets, so that even shooting one costs Israel more than the Palestinians had to pay for rocket itself, and to show the world that it not only possible but easy to defeat the Iron Dome was worth the game. Of course, this works too with cruise missiles against S-300, if you use enough of them at the same time. But in this case, the financial aspect will be different. The cruise missiles are more expensive than what is used to shoot them.

    Moreover, you also need prepared places for starting them. There would be US bases and US ships for them, but once the first missile started, they are legitimate targets and will be shot too. So, they will be enough for the first shot, and take out some of the air defenses active as the first defense. But that's all.
    Don't even hope, they will not do this. If they enter Russian territorial waters, they will be shot, and the Russians do not need an invitation for shooting them too.
    Even S-300 is better than what the NATO has, S-400 is beyond reach for the NATO.
    You have no idea about the prices.
    It was there because Russia said from the start that this issue between Iran and Israel is nothing they care about. But somehow the Israelis trespassed some Russian/Syrian red line, after that an Israeli plane was shot. And after this, the Israelis shoot missiles from far away (Lebanon or Mediterranian Sea) instead of flying over Syria.
    LOL, even the Yugoslav army was able to shoot US "stealth" aircraft. They said, after this, "sorry, we didn't know it was stealth". ;-)

    The Russian fighters are better in almost everything except stealth, and stealth is something you need if fighting some Papuas or so with weak air defenses unable to see them.
    Learn to count, the Russians came 2015, and the war was essentially won last year. The remaining cleaning of Idlib is nothing decisive, the remaining terrorists have no longer any power to do something really dangerous, it is more a game of diplomacy than a real war now.

    Nonsense, it is clearly visible that nobody asks for badges at the entry into the garden. The checks are made inside. Look at the pictures, they are public.

    Because I'm not aware of this claim, so I was unable to consider this.

    LOL. The gas attacks are obviously faked, and cui bono is already sufficient to show this. BTW, they did not even claim that Sarin was used during the Douma attacks.

    No, they are much more actual and much more precise. Russian journalism in the mass media is not high quality, as usual everywhere. They have only the advantage that they don't have to care about political correctness. And there are exceptions, in particular, war correspondents who really work on the frontline. In the past, such correspondents have been in the West too, I remember some of them working in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and they were together with the jihadists also quite close to the frontline. But actually there is no longer such journalism in the West.
    That has been implemented in the West long before it has been, after the crash of communism, taken over by the Yeltsin government for Russia too. But this is already long-forgotten past, in particular, the youth does not remember this time because they were too young.

    You have misunderstood, this has not happened yet. The actual agreement is that the US coalition can fly East of the Euphrates. But once everything else is secured, and it is time to throw the US out of Syria, this cooperation may be stopped. And if the Israelis fly East of the Euphrates, nobody cares too. (In particular, if they fake that they are US planes, as they have already done.)

    The Israelis actually shoot the Iranian things with missiles from outside. This is a good exercise for the Syrian air defenses. As explained above, if they use enough missiles, something will go through. Moreover, the Iranian sites are not what Syria cares about most. So, they are protected yet by S-200 level air defenses.
     
  17. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Vodka supplies are running low, guess it's time to break the ceasefire for the 50th time and go back to fighting until more arrives.
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2019
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Even your prejudices are outdated, Russians drink less than many European nations like Germans, Frenchmen, Czechs.

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    The criminal aim of the US occupation of the Syrian territory is not even hidden on the ground: A foto of a US flag on the Koniko oil field. It's not the Kurds who steal Syrian oil, but the US.

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  19. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    The only incentive for becoming a soldier in the Russian army is because it's the only way to get affordable alcohol, unless you're an oligarch. Funny that you have no trouble believing UN maps on alcohol consumption, but you refuse to even consider a word they say on the investigated use of chemical weapons by Russia's client regime in Syria.

    Don't worry, contrary to popular belief in your circles, US flags will not in fact kill your brain with lethal radiation. It's impossible for the Kurds to steal the oil because it already belongs to them, it sits on their lands, and the lands of those who partner with them. If the Kurds want US assistance to extract and sell their oil, they have every right to ask for and receive it. Meanwhile you don't seem to have any issue with Russian mercenaries attacking oil fields and massacring rebellious populations in exchange for rights to most of the profits from the fields they capture.
     
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    LOL. Alcohol is cheap enough in Russia for everybody. But in the army, this is close to impossible. Ok, Russians are anarchists in their nature, so they will find ways to drink alcohol even in the army if they want to, but this is something much more dangerous than, say, in the German army. Even much more problematic than in the Eastern German (communist time) army, which was a yet serious army, not Bundeswehr. I have been in that GDR army, participated there myself in buying alcohol (inclusive climbing over barbed wire fences - no problem for me with former Russian anarchistic experience), and can compare this with what I have heard from the Russian army.

    Of course, I place here maps which may seem reputable for the public here. If I would refer here to more reliable Russian data, this would be rejected as Russian propaganda, so this would not make sense. So I have used the US propaganda search machine google to find sources acceptable for this specific Western public. I have no trouble believing this particular map because it gave the same information as the Russian sources which have given me the information about this fact.
    Nice joke. But, unfortunately, it is not Kurdish land at all. The land with most of the oil sources is Arab land, and it is now occupied by the Kurds.

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    The dark green areas are predominantly with Kurdish population (in fact, other maps present much less of this as Kurdish). The black ellipses are the oil fields.
    Why should I have any issues with your fantasies? I know that NATO propagandists have a lot of such fantasies.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    The point being?

    Have you taken a look at this map, and compared it with what is occupied by the US and their Kurdish vassals now? The "long occupied by Kurds" land of both of the maps of your links is even less than the dark green areas in my map above.

    But, ok, thanks for linking evidence for my claim "in fact, other maps present much less of this as Kurdish".

    But maybe you simply don't know that what is actually occupied by the US is everything East of the Euphrates? In this case, find the Euphrates in your maps.
     
  23. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Judging by the amount of fighting and number of casualties experienced during this "US occupation", it would seem the Kurds and other local populations want the US there much more than Kosovars want Serbs or Chechens want Russians, but of course since you hold the US to a different standard than Serbia and Russia, it's natural that you would overlook your own hypocrisy. If you want to complain about Kurds "occupying" the lands of people who you believe want Vladimir Putin as their president instead, then what do you have to say about the Kurdish lands occupied by Turkey, Iran and Iraq? Do you think it's justified to gerrymander Kurdistan out of existence?
     
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