Military Events in Syria and Iraq thread #3

Sun Tzu
"When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard."

 

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In some situations it makes sense, in other situations not. In Stalingrad, it made sense, because the losses of the German army were quite big, simply because of the overall conditions.

Around the Kuweiris airbase, they have always left for Daesh some way to run away. And, finally, they have taken a quite large region for cheap simply because Daesh has given up this region. But in these situations, there has been no point in supporting these small villages with reinforcements. The situation is different for Aleppo. It may be more useful to surround these parts to prevent such reinforcements. Without ammunition, they will be less able to terrorize the other, government-held parts of Aleppo.

In Aleppo, it looks like the Handarat camp is again under control of the Syrian army and Al Kuds, and there are again different news about the Kindi hospital, some claim fighting, some claim Syrian army control. There are claims that to secure the Handarat camp it would be necessary to control the Kindi hospital and its environment too, so if the Kindi hospital will not be taken, all this may be repeated again. In principle, this would be not that bad - there are anyway hardly any civilians in the Handarat camp now, so fighting terrorists there will not lead to a lot of civilian causalities. On the other hand, with the control of the Handarat camp and the region South of it any hopes for the terrorists to take the Castillo road back would be finally dead.

 

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Latest news from Aleppo is that some hill, Tal Humrah, has been taken by the Syrian army, which allows fire control over a quite large part of the Shoqayf region. This increases the probability that this region will be liberated during the next time too. But I would guess, given that the terrorists fight heavily in this region, that one has to expect counterattacks to take this hill back. Around the Kindi hospital the fighting continues too. All this indicates that the terrorists hope for a future offensive along the Castello road from outside. In this case, leaving this hill as well as the whole Shoqayr region to the Syrian army would be fatal.

 

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There are news, not yet completely official, that the Syrian army has taken during the night the Kindi hospital and the whole Shokayef industrial area up to the Jandul square. If this appears to be true, and will not be reverted by a counterattack, this would be the end of any terrorist dreams to recapture the control of the Castello road.

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In fact, above news seem quite natural after what has been reached yesterday, with the taking of the hill Tal Humrah, which fire-controls the Shokayef industrial area, and the quarries East of the Kindi hospital, which give fire control over the hospital area. Taking this into account, counterattacks to retake them (if they really have been taken) would appear quite costly.

On the other hand, if they want to have a hope for retaking the Castello road, they have to counterattack - and to counterattack now, before the Syrian army has secured the area. We will see.

 

Children aren't terrorists. Three year old girls and babies aren't terrorists. Dissidents aren't terrorists. One of the biggest terrorists in the region is Russia and it's ally, Assad. They are the people who are bombing hospitals and gassing innocents.

Given Russia's history, it's not surprising Russians don't know the difference between legitimate dissent and terrorists.

 

As John Kerry only recently learned after having it thrown right in his face for the last 30 years, Russia and the vast majority of its citizens have no sense of shame whatsoever. If they did, they would have learned it at some point while they've been continuously raping and pillaging over the last 500 years, and they wouldn't make their women wrap rags around their heads and dress like medieval pig farmers looking even older, wrinklier and poorer than they already are.

Shaming Russians is an honour to them- it means someone's actually paying attention to them, which means they're less mediocre than Zimbabwe or Venezuela. Keep at it, and you'll simply fill them with so much pride, that the droopy-eyed wife-beating drunks they keep sending here pretending to be foreign members of Putin's fan club will eventually drop the pretense altogether, and stick exclusively to repeating the fake news they read every morning back home, faithfully awaiting the 50 roubles they were promised to be paid in 6 months.

 

as/re John Kerry:
I seriously doubt that he has bothered to read up on Russian history and/or tried to understand the resultant Russian and Putin mindset(s).
Which most likely makes his attempts at "negotiation" futile. "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying.........nothing."

 

I don't think this is about shaming Russians as that would indeed be an effort in futility, particularly because Putin controls what Russians read, see, and hear. I think it's more about exposing Russian misinformation and propaganda everyone outside Mother Russia.

 

And what makes you think John Kerry hasn't bothered to read up on Russian history or tried to understand the Russian/Putin mindset? Let me remind you, Kerry was able to successfully avoid the reality of Iranian nuclear weapons and he did that by successfully negotiating with the Ruskies.

 

As long as we do not have transparency of government, we are left to guess.

 

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There are now already sufficient confirmation that the whole Shukajef industrial area has been taken, as well as the Kindi hospital (or, more accurate, its remains, it has been destroyed by the terrorists already 2013). From the Kindi hospital where are now even videos:

and there has been information that the carpet fabric South of the Kindi hospital has been taken by the Syrian army too.

A good day also in Deir Ezzor: They are in the process of recovering the positions they had to give up to Daesh after the air attacks from the US.

 

Fighting continues in Aleppo. At the north end of east Aleppo, the Damascus regime has taken the Al-Shuqayf industrial area and there's fighting in the large Oweijah district east of it. The Kurds may be pushing out of their small Aleppo enclave into the adjacent Ayn at-Tal neighborhood just to the east.

At the south end of east Aleppo, fighting continues in the Shaykh Said neighborhood.

And in the center of east Aleppo, it looks like there may be a push westwards from the Aleppo International Airport area into theMuqar al-Anibya neighborhood. This push still looks to me like it's intended to link up with the Aleppo citadel, effectively dividing east Aleppo in two.

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There's talk of Iranian revolutionary guards and Iraqi Shiite militiamen arriving in Aleppo to assist Assad in this offensive.

 

There, fixed it for you.

 

I have also thought about posting this map, but it seemed too optimistic for me. The progress in Sheikh Said is presented much larger than by anybody else, and not much is known about the attack West of the airport.

The US has stopped all the Syria peace talks. What this really means is unclear. Some people are afraid that this may be the preparation for starting an open US-war against Syria. The Russians seem to prepare for this, some new air defense systems seem to have been delivered to Syria. The Russian military forums are not yet completely sure which systems (they are only sure that Foxnews has it wrong). Which looks like a clear message "if you attack, you will be shot".

 

Whatever, another map. It marks some quite large regions as "contested", without specifying details. Ok, "large" meaning here less than 1 km distances, so in fact not that large.

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Do you really think Ruskies can shoot anything American? Do you really think the US worries about Ruskies? If you do, you are delusional. The real question is how suicidal are the Ruskies?

The US has broken off negotiating with Russians because the Ruskies aren't credible. They make agreements they don't honor. There is no point negotiating with someone who isn't credible. That's why the US broke off negotiating with the Ruskies. They lost whatever credibility they may have once had. And if you had followed the negotiations, you would know that.

 

Of course, the Russians can, and they will shoot anything American if they are attacked by anything American.

The open question is only how they will react if America does not attack Russians, but only Syrians. I think in this case they will shoot too, but officially it will be the Syrians which shoot.

By the way, today it was officially declared that there is now some more C-300 in Syria. So, Russia is preparing openly and officially for the possibility of US air and rocket attacks.

 

The Turks and their surrogates are pushing towards Dabiq and are only about a mile or two away in two directions. (~4 km or less)

Dabiq is the village where the Prophet Mohammed supposedly prophecied the apocalyptic battle between Islam and "Rome" would occur, the battle in which God will come down from heaven and intervene on the side of Islam, ushering in the final Kingdom of God. This myth is central to the whole Islamic State 'end times' ideology and they strongly believe it. Many of their fighters are eager to seek martyrdom in Dabiq. To them it's like Revelations is to a certain kind of Christian, except probably even more so.

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Well that's more Russian delusion and hope than reality. Unlike your beloved Mother Russia, the US and its allies are only fighting ISIS in Syria. They aren't fighting Syrian dissidents. They aren't bombing civilians and hospitals. Unlike the Russian and Assad's regimes the US doesn't think the problems in Syria can be solved militarily. They think Syria requires a political solution and not a military solution. Russia and Assad think they can impose a military solution. That's the difference.

Russia's saber rattling doesn't impress the US or anyone else outside your beloved Mother Russia. All Russia's saber rattling has done is hasten the demise of Russia. Russian's just haven't learned. They aren't a super power, and they don't have the resources to become a super power. But they want to be a super power so badly. So they mindlessly spend their way into bankruptcy over and over again, perpetually deluding themselves with visions of military might and importance. It's an expensive delusion. But, hey, it's what Russians want. If they can't have the reality, they settle for the delusion no matter how transitory.

 

It appears that the battle to liberate Mosul is coming. The Iraqis are moving troops into the area south of Mosul through the Qayyarah airbase ~20 miles to the south. Iraqi forces total 11 'brigades', each with roughly 2,000 men. There are also about 6,000 Iraqi irregulars, mostly Sunni tribesmen. There are reportedly 560 US troops ("advisors") at Qayyarah along with some French. Both the Americans and the French have artillery and can call in air support. The Kurds and small numbers of fighters from various other "micro-minorities" like the Christians, Yarsanis and Yezedhis are to the east, northeast and north of the city. Encirclement sounds like it just needs somebody to flank Mosul from the west (a large area).

UK Defense Minister David Fallon say that encirclement operations should commence in a few weeks while the attack on the city itself should come in a "few months" (December perhaps). There are still a reported 700,000 civilians in Mosul, once Iraq's second largest city. They are largely Sunnis and strongly distrust the Shi'ite government in Baghdad. So apparently the plan is to have Sunni troops actually occupy Mosul once its retaken.

The battle might not be as large as some are anticipating. It's expected that ISIS won't try to defend the city's long perimeter since that would spread them out too much. They will probably try to defend the downtown government buildings (in Arab culture, apparently a city isn't taken until those buildings are taken) and the maze-like old city.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37487149