Someone asked me how this blitzkrieg across the agricultural lands of the Fertile Crescent is likely to progress. It seems that the SAA and friends now are largely in control of the Abu Duhur town and air base area and that a link up with forces advancing to the west from Khanassar is imminent. After that it will be largely a matter of cleaning up remnants of HTS resistance south of the link up before moving on to the rest of Idlib Province.
Where IS Steiner? pl
pl
Steiner is sitting in his den close to the Turkish border, crying and recording ridiculous videos for Youtube and Twitter. Here is what seems to be his latest:
https://twitter.com/walid970721/status/950787054232899589
Colonel, Sultan Erdo has already called in Russian and Iranian ambassadors to turkey for the SAA Idlib operation’ WTF is going on question. AS of matter Erdo may gets again change sides.
I would imagine that the SARgov’s eventual prime goal is to recover all lost lands and restore all lost authority and control. If the SARgov finds it easier to let all the Cannibal Liver Eating Jihadis escape into Turkey than to surround them all and kill them all, the SARgov will let them all escape into Turkey.
Ergogan would welcome them. They are his kind of people. He would give them shelter and comfort until they decide to go somewhere else and jihadify in new places.
This would be bad for the wider world, of course, but convenient for Syria as long as the SARgov comes to feel confident in its ability to prevent them from ever returning, and confident in its ability to kill every one of them upon any attempt to return, without exception.
Perhaps SAA already started at Khanasser. There are reports that they occupied the villages of Hawarin, Ramlah, Muzya’lah, Nuwara, Rasm al-Sheikh and Tell Subhah. All of those are just southwest of Khanaser.
But there are also reports they opened another axis driving south from Abu Ruwayl towards the airfield at Abu Duhur
Kooshy
I don’t see that calling in Russian and Iranian ambassadors will change anything. The “opposition” pressured Turkey to do something as one of the guarantor states of Astana against what the “opposition” describes as using the pretext of Al Qaeda presence to conquer opposition territory in the Iranian area of responsibility. Eliminating Al Qaeda, however it calls itself, Nusra, HTS or what ever, was agreed by Astana powers. Turkey knows it well, and the “opposition” knows it, too. So, if the “opposition” wants to avoid losing territory on the “pretext of eliminating Al Qaeda” they just would have to eliminate Al Qaeda themselves in that territory. The problem with that task is that the “opposition” is neither willing or able to do that themselves. As far as I understand the situation in the Idlib pocket, only the headchoppers of the Zanki gang managed to kick out Nusra from their areas of control, and that is a very tiny strip of land north west of Aleppo. All other territory of the Idlib pocket is de facto under tight control of Al Qaeda.
Russia responded to the Turkish complaint with counter-complaint that Turkey is not doing enough to root out Al Qaeda and prevent other groups like Ahrar Al Sham to launch terrorist attacks on Russian forces – eg the recent mass drone attack – in it’s area of responsibility in the Idlib pocket.
As I see it the result of the Turkish complaints and the Russian counter-complaint will likely be, that the Astana powers as agreed discuss such matters at their next Astana meeting. That may be still a while away, and in the meantime Russia, with the help of the SAA and the IRGC on the ground, will likely eliminate Al Qaeda from the center of the Idlib pocket, which is the Russian area of responsibilty.
It is just for show; Erdogan playing to his corner.
He wants to avoid being tarred the same way Iran has been tarred among Sunni Muslims – inside Turkey as well as outside of it – as being complicit in the murder of True Muslims on behalf of the heretical Alwaites and almost-as-bad Shia Muslims.
Steiner is here.
https://youtu.be/eVB-SSkkLnY
Erdogan is a Turk. Maybe a very special one but most Turks view the Arabs as KKK members view blacks.
ps. What is Turks for “Wir schaffen es”.
Where IS Steiner?
At a Super Bowl party.
There will be too pockets Abu Duhur to the eats to Khanssar and Abu Duhur to the north to Aleppo. The jihadis are already fleeing the area.
Erdogan is again trying to change sides? On top of the drones (which smell more of CIA than MIT to me) he delivered 6 MRAP like Turkish build vehicles to Feylaq el-Sham which flies a Taliban like flag and fights the Syrian forces.
https://twitter.com/Ozkok_/status/951394915124154368
Putin will have to make another phone call to put the wannabe-Sultan back down on the ground.
b
Agree. I got tired of writing. Are you the “pizza pineapple?” pl
I have seen claims that in some parts of once HTS territory there, ISIS has moved into those villages. jcg
Colonel, talking from experience, on pizza pineapple (Hawaiian pizza) if the one just removes the pineapples, it becomes a Canadian bacon pizza, which by far is easier to swallow.
I don’t agree, Sunni Arab street is well aware what’s happening and going on in Syria and the rest of Arab spring countries. Fortunately West/US and thier regional client dectators could not make this wars an Arab Persian or a Sunni Shia street level war, due to cleaver Shia reaction. Therefore there is no reason for informed street Arabs to blame Iran for thier own dictatorship’ misdeeds and submissions to western plans. KSA, Egypt, Jordan and PG shikhlets have zero political legitimacy or credit in Arab streets. Much less than Iran and Hezbollah.
Babak, BTW every time president Trump goes to an Arab country and hold that orb with two unelected Arab dictators, and gives away Arab cities and lands to non Arab European colonists, he brings the Sunni street Arabs closer to Iran’ position. For Iran’s regional policy, that’s like all you can eat buffet manna from the heavens.
Example of the Russian air force bombing hospitals and kitten sanctuaries.
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/turkeys-aid-militants-idlib-met-heavier-strikes-russia/
Look at their faces at 4:20.
The jihadist forces cannot long withstand that level of firepower in such an open terrain without deep and well hidden fortifications.
You are wrong to assume that there is such a thing called “informed Arab street”.
It is not just Sunni Arabs that blame Iran for supporting a dictator. Many Turks do that too.
FYI, here is an analysis/article by a very informed prominent westernized US born Arab American Journalist Rami G. Khouri.
“The bottom line for me is that major decisions on existential issues that impact the lives of 600 million people in the wider Middle East are being made largely on the basis of policy preferences among the Israeli and Saudi Arabian leaderships, and intermediated by mostly ignorant, and often very young and inexperienced American officials like Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The revelation that President Trump’s White House last year managed Middle Eastern issues mainly through the Israeli, Saudi Arabian, and Egyptian leaderships, with an overarching desire to push back Iranian influence in the region, helps explain why the United States finds itself in confusing situations across the Middle East. It has mainly crisis-managed relations through the lens of security and militarism, and often with mixed successes.
The main problem with the Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian combine as Washington’s preferred entry point into the Middle East is that these four counties’ leaders appear to be totally blind to the conditions, rights, sentiments, and aspirations of the 400 million people in Arab countries, and the other 200 million Middle Easterners in surrounding states. These four states’ steadfast attempts to maintain “security and stability” by using massive military and police force — alongside stringent limits on citizen political, social, and economic rights — has achieved exactly the opposite of what was desired.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48557.htm
Thank you for your comments.
Iran absorbed costs for not helping Chechen rebels against the Russian Federation or in Kashmiri rebels against the Indian government.
In both instances, an argument could be made that they should have supported those Muslim rebels out of religious solidarity.
That is an untenable position since those rebels – illegal fighters, if you will – were not authorized to wage war by any Just, Legitimate Authority.
I doubt that very many people could grasp that argument or even accept it.
Even in Iran, there were those who advocated on fighting on behalf of Iraq in 1991 – against the United States.
In Syria, one could argue that the rebels were not authorized by a Legitimate Authority; be it Just or not; which would mean that Iran was not required to render support to them.
That would have been an acceptable argument for many Muslims – Sunni or Shia.
But Iran went further and rendered assistance to the Legitimate, but not Just – Authority. Since Shia Islam upholds the Platonic principle of Justice as a pillar of religion, it follows that Iran went against one of the principals of Shia Islam by supporting the Dictatorial SAR government.
Iranians could argue that had they not done so, the replacement of SAR would have been even a more Un-Just dispensation.
This is a matter of political as well as religious debate; both on the level of who has authorized the Iranians to adjudicate in this manner as well as how one measure the degree of Un-Just-ness of a possible political dispensation.
For many Sunnis, it all looked that the Heretical Alawites were helped by semi-Heretical Shia – both being deviants from True Islam – calling themselves Party of Ali.
In a way, it likely is the case of God Mocking Man:
The secular republic finding itself 200 years later supporting a religious war of Jews against Muslims,
The Shia republic – where any non-Shia had been considered ritualistically dirty and thus untouchable – waging a war against Ture Muslims side by side with impure Orthodox, heretical Alawites, and barbaric Afghans,
and then there is that EU, ostensibly dedicated to the cause of Peace-in-our-time, whose acts since the demise of Soviet Union has been to bomb other countries in the names of Peace, Justice, Progress and whole bunch of other things.
Dictator or not by all accounts and poles, Bashar is the most popular leader in the Sunni majority Syria. That’s the reason West is not accepting him in standing in UN observed election.
Not to mention he is also by far the most legitimately “elected” Arab leader. Outside of Tunisia and Iraq, there is no real election for the head of state in Any Arab country, is easy not to think of that? And think Arab street not knows this or they lack having informed intellectuals who knows what the real facts are and who to blame. But how can anybody blame Iran for inanglment of Arab’ freedom fight is beyond me?
The two are not contradictory; Stalin was very popular as well – men died with the name “Stalin” on their lips.
Babak Makkinejad
“It is just for show; Erdogan playing to his corner.”
Yes. I strongly agree to that assessment.
Erdogan has now much more serious business with Russia and Iran than to have that destroyed by some “rebels” in Syria – or even in Iraq.
Just remember how Erdogan helped to destroy Barzani.