Few days ago, somebody there has entered some place in Damascus to find a document marked ‘Top Secret and Urgent’, detailing a ‘mechanism’ set up by the Russians (read: nearly certainly the GRU), to arrange communication between Israel and the Assadist Regime. Sadly, the same is covering only the period from around April and July 2023, while this ‘mechanism’ (i.e. a sort of ‘hot line’) must’ve existed since much earlier (probably since around 2015-2016, at least since around the ‘short war’ between Israel, Assadists and the IRGC, fought in February 2018).
Now, why have the Russians done that?
During the first year of its military intervention in Syria, back in 2015-2016, the Russians found themselves having no trace of clue about what is going on in the country, nor where. All they were able of concluding was that Assad was out of touch with reality, and having no armed forces to command. Moreover, their own operations were in complete disharmony with those of the IRGC’s- and thus Assadist forces. Even as of spring and summer 2016, each of three parties was fighting its own war. The situation might have culminated in the reported (but never substantiated) IRGC’s coup attempt against Bashar al-Assad, in January 2017. Apparently: the Iranians attempted to replace him by his brother Maher, but the Russians (i.e. the GRU-Spetsnaz) came in between…
Ever since, the Russians did their utmost to separate Assad from the IRGC. Was a ‘co-reason’ for their reform of the Assadist armed forces. See: re-organisation of dozens of disparate militias (many of these established by the IRGC as elements of the ‘National Defence Force’ and ‘Local Defence Force’) ‘back’ into the Syrian Arab Army.
This is becoming particularly interesting considering Assad’s actions of about the last 14-16 months: amid growing Israeli threats, he – gradually – curbed the flow of Iranian arms for Hezbollah in Lebanon, shut down the Houthi ‘embassy’ (or ‘office’) in Damascus, and ignored the Iranian warnings about the coming insurgent offensive. Indeed, through reading between the lines of dozens of different mainstream media reports, there are indications that by 1-6 December, he completely stopped cooperating with Tehran. And that although he was actually still dependent on the IRGC-support for survival of his regime. And, when he stopped cooperating with the IRGC, then the ‘young guard’ of the same – new commanders appointed instead of those shot away by the Israelis over the last 14 months, drew the only logical conclusion: why continuing to squander billions to support an idiot that’s not listening to them?
They’ve packed their stuff and started withdrawing: surviving Assadists are still complaining how they’ve been left down..
Another thingy important to keep in mind considering it’s now clear that the Russians and the Israelis were all the time in touch: mind that the Israelis were after Nasrallah (former leader of Hezbollah) for decades, but never managed to assassinate him. They did manage to do so only by an air strike that was possible because they have tracked him down – as he was returning from a meeting in Damascus. Can’t help it, but I would not the least be surprised if the Israelis did so on ‘tip’ from Moscow, i.e. the GRU or FSB (of course: on Putin’s order)…
If at least some of that is truth, then the result is an interesting ‘thesis’, if you like: the one that Putin – perhaps in collusion with Netanyahu (which wouldn’t be surprising, considering they’re business partners) – literally ‘torpedoed’ Assad by (successfully) distancing him from the IRGC.
Is certain to appear as an ‘own goal’ at the first look, but: mind that Putin remains preoccupied with Ukraine. Indeed, that is his ‘fateful affair’. If so – and yes, I’m aware of the fact that this is nothing else but a guess – then he certainly did not tip the Israelis about Nasrallah without some sort of Netanyahu’s favour in return.
And, in such a case… well, dear Ukrainians: I cannot but recommend you to wear something particularly warm, both this winter and the next spring.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/syria-war-12-december-2024-conspiracies
Comment: Given everything Russia had to deal with over the years, I’m even more impressed with what they managed to accomplish. I don’t think it’s a matter of being driven out. I just think they’ve reached the point of exasperation with Assad, the SAA, Iran and the IRGC. What may be more damaging than leaving Syria is the discovery that Russia was playing footsie with Israel while trying to limit IRGC in Syria and Lebanon. The eventual development of a gas pipeline to Europe will also have a detrimental effect on Russia’s economy.
But as Tom Cooper alludes to, further involvement in Syria has become a distraction that Russia can no longer afford. Now those resources that once went to Syria can be focused on the SMO in Ukraine. There’s an old saying that “when you are up to your ass in alligators it’s difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp”
TTG
I’ll give Biden credit for this and Ukraine. It occurred on his watch. I am starting to think Obama tried to accomplish something like this and pass it off to Hillary to complete. Trump instead became president and wasn’t on board with convoluted support to Islamic militants in Syria or a goading Russia into a proxy war. Trump set up some things during his first watch and Biden got to make some unpopular decisions that needed to be made to get where we are now. I’ve always wondered if all presidents collude with each other on a geostrategic level. Now he gets to hot tag Trump to build upon our position with a non/less interventionist and nationalist stance that may benefit our global standing.
Condottiere,
Obama, Trump and Biden were all consistent on fighting ISIS in Syria. Obama was bent on supporting “good jihadis,” a disastrous and embarrassing policy.
TTG pray tell me who these good Jihadists are? The so called moderates (Al Quaida on our side as per Sulliven) probably are trained by Saintly Nobel Laurette Obama to use guns instead of primitive knives and Swords to chop heads off. Tell you the truth at one time I believed this guy and even voted for him, but he was as much a deep state shrill as any one else was. Thanks
Muralidhar Rao,
Under operation Timber Sycamore, Obama authorized the arming and training of Syrian rebels. These weren’t established groups. They were individuals supposedly vetted. Hundreds were trained. A lot of them were captured and disarmed by al Nusra. Others voluntarily turned over their weapons. The ones trained and armed at al Tanf are still there, first as the Qaryatayn Martyrs Brigade later renamed the New Syrian Army (NSA). They, like the others, were supposed to fight ISIS. The NSA first fought the SAA against orders. All in all, the program was a miserable failure. The support of the YPG proved much more successful.
I don’t think that was a mistake or a failure.
Maybe a detail, but the dates of the communications can tell us something how fast the “hotline” worked. The seven specimens posted bu Hassan Hassan are dated 17 and 29 May, 9, 11 and 17 June, and 6 and 15 July 2023. Complains were made by the Israeli counterpart “Musa/Moses” on 8 April, this was forwarded to Ali Mamluk on 17 May 2023. The 15 July memo mentions receipt by the Syrian mukhabarat from the Russians on 14 July of a message sent on 6 July by “Musa/Moses.” So transmission was noticeably faster, but far from being useable in an operational context.
I quote a senior Russian in the summer of 2016: “Syrians took everything we had to offer to them, except our advice.”
But if Tom Cooper’s description is correct, Bashar al-Asad seems to have listened more to the Russians in the last 14 months of his reign. So I don’t think this supports a hypothesis that a decision was made “to cut him loose” in 2024.
I agree with Wunduk. There was no decision by Putin to cut Assad loose. It was just that the Russian MoD over the last three years has been focused on their ‘three-day SMO’ in Ukraine. Plus Putin put too much faith in the March 2020 ceasefire deal that he made with Erdogan.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-idUSKBN20S161/
Not to mention that they used Syria as a dumping ground for generals and senior officers that had been relieved of their command for failure in Ukraine.
LOL, will “next year in Moscow” replace “next year in Jerusalem ” as the prayer of choice with the borg? 2016 was almost a decade ago. Have we been sitting in that foreign land that long, blocking their access to their resources and depriving that government of funds while driving up costs – social and economic- to the detriment of people living there the whole time? Once a designated terrorist group takes over will we come home, and “peace in our time” break out there?
Thing is, Leith, it was pretty well a “three-day SMO” in reality, or thereabouts.
The sanctions war was really where we fought and lost the Ukrainian war; but even at the start the military war was not entirely a sideshow. And the SMO was a textbook example of how to fight it.
In what must be the most brilliant military operation of modern times, and in a remarkably short space of time, the Russians placed themselves just where they needed to be: either in a commanding negotiating position, though that was always a long shot, or correctly placed for the long process of attrition of Western proxies and Western equipment we are now seeing drawing to its close.
At the same time preventing for good the threat of the neo-Nazi units in the Ukrainian army getting loose in the Donbass and also preventing the attempt on Crimea.
The neatest little operation we’ve seen in our lifetimes, that start to the Ukrainian war. Compare it with the quite murderously wasteful amateur night efforts of the Milley/Cavoli/Radakin trio and it’s apparent that the Staff Colleges of the West could do with a thorough shake-up. If we take that lesson away from the war at least some good will come out of it for us.
As for Syria being a “dumping ground”, if it was that at the end I don’t think it could be called that earlier. With scanty forces the Russian pushed back the Jihadis we were using for the purpose of getting rid of Assad. I still wonder whether the drubbing they gave the US in Syria led to the current state of relations between the US and Russia. Generals are only human, after all, and there must still be a lot of professional resentment around in the US armed forces after the Russians out-thought them in Syria.
In fact the Syrian war gave the Russians useful experience for the Ukrainian war that was to come. You’ll have noticed that the liberation of Mariupol was almost a carbon cope of the earlier relief of East Aleppo. All the more useful in that the neo-Nazis who formed part of the Ukrainian forces occupying Mariupol employed much the same methods – use of civilians and civilian infrastructure as shields, atrocity theatre – as the Jihadis had employed in Aleppo.
I recollect a TV interview out of Kiev in which a neo-Nazi asserted they’d studied ISIS and learned a lot from them. So having to cope with the real thing in Syria must have been useful for the Russians when they came up against similar tactics in Ukraine.
The one branch of war where we outshone the Russians was information war. Unfortunately we got the wrong target. We didn’t fool the Russians, nor the Chinese nor anyone else, with all the nonsense the NATO information warriors put out. But we fooled ourselves. Comprehensively. That’s why we’re in such a jam now.
EO,
Still trying to spin the Russian invasion as a brilliant triumph from day one. Where did you get those rose colored glasses?
once deep red tinted… now faded.
once deep red tinted
unlikely, it feels, ked. Although, who knows? He no doubt exhibits a certain argumentative rigidity… Like this piece of his present jigsaw puzzle:
I recollect a TV interview out of Kiev in which a neo-Nazi asserted they’d studied ISIS and learned a lot from them.
What do you think? Would he be willing to give us more details on this specific piece of his puzzle? What channel? What “neo-Nazi”? Place: Out of Kyiv/Kiev? Where exactly? Time? When/Month/Year?
Leander,
When an otherwise intelligent and organized person demonstrates what you call “argumentative rigidity” and unable to accept obvious objective reality contrary to their argument, it is either because they have been thoroughly indoctrinated into a cult or they are paid to be propagandists.
TTG – yes, I did feel very much out on a limb back in early to mid 2022. Absolutely no one else I knew of was asserting that this war was lost before it started.
But honestly, the Russians would have needed their heads examining if they couldn’t win in these circumstances – they didn’t need to be playing 3D chess, just plod along making use of their overwhelming military superiority in this theatre.
They did rather better than plod, though. That opening campaign is going to be studied for years as a quite brilliant operation that set them on course to deal with whatever NATO could throw at them.
On that, I was surprised – NATO didn’t throw much at them. It’s now become apparent that that wasn’t only due to the constraints NATO was inevitably operating under in this theatre. It seems we don’t have much we can throw at them. The American army doesn’t have the kit or the men available for a land war in this theatre and the European armies are effectively non-existent!
That discovery, that NATO was a paper tiger, was the most sobering discovery of the last two or three years. We’re lucky in Europe that the Russians don’t want to come our way. We’d have precious little to hand to stop them if they did.
But it was always the sanctions war where this conflict was going to be decided. And there, our politicians failed entirely to grasp the strength of the Russian economy. And the weakness of the European economy. And yet Patrick Armstrong, here on the old SST, had been warning us about that for years! If a Canadian diplomat could see that from the start then our European politicians should have as well. They gambled the future of Europe on a very weak hand and their irresponsibility has left us Europeans in one hell of a mess.
………………………
As the war went on I discovered, inevitably, that mine was not a lone voice. Far from it. I found the experts also had doubts about the way we fought the war, and about the advisability of engaging in it. General Lord Richards, Kujat, one or two officers across your way – they all knew we were on a loser in this war and said why. I’ve just come across a most scathing analysis of the way we fought this war from a British naval officer. If you return to the subject of the Ukrainian war it’d be interesting to examine that analysis.
As for the contribution UK forces can make, Dr Richard North, who has a formidable track record on defence matters, sets out the problems we’re facing as we attempt to do more with less in NATO.
https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/front-page/defence-an-almost-impossible-task/
EO,
It was widely believed that Ukraine would not be able to resist an invasion from Russia. Patrick Armstrong believed that, but he also believed that Putin and Russia would never invade Ukraine. There was also widespread hope that Kyiv would not fully capitulate and would continue to resist in a UW war. Now Russia has that along with a war of attrition. Russia should be able to win an attrition war against Ukraine and they might yet. But the Ukrainians still have their country and are still resisting.
Could the UK forces take on Russia by themselves? Of course not. That’s why there is a NATO. And now, at Putin’s prodding, an enlarged NATO that is finally increasing its defense industrial base. Being that no NATO ground or air force is engaged in this war, and the Russian forces are the ones being attritted, I don’t see a Russian invasion of NATO as a realistic possibility.
The sanctions war clearly did not live up to its expectations. First, the threat of sanctions was supposed to prevent the invasion. Once that both the invasion and sanctions were on, the Russian economy failed to collapse. Putin prepared well for the sanctions with great fiscal reserves, a genius to manage the economy and a strong plan to circumvent those sanctions. But the sanctions are taking their toll. A war economy gives the appearance of a robust economy. A war economy is what lifted the US out of the depths of a depression. The interest rates in Russia are now at 23%. There are food shortages and skyrocketing prices. The rail system, the heart of Russia’s economy, is failing. China won’t build another pipeline for Russian gas and both China and India are forcing Russia to offer heavy discounts on oil and gas. The economy won’t collapse, but even Elvira Nabiullina sees bad times ahead.
EO,
Liberation of Mariupol? “we outshine the Russians “?
I see his majesty’s government has decided on a change of narrative in their war in Ukraine. I think the latest IO will fall flatter and faster than the first one.
Have your compatriots finished congratulating themselves over replacing Assad with the HTS guy with the $10 million bounty on his head yet? Do they still think that will get Trump entangled in a mideast war to replace the east European one the borg is busy losing?
Fred – on further killing in the ME, isn’t that up in the air right now? There seem to be great numbers in the West who now want to move on to Iran. Hoping Trump will have more sense.
Interesting observations from Baud. He has experience in the ME and reckons we’re screwing up there, as in Ukraine, simply because we’re too dumb to be able to take in how our opponents of choice think. Worth listening to, I think. Starts with how we interact with the Turks and takes it from there:-
https://youtu.be/5WTIz0TFvXg?t=2433
Set to around 40 mins. At 52 Baud moves on to the main point. Pretty damning, if one listens attentively.
(Minor point. Baud sets our provoking of Islamic terrorism to 1991. OK, he’s the expert but I still reckon it started well before, with Brzezinski nurturing Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan for the purpose of destabilising the USSR.)
EO,
Sure 1991. Those killings in Munich in the ’72 Olympics? Forgotten. PLO? Who are they? Why did they wind up in NOT Palestine? Apparently Swiss Intelligence (who failed to remind their government why staying neutral was important) failed to remember all that terror. Should I really watch an hour plus just to get that massaged information.
Nice deflection though. Mariupol ‘liberation’. Remember?
I don’t think Russia is worried about pipelines. Pipelines from the Gulf to Europe will have to pass through hundreds of miles of desert where the population is heavily armed so it will be an easy target for sabotage. Precedents for infrastructure attacks have already been set with blowing up Nordstream and with Chinese ships trawling communication cables in the Baltic with their anchors, so I doubt anybody will hesitate.
Land pipelines are impossible to secure and are much easier to damage than undersea ones because they are not encased in cement. Even shooting at it and piercing the pipes is enough to cause a leak and trigger a shutdown.
If I was Putin I would be regrouping to wage economic war with the west. To do that I would want to pull Iran into that strategy. As long as Iran is helping Hezbollah fire missiles against Israel, Iran will continue with that strategy because it allows them to feel powerful. If Iran is deprived of their land bridge to Hezbollah then their only option is to wage economic war with the west by integrating economically with Russia and China.
This war in Ukraine has gone very poorly for Russia militarily, but it has gone very well for Russia economically. As BenAris says:
“Sanctions were supposed to bring Russia’s economy to it knees. It didn’t. What it did was destroy Germans economic model. ”
https://x.com/bneeditor/status/1868550954221551811
James,
They really don’t have any leverage for economic war.
OTOH, if they set off a few dirty bombs in NYC and other locations on the NE coast (see drone activity possibly searching for nuclear signatures), the cities would evacuate creating a refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions. We’re talking about tens of millions of homeless people needing emergency housing, office space, food, medical care, etc. and Wall Street and many other financial hubs disrupted for long periods of time. That would allow for a form of economic war.
Eric Newhill,
By economic war I am primarily thinking about BRICS moving off of the dollar to an alternative “reserve currency”. Trump is sufficiently concerned about this that he has threatened sanctions on anyone who attempts it.
I am also thinking that they can simply strengthen themselves economically by working together to raise their GDP – not war in the traditional sense but GDP is a way of competing geopolitically and it is a source of power.
I like to think the Russians and the Iranians are not crazy enough to do a dirty bomb.
James,
I think the latter approach you suggest makes more sense. In order for BRICS bucks to carry any real weight, there has to be a robust multi-sector economy behind it. Then there are the Chinese who are the only BRICS nation who can really claim to have anything like that sort of well rounded economy. Russia and India don’t want to become the captives of China. Why trade the US boss for the Chinese boss? Becoming free of the US reserve currency domination will take a lot of time and effort. Smarter US policy could make the desperation to get there fast a less pressing need and permit it to occur naturally, if the BRICS nations can develop sufficiently.
The former suggestion is more like a suicide pact. That is, IMO, what concerns Trump. BRICS would destroy themselves and damage the US in the process if they really made a sudden, radical move to go off the dollar as the reserve currency. Everyone would lose.
TTG – Just a thought that occurred to me during the first five minutes of Alastair Crooke’s summary.
That slipping away secretly out of Damascus – when Assad told his staff he was about to prepare a speech and then just abandoned them.
Looks bad, and doesn’t conform to the picture one had formed of Assad as a man courageously taking risks for years in Damascus. Could be that he lost his nerve, certainly. But it could also be that he didn’t trust his staff not to betray him. He was never really on top of the convoluted mess that was Syrian politics.
Set to around 2 minutes 20.
https://youtu.be/iSrzdVdG-Pg?t=139
Assad had rejected earlier offers of help from Russia and Iran and was putting his faith in conciliating the West in order to get those crippling sanctions lifted. Maybe he also thought the Astana process would hold. His orders to his army not to resist were given in order to stop the country descending into chaos again. That is the picture we are given.
However it happened, on this one Brzezinski loses. Using Islamist terrorists to draw the USSR into a debilitating war was something he was proud of at the time and in his later life. The same tactics could have worked this time round, except that this time round the Russians, and the Iranians, didn’t bite.
Brzezinski dismissed the fear that this tactic would lead to blowback, though it did on 9/11 and other occasions. Crooke explains how that tactic might lead to blowback today.
But the real victors are, again, the Dana Strouls and the sanctions architects. Berletic, linked to recently, put up a video showing Dana Stroul explaining how best to destroy a country in order to further Western geopolitical interests. It’s quite simple, really. Just destroy the people.
Looking at that video Berletic put up, I suppose the difference between such people today and their forerunners in times past is that these days they’re more open about how they go about their business. Eichmann did at least attempt to keep what he was doing concealed.
EO,
Remember Col Lang was fond of reminding that sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.
Assad saw the bear coming at him, recognized that he couldn’t eat it, and did the smart thing, took off running before the bear ate him.
Nothing lasts forever. Whoever is first shall someday be last. Assad’s time to rule came to an end. Now the jihadis get their day in the sun – may it super nova on them.
Eric Newhill,
Assad went to Hmeimim Air Base as HTS approached Homs. It was a prudent move in my opinion. He planned to continue the defense from there. Once he got there a Russian general told him to get on a plane and leave. He did just that. That’s the explanation Assad gave from Moscow.
TTG,
What you say about creating a defensive line is what my Syrian/Armenian sources told me would happen. Then it didn’t.
IMO, the Russians knew it was a lost cause. As you say, the Russians are too resource constrained and generally too distracted in Ukraine. The loss of Syria is another cost of their piss poor military decision making. I do not think Russia wanted to lose Syria. Without the Ukraine commitment, they would have fought for it – or more likely, it would have never been attacked in such a well coordinated fashion. At any rate, the Russians would have helped Assad prevail no matter what came at him.
If you’re suggesting that Assad is a big meanie dictator and no longer had the support of the Syrian people, and they wouldn’t fight for him, you’re wrong and repeating neocon talking points. Same if you think that Russia was sick and tired of him and just shrugged and decided jihadis are ok.
Maybe you’re suggesting that the jihadis aren’t jihadis, in which case you are repeating more neocon pipe dreams as fact.
The jihadis (includes Turkey) played their hand well. Even elements of the US (you included?) are at least tacitly supporting them. When will the world learn that nothing good comes from jihadis? Heck, how many millions are we still paying to the Taliban? They’ll stick it to us soon enough.
Eric Newhill,
The Iranians supposedly had good intelligence that HTS was gearing up to assault Aleppo, but neither Assad nor the Russians paid any attention. The Iranian controlled militias and SAA elements didn’t put up much of a fight around there. The 25th Special Mission Forces Division, the old Tiger Forces set up around Hama. They didn’t put up much of a fight either. HTS did a lot of prior coordination with the Druze militias in the south. I wonder if they also did some recruiting among the SAA units, including the 25th.
Judging by the jubilant crowds, Assad didn’t have widespread support among the people. There are still a few units, like the ones that escaped to Iraq, that may be willing to support Assad. There’s also the ISIS elements that are chomping at the bit to take advantage of all the confusion. HTS has proven far more pragmatic than the run of the mill jihadis. They want Syria, not the 72 virgins. Will they revert to type? Too early to tell.
TTG,
Jubilant crowds?
How much crowds fit in a camera lens or in the imagination of news report?
Eric Newhill,
The biggest crowds I’ve seen in overhead photos and videos were of Umayyad Square in central Damascus and Assi Square in Hama. I’ve seen the same jubilation in Aleppo. Of course similar crowds appeared in Aleppo when the jihadis were driven out years ago. I get the impression that they are just hoping the war is finally over.
TTG,
I’ve noticed that the women in the jubilant crowds all have their hair covered and are dressed quite modestly. The Syrian women I met when I was in Syria were mostly dressed like women here in Toronto are dressed.
I have to wonder if the jubilant crowds are even Syrians. In any case – I am sure the average Syrian will be happy if the sanctions end, which I am sure they will since now “our sobs” are in charge.
James,
I agree that most are probably happy to see fighting end and hopefully sanctions end. The roads from Turkey are crowded with returning refugees.
@TTG
Not exactly, they are rather demonstrating “preemptive” agreement with their new overlords (in both cases). 🙁
TTG,
“The Iranians supposedly had good intelligence that HTS was gearing up to assault Aleppo, but neither Assad nor the Russians paid any attention”
This statement does not make much sense. Iran and Russia about to sign a defense pact. Do you really think the Iranians failed to inform Russians about something this important? That’s a neocon talking point, IMHO.
Furthermore, I read from multiple sources that Assad refused further Russian and Iran helps after the war, counting on the Gulf States to help protect Syria, which is a fatal mistake. They welcomed him back, and let Syria being destroyed by the jihadis.
Well, some are happy anyway. A Mr John Gilberts on MOA came across this brief video:-
https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1868290147701399802
No idea what they’re saying but looks like they might be expecting to stay for a while.
EO,
Netanyahu has stated he’s staying in Syria until arrangements are made to secure Israel. Israeli settlers are talking about settling in the new lands.
Arabs. No wonder the Colonel had no liking for them in general, TTG. They’d sell out their own mothers if they read in Bloomberg the money was right and they’ll have no compunction selling out the Palestinians. As for the Golan, we’re now just looking at a chunk of Greater Israel.
So says Colonel Wilkerson, cutting loose in a way I’ve not seen him cut loose before. “I don’t think the Palestinians have a prayer”, he predicts. He reads the Arabs as “Only interested in money and the furtherance of their own interests. Be damned to the Palestinians.”
As for Israel, “Israel is our bull terrier – they do our killing for us” and he quotes Lindsey Graham as saying -” if they weren’t doing it, we’d be doing it.”
Wilkerson also reckons that Putin is “beleaguered”, threats on all sides, and therefore had no choice but to pull out of Syria.
From there to a consideration of the position of Iran and China. And a somewhat tentative look at what President Trump might or might not do. Allowing for the fact that President Biden is attempting to box the Trump Presidency in every way he can and may very well succeed. One hell of a transition period, this.
I’m not so sure Trump will be boxed in. I read Trump’s version of MAGA as presupposing the US regaining its standing in the world as the trading and economic superpower. Not as a killing machine roaming the world seeking dragons to slay. So when it comes to the forthcoming Trump Presidency let me put my rose-tinted spectacles back on, TTG, and dream of an end to the mayhem.
Colonel Wilkerson has no such dreams. As said, he’s cutting loose:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIycVIo6lFc&ab_channel=DialogueWorks
And Erdogan continues to Islamize Turkey, undoing all the secular checks and balances that Ataturk established after killing or driving out all the Christians. Also, Erdogan is killing Kurds faster than Israelis kill Palestinians. Not that I care about the fate of hyenas and jackals, but, as they say, just saying. Where are all the progressive bleeding hearts crying about “genocide”? I guess there are no Jews involved, therefore no genocide. People are such tools.
Why is Turkey still in NATO?
Someday Vlad The Impaler will be recognized as the hero of western civ that he was. Then again, the west might just quietly go into that good night because they’ve been programmed to virtue signal that they’re not racists.
We’ll see if they revert to type? Yeah, the Pope might revert to being Catholic. Bears might revert to crapping in the woods.
Eric –
Turkish genociders are non-discriminatory & DEI compliant. They’ve massacred Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Alevi Turks, Bulgarians, et al. Just eight years ago the Turkish Army burned alive 178 Kurdish civilians including dozens of children in Cizre. And they forced 350,000 Kurdish civilians from their homes, which were destroyed.
The article “The Syrian 7 October Chronicles – part 2 – an engaged Israel, a deceived Iran and a weak Russia” published on 19 December by researcher Ibrahim Al-Amin in Lebanese Al-Akhbar which is pro-“resistance” (e.g. Hezbollah, HAMAS, Iran) is worth a read (use Google Translate, usual caveats apply – beware sometimes they mix passive and active and have other quirks, so not reliable). The author quotes anonymous Russians.
Among other things, Al-Amin states that 25,000 of the local defense groups were transferred to the regular SAA following 2021 demands by Bashar al-Asad. This means that the Iran/Russian-managed reconciliation mechanisms lost weight in number that was more than twice the size of HTS.
What happened next is left to imagination and not described by Al-Amin: while young Syrians found a calling and acceptable conditions in serving in these local defense groups, this was not the case in the SAA. So they deserted well before HTS launched their offensive.
Second point made by Al-Amin: Russian officers selling kit to the rebels. I have not heard this anywhere else in the Syrian context and find it worthy of note.
Link: https://al-akhbar.com/lebanon/816814