Syria : a gamechanger?

This shows the rebel offensive in Syria. Notice the extended supply lines which are highly vulnerable to aerial interdiction. The rebels are overextended. And strategic Hama is well-defended. As I mentioned yesterday there are good reasons not to go all out in Aleppo.

In an excellent and timely article i the Cradle on the jihadist attack on Aleppo, Haidar Mustafa writes “

Military expert, Brigadier General Haitham Hassoun, confirms that preparations to launch this operation began “a long time ago,” and that the participating groups established a joint ops room about a month and a half ago. He believes that the militants benefited from “misdirection” and electronic warfare media operations carried out by Turkish intelligence to camouflage their intentions and movements and by Turkish occupation forces inside Syria during the days preceding the shock offensive. The militants further benefited from sophisticated intel that helped them exploit existing loopholes on the ground and were aware of vacuums in the Syrian army’s positions, which then led to this breach and confusion in the defense lines.

In other words, Turkey’s pretense at not being party to the attack is just that — pretense.

The Russians will not be pleased.

Of course, they have never much trusted the fickle, fiddling Turks, but Putin has a known dislike for those who renege on agreements.

You can expect him to find ways to punish the Turks, who are generally unpopular throughout the Middle East, especially now that Syria being welcomed back into the Islamic fold.

But one must consider if Putin knew that this operation — or something like it — was coming. After all, the situation has been unstable for a long time. Maybe, maybe he anticipated that it provided:

a .) a way for Syria to regain sovereigntnow that more and more Middle Eastern nations are making peace with Assad.

b.) a way to put the Americans, Israelis, and Turks in their place— all at the same time and restore balance to the north west of the Middle East.

In a preliminary estimate, what is happening is a return to the situation before 2019, a re-invasion that effectively seeks to derail all the achievements of the Astana peace process.

In turn, this deserves nothing less than an equally brash and unexpected response: a Syrian military counter-offensive that not only reclaims the positions held by Syrian army forces a few days ago but one that decisively pushes all the way to Darat Izza and beyond up to the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkiye, cutting off communications routes between the militants in the Aleppo and Idlib regions, and restoring the entire governorates under Syrian government control.

What began as a shock assault may have created an opportunity to end the state of limbo in the country’s north at the end of the Syrian war, provide Damascus and its allies a way to sidestep unproductive de-escalation understandings, and hand the Syrian state a legitimate, legal and moral justification to liberate all territories from terror organizations.

In other words, Astana is history.

Now the Russians and Syria will take back much of the territory occupied by Turkey in 2019. It is the Turks who broke the agreement — and the peace.

The Turks are denying that of course. but the mercenaries fighting on Aleppo appear to have crossed over into Syria from Turkey— Uighurs, jihadis from Turkestan and assorted terrorists from ISIS-K. Maybe even militants from Ukraine.

With many taken prisoner, the truth cannot be hidden.

This will give a boost to SDF the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, the Axis of Resistance, and put pressure on the US’s illegal occupation of Syrian oil fields which were pumping oil to Turkey who resold it to Israel.

So far, estimates are between 500 and 1000 jihadi casualties. But the MSM are cheering the apparent “fall” of Aleppo as Syrian forces withdraw and regroup. The strategy will be to attack the rebel’s bases and supply lines so that forces in the city will be cut off.

The jihadi offensive cannot be maintained — no matter what the MSM would like to think.

And the Russians have pretty good intelligence, without which they could not have made the attack recounted below.

Is he dead? Maybe…maybe not….

Point is, the Russians know where to hit.