The Syria Analysis Thread

Stubby Friday 17 May 2013

I'd hazard the gamble in all this is that Russia might need to send their own men to operate these systems, given how gutted the SAA is, and how fragile the situation on the ground is. They could of course have gotten Iranians to man them... but they cancelled the sale of the S-300 to Iran. AFAIK Iran doesn't operate any of the latest Russian anti-ship systems either. The Russians might be regretting this.

Niccolo and Donkey Friday 17 May 2013

Americans play checkers, Russians play chess.

Niccolo and Donkey Saturday 18 May 2013

A Muslim from the Serbian Sandzak (Sancak, in Turkish) region was killed three days ago in Syria as a volunteer Jihadi.

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Byssus Saturday 18 May 2013

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article3751238.ece

Ruken reads Nietzsche and Aristotle, smokes Gauloises Blondes and last month she shot her first man dead with a Russian-made assault rifle. :square:

Amid an increasingly Islamicised struggle in which bearded men, religious conservatism and Islamic slogans have become the face of Syria’s revolution, the 27-year-old commander of 40 Syrian-Kurd fighters in Aleppo, all of them women , is unusual in every way.

[...] Until a month ago the streets of this predominantly Kurdish quarter were all but untouched by the fighting. The Kur dish YPG militia to which Ruken belongs, a paramilitary affiliate of the PKK in Turkey, had preserved a status of neutrality with the Syrian regime, guarding the area against rebel intrusion and allowing President Assad’s paramilitaries to conduct raids on suspected rebel safehouses.

But in late March the YPG , most of whom are devoted to the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned in Turkey, suddenly turned on the regime , ejecting the militia from the streets of Sheikh Maqsood in five days of fierce fighting. ["Serves him right ... he trusted an Aryan !"]

Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels joined the fray in an unlikely alliance with the YPG. Some of the Arab fighters were astounded to find themselves fighting alongside uncovered Kurdish women.

“There is a deep-rooted belief among the Islamic fighters here that women can’t fight or shouldn’t express themselves in strength,” Ruken added. “Well, a Kalashnikov is for killing and of course I have killed. The FSA couldn’t believe it at first when they saw me fight like that, but now they are showing me a bit of respect.”

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/2013/04/21/Kurdish-women-warriors-battle-in-Syria-.html

Unveiled and barking orders at fierce-looking Kurdish men nearly twice her size, commander Engizek is a shocking sight within Syria’s male-dominated rebel ranks.

A short, diminutive woman flanked by gun-toting loyalists, Engizek leads dozens of Kurdish combatants in Aleppo city’s embattled district of Sheikh Maqsud, large parts of which were seized late last month from regime fighters.

Fighters like Engizek -- whose Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG) brigade is 20 percent women -- are the hidden face of Syria’s armed rebellion against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, now in its third year.

Engizek, who goes by a single name, says the YPG’s women fighters undergo the same rigorous training as men and fight alongside each other as well as eat together and share cooking and cleaning duties.

As she spoke, her comrades, both men and women, took a break from duty in a nearby room in the desolate building, smoking, chatting and eating flatbread, cheese and fresh olives .

While the fighters mingle freely, the women live separately from male fighters and relationships are strictly forbidden. Engizek did not reveal what punishment awaits fighters who break that code of conduct.

Joining the struggle has exacted a heavy price -- most of the female fighters have given up all hopes of having families of their own some day.

Engizek, for one, is staunchly opposed to marriage.

“Marriage is enslavement,” she said. “I don’t want to be a slave, my girls don’t want to be slaves.”

The presence of women fighters in conservative Syrian society inspires both awe and shock.

“ They are not women -- they are men ,” said one Free Syrian Army soldier. “A real woman is more feminine.”

He said he was particularly opposed to women on the front line because their presence can “seriously distract male fighters”.

It is a view that resonates strongly with Noor ul-Haq, a primary school teacher in Aleppo whose husband is a fighter with the Liwa al-Tawhid Brigade, one of the largest rebel groups in the war-torn city.

Syrian women of varied social and ethnic backgrounds, she says, have contributed to the anti-Assad revolution in other meaningful ways, from taking part in demonstrations to delivering food and ammunition to rebels.

“There’s no need for women to pick up the gun,” she said. “There are so many men out there.”

Engizek’s comrades dismissed such a view as “retarded” .

“This country will not be free until women are free,” said Lokman Abusalam, a 41-year-old fighter, adding that his male comrades have no problem in reporting to a female commander.

Engizek said the ascendancy of radical Islamist groups in Syria’s messy civil war has led to concerns that they may begin trampling women’s rights.

She expressed particular dismay about the rise of the Islamist Al-Nusra Front, which has announced its affiliation to Al-Qaeda.

“We are not willing to collaborate with those who don’t accept women’s rights,” she said. “As a group we cannot accept that. As a woman, I cannot accept that.”

Fourth-wave riot grrrls pausing their game of death squad to lecture bewildered Arabs about International Women's Day as Hillary Clinton meanwhile claps like a sea lion: an outcome as inevitable as the eerie two-way mirroring of Ta'ziyah in the Passion of the Christ. Inevitable because its determinants were not historically contingent but racial and zodiacal. This is the realization of death drive – in this hour, wherever it is, the white race is doomed.

Stubby Saturday 18 May 2013

The odds that some or most of the above is bullshit are very good

We've been seeing these media pieces on female fighters from the very beginning, complete with ridiculous "tough talk" from the interviewees, and vague language, but I have yet to see a single female fighter in any of the hundreds of both combat and non-combat videos of rebel operations, and they're even absent in the photo spreads of major western publications, unless they've made an aside to mention it or show it. For instance there will never be an "organic" photo of a female fighter in a spread on the fighting in one Aleppo neighborhood, but if it's a general spread of whatever they want, they might post a random one.

Byssus Saturday 18 May 2013

no, Stubby, it's Saladin meets Jihad Jane

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DIE CIS SCUM

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You gonna get raped.

Niccolo and Donkey Sunday 19 May 2013

Syrian troops score gains in strategic rebel-held town near Lebanon

BEIRUT—Syrian troops pushed into a rebel-held town near the Lebanese border on Sunday, fighting house to house and bombing from the air as President Bashar Assad tried to strengthen his grip on a strategic strip of land running from the capital to the Mediterranean coast.

With the regime scoring gains on the battlefield, the U.S. and Russia could face an even tougher task persuading Assad and his opponents to attend talks on ending Syria’s 26-month-old conflict. Washington and Moscow hope to start talks with an international conference as early as next month, though no date has been set.

Government forces launched the offensive on the town of Qusair just hours after Assad said in a newspaper interview that he’ll stay in his job until elections — effectively rejecting an opposition demand that any talks on a political transition lead to his ouster.

The rebels control large rural areas in the north and east of the country, while Assad has successfully defended his hold on the capital, Damascus, the coastal area and parts of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Before Sunday’s offensive, Qusair had been ringed by regime troops and fighters from the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, an Assad ally, for several weeks.

Qusair lies along a land corridor between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, the heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Many rebel fighters are Sunni Muslims and Qusair, overwhelmingly Sunni, had served as a conduit for shipments of weapons and supplies smuggled from Lebanon to the rebels.

Hadi Abdullah, a Qusair activist reached by Skype, said regime troops and Hezbollah fighters began shelling the town late Saturday, followed by airstrikes early Sunday that sent residents taking cover in basements. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group, said warplanes resumed bombing raids later Sunday.

By Sunday afternoon, regime forces had advanced into the town, engaging in house-to-house battles with rebel fighters, Abdullah said.

Syrian state media said Assad’s troops took control of the main square, the area around the municipal building, a sports stadium and a local church. Syrian state TV said troops arrested rebel fighters who tried to flee Qusair dressed as civilians.

A government official said the regime left an escape road open to civilians, a claim denied by Abdullah, who said thousands of noncombatants were trapped in Qusair. “We tried to get civilians out four times. They are not allowing us,” he said of regime forces.

The Observatory said 52 people were killed in Qusair, including 48 fighters, three women and a male civilian.

Abdullah said the air raids destroyed at least 17 houses. A field hospital was damaged last week, leaving the town with only one medical centre which was unable to handle the influx of some 400 wounded Sunday, he said.

Stubby Wednesday 22 May 2013

I don't know if anyone is unaware, but there is a critical battle (it started on the 19th, but the city was surrounded over the last month and a half) in Al-Qusayr right now, a town on the route between the coast and Damascus, near the Lebanese border. Some of the heaviest fighting involving Hezballah.

Here is YT channel showing FSA video from inside the city http://www.youtube.com/user/qmediacenter/videos?view=0

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 22 May 2013

What is the actual situation? Who holds what?

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 22 May 2013

Angocachi Mike Thomas777 Roland Stubby President Camacho SteamshipTime

Syria Begins to Break Apart Under Pressure From War

After steadily losing territory to rebels during the first two years of the conflict, government forces have progressed on a number of key fronts in recent weeks, routing rebel forces in the southern province of Dara’a, outside Damascus and in the central city of Homs and its surrounding villages.

These victories not only reflect strategic shifts by government forces but also could further solidify the country’s divisions.

Since mass defections of mostly conscripted soldiers shrank the government’s forces earlier in the uprising, it has largely given up on trying to reclaim parts of the country far from the capital, said Joseph Holliday, a fellow with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

Instead, the government has focused on solidifying its grip on a strip of land that extends from the capital, Damascus, in the south, up to Homs in the country’s center and west to the coastal area heavily populated by Mr. Assad’s sect, the Alawites.

Other than hitting them with airstrikes or artillery, Mr. Assad has made little effort to reclaim rebel-held areas in the country’s far north and east.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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