The Syria Analysis Thread

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 5 Jun 2013

Roland President Camacho Angocachi Mike Thomas777 Stubby SteamshipTime

Syrian government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies seized control of the border town of Qusair

(Reuters) - Syrian government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies seized control of the border town of Qusair on Wednesday, a severe setback to rebel fighters battling to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Two weeks of heavy fighting reduced much of the town to piles of concrete, whole blocks flattened by shelling, with glass and rubble littering the roads as tired, delighted Syrian soldiers gathered at the bullet-riddled clock tower.

Street after deserted street lay in ruins, windows blown out, facades crumpled and trees blackened and burnt. The dome of the local mosque was damaged by rocket fire, and the walls of a church smashed open.

"We will not hesitate to crush with an iron fist those who attack us. ... Their fate is surrender or death," the Syrian armed forces command said in statement. "We will continue our string of victories until we regain every inch of Syrian land."

The fall of Qusair, which lies on a cross-border supply route with Lebanon, might make it harder to convince both sides to attend a proposed peace conference in the coming weeks, with Assad's fortunes on the rise and the opposition in disarray.

In a frank assessment of their defeat, an opposition group from Qusair said more than 500 rebels had died in two weeks of combat, with a further 1,000 wounded, leaving just 400 outgunned men struggling to hold onto the town.

Facing determined Hezbollah guerrillas from neighboring Lebanon, who swung the fight Assad's way, the survivors decided to escape in the night through a corridor that the attackers said they had deliberately left open to encourage flight.

"We went in, there was some fighting, and then (the rebels) withdrew," said one fighter heading home to rest after four sleepless nights. "We saw them leaving in about 400 cars."
Some bodies still lay in the street; at least three men, sporting long beards, appeared to have been executed.

The capture of Qusair secures an important corridor through the central province of Homs, which links the Syrian capital Damascus to the coastal heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Bolstered by his Iranian and Russian backers, Assad's forces have launched a series of counter-offensives in recent weeks against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels battling to overthrow him and end his minority Alawite family's four-decade grip on power.

A member of a pro-Assad Syrian militia said the military focus may now move to the northern province of Aleppo, which has been largely in rebel hands for the last year.

The muscular support of the Shi'ite group Hezbollah appears to have given Assad fresh impetus. The group, which was founded to fight Israel, said on Wednesday that the fall of Qusair showed the Syrian president was secure in power.

"Today we proved without any doubt that the gamble to topple Syria is a delusional plan," said deputy leader Naim Qassem.

Underlining the risks for Lebanon, which was wrecked by its own civil war from 1975-1990, the head of the rebel Free Syria Army warned that it might target Hezbollah on its home turf.

"Hezbollah fighters are invading Syrian territory. And when they continue to do that and the Lebanese authorities don't take any action to stop them coming to Syria, I think we are allowed to fight Hezbollah fighters inside (Lebanese) territory," Salim Idriss told the BBC.

Hezbollah's involvement also irked the Arab League, which issued a resolution after a meeting of its foreign ministers in Cairo expressing "strong condemnation" of all forms of foreign intervention, especially that by Hezbollah.

The rebels said in a statement they had pulled out "in face of this huge arsenal and a lack of supplies and the blatant intervention of Hezbollah".

An opposition group called the 'Qusair Revolution' posted a statement on Facebook about what it said were the lessons learnt from the battle, accusing political exiles of ignoring them and some militia chiefs of worrying more about money than fighting.

"There are battalion leaders in this revolution whose profession has become profit. They do not move unless they have gotten enough money for their weapons and ammunitions paid for."

A security source with ties to Syrian forces said Assad's troops had left an escape route into nearby Debaa and the Lebanese border town of Arsal to encourage rebel fighters to quit Qusair, once home to 30,000 people.

"We are heading now to crush Debaa," a Syrian soldier said.

In the Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut, residents set off celebratory fireworks as news of Qusair's fall spread.

A senior Lebanese political source close to Hezbollah said the victory was a strategic success that would boost the morale of Assad's allies. He suggested that Hezbollah would not necessarily intervene directly in other battles but might offer indirect help to the Syrian army.

"The battle will continue in all regions, but I believe Aleppo (will be) first," he said.

Thomas777 Wednesday 5 Jun 2013

Salafis are chomping at the bit (and have been) to engage Hezbollah on the ground in Lebanon - at the same time, Turkey has been making sure, under Erdogan's tenure, that Hamas distance itself from its (always tenuous) cooperation/alliance with Hezbollah. This of course is connected.

A takfiri war would only help America and Jewry/Israel - let's hope it doesn't happen.

Angocachi Wednesday 5 Jun 2013

Fighting Shia isn't Takfiri. Even Saladin had to do it before he could crush the foreign presence. Destroying the Shia will make the Ummah stronger. They've sided against the Sunni everywhere.

Thomas777 Wednesday 5 Jun 2013

Osama said that America is the only enemy - he was right. General war between Moslems and Shia, kafir they may be, only strengthens America and Jewry.

Stubby Wednesday 5 Jun 2013

Bit about Hizballah and the Shia militias now.

Hizballah Cavalcade: What is the Liwa’a Abu Fadl al-Abbas (LAFA)?: Assessing Syria’s Shia “International Brigade” Through Their Social Media Presence

http://jihadology.net/2013/05/15/hi...-brigade-through-their-social-media-presence/

Part of a series on Hezbollah and relatives

http://jihadology.net/hizballah-cavalcade/

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 5 Jun 2013

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 5 Jun 2013

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 5 Jun 2013

Niccolo and Donkey Thursday 6 Jun 2013

Angocachi Roland Byssus President Camacho SteamshipTime SweetLeftFoot Thomas777 Stubby

Hezbollah don't take no shit

The "Friends of Syria" are appalled. Their much vaunted "rebel held" stronghold of Qusayr is gone. This BBC headline sums it all up: "Syria conflict: US condemns siege of Qusayr."

For White House spokesman Jay Carney, "pro-government forces", to win, needed help from by their "partners in tyranny" - Hezbollah and Iran. Right: so the "rebels" weaponized by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the CIA, not to mention jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra kind, are partners in what, "freedom and democracy"?

Spin out, facts in. This is a monster strategic defeat for the NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council-Israel axis. [1] The supply lines from Lebanon to Homs of the Not Exactly Free Syrian Army (FSA) gangs and the odd jihadi are gone. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) will next move to Homs and the whole Homs governorate. The final stop will be two or three Aleppo suburbs still controlled by the FSA.

There's absolutely no way Qusayr can be spun in the West as yet another "tactical withdrawal" by the FSA. The rebels insist they "withdrew". Nonsense. It was a rout.

This, in a nutshell, is how it happened. Qusayr had been under control of the Homs-based al-Farouk brigade, part of the FSA, for no less than 18 months. Six months ago, the SAA had already cleared the Syrian north-south highway, not far from the city - essential for all Damascus-Aleppo business.

Qusayr was strategically crucial as a key weaponizing depot for the FSA; Sunnis in Lebanon were relentlessly shipping them weapons through the Bekaa valley. So the first thing the SAA did was to encircle Qusayr. Then Hezbollah stepped in - as most of Qusayr's population of 30,000 had already left for either Lebanon or Jordan.

The final, wily SAA tactic was to allow the Aleppo-based al-Tawhid brigade to sneak into Qusayr to help the al-Farouk. So when these twin top FSA brigades were properly encircled, the SAA pounced . Virtually no civilians were in town, apart from a few farmers nearby. There was no "genocide".

When will the NATO-GCC axis ever learn? Hezbollah's Sheikh Nasrallah staked his reputation by going on air and promising a victory. Once again, he delivered. Contrary to Western spin, Hezbollah did not do it by itself; it was a combination of SAA, Hezbollah and Iranian specialists applying superior tactics and displaying crack urban warfare knowledge.

It's also easy to forget that a prime wet dream among US Think Tanklanders these past few months was the possibility of pitting Hezbollah against al-Qaeda-linked jihadis inside Syria. They got their wish.

Hezbollah fighters though don't need to overextend themselves and venture inside Syria further than Qusayr - which is roughly 10 km from the Lebanese border. Their "mission" is in practice to secure the Syrian side of the Lebanese border.

And talk about precious timing; the "fall" of Qusayr totally blew away a monster chemical weapons propaganda orchestrated by Paris. French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius is breathlessly spinning that "Bashar's army" used sarin gas against the "rebels". French media is gung-ho for a military intervention.

Angocachi Friday 7 Jun 2013

OBL didn't believe America was the only enemy, but the biggest in the modern era. He knew Russia, India, China, Israel, France, the UK, and many other governments, especially in the Muslim world, were the enemy.

He wasn't concerned with Shia, but so what. He wasn't concerned with the Saudi royalty until it bit him in the ass.

The Shia regime in Iran and the Hazara collaborated with NATO against the Taliban all through the 90's up to Ahmadinejad's review of that policy. Then the Shia regime and Iraqi Shia collaborated with the US-UK against the Iraqi Sunni through the same period until they got the elections they demanded on threat of insurgency. The Shia regime in Syria has stomped on the Syrian Sunni for decades, and have served as a proxy of Russia... foe of Sunni in the Ciscaucasus and Idel-Ural and patron to secularist regimes in the Islamic former Soviet Union. Destroying the Shia clergy and governments on their leash can only help the Ummah, as much as it will benefit the Ummah to destroy Sunni collaborators and foreign-proxies.

And keep in mind that this isn't a choice. The Sunnis are not choosing to have a war with the Shia, the Shia are the aggressors.

I understand that Tehran is a Russian proxy, and so too Assad, Hezbollah, and the whole Shia squid oozing over the Persian Gulf with it's splatterings in Anatolia, Punjab, Yemen. For this reason, anybody who sympathizes with the red camp, the Moscow-Beijing Axis and it's satellites, will side with the Shia. However, the Sunni are going to amputate the Shia, force them into emigration and rump states and the Ummah will be stronger for it. Salafi militias on the Golan Heights and Jordani border is a mighty fine proposition.

The Syria Analysis Thread

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