The Syria Analysis Thread

10 posts

Angocachi
Obama suspended relations with Assad because Putin siezed Crimea. It's a totally pointless, ineffective, and childish move intended to signal Obama's displeasure with the Crimea annexation, 'If you don't work with the new Ukrainian government we won't work with the Syrian government.'

The US can do nothing to oust Assad until the potential for a Shariah state in the Levant is minimized for the same reason you don't shoot geese over an alligator swamp. The greatest risk of NATO intervention Assad faced was when the insurgency was controlled and dominated by secularist ex-military and exiles. Talk of a no-fly zone and a repeat of Gaddafi etc ceased when the black flags started going up. NATO's primary role in Syria as of the last months has been in helping GCC backed groups and Maliki to squash the Islamic State.

Israel prefers that Assad stay in power because his fall means the rise of Salafi Jihadists. The FSA has said that Israel prefers that Assad stay in power. The US has said that it will not arm the rebels because of the Salafi Jihadists among them. And the rebels themselves have noted how they went unarmed and unsupplied by their foreign 'backers' until they took up the fight against ISIL.

NATO wants Assad to fall, only if the rebels can guarantee a secular regime in his place.
Niccolo and Donkey
Syrian army reclaims legendary Crusader castle from rebels

SweetLeftFoot

That they can take Krak shows just how well the Assad/Hezbollah forces are doing.

Other reports I've seen show the damage isn't that bad.

One of the most amazing places in the world.

Niccolo and Donkey
Schmeisser Theo franko SweetLeftFoot Angocachi Longface Stubby Jongkind

This is huge..............

Here Is The YouTube "Start A False Flag War With Syria" Leaked Recording That Erdogan Wanted Banned



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Stubby

Yes Antonius Blockhead , it is pretty incredible. Erdogan needs to up his game. It's not terribly surprising though, that Turkey would see itself as having something to gain in the new fractured Syria. If the West supports the aloof crooks of the SMC, why not support Turkey, it's better for them than Assad or an Islamic state.

Niccolo and Donkey
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Longface
Syria: the jihadi town where 'brides' are snatched from schools

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A year ago, the city of Raqqa in northern Syria was sprouting political activist groups and philosophical discussion circles. A “guerrilla gardening” squad promoted environmental awareness by planting vegetables in central reservations.

The liberals who made it a base after the rebels swept in and drove out the regime in March last year are gone, disbanded, accused of supporting democracy and other “kuffar” or infidel beliefs, their members living either underground or in Turkey.

The city has been transformed into a staging ground for displays of the harshest “justice” meted out by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the jihadi group too extreme even for al-Qaeda that has imposed its rule over large parts of the country.

Refugees, women still living under its rule and men who have escaped from its prisons have told Telegraph of the life under the shadow of the extremist group’s black flag.
One woman, whose name the Telegraph knows but is withholding, described how she went to the recruiting office of an all-women jihad unit, formed from the women who have flocked to Syria from Europe and elsewhere to serve the cause, some with their children.

“I went inside their headquarters, which used to be the Christian church,” she said. “I asked what the conditions were to join. They said you have to be 18-25, unmarried, and you would earn 25,000 Syrian pounds.

“But if you joined you had the opportunity to marry one of the foreign fighters. However, they make sure you are a real jihadist.”

She said that outside she met four new recruits, three from Tunisia, and one Frenchwoman, who told her she was divorced and had brought her 12-year-old daughter and four younger sons to Syria to join the militants.

The opportunities for marriage in the Syrian jihad - and before “martyrdom” - is a recurring theme of the blogs and other online forums favoured by ISIS’s foreign fighters in Syria, many of whom write in English.

But the Raqqa woman and other activists from the town say that the imbalance of the sexes means ISIS has begun to “recruit” brides from local schools and colleges.

Among those who resisted, they say, was a 21-year-old student called Fatima Abdullah from a tribal area outside the city, whose brother had joined ISIS and persuaded their father to hand her over for marriage to a Tunisian. She refused, and when her family insisted, killed herself with rat poison. The story was confirmed by other activists from the town.

Since the beginning of January, rival rebel groups including western-backed militias still loyal to the original opposition Free Syrian Army have launched a counter-attack across the north of Syria to drive out ISIS.

Earlier this month, rebels all but completed an operation to remove the extremists from Idlib province while in Aleppo province ISIS have been forced into towns to the east. As they left their former strongholds they killed some of their prisoners, freed others, and loaded many more on to trucks and took them with them.

In Aazaz, a town between Aleppo and the Turkish border, ISIS retaliated for the FSA attack by beheading four captives from other militias and placing their heads on the plinth in the middle of the roundabout in one of the main squares, residents.

“We call it the beheading circle, now,” one, Anwar Mohammed, said.

A photograph of the heads, with a German fighter standing in triumph over them, circulated on jihadi websites.

Ahmed Primo, described how he was saved from a similar fate by a stray shell.

“I heard a voice calling my name for execution,” he said. “Then suddenly there was the sound of an explosion. The guards and the emir, the militia leader, were injured, and carried away. The next day the prison was liberated and I escaped.”

Mr Primo had previously been detained by the Syrian regime in his home city, Aleppo, and held for a month. Asked whether the treatment he received from ISIS, which included beatings, being bound and blindfolded for weeks at a time, and electrocuted in his testicles, was better or worse than his experiences under the regime, he said: “It is not a question of better or worse. It was exactly the same.”

ISIS split last summer from Jabhat al-Nusra, the recognised wing of Al-Qaeda in Syria, and in February was disavowed by Al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman Zawahiri.

But by then its capacity to instill fear by its harsh punishments, and ability to attract fanatical fighters from abroad had enabled it to take control of large parts of northern Syria, with Raqqa province mostly under their sway.

Mr Mohammed, one of the early “citizen journalists” who sent reports of the initial uprising against President Bashar al-Assad to the outside world, was among Aazaz’s luckiest people. He had been seized from his home by ISIS fighters, taken to the group’s headquarters in Aleppo city, a former children’s hospital, for interrogation, and then detained in a prison in another town, Hreitan.

Light of build, he managed to escape one night by squeezing through the bars of his cell and lowering himself to the ground with knotted blankets. When he made it home - and across the Turkish border - his father said ISIS had visited him to tell him his son was to be executed as a spy.

Mohammed Nour, who ran the media centre in Aazaz from where reports by local and international journalists were filed after the town was “liberated” from the regime in July 2012, was the son of a man who had disappeared in the Assad regime’s prisons before he was born.

Last September, ISIS came for the son after it defeated Mr Nour’s Northern Storm brigade. Like his father, he has not been seen since.

His mother said she had visited al-Bab, a town to the south-east still under ISIS control, to try to find him. “I go to the prisons, like I did with his father,” she said. “They say to come back later.”
Now 49, she never remarried, and Mohammed is her only child.

What is perhaps most remarkable is that despite the brutality, many residents of north-west Syria still back ISIS. Samer Amori, Mohammed Nour’s uncle, said that people who supported the regime now support ISIS. A more convincing explanation is that by demanding control of all aspects of its subjects’ lives, ISIS did at least manage to impose some sort of order on a Syria that is becoming more lawless as the war progresses.

But for many men and women, particularly the liberal activists, who have suffered under both the regime and ISIS, the recent fighting has brought the third year of the uprising to deeply depressing close.

Mr Primo, electrocuted by fighters from the regime and Assad, said he had always believed the West would intervene, and that what had happened in Tunisia and Libya would happen in Syria. Now it is clear that with the country little more than a fighting ground for rival warlords, some not even Syrian, the West has little stomach for involvement.

“When I started out I could never have imagined anything like this,” he said. “These people, they do not have our way of life, or of thinking.
It’s very strange to us. I didn’t expect it would turn out this way.”
Longface
Islamists bomb Shi'ite shrine in eastern Syria - activists

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Islamist fighters from an al Qaeda splinter group bombed a large Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the eastern Syria n city of Raqqa on Wednesday, activists said.

The mosque of Ammar bin Yassir and Oweis al-Qarni was once a destination for Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims from Iran , Lebanon and Iraq before it was taken over a year ago by Sunni rebels battling to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

One photo posted on Twitter on Wednesday under the heading "the pagan Iranian shrine" showed extensive damage to the exterior walls and roof of the site, a turquoise and white complex of domes and minarets centred around a tiled courtyard.

Another picture showed concrete and twisted metal strewn on the street outside the mosque - built under Assad's rule with support from Shi'ite Iran - while another showed an interior wall that had collapsed inward.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the al Qaeda splinter group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had set off two powerful explosions at the mosque early on Wednesday.

Many fighters from ISIL and other radical Sunni Islamist groups in Syria deem Shi'ites as infidels and consider their shrines idolatrous, and therefore legitimate targets.

Their attacks have stirred fears in neighbouring Turkey that the Islamists' next target will be the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the Ottoman Empire, which lies on the Euphrates river inside Syria but is guarded by Turkish special forces.

Ankara regards the tomb as sovereign Turkish territory under a treaty signed with France in 1921, when Syria was under French rule, and threatened earlier this month to retaliate for any attack on the mausoleum.


President Abdullah Gul said on Sunday Turkey would defend the site in the same way it would defend any Turkish land. "However the motherland is protected, that place will be protected in the same way," he said.
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Longface
“Do Syrians Want To Fight Until Victory or Do they Want a Ceasefire?” by James McMichael

A recent survey results show clear-cut differences between the views of civilians and those of rebel fighters with regard to the war and the political future of Syria. Simply put, civilians want a negotiated peace as quickly as possible, while rebel fighters are determined to fight on for military victory.
Moreover, civilians want a postwar government with limited religious influence, while rebel fighters want a religion-dominated postwar government. The survey results also contradict some existing theories as to the nature and origins of the war. Three researchers, Vera Miranova, Loubna Mrie and Sam Whitt conducted surveys of civilians in rebel held areas and rebel fighters in Aleppo during August-September 2013 and Idlib during November-December 2013. See the Voices of Syria project .

Civilians and rebel fighters were asked to select the best from several options with respect to negotiating with and fighting against Assad. “Continue fighting until Assad defeated” was selected by an overwhelming majority of 89.29% of rebel fighters but by only 36.36% of civilians. Conversely, “Immediate cease-fire to begin negotiations” was selected by 45.45% of civilians and by a mere 3.57% of rebel fighters. If the “civilians” could be represented in peace negotiations, then perhaps a result different from Geneva II could occur. However, while the views of rebel fighters and the external opposition are heard by Western and Gulf governments, the views of Syrian civilians apparently are heard by no one outside Syria.

Civilians and rebel fighters were asked how large a role religion should play in future Syrian politics. Of civilians, there is nothing approaching a majority position and 39.3% favor a very important role, 22.2% favor a not very important role, and 6.2% favor no role at all. Of rebel fighters, a majority of 53.3% favors a very important role, just 13.3% favor a not very important role, and none favor no role at all. It appears that, if civilians determine the nature of a postwar government, then it possible that a balance might be struck between religion and secularism in government. In contrast, if rebel fighters prevail as to the form of postwar government, then theocracy seems to be in store.

The view that the war is a political revolution appears to be incorrect. Rebel fighters were asked their main reason for joining rebel groups. Revenge against Assad was given by 46.3%, support for the group’s goals was given by just 18.5%, defending their community was given by 13%, and defeating Assad was given by 11.1%. With a majority of 57.4% fighting against Assad, and just 18.5% fighting for their group’s goals, the rebel fighters care whom they are fighting against, but are quite unconcerned as to what they are fighting for. This indicates that the war is not a revolution seeking a new political order but is, instead, an identity-based civil war like Biafra, Northern Ireland and past and present Iraq.

One explanation that has been offered for the 2011 uprising, aside from emulation of the Arab Spring in other countries, is economic deprivation caused by a moribund economy, a high birth rate, a bloated public sector, and a multiyear drought. The survey results rebut that hypothesis. Rebel fighters were asked their pre-war occupation. Pre-war, 35.59% of rebel fighters were students, 27.12% were professionals, and just 13.56% were unemployed. The ranks of the rebel fighters were not filled by the economically deprived.

Although not discussed above, the survey results provide extensive information as to the social effects of the war. Those social effects are, in a few words, physical, personal, economic and psychological catastrophe. This catastrophe goes a long way toward explaining the civilian preference for a negotiated end to the war as quickly as possible and aversion to fighting on for military victory. If only Secretary Kerry and his counterparts in Europe and the Gulf were aware of and amenable to the potential for peace in bypassing the rebel groups and external opposition and providing to Syrian civilians the means to become the “sole legitimate representative” of the Syrians. However, nothing of the sort appears to be on the diplomatic agenda.

A few caveats are necessary. Security concerns prevented the researchers from using certain sampling techniques. The surveys were limited geographically. The total sample size was just 150 individuals. No margin of error is provided. Nevertheless, these surveys are an important advance in understanding the nature of the war, the prospects for peace, and the possible forms of a postwar government.

The researchers report as works in progress three papers analyzing their survey results. These are sure to be of value to those trying to understand Syria.
CAVEATS
  1. It was not possible to use standard survey sampling techniques.
  2. The limited geographical area.
  3. The sample size was just 150 individuals.
The research interest was rebel held areas and the surveys were conducted accordingly.
Longface
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