The Syria Analysis Thread

10 posts

Bob Dylan Roof

The world has learned its lesson: don't prod the Assad. The receding chin master race is rising [​IMG]

Fitz
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Niccolo and Donkey
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SweetLeftFoot

Belgium huh.

Done stuff on this, very weird to be sitting in a flat in Schaerbeek looking at pictures of a bloke you know is now fighting with IS when he was 8 years old with his first bike.
Bob Dylan Roof

Obama dropping some Smart Diplomacy (TM) on the 'Kwa by using ISIS as pretext to go after Assad:

Obama's Plan to Arm Syrian Rebels Gains Congressional Support

The mewling faggot Boehner is 100% behind Barry on this one. It makes sense because, after all, the ISIS offensive was in no way related to the west prolonging the war in Syria and arming and training "moderate, secular" rebels.

Fitz
Israel shoots down Syrian fighter jet which 'infiltrated' Israeli airspace

Military source says plane infiltrated Israeli airspace and was shot down using Patriot air defence system
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The Syrian fighter jet is seen in flames after it was hit by the Israeli military over the Golan Heights. Photograph: JALAA MAREY/AFP/Getty Images

An Israeli Patriot missile battery has shot down a Syrian fighter jet that infiltrated half a mile into airspace controlled by Israel over the Golan Heights on Tuesday morning.

Video footage of the first such downing by Israel of a Syrian jet since 1982 showed two burning sections of the plane falling to the ground and then the parachutes of the pilot and navigator who ejected moments before impact.

Syria immediately condemned the downing of the jet, with state television describing it as an “act of aggression” and linking it to US-led air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) forces in Syria that had occurred earlier.

The jet entered Israeli-controlled airspace a few minutes before 9am and was flying at between 10,000 and 14,000 feet when it was engaged.

An Israeli military source said a “Syrian aircraft infiltrated into Israeli airspace [and was] intercepted in mid-flight, using the Patriot air defence system”.

Military sources and experts described the plane as a Sukhoi 24, which they say had flown from Saikal air base in eastern Syria. They said they believed it had strayed into Israeli-controlled airspace while fully armed on a mission to bomb anti-government groups on the other side of the border.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the warplane had been bombing areas outside Quneitra, a Syrian town near the Israeli-held side of the frontier, at the time it was shot down.

The decision to bring down the aircraft was taken after it had spent one minute and 20 seconds in Israeli airspace. Defending the decision, sources and military experts said the infiltration by an armed enemy aircraft could not be tolerated.

Israel’s defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, said the Syrian warplane had “approached Israeli territory in the Golan Heights in a threatening manner, and even crossed the border”.

He said Israel “has made it clear in the past, and is reiterating now: we will not allow anyone, neither state nor terror organisation, to threaten our security and to violate our sovereignty.”

In recent weeks, fighting on the Golan Heights – which Israel captured from Syria during the six day war in 1967 – has raised tensions on the normally quiet border.

The regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has recently been fighting al-Qaida-linked groups around the Quneitra border crossing. On a visit to the Golan last week, the Guardian could hear the sound of fighting echoing over the mountainous border throughout the day and into the night.

Israel has largely stayed on the sidelines of the civil war raging across the border in Syria. But Israeli leaders appear increasingly nervous about the possibility of fighters linked to al-Qaida occupying the Golan’s high ground over northern Israel.

During the civil war, Israeli troops have responded to occasional mortar fire that has landed on their side of the Golan. Israel says some of the attacks have been accidental spillover, while others have been intentionally aimed at Israeli civilians and soldiers. It has always held Syria responsible for any cross-border fire.

Despite Tuesday’s incident, the former Israeli air force commander Eitan Ben Eliyahu said he did not believe that the Assad regime was trying to provoke an escalation, adding that he did not believe the aircraft posed a threat to Israel before it was shot down.

He told Israel Radio: “The Syrian regime would not dare now – and it has not dared for decades – to do anything to provoke us. So I don’t believe that this was deliberate. The fighting there is right on the border fence and when planes are involved, because of their speed and altitude and ability to spot the targets, it is easy to make mistakes. We, of course, cannot permit this.

“No, I don’t consider the infiltration as a threat. But it reminds us of the mess over there. Perhaps the most important thing is the formation of the coalition against Isis.”
Niccolo and Donkey

Pepe has been spot on throughout this entire Syrian Civil War......here's his latest piece in full:

Operation Tomahawk The Caliph

Don Johnson
U.S. Considers a No-Fly Zone to Protect Civilians From Airstrikes by Syria

NY Times
By HELENE COOPER and ANNE BARNARD SEPT. 26, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has not ruled out establishing a no-fly zone over northeastern Syria to protect civilians from airstrikes by the Syrian government, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday.

Mr. Hagel and General Dempsey indicated they are open to considering the request of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey for a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, where tens of thousands of Syrians have sought refuge. Mr. Hagel said, “We’ve discussed all these possibilities and will continue to talk about what the Turks believe they will require.” He said 1.3 million Syrian refugees are now in Turkey.

General Dempsey added that “a buffer zone might at some point become a possibility,” but he said it was not imminent. Creating a buffer, or no-fly zone, would require warplanes to disable the Syrian government’s air defense system through airstrikes.

Both men spoke as the Pentagon continued its own airstrikes against the Islamic State. The extremist group is battling President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Syrian insurgents backed by the United States — a complication of the American military campaign in Syria that began this week.

On Friday in Turkey, the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Kobani near the border with Turkey was on the verge of falling to Islamic State militants, residents said. Kurdish militants there said they had struggled to fight off the militants all week even as an American-led coalition launched airstrikes against the Islamic State elsewhere in Syria.

By late afternoon, Islamic State militants could be seen along the border both east and west of the main town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, a constellation of mostly Kurdish farming villages with a population of 400,000. Fighting intensified as night fell, with heavy clashes reported near the town.

Refugees fleeing into Turkey and Kurdish fighters seeking to cross into Syria to defend Kobani expressed anger and perplexity that the American-led coalition had not launched airstrikes against their assailants to avert what the refugees said would be a massacre. The Islamic State’s attacks on Kurdish civilians in Iraq triggered the first American strikes on the group last month.

“If they need to locate them I can insert a smart chip in my heart and go to the Islamic State fighters,” said Hajjar Sheikh Mohammad, 22, a Syrian Kurd trying to return to Syria to fight, suggesting that he would sacrifice himself to spot Islamic State targets for American warplanes.

Increasingly desperate Kurds broke through a border fence on Friday afternoon in the border village of Mursitpinar and crossed in both directions, with women, children and old men streaming into Turkey with livestock and belongings, and men crossing into Syria, unarmed but determined to fight. Turkish forces fired tear gas canisters into the crowd at short range, sending people fleeing in panic.

The Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or Y.P.G., had been issuing urgent calls for help, saying they had only light weapons and were struggling to hold off Islamic State fighters who are armed with tanks and artillery. But aiding the group could be politically difficult because of its link to the P.K.K., a Turkey-based Kurdish separatist group that Turkey and the United States consider a terrorist organization.

In the news conference at the Pentagon, General Dempsey indicated that a moderate Syrian rebel force of about 12,000 to 15,000 fighters would be needed to defeat the Islamic State — three times the number of fighters that the United States is planning to train. But he said the current plan for 5,000 fighters to be trained and armed by the United States in Saudi Arabia was never meant to be a ceiling.

Congress last week approved the Obama administration’s proposal to train and equip up to 5,000 moderate members of the Syrian opposition; the State Department and the Pentagon have been evaluating people before beginning the training program in Saudi Arabia.

Both Mr. Hagel and General Dempsey acknowledged that even with airstrikes in Syria, degrading and defeating the Islamic State — President Obama’s stated goal — could not happen without troops on the ground.

Mr. Hagel put the cost of the American military campaign in Iraq and Syria at between $7 million and $10 million a day.

Separately, United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said that American warplanes conducted 10 more airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Thursday and Friday. The warplanes destroyed three Humvees and one vehicle, disabled two armed vehicles and damaged one mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, or MRAP, in five airstrikes south of Kirkuk.

Airstrikes west of Baghdad destroyed a guard shack, an armed vehicle and a bunker. An airstrike near Al Qaim destroyed four armed vehicles, a command and control position and a checkpoint.

In Syria, three strikes south of Deir al-Zour destroyed four tanks and damaged another, according to the Central Command.
Fitz
Fitz

dead YPG/PKK from the battle of kobane.

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