The Syria Analysis Thread

10 posts

Fitz

By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON
11/04/2015 21:24

Iranian commanders refuse orders to fight in Syria, report says

October seen as bloodiest month yet of Syria war for Iranian and Afghan forces.

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Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards take part in a military parade to commemorate the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war in Tehran. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Iran’s increasing military involvement in Syria to sustain President Bashar Assad’s regime is costing more and more casualties and top commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guards force have been charged with mutiny and treason for refusing orders to fight there, a pan-Arab daily newspaper reported on Wednesday.

A source quoted by the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily said several Revolutionary Guard generals from Ahvaz province which has a significant Arab population, have chosen to retire or go into business rather than fight in Syria.

An official investigation has been launched into the large numbers of generals from that region suddenly retiring from service, the source told the paper, which backs Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, a rival of Iran’s Shiite regime.

The source said further that a rise in deaths among the Revolutionary Guards’ special Quds force has led its leadership to recruit higher-ranking officers to fight in Syria.

Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the elite extra-territorial Special Forces arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The report could not be independently confirmed.

Ali Alfoneh, an Iran expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Washington-based think tank, told The Jerusalem Post the real number of Iranian casualties in Syria was not known and Tehran has every reason to downplay the degree of its involvement and losses there.

“My survey of open-source data collected from the Persian language accounts of funerals in Iran, shows that 165 Iranian nationals, 154 Afghan nationals, and 26 Pakistani nationals – all Shiites – have been killed in combat in Syria since January 2013,” Alfoneh said.

He estimates that Hezbollah and Iraq’s Shiite militias have suffered greater casualties than Iran.

“Ever since the first Russian military engagement in Syria on September 30, there has been a marked increase in Afghan and Iranian casualties making October the bloodiest month in the entire course of the civil war for Iranian and Afghan forces,” said Alfoneh.

Thirty-four Iranians were killed in October while Afghan combat fatalities numbered 22.

Funerals have been held for six Pakistani nationals since June 25, “though there is no report of Shiite Pakistani combat fatalities in Syria,” Alfoneh said.

The Revolutionary Guards is increasingly deploying ground forces to Syria, which is a change from an earlier deployment of the Quds Force to that battle zone, Alfoneh said.

“This indicates the Quds Force is spread thin in several regional conflicts and has suffered heavy casualties in Syria,” he said.

“Deployment of the Revolutionary Guards is blurring the functional differences between it (a traditionally domestic force) and the Quds Force, which hitherto has served as the sole expeditionary warfare force.”

He said the Guards were increasingly using Iranian commanders for the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade.

“This may be an attempt to improve the leadership of the Afghan Shiite forces, which have suffered extremely high casualties.”

The Guards seem to have stopped using Pakistani nationals on the front line, he noted, attributing this to possible difficulties recruiting Pakistani Shiites for the war effort.

Iran has denied it has ground troops fighting in Syria, saying it has only dispatched advisers to help the Syrian army and Hezbollah.

However, increasing reports of Iranian casualties raise questions about how deep Iran’s involvement really is.

According to a report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) last week, some 30 Revolutionary Guard officers were killed on the Syrian front in the previous two weeks, citing reports by sources affiliated with the Iranian force.

Iranian media has been full of war propaganda regarding its and its Syrian and Russian allies claimed successes against the rebels in the past few months.

Two officers of the Revolutionary Guards were killed in Aleppo on Tuesday “while serving as military advisers to the Syrian army,”

Iran’s Fars News Agency reported. A report earlier that day said Colonel Ezzatollah Soleimani had died in the same area.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Fitz
Syria jihadists capture regime town along vital road

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By Maya Gebeily November 5, 2015 2:43 PM

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Beirut (AFP) - Jihadists seized a key town Thursday along a vital road in Syria's central Hama province, where regime forces are struggling to gain ground despite a month of Russian air strikes.

The setback for Damascus came as France announced it would deploy an aircraft carrier to boost its fight against the Islamic State group, which has seized control of large parts of Iraq and Syria.

And in an apparent spillover of Syria's war, five people were killed in a suicide attack in a Lebanese town near the border.

Bolstered by the Russian air campaign launched on September 30, President Bashar al-Assad's forces have been fighting to retake territory lost to rebels in the country's brutal four-year war but have failed to score significant gains.

On Thursday a jihadist faction, Jund al-Aqsa, was reported to have seized the last government-held town on the main highway between second city Aleppo to the north and the city of Hama to the south.

They "seized full control of the town of Morek after a fierce offensive," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

Director Rami Abdel Rahman said clashes were still raging in the south and east of the town, and that "dozens" of soldiers had been killed or wounded.

Jund al-Aqsa boasted of victory on its Twitter account.

A Syrian security source insisted fighting was ongoing and denied a major setback.

Opposition fighters in the area "are being dealt with by the Syrian and Russian air force," the source said.

Morek has changed hands several times in the conflict, with government troops last retaking it in October 2014.

Last month, Syrian troops launched a major fightback in Hama province with Russian air support, with the main Aleppo highway a main objective.

It was one of a number of counter-offensives the Damascus regime has launched since Moscow intervened.

- Turkey vows action -

But the loss of Morek has shown that despite "a lot of firepower" the Hama offensive "has had very small success, if any," said Jeff White, a military expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"Despite the Russian intervention, rebels are still capable of mounting offensive operations," White said.

Regime forces did score a rare win Wednesday, recapturing from IS an alternative route further east that provides the government's sole link to neighbourhoods of Aleppo under its control.

Advancing IS forces had severed the road last month, cutting off food and supplies to tens of thousands of civilians in the west of Aleppo city.

For the first time since IS had cut the road, trucks of fruits and vegetables arrived in regime neighbourhoods in Aleppo city, residents said.

IS has continued advancing its various parts of Syria, despite the Russian strikes and more than a year of air raids targeting the group by a US-led coalition.

The Observatory said at least 22 civilians were killed along with several IS fighters in Thursday air raids on the Syrian town of Bukamal, near the Iraqi border, but did not say which nation carried out the strikes.

Russia said its air force carried out strikes near the IS-held ancient city of Palmyra, bringing to 263 the number of targets Russian jets have hit in the past two days.

And France, which joined coalition operations in Syria last month after previously carrying out strikes in Iraq, said on Thursday it would deploy its Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to better fight the jihadists.

More than 250,000 people have been killed in the war, which began in 2011 and has frequently spilled across the border.

On Thursday, six people were killed in a suicide attack at a meeting of Muslim clerics in the Lebanese town of Arsal, a security source told AFP.

Arsal is a Sunni Muslim enclave in mainly Shiite eastern Lebanon and hosts many Syrian refugees as well as rebel fighters in the surrounding countryside.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack.

The US's new coordinator on anti-IS efforts, Brett McGurk, said on Twitter Thursday he was in Ankara "for consultations with senior Turkish officials".
Fitz

video footage of liberation -


Niccolo and Donkey
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Niccolo and Donkey
Fitz
nuclear launch detected

Really good stuff. Thermobarics are nasty bombs. If the initial blast doesn't kill you, the intense heat will, if that doesn't work the massive vacuum shockwave literally turns your body inside out. It's basically a 1, 2, 3 punch. Very awful stuff. The Russians aren't fucking around here. Also there are reports of mass desertions among the Jihadis. And for even more better news, Assad is making serious gains to boot.

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Fitz

that mass desertions story is total horseshit.

Vuk
Fitz
The Shia jihad and the death of Syria’s army
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Lara Nelson
Wednesday 18 November 2015 12:23 UTC

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A Syrian army defector explains how President Assad's forces have been overrun by foreign armies and militias

It was a hot July day in Ramadan when Khaled al-Shami saw an opportunity to flee Division 9 in Daraa, southern Syria, the place that had been his army barracks for the past four years.

One month before two soldiers like him had taken the same route, but had been spotted: one was gunned down and killed; the other was wounded and died as he was run over by the pursuing forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Their fate ran round and round Shami's head as he slipped out of the headquarters, while his friend distracted the guards. He walked five kilometres before he met soldiers from Saif Al Sham, a group in the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front with whom he had been coordinating his defection.

It was two months before he was able to leave Syria and cross into Jordan. I met him in Amman and asked him about conditions inside Assad’s forces.

“I was living in a nightmare,” he said. “I need a software change after everything I saw and experienced. Most people like me want to leave, but it’s the overwhelming fear that stops you”.

He described what life was like inside Assad’s army.

“One important thing to realise is that there is no Syrian Army anymore, it is just militias, mostly Iranians and Lebanese.”

Composition of armed forces

Division 9 is the largest and most important military force for Assad in southern Syria. It houses the only tank division, and has around 4,000 troops within four brigades.

However, most of the troops within the division are now non-Syrians: “Without the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hezbollah the army could not stand up. Seventy percent of the troops in Division 9 are Iranian troops or Lebanese Hezbollah, the rest are shabiha. Only two to three percent are regular Syrian soldiers,” Khaled said.

Shabiha is the name for the Alawite paramilitary force known for its brutality and sectarian nature. Khaled described the dynamics between these different fighting elements: “The Iranians and Hezbollah are not under the control of the Syrian Army, the exact opposite.”

He described how troops were organised and deployed: “Ten high-ranking Iranian officers control the division, they plan the operations. Only Iranian or Hezbollah forces can access operations rooms, no Syrian soldiers are allowed in."

For battles, groups of 50 fighters are deployed: 15 IRGC, 15 Hezbollah, 20 Syrians, the majority of which are shabiha. Within battles the hierarchy is clear: the commander is an Iranian IRGC officer and his deputy will be a Hezbollah officer, according to Khaled.

Hierarchy

A Syrian officer who defected and is now in Amman, who asked to remain anonymous, recounted comments to me from a friend who remains an officer in Assad’s forces: “We are in the fifth class,” he said. “Even the civilian Lebanese militia have the power to tell a Syrian general what to do, to send him back to his office. They have better food than us, better weapons and more respect.”

He described how Syrians are now isolated from military activities and have no trust: “The militia are running the show nowadays. These militia believe they are there to defend Syria when the regular army has failed, so they treat us as failures with no respect.”

The difference in pay between the groups is stark: Khaled was paid $60 a month as a regular Syrian soldier, while the shabiha were paid three times as much at $180 a month. Lebanese Hezbollah were paid around $400.

Defections, desertions and fatalities

Major Abu Osama al-Jolani, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander and defected officer, told me how the war has changed over the past 12 months.

“The Shia militias are leading military action to support the regime in all battles for the last year … Everyone we are fighting now are foreigners.”

Christopher Kozak, at the Institute for the Study of War, wrote back in December 2014 how “defections, desertions and over 44,000 combat fatalities” had significantly reduced Assad’s forces.

He said critical pressure remains due to grumblings within the regime’s Alawi support base who “have exhibited growing signs of dissatisfaction with the Syrian regime”.

Assad publically admitted he had a manpower shortage in a speech in July this year: “The army’s energy is manpower, and if we want the army to give its best, then we need to give it our best.”

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Occupation strategy

The influx of foreign fighters, many of whom are coming to Syria to fight Shia jihad, adds a dangerous sectarian character to Assad’s forces.

Khaled recounted stories of how they occupy mosques in areas they control, removing Sunni icons and putting up pictures of Shia figureheads such as the late Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in their place.

“Their strategy is to spread the Shia religion. When they occupy the mosques they prevent Sunnis from praying there. They even blow up the mosque if they think the FSA are using it,” Khaled said.

Instances were recorded this year when Iraqi and Lebanese Shia militia entered the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, hung Shia flags on the wall, and began chants considered by Sunnis to be blasphemous.

Similarly when Hezbollah took over the town of Al Qusair, between Homs and the Lebanese border, a video was released showing Hezbollah fighters hanging a large flag from the minaret of the main Sunni mosque in the city which reads “Oh Hussein.”

Recently an Iraqi Shia militia group occupied a mosque in Tal al-A’is, southern Aleppo, and published pictures on their website.

Abu Salah Al Shami, leader of the FSA’s Saif Al Sham, commented on this practice saying what his fighters witness on the ground: “Often these militia try to occupy and control the religious symbols in the Sunni community to achieve not just a territorial victory but a sectarian one as well.”

These forces have been repeatedly accused of human rights atrocities, many of which are said to have had a sectarian character. Fighting alongside Hezbollah, Khaled said he witnessed crimes committed by these forces, including the rape and execution of civilians in the town of Deir al-Adas after Assad’s forces took over in February 2015.

Rights group the Syrian Network for Human Rights has issued a series of reports on the human rights abuses committed by these militias, including massacres described as ethnic cleansing. In one report they document a series of sectarian massacres between March 2011 and January 2014 that left 962 civilians dead.

Iran’s role

While Syrians I spoke to estimate that there are around 30 different foreign fighter groups on the ground in Syria supporting Assad, the bulk of their numbers is made up of fighters from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah, as Khaled witnessed within Division 9 in the country’s south.

Major General Qasem Suleimani, the leader of the Quds Force, which handles IRGC missions abroad, regularly visits Syria, where he is seen rallying his soldiers and their fellow fighters.

A stream of senior Iranian and Hezbollah commanders have been killed in Syria. The FSA’s Major Abu Osama Al Jolani said his forces hold the bodies of two Iranian commanders killed in fighting in Quneitra, southern Syria.

The coverage of these forces in the mainstream press receives a fraction of the attention Sunni foreign fighters receive, such as those from Jabhat Al Nusra, despite some of these groups, including both Lebanese and Iraqi Hezbollah, appearing on the US foreign terror organisations list .

The US government designated the IRGC and its Quds Force a concern for the proliferation of terrorism in 2007. The role of these forces within the Syrian conflict has been tracked by Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland, who has issued a detailed report on the Shia jihad in Syria.

There is a major recruitment drive within radical Shia circles to recruit jihadists to fight for the Shrine of Zeinab in Syria, the burial place of the Prophet Mohammad’s granddaughter and daughter of Ali. In a recent interview Smyth outlined that Iran’s aims are not just to secure the geopolitical interests in Syria, protecting the crescent of influence from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, but it has the ideological goal to spread the Iranian Islamic Revolution in the region.

Khaled’s insights shed light on the workings of those forces supporting the Syrian regime’s foothold on power in the country. While many still refer to the “Syrian Arab Army” (SAA), it is clear that most fighters now supporting Assad are not Syrian, many are not Arab and the structure of forces is more of a conglomeration of militia than an army.

While the mainstream media is magnetised to the Hollywood horror productions of ISIS and the activities other Sunni jihadi groups in Syria, Shia jihadists in a range of militia groups have multiplied, and their dangerous sectarian policies and human rights abuses have received little attention. This wave of Shia jihad in Syria not only adds to the chaos and bloodshed in the country, but has major repercussions for sectarian tensions in the wider region for times to come.