The Syria Analysis Thread

Welund Wednesday 2 Nov 2016

It does and was reported by several unreputable websites, however, I find the source interesting in this case.

TradPost9000 Wednesday 9 Nov 2016

Clashes near Quneitra village
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/XeMdiDvxiZs

Niccolo and Donkey Wednesday 9 Nov 2016

Derrick Thursday 10 Nov 2016

I don't know anything about the terrain but there's a large gap to the east of the rebel enclave that doesn't look covered. Is that gap SAA? Looks like a great place for the rebels to break out.

TradPost9000 Thursday 10 Nov 2016

They haven't bothered going east because they would have to cover more ground to break the siege (its about twice the distance to cover compared to the South Western corridor they opened last time they broke the siege) and ISIS currently holds the territory on the other side.

TradPost9000 Thursday 10 Nov 2016

another factor to consider is the ability to keep the siege from being in effect, if they were unable to control a stable supply corridor in an area half the length, it wouldn't be feasible to do so where they would have to breakthrough & hold more territory

Chic bot Thursday 10 Nov 2016

looks like russian mech infantry are starting to get into the conflict here. Not confirmed, but highly probably given their gear

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/RnE52_tZYgk

TradPost9000 Thursday 10 Nov 2016

I have heard rumors that the soldiers in the footage are forward observation for artillery- I do not have evidence of this at the moment however.

TradPost9000 Friday 11 Nov 2016

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/HyAIZkXcWbU

seems that the Soliders are actually members of Liwa Al-Quds. Their flag can be seen flying around 1:30 (this is extended footage from the same set)

Stars Down To Earth Saturday 12 Nov 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...b-11e6-8042-f4d111c862d1_story.html?tid=sm_tw

Obama directs Pentagon to target al-Nusra in Syria, one of the most formidable forces fighting Assad

President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to kill the leaders of the al-Qaeda-linked rebel group in Syria, which the administration had ignored until now since it was at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government, Pentagon officials said.

The decision to deploy armed drones and intelligence assets against the Sunni militant group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra reflects Obama’s concern that it is turning Syria into a new base of operations for al-Qaeda right on Europe’s southern doorstep, the officials said.

The move underlines the extent to which Obama has come to prioritize the counter-terrorism mission in Syria over the efforts to pressure President Bashar al-Assad to step aside. Al-Nusra is among the most powerful rebel forces battling the Syrian government.

That shift is likely to accelerate greatly, once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has said he will be even more aggressive in going after the Islamic militants than Obama, a stance that could lead to an expansion of the campaign against al-Nusra, possibly in direct cooperation with Russia.

The group now calls itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham — or Front for the Conquest of Syria — and claims it has broken ties with al-Qaeda, an assertion discounted by U.S. officials.

The United States has conducted sporadic strikes in the past against veteran al-Qaeda members who migrated to northwestern Syria from Afghanistan and Pakistan to join al-Nusra and whom U.S. officials suspected of plotting against the United States and its allies.

Obama’s new order gives the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, wider authority and additional intelligence-collection resources to go after al-Nusra’s broader leadership, not just al-Qaeda veterans or those directly involved in external plotting.

The White House and State Department led the charge within the Obama administration for prioritizing action against the group. Pentagon leaders were reluctant at first to pull resources away from the fight against the Islamic State.

But presidential aides say Obama grew frustrated that more wasn’t being done by the Pentagon and the American intelligence community to kill al-Nusra leaders given the warnings he had received from top counterterrorism officials about the gathering threat they posed.

In the president’s Daily Brief, the most highly classified intelligence report produced by U.S. spy agencies, Obama was repeatedly told over the summer that the group was allowing al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan to create in northwest Syria the largest haven for the terrorist network since it was scattered after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials have also warned Obama that al-Nusra would soon fill the void when its rival, the Islamic State, lost ground.

Lisa Monaco, Obama’s White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, said Obama’s decision “prioritized our fight against al-Qaeda in Syria, through targeting their leaders and operatives, some of whom are legacy al-Qaeda members.”

To support this push against al-Nusra, the White House pressed the Pentagon to deploy additional armed drones and intelligence-collection assets in the airspace over northwestern Syria, an area that had been barely covered by the United States until now because of its proximity to advanced Russian air-defense systems and bomber jets.

A bitterly divided Obama administration tried over the summer to cut a deal with Moscow on a joint U.S.-Russian air campaign against al-Nusra, in exchange for a Russian commitment to ground the Syrian government planes and to allow more humanitarian supplies into besieged areas. But the negotiations broke down, with Moscow accusing the United States of failing to separate al-Nusra from more moderate rebel groups and Washington accusing the Russians of committing war crimes in Aleppo.

Drone strikes by the U.S. military against the Nusra front began in October and have so far killed at least four high-value targets, including al-Nusra’s senior planner. The Pentagon has disclosed only two of the strikes so far. One of the most significant strikes — targeting a gathering of al-Nusra leaders on Nov. 2 — has yet to be disclosed, Pentagon officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operations.

So far, the Russian aircraft haven’t interfered with the increasing U.S. operations against al-Nusra. Officials attributed Moscow’s acquiescence to the small number of U.S. aircraft involved in the missions and to Russia’s interest in letting Washington destroy one of the Assad regime’s deadliest enemies. U.S.A.F officials said they gave notifications to the Russians before the al-Nusra strikes, to avoid misunderstandings.

Officials said the expanded al-Nusra campaign was similar to those that Obama has directed against al-Qaeda's affiliates in Somalia and Pakistan.

While al-Qaeda’s central leadership in Pakistan has been decimated, the United States now faces more threats involving more extremists from more places than at any time since 9/11, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center told a Senate committee in September.

The push into the province of Idlib and other Sunni parts of northwestern Syria coincides with Pentagon-backed offensives on Islamic State strongholds in eastern Syria and in Iraq, which have attracted the majority of U.S. military resources and public attention.

White House officials had considered launching a systematic bombing campaign to destroy al-Nusra from top to bottom, much like their approach to the Islamic State. But that option was rejected as too resource-intensive. Many of al-Nusra’s fighters are common Syrians who joined the rebel group because of its ample supply of weapons and cash, and its commitment to defeating Assad, not to plot against the West.

Officials said the drone strikes on leadership targets were meant to send a message to the other rebel units, including those backed by the Pentagon, to distance themselves from the al-Qaeda affiliate. At critical moments during the five-year-old civil war, many moderate rebel units have fought alongside al-Nusra in ground operations against Assad’s army. In fact, U.S. officials credit those Sunni rebel campaigns in early 2015 with putting so much pressure on Assad's government that Russia decided to double down in support of Assad.

U.S. officials who opposed the decision to hunt down al-Nusra’s wider leadership warned that the United States would effectively be doing the Assad government's bidding by weakening a rebel group on the frontlines of the Syrian rebellion. The drone strikes, these officials warned, could backfire on the United States by bolstering the terrorist group’s standing, helping it attract more recruits and resources.

Officials who supported the shift said the Obama administration could no longer tolerate what one of them described as “a deal with the Devil,” whereby the United States held its fire against al-Nusra because the group was too popular with Sunni Syrians in rebel-controlled areas and furthered the American goal of putting heavy pressure on Assad. Russia had accused the United States of sheltering al-Nusra, a charge repeated last week in Moscow by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“The president doesn’t want this group to be what inherits the country if Assad ever falls,” a senior U.S. official said. “This cannot be the viable Syrian opposition. It’s al-Qaeda.”

Niccolo and Donkey President Camacho Welund

The Syria Analysis Thread

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