Posted on 12/06/2024 6:17:22 AM PST by RandFan
Summary
Islamist-led rebels are now just 1km from Syria's third largest city, Homs, according to a war monitor
Tens of thousands of people have been fleeing as the anti-government forces advance
Russia - a key ally of the Syrian government - is now urging its citizens to leave the country
The rebels seized Hama to the north on Thursday, a second major blow to President Bashar al-Assad who lost control of Aleppo last week
Their goal is the overthrow of Assad's regime, the leader of the Islamist militant group HTS says in a CNN interview
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Anyone else keeping an eye on this?
Jordan closes border with Syria
Jordan’s interior ministry confirms that it has ordered the closure of the country’s border with Syria.
Interior minister Mazen al-Faraya says the closure of the Jaber border crossing, which is opposite the Syrian Nassib crossing, is “a result of the surrounding security conditions in Syria’s south”.
They are toppling statues of Assad
Not good. I predict that large numbers of Christians and ethnic minorities will be “disappeared”. I also suspect that American neocons and government agencies are involved in supporting this along with THEIR good friend Turkey. It’s their nice “welcome” gift for Trump.
I’m sure some will cheer it on. Ugh.
HTS is way out over their skis if they continue on to Damascus.
"Separately, Turkish-backed groups have launched operations against largely Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, which is in line with Ankara's long-communicated desire to move against Kurdish forces there and to control a swathe of land south of its border as a security buffer zone."
This seems Ottoman-dreaming Sunnis moving against Kurds (supposedly defended with US forces) and the joined Salafists, all wrapped against Shia mentality, and with a shared aim in the end -- targeting oil revenue (the practical) and Israel (the theological).
One learns: "....the Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)" is translated for us into "Organization for the Liberation of the Levant." In historical terms, that stretched from Turkey down to Egypt, and in modern terms still means Syria, Jordan and Israel.
One fine and complex mess, to be sure.
Either something seems really amiss, or the invasion of and war in Ukraine has weakened Russiam forces in Syria such that it is not as much help to Assad as it once was.
But no one should celebrate the fall of Assad. Whoever comes out on top after his ouster will be worse, worse for the west, worse for Israel.
Deep state and cia need a new hotbed for terrorists to come from just in time for Trump.
The proximate cause is the collapse of Lebanese Hezbollah, smashed by Israel. Assads perennial problem has been manpower, as Syria is majority Sunni. Iran has been providing Shiite troops recruited by its puppet Hezbollah, as a major part of the Syrian governments infantry. It seems that last week all or most Hezbollah troops just went home, apparently the result of a collapse in morale, leaving the frontline unmanned or undermanned.
It was the Iranian-provided infantry that were critical, not RuAF assets.
Russian forces in Syria were just some specialist and support formations. Without the manpower to hold the front all the remaining Syrian forces can do is retreat. You cant hold the line with just airstrikes.
I’m thinking Russia is now a paper tiger military with the exception of nukes. They have no navy, no aircraft carrier to project power worldwide wide. The admiral Kissoff is basically an artificial reef.
“They have no navy, “
A bit confused here . . . just how many boomers are in that non existent Navy?
Very plausible analysis.
Yet, it would seem the “rebels” owe some thanks to Israel, but would their government, if they replaced Assad, be greatful?? NOT ONE BIT. The “rebels” are` as much Islamists as the Mullahs in Tehran or any of the Islamic terrorist groups.
It is very much about this.
How Syria Became the Middle East’s Drug Dealer"With the support of Iran and Russia, Assad has survived, and his government now controls about three-quarters of the country. In the past few years, he has found a desperately needed source of income in captagon.
In Syria, a single pill of the stimulant costs a few cents to produce. But that pill can be sold elsewhere in the Middle East—the only part of the world where captagon is a popular drug—for as much as twenty-five dollars, especially in wealthy cities such as Riyadh.
The Assad regime now controls much of the captagon trade, making billions of dollars a year. The most significant figure in the government’s production and distribution of captagon is reportedly the President’s younger brother Maher al-Assad, who is the head of the 4th Division of the Syrian Army, a unit founded in 1984 to protect the government from all threats to its authority.
Syria’s amphetamine business is worth some ten billion dollars. The country’s official gross domestic product is only nine billion.
Fighters on all sides of the conflict in Syria have taken captagon. On June 12, 2018, coalition forces battling ISIS found and destroyed three hundred thousand captagon pills belonging to the Islamist group. Last year, the Israel Defense Forces reported finding captagon pills on the bodies of Hamas fighters killed during the October 7th attacks.
Saudi Arabia claims that between May, 2023, and July, 2024, it seized seventy-six million captagon pills. The country has a population of only thirty-two million."
Thanks for the link. Nothing about this surprises me. While we in the West want to think in some sort of Hollywood storytelling about a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, there surely a realities in which bad guys on many sides take aim, one against another.
Oct 7 was a massive miscalculation by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran that has created a chain of events that are significantly changing the region.
“Russia has informed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that moving forward, their Intervention and Support for the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) against the Rebel Offensives now in the North, East, and South of the Country will be Limited.”
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1865086346907291969
Sky News Arabia:
Russia informed Damascus that any intervention would be limited and that it has other priorities at this time
And Assad informed Russia, "I need a ride, not ammo".
Russia might want to cut a deal with Turkey, if that's even possible at this point.
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