Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan meet in Sochi, Russia November 22, 2017. (photo credit: SPUTNIK/MIKHAIL METZEL/KREMLIN VIA REUTERS) The Three Amigos
Posted on 05/05/2019 12:01:36 AM PDT by NorseViking
BEIRUT/ANKARA (Reuters) - Syrian government forces and their Russian allies pounded the rebel-held northwest of Syria with air strikes on Saturday, sources in the area said, as artillery hit a Turkish military position there, underlining the risk of wider escalation.
The upsurge in violence in Idlib and nearby areas in the last five days has strained a Russian-Turkish deal that has staved off a government offensive since September. The area is part of the last major foothold of the Syrian rebellion.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Headlines like this always remind me of that verse in the Bible where Damascus ceases to exist. One of these days.....
How dare the Syrians attack an enemy inside their own borders claiming turf? /s
I haven’t followed this mess in Syria - it all seems pretty confusing to me! I’m guessing that all of the players are the “bad guys” which always makes it difficult for me to figure out who to root for.
I think some of the rebels are good and some aren’t (like ISIS for example). However if they actually toppled Asad, probably the bad ones would be in charge, based on Middle East history. Asad is very bad. It is hard to figure out who to root for.
I do not like Erdogan, Putin or Asad, meanwhile in Persia and Venezuela..
All amiable fellows among friends I am sure.. but what is in their hearts?
Assad has protected Christians for decades. His father did the same. It would be far worse if they overthrew him.
Obama and Hillary didn’t like him. That means nothing to me. Besides, it was mostly terrorists we obama was backing to overthrow him.
That’s what I’ve heard.
I am not well read on the goings on during his reign, but if it’s true he protected Christians, I can see why obama hated him.
He also does fund terrorism so that’s a bad thing. Obviously.
We got that other guy in Libya to change his ways but hillary screwed that all up.
“I’m guessing that all of the players are the “bad guys” which always makes it difficult for me to figure out who to root for.”
One observer said something like, “The difference is in how they execute people who aren’t in their group; fire, beheading or shot.”
Turkey backed ISIS. Once Russia closed off the border, ISIS collapsed.
No good guys among the rebels. Good guy opponents of Assad pleaded with the US not to go to war. The sorta good guys, like the Kurds, quickly realized Assad was preferable to ISIS. Anyone who fought against Assad after Kohane was ISIS.
The guy in Libya opened his weapons arsenal for inspections. He was not a threat to anyone. Libya was a very prosperous nation. Obama and Hillary had their agenda and took him down. The situation in Libya and the people there are far worse off now.
Syria wasn’t a threat to anyone except those trying to overthrow their government. Assad is an Alawite. Still a muslim but not one of the extremist types. Both ISIS and al Qaeda wanted to overthrow him. We were sending them weapons calling them rebels and the Free Syrian Army.
I’ve heard a couple of different reasons why France, the UK, and obama and Hillary wanted to over throw them but there was no just reason for us supporting rebels to overthrow them. And there was a lot of fake news coming out of there too as we should have expected because obama and hillary’s bunch controlled the media.
Very accurate and true and important post about a sad disaster that accompanied the obama presidency.
He WANTED our enemies let loose.
He did a good job and hillary sure helped.
The GOOD news is she lost in ‘16 or we’d be done.
Or in a CW, and many countries would LOVE to see us engage in a CW.
In May, the Assad regime transported as many as 1,600 ISIL fighters and family members from the Hajar al-Aswad district and Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp -- an ISIL stronghold in southern Damascus since April 2015 -- to the Badiya region, a vast stretch of desert in southeast Syria. The transfer paved the way for the government to retake full control of the capital after many years.
The government's chief allies, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, have also supported such arrangements for military and political gains in the Syrian civil war.
Perhaps the most controversial of all was an Iran-blessed deal between Hezbollah and ISIL in August 2017 which saw hundreds of ISIL fighters and their families leaving, under Syrian military escort, an enclave on the border with Lebanon for the eastern province of Deir az Zor. According to the Hezbollah leader Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Iran-backed group accepted an unprecedented arrangement with a "terrorist" foe -- which drew rare criticism from the Iraqi government among others -- to find out the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers in ISIL captivity since 2014.
The deal, however, served a bigger objective, purging the Syrian-Lebanese border regions of ISIL presence and handing a much-needed political victory to Hezbollah whose reputation had suffered at home for sacrificing Lebanese interests to fight Bashar al-Assad's civil war. It was also meant to reinforce ISIL ranks in eastern Syria in their fight against US-backed Kurdish forces and thus pit two nemeses of the Syrian government against each other. Rather unsurprisingly, the US warplanes struck parts of the convoy, blocking its progress to Al-Bukamal in Deir az Zor -- reportedly the fighters' final destination -- and forcing it to redirect towards lightly populated areas in the Homs province, central Syria.
Assad's strategic use of ISIL made his victory in Syria possible | Maysam Behravesh | October 18, 2018
"Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown."
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan meet in Sochi, Russia November 22, 2017. (photo credit: SPUTNIK/MIKHAIL METZEL/KREMLIN VIA REUTERS) The Three Amigos
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