Why so Syriaous (Syria Megathread)

[atomheartbevo 90021]

Assad and family are apparently at the Four Seasons hotel in Moscow (Russia not denying it).

Russian forces have bailed on three of their largest bases and are trying to make their way to the coastal bases.

Aleppo and Hama have fallen to the rebel forces.  Rumors of a coup against Assad.  Dogs and cats living together.

They might have an air force

 

[mchookem 16511]

are we sure they're not at Four Seasons Total Landscaping? 🤔 

[956 Worldwide 34892]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Assad and family are apparently at the Four Seasons hotel in Moscow (Russia not denying it).

Russian forces have bailed on three of their largest bases and are trying to make their way to the coastal bases.

Aleppo and Hama have fallen to the rebel forces.  Rumors of a coup against Assad.  Dogs and cats living together.

They might have an air force

 

Those are for sure L-39s. 

[atomheartbevo 90021]

 

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2115]

 

[Macanudo 13050]

Do those L-39s have hard points for munitions?  Or will we see them zip tie and rubber band missiles to them and then the pilots dropping hand grenades from the cockpits WWI style?

[B00M 6570]

38 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

Do those L-39s have hard points for munitions?  Or will we see them zip tie and rubber band missiles to them and then the pilots dropping hand grenades from the cockpits WWI style?

Still likely effective against Russians 

[RDCanecutter 26540]

42 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

He got that finger up doin that Allahu Akbar thing.

[KYHorn 17257]

Some context 

 

Spoiler

While the situation in Syria is still developing and in many cases unclear, one big elephant needs to be addressed:

 

Turkey

 

While we see many Turkish-backed units (SNA), especially east of Aleppo operating and taking position, it is clear that even the events by rebels (HTS and others) in this sector west of Aleppo have been tacitly accepted by Ankara. 

 

In order to understand this, we have to look back when Turkey made a deal with Russia and Iran in the so-called Astana deal, which basically was a division of Syria into sphere of influences and keeping Assad on the throne, which in itself was already a hard pill for Turkey to swallow.

 

But faced with limited choices Turkey agreed, and its Syrian allies were promised a piece of land. This, however, was shortly later violated by Russia. Iranian and Assad forces with the help of the Russian air force took vast areas around Aleppo and even Idlib. President Erdogan was betrayed by Putin.

 

While we all shouldn't be surprised that Putin does not give much on agreements, it was a new experience for President Erdogan, who shortly earlier accepted to buy the Russian S-400 air defense system, hoping to meet some of Putin's interests. Well, that didn't work out well.

 

On top of this, Russia tried to strong-arm Turkey in accepting the "new reality that Assad is going to stay". You see that Russia loves talking about "new realities", because this is what Russia does. It is about the "fait accompli", not about rules or treaties. Putin saw this on top of the events.

 

Then came Putin's disastrous decision to launch the full-scale war in Ukraine. Of course, he started it believing to be a short affair of 3 days, but almost 3 years later, it is clear for everyone to understand the magnitude of Putin's miscalculation. It was monumental.

 

Russia's adventure into Ukraine proved to be so costly that Moscow was forced to scramble all resources it can get and redeploy them to Ukraine and the Russian border areas. Furthermore, in order to keep supplies from the West afloat, Turkey became the main conduit, both political and economical.

 

Basically overnight, Turkey moved up and became the serious player in the Middle East and Black Sea region, which hasn't been seen since the Ottoman times. Russia's dependency on Turkey increased, considerably. If Russian tourist wanted to escape their homeland, then Turkey was number one.

This has been a vast change compared to 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian plane which violated Turkish airspace. Russian media and officials back then were calling Turkey names and compared it with the IS. Russia completely reversed the tone, because it has become the beggar in this picture.

Moving forward to the year 2024. The triple-humiliation by Putin against President Erdogan back in 2020 was not forgotten, not by Tayyip. The events in Ukraine, the Iranian adventures against Israel as well as Hezbollah's degradation clearly shifted the power balance in the region.

In contrast to some Arab governments, Turkey resisted all attempts by Russia to recognize Assad's rule over Syria, knowing well the weakness of the Russia-Iran-Hezbollah alliance which has been steadily weakening. All what Ankara had to do is to wait for the right moment.

And this moment most likely was reached a few days ago. The collective build-up and attack by several rebel groups was so big in size that Turkish intelligence officials most certainly have picked that up. In case of the SNA, it is safe to assume that they even played an active role.

The decisive conquest of Aleppo can be directly attributed to this Turkish patience. Surely, other components have played a decisive role in this game, too. Syrian rebels, as being directly at the frontline, saw Hezbollah's degradation in Lebanon and its results in Syria, firsthand.

The resulting blitz offensive has completely shaken the power structures in the region. We will see frantic efforts by Iran and Russia to salvage what is possible. The question now is what Turkey is going to accept. Assad for what's worth, will play now even less a role than before, if at all.

Turkey moved from being the weakest of the power brokers in this region to the strongest player. It is still unclear what this means in tangible means and the way might be still very long, but is clear that the trajectory will be a different one. Russia and Iran along Assad are the biggest losers.

In short:   

Decisive Turkish Victory

 

[InkaUtexas 26321]

Good article. I hope this is a decisive victory. Still not sure what role Assad was really playing anyway. Syria was/is a Russia/Iran protectorate.

But it is real that the Turks are key players now in three conflict areas more than last week. Syria, Caucus and Ukraine.

Fun times.

 

[Mother mopar 3340]

14 hours ago, Macanudo said:

Do those L-39s have hard points for munitions?  Or will we see them zip tie and rubber band missiles to them and then the pilots dropping hand grenades from the cockpits WWI style?

They have 2 stations for munitions, but payload is extremely limited, something like 700lbs.

[KYHorn 17257]

 

[Superhero 8888]

When (when not if) do the rebels start turning on each other? Alliances don’t matter and the region will have another humanitarian crisis on its hands.

Humans are the worst.

[PRONG HORN 3162]

 

[Captainant 27969]

1 hour ago, KYHorn said:

 

That pantsir is some serious AA hardware

[InkaUtexas 26321]

57 minutes ago, Superhero said:

When (when not if) do the rebels start turning on each other? Alliances don’t matter and the region will have another humanitarian crisis on its hands.

Humans are the worst.

When the UN tells them they need to have a western style democracy. Beruit 1980's, etc.

 

 

[InkaUtexas 26321]

We have a P-8 right off the coast flying a racetrack. Was watching it then it goes dark. Very little over Syria today.

Edited 6 hours ago by InkaUtexas

[Bevo 13631]

2 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Good article. I hope this is a decisive victory. Still not sure what role Assad was really playing anyway. Syria was/is a Russia/Iran protectorate.

But it is real that the Turks are key players now in three conflict areas more than last week. Syria, Caucus and Ukraine.

Fun times.

 

 

I had to look it up - 90M people live in Turkey. That's bigger than Germany and 3/4ths the size of Russia.

[Leeroy Jenkins 2426]

59 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

We have a P-8 right off the coast flying a racetrack. Was watching it then it goes dark. Very little over Syria today.

I can’t tell you how many hours I flew in that very area. 

[InkaUtexas 26321]

14 minutes ago, Bevo said:

 

I had to look it up - 90M people live in Turkey. That's bigger than Germany and 3/4ths the size of Russia.

And they have fought once or twice. Turks want to push into the NE where they slowly have been building influence.

[Brian Fantana 6702]

Once again I will remind everyone that Twitter is not news and that Prong's tweet does not come from a real news agency. I would encourage everyone to seek out actual news outlets and not follow that account.

[atomheartbevo 90021]

3 hours ago, Superhero said:

When (when not if) do the rebels start turning on each other? Alliances don’t matter and the region will have another humanitarian crisis on its hands.

Humans are the worst.

Not until they take Damascus, however there are a lot of groups that are spread out in Syria, so the country could just fracture similar to Yugoslavia,

Here is a decent map although if you drew a line from Damascus to Deir At Zor, everything east of it is pretty sparsely settled, and most likely there are no Syrian troops there -  most of the population is closer to the Western/Northern parts.

 

 

[atomheartbevo 90021]

Supposedly a Syrian general has been captured, which means his troops were captured or wiped out (or they really hate him).

Supposedly Syrian forces are dropping dumb bombs on a couple of cities, killing civilians (would not be surprising).

Lots of conspiracy theories that Israel and Turkiye are running the show, with claims that Al a Qaeda and ISIS are doing their bidding.  Those are fun conspiracy theories.

[SurlyGator 899]

15 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Not until they take Damascus, however there are a lot of groups that are spread out in Syria, so the country could just fracture similar to Yugoslavia,

Here is a decent map although if you drew a line from Damascus to Deir At Zor, everything east of it is pretty sparsely settled, and most likely there are no Syrian troops there -  most of the population is closer to the Western/Northern parts.

 

 

That map is a perfect illustration of a dumpster fire.

[Brisketexan 105558]

3 minutes ago, SurlyGator said:

That map is a perfect illustration of a dumpster fire.

The judges also would have accepted "crowd shots of Kyle Field last night."

[atomheartbevo 90021]

41 minutes ago, SurlyGator said:

That map is a perfect illustration of a dumpster fire.

And it could be applied to Iraq with the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. 

 And Yugoslavia set the modern precedent for how messy it can get.  

[InkaUtexas 26321]

Map from today. MAKS from Bluesky is the source. Was pretty reliable on Ukraine.

Group Alingment. same source.

 

A better version.

[Macanudo 13050]

3 hours ago, Leeroy Jenkins said:

I can’t tell you how many hours I flew in that very area. 

About tree fiddy?

[Parliament 14365]

1 hour ago, InkaUtexas said:

Map from today. MAKS from Bluesky is the source. Was pretty reliable on Ukraine.

Group Alingment. same source.

 

A better version.

Needs more Crimson Jihad

[Brisketexan 105558]

52 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Needs more Crimson Jihad

It would have, but, ummm....technical difficulties.

 

Edited 36 minutes ago by Brisketexan