Image is of Assad and his family.
After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.
Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah’s resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria’s collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like “this is bad” and “Assad is fucking up”; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.
There is still too much that we don’t know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah’s assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.
What is certain is that Assad’s time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Russia is close to reaching an agreement with the new Syrian leadership to keep two bases in the country, two sources tell Bloomberg
Israel couldn’t help it. All they had to do was play ball with a NATO backed goverment. HTS had been going out of its way to say they had no problems with Israel and were anti Hezbollah/Iran. But no, the Israelis just had to do a shameless landgrab and bomb the shit out of Syria instead.
No future government of Syria can exist without military infrastructure. And now Russia is back into play as the only actor that can make that a reality. I’m sure nobody in Washington will blame Israel for this though.
realism winning again. The Syrian state’s international position is the same as it was under Assad, even worse actually now that they lost their entire milliary. Turkey is fundamentally a threat to Syria with their territorial ambitions in the north. The NATO-Zionist bloc has extensive power projection in the region and nakedly imperialist ambitions. Their Arab neighbors are either wrecked and occupied (and thus useless allies) or already cut deals with the Zionists that they won’t renege on for poor, powerless Syria.
Russia is the only major power that doesn’t directly threaten Syria’s state sovereignty, that makes them natural partners in this current world order. China is the other exception but Syria has nothing to offer China that they couldn’t get somewhere else easier. Russia meanwhile has few options and needs to maintain their own limited power projection in SWANA. Assad didn’t work with the Russians just because he loved Молчат Дома and hated liberal democracy, they were the only ones who could offer him the best deal. HTS is finding out the hard way that the realities of international relations and governance are a lot less fun than looting the country.
I disagree on one point. I don’t think Turkey has territorial ambitions towards Syria. If anything they come across as one of the few actors that don’t. To them the game is economic and political, but they don’t need to annex territory to project power.
Yes, Turkey is a foreign instigator of the second civil war. But against whom? Assad and the SDF. Turkish troops haven’t crossed the border and Turkey hasn’t annexed territory. Even though Turkey has been bombing SDF positions, just by comparison to Israel the Turks come across as restrained.
Wether one sees Turkey’s actions as legitimate or not is down to wether they see the new government as legitimate or not. So what happens should the new government objectively improve people’s material conditions? The real hard part there is re-founding the Syrian state. If that is done, then there goes the sanctions and in comes the oil field revenues. That by itself goes a long way and who will have made that possible? Not Russia, not Iran, not the US but Turkey. Erdogan will be the one who rolled the dice, triggered Assad’s ouster, and the pressed the US backed SDF into negotiations.
There are Turkish Nationalists online talking about annexing Aleppo or whatever. They don’t matter. The Turkish State only cares about two things. The immediate survival of its current government by tackling the refugee crisis, and that the SDF does not remain/become a platform for kurdish nationalism. Turkey will be happy as long as Damascus recovers the northeast or, even better, the SDF withdraws from the arab majority areas and transitions into a sort of syrian version of the KRG. Turkey doesn’t have to annex a single mile of territory to create a Syria that is very lucrative as a dependency for economic, military and diplomatic reasons. A cursory look into how things trucked onwards in Idlib and Afrin show that turkish companies were the ones supplying the populace there. A stable Syria would be that, just economically viable and much bigger.
The two objectives sort of feed into each other. Turkey wants a stable client in Damascus to feed its industry and so that the refugees have a place to return to. Those who do will end up being supporters of the new government if for no other reasons than they’ve consumed Turkish and European media for a decade + they were probably Assad detractors in the first place. The Israeli invasion and American support for the SDF makes Turkey look better by comparison.
Bad move on the part of HTS, their supporters and allies despise the Russians almost as much as Assad, the Russian jet was the bane of these beheaders for nine years, this guarantees infighting and splintering
The HTS have no choice if they want to get any advanced weapons, like air defence systems, aircraft, and tanks, though. Israel just destroyed all of it. Turkey, the NATO member, will not give that to them, China will not give that to them because they want to remain neutral, Iran doesn’t have much to give, and the US certainly won’t give them anything. The only option, and only nation prepared to sell, is Russia. Russia gave Syria S-300 and S-200 air defence systems along with Pantsir and Tor, MiG 29s fighters, Su-24 bombers, and T-72 and T-90 tanks under Assad. What other nation is prepared to sell equivalent equipment to Syria? It can be remarked that a lot of this is “Soviet era”, but is there any nation prepared to give Syria anything better? A lot of this equipment is still very useful, T-72 tanks have taken out export specification Abrams tanks in battle during the Ukraine - Russia war. Tor and Pantsir are widely used by Russia.
At this rate the new syrian government has no choice if they want to have weapons at all. Israel is destroying the entire security infrastructure of the Syrian state. Airbases, barracks, police stations, naval bases, intelligence agencies, even an university from what I understand. You name it, Israel probably destroyed it ‘in self defense’.
Turkey doesn’t like seeing this, but it can’t go against the US directly. The US might think the Israelis are going too far, but they would never dare reprimand them. This leaves Russia as the only viable actor to offer security guarantees (you’ll be bombed 3 times a week instead of 500 or more). Turkey in turn becomes the cement that gels Russia and HTS communications.
I don’t think Syria is getting re-armed by the Russians.
Russia’s force projection via Syria is effectively over, with a new “government” that is receptive if not straight up backed by the US, Israel and Turkey.
This is a new leadership and while the Russians may not get immediately expelled (they will be eventually, but the last thing you want to do right now is to provoke Russia militarily and give them reasons to stay), the old network formed over decades under the Assads is gone and Russia is going to have to compete with the Western imperialists to win over the new guys taking over.
Not to mention the economic collapse that is going to take place. Syria’s fate appears to be to open themselves up to neoliberal slaughter, which is what the new leaders are already signaling.
Syria’s future is French and Ottoman based on the way things are going.
Putin selling weapons to HTS is the equivalent of him selling weapons to foreign mercs in Ukraine in the hopes of destabilizing Zelensky
It all depends on how badly Russia want to keep their naval facilities and airbase in Syria. They’re going to have to cut a deal with HTS to keep that, such a deal could involve arms sales.
That would invite the wrath of the US upon HTS and the Americans would begin pressuring the Qatari paymasters and Turkish Intelligence to either discipline HTS or break ties and it would make the Americans more accepting (than they already are) of Israeli land grabs
The whole future of Syria is a difficult thread to needle. But HTS has already said they a) don’t think Israel’s landgrabs are a priority, and b) announced ‘free market reforms’. This is code for ‘the Qatari-Turkey-Europe pipeline is happening’. Remember, that pipeline is the reason why the west was ready to coup Assad years before the Arab Spring was even a thing. HTS is also positioning itself as anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran, so that’s another bargaining chip.
Add all of these together and HTS can be a compliant government of Syria while at the same time having good reason to give Russia an inch - Israel just invaded it and bombed the entire fucking country. In this scenario neither Turkey nor Syria would be pressured to do even more to comply.
There is no pipeline
Who in their right mind would make a pipeline in the year of our lord 2024, lng happened, europe builds terminals for it out of a wazoo, why lose margin and freedom of trade on giant physical infrastructure?
They’re still importing russian energy through Turkey and Azerbaijan, why not import Qatari energy as well? The EU just announced an FTA with Mercosur. The whole point of which is to swamp us here in South America with their industrialized goods. Now the Chinese are investing here, so if Europe can’t get its act together in terms of energy prices we might end up exporting industrialized goods to them instead.
That’s all true, but remember when it comes to Russia, the US is in full maximalist mode and I can see them pressuring Turkey and Qatar to replace HTS with the SNA
I don’t think there is such thing as replacing the HTS with the SNA. The latter is directly controlled by Turkey, the former is a Turkish ally and they are both joined at the hip with each other as well.
What the US might do is make the SDF’s retreat from non kurdish areas (and the syrian oilfields) contingent on the Russians leaving Tartus after all. But that play is becoming more and more untenable together with the SDF’s control of the northeast. First Deir Ezzor then Raqaa, you have syrian arab regions with protests being dispersed with guns. If the local councils keep flipping, the SDF will soon find itself more and more isolated, enforced only by their alliance with the US.
That’s the goal. Syria is going to remain fractured and that is good for the imperialists to create chaos.
The end goal is like various African countries where the official government is headed by a comprador that only controls around 30% of the country with the other 70% controlled by warring separatist groups.
Just create the Latakia state at this point, because the HTS wont survive the next years anyways.
I rather think it’s about oil (at least transitionary) or neutralizing turkey somewhat. Iran wouldn’t send the oil to hts (well likely wouldn’t), cause their value is likely negative. Russia could easily ship 50 k barrels per day to save face for 6 months later withdrawal. While hts will try to take the kurds out.
Also i could just as well see this as entity (under usa auspices lol) sticking russia there to ward off turkey influence. (despite erdie being big doggie of empire (aspiring sub-empire), pisrael is bothered by him), if it’s more permanent arrangement.
Russia has contradictions with rebels the size of a moon and they have bad blood against russia.
on the contrary it will be framed as Russian meddling