Military Events in Syria and Iraq thread #3

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joepistole said:
I wonder why our Russophile comrades didn't mention this development?
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Oh and also notice that they never mentioned how President Erdogan, their despised war criminal and ISIS sponsor, is now also their newest best buddy. Maybe they can hook him up with one of those leather jackets from Putin's motorcycle club, they don't have much else worth giving away at the moment. See, and here I've been, saying all along that both Putin and Erdogan were war criminals from the very start. *Sniffle* Together with mighty Belarus and Kazakhstan, I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship :D.

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"Yehehehehe, dis guy and da tings he says!"
"No, DIS guy! Hahaha!"
 
The battle for Manbij seems to be entering into its final stage, where the SDF is mopping up a few remaining pockets of ISIS resistance in the center of town.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-islamic-state-idUSKCN10N178?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Feed: Reuters/worldNews (Reuters World News)

There are reports that the Kurds and ISIS negotiated the safe passage of ISIS fighters out of town and the majority of the ISIS fighters left in a convoy of about 500 cars that left for Jarabulus, an ISIS controlled town on the Turkish border.

The Kurds say that there are about 100 ISIS fighters remaining behind (in hopes of martyrdom?) but they are holding civilian hostages so the Kurds are reluctant to engage them.
 
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Russia Today's editors appear to still be recovering from their New Year's hangovers. Now they're using paid actors to create fake war news in Syria.

Smelly old bearded guy is both a surrendering rebel fighter and a Shiite militiaman: https://twitter.com/bdrhmnhrk/status/761449009819054080
"Surrendering rebel commander" is also an innocent refugee fleeing terrorists in eastern Aleppo using Russia's fake humanitarian corridors: https://twitter.com/zulamba/status/761454627883741185

Things must be really bad on the Soviet side. Here's my weekly pro tip for fixing Russia's economy: Melt down all the gold and silver, and cut out all the marble in all public facilities. Sell it all to China, and replace it with cheap Belarussian concrete, lamination and electroplating.
 
The Kurds of the SDF, having just retaken Manbij, are saying that their next target is Al Bab to the west of Manbij. Their intention is evidently to complete their Rojava Syrian-Kurdish state by linking the main area in the northeast with the small Afrin enclave in the northwest.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-backed-forces-aim-at-another-syrian-town-1471302138

This doesn't exactly please the United States, which wants the Kurds to attack Raqqah, and it certainly doesn't please the Turks, who don't want their entire southern border with Iraq and Syria to be controlled by semi-independent Kurdish states. (They fear that it will give their own Kurds ideas. Kurds are the majority in most of Turkey's border areas with Syria and Iraq.) But it will complete the encirclement of ISIS and deprive it of any border with a country it isn't actively fighting.

The loss of Manbij is significant since the town hosted a reception center and base for the many foreign fighters who entered ISIS territory through Turkey. Presumably those functions have moved to Al Bab, the only other large town that ISIS still holds near the Turkish border.
 
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Yazata said:
The Kurds of the SDF, having just retaken Manbij [Membic on the Kurdish-language map], are saying that their next target is Al Bab [Bab on the Kurdish map] to the west of Manbij. Their intention is evidently to complete their Rojava Syrian-Kurdish state by linking the main area in the northeast with the small Afrin [Efrin] enclave in the northwest. [Azaz/Ezaz is held by hard-pressed Turkish supported rebels]

This [the Kurdish expansion westwards] certainly doesn't please the Turks
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The Syrian Kurds' advance has apparently stirred the Turks into action to prevent their link-up. About 3 AM local time this morning (Aug 24), Turkish artillery started up shelling the ISIS-held border town of Jarabulus (Cerablus on this map) on the Euphrates and then around 4 AM Turkish infantry and armor went across the Syrian border and engaged ISIS fighters in the town. US A-10's and US and Turkish F-16's are flying air support. Turkey is a NATO member and its army has to be considered capable, provided that it hasn't been weakened too much by post-coup purges of secularist military officers. My understanding is that the current organizational status and fighting ability of the Turkish military is a bit of a mystery.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/0...ree-syrian-border-town-from-isis-control.html

The Turks were saying as of noon their time, that their army had taken the town center. (And in Middle Eastern style they announced the capture of the town). There are also indications that Turkish forces have crossed the border into ISIS controlled territory at several points west of Jarabulus.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/08/24/turkish-tanks-roll-into-syria-with-us-air-support.html

US VP Joe Biden is in Turkey and warned the Kurdish SDF to stay on the east side of the Euphrates near Jarabulus and that if they crossed it, the US would no longer consider itself allied with them. (It sounds like he's Erdogan's VP, not Obama's.) The Kurds are already well west of the Euphrates further south, having advanced about halfway from Manbij to Al Bab.

The Damascus government is protesting that Syria's sovereignty has been violated. The closest Syrian government forces to the new fighting is east of Aleppo and south of Al Bab.

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joepistole said:
I wonder why our Russophile comrades didn't mention this development?
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Very simple, I waited before the situation becomes more clear, but it isn't clear even today if the way can be used to transfer any goods or not. The whole way is under fire control, and up to now remains under fire control. But what this fire control really means is not easy to establish from outside.

There have been some three or so trucks with tomatoes or so presented to some Western media, the other side has named them faked. So, if it is possible to transfer weapons to the terrorists inside is not clear, the reasonable guess is that it is possible, but with serious losses on the way. During the last days, the situation became even worse for the terrorists, because the Syrian army has taken a hill which gives fire control over a much longer part of the path. And now the terrorists are attacking this hill all the time to take it back, to make at least some part of the way safe, up to now without success.

It looks like the Syrian army is not that uncomfortable with this situation, given that the terrorists have to defend an area which can be heavily bombed without causing any civilian causalities (most of it is a military academy), so that the terrorist loose, and have to loose, a lot of fighters, do not gain much, given that the whole path is under fire control, but cannot simply give up this deadly place, because this would be the final fail in Aleppo, and Aleppo is central. In fact, they even have to attack, to reach a safe, stable situation - but to attack in well-known places.

So far about Aleppo. What the Turks do and want to do in the North is not clear at all, but, given that the "protests" from Syrian and Russian side against this obvious violation of Syrian territory are formulated in a quite mild way, behind this may be some inofficial agreements with the Russians/Syrians that the Turks are free to hit the Kurds, in exchange for something yet unknown. I have read some claims that some terrorists run away from Aleppo to go to Jarablus "because they pay much more there". What the Turks want is to prevent a Kurdish state. Syria does not want such a state too. So, why not allowing the Turks to destroy the Kurds? Given that a Kurdish state would be an US vassal state, Russia is not interested in such a Kurdish state too, the Iranians have a problem with Kurds too, so will cooperate too. So, in principle there may be a Turkish/Iranian/Russian/Syrian coalition against the Kurds supported by the US. And the US support actually looks quite weak, the Kurds will have to learn the lecture of all the US vassals, that they are only a tool, to be thrown away if other interests are more important. The other interest of the US is now to prevent the Turks from leaving NATO.

But all this in a situation where nobody trusts Erdogan.

The other important news is Darayya. This is a suburb of Damaskus, and there have been small but steady progress of the Syrian army during the last weeks. And it seems this progress has reached a critical limit, and the defenders of Darayya are giving up. So, there are negotiations, some claims that the negotiations have already been finished successfully, other claims they are yet ongoing, with the aim that some of the locals can use the amnesty by laying down their weapons, others will be transferred, by UN or so, to Idlib or so.

This will free, of course, a lot of soldiers now encircling Darayya, which will probably be used in East Ghouta. In this region, the Syrian army advances too:
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These advances endanger even two regions with encirclement: The Northern part, where the terrorists hold an important hill, Tal Kurdi, which has, itself, a very good defense, and allows to control a lot around. So, to encircle it seems a good idea, and the latest advantages have been in this direction, with taking an Army base. And there is the South Eastern part, which is endangered too.
 
Schmelzer said:
Very simple, I waited before the situation becomes more clear, but it isn't clear even today if the way can be used to transfer any goods or not. The whole way is under fire control, and up to now remains under fire control. But what this fire control really means is not easy to establish from outside.
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Well, here is the thing comrade, when the shoe is on the other foot you don't wait for anything. The facts were clear. You just didn't like them. So you didn't report them. That's the bottom line.
 
joepistole said:
Well, here is the thing comrade, when the shoe is on the other foot you don't wait for anything. The facts were clear. You just didn't like them. So you didn't report them. That's the bottom line.
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In comparison with the map which was posted by Yazata at #61 is not that much has changed to post another one. But, ok, if you like, the actual map seems close to this:

CqtVtlkVYAA0vBH.jpg:large

Other maps differ about which parts of 1070 are under terrorist control and which under SAA control, the map above as well as the #61 map attributes it to the terrorists. Do you really care about such differences?
 
Apparently the Turks are demanding that the Kurds withdraw east of the Euphrates. US Vice President Joe Biden echoes that and claims that the Kurds' advance west through Manbij was in violation of an agreement they had with the US. If that's so, then why was the US flying air-strikes in support of the Kurdish assault on Manbij? Why were there US special forces on the ground directing those air strikes? (I think that it's true that the US would have preferred that the Kurds attack south towards Raqqah, but if you aren't willing to commit your own troops, you take what you can get.) Biden says that if the Kurds don't withdraw from their recent gains, their alliance with the US is over.

Talk is that the US is concerned that Turkey is spiraling out of the Western alliance, so that Washington is prepared to accept the post-coup authoritarian Erdogan's new demands.

The Kurds are predictably saying that they aren't going to evacuate Manbij, after their forces fought a bloody and difficult urban battle house by house and street by street to take the town. So that sets up the possibility of the Turks attacking the SDF Kurds to force them out. Reports late Thursday suggest that the Kurds may indeed be pulling out of Manbij.

Given that the Kurds are pretty much the only effective 'boots on the ground' in Syria (apart from Assad's forces perhaps) willing and able to fight ISIS, a Turkish-SDF conflict, with the US very publicly taking Turkey's side, represents a total collapse of the US anti-ISIS strategy. The likelihood that the Kurds will do Washington's bidding by attacking Raqqah (a difficult and costly proposition) after getting stabbed in the back by Washington is about zero. Raqqah isn't within the borders of the new Rojava state the Syrian Kurds are carving out for themselves, so why should they be concerned with it? More likely they will try to reach some de-facto cease-fire arrangement with the increasingly beleagured Daesh who have enough on their plate already with the Iraqis gradually preparing a Mosul offensive.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...nks-into-syria-as-us-tells-kurds-to-withdraw/
 
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Reuters reports that the Turks are pressing south, taking two small villages controlled by the Kurds, Amarinah on the Euphrates (previously held by ISIS, which the Kurds moved into when the Turks took Jarabulus) and Jubb al Kusa. (You will find them on this map, due south of Jarabulus in the direction of Manbij.)

While the SDF announced Thursday that it had withdrawn from Manbij, it appears that many of their fighters stayed and simply transferred their allegiance to an SDF-allied militia called the Manbij Military Council.

Battle_for_Northern_Syria_August_24_2PM.png
 
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In Syria, not much has happened, but some interesting things nonetheless have happened.

In the main battle, Aleppo, there is small progress of the Syran army. Here is the actual map of the critical region:
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One can see that the main road from outside to inside, from Chan Touman (lower left corner) to Ramouse is no longer only under fire control, but really cut, and the Syrian army is at the North as well as the South of the Artillery base. So, what remains is essentially a fight for reestablishing the connection to West Aleppo from the South, and no longer about cutting some road for the terrorists. The tactic is, as explained, to advance only in small steps, often attacking and then retreating, to identify fire positions which, then, can be destroyed by the Russian airforce, with the aim to minimize own losses and to maximize losses of the enemy.

The terrorist seem to be aware that this battle is in the long run lost, and have started an offensive at another place, in Northern Hama. They were able to take some villages and small towns, and, as usual (not the first time in this region) mass murdered non-islamist population. Now, reinforcements have arrived, one or two of the villages have been already retaken in a counter-offensive. Some of these reinforcements came probably from Aleppo, which was, of course, one of the aims of this attack. But so what - the attacking forces are also not available in Aleppo.

Another attempt made by the terrorists was an attack at the Northern part of Aleppo, at the Mallah farms. They have obviously hoped that the main forces from this part have been moved to Southwest Aleppo to fight there. But the remaining forces were nonetheless strong enough to repel the attack.

Then, after the surrender of Daraya, the neighbour rebel enclave Mohadamiya is also giving up on a similar base, with the militants, together with light weapons, being transferred to Idlib. And there seem to be negotiations about a similar surrender of Al Waer, the only neigbourhood of Homs not yet under government control.
 
Today, the first maps have appeared which show the Artillery school also under Syrian army control or at least as a contested area.

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So, the development is the same as during the last time, the terrorists no longer attack, but, instead, the Syrian army attacks. And not only at the critical Artillery school, but also South of it. So, the Syrian army has taken, again, Qarassi. This village is almost impossible to defend if one does not control the hills around it, but it seems the important hills around are now under control of the Syrian army too, and North of Qarassi some munition storage has been taken by the Syrian army too.

So, actually it looks like the terrorists are losing the battle of Aleppo. Some people are afraid that they will attack in the North again, at the Mallah farms and the Castello road, in the hope that the Syrian army is weakened now in this direction, having moved all the power toward the South West. We will see. But at least at the South-West front, they seem to loose.

Once the terrorists are loosing, one has to expect that the Western media will increase again the hysteria about the humanitarian catastrophe in Eastern Aleppo.
 
The last I heard, there's still fighting at the Artillery School. Maybe that's old news. There does seem to have been a big government (SAA and fighters from Hezbollah) push on Sunday Sept 4. Whether or not they occupy the school, it certainly appears that the rebels' supply corridor into east Aleppo has been cut. Of course, the government probably hasn't been able to restore their own supply corridor into west Aleppo either.

In more news, the Turks seem to have crossed into Al Rai along the border east of Azaz, and are pushing east from there and west from Jarabulus, to take the 40 km or so that ISIS still occupies along the border. It looked for a while like the Turks were going to attack Manbij, but they haven't done that so far.
 
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Schmelzer said:
So, actually it looks like the terrorists are losing the battle of Aleppo. Some people are afraid that they will attack in the North again, at the Mallah farms and the Castello road, in the hope that the Syrian army is weakened now in this direction, having moved all the power toward the South West. We will see. But at least at the South-West front, they seem to loose.

Once the terrorists are loosing, one has to expect that the Western media will increase again the hysteria about the humanitarian catastrophe in Eastern Aleppo.
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Hurray, the women and children are back to completely starving again! Let's hope Putin found out in time before he made any concessions to Mr. Horseface and his Yankee friends.
 
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