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Warbadger posted:Ghouta appears to have been a shitload more deadly so far than Raqqa, Mosul, or Gaza incursions so I'm really not sure what your point here is. Killing thousands because you don't give a gently caress and shell/bomb indiscriminately is actually worse than killing hundreds accidentally while trying to minimize civilian casualties. Definitely not even close to as deadly as Mosul. Mosul even makes Raqqa look like a joke in comparison. And lots of the estimates about civilian casualties in Mosul were way off, they're still digging people out from the Old City. I remember in March 2017, the USA killed more than 278 civilians in a SINGLE air strike in Mosul. And in the week before, there had been 500+ civilian deaths in Mosul al-Jadida (a SINGLE district) from the air strikes and fighting. The Old City, al-Zanjili and al-Shafaa were pretty much completely flattened too. Ghouta is extremely bloody, but still not anywhere near the level of Mosul.
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Mar 13, 2018 00:11
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Laurenz posted:Definitely not even close to as deadly as Mosul. Mosul even makes Raqqa look like a joke in comparison. And lots of the estimates about civilian casualties in Mosul were way off, they're still digging people out from the Old City. Ghouta isn't over yet. And yeah, so far Ghouta is producing a pretty drat high death toll in comparison. Hint: scale is a factor! I mean, have you ever considered the life choices that led you to argue that hitting reported enemy positions precisely with small bombs in a city during a ground assault is actually the same as imprecisely lobbing a fuckload of small bombs all over the city blocks the enemy is in while troops encircle them? Warbadger fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Mar 13, 2018 |
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Mar 13, 2018 00:37
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Warbadger posted:Ghouta isn't over yet. And yeah, so far Ghouta is producing a pretty drat high death toll in comparison. Hint: scale is a factor! Haha, 'small bombs'. Good one. Also I never said anything about the government 'tactics' or whatever, I just said that Mosul was more bloody. And if the civilian casualties for Ghouta and Mosul are the same despite these vastly different tactics - indiscriminate (Ghouta) vs. 'precise' (Mosul) - then that really says something about how 'precise' the US was during the Mosul battle. And in my post I also took statistics of the civilian death toll from a single city district in a single week of the Mosul battle. So yeah, I took scale into account.
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Mar 13, 2018 00:57
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Laurenz posted:Haha, 'small bombs'. Good one. The casualties aren't the same you twit, the urban areas of Ghouta aren't the focus of the ground offensive at this point. They have been encircling the built up urban areas, shelling them in the process. You are comparing the casualties from assaulting and capturing a city district with the casualties from an extended bombardment ahead of an assault. You did not see anything approaching these casualties in the lead up to Mosul and I'm guessing that when the assault on the urban areas comes it's going to show a similarly awful comparative result. And yeah, the bombs used in urban areas in Mosul were intentionally "small", often without explosives to minimize the impact on surrounding structures/people. But I guess that's all wasted effort, should have just bombed and shelled it all flat the week before the attack right?? Warbadger fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Mar 13, 2018 |
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Mar 13, 2018 01:33
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Even under Trump I imagine the US takes more care to avoid civilian casualties than Assad, and certainly has more precise capabilities. To the extent that the numbers for Raqqa or Mosul may not reflect that, I'd suggest it's likely that ISIS being a group that was particularly motivated to fight to the last in a way that was as destructive as possible probably made those fights inherently messier than Eastern Ghouta. Yes, "those terrorists were hiding behind civilians" is the argument every awful warmonger in the world uses to justify killing civilians, but terrorists do also genuinely hide behind civilians, and even when trying to be careful it's impossible to capture a city cleanly when the enemy is sufficiently determined to resist. Yes, Trump is more bloodthirsty than his predecessor, and yes casualty aversion by the US meaning we bomb the gently caress out of the area so our less capable proxies can capture territory probably also increases the risk of mistakes, but those cities were going to be bloodbaths even under the best circumstances. That said, I do think the bloodiness of those battles takes away from our moral authority when Nikki Haley starts threatening that we're going to attack the regime over Eastern Ghouta. Mosul and Raqqa aren't sufficient reasons to hand wave away civilian death tolls everywhere else, but the idea that we're going to save lives by arbitrarily bombing the regime at the 11th hour when it's finally pacifying the area around its capital after clearing out essentially every other important area we or Turkey aren't occupying is absurd. I'm sure the conditions on the ground in Eastern Ghouta are nightmarish, but not uniquely so in the course of the war. With this administration even more than most, I just don't believe them when they say they're motivated by humanitarian concern--I think they all just want to relive the high of the media calling them badasses for bombing an airfield last year.
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Mar 13, 2018 01:34
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Warbadger posted:The casualties aren't the same you twit, the urban areas of Ghouta aren't the focus of the ground offensive at this point. They have been encircling the built up urban areas, shelling them in the process. You are comparing the casualties from assaulting and capturing a city district with the casualties from an extended bombardment ahead of an assault. You did not see anything approaching these casualties in the lead up to Mosul and I'm guessing that when the assault on the urban areas comes it's going to show a similarly awful comparative result. The urban areas of Ghouta are also much smaller than the entirety of Mosul. You'd do better to compare the districts of Mosul and in this case, al-Jadida hadn't seen a ground incursion by the army yet, so in that case it was bombardment ahead of an assault.
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Mar 13, 2018 01:52
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Turkey is bombing the poo poo out of Afrin yet nobody is pointing out the barbarity of their offensive.
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Mar 13, 2018 02:04
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Darkman Fanpage posted:Turkey is bombing the poo poo out of Afrin yet nobody is pointing out the barbarity of their offensive. I haven't really seen a whole lot of evidence that Turkey's killing a ton of civilians. They tried saying they haven't killed any, which is one of those 'our dictator won 99% of the vote!' kinds of claims, but if it was a massacre I feel like we'd know about it given how social media savvy the YPG have shown themselves to be in the past. If the YPG actually puts up a big fight in Afrin city maybe that'll change though--most of the fighting so far hasn't been in urban centers. I do think Turkey's being more careful than Assad in order to avoid provoking international condemnation, for what it's worth, but also the YPG probably value civilian lives in their communities more than some of the jihadist groups have.
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Mar 13, 2018 02:14
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I actually don't think the YPG are that media savvy, especially when they're taking a beating like they are in Afrin. They've released very few videos aside from the occasional ATGM clip of them blowing up a tank or technical. As for Turkey they've been bombing plenty of villages on their offensive towards Afrin city so calling them careful is a bit of a stretch.
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Mar 13, 2018 02:20
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Darkman Fanpage posted:I actually don't think the YPG are that media savvy, especially when they're taking a beating like they are in Afrin. They've released very few videos aside from the occasional ATGM clip of them blowing up a tank or technical. As for Turkey they've been bombing plenty of villages on their offensive towards Afrin city so calling them careful is a bit of a stretch. Turkey has been making extensive use of attack helicopters and guided 70mm rockets and fighting in a relatively rural environment. They aren't committing a slaughter, they're taking as much care as the US would simply because they have the technology to do so.
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Mar 13, 2018 02:26
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights seems to have it a bit over 200, which is really low for how long this has been going on and how much territory has been captured.
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Mar 13, 2018 02:27
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From what I've seen, most of the time when a village is captured it's sustained minimal or even zero physical damage. Obviously the main reason for this is the YPG have been putting up little-to-no resistance after the initial defensive lines fell. If they mostly retreated to Afrin itself and hope to make a stand there then things could be massively different. That said, it does seem Turkey is at least attempting to keep civilian deaths and physical destruction somewhat low.
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Mar 13, 2018 03:57
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I'm halfway convinced by this point that most of those over 1,000 fighters that have recently redeployed aren't actually headed for Afrin, but Manbij and other places near the border with Turkey. Or is there any kind of confirmation that they all just funneled themselves into a place, that is very obviously going to get taken by Turkey now that they've nearly cut the place off from reinforcements?
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Mar 13, 2018 04:01
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Sinteres posted:I can't blame them for leaving, and I'd do the same if I were them, but if ethnic cleansing really is what Turkey has in mind for the area, blocking people from returning and settling refugees in their homes will be a hell of a lot more camera friendly than actually expelling them. "Hey, they chose to leave!" That's almost exactly what they did with the Greeks in what is now North Cyprus, so yeah I'd expect that.
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Mar 13, 2018 04:58
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I was in southern turkey in the predominantly Kurdish areas in 2016 doing some humanitarian work. Turkey has been conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing/anti insurgency down there for a long time. The estimates of Internally Displaced People in Turkey goes up to 1~2 million (mostly kurdish). Figures and records are really hard to come by because the people being displaced are not recognized as IDP and seen as migrant workers/transients etc because of the nature of Kurdish people and the Turkish state. The example I cite come from Diyarbikir which was considered the cultural capital of Kurdish peoples in Turkey. After the uprising in 2015 the Turkish government slowly closed off the city to the outside world preventing aid and information from the city while the military slowly surrounded and encouraged the populace to leave. Currently the old city of Diyarbikir does not exist (it was demolished in house to house fighting, then subsequently dismantled systematically with no oversight). This program was repeated in several predominantly Kurdish cities/towns. Now the government has prevented any past residents from returning (who are not considered idps by the govt) and have been resetting Syrian refugees/non Kurdish citizens. All of this is very camera friendly and comes with relatively low casualties (while I was there the UNHCR wasnt allowed to deal with the idp's because politics~), but the repercussions and results are devastating. Phone posting so I can't go further, but this is bad and I fear for the future.
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Mar 13, 2018 05:32
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Radio Prune posted:From what I've seen, most of the time when a village is captured it's sustained minimal or even zero physical damage. Obviously the main reason for this is the YPG have been putting up little-to-no resistance after the initial defensive lines fell. If they mostly retreated to Afrin itself and hope to make a stand there then things could be massively different. That said, it does seem Turkey is at least attempting to keep civilian deaths and physical destruction somewhat low. Yeah I don't think there's going to be a desperate last stand in Afrin city, looking at the town on a map it seems like a hopeless position and the YPG really don't have the death cult culture of ISIS. I was thinking about the ~$250 million in U.S. aid going to the SDF and I was wondering how much of that is just cash payments to Arab and tribal fighters who maybe don't have much ideological commitment to Rojava. What do you guys think would happen if the U.S. cut off all funding?
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Mar 13, 2018 06:00
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Warbadger posted:Ghouta appears to have been a shitload more deadly so far than Raqqa, Mosul, or Gaza incursions so I'm really not sure what your point here is. Killing thousands because you don't give a gently caress and shell/bomb indiscriminately is actually worse than killing hundreds accidentally while trying to minimize civilian casualties. Not to say but almost everyone in the center of Mosul has been killed, it has been reported the river has been churning bodies for months after http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/mosuls-final-bloodbath-we-killed-everyone-men-women-children-1721780413 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/15/stream-of-floating-bodies-near-mosul-raises-fears-of-reprisals-by-iraqi-militias
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Mar 13, 2018 10:17
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The bodies referred to in that article are from extra judicial killings primarily/kidnappings, not leftovers from the bombing campaigns. That said it's an interesting, important subject in its own right and I'd guess that Iraqi military and govt higher ups have decided that the only way to deal with the legacy of ISIS is to basically kill anyone meaningfully involved. My heart goes out to anyone who had the terrible fortune to experience any of the monstrous poo poo that happened in Mosul.
Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Mar 13, 2018 |
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Mar 13, 2018 12:39
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SA_Avenger posted:Not to say but almost everyone in the center of Mosul has been killed, it has been reported the river has been churning bodies for months after Both of those articles are from directly after the capture of the city, so not sure where you're getting "for months after" from. Also given that there were expected to be hundreds of thousands of civilians in Mosul's old city, I'm also pretty sure they didn't kill "almost everyone". I mean not that it's not horrific; there's just no need for hyperbole.
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Mar 13, 2018 13:13
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Saladman posted:Both of those articles are from directly after the capture of the city, so not sure where you're getting "for months after" from. Also given that there were expected to be hundreds of thousands of civilians in Mosul's old city, I'm also pretty sure they didn't kill "almost everyone". You are correct, I thought I had read about it later on as well but can't find it so I probably just mixed the timeline
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Mar 13, 2018 13:22
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Herstory Begins Now posted:The bodies referred to in that article are from extra judicial killings primarily/kidnappings, not leftovers from the bombing campaigns. That said it's an interesting, important subject in its own right and I'd guess that Iraqi military and govt higher ups have decided that the only way to deal with the legacy of ISIS is to basically kill anyone meaningfully involved. My heart goes out to anyone who had the terrible fortune to experience any of the monstrous poo poo that happened in Mosul. Did the more fervent Shia-militias ever stop being ISIS-lite?
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Mar 13, 2018 14:17
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https://twitter.com/XwinuWelat/status/972556609414148096/photo/1 For posterity in case of tweet deletion:  Mr.Kurdistan @XwinuWelat posted:These posters can be seen everywhere in Turkey! Kirkuk, Mosul and Efrin are proclaimed as new provinces of Turkey! Islamism and turkish fascism paired with jihad and expansion of turkish "lebensraum"! Today Kurds, tomorrow the rest of the world! #StopErdogan The other thing I notice on this picture is that there's a shop named  .
Cat Mattress fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Mar 13, 2018 |
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Mar 13, 2018 14:42
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Sinteres posted:The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights seems to have it a bit over 200, which is really low for how long this has been going on and how much territory has been captured. Isn't SOHR usually quite unreliable? Especially considering it's run by a single British guy sitting in Coventry?
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Mar 13, 2018 15:27
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Laurenz posted:Isn't SOHR usually quite unreliable? Especially considering it's run by a single British guy sitting in Coventry? Nobody else is really putting it much higher that I can see. Even the SDF's estimates that I saw were in the low hundreds.
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Mar 13, 2018 15:51
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Laurenz posted:Isn't SOHR usually quite unreliable? Especially considering it's run by a single British guy sitting in Coventry? It’s best not to use such sources as an absolute count of deaths, but rather as a relative measure to compare general trends w/in the conflict. As long as the methodology is consistent the numbers should reflect what is going on. Yeah though there are a lot of caveats, especially when trying to make inferences about one localized battle.
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Mar 13, 2018 17:53
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Cat Mattress posted:https://twitter.com/XwinuWelat/status/972556609414148096/photo/1 Wow.
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Mar 14, 2018 08:26
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Laurenz posted:Isn't SOHR usually quite unreliable? Especially considering it's run by a single British guy sitting in Coventry? Not really, no. He's got as extensive a network of sources in Syria as anyone, and they've broken several stories. Their numbers aren't a huge aberration anywhere. They generally line up with what other sources put out, including on US strikes in Syria. A network like the one he coordinates is gonna be run by some dude who sits in front of a computer all day, I'm not sure why the location of that computer matters.
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Mar 14, 2018 09:11
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https://twitter.com/BarzanSadiq/status/973837877493878784?s=19
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Mar 14, 2018 09:34
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Volkerball posted:Not really, no. He's got as extensive a network of sources in Syria as anyone, and they've broken several stories. Their numbers aren't a huge aberration anywhere. They generally line up with what other sources put out, including on US strikes in Syria. A network like the one he coordinates is gonna be run by some dude who sits in front of a computer all day, I'm not sure why the location of that computer matters. Cause people like putting out regime FUD. See bellingcat.
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Mar 14, 2018 11:35
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Probably not enough to get the Syrussian SAMs to start actively shooting down Turkish airplanes, but we can always hope.
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Mar 14, 2018 12:54
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They're shelling Turkish forces in response now. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...r-idUSKCN1GQ1AA
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Mar 14, 2018 13:35
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Hezbolla has always been friends of the YPG. https://twitter.com/QalaatAlMudiq/status/973910066939269120 https://twitter.com/samtamiz/status/973847493875240961
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Mar 14, 2018 20:46
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Sinteres posted:Even under Trump I imagine the US takes more care to avoid civilian casualties than Assad Perhaps, but Trump certainly loosened restrictions on our air war because the civilian casualties just absolutely spiked after he took office, leading to our bombs being more deadly than Russian ones in the past year.
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Mar 14, 2018 21:22
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Oops, double post
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Mar 14, 2018 21:23
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Sergg posted:Perhaps, but Trump certainly loosened restrictions on our air war because the civilian casualties just absolutely spiked after he took office, leading to our bombs being more deadly than Russian ones in the past year. I feel like I addressed that in the rest of my post. I'm not a Trump apologist in any way, and his decision to unleash the military was a bad one which absolutely led to a dramatic increase in civilian casualties, but taking two major cities from ISIS was never going to be clean no matter who led the effort.
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Mar 14, 2018 22:46
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lol https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/974103060296359938 https://twitter.com/ZainaErhaim/status/973898993909534721
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Mar 15, 2018 17:44
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it's kinda nuts how internationalized this war has become, literally every side is fighting with cadres of international soldiers and volunteers. I gotta say it's really random that there's uyghurs fighting with the turkish army.
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Mar 15, 2018 21:36
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Al-Saqr posted:it's kinda nuts how internationalized this war has become, literally every side is fighting with cadres of international soldiers and volunteers. I gotta say it's really random that there's uyghurs fighting with the turkish army. Not really, Uyghurs are ethnically Turkish.
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Mar 15, 2018 21:41
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Al-Saqr posted:it's kinda nuts how internationalized this war has become, literally every side is fighting with cadres of international soldiers and volunteers. I gotta say it's really random that there's uyghurs fighting with the turkish army. Turkey has a lot of other jihadis fighting for them?
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Mar 15, 2018 21:41
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Al-Saqr posted:it's kinda nuts how internationalized this war has become, literally every side is fighting with cadres of international soldiers and volunteers. I gotta say it's really random that there's uyghurs fighting with the turkish army. There have been Uighur dudes and small groups fighting in Syria for years. Make sense they're on Turkey's side-- Turkey may have encouraged them to come in the first place.
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Mar 15, 2018 21:50
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