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The SDF seems to be breaking off ties (including oil sales) with the regime and setting up its self administration government in eastern Syria, with the blessing/encouragement of the United States. Have to imagine that's going to piss off pretty much everyone else in the region.
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Sep 6, 2018 20:12
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Sinteres posted:The SDF seems to be breaking off ties (including oil sales) with the regime and setting up its self administration government in eastern Syria, with the blessing/encouragement of the United States. Have to imagine that's going to piss off pretty much everyone else in the region. Wow where ya gettin that from?
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Sep 6, 2018 23:04
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CherryCola posted:Wow where ya gettin that from? https://twitter.com/hxhassan/status/1037721937294831617 https://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2018/5-september-deir-ezzur-sdf-forces-issue-an-order-to-close
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Sep 7, 2018 01:27
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oh this is all we loving needquote:Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday signalled his country could strike Iranian targets in Iraq if they threatened Israel, saying it would hit wherever necessary.
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Sep 7, 2018 01:29
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I mean, Israel being Israel aside, why the gently caress would anyone give a militia ballistic missiles? I'm curious if that's actually a thing, because that sounds like a very terrible idea.
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Sep 7, 2018 01:46
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Sinteres posted:https://twitter.com/hxhassan/status/1037721937294831617 Thank ye. What’s going to be our excuse for sticking around after the ISIS fight is over though? And if we don’t stick around how the poo poo are the Kurds going to not get rolled?
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Sep 7, 2018 01:46
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Warbadger posted:I mean, Israel being Israel aside, why the gently caress would anyone give a militia ballistic missiles? I'm curious if that's actually a thing, because that sounds like a very terrible idea. The houthis have launched a few.
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Sep 7, 2018 01:59
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CherryCola posted:Thank ye. What’s going to be our excuse for sticking around after the ISIS fight is over though? And if we don’t stick around how the poo poo are the Kurds going to not get rolled? We're still holding Tanf even though there are no (non-regime) hostiles anywhere near it anymore, and as long as Americans aren't dying, our commitments have a way of outliving their original purpose, so I wouldn't bet on us leaving any time soon even if/when we do finally extinguish ISIS. But yeah, the Kurds are turbo-hosed if that ever does change.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:07
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Volkerball posted:The houthis have launched a few. That makes a bit more sense just because some of them came from Yemen's military stocks, and at least they're the faction Iran's backing in the ongoing civil war. In Iraq the militias are mostly between wars at the moment, and in each of those potential new wars Iran would have a regular army to dump the missiles on over the random militias - unless they're going after the Iraqi government I guess.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:13
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Volkerball posted:The houthis have launched a few. Quite the understatement.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:20
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In Iraq, they've always leveraged their militias against the state. They never like to give jurisdiction over to a proxy when they can just insert themselves directly. It's really similar to the Lebanon model with people like Ameri and Qais Khazali playing Nasrallah-esque roles to simultaneously co-opt and undermine the central government. With the state of protests and the uncertainty regarding an Iranian aligned coalition government, that's only going to increase. Re: the missiles themselves, the ones used in the long range, high profile attacks are the Burkan 2h which are modeled after an Iranian missile and were first used in the Yemen war. Iran either delivered them or helped the Houthi's develop them.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:35
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CherryCola posted:Thank ye. What’s going to be our excuse for sticking around after the ISIS fight is over though? And if we don’t stick around how the poo poo are the Kurds going to not get rolled? Sinteres posted:We're still holding Tanf even though there are no (non-regime) hostiles anywhere near it anymore, and as long as Americans aren't dying, our commitments have a way of outliving their original purpose, so I wouldn't bet on us leaving any time soon even if/when we do finally extinguish ISIS. But yeah, the Kurds are turbo-hosed if that ever does change.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:43
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Speaking of Ameri and Khazali. https://mobile.twitter.com/UticaRisk/status/1037826224641327104
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Sep 7, 2018 02:58
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Volkerball posted:In Iraq, they've always leveraged their militias against the state. They never like to give jurisdiction over to a proxy when they can just insert themselves directly. It's really similar to the Lebanon model with people like Ameri and Qais Khazali playing Nasrallah-esque roles to simultaneously co-opt and undermine the central government. With the state of protests and the uncertainty regarding an Iranian aligned coalition government, that's only going to increase. I'm not arguing that Iran didn't give the Houthi groups missiles, it's just that they treat them as their proxy army in Yemen, where they are in the middle of fighting a war. Giving the local rednecks over in Iraq ballistic missiles at a time when Iraq finally isn't in the middle of a big drat war seems like an awful idea and not even terribly useful unless they're going to do some very dumb, awful poo poo.
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Sep 7, 2018 03:09
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I mean the last major war kicked off over Iran's boy Maliki ordering crackdowns on protests and purging Sunni politicians, as well as by there being no accountability for the Iranian backed PMU's that were going around burning people alive for being named Omar. It's a safe bet they're up to some dumb, awful poo poo.
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Sep 7, 2018 03:24
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Volkerball posted:I mean the last major war kicked off over Iran's boy Maliki ordering crackdowns on protests and purging Sunni politicians, as well as by there being no accountability for the Iranian backed PMU's that were going around burning people alive for being named Omar. It's a safe bet they're up to some dumb, awful poo poo. Do you have a link actually going over this part? At the time I was only vaguely aware of it, viewing it as a continuation of bombings and attacks that had been going on for years. But I paid only mild attention until ISIS took Mosul so I missed a lot.
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Sep 7, 2018 03:44
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Count Roland posted:Do you have a link actually going over this part? At the time I was only vaguely aware of it, viewing it as a continuation of bombings and attacks that had been going on for years. But I paid only mild attention until ISIS took Mosul so I missed a lot. Frontlines "Rise of ISIS" went over it in detail iirc
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Sep 7, 2018 04:08
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Volkerball posted:The houthis have launched a few. I'm not sure this is a good comparison, as the those Yemeni missiles were probably launched by professional members of the Yemeni army, probably the same personnel trained to use ballistic missiles before the war. As Yemen's conflict has progressed and pay has run short, the professionalism has declined, but I'm pretty sure they still have regular formations to handle this kind of stuff. Of course I see no reason the big Iraqi militias could keep on enough professionals to manage a small stockpile of sophisticated weapons either. I don't know enough about their structure to say for sure.
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Sep 7, 2018 04:41
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Sinteres posted:https://twitter.com/hxhassan/status/1037721937294831617 This doesn’t really back up very much of your earlier comment. The main "wow" is the supposed breaking off of ties and oil sales with the regime, which I don’t believe at all, and if SDF tries that they’re pretty dumb and can say goodbye to their protostate.
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Sep 7, 2018 06:04
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Saladman posted:This doesn’t really back up very much of your earlier comment. The main "wow" is the supposed breaking off of ties and oil sales with the regime, which I don’t believe at all, and if SDF tries that they’re pretty dumb and can say goodbye to their protostate. Cutting off river crossings from DeZ and announcing a new regional government on the same day the regime makes a point of saying there won't be a Kurdish autonomous region points pretty clearly to a breakdown in the negotiations they'd been working on together. The US also sent a bunch of armored vehicles into the region around the same time, suggesting we've made renewed promises to stick around, and likely told the SDF to knock off looking for alternatives. Perhaps relatedly, Russia's making new noises about attacking Tanf, to which the US military has said they better stay the gently caress away. I went back to try to verify the information on the oil sales, and I may have been too hasty in believing what i casually read before, because it looks like it might be just some guy making poo poo u. I still think taking new steps toward a long-term self-governed territory (albeit one entirely reliant on an outside power) amid a breakdown in relations with the regime is noteworthy though.
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Sep 7, 2018 07:45
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Squalid posted:I'm not sure this is a good comparison, as the those Yemeni missiles were probably launched by professional members of the Yemeni army, probably the same personnel trained to use ballistic missiles before the war. As Yemen's conflict has progressed and pay has run short, the professionalism has declined, but I'm pretty sure they still have regular formations to handle this kind of stuff. Yeah, 'The Houthis' includes what remains of the pre-2014 Yemen Army.
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Sep 7, 2018 13:08
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Large scale airstrikes by Russian and Syrian planes have begun in Idlib, signaling that the ground offensive may come soon. Pompeo's special CIA adviser for Syria, Jim Jeffrey, said there's "lots of evidence" that Assad's forces are preparing large amounts of chemical weapons to be used in the upcoming offensive. In my opinion, the Syrian government already announced they were going to use chemical weapons in Idlib when they laughably made the claim that the rebels were preparing to gas themselves again.
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Sep 7, 2018 13:37
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I genuinely don't know what benefit there is to the Syrian Regime using chemical weapons at this point. I mean, you've been caught red-handed before so many times that simply doing that announcement is enough to terrorize people way more with the mere possibility you'll do it again, rather than actually doing it again. So why even bother doing it and risk more cruise missiles and damage to your facilities (again, something that has been proven will happen as a response)? I'd actually buy some stories saying, it was overzealous assadist commanders that ordered them in a fit of rage/impatience, but doing it purposefully by this point after announcing it like this really would be grade-A stupid.
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Sep 7, 2018 15:55
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because they kill people you want dead
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Sep 7, 2018 16:12
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don't overthink it
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Sep 7, 2018 16:14
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Now that the CIA is saying they have “lots of evidence” you know it’s true. No you can’t see the evidence.
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Sep 7, 2018 16:16
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it's not as though "assad is planning to continue using chemical weapons" is an extraordinary claim
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Sep 7, 2018 16:19
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https://mobile.twitter.com/iraq_day/status/1038087921717391360
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Sep 7, 2018 18:27
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Now that Iran has suffered their own Benghazi, Hillary Clinton won't be their president either.
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Sep 7, 2018 18:32
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qkkl posted:Assassinating Assad would just put his extremely angry and volatile younger brother in charge, which I'm certain would have lead to much worse Syrian casualties down the line. However Maher might have started committing atrocities so extreme that even Russia would have been forced to accept that removing the Assad regime was necessary. Lol yeah Maher Assad is by all accounts psychotic (even his own father thought so, and that’s why he went with Bashar after Bassel died). Although, the Russians would probably want Al-Hassan in charge. Frond fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Sep 7, 2018 |
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Sep 7, 2018 18:56
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coathat posted:Now that the CIA is saying they have “lots of evidence” you know it’s true. No you can’t see the evidence.
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Sep 7, 2018 19:03
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Yeah they've only used chemical weapons dozens of times throughout the entirety of the war, there's no way they'd do it again. It's almost like the Assad regime is not a rational actor but an apartheid state meant to terrorize its Sunni subjects into behaving so that the small Alawite minority can loot its coffers.
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Sep 7, 2018 20:27
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Literally every slave state in existence where small ethnic cadres ruled with an iron fist, regularly used terror and brutality to keep the majority in line. In ancient Sparta you weren't considered a man unless you went out and murdered a helot, and so you had bands of Spartan teenagers that roamed the countryside as death squads while the large majority of the population lived as slaves and provided the material wealth upon which Sparta relied. In the American South nearly every man was employed in a slavery-based business and almost every man had served in the militias whose primary purpose was to put down slave revolts, catch runaway slaves, and patrol the roads to beat black people who didn't have passes. Having the ability to beat up and humiliate your 'social lessers' with impunity will inevitably lead to grandiose thoughts that there will never be a reckoning, that you are indeed the superior specimen who dominates the weak, that you deserve all the privileges foisted in your lap, and that the lessers are fit for nothing but to be your lapdogs. The Assad government does not reflect the popular will of the people, not even close. If it did, he'd be lying dead in some gutter after being mutilated by an angry mob and Syria would have multi-party elections in which Sunni Islamists would dominate, much as Shia Islamists tend to dominate Iraqi & Lebanese elections. Ask yourself this: how many times have posters in this thread called for a violent overthrow of Iraq's Shia Islamist dominated government? As it stands, sure there are a lot of Sunnis who support the government. How many of them do you think support Alawites continuing to rule with an iron fist and extract every last morsel of wealth from the rest of the country? Many of them simply have Stockholm Syndrome, which is a completely rational survival mechanism in the face of constant threat of violence wherein the captive becomes grateful and emotionally attached for small favors once the threat of extreme violence becomes the norm. The people also want infrastructure and schools and medicine, and the rebels were never organized enough or had enough resources to give it to them. The government made sure they had no medicine through a systemic campaign of assassinating doctors, nurses, and paramedics while bombing hospitals, medical supply depots, and aid convoys. How much sense does it make to bomb the majority of your nation's hospitals and kill its doctors? Doesn't make any sense if you're looking at it from the perspective of a Syrian populist, but it makes perfect sense once you realize that terrorizing these people into submission is not a side-effect of the civil war but the overarching goal so that you can continue to control all the levers of power and keep real Syrian populists weak and afraid. JaN/HTS and other far-right Islamist organizations often do this too, because they know their particularly extreme brand of Islam is not popular among the vast majority of Syrians.
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Sep 7, 2018 21:01
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Saladin Rising posted:Yeah, if the US decides to stay put in Northern Syria for the foreseeable future there's not really anything the other power players in Syria can do about it. If Trump didn't occasionally have a bug up his rear end about the US pulling out of Syria I'd assume that "support Rojava via sticking around Syria forever while also loving with Hezbollah and Assad" was the main plan going forward. Aside from the obvious impact that would have on our already miserable relations with Turkey, why shouldn’t the US support Rojava? The alternative looks like allowing the Syrians to retake all of that territory. It seems to me like it would be in the US’s interest to not give Russia and Iran’s ally such a large concession for no reason.
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Sep 7, 2018 21:40
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There is no such thing as Alawite supremacy. I have seen 0 indication that it exists.
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Sep 7, 2018 21:44
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Frond posted:There is no such thing as Alawite supremacy. I have seen 0 indication that it exists. Google "shabiha."
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Sep 7, 2018 21:54
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https://twitter.com/Jake_Hanrahan/status/1038168025105616896
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Sep 7, 2018 23:35
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We are definitely living in a timeline.
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Sep 7, 2018 23:40
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Volkerball posted:Google "shabiha." That’s a paramilitary gang. There are lots of those.
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Sep 7, 2018 23:51
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They also don’t exist anymore.
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Sep 7, 2018 23:53
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