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May 21, 2024 09:42
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Where are you C/Ping that from?
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Mar 29, 2011 12:20
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Wo...campaign=buffer
quote:
ALEXANDRIA, Va.: A Syrian-born U.S. citizen has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison for smuggling rifle scopes, night-vision goggles and other gear to Syrian militant groups.
Fifty-year-old Amin al-Baroudi of Irvine, California, was sentenced to 32 months Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. He pleaded guilty in January to violating U.S. sanctions in Syria by supplying an insurgent group called Ahrar al-Sham, which frequently fights alongside the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Nusra Front.
Al-Baroudi apologized in court. His defense sought probation, arguing al-Baroudi is a survivor of then-Syrian President Hafez Assad's 1982 massacre of civilians in Hama and was motivated by a heartfelt desire to help Syrians shake off Bashar Assad's government.
Prosecutors say al-Baroudi may have wanted to help, but sending weapons into a war zone is the wrong method.
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Jun 10, 2016 17:25
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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I haven't tried it myself but anti-personel fragmentation grenades aren't all that destructive against things made of metal. I think there are specialized charges using thermite for that kind of thing.
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Jun 12, 2016 17:07
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Why is Russia the only country capable of handing out S300s as a political tool. Why can't the US start shipping batteries of PAC4s to their lackeys?
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Jun 17, 2016 15:23
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Rifles really aren't that difficult to obtain or expensive, in the big scheme of things that destroy other things.
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Jun 17, 2016 21:07
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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The video is here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUEXrjCWOpk
It's a SA-8 that they seized from the SAA early the war. Not clear if they shot down the target there, other reports say the helicopter landed safely.
Better video
https://twitter.com/putintintin1/status/747202225257197568
Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Jun 28, 2016
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Jun 28, 2016 03:52
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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I see BBC reporting gunfire and explosions at Atatürk airport in Istanbul. IS on the move?
Aren't the Turks the closest thing to a supporter that IS has? Why would IS attack them?
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Jun 28, 2016 20:33
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Assad interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VynWkRJPoeY
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Jul 1, 2016 15:39
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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How do you figure that's an explosive vest? it just looks like normal webbing.
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Jul 5, 2016 05:45
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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A tank can hide from planes indefinitely as long as it doesn't have to move or fight, and even moving is probably OK if done under cover of darkness.
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Jul 5, 2016 22:33
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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So why should anyone root for the New Syrian Army again, other than being the chosen proxies of the CIA?
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Jul 7, 2016 22:30
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Seems like that could be a pretty significant limitation of capabilities! But who the hell knows, maybe they didn't want to help NSyA.
In further depressing news, 35 more people were killed and 50 injured in a new attack in Balad: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36742581
Planes are faster than cars but they can't teleport, when they found the big Iraqi convoy they probably told all the planes close by to head over, so if they want planes over the Syrians then those planes have to come from somewhere else, if there even were any spare ones around. If your entire offensive collapses because the American planes had to leave for a bit then maybe it wasn't a great idea in general.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:39
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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He sure looks well fed.
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Jul 9, 2016 04:45
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Here's a cool video of a bunch of guys attacking a position.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faP4k_I5xm0
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Jul 13, 2016 00:54
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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They only brought Turkey into NATO to balance out the troop numbers vs the Warsaw Pact anyway. Now that the Cold War is over the west can just cut Turkey loose.
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Jul 13, 2016 17:43
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Wait so Iranian nationals are not nearly as susceptible in causing terrorist acts as Arabs?
Most of the Iranian diaspora in the west were those who fled the country after the Islamic revolution, so probably.
Similarly a large part of not most of the Syrian diaspora in the west are Christians and tend to support the secular Bashar Al Assad, because he's better for Christians than IS or Al Qaeda.
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Jul 15, 2016 06:18
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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I wonder this too, is there any sort of official list of what groups get TOWs? It seems like US support for non SDF groups in Syria has slowed a lot lately (besides the NSyA I guess, lol)
DOn't the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia also supply TOWs? The US isn't the only source for them.
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Jul 19, 2016 20:04
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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This is only a half formed thought for now but after watching the back and forth for a few months in Syria it strikes me that at least for the SAA vs Aleppo rebels side of the fight, both sides are much better at offensive action than they are at holding ground in the defensive, so the front lines are very fluid as both sides launch offensive and counter offensive in turn that invariably succeed in throwing their opponents back.
I wonder what the reasons are for this. Some theories: Both sides seem to have an abundance of motorized transport, and roads in Syria seem to be fairly good. Both sides are often composed of troops with limited training and lackluster morale, and while a breakthrough can be made with a small number of hardened veteran troops or foreign fighters, as soon as these leave and are redeployed the ground then needs to be held by less reliable militia or conscripts. It's easy to concentrate your own forces for an attack at a specific point but difficult to anticipate where the enemy will do the same and establish defensive works.
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Aug 11, 2016 12:42
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Most of the Syrian army and militias are composed of Sunnis, which kind of make sense since 80%+ of the population are Sunnis. Assad's minister of defense is a Sunni. Liwa Al Quds, the largest Syrian pro-government militia, is composed of mostly Sunni Palestinians.
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Oct 11, 2016 02:00
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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I'm sure you're also willing to acknowledge that advocating on behalf of the Syrian government is literally, not essentially, advocating for genocide of the Sunni population. Since, you know, that's actually happening instead of being proposed as a hypothetical on an internet message board.
That is literally what Nusra and ISIS actually want. Not even the American or French government actually deny this, and at least try to hang their hats on non-existant "moderate rebels".
Has Bashar Assad been trying to literally genocide the Sunni population of Syria since he came to power in 2000? Or only since half the country was taken over by Sunni jihadists? I mean you can hold the reasonable position that Assad is a lovely ruler without these fantastical claims.
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Oct 11, 2016 02:13
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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I don't think either the US or Russia are unambiguously good, but I don't think either government should be overthrown by Al Qaeda.
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Oct 12, 2016 15:59
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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So they'd prefer to keep Shiite-Dominated Iraq as a satellite state? Howabout offer them that?
Do you understand that Iraqis are Arabs and Iranians are Persians and they don't even share the same language, let alone anything else other than religion? Are you also perplexed why Croatia isn't just a province of Poland because they are all catholics?
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Oct 12, 2016 17:43
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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The Turkish army is bigger than the rest of non-US NATO combined. Without Turkey NATO would have been outnumbered by the Warsaw Pact.
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Oct 17, 2016 14:58
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-jarablus-idUSKCN12J2CW
quote:Two months after driving Islamic State from this Syrian border town, the young rebel fighters patrolling its streets nurse an ambition beyond the aims of their Turkish backers: to break the siege of Aleppo.
These Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters, some in their teens, others hardened by years of war, swept into Jarablus almost unopposed in August.
They were part of Turkey's "Operation Euphrates Shield" meant to clear the jihadists from the border and prevent Kurdish militias gaining ground in their wake.
But for them, that operation was a means to an end, just the start of a journey that would ultimately see them battle their main enemy - the Russian-backed forces of President Bashar al-Assad - and come to the aid of hundreds of thousands of civilians encircled in opposition-held eastern Aleppo.
Such ambitions leave Turkey in a difficult position as it restores relations with Moscow.
Long one of Assad's fiercest opponents, Ankara's main priority appears to have shifted towards preventing Kurdish territorial gains and away from pushing for his immediate departure, putting it at odds with the fighters it supports.
"Our most important target is to break the siege of Aleppo. There, our FSA brothers are trapped," Ismail, a commander from the Sultan Murad group, an FSA faction, told Reuters in Jarablus, wearing camouflage fatigues and Adidas sneakers.
"This is our own idea, but in the coming days we will discuss this with our Turkish brothers," he said.
The answer may not be what he wants to hear.
CO-FIGHTERS
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russia's Vladimir Putin agreed at a meeting in Istanbul last week to try to seek common ground on Syria, despite backing opposing sides, although there has been little sign of concrete progress.
Erdogan said he had spoken with Putin on Tuesday and agreed to try to help meet a Russian demand that fighters from the group formally known as the Nusra Front, now called Jabhat Fatah al Sham, be removed from Aleppo.
"The necessary orders were given to our friends, and they will do what is needed," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.
Such willingness to do Moscow's bidding is unlikely to go down well with the FSA fighters Turkey is backing.
"Russia says they are bombing terrorists, but be it al Nusra or Ahrar al Sham, these are people who have fought with us to save our land," Sighli Sighli, another commander from the Sultan Murad brigade, told Reuters in Jarablus.
He said he was grateful for the backing of the Turkish military, and that the FSA's recent advances could not have been achieved without it, but that Aleppo was the strategic goal.
"It's not possible for us to accept what Russia or Iran or the PYD (Kurdish militia) wants to do with our country. This land belongs to Syrians, not Russians or Iranians," he said.
HARDER FIGHT AHEAD
Some of the civilians in Jarablus, where shops have gradually reopened selling fruit and cloth as rebel fighters patrol the streets on foot and in pick-up trucks, are also suspicious of Ankara's warming ties with Moscow.
"My family is starving in Aleppo. Thousands are starving... Erdogan has left our people there to die, he has abandoned us," said one Turkmen resident who gave his name only as Yahya, and who said his wife and five children were in Aleppo.
ALSO IN WORLD NEWS
Abandoned villages on road to Mosul rigged with tunnels and bombs
Major Russian naval deployment to intensify Aleppo assault: NATO diplomat
"He sold Aleppo off to the Russians and Iranians. They made a deal and they no longer care about Aleppo," he said, standing outside a grocery store in the main square.
Rebel fighters who have benefited from Turkish firepower in recent weeks are less skeptical, convinced that they will go on to battle Assad in Aleppo once Turkey's ambition of flushing Islamic State from its border is achieved.
"We have put aside our desire to fight Assad just for now. We haven’t abandoned it ... it's not like we've dropped our target," Bessam Muhammed, a 40-year-old rebel fighter, told Reuters in the garden of a Turkish-run field hospital.
"We haven’t come all the way and fought this war to seize Jarablus and then stay here," he said.
Operation Euphrates Shield has made good progress. Backed by Turkish tanks and warplanes, the rebels captured the village of Dabiq, southwest of Jarablus, from Islamic State on Sunday, a stronghold where the jihadist group had promised a final, apocalyptic battle with the West.
Turkey's military has said border security has now been largely achieved. But as the offensive moves towards al-Bab, 35 km (22 miles) northeast of Aleppo, the battle may get harder.
"The fight here for Jarablus was easy, but the fight for al-Bab will be much harder. Here there wasn't much resistance. They fled the town and we moved in," said Mahmut, 26, an FSA fighter wearing a Turkish police helmet.
"We don’t want to stop here or in al Bab. Next is Aleppo."
(Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Erdogan has hugged it out with Putin and is going to tell Nusra to leave Aleppo.
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Oct 19, 2016 21:19
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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If there are so many of these progressives around then why doesn't the US arm them instead of Al Qaeda and others who behead children?
The west has no problem arming Al Qaeda jihadists in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government, and no problem arming literal Nazis in Ukraine to suppress an ethnolinguistic minority. It's almost as if they don't actually care about anything other than killing Russians.
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Oct 26, 2016 20:32
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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You may not have seen my question from yesterday, but do you believe there are only two sides to the Syrian conflict, or more? You seem to be approaching this debate with the notion that there is Assad and the rebels, you are either in favor of one or the other. By my count I'm seeing the Assad regime, the rebels, ISIS, Russia (not perfectly aligned with Assad), Iran, SDF, Gulf states, Turkey, and the US, for a total of 9 different actors in Syria. Let's take a look at how they interact.
1. First you have Assad, who wants to reclaim all of Syria under his brutal tyranny. He's a monster and inhuman. I don't think we need to expand on him.
2. Next up are the "Rebels," a large coalition of different factions, which by now have been whittled down into a relatively unified ideology (we'll ignore the divisions that existed a couple years ago, since they no longer exist). The rebels want a unified Syria without Assad, and some or most want an Islamic state in his place.
3. We also have ISIS, who need no introduction. Their goal, as best I can decipher, was to recreate the old Abbasid Caliphate, so they wanted to rule all of Syria and the Middle East.
4. Finally you have the SDF/Rojava. Mostly Kurds, they want to create a federal system of semi-autonomous regions, or create an independent Kurdish state, depending on who you ask or who you believe. They do not want the status quo, nor do they want to be under the control of the other three factions, but they don't want to dominate them either.
So those four factions are all in direct opposition. Their stated goals are all mutually exclusive. Now let's go for the next batch: the external actors.
5. Russia wants to secure coastal Syria for their own use. A unified Syria may not be that important to them, as an Assad that is entirely at Putin's mercy is more reliable than one who can stand on his own. Russia's primary goal is to ensure that the only alternative to Assad is ISIS or Nusra-affiliated rebels in order to make Western intervention unpalatable. They've largely succeeded in that. While Russia is nominally in Assad's corner, they pull his strings in ways he doesn't like, such as enforcing a ceasefire between SAA and the SDF. Russia also sees use in the SDF because it is a thorn in the side of Turkey and destabilizes the Turkey-US relationship. Russia also wants to try and prevent the Kurds from being solely in the US camp. That is why I think you see so little SAA-SDF conflict. Russia doesn't want to waste the effort on a faction that it has no gain in defeating and would only serve to waste men and material, and the SDF doesn't want to waste their limited manpower on fighting someone they don't have to.
6. The US. The Obama administration's fundamental code is "don't do stupid poo poo." That is why we've essentially stayed out of Syria until it was a charlie foxtrot. However, the ISIS victory in Iraq and atrocities at Sinjar forced US opinion to act. The Kurds' last stand at Kobane attracted a ton of media attention here in the US (relatively speaking) because it touches at the American psyche, like the Alamo. The Kurds have been working on their PR and propaganda for years, and with Kobane it paid off in full. Suddenly people in the US equated the Kurds with a secular western entity that could share their values. That is why Obama has made steps to help the Kurds, because not helping the Kurds is like abandoning the Alamo and stabbing Jim Bowie in the back with his own knife. Essentially, the US doesn't have any goals, and it has hurt our efforts. But it means in turn that we don't align fully with any other faction. Thus, we go after the one target everyone agrees is terrible: ISIS. Granted, we should have bombed Assad into the stone age after the gas attack, but that's Obama's  foreign policy for you.
7. Turkey; Turkey doesn't give two shits about anyone other than themselves. There is growing evidence that Turkey aided ISIS as well as the rebels for the purposes of destabilizing Assad. Turkey only allows assistance against ISIS after considerable pressure by the US combined with domestic attacks on their soil. Considering Erdogan's latest rhetoric, it sounds like his goal is to expand Turkey's influence on neighboring regions of ethnic Turkmen. As admitted on record, Turkey would sooner work with Assad than with the Kurds. Therefore, while Turkey will give support and equipment to the rebels, to view their current ground efforts as anything other than preventing the Kurds from linking the cantons is cognitive dissonance. Turkey won't intervene in Aleppo for two big reasons: a) the 3000 man force they have can't handle the SAA/Hezbollah/Iranian militias, and b) Turkey doesn't want to offend Russia right now. Considering Erdogan's attempts to warm up to Russia the past couple months, and his rhetoric against the West, I see Turkey trying to play both sides against the middle or shift more towards Russia (there is a reason the US withdrew our nuke stockpile from Turkey).
8. Iran/Hezbollah. These guys are in Syria to prop up Assad and try to maintain the balance of power in the Sunni/Shia proxy war. Losing Syria would mean losing easy access to Lebanon, and thus Israel. It would also be a huge loss of face against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Iran is much more closely aligned with Assad than anyone else, but only to use Assad as a means to an end.
9. The Gulf States and the KSA. These guys are just the opposite of Iran. They want Assad to fall to weaken Iran and tilt the balance in their favor. They don't care who the rebels are, as long as they kill Iranians. Maybe some of them do honestly support the rebels for ethnic/moral ties, but I think we can rule the KSA off that list based on their actions in Yemen (which I don't support either).
I say all this to make absolutely clear that your conclusion of "if you're in the way of Turkey, you must want Aleppo to die and are therefore evil" is incredibly naive, simple-minded, and ideologically driven. I agree that Assad must be stopped, and I agree that the siege must be broken, but Syria is anything but simple. Turkey fighting the SDF is not an attempt to save Aleppo, it is simply Turkey trying to achieve their own ends; they don't care about Aleppo. This isn't an "us versus them" kind of war, this isn't a bipolar conflict. It is incredibly multi-polar and until we all understand that, none of this will make sense, nor will we figure out a path to resolution.
I haven't seen any official pronouncements from the Syrian Kurds that they want to secede from Syria.
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Oct 26, 2016 23:51
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Here's a video of some guys shooting from the back of motorbikes set to catchy music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq6V2YCp3h8
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Oct 29, 2016 20:22
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...o-a7389346.html
quote:Khaled Kaddoura and his wife Samira are both 50 – they married when they were only 15 – and they are a tough, forthright couple who decided just over a week ago to abandon their besieged home in eastern Aleppo. They and their son Almuatazbilah, a boy of eight with long, uncombed hair, were among only 48 men, women and children in weeks to make it to the Syrian army lines surrounding the east of Syria’s largest city with its tens of thousands of civilians and its collection of militias, most of them Islamists, who refuse to surrender.
Both husband and wife have dark, almost haunted eyes, and they tell a frightful story which is often at odds with the East Aleppo narrative of heroic ‘rebel’ defenders and civilians fearful of a regime massacre. Samira al-Jarrah – in Syria, wives keep their maiden names — says she prays for her country every night, but neither she nor her husband mention Bachar al-Assad.
They agree that the bombing and shelling of eastern Aleppo was terrifying but they also say that the Jabhat al-Nusra – the thousands of al-Qaeda followers who have twice changed their name in a vain attempt to shake off the West’s claim that they are ‘terrorists’ — are the least offensive, perhaps even the kinder, of the armed groups which still hold their sector of the city. This family are no Syrian government patsies.
READ MORE
What it's really like to be in the middle of the battle for Aleppo
But slowly and with great deliberation, Khaled Kadoura describes how hundreds of east Aleppo militiamen prevented at rifle-point thousands of civilians from fleeing their enclave over the past two weeks, how they shot dead six people, including a pregnant woman, and of how, after Samira and Khaled had reached the west of the city with their son, the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham arrested Khaled’s 27-year old brother Hamzi and sentenced him to execution. The news, he says, was broadcast on the opposition ‘Aleppo Today’ television and he is now desperately telephoning eastern Aleppo to see if the sentence has been carried out.
“Even my friends were arrested after we left,” he says. “The militias came to our house after we crossed, they stole from our shop and smashed our home to warn other people not to do the same thing we did. They had told me that if we left east Aleppo, the government would execute us, but when we came here they didn’t.” He is staying now with relatives in the west, a man who might once have been called middle class – he still has his deeds to his lands and broken property in eastern Aleppo – but who now sits in a grey robe and black woolen hat, his wife dressed all in black. They need to register now with the UN for food.
This is their story, as they tell it, and readers must judge for themselves how much it reflects the lives of others in eastern Aleppo. As we journalists like to say, there can be no ‘independent confirmation’ of this family’s account – because western journalists dare enter eastern Aleppo today for fear of decapitation by its defenders.
In pictures: Aleppo bombing
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“We were living a real tragedy in east Aleppo,” Khaled Kadoura says. “We were short of everything, especially food and fuel. I had a shop that rented out chairs and tables for weddings. Of course, there was no business. We couldn’t find any medical aids or medicine since the beginning of the war. We were deprived even of learning and education. The Ahrar al-Sham [Islamist] group and other groups made their bases in the schools.”
Eight-year old Almuatazbilah is listening to his father and when I ask him about his education, he tells me he can neither read nor write. It’s clear that poverty and hunger as much as fear drove the Kadouras to leave eastern Aleppo. “We were under pressure,” Khaled Kadoura says. “At the beginning of the war, one kilo of sugar cost 10 Syrian pounds, now it costs 3,000 for a kilo. Gas cylinders were 200 pounds. Now they are 150,000 pounds. Fuel shortages began five months ago. I have diabetes and there was no more medicine for me. My son was often sick. There were only Turkish medicines in the hospitals. I have properties there – my house, my car, we used to be a rich family – but I could leave all this. There was so much shelling and bombing in our neighbourhood.”
Samira interrupts her husband. “When there was no bread, I managed to bake from wheat we got from the UN. I made ‘burgol’. But otherwise we had to starve, even during the festival of ‘Eid’.” She says they felt free before the war, which began in Aleppo in 2012, a year after the rest of Syria began to collapse into open insurrection. In 2011, Khaled Kadoura made the ‘Haj’ pilgrimage to Mecca. It must have seemed strange for Khaled to pick up a still-working telephone – the militias had taken away thousands of mobile phones in eastern Aleppo for ‘security’ reasons – and call a member of the Syrian government’s ‘reconciliation’ committee, a man he called ‘Abu Hassan’, when he heard that the regime was to open eight passageways across the front lines for civilians and even armed men to leave eastern Aleppo. He didn’t want to be shot by the Syrian army.
READ MORE
The strange case of the Scottish ambulance found in Aleppo
In the carnage of Aleppo children die on both sides of the city
The devastated Syrian town where fighting may have finally ended
“On the day this started [20 October], the armed groups in east Aleppo surrounded the people who wanted to leave with a sort of ‘security circle’ to prevent them going out,” Khaled says. “They even had weapons in their hands. They shot at some people – I was told six died – and they killed a pregnant woman. She was killed and there were others wounded. They accused the [Syrian] government of shelling the passageways. We waited till night to cross and we waited till after the Maghreb prayers when we knew that the armed men near the crossing point would have gone to rest. Later, they were all arrested and accused of taking bribes to allow us to cross. We had to be so careful because of mines.”
Khaled and his family had discussed how to cross many times – they succeeded only at their second attempt and another family which tried to follow them on the same route were caught by the militias. “We used to say there are so many of us who want to go, why can’t we force our way? We talked about how the Palestinians used knives against the Israelis. Why couldn’t we do the same to get out?” It was a highly unusual parallel for an Arab Syrian family to draw in Aleppo, to compare the Palestinians’ oppressors with the men who are supposedly defending eastern Aleppo.”
Over the months of the siege, Khaled Kadoura continued to attend his local Anas bin Malak mosque. “All the speeches were by an Imam who is the mufti of the [Islamist] Ahrar al-Sham movement – all his speeches were about the regime, about how they would kill us if we left and would force us to shave our beards. We favoured the Nusrah group [regarded by the regime as even more dangerous than Isis] because they left us alone and were respectful and kept away from the civilians. We talked a lot with Ahrar al-Sham. One time, I asked them why they kept us there and they replied that ‘we are defending you from the regime which has treated you inhumanly’. When Fatah al-Islam came from Idlib, they told civilians to join them but very few did. We saw a lot of Saudi and Gulf and even Azerbaijani and Afghan and Chechen and Chinese fighters – I knew a lot of their nationalities because I had seen their countrymen on the Haj. The Chinese Uighurs brought their families with them to the suburb of Khan al-Asal. There were Europeans too, I saw their eyes were blue. The Isis came there two years ago from Raqqa. The talked to each other but were very friendly with us. They didn’t need money and they didn’t ask for any – they had money from their organisation.”
Khaled Kadoura’s spoke of local eastern Aleppo hospitals, however, in terms which most opponents of the Syrian regime and many western politicians (and journalists) might condemn. “Yes, the aircraft bombed the schools, the hospitals – but all these hospitals are also bases for militias and their weapons. The hospitals have some patients, but lots of rockets are on the top of hospitals where they use them to rocket the west of the city.” Kadoura named three hospitals which he said were used for bases.
No-one can hear this without profound concern. Numerous Middle East dictatorships have used the ‘human shield’/terrorists-in-hospitals excuse to slaughter civilians with impunity, and the Syrians have adopted the same expression. When I called a trusted friend who has visited Syria as an NGO, he said that his local NGO workers denied the use of hospitals by militias, “but we are not there to see for ourselves.” Certainly, video footage from bombed hospitals shows no weapons in the wreckage, only wounded and dead patients. Clearly wounded militiamen may be treated in east Aleppo hospitals – just as I saw a badly wounded Syrian soldier brought into a west Aleppo hospital several days ago.
Khaled Kadoura says that when he asked the militias to re-open schools for the children, including his son, he was asked why he did not go and fight the regime. “I said: ‘let us go’. They refused to answer. They said ‘this is not your business – this is a military operation.’” Hopelessly unreliable estimates suggest that there are 250,000 civilians trapped in east Aleppo. Even Syrian military officers choose figures between 75,000 and 300,000. Khaled Kadoura suggested the latter, adding that the 7,300 families in his own suburb would all leave if they had the chance.
Now he lives with relatives, his wife is asking the UN to register them as refugees. When I spoke to Khaled Kadoura and his wife and son, the new opposition offensive had just started against western Aleppo and shells were bursting only half a mile away. But none paid the slightest attention. They had been through this before. “The government offered me an apartment but I said I would live with my sister and brother-in-law who are here and they should give accommodation to others,” Khaled Kadoura said. “We live at the moment in a mixed area of west Aleppo and there are many Christians living there and they give us bread and food. They are very kind.”
I don't under stand, Al Saqr said that the o nly thing standing between these people and death by Assad is his merry band of heroic Al Qaeda fighters?
Also we're now at a point where Nusra is legitimately the least bad group of people with guns on the ground. 
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Nov 1, 2016 22:42
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Yes, obviously, now is the time for infighting.
Iirc fastqem is one of the moderate vetted groups that the US sends tows to? It would make sense for Zenki and Nusra to go after them.
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Nov 3, 2016 00:18
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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ANNA news embedded with Liwa Al Quds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grXXoSPNMzw
Good footage of scoped Mosin Nagant and Grad used in the direct fire role.
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Nov 4, 2016 18:40
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Some action footage from CNN during a battle. NSFW because a civilian is executed in the streets like a dog.
:nsfw: h t t ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-q0MIPfV_Q :nsfw:
Footage from IS of the same battle. No gore.
h ttp://video.jkikki.de/v/dl05112016.mp4
h ttp://video.jkikki.de/v/nd06112016.mp4
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Nov 7, 2016 19:13
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Yeah but Putin didn't engineer a regime change in Britain to make Boris Johnson PM tho.
What does everyone thing of the summary of the last rebel offensive on reddit? It sounds compelling but I haven't had time to go over it in detail
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Nov 10, 2016 00:53
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Do you have a link? The only time I open reddit is if I google search for games guides or such, so I have no idea where to look for this.
Watching the SAA's strategy unfold
https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/5c1203/watching_the_saas_strategy_unfold
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Nov 10, 2016 02:04
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- Throatwarbler
- Nov 17, 2008
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by vyelkin
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Trump has kind of promised to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea.
I don't think Bashar Assad even does that.
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Nov 10, 2016 02:28
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 21, 2024 09:42
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Feb 25, 2011 09:44
