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Brown Moses posted:It does seem like the FSA are getting pretty handy with RPGs, seen a lot of videos of them being used in close quarters against BMPs and other targets. Got any links?
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May 18, 2012 13:58
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Xandu posted:Wow Dear god.... That second one is one of the worst videos I've ever seen on the internet, and I've seen some poo poo. I need backstory here. Who were those people? Whose funeral was that? Are they pro or anti-regime? What city? What are they saying besides "Allah akbar"? Any info someone could give would be useful.
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Jul 2, 2012 02:14
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19192413 Rebels are losing Aleppo. Assad is willing to go Full Chechnya on them.
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Aug 9, 2012 15:39
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New Division posted:The FSA really shouldn't be trying to stay put and hold ground in the city anyway. If they stay in one place too long it's easier to target them with heavy weapons and bombardment. Retreating then counterattacking from unexpected directions is the way to go. Retreating is a very difficult situation for the rebels because when they leave a neighborhood the Shabiha are going to roll in and torture/murder the local civilians. Also they need to keep and hold ground in the north as a matter of logistics. They need supply lines from Turkey to move in weapons, fuel, medicine, and men. Turkey is their primary training ground and rest assured they will come back later on with more weapons, better training, and better morale, but they must keep the lines open with Turkey. They need to hold some ground where they can mass, build up heavy weaponry, and perform large-scale military maneuvers.
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Aug 10, 2012 00:38
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I'd rather you guys not have a pissing match with each other about who knows more about the situation on the ground. Please provide relevant links if you've got some good info. Honesty do either of you guys even have a military background or educational background in military history? Because I have the second one, and I'm witholding judgement of the situation because I have no idea what the situation is like. All I know is that I can't trust any information put out by the regime because all of their news is like Baghdad Bob. I do know one thing, and that is that from a couple of sources of defecting soldiers, government forces took far heavier casualties during the fighting in Homs than they admitted to, due to house-to-house fighting and rebel boobytraps. I imagine that government forces are also taking a lot of heavy losses here too, and that the supply lines for the rebels are very porous but subject to ambush and bombing/shelling so probably difficult to move anything requiring something bigger than a pickup truck.
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Aug 10, 2012 05:28
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One question that's been really chafing me is where Assad and his army are getting their supplies from. They're going through a ton of spare parts, ammo, mags, guns, shells, bombs, etc. I know they probably have a poo poo-ton stored in various depots around the country in case of war with Israel but they'll eventually run out without an outside supplier. Pretty sure everyone's got an arms embargo against Syria right now. Plus all the countries around them are hostile (Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Israel) which leaves only Lebanon. It wouldn't surprise me if Russian arms, ammo, and military equipment is being funneled through Lebanon. Also wouldn't surprise me if Russian/Chinese weapons were being smuggled via the coast, since Syria's coastal strip is populated by Alawites. Long-term the Syrian Army can't continue large-scale operations without adequate supplies, but this is gonna be a LOT tougher meatgrinder than Libya was. Rebels don't have NATO airpower and when the Syrian regime does lose control of the Sunni populated areas it has some pretty nice defendable mountain ranges around Damascus and its coastal Alawite strip to make one hell of a last stand. Oh and my professor of military history told me that you don't need to completely surround an enemy in order to cut off their supplies, you just need to block the main roads/railways. Of course he also studies conventional war with a focus on WWII, which happened before the proliferation of car culture and on a much larger battlefield so it doesn't necessarily apply to the rebels in Aleppo.
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Aug 10, 2012 06:58
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Most of the men who were flung from the rooftop were dead. They didn't bleed like they should have when they hit the ground and they flopped like ragdolls while falling. The last one bled a whole ton, so he was either still alive or had been killed immediately before they dropped him. Maybe he was just unconscious because he was very ragdollish too. And you can clearly see the 2nd one wearing military fatigues, so he was most certainly not a civilian.
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Aug 14, 2012 01:30
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/world/middleeast/explosion-in-damascus-syria.html Syria's defected PM claims that loyalist forces only control 30% of the country's territory, and that there were many more officials and officers who want to defect but can't. He claims he defected because Assad's thugs started threatening to kill his family. I imagine its the same deal with a lot of people who might defect, that their families are held hostage. He claims he doesn't want a position in the post-Assad government. Fighting still grinding on in Damascus suburbs and Aleppo.
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Aug 15, 2012 08:41
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MothraAttack posted:Reports coming that the director of Air Force Intelligence Jamil Hassan has died of injuries sustained in combat. He was apparently a feared secret police leader. Air Force Intelligence CHIEF. The Air Force Intelligence was probably the most powerful of Assad's intelligence services because of the fact that Hafez Assad was an Air Force guy.
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Aug 20, 2012 23:22
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Sivias posted:If this guy was so important, why was he anywhere near combat? Aren't logistics and that sort of stuff generally handled outside of the combat zone? He might have been severely injured by the bomb blast that killed his comrades several weeks ago. Also could have been wounded by assassins or in an attempted kidnapping. He supposedly died in a Moscow hospital and his body was flown back to Damascus.
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Aug 21, 2012 00:38
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Young Freud posted:The Israelis applied something called "Lethal Theory" (PDF link), which is essentially this. They made "tunnels" through residential buildings in the 2002 invasion of Nablus that allowed them to move almost undetected, allowing them to pop out and ambush Palestinian guerrilla forces. Yuppers. Our soldiers did the same thing in Fallujah
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Aug 26, 2012 01:13
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farraday posted:Anyone with more experience/training want to comment on what we're seeing here? Not sure if the rebels would be able to ransack the place, it seems pretty open to the sort of heavy firepower the army should be able to bring to bear in the Damascus area. Interesting clothing/armor on the rebels, any ideas on what the helmets are or if the uniform white undershirt signifies anything? If you look at the frame in 24 seconds you can clearly see 2 dead bodies at the entrance to the checkpoint, there are also a couple of spots on the ground inside the checkpoint where you can see blood. Its possible that the soldiers they are engaging are across the street and not actually in the camp, or have all taken cover and aren't exposing themselves. Also at 42 secs in a bullet clearly impacts and takes a chunk outta the concrete near the cameraman's position, and there is someone on the roof with him firing. Those white shirts are probably so they can tell one another apart from the enemy and don't get shot at from friendly snipers behind them. Sergg fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Aug 28, 2012 |
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Aug 28, 2012 06:23
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farraday posted:Here's Fisks report in the Independent on his visit to Deryaa and some snippets of interviews with locals Robert Fisk sickens me. All reports coming from Daraya are that government forces and Shabiha carried out the massacres house-to-house as they have done in many other Syrian towns, but Robert Fisk says it was a prisoner swap gone wrong and blames the FSA? Disgusting.
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Aug 29, 2012 13:55
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I'm leaning more towards someone on the inside sabotaging the war effort.
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Aug 31, 2012 00:42
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Farraday, i poo poo trains, I would appreciate it if you guys could stop insulting each other. I'm trying to learn about the Syrian Revolution here. It's starting to get really petty with these personal attacks, and I'm confident we're all on the same side here. If you think somebody is wrong, just be like "Oh hey I respectfully disagree and here's why" instead of saying "OH look at this dumb human being with his dumb fag ideas" because the second approach doesn't win anyone over. Besides, my dad could totally beat up both of your dads in real life.
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Sep 2, 2012 00:10
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Seriously guys can we stop with this threadjack bullshit? There's like 10 times more people arguing with Devil Child than there are actual updates or discussion of facts on the ground concerning the Middle East in its present day.
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Dec 26, 2012 22:04
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Despite the fact that the Syrian government will give a lot of the aid to its own followers, a lot of other people who are in areas that are still gov't controlled like Damascus will also get it. People in gov't areas still need food and medicine, regardless of their level of support for the regime or their complicity in its actions. Also the FSA gets most of its guns from sympathetic arms dealers in the Syrian military, so they'll give/sell lots of it to the rebels too. Also, regardless of who hit the University of Damascus, it was probably a complete accident and should be chalked up to the chaos and tragedy of war more than anything else. And before somebody accuses me of being an apologist, I am absolutely against the regime but I want to see the Syrian people suffer as little as possible. After every civil strife there needs to be some kind of forgiveness and letting go of old blood feuds or else the cycle will simply continue. Sergg fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Jan 23, 2013 |
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Jan 23, 2013 06:06
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Although I commend you on your solid journalism work, Brown Moses, I also feel compelled to point out that your journalism is severely complicating the issue of arms procurement for the rebels. I mean, the same week your article is published their arms dealer pulls out and joins the embargo. How do you feel about this?
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Feb 28, 2013 23:32
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I'm like 95% sure it was the Syrian government attacking with chemical weapons, considering they're the ones sitting on a gigantic stockpile of poison gas and their state control is disintegrating. Also this isn't the first time. They attacked with, I hope I'm spelling this right, deliriants before, chemicals meant to make you delirious. EDIT: Carl Levin is awesome and he's my uber-liberal Senator from Michigan.
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Mar 19, 2013 23:07
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From everything I've read, the Bosnian Serbs did, in fact, use deliriants on Bosnian forces retreating from Srebrenica, and there are hundreds of witnesses that testified about it. Never heard about the Kosovar accusations and this is the first time I've heard of the alleged 'debunking' of the gas attacks earlier this year.
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Mar 20, 2013 02:42
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Squalid posted:source? To my knowledge there's never been any serious evidence of actual deployment of bz. A cursory google search mostly turned up newspaper articles written at the time, with weird allegations like colored smoke induced their hallucinations, which is odd because bz is colorless and odorless. Witness testimony is the only evidence I've seen, and I'm skeptical a witness could accurately identify the effects of bz exposure. If someone was exposed to industrial chemicals, can we expect them to know the difference between it's effects and the effects of a chemical weapon? I did further reading on the subject and you're right. There wasn't BZ used on the fleeing column of Bosniak men. They described strange behavior like people getting naked, shooting each other, or killing themselves right there on the spot. Some of this (suicides) can be accounted for by the desperate and mentally exhausting situation they were in where men had just lost their families, and others (shooting each other) can be accounted for by Serb infiltrators in civilian clothing who continually attacked the column of men, making it appear as though they were attacking each other. Don't know why any of them got naked though. EDIT: It's really difficult to know for 100%, considering that the vast majority of the column of Bosniak men died before they reached their lines again. Sergg fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Mar 20, 2013 |
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Mar 20, 2013 18:50
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I think the people of Syria would disagree vehemently with you about the rebel groups being worth a drat, as evidenced by the mass defections and the whole civil war thing. If Assad wins, there is no hope. No hope for a better future. He will just keep killing and killing and killing, just like he was doing before the people took up arms against him. If Assad wins he will kill everyone who opposed him and his iron fist will come down with renewed vigor and multiplied force. It'll be like Iraq in 1991 all over again. That's why so many Syrians would rather die than live under his regime. EDIT: As far as to respond to your question about American foreign policy, you can expect more diplomacy and multilateralism from the US as has been the case since the Obama administration took office. The horrors of the Iraq War have affected a generation of Americans and you will see a reflective avoidance of war for probably another decade. The US is leaving Afghanistan in 2014, and you can expect the drone campaign to wind down considerably. There will still be covert operations targeting Iran and various little Al-Qaeda affiliated groups in North Africa, but outright war has generally allowed Al-Qaeda to set up permanent bases in the countries we've invaded. Sergg fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Mar 25, 2013 |
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Mar 25, 2013 18:59
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gobertech posted:Being honest, if the fighting stopped tomorrow and fair elections are later held with Bashar's name somewhere on the ballot I wouldn't be surprised if he actually wins. It does indeed speak to the regime's strength that is has lasted so long, but lets remember that Gaddaffi was wildly unpopular except with a few tiny groups, and that he was winning the civil war in Libya before NATO intervened to prevent the kind of slaughter we're seeing now.
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Mar 26, 2013 22:27
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If you guys find any more good videos of the fighting or of atrocities taking place in Syria please continue posting them. I am attempting to raise awareness of the Syrian civil war, the fighting, and the human rights abuses among my friends.
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Mar 31, 2013 21:23
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Miruvor posted:Following up on Xandu's post from earlier, AQI and Al Nusra Front have combined to form 'the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' Welp, that's hosed, this is hosed, now everything is totally hosed. Man that is bad and super-depressing news. Get ready for a decade of carbombings in Syria.
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Apr 10, 2013 01:21
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I was really afraid when this started that Syria would end up like Afghanistan. "No," I told myself, "that won't happen. Syria is too modern." Kiss it all goodbye now. I'm in full defeatist mode. We waited too long and now the situation is hosed. Iraq's Shia gov't is going to go full-tilt for Assad now. They'll send him American and Iranian guns and weapons. They'll train Syrian soldiers in the same counter-insurgency techniques we trained them in. Syria is hosed. There is no way in hell that Iraq's Shia population will allow Islamic State of Iraq to set up an open house right next door when they're still getting blown to bits with car bombs every week.
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Apr 10, 2013 03:14
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Do the Syrians manufacture their own domestic chemical weapons shells/bombs or do they use old Soviet designs instead?
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Apr 29, 2013 17:50
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Bashar Assad posted:That's understandable. A lot of posters seem to have not read the page and are operating under the mistaken assumption that demonstrations in war zones should be handled like delicate china.
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May 16, 2013 20:11
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This whole thing is a clusterfuck but Assad winning is the worst-case scenario long-term for everybody. Even though he's secular, he's essentially a fascist and his rule is one of a minority coalition ruling over a majority, which is scarcely a recipe for anything but brutality and oppression.
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May 19, 2013 22:04
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Let's just ignore the 100,000 Syrians already brutally murdered by the current regime, which has no qualms about massacring villages full of Sunnis and carpet-bombing its own cities to rubble. When your own government has roving torture squads and has incinerated the majority of its cities outside of the capitol, you've pretty much already hit rock bottom. Just because they're secular doesn't mean they're the lesser evil. EDIT: And as far as "Stability for the region", Assad was a very active participant in Iraq's civil war and major supporter of Sunni jihadi groups, which is coming back to bite him in the rear end now. Sergg fucked around with this message at 22:33 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 22:31
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Baron FU posted:So you agree that the west probably shouldn't be supporting the rebels then. Since it will probably come back to bite them at some later point in time. I think the West should be supporting secular rebel groups like the FSA, but even that may come back to bite us in the rear end, which is why our government is so hesitant to further involve itself, but paradoxically that hesitation increases the power and influence of the radical Islamists whose backers have no such compunction or restraint. EDIT: Also a lot of fighters are with JAN just because they're competent and well-supplied. They care moreso about whether they have bullets than the ideology of their umbrella organization. Sergg fucked around with this message at 22:56 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 22:52
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Brown Moses posted:Here's rare footage from Aleppo of a SA-16 MANPADS being fired at, and hitting, a helicopter You sure its hitting it? There doesn't seem to be any smoke coming from the helicopter and there was that weird flash looking like fireworks. It looks like the chopper popped countermeasures like chaff/flares but I don't know if helicopters can actually be equipped with that stuff. Anyone else weigh in?
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Jun 10, 2013 22:57
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Upon further examination on a big screen TV it seems that the missile indeed hits the chopper or at the very least explodes right next to it, and there is no visible counter-measures coming from the chopper before the detonation. Usually it causes choppers to smoke but its entirely possible the chopper exploded into a billion pieces 5 seconds after the video cuts off. EDIT: Oh and my big-screen examination of that one video where the missile hits the tank and fire shoots from the turret and hatch before the little dude runs off with his arms up? He was right next to the tank tread on the left side before the explosion. Didn't see it until I full-screened on a huge TV.
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Jun 10, 2013 23:35
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:Found this on another forum. That "boy" beheaded in the video is an adult male with a full beard. Still very brutal because they went with the classic jihadi "saw through neck with knife" method of decapitation. There are actually two women being executed in it. They look like they're wearing veils and blindfolds, and they are frogmarched up onto the rocky outcropping and shot. You can clearly see its two women earlier in the video, and when they are marched onto the outcropping one is standing behind the other from the camera angle. EDIT: That's not a rocky outcropping, its mounds of dirt for the pre-dug graves. There are two fighters at the end of the video who have red hair and white skin, one of them sporting a neck-beard and the other with a clean-shaven face. They seem to be the more enthusiastic of the bunch and performed all the executions. Sergg fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jun 19, 2013 |
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Jun 19, 2013 18:54
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Without some kind of major intervention, Syria is and will remain a failed state like Afghanistan, Dem. Rep. of Congo, or Somalia. I mean, it might end up as such despite major intervention. That's what happens when you have European diplomats arbitrarily decide a nation's borders irrespective of language and culture. Assad winning IMO would be the worst of all possible outcomes, because it would just lead to another equally devastating civil war 5-10 years down the road. But if the rebels win, what then? Warlordism? European and US powers would never allow Al-Nusra to exist without an external enemy to pit it against. Does that mean that 'the West' will point Al-Nusra in its next logical direction, into Lebanon and Hezbollah, following said resolution? The longer this war goes on the more terrorists its going to create, the more people it will radicalize. US army studies into insurgencies have shown that they are almost always because of legitimate grievances against the state, surely the higher-ups at the Pentagon realize the long-term sociological ramifications. Ha, yeah, surely. Sergg fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jun 20, 2013 |
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Jun 20, 2013 00:10
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If the rebels have any chemical weapons, they are made by the Syrian government. With the breakdown in basic services I'm not surprised they found chlorine. There's probably a shortage of potable water. Honestly you shouldn't bother watching or listening to RT, its blatantly misleading pro-regime propaganda. I remember looking for the video that showed the FSA throwing Syrian Air Force Mukhabarat off a building to the cheering crowd below. RT had it, but it was mislabeled claiming they were throwing postal workers off a roof. They heavily edited the video to remove the cheering enthusiastic crowd of civilians. Seriously RT has zero journalistic credibility and it's safe to ignore anything they say.
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Jul 15, 2013 06:00
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Israel should learn from Sun Tzu: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
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Jul 17, 2013 05:35
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We can wax poetic about what could have been but nowadays these borders are largely solidified. A Sunni-controlled Syria is never going to give up their only coastline to the Alawites.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:19
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I dunno why Assad would travel in a big convoy. It sounds like the perfect decoy so he could slip by in the back of an old beat up jeep that follows 200 yards behind it. That's how Uday and Qusay shook the cordon and fled Baghdad after it was occupied by US soldiers. They just got in a regular old car, wore sunglasses and jeans, and just drove past several US Army checkpoints after sending another car through first. But perhaps the entire point is a show of force, for him to say "I'm still in charge of this country and I control it" with that convoy.
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Aug 8, 2013 20:12
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Generally speaking the War Nerd is very often poorly informed about conflicts. The native Arabic speakers in this thread and Brown Moses are generally going to be way more reliable.
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Aug 9, 2013 02:58
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