[JohnRawls]

Assads corridor is in the desert, there are very few places where any group can hide much less create a fortified position considering Russian airstrikes. Rebels need to implement hit and run tactics because of that but that runs in to the same issue of desert being a bad place for hiding and Russian air superiority just in a smaller way.

The current artilery pocket is heavily fortified, the artilery positions of the Assadists are heavily fortified and supplied with Russian drones,sattelite, other inteligence sources. Not to mention that Assad has more artilery in general. The Rebels on the other hand can't fortify any artilery implacment without being bombed by the Russians nor do they have Russian inteligence.

[Igor Antunov]

Turkey lost their first two tanks in north syria.

[Bosnjak]

Assads corridor is in the desert, there are very few places where any group can hide much less create a fortified position considering Russian airstrikes. Rebels need to implement hit and run tactics because of that but that runs in to the same issue of desert being a bad place for hiding and Russian air superiority just in a smaller way.

The current artilery pocket is heavily fortified, the artilery positions of the Assadists are heavily fortified and supplied with Russian drones,sattelite, other inteligence sources. Not to mention that Assad has more artilery in general. The Rebels on the other hand can't fortify any artilery implacment without being bombed by the Russians nor do they have Russian inteligence.

but they can the several houndred kilometer long korridor bombard with rockets, and mortars dropping spikes and shrapnells targeting the trucks tyres, to increase the cost of supply... if they manage the cut North-West Allepo the supply roads the hole russian fleet would be busy droping food instead of bombs

[Typhoon]

Turkey lost their first two tanks in north syria.

Yes it appears that Turkish backed forces and the SDF are now in direct conflict, Turkey will find it difficult to resist being further sucked into the Syrian civil war.

Also why does Russia have to create peace there. Again this is imperial ego games. Let them resolve their own affairs like grown up adult they are. So next time they can not scapegoat the west or any other outside nation, when they decide to blow each other up.

Libya was an important lesson for Russia, it cannot rely on good faith in dealing with the West. This is why Russia needed to intervene in Syria, to draw a line in the sand on what it finds acceptable. Namely that regime change by foreign intervention is unacceptable.

[Rich]

Namely that regime change by foreign intervention is unacceptable.

Regime change by foreign intervention can be totally acceptable. It was in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. It was in Libya. Gadaffi gave arms to the IRA, Gadaffi was responsible for the death of Yvonne Fletcher, we were perfectly entitled to kill Gadafii and remove his regime any time we felt like it and without asking anyone else for by or leave, as Russia didn't need permission from anyone to liberate Crimea.

Regime change must always be judged on its merits. The way to aid Syrian development however is to help the Assad regime democratise by, supporting an independent Kurdistan and utterly cleansing its territory of every last Sunni Muslim terrorist and every Sunni Muslim terrorist fellow traveller, sympathiser, supporter or enabler.

[Igor Antunov]

Looks like Turks are going for Manbij:

[Igor Antunov]

Well, nothing subtle here:

Erdogan: "Our struggle will continue until PYD is exterminated."

His exact words.

[Bosnjak]

I think all sides are exhausted, ISIS uses childsoldiers cause the turks block theirs foreign fighters, YPG uses also women and now childsoldiers.

The Rebels have over a Million of possible recruits in turkish refugee camps, who can cross the borders.

after 5 Years war will demographics decide the next 5 years.


I hope the arab states empty the prisons and send them to the FSA. I read somewhere they started sending them to Jemen.

In Balkan Wars an all sides were Criminal Gangs the best units even better then police and milliatary special squads.

[JohnRawls]

YPG uses women soldiers because they are communists/socialists technically. Communists and socialists have always been on the front of gender equality

The war itself will not be decided by demographics or anything like that. The war will be decided when the political climate changes aka when America and Russia strike a deal of any sort. (That is the most likely scenario)

[Igor Antunov]

They use women in front-lines roles in Syria because they lack manpower relative to their neighbors. Short of resorting to child soldiers, you gotta leverage the other 50% of the available demographic. Same as Israeli military.

I'm sure Assad would use women too if there had been a training program in place for that when it came to reserve replenishment, too late for that. Nobody anticipates the complexities of a civil war.

[layman]

The Rebels have over a Million of possible recruits in turkish refugee camps, who can cross the borders.

Didnt they run away because they didnt want to fight ?

[Bosnjak]

They use women in front-lines roles in Syria because they lack manpower relative to their neighbors. Short of resorting to child soldiers, you gotta leverage the other 50% of the available demographic. Same as Israeli military.

I'm sure Assad would use women too if there had been a training program in place for that when it came to reserve replenishment, too late for that. Nobody anticipates the complexities of a civil war.

Women are in war as usefull as children. the Israeli Army does not let them fight in first lines, commonly women have a role behind the front.

Obama allowed women on first lines, but according an survey are 80% of US-soldiers against it.

[Atlantis]

I think all sides are exhausted, ...

True! All sides are exhausted and all sides are weak. That means they all lack the force to gain a decisive victory over their enemies. That will make the war go on as long as the outside backers continue to supply arms.

ISIS uses childsoldiers cause the turks block theirs foreign fighters,

Not true! IS uses child soldiers for suicide missions because children can be easily manipulated. There are in fact reports that IS is sending Western jihadist back to Europe to carry the fight to the West because they don't have any use for them in Syria. What do you do with pampered Europeans after all? And with dwindling income IS no longer has the resources to pay the high salaries that we'll keep the Westerners happy.

after 5 Years war will demographics decide the next 5 years.

The war will go on as long as the outside backers continue to send supplies. The Syrian civil war could even turn into a broader war drawing in neighboring countries. Turkey is already on the brink of entering the fray in earnest.

The war itself will not be decided by demographics or anything like that.

That's very true. The Muslim world is full of unemployed angry young men who may join the fighting for lack of anything else to do. Assad is even using a battalion of Afghans.

The war will be decided when the political climate changes aka when America and Russia strike a deal of any sort. (That is the most likely scenario)

Even if the US and the Russians were able to agree, which is far from certain, the question remains to what degree they can influence their allies. The Turks are known to resist US pressure and even Assad doesn't always do what Putin wants him to do. The Kurds are a wild card and may ally with the one or the other or even both at the same time. And Tehran isn't taking orders either form Moscow or from Washington. And who is going to reign in Saudi Arabia and the international financiers of Sunni terror?

The war has all the making of going on for a very long time or even spreading into a regional conflict.

The US can't even prevent its allies Turks and Kurds from fighting each other:

Brett McGurk ✔ @brett_mcgurk
DOD: We want to make clear that we find these clashes -- in areas where #ISIL is not located -- unacceptable and a source of deep concern.
10:05 AM - 29 Aug 2016

DOD: The United States was not involved in these activities, they were not coordinated with U.S. forces, and we do not support them.
10:06 AM - 29 Aug 2016

The fighting between Turks and Kurds may even give IS a new lease of life because the fight against IS largely depends on Kurdish fighters.

[Typhoon]

Regime change must always be judged on its merits. The way to aid Syrian development however is to help the Assad regime democratise by, supporting an independent Kurdistan and utterly cleansing its territory of every last Sunni Muslim terrorist and every Sunni Muslim terrorist fellow traveller, sympathiser, supporter or enabler.

I do not feel that Russia considers its Ukrainian intervention as regime change. If Russia was to perform regime change then it would legitimize such methods against itself, which is anathema for the Russian elite. Rather in Ukraine Russia's efforts are a calculated intervention to confound the outcome of Western meddling (regime change).

Foreign interventions certainly but it is not regime change but regime freeze that Russia attempts.

I agree that these interventions should be judged on their merits, its not yet clear if they will be as disastrous as recent Western adventures. What we can say is that Russia's policies will not result in a free Kurdistan or solve the problems which resulted in the Syrian civil war in the first place. That said Russia (with Iran) will annihilate the terrorist elements in the conflict and re-set to the pre-conflict state of Syria, for sure an improvement over the Western Libya 2.0.

The fighting between Turks and Kurds may even give IS a new lease of life because the fight against IS largely depends on Kurdish fighters.

The main fighting elements in the conflict against IS are the Iranian/Iraqi/Syrian governments and associated militia. The Kurdish assault on Manjib for me underlined the point that they have probably reached maximum extension. We know the Kurds are not going to attempt Mosul either for similar reasons.

[Atlantis]

The main fighting elements in the conflict against IS are the Iranian/Iraqi/Syrian governments and associated militia. The Kurdish assault on Manjib for me underlined the point that they have probably reached maximum extension. We know the Kurds are not going to attempt Mosul either for similar reasons.

The Iraqi army has been well supplied with US weapons. The Kurds haven't received anything on that scale. So we should at least expect the Iraqis to do some fighting instead of just running away. My guess is that they'll only take the city after it has been completely flattened by US bombardments.

However, in Syria, the US only has the Kurds to drive IS out of Raqqah. The Sunni rebels are not very dependable. But why should the Kurds fight for Raqqah if they are driven out of Manbij by the Turks? The Kurds would rightly consider that they would also be told to leave Raqqah after having conquered it.

[Igor Antunov]

Women are in war as usefull as children.

Granted, but child soldiers are still more useful than no soldiers, and it certainly looks much better using them than children.

[pikachu]

All evidence recently seems to point to the idea that a major deal has already been reached between Russia and Turkey regarding Syria. Otherwise, either Turkey would not be so brazen, or Russia would not be so agreeable. Despite the weight of the Turkish move, all that Russia expressed is "concern" - which is not even the same thing as opposition, let alone strong opposition that we could expect. "Concern" is the bare minimum and the formality they simply had to express given the situation, but nothing else followed. Instead, just yesterday Russia began to lift its sanctions on Turkey which it imposed last year over the downing of the Russian jet in Lattakia. Of course those "sanctions" are of a purely symbolical nature - which makes it all the more striking that Russia would choose to remove them now. I think it's safe to say that it wouldn't be doing so if it was even a little bit upset at the Turkish behavior. Now Putin is apparently also planning to visit Antalya in a couple of days for a friendly match and conversation with Erdogan. And here's what Lavrov had to say today about the Turkish conflict with YPG: "Lavrov said it was unacceptable to use the Kurds (who seek to establish a state of their own) to break up Syria, while Kerry pointed out that the U.S. had been working with the Kurdish forces "on a very limited basis". Against the backdrop of the military operation that Turkey launched this week in northern Syria, [...] the two ministers' statements look like support for Turkey, experts note." I think the signal is pretty clear: Russia is in agreement with what Turkey is doing.

If Russia and Turkey were not in agreement on this, I'd expect Russia by now to be calling up UNSC meetings to condemn the Turkish invasion, imposing further sanctions on Turkey, deploying more assets to the Middle East, and most of all - arming and supporting the YPG/SDF with everything Russia has to offer in attempt to make the Turkish adventure as painful as possible. Obviously that's not what we're seeing right now.

But since what Turkey is doing seems to empower the Turkish-backed rebels at the expense of ISIS and YPG (mostly YPG really), Turkey must have offered something to Russia as compensation. But the only thing Turkey could really offer Russia, and the only thing that Russia would really want from Turkey at this point, is for the latter to cease its support for the Idlib agglomeration. This kind of agreement between Turkey and Russia would make sense for both. Turkey ceases its support for the Al Qaeda emirate while Russia ceases its support for the PKK federation - and the two allow each other to hammer their respective enemies without interference from the other.

With this context in mind, the Kurdish behavior in Hassakah also becomes entirely explainable. They understood that they were going to be sold out as an expendable trading chip, and they acted preemptively to solidify their position. Anyone would have done the same in their situation. As far as Idlib goes - on the military side it is not yet apparent that Turkey is selling out the Idlib rebels, on the contrary, just today they managed to capture a significant village in North Hama. But diplomatically all signs are pointing in that direction. I think that the further Turkish-backed rebels advance in North Syria, the more likely we are to see serious problems start so emerge for the rebels in Idlib.

For Turkey the trade would even make sense from the military standpoint, because it is obviously not interested in occupying North Syria with its own forces. It needs the Syrian rebels to do the majority of the fighting, policing, and administration on its behalf - while Turkey just provides support, the same way that Russia, for example, provides support for the Syrian loyalists. But Turkey can't just pull more Syrian rebels out of a magic hat - if it could do that, it would have done that. If Turkey needs more Syrian rebels for North Aleppo, they will have to be drawn from other fronts, or more specifically from the Idlib fronts. So Turkey is probably going to start encouraging its proxies and puppets to leave the Idlib agglomeration and relocate to North Aleppo shortly, thus also leaving the Idlib area squarely in the hands of the Al-Qaeda alliance, diplomatically and militarily isolated. Which, by the way, may finally allow the US to start its own campaign against Al Qaeda as well.

Speaking of which:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/russia-close-reaching-syria-peace-agreement-160827041830873.html

Though to be honest, if Turkey sells out Idlib and al Nusra, would Russia even want the US to come in and start bombing Idlib at that point? It would look pathetic - Russia had been bombing the Idlib rebels for a year to little effect, then the US starts bombing and suddenly the whole agglomeration inexplicably starts collapsing. Yay, another easy victory for captain America. This would not be a good PR for the Russian military. On the other hand, obviously the American intervention against Nusra would have many advantages for Russia as well. I guess it all depends on what exactly the US asks for in return.

[JohnRawls]

Good Summary. It was obvious that there is a deal between Turkey and Russia because Russia didn't care much at all when the intervetion started. This simplifies the situation with the deal on several fronts by throwing the Kurds under the buss and satisfying the Turks. ( The Kurdish question is a primary concern for them while Assad is secondary. The coup changed Turkeys priorities). The Sauds and Iranians are the only parties that are hard to please. Currently the main question is the 'Assad' question and what Russia and the US will decide about Assad staying or going. SA can't accept Assad staying while Iran can't accept Assad leaving. US and Russia are ultimately more flexible in the Assad question. There is also a wildcard of Israel but they are not part of the negotiations. It is hard to judge what Israel really wants in this negotiations but it is likely that they are pro-Assad instead of somebody else since Assad is known quantity and quality.

[Zionist Nationalist]

Israel is not pro Assad. for Israel best scenario is that Syria will be like Afghanistan stuck for decades in a civil war

but a rebel victory is also better than Assad staying in power since we dont want Iran to expand its influence and the Rebels will not attack Israel and wont support Hezbollah

[anasawad]

LoL.
2 points.
First, you do realize that all major sides are literally willing to burn Syria to the ground with everything and everyone in it than letting the rebels win. right ?
So far the fight is to take back control over areas, not to actually destroy them.
Its alot easier to destroy than to control with minimum losses for structure and civilians.

second.
The fact that you still think Hezbollah is the biggest threat to Israel.


Ooh and BTW. weapons and drugs and supplies traffic through Syria in both ways is actually much easier and faster now with the civil war.
Before Assad was in full control, so you actually had to do political effort and give something to pass through. Basically do deals that benifit both sides.
Now, not only its easier to go through, but also, you got everyone counting on it going through. not just Assad, even the rebels, and heck even Islamists.