Image is of Assad and his family.
After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.
Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah's resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria's collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like "this is bad" and "Assad is fucking up"; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.
There is still too much that we don't know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah's assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.
What is certain is that Assad's time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
I'm not a westener nor do I live in a western country. It feels in many ways like a repeat of Bangladesh. People thinking based epic chungus Yunus will fix all the problems.
Is Bangladesh free from unemployment? Of course not. Their new Government has decided to cut the budget due to high interest payments combined with controls on deficits.
(Hasina wasn't even remotely as repressive as Assad btw, I'm not saying that. But she did have her skeletons, see "Aynaghor")
This is projection, nobody is treating this event as a fantasy or a movie more than bloodthirsty liberals.
GaddafiAssad is a butcher, while you can tell our guys are the heroes because the media always calls them rebels, like in star wars. Yay we win! Time to go on x dot com and find a way to paint being opposed to this as racist. Ah, why bother with all that work? I'll just reach down into my subconscious, take the thing I know on some level I'm doing but have justified to myself, and apply it to the other! Genius!No I will not check back up later on the country in question to see how it's going, I might see something that endangers my worldview.
Typing this out took me back to 2022, when the Ukraine movie was being presented as going well for them, and has made me fucking sick all over again to remember how fucking smug and racist and gleefully sadistic liberals all got. Passing close-up drone snuff footage back and forth like a bunch of channers to guffaw at the death throes of the stupid orcs. Fuck these boneless shapeshifting nothing-creatures, hell is too genuine an experience to be wasted on beings so empty.
I mean my thinking is let syrians be happy (i assume they won’t read anything here, so my fears wouldn’t dampen their mood). And assad anti-imperialism is more like letting anti-imperialism happen, not doing anything.
We have to wait and see what those people would do. My read is jolani is some ruthless motherfucker. But what would be his policies outside of good vibes I don’t know. Is he completely accepting turkey rule? Will he become qatari puppet? Is he as bothered by drugs as taliban, or is religion stuff just a mask to gain power? Is tolerance current media speak, or has he realized he can’t cut his way through all minorities of syria?
That’s all aside, it just looks bad when for next months will have news of prison liberation, who will be some Isis shitheads, but some - pflp members in unspeakable conditions.
Realistically they’ll likely turn to jordan/egypt, countries where never nothing ever happens to any opposition ever and israel is great friend, and when they do - it would be time to criticize. But even route to this arrangement is unknown
Considering he was the second-in-command of ISIS in Syria, I assume his policies are gonna be to copy Raqqa between 2014-2017 and apply it to the rest of Syria, so basically heads on pikes in public squares, fascist psychos like this don't mellow out with age, they just get worse
I mean everyone is asking will "former" ISIS jihadists stop being jihadists, and the answer is a resounding no, right now they're stretched out over the whole country and sorting thru the loot, but once the consolidation solidifies shit is gonna turn ugly and firm words from Turkish intelligence and Qatari emirs isn't gonna stop it
Realistically yes. But maybe he is a power-hungry guy who goes with the flow (oh look isis holds third of syria, i'm isis now, oh look isis bad, i'm a very different hts now), and then extrapolation is complete unknown. Maybe he installs puppet government from opposition, and becomes like hezbollah (real military power with limited official presence). Or maybe he installs his people instead of assad's people to collect taxes and absolutely nothing changes structurally. Or maybe he reveals his power level, and installs salafi (is he?) social order with women suppression and stuff. Or maybe turkish forces get rolled over in a prelude to civil war. Or maybe usa recognizes kurdistan to stick it to turkey (unlikely with trump, but who knows), and then syria is still fucked without friendly iran oil shipments.
I think it's all realistic scenarios, and which one he is difficult to predict. Or as i've said they become second pakistan/egypt, shadowy military government, training "insurgents" against enemies of usa, where nothing ever happens with any politics ever.
New Bangladesh government is letting religious Extremists attack minorities. Yunnus is clearly pro radical Islam. They're not going up.