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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Last week's thread is here.
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.
That would invite the wrath of the US upon HTS and the Americans would begin pressuring the Qatari paymasters and Turkish Intelligence to either discipline HTS or break ties and it would make the Americans more accepting (than they already are) of Israeli land grabs
The whole future of Syria is a difficult thread to needle. But HTS has already said they a) don't think Israel's landgrabs are a priority, and b) announced 'free market reforms'. This is code for 'the Qatari-Turkey-Europe pipeline is happening'. Remember, that pipeline is the reason why the west was ready to coup Assad years before the Arab Spring was even a thing. HTS is also positioning itself as anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran, so that's another bargaining chip.
Add all of these together and HTS can be a compliant government of Syria while at the same time having good reason to give Russia an inch - Israel just invaded it and bombed the entire fucking country. In this scenario neither Turkey nor Syria would be pressured to do even more to comply.
There is no pipeline
Who in their right mind would make a pipeline in the year of our lord 2024, lng happened, europe builds terminals for it out of a wazoo, why lose margin and freedom of trade on giant physical infrastructure?
They're still importing russian energy through Turkey and Azerbaijan, why not import Qatari energy as well? The EU just announced an FTA with Mercosur. The whole point of which is to swamp us here in South America with their industrialized goods. Now the Chinese are investing here, so if Europe can't get its act together in terms of energy prices we might end up exporting industrialized goods to them instead.
i understand why turkey or europe would want it. Why on earth qatar, saudi arabia and usa would want it?
I can even see it becoming kinda like the line, ever been built never completed. But no way it will work
The Line is just science fiction, a pipeline is not comparable to that. Its something that can actually be built.
Qatar would be the ones making money, together with some transit fees for Turkey and Syria. Saudi isn't really in a position to block anything. And the US gets to have Qatar undercut some of Russia's energy dominance. Americans also make money regardless of who's selling what to whom by virtue of controlling the international financial system. It might be a different set of Americans, sure, but the only people whose profit margins really go down are those European elites who made bank by owning the private monopolies that imported all that american LNG.
But they crucially would be making less money and/or lesser margins. us wants to sell expensive gas to europe, not cheap gas to europe. Especially under republicans. They took dimview of nordstream, they would take same view of qatar pipeline. That's putting aside that syrian and saudi desert are not a safe place, one cool guy with a shovel can explode it.
All american behavior is indicates desire to milk europe, be it energy stuff or medical care or military stuff.
They took a dim view of Nordstream because American foreign policy has, for a century now, demanded that there be no permanent joiner of russian resources with german industry. A qatari pipeline by comparison is American power. It's american economic power as the americans control the financial system through which the gas is sold. It's American military power as, you said it yourself, the desert is not a safe place (great reason to have a bunch of American bases everywhere). It's American diplomatic power because it undercuts Russia's energy exports.
The Americans did not go to war over algerian, azeri, qatari, saudi and so on exports to Europe. They went into hybrid warfare against Iranian and Russian exports because those are enemies of empire. They went to war against Libya once it threatened Euro-American finance but not beforehand.
There is more than one way to extract tribute from your clients. And if the Americans want Europe to start paying up for medical care or military stuff, then they won't mind making money off of a qatari pipeline that helps keep European payments viable in the first place.
That's all true, but remember when it comes to Russia, the US is in full maximalist mode and I can see them pressuring Turkey and Qatar to replace HTS with the SNA
I don't think there is such thing as replacing the HTS with the SNA. The latter is directly controlled by Turkey, the former is a Turkish ally and they are both joined at the hip with each other as well.
What the US might do is make the SDF's retreat from non kurdish areas (and the syrian oilfields) contingent on the Russians leaving Tartus after all. But that play is becoming more and more untenable together with the SDF's control of the northeast. First Deir Ezzor then Raqaa, you have syrian arab regions with protests being dispersed with guns. If the local councils keep flipping, the SDF will soon find itself more and more isolated, enforced only by their alliance with the US.
If the SDF's position keeps deteriorating, that only gives the US more incentive to either bring HTS in line or rip the SNA out of Turkey's hands, otherwise they'll have to start building another faction from scratch out of Al-Tanf
To achieve what, exactly? Instability is not an end goal in and of itself. It's a means to an end. And one end the Americans do not want is to see an unstable Syria turning into an Iranian smuggling route.
Personally I assume that the American priorities are the gas pipeline (to undercut Russia) and blockading Hezbollah (to undercut it and Iran). Getting Russia out of Tartus is a nice third objective. HTS is willing to give the Americans at least 2/3 objectives. At that point the Americans could turn to Turkey and say 'if HTS kicks Russia out of Tartus, we'll force the SDF to join the new government'. Either way the Americans win without having to confront the zionist invasion in southern Syria.
The American priority are the Russian ports, the pipe dream is just that, a Gulf-Turkish dream, and one that could compete with American LNG dominance
The Americans support Israeli land grabs, tho it doesn't pay to say that out loud, at least not yet, isolating Hezbollah and kicking the Russian military out of the Middle East trumps any other consideration
Erdoğan is actually in dangerous waters, the US and Israelis may feel it's time for a Turkish "correction" if Turkey starts feeling it's oats a little too much over this victory, the US doesn't have the rabid anti-Kurdish brain worms that animates Turkish intelligence, and the continuing deterioration of the SDF is a soft US red line meeting a hard Turkish red line
But if the SDF falls and the Turkish and Qatari jihadists get out of hand and start believing they're something more than a client state for the US and Israel, then the US is gonna destabilize the destabilizers
And if the american priority is the Russian ports, then they can still achieve that via the already very compliant HTS. Al-Tanf, SDF, SNA or whatever, none of these groups can be more compliant than HTS. The only reason the Russians keeping the port is even in the cards is because of Israel's actions. Washington will pretend otherwise, but they know this.
I don't think the US and the Israelis will feel the need to go against Turkey because nothing Turkey is doing goes against their interests. Wether the Turks reunify Syria or get their syrian KRG, the deal will be sealed through backdoor negotiations that already include the Americans. In fact the US recently went out of their way to say that the Turks do have a 'right to make sure terrorist organizations don't threaten it from across the border' (I'm paraphrasing). That's massive alignment right there.
Both of these vectors feed into each other. The Turks want an end to a nationalist SDF (they are already half of the way there). HTS/Al-Tanf/South Command/SNA don't want an SDF that controls arab majority areas or the oil fields (they are a fourth of the way there). The Americans want to completely shut the Russians and the Iranians out of Syria (they are two thirds of the way there). I am willing to bet that all of these objectives are complementary and being achieved in concert.