At A Calvary Near The Afrin* - Round Two of Syria's War Has Begun
Map of military situation in Afrin canton
https://maps.southfront.org/military-situation-in-afrin-area-on-february-13-2018-syria-map
Source: SouthFront.org
Turkey's illegal invasion of Northern Syria that started on 20 January should come as no suprise. It has been a long time in coming. Turkey's president, RecipErdogan, the inveterate gambler that he is, has thrown his armed forces, and maybe his future, into the maelstrom of the Syrian conflict. This new development can be said to mark the beginning of round two of this bloody war. It also signals the failure of Russian peace making efforts and almost guarantees that the war in Syria will roll into the next decade.
Round two of this multi-faceted conflict threatens further bloodshed on a biblical scale as the former enemies of Isis face off against each other in a three way stand off for control of this strategically placed country. In one corner we have the neo-Ottoman ambitions of Recip Erdogan the Bonarpartist leader of Turkey who is playing the nationalist card for all it is worth with elections coming up in 2019. In the home corner we have Bashar Al Assad and his Shia allies along with his trump card in the shape of Russian support. Last but by no means least, we have the 3 Kurdish cantons in Northern Syria whose leadership see the present crisis as the best opportunity in a lifetime for Kurdish home rule.
Turkey's onslaught upon the Kurds has not just been confined to Northern Syria. The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) have also illegally entered Northern Iraq and have bombed Kurdish military positions in the Zap, Avasin, Basyan and Hakurk regions. Not surprsingly, Assad's government has condemned Turkey's invasion as has its shia ally Iran.
To many ordinary people in the West the war in Syria seems like a confusing mish mash of events while war crimes seem to committed on a regular basis with impunity. The sad reality is that Syria and Iraq over the last 7 years have been the battleground for a proxy war between US imperialism and its Sunni allies and the Sunni crescent led by Tehran with Moscow's tacit support.
In round one of this conflict we had the American project to topple Assad. This was with the active connivance of Turkey and the Gulf dictatorships who have supplied billions of dollars in weapons and supplies to the scores of genocidal sunni terrorist groups ranging from Al-Qaeda and Isis to Aharar Al Sham.
This attempt to overthrow Assad would have led to the de facto partition of Syria if it had been successful and would left the US one domino closer to an attack upon Iran. It helped forge a Shia alliance between Assad, Baghdad, Hezbollah and Tehran. What the US and its allies never counted upon was the entry of a newly resurgent Russia into the fray. This factor was a turning point that put paid to the plan to topple the Assad regime.
During 2017 we saw the gradual demise of the Isis caliphate in Syria and Iraq which represented the final nail in the coffin of the project to overthrow the Assad regime. Alongside this, we saw the fracturing of the anti-Assad coalition and former friends become deadly enemies. Saudi Arabia turned upon former ally Qatar, a major supporter of Sunni terrorist groups in Syria while Turkey also jumped ship and sent military support to Qatar while becoming ever distant from its NATO ally in Washington.
Since then several of the key players in this regional proxy war have come to reappraise their strategy and tactics in the Syrian conflict.
The United States has been torn between arming various Sunni groups such as the FSA and Al Qaeda, which has gone through various rebrands and now goes under the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham brand, and building up the forces of the Kuridh led Syrian Democratic Front (SDF). During 2012-2015 the CIA with Saudi financial support facilitated the shipping of thousands of tonnes of heavy weapons through Turkey to help bring about the overthrow of Assad's regime. The Russian intervention in October 2015 altered the balance of forces on the battlefield and led to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) gaining the upper hand aginst Isis, Al Qaeda and their allies.
This has forced the US to reassess its options in Syria. The overarching goal of toppling Assad never went away. However, Russia's involvement has forced the US to accept for now that Assad is safe in power. Despite this, the Pentagon has decided that if it can't have Assad's head on a platter just yet then it will settle for the parititon of Syria and the subsequent destabilisation of the region which will it hopes will weaken the Shia crescent particularly its main sponsor in Iran.
You may ask: how is the Pentagon to achieve this ambitious goal? While billions were poured into toppling Assad via the genocidal Sunni terrorists it came to the notice of the Pentagon that one of the most effective groups on the Syrian battlefiled were the military forces of the Syrian Kurds in the shape of the YPG and YPJ. The Pentagon gradually began to build up ties with the leadership of the Kurdish cantons in Northern Syria. The YPG and YPJ were given a makeover and rebranded the Syrian Democratic Forces to dispel the belief that the Kurds were taking over whole swathes of eastern Syria.
In return for US arms, military training along with US aircover the Kurdish leadership have allowed their forces to become an American proxy on the ground. During 2015-2017 the YPG and YPJ pushed the forces of Isis from Northern Syria right down into south eastern Syria on the eastern side of the Euphrates river.
Map of areas captured by YPG/YPJ from Isis
https://maps.southfront.org/military-situation-in-syria-on-february-6-2018-map-update/
source: SouthFront.org
During their military operations against Isis the SDF has made it clear that it will not return any of the territory it has taken from Isis to the control of Assad's government. Besides this, it has vitirolically denounced any attempt by the SAA to take territory on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Aldar Khalil, a leading Kurdish politician in Northern Syria has made it very clear that any attempt by Assad's forces to recover territory controlled by the SDF would receive a brutal reply,“all its forces will be killed”.
Last weeks attack upon SAA forces on the eastern bank of the Euphrates by the U.S. military is a bloody reminder that the U.S. will not permit Assad's forces to encroach upon any territory controlled by its Kurdish proxy.
Buoyed up by such U.S. military action and declarations from Trump's administration that the US has no intention of removing its troops from SDF controlled areas the Kurdish leadership in Syria is proceeding with its plans for autonomy from the Dasmascus government. These plans in effect amount to de facto independnce for the 3 Kurdish cantons in Northern Syria commonly known as Rojava. In December 2017 US Defence Secretary James Matiss made it clear that the United States presence in Syria will expand to include a large contingent of civilian contractors whose focus will be on rebuilding and stabilising the Kurdish controlled areas. He has warned Assad's government that any attack upon the Kurds would be a ''mistake''.
Not surpsrisingly, Assad's government has responded to this by declaring that "All those who work for a foreign country, mainly those under American command are traitors”. The Turkish attack upon the Kurdish canton of Afrin must be music to the ears of Assad's government even as it denounces Erdogan's illegal invasion of his country. On the other hand, Assad feels threatened by Turkey's ever deeper encroachment into his country and has allowed the SDF to reinforce its forces in Afrin by allowing the transfer troops through SAA controlled territory.
2017 was a good year for Syria's president as his armed forces wrested control of all of the country's major cities and slowly pushed Isis down to the south eastern border with Iraq. Assad faces many challenges over the coming year. There is the genocidal jihadi hotbed in Idlib province to eliminate while it tries to squeeze and reduce numerous pockets of resistance such as East Ghouta near Damascus. The Syrian government will be keen to focus its energies upon reducing the jihadi terror groups while trying to restore basic amentities such a s water and electricity to all the areas it controls.
Arguably, a much bigger headache for Assad are the Kurdish controlled areas of eastern Syria and the Turkish military zone in the north of the country. To take back these areas Assad will have to play ball with the Russian sponsored peace process. He is aware that his army is too overstretched to take back the Kurdish areas by force and that the U.S. would step in to oppose such action.
However, Assad has recently received an unexpected New Year present in the form of the jihadi manpad attack that brought down a Russian warplane in Idlib province. You may ask well how is a good thing for Assad? In December 2017 Putin announced that Russian forces in Syria were to be slowly wound down and returned home. Putin has an election coming and he would no doubt dearly love to tell the electorate that the expensive Syrian venture is drawing to a close. The shooting down of the Russian warplane has provoked a strong response from Russia which has heavily bombed jihadi groups in Idlib and used ship launched crusie missiles aginst their positions. Russia has sent numerous special forces units to join the fight in Syria.
It remains to be seen if Russia can maintian its current delicate balancing act of trying to keep the wild card Erdogan on board with the Astana ''peace'' accords and trying to avoid any confrontation with the Kurds and their American sponsors. On top of this, Russia is keeping a relativley low profile when it comes to Israel's recent spate of attacks upon SAA military facilitites near the capital Dasmascus. Putin clearly wants out of the Syrian quagmire yet he cannot afford to not support his ally in Damascus as the downfall of Assad would bring the threat of jihadi terrorism closer to Russia's borders. Hence his efforts on promoting peace initiatives at Astana and Sochi.
Assad too, clearly does not want a military confrontation with the Kurds or Tukey. Sadly, it looks like events could well force his overstretched forces to fight former ''allies''. Over the coming year. By allies I mean they once allegedly shared a common fight against Isis. This brings us to Turkey's role in this Middle Eastern game of thrones.
When the project to topple Assad looked like it was gaining ground during 2014-2015 Turkey was more than happy to buy oil from Isis at bargain basement prices while letting Sunni jihadis pour across its border into Syria. Turkey's shooting down of a Russian military jet in Novemeber 2015 was a serious mistake that forced Erdogan to eat some humble pie and eventually apologise to Putin. This combined with several other factors have led Erdogan to reevaluate his Syrian strategy.
America's increasing military support for the Kurdish led SDF and its support for the 2016 coup attempt have led the Turkish leader to heavily criticise his NATO ally. Meanwhile, the Saudi split with Qatar was the final nail in his previous support of the U.S. led coalition to overthrow Assad. Erdogan now feels that he can trust no one and has been relatively successful playing off Russia and America against each other. Turkey appears keen to keep a foot in both camps while being committed to neither.
Besides, geo-political issues Erdogan is driven by Turkey's many economic problems, voter unhappiness with the purges following the failed coup in 2016, a Kurdish insurgency in the south east of the country and a large fall in the birth rate while having 3 million Syrian refugees in his country. To top it all off, Erdogan is feeling the pressure of looming parliamentary and presidential elections in November 2019.
Turkey's first incursion into Syria in August 2016 went very well and its armed forces carved out a large zone of control that prevented the Kurdish canton of Afrin from linking up with the cantons of Jazira and Kobani in the north east of the country. For the Neo-Ottoman leaders of Turkey's government the creation of a Kurdish state on their southern border represents an existential threat that has to be extinguished. Now with a multitude of problems facing him Erdogan has decided to take the ultimate gamble by throwing the Turkish Armed Forces into the Syrian maelstrom.
Only time will tell if this gamble pays off. Turkish armed forces have made slow but steady progress against the Kuridish milititas in Afrin canton while taking fairly heavy casualties. At he latest count over 31 Turkish soldiers have been killed in action in Afrin canton.
The recent crash of global stock markets carries many risks for Turkey which has been reliant upon a huge injection of credit by the government to keep its economic growth going. If bond and stock markets continue to fall over the coming year then Turkey's economy will pay a heavy price as its credit bubble bursts leading to rising inflation, unemployment and business bankruptcies. This is just one of many factors that could put a spoke in Erdogan's plans in Syria which are partly geared to helping him win the 2019 elections.
The power struggle going on between the various actors in the conflict will drag on for some time to come. The present situation contains within it many dangers of the crisis escalating to open conflict between Damascus and Turkey and/or Damascus and the Kurds.
Developments in the global economy could well play a decisive role in how the various actors play their hands over the next year. A new world recession much more profound and severe than 2008 looms. If it transpires then the regional and super powers may have to reevaluate their commitment to this terrible conflict. In both World War One and in the Vietnam War the major powers enagaged in a war of attrition that led to economic crisis and political upheaval that helped bring those conflicts to an end.
The United Nations and world community stand by passively impotent while the Syrian people experience golgotha every day. The least we can all do is bear witness to this terrible tragedy and remind ourselves that war cannot and never will solve the problems of humanity.
- refers to the river Afrin that runs through the Afrin canton in Northern Syria
Sources:
Al Masdar News
SouthFront.org
Al Monitor News
Robert Fisk's articles for The Independent
Rudaw – a Kurdish media network
https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/01/new-us-strategy-will-keep-american-troops-syria
http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/10022018
https://www.csis.org/analysis/losing-every-direction-arab-game-thrones
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/raghida-dergham/a-new-american-strategy-i_b_14698080.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/08/politics/us-syria-battle-trump-strategy/
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2017-12-13/putins-plan-syria
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE200/PE236/RAND_PE236.pdf
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html
Detailed and well reasoned post. Upvoted and followed. Will read more of your earlier posts as time permits
Thank you for your support. It makes all the time and effort researching and writing worth it when you get such positive feedback.
I have a different opinion, Its only a conspiracy theory that US helped Al-Qaeda. The main Al-Qaeda group was eliminated by US coalition attacks. Al-Nusra fought and kicked out every pro-US group in Idlib, even they attacked pro-Turk groups. Even Al-Nusra's top leadership other than Joulani was also killed by US-coalition airstrikes. Russian couldn't kill those leaders because Russia have a way less target bombing policy than US. I have no sympathy for any power but I just want to present the facts.
Please check this link as it shows almost all of Al-Qaeda figures were killed by US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorasan_group
See my post and vote my last 3 post and I will upvote you 100% in one hour.... No reply
ok thanks for the support
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