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.
Israel is currently undertaking one of the largest offensive air operations in it's entire history in Syria, bombing basically any piece of SAA/ex SAA military equipment, research facilities (both civilian and military), military bases and installations, weapons caches and ammunition caches, air defence systems, tanks, fighter jets, naval assets, ports, factories, etc. All that equipment that the HTS captured from the SAA is turning to ashes at this moment, all across the country. Israel is striking as far east as Hasaka, launching over 300 airstrikes in the past few hours. 150 airstrikes were reported yesterday. The United States is, as expected, providing assistance, flying MQ-4C ISR recon drones over the coast of Syria and Lebanon. Israeli ground forces are also in the Damascus countryside and 20km/12.5mi away from Damascus city itself. It's a disastrous situation, one that's was entirely predictable should the government of Syria fall.
I made a comment a few months ago about how the SAAs air defence systems, including S-300 PMU-1's supplied by Russia, S-200s, Tor and Pantsir point air defence systems, were the only things in Syria preventing a large scale air attacks from Israel, and the skies of Syria turning into the skies of Lebanon and Gaza. Yes Israel could conduct air strikes into Syria, but those required extensive effort and planning, and were only done on a small scale, nothing like what is happening now. Some were dismissive of my comment given that Israel could conduct these limited strikes. But it unfortunately seems that I was right, now that those air defence systems no longer exist or have operators, Israel has free reign over the skies of Syria and are conducting some of the largest air operations in their history... The Syrian state infrastructure is being completely dismantled.
Yeah
I'd love to hear pro-NATO milblogger types try to explain why Israel didn't bomb Syria like this before, without admitting that Russian air defense systems work quite well.
I mean Israel could have, in theory, carried out a large scale prolonged SEAD/DEAD operation to take them out, involving standoff weapons. Like NATO did to Iraq in the first Gulf War. But that would have meant all out war against Syria, aircraft losses for Israel, breaking agreements with Russia with their presence in Syria, and likely direct US involvement. Israel lost 1 F-16 to an S-200 in Syria before, and their reaction to that was completely over the top.
Which is why it never happened. The effort required to do that was way too high when compared to any potential benefit. And a lot of times that's what preventing attacks comes down to, any defence will likely be breached inevitably by a highly motivated adversary, the point is to make it difficult enough for them not to try, and to be more well defended than your neighbours, so you don't get picked on as the weakest link.
That seems like a losing fight for Israel
I guess we’ll never find out if the Syrian SAMs did shoot down that Israeli F-35 back in 2017 (Israel claimed ‘bird strike’), but if that was did the case, it’d explain why Israel had been so careful with their bombings in Syria in recent years. Now it’s open season. There is nothing to stop them now.
Yeah Israel is going to bomb whatever they want, and grab as much land as they want now, there is nothing that can stop them. Russia is withdrawing (last night two An-124 aircraft, the largest cargo aircraft in the world, left Latakia and were last tracked over Egypt last night), Iran is withdrawing, Hezbollah has been hit hard, the SAA no longer exist, the SDF are reliant on the USA, and Turkey is not going to stop this, this HTS and SNA takeover is their plan after all.
Israel are setting the conditions for the new Syrian state, de-militirising it and striking their advanced facilities. They are showing us what capabilities they will allow the new Syria to have with every bomb that is dropped.
"Israel" unleashes hell across Syria with over 250 airstrikes since fall of Damascus | The Cradle
I think it's also pretty plausible that they are getting coperation from/coordinating with Russia in targeting a lot of this stuff, as well.
Depends on what, but I wouldn't think so for this level of extensive strikes, those could kill any Russian advisors who have not withdrawn yet. Russians are probably telling them what not to hit so that their military service members still stuck on some airflied in the middle of the desert don't die. Here's what the Russian Air Force linked, and ex Russian fighter pilot who participated in Syria run, FighterBomber telegram channel had to say on the situation earlier today:
what is this, a tweet to elon musk after the EMTs pulled your failsons corpse from the creek your cybertruck drove itself into?
Badly translated Russian sarcasm I guess. My interpretation is that no one died yet, byt that it's possible, and the "they can die/be killed a little" is sarcasm.