Here is a video of someone who was in Aleppo documenting events at the fall of Allepo, and is also discussing the White Helmets issue on the Jimmy Dore Show

Carla Ortiz Shocking Video From Syria Contradicts Corp. News Coverage

It is quite an interesting discussion, and reflects precisely what Col. Lang, TTG and other people have stated here ever since I started reading this site.

Thanx TTG.

IMHO the negotiations for the East Qalamoun pocket were critical since it overlooks the the M5 Hiway between Damascus and Homs. But even more importantly the Syrian Air Defenses will be much better when early warning radars are set up on the peaks there.

There is at least one suggestion that only part of the FSA in East Qalamoun will be evacuated, and the remainder will be inducted into a pro-Assad NDF: https://twitter.com/SyriaWa.... I'm speculating those will be al-Shaitat tribesmen as that tribe already has some pro-Assad militias. In any case they need to do a good vetting job.

Further north in the Hama pocket, I had thought the 11th Division was an armored unit of 2nd Corps and not NDF. But maybe not, the name changes and restructuring in the SAA is constantly changing. Hard to keep up with from my armchair.

We need someone on SST to keep track of the constantly changing OOB in Syria. Want the job?

PL -

Order of Battle is not in my skill set. Surely there are some former intel types following this blog that would jump at the chance.

Not Yet.

TTG - Thank you again for your comprehensive survey. Might I put in a query?

We know roughly what we're up to. Spoiling actions mostly, it seems, unless we can come up with some more gas attacks.. We know roughly what Syrians are after. Any idea how the Turks want it to end up or are they just winging it?

English Outsider,

I think the Turks reasonably see the Rojava Kurds as a threat especially given their support for the PKK in Turkey. Even a limited Kurdish autonomy within a SAR remains a threat. I think both Turkey and Syria would only settle for a limited Kurdish cultural autonomy rather than any kind of political or military for Rojava, although the Turks seem to want the Kurds to disappear altogether. Erdogan may want to keep Afrin and the Jarabulus area, but I don't think they'll stay in their OPs in Idlib once the R+6 deals with the jihadis in that zone.

For the Rojava Kurds, their best course of action would be to make peace with Damascus and integrate back into the SAR as soon as possible. They cannot stand if they pursue their dream of an independent Rojava. The US is doing them a great disservice, as usual, by not convincing them of this reality. For once, I wish we would follow through with the final stage of a US sponsored resistance movement... demobilization and reintegration into the national forces.

TTG - thank you for your reply..

Agree 100% with your last paragraph.

Regarding the Turkish enclave in Afrin and the Jarabulus triangle: I don't believe the Syrians will put up with that indefinitely. Sooner or later they are going to retake control there. Although they may well agree to and put up with the ethnic cleansing there, even though the Kurds have been in Afrin for a thousand years.

Thanks for the update TTG.

I don't doubt an attempt will be made to recover Idlib in due course. One big change in the dynamic between Syria + allies and Turkey is Erdogan's recent announcement re a (very) early election on June 24th. If Erdogan wins this, his power will be consolidated in the new role of executive president. I would therefore have thought that the best window of opportunity to move on Idlib (and deal with the Turkish OP's) is within the next 2 months. Erdogan is certainly not going to want open conflict with Russia on the campaign trail.

Also, as at least one other person pointed out here not so long ago, the set of OP's suffer from the same strategic weakness as the Maginot Line, i.e. they can be bypassed altogether - say via an attack from the SW. My bet would be we see them skirted & effectively sieged until the Turkish troops are forced to withdraw. The one on the Hama Aleppo road south of Khan Sheikhoun looks particularly exposed to an encirclement action to me - I trust they occupants have plenty of vitals stored up.

With the early elections in Turkey on June 24th the 2017 referendum comes into effect establishing the new executive presidency giving Erdogan wide powers. Given Erdogan's control of the media and popular sentiment from the Afrin operation I expect he will win. I doubt he will start any new adventures during the campaign season that could upset the current feelings of success.

In Idlib it looks like co-opt and covert is the priority in the struggle between HTS and the FSA. At some point I'd expect a referendum to join the SIG. Turkey won't invade without Russian approval and it may not have to. I'm sure the Russians want a larger buffer zone around Tartus or at least safety guarantees, the Syrians at a minimum want more security around Latakia and the M5 back as agreed originally at Astana, and Turkey wants to incorporate an FSA controlled Idlib into it's newly forming country stretching from Idlib/Afrin/Euphrates Shield plus address the rights of the displaced turkmen. If Russia approves FSA control of Idlib, Syria will have to comply, as in Afrin, as they cannot take on Turkey at this point.

An interesting article, in-depth on Idlib -

https://warontherocks.com/2...
.

1. It's an interesting and informative article but I don't understand this sentence -

" All parties seem to agree, for now, that a scorched earth all-out assault on Idlib province does not promise to secure the desired objectives. That agreement may erode over time, or be disintegrated by aggressive actions by the Assad regime and Iran, but it is the dynamic at play today."

Who might be mediating a 'scorched earth all-out assault"? Us, the Syrians, the Turks, a Jihadist faction, or some combination?

2. I can find no reference in the War on the Rocks article to the presence of Uighur fighters settled in the area.

There are many reports of these settlements including this:-

http://www.atimes.com/chine...

("The report estimated that there were around 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese Uyghurs living in Syria, especially concentrated in Zanbaq and Jisr al Shughour, thereby changing the demographics of Idlib province.[1]")

Nor is there reference to other Jihadists coming from outside Syria. Nor to the Turkish irregular fighters. Are there any of the latter in Idlib?

3. That aside, it's difficult to tell whether this article is written by an expert who's finding out what's on the ground in Idlib, or by an expert who is fitting what's on the ground into a Western narrative -

" That external threat is compounded by a Syrian mainstream opposition now openly critical and frequently hostile to HTS’s overbearing influence and aggression."

"In addition to its alleged covert activities, Turkey is also heavily involved in backing a very public revival of the Syrian Interim Government (SIG), under the leadership of heart surgeon Jawad Abu Hatab. By itself, the SIG has no means to compete with HTS, but with Turkish encouragement, political and financial support, and considerable logistical assistance, the SIG has built an intimate relationship with the complete spectrum of Syria’s mainstream opposition. Those relationships have resulted in the formation of a unified army structure in northern Aleppo (created on Oct. 24) and extensive negotiations for a national structure to coordinate the armed opposition’s future."

"Nusra achieved some legitimacy after several years of demonstrating its apparent loyalty to the broader, national Syrian cause, but this rapidly eroded when JFS and HTS were seen as prioritizing their own self-interest over the interests of the collective anti-Assad opposition."

"HTS’s creation had therefore helped clarify a line drawn between those loyal to a more “black” jihadist vision for Syria (who joined HTS) and those who, despite their Islamic conservatism, were determined to prioritize the Syrian revolution’s “green” nature."

'Syrian Mainstream Opposition', fighters attached to 'the broader national Syrian cause', the 'Green nature' of the 'Syrian Revolution', 'the collective anti-Assad opposition' - these are all terms I have frequently seen applied in the past to the Idlib Jihadists. Would these fighters be related at all to the 70,000 'moderate rebels' Mr Cameron informed us were awaiting our assistance in Syria? Or are they standard issue Jihadists that we're trying to manicure into a respectable opposition we can respectably support?

It is an interesting and informative article but I'd like to know what information it's conveying. Could I therefore ask, is this information about what the Western Powers want us to see in Idlib, or is it information about what really is in Idlib?

English Outsider -

It might be smart for Uighurs in Jisr al-Shugour to move elsewhere soon. According to an alMasdarNews article Turkey has given the SAA and the Russians a green light for Jisr al-Shughour offensive. And the same for the al-Ghab Plain just south of there. Apparently many rocket and drone attacks on Latakia were initiated from that area. Not sure I understand though why the SAA needs a greenlight from Turkey to reclaim control of Syrian land.

Thank you, Far North Solitude and Eugene Owens for those informative details.

As for Charles Lister, I'm feeling my way here and please tell me if I'm wrong, but he seems to me to be a decidedly superior grade of apologist. He's working at a fairly high level.

At the lower level - the one for me and most of the public - there are the TV and press reporters. These really only set out and embellish the official narrative.

But that more simplistic official narrative is chiefly there to appeal to our emotions. The message is fairly crude: Assad is terrorising his people, some brave fighters against dictatorship need our help, we must intervene to stop this dreadful carnage.

That's sufficient for most of us because we have little time to look further.

I'd guess that such as Charles Lister provide the more detailed narrative for those who do look further. He is not working at the popular level but at think tank, maybe even academic level. It would be interesting to talk to him and ask him whether he genuinely believes the narrative he shapes.

Interesting but not that important. Whether he's deliberately misleading us or whether he believes his own story his function is essentially the same as those working on the lower, popular level. Putting lipstick on the pig.

Seems to me that pig is going to need a hell of a lot more lipstick as more and more facts about the true state of affairs in Syria emerge.

Great questions that I don't know the answer to. The author is Charles Lister -

"Charles Lister is a senior fellow and Director of the Extremism and Counterterrorism Program at the Middle East Institute.
Lister is a frequent source of briefings on the Syrian insurgency to political, military and intelligence leaderships in the United States and across Europe and the Middle East. He appears regularly on television media, including CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera, and his articles have been widely published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, among others."

So I assumed a western perspective and that he was referring to FSA going all out against HTS.

http://www.mei.edu/profile/...

The Uighur info is interesting. Also - Turkman Mountain is in Latakia and Northwestern Idlib has always had a Turkman population but their was some ethnic shuffling in the region.

Recent map of Idlib - HTS/FSA

https://twitter.com/search?...

And this one shows faction by faction - including the Uighurs i.e. Turkistan Islamic Party.

https://twitter.com/search?...

More about East Qalamoun
Some details of #SAA’s confiscation ( from 24 Resistance Axis )

3 h24 in East #Qalamoun:
48 000 Tank projectiles
42 000 Artillery projectiles
6,800 Grad missiles
1,400 Konkurs missiles
8 Cobra missiles
36 Scud missiles
12 Katyusha / BM-21 launchers
38+ Tanks*

Djihadists have even built an iron track for handling inside their ammo depots !

Am I right in assuming that most of this weaponry is from arms that are washing around in the ME that have no certain provenance and can be attributed to no particular supply chain?

Even if so, does some of it match up with End-user Certificates elsewhere thus enabling the supply chain to be at least partly identified.

Could I ask if any work has been done on this and the results published?

OE
If you have not seen it this may be of interest.
https://southfront.org/trac...
There is also a long audio interview with the journalist I listened to at the time and she seemed very credible having instant recall of vast quantaties of data she had accumulated.

Eugene Owens What are you referring to about the link?

PL -

The page linked to was embedded in the comment. That was not my intent. In the past if you typed in a URL then there was just a hyperlink to the other document that jumped to that URL when clicked on.

I presently have this feature turned on in Disqus.

Sorry about that link. Was that me or does DISQUS treat all links like that.

Also, my comment should have read "al-Shaitat tribesman" and NOT 'al-Shaita' without the T.

Did I manage to correct it via the edit function?

there is elections in Turkey in June, which is a last ditch attempt by Erdogan to keep his grip in the country. There is good reason to think that this time, he will fail as most people realized that he would be end of Turkey as a country, just like hubristic Enver Pascha was the end of Ottoman empire: So, even among islamists there is resistance to his rule.

If he is removed from the power, the next Turkish government will absolutely withdraw from Syria, leave the control of Turkish occupied territories to Syrian government, and seal the border to prevent jihadist infiltration to Turkey.

If he stays in power, then his hands will be full with a full-blown economic crisis (the main reason for snap election: to get re-elected before crisis hits). Under these conditions, he wouldn't dare to confront Syrian army without air cover.