More than 400 militants of the Turkish-backed Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement and its allies arrived in the Turkish-occupied area of Afrin after withdrawing from all of their positions in the western Aleppo countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on January 6.
The Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement lost its battle with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in a very humiliating way. The group’s militants were not able to resist for more than few days, while the leaders run away to Turkey.
According to the UK-based monitoring group, another 100 militants are expected to withdraw from the town of Atarib to Afrin in the upcoming few hours as HTS is currently deploying its forces inside the town. The radical group forced Thuwar al-Sham and Byariq al-Islam groups, which controlled the town, to surrender after a quick battle a day earlier.
Syrian opposition activists released a video showing dozens of vehicles and heavy weapons which were abandoned by the Turkish-backed militants on the road to Afrin. HTS had announced that its fighters managed to capture many battle tanks and armored vehicles from the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement.
Some photos, which were published on social media platforms by locals, also show HTS fighters burning the so called “revolution flag” and stepping on it in the former positions of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement and its allies in western Aleppo.
Click to see full-size image
Click to see full-size image
HTS’ attack on the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement was an example of how the radical group, which served as the main branch of al-Qaeda in Syria for years, is taking advantage of the current ceasefire in northwestern Syria to expand its control. Local observers believe that the group’s next target will be the remaining Turkish-backed militants in the southern Idlib countryside.
It looks more like a “merger” then the real battle. Rats joins the most powerful group or the highest bidder…
like a fixed game yes.
This “development” is good…. if HTS takes over of whole Idlib. It will give perfect excuse to Russia and Syria to clean up Idlib out of jihad terrorists and not having much complaints from Turks or from the others protectors of terrorists.
exactly!!
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE :
“Syria Withdrawal Now Depends On Turkish Guarantee Not To Attack Kurds”
President Trump will only withdraw American troops from northern Syria if the Turkish government guarantees it won’t attack US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-06/syria-withdrawal-now-depends-turkish-guarantee-not-attack-kurds
The problem with this condition is, IF Turkey promises as such -a very faint possibility- it emboldens the Kurdish alphabet soups and they don’t feel a need to reconcile with the Syrian government. They did before and they’ll do it again. And if Turkey rejects the proposal (more likely) then the US has an excuse for Trump’s U-turn on withdrawal promise.
I’d say this condition is designed for exactly this outcome, either way the result will be prevention of cooperation between Kurds and Syrian government. just like the initial promise to withdraw was to put Turkey and Syria+allies face-to-face which with recent developments (now Idlib is under command of a universally recognized terror group, ready to be eliminated without much protest from outside) failed by the way.
Good analysis. But to keep things simple this U.S. approach is double edged sword and can turn against those who wanted to use it against Assad, Iran and Russia. US has nothing to offer to the Kurds any longer. And Kurds only if they are stupid will stick with US. All this situation is poker game.. The weakest hand in Syria have U.S. (and Kurds) once U.S. leaves Kurd controlled part of Syria…. So winner is everybody who plays against the weakest hand.
Deep down, Turkey (even if they would accept something like that promise to U.S. )Turks will never respect their own promises once U.S. is away. For the moment the name of the game is bluffing… Turks have no reason to come out openly with their true intentions … It is still to soon to play in hands of U.S. totally and to antagonize Russia (remember CIA coup against Erdogan and process of buying S-400 as protection from another coup) Also they can’t indirectly help US in propping up Kurdish independence…They still need Russia Master of Syrian sky as friend not an enemy. If I was Erdogan I would be sly not only with US but with Russians also. Playing with both sides and waiting the chance to slaughter the Kurds. And grab as much of Syria as I can… if I can… Turkish Fox near Kurdish chicken house….and U.S. dog is leaving and asking fox for promise not to eat the chickens …Ha, ha, ha :-)) What is one lousy promise in exchange for making U.S. leaving and exposing Kurds to direct danger?! Nothing ! Turks simply can play delicately till something happens to put Turkey in advantageous position against any of 2 sides. Because now Erdogan is pretending to be on both sides….and he is waiting for his chance to grab or kill… So no need for Turkey yet, to come out in open aggression towards anybody….. One thing is always clear….Turks will never accept independent Kurdistan and that is the bottom line a common denominator of all equation’s (never to forget). They might hate Assad but for the moment they need united Syria (and Assad) as solution to the Kurdish “problem”.
Turks can find many excuses to walk over their promises (not to touch Kurds) that’s the easy part of this game.
Where you see the term ”Turkish-backed militants” you should swap for ”Turkish-backed terrorists”. The question is why aren’t the Russians bombing them too ?
And the answer : because the Turks have promised to buy S400 …
I m talking about the Turkish terrorists in Idlib, the Turkish-backed ones.
The remaining Turkish backed terrorists will run as well, as has been called for by the Turks. Then Turkey and Syria, will let lose from all sides and eliminate the HTS TOGETHER. My view only.
Why? Why would the Dog give up everything? The way things are going he will be lucky if Syria will not take back Antioch and Hatay. If i was in power ,I would ;as reparations in part and to humiliate the Terrible Turk.
I agree. If Russia can’t bomb the Turks it should bomb the caca out of the Idlib Turco alphabets(that were sent there all-expenses paid in air-conditioned buses) to teach Erdogan a lesson,thumb its nose at Fukusis and to get Syria its land back again.
and the pipeline they build via turkey you think has no bearing into not bombing the turks right?
Dont put words into my mouth pal, I dint say that. It most likely does have a bearing.
I lost myself when they were stomping on the green flag! LOL. Nusra has done it again!
“…The group’s militants were not able to resist for more than few days, while the leaders run away to Turkey.”
Seems like standard operating procedure when head-choppers are losing territory. The big unanswered question though, is “How many of those leaders are on the payrolls of GCC/FUKUS/Israel?” Martyrdom is only for the cannon fodder jihadis in Syria. The leaders are busy picking out their new cars and free houses – half-way around the world somewhere. Arlington, VA, if there’s such a thing as Karma.
Haha. Funny how all these leaders RUN back to Turk -Occupied Asia Minor when something goes wrong. Just proves who was the ponce running them the whole time. Erdogan was runnng these pigs as a deputy for the Us since 2011 and since the lover’s quarrel with America , the Ottoman State runs them for herself. What a bloodthirsty whore the Turkish State has always been!
Is this a new way that Turkey supply weapons to terrorists? It reminds me the drops of Americans to “moderates” which finally ended up tp terrorists.
You mean all the nice uniforms that these pigs are showing us in the photos above? Hahah
What a pathetic bunch of tossers. And what a waste of Turkish taxpayers money that this headchopper group folded quicker then an Italian army at the sight of a British tank. Ah well, there’s plenty of other headchopper groups for Erdogan to waste his country’s money on.
mercenaries and traitors, that fight against their own country, usually is what they do. By the way if you so well versed in historical fact you also know that 250.000 british soldiers have surrendered to Rommel with out a shot been fired, in africa.
Source? l. I know that the biggest surrender was 32.000 at Tobruk in 1942, most of them South African, and that Rommel bagged most of British 2nd Armored Division, which was at brigade strength in early 1941. Two brigades, a South African and New Zealand one were overrun during Crusader in late 1941. 8.000 POW’s were taken at Mersa Matruh in mid 1942. I fail to see how Rommel could have taken that many prisoners as the British never had that many troops in the field to begin with, not even during 2nd El Alamein, when they only had 195.000 troops. Most of the campaigns were fought with less then 100.000.
he did not. He could not afford to logistically, so he let them walk away. See the accusations of the generals against him when they branded him a traitor in germany and you find out the facts.
Yeah, well, German generals had a HUGE habits of blaming others of their own failings after the war. That’s why blaming Rommel, Von Paulus or Hitler proved so popular. Those who were dead, or still in Russian captivity, were unable to call bullshit. This is why memoirs written by generals are always considered as suspect and unreliable by historians.
I still think, just based on the numbers, and the nature of WW2 desert war that Rommel was unable to capture 250.000 British even if he had tried, because A: there were never that many British troops arrayed against him, B: he barely had enough infantry as it was to support his own tanks, let alone to complete envelop and annihilate the British (the same happened in Russia where lack of followup infantry allowed tens of thousands of Red Army troops to either escape encirclement or escape into the forest to become partisans), and C: the British were very good at escaping. Because unlike the Italians, who fought or tried to flee on foot (and could thus never really escape), the British were fully motorized and could always put the pedal to the metal on their tanks or trucks to escape defeat.
If generals in Germany claimed Rommel could have done so then A: they were ignorant of the situation of desert war, which makes sense as their attention at the time was 100% focused on Russia, and B: they should have given Rommel more troops to carry out these kinds of operations.
they was not as many british soldiers from england but was more than that in the alliance under british rule and orders.
Yeah, the 8th Army was very much an international army. A sort of EU ;-). And like the EU not everyone was pulling their share of the fight. And like with the EU there was not a whole lot the British commander could do about it. The saga of General Pienaar of 1st South African infantry brigade during Operation Crusader is legendary. That guy disobeyed orders. Time after time after time. And got away with it!
I hear the stories from my grandfather that joined the british army and was one of the main forces, with his war teams, behind creating the famous body of the “british“ desert rats as they called them in ME and africa. Much of history as is well known is written by the victors of each war so never real events get public or ever written in the history books.
My choice is to believe what my grandfather told me.
Merry Christmas to all the Orthodox Christians. And a very merry Christmas to HTS as well, I have to be nice because it’s about to be your very last one, isn’t it lucky none of you are Christian. This is it, Erdogan’s nearly finished separating his forces from HTS, he’s left the whole south and east of Idlib open for an imminent SAA/Russian invasion, and the only ones that will be left there are HTS. Hurry up any NFL stragglers, you’re needed in Aleppo, if you’re left behind in southern Idlib when the poo hits the fan you’re history. It’s very convenient that all the NFL and FSA fighters are being driven out of ALL the areas in the south and east, by HTS who only have 15,to 20,000 fighters, versus Erdogan’s 35,000, 20,000 in Idlib and 15,000 in Aleppo, as well as any hidden extras. All the same areas I’ve been predicting on SF for many months now, and saying Erdogan’s going to pull his forces out of ALL these areas, and then just let the SAA come in and take over by defeating HTS, leaving Erdogan and his remaining forces in the north. That’s a strange coincidence that HTS just so happens to be driving them out of all the areas I predicted Erdogan would voluntarily vacate. In my posts I’ve said that Erdogan will abandon east Latakia, northern Hama, parts of Aleppo just west and south of the city, and Idlib from Hader in Aleppo straight across to Foua and Kafarya in Idlib, and then all the way west to the Turkish border. I might alter that just a little to leave Jisr ash Shugur in Turkish hands, even though I know HTS is in control of the area now, but somehow I think this town will end up in Erdogan’s hands in the next few months, a tiny revision of my past predictions. Iv’e got dozens of archived posts on SF going back many month predicting exactly what’s happening in Idlib right now, exactly the way it’s happening, I wonder if any of my detractors would still like to say I’m wrong now, it should be blatantly obvious what’s really happening in Idlib even to blind Freddy. Most of Southern Idlib will be back in the hands of Assad by the end of Christmas, that’s 30 days after January 7th and a week to enjoy Christmas, so that makes it 37 days from now, another bold prediction by me, lets see if I’m brave or just being stupid making that prediction. And why stop there, I’ll go on and make a few more. I’m going to make some of the same assertions I made for the Daraa/Quneitra campaign, 1 it will be a cake walk for the SAA, 2 the SAA will have slightly more casualties than they had in Daraa, but not too many more, I’ll still say the same as I did for Daraa, minimal casualties for the SAA, 3 HTS will suffer massive casualties and just give up in certain areas, the more moderate factions [sic] will give up more easily but the fanatics, they’ll do the same thing they did in Quneitra, fight until there’s no hope left, then give up, 4 It will only take 4 weeks to take back all the south of Idlib and surrounding areas, it may be a little longer to clean out the very small pockets of resistance that are always left, but that too will be just like Darra/Quneitra, where the mopping was more like a police operation than a military one, 5 There’ll be more civilian casualties here than in Daraa though, a lot more, and they won’t just mostly be the families of those fighting either, unlike Daraa/Quneitra, there’ll be a lot of innocent families caught up in the bombing, this area isn’t made up of isolated enclaves like Daraa/Qunitra was, I just hope the civilians get out in time, 6 The UN will have something to complain about here, unlike Daraa/Quneitra where they complained about a possible refugee crisis when there wasn’t a chance in hell there would be one, they should start now, they’re going to have a lot of work to do here. Very sad, so I won’t be criticizing the UN this time I don’t think, they wont have to falsely triple the numbers this time to make them sound sensational, if they say 200 to 300,000 refugees this time, I might even think they were underestimating the numbers, 7 That all the people who believed that HTS was actually driving the NFL out of all these areas so easily, instead of realizing it was just Erdogan separating his forces from HTS [and not very cleverly either], will all end up feeling silly, as I said before, even blind Freddy should be able to see what’s really going on by now. Sorry for being so insulting, but some of you need a good slapping to wake you up, you’re missing too much of the movie.
Bravo if your predictions have come to pass. I hope you come out correct this time as well if that is the case.
The Greek Orthodox of Greece have just finished their Christmas as has everyone else. Mt Athos State though may still run on the same calendar that Russians do to this day re Christmas Either way ,a Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you too
The Zenki terrorists were only good at cutting throats of children. Of course the´d hit the road when confronting AQ.