Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militants have managed to recapture a part of Yarmouk Camp in Damascus from terrorists of the Islamic State group.
The situation in Yarmouk Camp by March 21, 2017. Blue areas show territories, repulsed from the IS
Militants of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist alliance have sharply intensified their attacks in the south of Damascus. On Monday, HTS militants launched an offensive on positions of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Yarmouk Camp.
HTS terrorists managed to knock out their competitors from Safuria Street, located in the north of the former Palestinian camp, but IS fighters counterattacked. On the morning of Tuesday the fighting in Yarmuk continued.
Photos, taken by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in the territories, recaptured from the IS
Photos, taken by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in the territories, recaptured from the IS
Photos, taken by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in the territories, recaptured from the IS
At the same time, Islamist militants also became active in the vicinity of the Qalamun Mountains. The joined forces of the Ahmad al-Abdo, Al-Sud al-Sharqiya and Jaysh al-Islam groups launched an attack on a former battalion base, located on the eastern flanks of the mountains and occupied by IS terrorists. During the clashes, militants of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) managed to capture the Al-Nakab height, obtaining fire control over the surrounding areas.
Militants attack the former battalion base in the Qalamun Mountains
The fighting was started at dawn with an attack of vehicles, controlled by suicide bombers, in the western sector of Jobar, near the area of Al-Abbasiyyin. After that, intense clashes occurred, during which terrorists attempted to infiltrate in the direction of Isar-Abbasiyyin. Jihadists once again intend to repel the Albamar garages, electrotechnical base and Mercedes store in Al-Abbasiyyin.
Fierce fighting is ongoing in the area of Al-Qaboun. The forces of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and Faylak Ar Rahman managed for short time to reunite two Islamist enclaves in the industrial sector of Jobar.
The attack of Ahrar al-Sham militants in Jobar
#Damascus | #Jobar offensive, launched by East Ghouta insurgents. Footage from Ahrar Al-Sham’s media department. pic.twitter.com/EjNc48RZTZ
— Chris Tomson (@TheDaneChris) March 20, 2017
However, this success was short-lived. Government troops repulsed all the attacks of jihadists and regained control over previously lost areas.
The Syrian Armed Forces fight in the area of Jobar
In total, 72 servicemen of the Syrian Armed Forces were killed yesterday. The militants’ losses, which they sustained mainly by missile fire, are estimated at 100 people.
At a critical moment, the Command of government troops resorted to extreme measures. Two Tochka-U short-range ballistic missiles were launched on the place of the breakthrough in order to stop the terrorists’ offensive.
I don’t understand the strategy of the SAA. They should eliminate first those small pockets around Damascus and in other places. Those pockets are a threat and the are binding many forces.
Unfortunately the SAA and their allies have to fight at many fronts to keep their enemies away from reuniting great areas all over Syria.
On the other hand they must advance into ISIS held territory to gain a foothold in Eastern Syria, before that falls completely in the hands of the US and its proxy forces. And there is also Deir Ezzor that desperately needs relief. And a watchful armed eye has to be maintained on the Turks around Al Bab.
Too many fronts, not enough troops.
They need to have forced conscription like the Jews. This is a national emergency.
On the other hand the average Israeli citizen is infinitely better motivated to serve and infinitely less likely to evade conscription, or desert to the enemy. After all, most Syrians are Sunni, with little love for Assad’s ruling Alawite elite.
You also need to train all these conscripts, and the SAA does not exactly have the infrastructure, instructors, NCO and officer corps to train, lead and incorporate all these conscripts. It took the British two years in WWI for Kitcheners volunteer armies to finally take it to the trenches, and then its performance left much to be desired for.
And finally you take every abled bodied man out of an economy for a prolonged time and your economy will collapse. That’s why Israel always wanted to fight short wars. Why they had to start the 6 Days War, they just could not afford to keep their huge conscript army fully mobilized indefinitely. The Arabs could have won just by having their armies sit along the border and do absolutely nothing as they mobilization was not on the same scale, and could thus be maintained for far longer.
look, stalin also dod not have officers, time and plac. if there is a war, everyhwhere do only 3 minths training and sent to frontlines. so made french, brits, americans, too.
“Too many fronts, not enough troops”
We have been saying, over and over again: Ultimately this comes down to an issue of manpower and attrition. It is necessary above all, in a critical existential struggle like this, to DECIMATE the other side’s manpower. Syria is a small nation with a mid-size population, not a large country like China, India etc. with 1 billion plus people that can sustain large numbers of casualties indefinitely; moreover they have ALREADY been sustaining large casualties for 6 years now, AND have lost a significant percentage of their military-age population as “refugees”. It is not just sadism and savagery (though of course there are those) which makes the jihadis massacre all captured Syrian soldiers, but also a shrewd recognition of this fact: they are simply whittling down the Syrian armed forces, the country’s young&patriotic lifeblood, through attrition – AND demoralizing and deterring new recruits.
What the Syrian government forces should do is to, more than anything else, focus on DECIMATING JIHADI-AND-SUPPORTER MANPOWER. It is WRONG to let surrounded jihadi formations retreat to safety with their lives and weapons, in exchange for “voluntarily evacuating” a few blocks of ruined rubble. It is WRONG to hold back from heavily bombing districts with large concentrations of jihadis, instead risking the lives of more government soldiers by sending them to storm entrenched defensive positions on foot, for fear of increased “collateral damage” (the vast majority of whom are families and sectarian Islamist supporters of the jihadis). It is WRONG to agree to “ceasefires” when you are winning and the other side is about to collapse (especially since THEY never return the favor). It is WRONG to spare and even amnesty captured jihadis, when they execute out-of-hand any of your soldiers that they capture. All these are UNFAIR and an INJUSTICE to your own side’s people. The current Syrian and Russian leadership are doing these things which they must realize to be wrong and stupid, in order to try to avoid the opprobrium of the Western MSM and self-righteous Western “liberals”; but this is a LOSING STRATEGY. The Western MSM is profoundly dishonest; hostile to the hilt; and dedicated to your defeat already. Moreover it is under the control of the Western corporate globalist oligarchic establishment, the deep state/CIA/MIC and maniacal Anglo-Zionist neocons.
You can say that, but a battle of attrition often works both ways. The Germans started the battle of Verdun not to capture that city but to bleed the French army white. And the end they ended up losing just as much men. Al of the major battles of attrition usually end with both sides losing similar numbers of men. Even worse is that every victor in a battle of attrition usually ends up so exhausted as well that it can’t even take advantage of its victory. That’s what made almost every WWI battle so pointless.
The point remains that in Syria the Jihadis are very well entrenched in urban areas and very well armed, which means you have to send soldiers into extremely costly urban combat to take them out at great loss to the SAA. Making each and every one a costly battle of attrition that will cost the SAA just as much as the Jihadis, only by the time that the SAA will be bleed white, the Jihadis will be the ones with still some forces left in the field. Therefore the strategy you’re proposing, however morally satisfying, will be a losing one. The SAA cannot afford to be drawn into a single battle of attrition, and if it means making deals to let Jihadis go, so be it. Far better that the Jihadis come out in the open and storm SAA lines into a costly hail of bullets, while the SAA falls back only to retake its positions once the Jihadis have exhausted themselves. They’ll also be far more likely to surrender and leave once they have exhausted themselves/ And as long as they only leave with their AK’s and not their heavy weapons it still means the SAA comes out on top. Frontlines will still be shortened and the escaped Jihadis would still have to rearm first.
Urban warfare is costly to own troops only if it is approached piecemeal and without application of massive forces, as happened to Russians in first Grozny and US in Fallujah 1 – they learned their lesson hence Grozny 2 and Fallujah 2. This is the brutal reality, the price Syria is forced to pay to defeat the enemy is extensive destruction and deaths of thousands of innocent civilians – what is the alternative , to allow the war to drag on for-ever as is the aim of the foreign war-mongers Israel/US/UK/France/Saudi/Qatar ??
Except the SAA does not have massive force. If it did this war would have been over years ago. The closest it had to massive force was in East Aleppo last year, but it had to stretch itself vulnerably thin at other fronts because of that. That’s why Palmyra fell again, remember. And even then it did not have the time to wage that battle of annihilation that you dream off as they still had to let the Jihadis go. Because whenever the SAA goes on the offensive against one foe, the others always start to take advantage of that by launching an offensive against a quiet sector. As we now see in Damascus and Hama.
Again, while very satisfying the SAA does not have the manpower and resources to carry out what you want.
Exactly! Well-said.
You’re still talking about “battles of attrition working both ways” and “entrenched jihadis” and “sending soldiers into extremely costly urban combat”. Apparently you did not read what I wrote in my post; or simply refuse to accept the logic because it is “unpalatable” to you:
“It is WRONG to hold back from heavily bombing districts with large concentrations of jihadis, instead risking the lives of more government soldiers by sending them to storm entrenched defensive positions on foot, for fear of increased collateral damage”.
No, you seem to put words in my mouth. I never said it was unpalatable. I love nothing more then for Jihadis to get what they want, a one way ticket to the afterlife. Thing remains though that urban combat remains costly no matter the tactics. The Americans could afford to do it in Fallujah because they can literally flatten anything, as they have overwhelming firepower thanks to an insanely bloated defense budget. The Russians could do it in Grozny because they literally scrounged together enough guns and aircraft together from their neglected post Soviet arsenal to still have enough overwhelming firepower to flatten a relatively small city. Read this part: The SAA does not have overwhelming firepower and manpower! Period! The SAA cannot afford to mass enough firepower and manpower to do what you want it to do! Because then the Jihadis will exploit this on other fronts. And the RUAF only has a few dozen aircraft in theater. Hardly enough to heavily bomb Jihadi held districts. Similarly for the Syrian airforce. And if they did it would allow Jihadists elsewhere free reign to move and concentrate forces. Always too many targets, never enough planes.
And that is excluding the facts that these battles of attrition are alwats costly. The SAA would lose a lot of men, time and be very vulnerable on other fronts, and the Jihadists would gain a lot of free publicity as the world sees a constant barrage of propaganda of the evil SAA and Russians terrorbombing civilians. And for what? Some dead headchoppers?
It’s just too costly to do what you want. So therefore moral outrage at these headchoppers being given a free pass to safety has to take a backseat to the expediency of the SAA managing to take Jihadi pockets and free up troops that can be used elsewhere. Of course I would rather see these headchoppers dead, but the world is not perfect and life is full of compromises.
“…the Jihadists would gain a lot of free publicity as the world sees a constant barrage of propaganda of the evil SAA and Russians terrorbombing civilians…”
This is EXACTLY the basic problem that needs to be overcome. The Russian/Syrian side cannot be deciding war tactics based on what “barrage of propaganda” the Western MSM will spew out. This is a LOSING STRATEGY – the road to perdition. The war tactics (heavy bombing of a particular area, and the like) must be decided ONLY according to the exigencies of the military situation on the ground and the requirements of winning. The Western MSM are lying hypocritical propagandists in service of (and THEMSELVES PART OF) Western oligarchic globalist/neocon elites, who regard Russia and Russian allies as “the enemy” and churn out self-serving propaganda accordingly – NOT honest “humanitarians” or truthful objective reporters. The “humanitarianism card” as a weapon MUST be taken out of their hands – by IGNORING their faux-humanitarian propaganda entirely and TURNING IT BACK ON THEM. Otherwise, any country/government targeted by the Western MSM cannot win ANY armed conflict ANYWHERE – INCLUDING ON THEIR OWN SOIL!
Totally agree with your contention. SAA does not appear to have more than one, maybe two battalions ( 1-2k soldiers) at any one front, Hezbollah units and Qud militias included. Their approach of sparing the civilian population ( which to a large extent supports the jihadists in these enclaves) is totally wrongheaded. If the would make use of massive artillery fire to bomb into oblivion these resistance pockets, they would have liberated some of this territories long ago.
But their concern about western media portrayal of the SAA army as an army of savages, prevents them for doing that. The Syrian army has they reactive artillery Urgan & BM-21 Grad numbers necessary for this task, the Russian would probably give them the necessary missiles. What is lacking is the political resolves to finish off this cockroaches and their families which are only going to breed new cockroaches going forward.
Exactly, lack of political resolve, probably following doctrines of counter-insurgency wrongly – first you completely eliminate armed insurgents, only then worry about winning “hearts and minds ” This is not a localized small war, this is a full blown war of survival for Syria
Precisely worded. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
You said it. Time to stop playing at war with Queensbury “rules ” or Geneva “Conventions”. The only rule in war is to win decisively. Use flamethrowers and vacuum bombs in built-up areas. So the western press may squeal at “inhumane methods ” So what ? The dead don’t care how they were killed.
Sure I agree with you, too many hotspots and not enough troops. But first things should come first. And eliminating those pockets would free ressources for bigger operations. But instead the SAA often shows a terrible performance and areas already liberated get lost again. Like in Palmyra. They conquer some place and they relax instead to fortify it, digging trenches, etc. And then they run away when those goat fuckers come back. The SAA is in a terrible shape.
Saa desperately need more surveilance equipment than more soldier, because with good surveilance equipment at least they can supressed enemy concentration before they able to launch an attack, it shame saa cant detected large number force moving to their defence before it too late, where enemy forces can be seen in the past moving thousand forces over large field without worry, with good surveilance equipment + good air force networking system those bas*ard will be lucky to see sun again
10 million inhabitants. there is nice potentiol to recruite 100 000 rookies.
Check a map from a year ago. They have eliminated several pockets of resistance around Damascus. Only a few remain, which are the strongest.
SAA is extremely over stretched and always have to keep in mind which battles will cost the fewest soldier lives. Most of the soldiers they have are new and hardly have any training. The city battles are often the most expensive manpower wise so I do understand why they leave them for later. Palmyra was lost since SAA had to prioritise Aleppo the biggest city in Syria. You see that the soldiers quite quickly retreated from Palmyra so they could regroup when Aleppo was over. If you have to garrison soldiers in every town and village (which of course they don’t) you capture you also lose a big part of the striking force.
Hezbollah sending new troops to Maskana regions to free that regions from wahabi terrorist.
Yes, it looks like SAA use to do idiot things ¿ doesn’t it ?, and syrian population just do not care who is fighting, they just move away from the place instead of defending its own country. Without Hezbolah, iranian, and russian, this country would be another Afganistan or Lybia country (living in chaos and eithout any direction). Their legal authority needs this people to defend the country under the attact of USA-NATO-Israel (ISIS and moderated terrorists). Military SAA tactics look so naive that one use to laugh about what is happening, even worst, they allow the terrorist to leave places when these are about to be totally defeated and eliminated, or have fool agreements of cease fire.