Following the collapse of militant defenses in the Wadi Barada area northwest of Damascus, militant groups will leave the town of Sirghaya and the areas east of the town of Zabadani at the Syrian-Lebanon border, according to pro-government sources and media activists.
The move is reported to be a part of the wide reconciliation agreement made during the government operation in Wadi Barada. If it’s implemented, government forces will secure a large part of the Syrian-Lebanon border.
Sirghaya, Buqqayn and Madaya will allegedly be the villages where this agreement will be implemented soon. Then, the rest of the militant-held area along the border will be also surrendered to government forces.
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Maybe if the army actually fought their opponents, and got battle experience, rather than busing them away and calling it a military triumph, they wouldn’t be completely inept at war, running away at the mere sight of the enemy (ISIS at Palmyra). After 6 years of war, the SAA should not claim to be inexperienced.
All they’re doing is gathering the jihadists in Idlib in such numbers that they’re due to explode outwards, there’s no winning about putting them there.
See man the army is depleted after 6 years of war.If they have followed your advice they would have lost .Palmyra was lost,but Aleppo was liberated.Aleppo is the most important city.Palmyra have no strategic value.Bunch of old ruins.
Fighting is necessary in a war. Fighting against outnumbered, outgunned, besieged pockets with troops growing increasingly experienced is a sure way of success rather than moving the problem to another part of the country while the enemy all becomes unified, as we’re seeing now, and more a competent force than the SAA unfortunately will ever be. If they had followed my advice then liberation would’ve been much quicker, the army as a whole would be able to advance rather than 90% of battle lines stagnant because of inept troops.
Winning is necessary in war. This can be accomplished in a number of ways and fighting is only one of them. Another is getting your enemy to lay down arms without fighting. To criticize this shows you need more experience as an armchair general.
But they never fight, they always bus away rather than conquer, thus their constant fleeing! Palmyra, twice, the enemy getting to outskirts of Hama etc.
I won´t speak for all of it but, I did see a similarity between what happened to the SAA at Palmyra and the Japanese on Tarawa. In both places, the position commanders were killed early in the fight. The SAA had the room to regroup, where as the Imperial Marines on Tarawa were on an atoll and forced to fight to the death. I wish you well Aquartertoseven.
Actually the green buses have some virtues for Syrian government; by relocating the militants SAA frees up own limited infantry manpower, strips militants of heavy weapons they leave behind, government spared the need to incarcerate militants with associated international political cost, and in conjunction with latter point, government has political higher ground/ controls narrative over militants, as arguably attempting mix of military and political solutions. Idlib is a rural backwater, and point of origin of many of domestic militants, putting them all together there is certainly a calculated risk, but these are armed and competing groups. At some point they will inevitably clash with each other, with varying degrees of violence, over shrinking territory, logistic routes and resources. It doesn’t mean Idlib isn’t giant problem, as are Turkish access points, but it is better long term to have the myriad of pockets around cities removed and militants in one approximate geographical location. It may take years to resolve Idlib, but is far better than having militant pockets in locations like outskirts of Damascus, where they can disrupt civil infrastructure and frustrate SAA progress on other fronts.
They’re all uniting, so there goes that theory. With the help of men from Darayya and Mo’adimiyah alone, they nearly reached Hama city. Now add Beit Saber, Wada Barada, Madaya, the border pocket to the north, who knows how this cluster will next explode.
There uniting themselves indeed, but not in one block, but two opposing blocks facing each other.
You forget that most of those fighters are locals. They surrender to the government and restart a civilian life. It is minority that leaves for Idlib. So this is a way for the government to reduce the number of opposition fighters without battle and the accompanying costs.
You also underestimate the propagandistic aspect. Nobody likes to fight for a losing case. And the less territory the opposition controls, the more they look like a losing case. So the more territory the opposition loses the more inclined the remaining opposition held areas will be to make some deal with the government.
Each army in history has had its lesser quality and highly experienced (elite) units on the other side. In this case you have your local static militias(like the NDF’s), in between regular army units and then the elite units:Tiger Forces, Desert Hawks, Rep. Guards and the armoured divisions. They can’t all be of the highest experience like the latter units. If the syrian goverment can clean out all these small pockets across the country using lesser experienced units and use the elite units for real offensive actions, it’s every time a small tactical victory. The militants and terrorists being shipped to Idlib (minus their heavy weapons) now will have to immidiately chose one of the two large blocks formed in Idlib: tahhir al sham or ahrar al sham. After that, they will rather face the other rebel block, instead of Syrian goverment units. The situation will more likely implode, rather then explode. For the situation in Palmyra: they had no other choice but to retreat and shorten their battle lines (being overwhelmed).
The fact that they have weak militias shows his inept the SAA is, that that they couldn’t even conscript these cowards into the army. And again, having only 5% of your army capable of offensive operations in laughable! Unheard of in any army!
Militants have been stuck in Idlib for years, and the worst their little infighting has caused resulted in insignificant numbers of deaths, whereas their offensive operations have been devastating.