On January 17, the Syrian army, led by Tiger Forces units, made a push against ISIS terrorists in the eastern countryside of Aleppo city. Government forces seized the village of Abad and engaged militants in the villages of Rasm al-Alam and Mushayrafa.
Some pro-government sources described this move as a first stage of the long-awaited offensive against ISIS south of al-Bab. However, this still has to be confirmed.
Click to see the full-size map
Godspeed SAA
Now this is the crucial thing to consider; how the SAA can secure as much territory as possible without being sandwiched between Turkey’s troops and ISIS. How to do this without massive loss of life too. As Al Bab and Manbij show, ISIS have urban warfare down to a tee; even completely besieged (Manbij), they’ll kick your asses and make you pay for every gain, so I would recommend avoiding Deir Hafer entirely, at least until all following steps have been carried out.
Firstly, swoop in and take everything to the north of the above map, before Turkey do, but don’t approach Al Bab; let ISIS keep giving the Turks a hard time for as long as possible. Then, in tandem with the Kurds, who are the essential buffer for the SAA from Turkey, take everything northeast of Kuweires, linking up in the middle. After this it’s essential that the Kurds press Turkey’s forces both west and east of Al Bab to distract them, to let the SAA do their thing. Finally, lunge south and take Jirah Air Base whilst cutting off Deir Hafer from all supplies and reinforcements. This is one of the few times that I’d agree with a relocation deal, if ISIS even does that, due to the unwanted losses. If not, they’re completely tied up anyway.
Either way, thanks to the Kurdish gains north of the Euphrates, this offensive will go so much smoother than it would’ve otherwise, and with the Kurds doing their bit too south of Manbij, the shared border with Turkey in Aleppo will only be fairly small, barely 20km long. Finally, from here the SAA can keep storming south towards Maskanah and eventually Tabaqa, with a joint salient from Ithriyah helping them too. Getting to Tabaqa fully secures the road to Aleppo city, ending the constant threat of ISIS troubling Khanaser, and by doing all of the above steps, the Tabaqa offensive will be different from before, in that the only enemy contact is to the south, rather than north, east and south as it was last time, to disastrous results. The only liability is manpower, which Palmyra shows all too clearly, but if they have planned for this then maybe they have it. Maybe they’re finally using the men left over from the Aleppo city victory.
Your logic is broken from the very begining. YPG and SAA are today’s friends, tomorrow’s enemies. Assad will favor positions where he can prevent YPG getting more lands. Because Turkey, one way or another, will leave Syria one day. Because Turkey has USA, Russia, Iran and Syria itself against him. He can’t do this. But YPG on the other hand has USA and Israel behind him and they are pushing for federation. We all know what comes after federation. A puppet state for USA and Israel. I would like to believe Assad is smart enough to see through all of this.
Not at all, the SAA and YPG have worked together to jointly acquire the territory in the top left hand corner of the article’s map, where the infantry school is, that was an offensive planned together, so there’s a definite partnership there.
One side can’t exist without the other, so they have to get along; the SAA needs a buffer from Turkey as well as a distraction for thousands of ISIS forces that would other be closing the Khanaser highway to Aleppo or troubling Qaryatayn as they used to, before the Kurds truly established themselves. And the Kurds need the SAA to distract ISIS forces with Palmyra and the like as well as use the Syrian government support to make Turkey think twice about invading through Qamishli or Kobane, as they could easily do. Can you imagine if Turkey took all Kurdish areas, labelled them FSA, therefore gaining international credibility to the likes of the West and Gulf, and then basically replacing ISIS eventually? The country would fall with such pressure. Both sides need each other during this war; the situation after the war is so far off as to be irrelevant for now.
As I said in Phase 2, the SAA needs the Kurds to go a bit south of Manbij and then pressure Turkey around Al Bab. This increases the Kurdish buffer as well as limits the Turkey/SAA border too. The SAA would much rather have the Kurds near them than Turkey.
Turkey won’t leave, not really; FSA lands are theirs, under their control. Currently the USA are impotent with regards to Turkey, I’m not sure how things will change under Trump though. Russia, Iran and Syria haven’t been nearly enough to dissuade Erdogan from going as far as he has so far though. He can do this, clearly.
These countries won’t stop until Syria is weakened, and allotting some people and land to the Kurds is the least objectionable way of doing that. It creates some distance with Turkey as I said, which is VITAL, and the Kurds need Syrian support, otherwise they’re trapped between two countries that hate them, so they’d be forced to get along. With a Syrian Kurdistan, there would be little reason to continue flooding the country with terrorists, from the perspective of the West at least, so the violence would, if not stop, diminish significantly at the very least. There’s no way that the SAA can win this war without the Kurds. And their army has taken too much of a beating to secure the north themselves anyway, so they need them. Assad is clearly a man of compromise, as these relocation deals all show, and this ^^^^ is as sweet a deal as he’ll ever get. If he hasn’t noticed that already, he will soon.
The Afrin Kurds are finished, bottled up in their canton, no prospect of joining a Kurdish so called “Rojava Republic or North Syria Federation” whatever. The Manbij Kurds are already under air/artillery attack from Turkish forces lined up along the SAJUR river line and primed to advance, Turkey will never, ever accede to any sort of Kurdish.YPG polity west of Euphrates and is prepared to occupy northern Syria forever to prevent it (see northern Cyprus, occupied since 1974 !) If you look at the ethnic demographics Kurds have no justification for creating any “statelet” in northern Syria, they already have their Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. As for setting up a Kurdistan “buffer zone ” how long would that last before Turkey re-invades as part of its strategic aim of genocide ? Syria will be better off without the Kurds, OK temporary allies in the bigger war but long-term don’t trust them.
Deir Hafer is the main logistics base/hub for all Dai ‘sh forces forward to Al Bab. It must be seized, or at least invested/besieged to attrit Dai ‘sh by cutting off their supply/re-inforcements. Happy to let Turks/FSA/ISIS slug it out meantime, while SAA pushes east to secure/control JIRAH airbase and the Aleppo main water supply plants at KHAFSAH on the western shore of Lake Assad. If and when the objectives are achieved then the long-awaited advance to TABQA thence RAQQA co-ordinated with a push NE from ITHRIYAH (believed a Brigade Group+ /Task Force assembing in area ??)