On November 5, the tensions in the northwestern part of Syria, particularly the Idlib de-escalation zone, decreased in comparison to the previous days.
On November 4, limited violations of the ceasefire regime took place in northern Hama, northern Lattakia and southwestern Aleppo. However, no notable clashes were reported. On the next day, the Russian Defense Ministry reported at least one violation of the ceasefire regime registered by the Russian-Turkish observation points in northern Lattakia.
Some sources link the current de-escalation in the area with withdrawal of at least 1,200 Turkish-backed militants from the area to a frontline with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the area of Manbij. Most of Turkish-backed groups are only formally supporting the de-escalation agreement and in-fact assist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radicals in their actions.
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Clear this whole area. Now.
HTS might end up all alone trying to defend Idlib, and Erdogan could end up trapped in Ar Raqqa, sound too good to be true, not to me it doesn’t. HTS won’t survive an SAA assault without Erdogan’s forces supporting them, they’ll cave in pronto if they’re left to defend themselves, just what the SAA and Russia want. Once the Kurds start killing heaps of Turks [and they will], the Turks will start moving in more proxy troops from Idlib to counter them, it might only be 1200 this time but we all know that numbers going to grow. And where that will end no one knows, not even Erdogan yet, he’s got 28800 troops left in Idlib out of the 30,000 total, lets watch and see how that ratio changes. Erdogan has a lot of support in Idlib from the local population, but he’s also spending a fortune to maintain that support, it’s a huge drain on the Turkish economy that he can’t afford for much longer, he’s going broke faster than the Saudis are now, so he has no choice now but to do something to stop that drain. So what does he do, keep all his forces in Idlib where they, and the rest of the local population just cost him money, or does he start moving them over to where the goldmines are [oil], I think we all know what will eventually happen. In Idlib Erdogan has the support of all the Turkman population and a fair bit of the Arab population, In Aleppo he has all the Turkman population [less than Arab pop] supporting him and only some of the Arabs. In Ar Raqqah he’ll have no support, the Kurds we already know are mortal enemies with him and the Arab population won’t treat him or his fighters any better either, I think it become a quagmire for him if he gets trapped there. Someone’s plan is working.