A fully armed MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle taxis down the runway at an air base in Afghanistan on its way to another wartime mission. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson)
Late on April 14, a large explosion was reported in the western outskirts of Idlib city, the center of the northwestern Syrian region of Greater Idlib.
While some opposition sources played down the explosion, others, including the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said the explosion was the result of a drone strike.
According to the SOHR and several other sources, an unidentified combat drone struck a military vehicle in the western outskirts of Idlib city.
The sources didn’t report any casualties. However, they claimed that the drone responsible for the alleged strike was of the US military.
Al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is the de-facto ruler of Greater Idlib. A number of other terrorist groups, like Horas al-Din, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Ansar al-Tawhid and Ajnad al-Kavkaz are active in the region.
Over the last few years, a series of US drone strikes targeted prominent leaders of al-Qaeda in Greater Idlib.Most of the targeted personnel were foes of HTS, which was not targeted at all.
Many radicals in Greater Idlib believe that HTS is complicate in US drone strikes on the region and that the strikes are meant to strengthen the influence of the group.
The Americans who support a faction against another is not a novelty, and not only at the level of terrorist bands, but also at the level of nations, this is the chaos strategy in which the Jews are usually hiding, they put him in writing In the aftermath of WWII and was the load-bearing filosophy of the West since then.
Try again. My armchair has seatbelt and airbag.
Syria, another Land of Airstrikes & Misery. Courtesy of CIA, a Gift that keeps Giving.
Mysterious my backside, the events are only mysterious for the poor SF readers who are never told the truth about HTS and Al Qaeda. The anti Jihad terrorists are fighting the pro Jihadist terrorists for supremacy over Idlib and the anti jihadist terrorists are winning, HTS with only 15,000 fighters is overcoming all the Al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups which can boast close to 100,000 fighters. Pigs fly but only when they’re helped, so who’s helping the pigs fly. HTS fights against Isis and any of the Al Qaeda groups who actively oppose HTS’s changed stance on Jihad, that includes groups like Horas al-Din who actively subvert HTS’s decision to abandon Jihad and continue cooperating with Isis against HTS. That’s why the US attacks groups like Horas al-Din but not HTS, why would they attack HTS, they have no reason to, HTS aren’t the biggest problem anymore. HTS is effectively circumventing Al Qaeda and Isis in Idlib, so they’re actually helping the US by doing some of their dirty work for them, so they’re the last group the US wants to bomb, cooperation against a common enemy is the driving force in this equation. I suspect HTS relays information to the US for these drone strikes, it’s something they’d probably do to earn brownie points towards their end goal, which is their eventual recognition as a moderate opposition force. Now of course this is the point where some people say the US is complicit in helping HTS, but if that was the case it would mean Assad and the Syrian Government were even more complicit in helping HTS, because Assad has a lot more to do with HTS than the US does. Assad has several open border crossings with HTS and uses those crossings to trade with HTS, they also do prisoner swaps as well as other unknown deals, so Assad’s Government is far more cooperative with HTS than the US is. So ask yourself this, why do the US and Assad both seem to favor HTS over the other terrorist factions, and in Assad’s case openly cooperates with HTS. Assad doesn’t cooperate with any of the moderate opposition factions, just the HTS terrorists, what do you think that means. Well in the US’s case it’s the Al Qaeda link as I explained, but in Assad’s case it’s the Muslim Brotherhood link. Assad uses HTS to help him get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood and he uses them the same way the US does, that’s why Assad does deals with HTS and no one else. HTS is anti Muslim Brotherhood and the Brotherhood are Assad’s sworn enemies, and unfortunately for Assad nearly all the other opposition groups [both terrorist and moderate] are Brotherhood aligned. So it makes perfect sense that Assad cooperates with the anti Brotherhood HTS, they both have a common enemy, and the enemy has large numbers and strong allies [Turkey + Qatar]. On top of that the moderate opposition groups aligned to the Muslim brotherhood also have political legitimacy according to the Astana agreements, so they’re untouchable on some fronts, Assad’s forces can’t even attack them according to the Astana agreements, just retaliate, so it definitely suites Assad to have HTS working against Brotherhood interests in Syria. And the odd man out is Russia, Russia prefers to attack HTS wherever and whenever they can, but they don’t attack them militarily as much as they attack them verbally. SF often claims the Russians attack HTS positions but they don’t, 9 out of 10 times they’re actually attacking the Turkistan Islamic Party, Ansar al-Tawhid and Ajnad al-Kavkaz, not USUALLY HTS itself, but the Russians always claim it’s HTS they’re attacking, why do they do that. They also do the same thing whenever the SAA is attacked, HTS always gets the blame despite the fact it’s usually Ansar al-Tawhid and/or the moderate opposition NFL/FSA shelling Government held areas.
Russia needs to rethink resolution 2254 and all the Astana agreements, even if they don’t want to re-designate HTS as a moderate opposition force [which is ok by me], they definitely need to change their stance on many of the militant groups included in the political process. Many of them need to be re-designated as terrorists and removed from the political process altogether, otherwise just let HTS do the job that Assad can’t do himself, and he can’t do the job himself because the Astana agreements won’t let him.