The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) have resumed attempts to re-capture the T2 pumping station from ISIS in an area near the Syrian-Iraqi border.
According to pro-government sources, the SAA and the NDF pushed ISIS units from its vicinity and established a fire control over the station. At least 2 ISIS vehicles were destroyed in the recent clashes.
If the SAA captures the pumping station, ISIS will lose its last important strong point south of the border city of al-Bukamal.
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It would be beneficial to Syria if IS is pushed away from the border and destroyed.
And it would be beneficial to you when the child of your daughter is born. Good wishes.
Why, thank you. My wife is jumping (and tbh me too) every time the phone rings.
Hello @dutchnational:disqus, please, provide examples of the issues that you pointed out in your email to info@southfront.org
Taking T2 pumping station has taken so long that we really question the tactic and generals capabilities.
SAA General luck of military tactical planning and strategy.
Oh dear, this is becoming tiresome… fucking idiot…
It’s more of a manpower + recourses issue. Units around T2 are probably not given much to work with.
Its the desert. Other areas were closer to surrounding oasis of civilization in this typical 50 deg C heat of the Syrian Desert so if things went wrong the army could fall back to another holding line. Those were the areas that were liberated first. Running out of water is as good as running out of ammo in these conditions.
The relatively featureless desert here means it is like in the ocean, with few markers and references.
Recall the WW2 battle in Libya both sides dared not go deep south and kept their battles to a limited distance from the coast.
T2 so far has not been any kind of priority, it has low strategic value in itself and it would have been suicidal to attack it prematurely. It has long supply lines and Daesh can counter attack very easily there as it is quite close to Albukamal and the border areas. There is absolutely no point in taking a piece of desert if you cannot hold onto it. And incidentally during the summer the desert is hellishly hot and clearly favours the defence. What would have been your strategy.?
Perhaps natural gas is more valuable than oil after all.
Can’t be counting on the Iraqis now that they’re busy with the Kurdish-ISISraeli thing. Is Russian close air support deployed to back this battle? Because the Kurds/ISIS can make a deal and get to Bukamal faster than Russian planes can fly from Latakia to eastern Syria.
Russians are busy calling their western colleagues and partners.
Its diplomacy stage now. Military conflict is over; in terms of conventional war, you will still get an insurgency especially Homs-DeZ. It is up to SAA and allies to chose to do, if its something like what was done to Iraqi Kurds. They can turn the barrel at them, or they can negotiate. SDF having Omar oil fields do make negotiations hard for SAA. The Syrian government does have one trump card, Northern Aleppo (Manbij-Albab-Afrin) and the de-escalation deal with undesirables. Doesn’t matter how many oil fields SDF takes, Syria has the upper hand.
IS leadership may not be able to compel Arab tribal fighters to hold teh line in face of certain defeat, but control of al-Bukamal isn’t going to be given away for free like a few (non-producing) oil fields. If you think Kurds and ISIS will “do a deal” you’re stark raving bonkers.
The four Deir EzZor / Omar field pipelines run southwest to T2. The Iraqi pipeline from Haditha and T1 pumping station to Syria are not operating now and are usually marked ‘defunct’ on maps, but Iraq has always intended to reopen export to the Syrian T2 pumping station. The ‘T’ in T2 stands for the Tripoli port – where the oil was exported years ago. The line split at Homs and also fed the Syrian refinery at Banyas. The Deir EzZor/Omar pipelines to T2 were added later.
Important because the Iraqis are kind of upset with Iraqi Kurds. Eventually, the Kurds will pump so much of ‘their’ oil through Turkey that the Iraqis won’t be able to use their existing pipeline to Turkey at full capacity. Turkey’s Ceyhan pipeline can only carry so much The Iraqis are looking to divert much of that oil going north from Haditha to the west, instead. That means through the repaired Tripoli pipeline and the T1 pumping station to Syria’s T2 pumping station. It would be worth it (at least politically) to add a bigger line through Syria than pump oil though Turkey and their ports.
There’s a whole dumpster of reasons that the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia do not want a million barrels a day flowing from Kirkuk, Iraq through Haditha then across Syria to either a Syrian or Lebanese Mediterranean port. On the contrary, there are plenty of reasons why it is in Iraqi’s strategic and commercial interests to do exactly that.
What US, Israel and Saudi Arabia might want doesn’t mean a thing. Fuck them all.