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On February 24, the Turkish Army and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) successfully surrounded the center of the Rajo district in the Afrin area from the western, southern and eastern directions after they had captured the villages of Hajjico Fuqani, Hajjico Tahtani, Dumailiah and three hills around the district center, according to Syrian opposition sources.
Furthermore, Turkish sources reported that warplanes of the Turkish Air Force (TAF) targeted several positions of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the pro-government National Defense Forces (NDF) around the Rajo district center. The Kurdish Hawar News Agency (ANHA) confirmed that several NDF fighters had been killed and injured in the TAF’s bombardment.
A Turkish helicopter firing on #YPG targets in #Afrin.#OperationOliveBranch
Helikopterimiz Afrin’de YPG hedeflerini vuruyor.
kaynak : instagram pic.twitter.com/FsDx65B4Ru— Cemal (@Acemal71) February 23, 2018
Meanwhile, the YPG announced that its fighters had repelled an attack by the Turkish Army and the FSA on their positions in the village of Umranli in the Shara district north of Afrin city. YPG fighters killed several Turkish Army soldiers and FSA fighters, according to the YPG press.
Earlier, the Turkish Army and its proxies were able to capture the key villages of Abu Kaab and Hajiler southeast of the Jandaris district center west of Afrin city. The Turkish Army advance in Rajo and Jandaris could led to the collapse of the YPG’s defenses in the entire western flank of the Afrin area.
The Turkish-backed FSA advance in the Rajo district:
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Click to see the full-size image
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They are off to a good start at surrendering! Soon SAA will be at the gates of Ankara, like the Red Army at Berlin in 1945! :D
National Defense Forces are independent from the SAA and don’t form as a legal entity of the Syrian Military that is why they are their and not the SAA. Assad is playing it down the middle.
Stalin the blood sucker had gone to hell and waiting Putin the butcher to be next to him
Such an imagination. You’ve been munching captagon again!
Turkey doesn`t even use 10% of their forces in afrin and they absolutely destroy their enemies. What is SAA going to do at “the gates of ankara”? The entirety of saa will be shelled to dust before they even reach the concrete wall at the border. This is Turkey we are speaking about. 8th strongest army in the world. Second strongest army in NATO.
iraq was 5th Strongest Army under Saddam. Then he was in a dirt hole like a go fer. Soon ErrDawg will be a dirt go fer!
Turkish Army Surrounds
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7105ae6af7daa6eb38731fa2cc37f3936c1193e8252a48602196a73426c955e0.jpg
Translation: Rajo town surrounded on three sides? Rajo is center of the road net for the NW section of Afrin.
Don’t bother, what really is going to fall is East Ghouta.
i must say, i got the feeling you are more correct than it may appear.
Error, correction; and all us have a little of Jeckyll and a little of Hide. Many times what counts are the circunstancies thar make you a good Jeckyll or a bad Hide, or a bad Jeckyll and a good Hyde. Example for the upside down case: a disciplinary platoon of the Red Army on WWII
yes i like that. in any case i didn’t want to make a patronizing comment at all.
i meant that i surmise there could be more than what publicly known in this operation, as the countries lobbied or ruled by the international criminal organization are making much noise at UN about it.
Yes, but I like the headline anyway.
headline hard to read who or what was going on. Reading the full article made more sense of it. Maybe translation issue to English.
“rojava” is dead. Assad and Putin didn’t want to destroy rojava. Erdogan is helping Syria by destroying “rojava”. Otherwise, kurds will have create a country there.
Now, kurds are becoming the main loosers because, they lost “rojava” and they must manage west Syria where they are a minority and what they nerver wanted to manage.
You are forgetting, in the real losers the dutch servents of mortar in east Ghouta, and maybe some Israelis too, no?
sunnis are always loosers. They don’t count. israelis are winning. They destroyed Syria, they hijacked USA, they own sunnis.
Thanks for your elaborations.
I was veryb happy reading the Turkish army was surrending.
Reading the report however, I found out the turkish army was not surrending at all.
It was surrounding Rajo at three sides. English is a difficult language indeed.
If the turks succeed in really surrounding Rajo at four sides, they become very vulnarable to counterattacks through their backs on the fourth side.
It is a sign of the little progress that up till now, there has not even one real breakthrough through the defensive lines of the SDF, and now a little NDF too, while turks are becoming more vulnarable to hit and run counterattacks behind their lines.
I understand that for their defense plan they need to lose some territory (to defend at places that are more adaptive to defenders), I just hope they don’t plan to lose much more because they are slowly running out of places to retreat to. :P
“English is a difficult language indeed”
ain’t that true dutch, ain’t that true.
I am glad to be Dutch. Such an easy language to master.
Well you never seem to miss the opportunity to spin. The first and most important objective has already taken place in the first few weeks. There will be no Kurdistan, there will be no relief from being landlocked by “There will be no new Israel in the ME” alliance.
Look at the map the only possible hope to establish their dream of pillage and plunder from other sovereign nations required access to the Mediterranean, this has not only been blocked but will now push East to the Syrian/Iraq border between the Euphrates and the Turkey border.
It seems that all the bravado kurds was projecting, thinking the merikkkans and israelis, will come to their rescue, is deflating very rapidly now coming face to face with the reality of their predicament. I wonder if they begging to realize now they was nothing but convenient idiots used to bite the hand of the country that give them hospitality and a place to stay.
Well, an enraged idiot can be very dangerous.
true if the enraged idiot get air support and unlimited supply of heavy weapons. The kurds have nothing, but mostly small arms. When they bomb you from safe distance all you can do is seat and die.
Be cool, they have a lot of new friends, the mean russkyes and (the rest of the) syrians. If Leningrad suffer at least 3 years and more some months of siege, sure Afrin can suffer some weeks. The Tigers (and the rest) are not very far.
and why die for them? Now to kick the turks out after finishing the job, it make sense. I never liked turks or kurds to me are one and the same treacherous people never to be trusted. And they never fail to prove it every step of the way.
seat and die? you mean seat ibiza? or you mean sit? ^^ also that pickup truck was full of alien made plasma blasters
trueee
You surprised me with your comment. Well said my friend, well said. It was a compact but quite panoramic analysis of the crude Kurdish reality in a few words.
What they going to put the FSA there then is it free Syria Amy bastards is it.
What does that lot mean.They born and bread there.Its mostly Kurdish.
That decision to send NDF to Afrin was pretty dumb, Assad should keep eating popcorn and enjoying FSA and YPG parasites eating themselves.
Lets see, and I confess that never eat pocorns at neither enjoy in a dangerous situation. That must be for iluminated.
Not so dumb. It shows good-will from the Syrian side and maybe those YPG girls might hear something different from the NDF than what they have been told through years of Kurdish propaganda. The Kurds might get to realise that helping Syria is a better idea than helping the Neocons, who really don’t give a sh*t about them
Actually it is brilliant, pay attention.
Over the past six years, the Syrian regime has delegated a large swath of its powers to loyal militias, entrusting them with preserving security, representing the regime and handling the day-to-day affairs of local communities. Today, it seems almost impossible for the state to recover its authority. In addition to the weakness of the Syrian state and its increasing failure to provide key citizen services, militias have gained so much ground that the state cannot restrain them and exert sole control over weapons and violence, even if it wishes to do so.
The intensity of the current chaos in Syria varies by region depending on social cohesion and the prevailing ethno-sectarian climate; however, an identical model reproduces itself throughout regime-controlled areas. Local militias from Latakia to Suwayda perpetrate looting, murder and kidnapping for ransom on a daily basis when facing financial pressure or as part of the internal conflicts and wars for territory that pit them against one another. Militias also extract protection payments from traders and manufacturers, meddle in the affairs of private businesses, impose ‘taxes’ on private and public businesses and control the prices of goods.
Aleppo, whose eastern neighborhoods were retaken by regime forces in late 2016, may be the most violent example of chaos and insecurity. Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods are controlled by militias of Liwa al-Baqir, the Popular Committees, the Berri clan, al-Anajira, the Palestinian al-Quds Brigade and the Ba’ath Brigades, while the shabbiha militias, which are linked to the security services, are deployed throughout the city’s west.
Militias hold a monopoly on key services, which have become a source of income for them, from public hospitals and transportation to energy and drinking water. Each armed militia runs a type of service and public utility and shares revenue with the regime’s security services. For example, the Liwa al-Baqir militia runs Aleppo’s transportation sector, using a large fleet of microbuses, and shares its revenues with the Traffic Police Department and Military Security.
The lines separating the state’s authority from that of the militias have become blurred amid the heavily polarized militarization of Syrian society. The state and militias in Syria today are like conjoined twins who cannot be separated without killing one of them.
https://syria.chathamhouse.org/research/the-regime-and-loyal-militias-will-struggle-to-disentangle-their-relationship
“…Militias hold a monopoly on key services, which have become a source of income for them…”
Hey, same as in the US. We call the infrastructure militias ‘corporations’. And just like with Syria’s evil conjoined twins, we can’t separate them without sacrificing one. My money is on the corporations though – I don’t think anyone here will miss the useless, parasitic state. It shouldn’t be forgotten, though. I think it should be preserved in a big glass jar of formaldehyde and be featured in traveling circus freak shows. “Kids! Don’t tap on the glass… that thing is dangerous!
Aye, I hope you mean corporate (fascist state) parasite will not be missed. Government by the people means it is governed for the citizens Treasure, Commons and Unalienable Rights over any other considerations or groups.
The YPG better have a fucking plan other then to just retreat after every clash!
They will retreat to Iran !! XD.
OK so Russia, Iran and Turkey deal is going to replace YPG secular with FSA jihadist in Afrin. That was a silly thing to do by Russians for his Syrian allied, especially if the Western countries get a ceasefire at the UN for Eastern Ghoutha. IMO
if you say so.
Those “seculars” would have separate north Syria from south Syria. So, like noone is willing to do the job, let Erdogan do it.
And why not too let the Israelis do it in the rest of the Golans, and more above? Keep dreaming.
Erdogan is using FSA to get rid of Kurds. Erdogan said that he will welcome Assad to fight YPG. Like SDF betrayed Assad, Assad better join Erdogan and make a deal.
Or Erdogan better join Assad and the mean russkyes and make a deal.
Erdogan, Iran and Russia are helding a council in Astana. So, the french president said to Edogan “Asatan plan is not for peace”. XD.
Join Erdogan to fight SDF and USA will return back with nothing !!!
Serious, sorry, but I have to go.
the western countries are not in charge of what is happening in syria so they can go f*ck themselves dry exactly as they like it.
The only way to stop the Turkish advance is to turn Kurdish secessionist areas over to the Syrian government so that they can mitigate the threat that the Kurds pose to the Turks so that the Turks don’t have to do it themselves.
I find it inexplicable and indeed inexcusable that the Syrian government allows a foreign country (Turkey) to use its airspace and bombard civilian targets without even the attempt to interdict those incursions and illegal attacks. In my view, and for many others, the government of Bashar al-Asad has lost credibility and legitimacy because of their continued inaction or even acquiescence. One might argue, that if the YPG and their allies repell the Turkish aggression, it is they, and only they, that have a legitimate claim to the territories they defend.
It’s the Kurds keeping the SAA out of Afrin, not the Turks.
I am shocked on how terrible Kurds are in actual fighting just like their Israeli allies are. When they really have to fight and take some losses, they just buckle under the pressure. Mind you that the Kurds have a 150,000 member military force. 150,000 fighters, and they cannot handle a few weeks of actual fighting. They are operating as lousy as Israelis did in the 33 day war.
Well, kurds do not have a 150k military for, at least not the Syrian kurds as of yet.
Total SDF forces might indeed be close to this figure.
The small problem regarding to Afrin is that the vast majority of those are in the eastern part of the region, which has no direct (overland) contact with Afrin.
The forces there are much smaller and much more lightly armed as they received no weapons from the US.
The number of SDF in Afrin vary wildly, from 8-10k acc to Turkey to over 35k acc to some pro SDF sources. There is no disagreement on them being lightly armed.
SDF has to utilise many of her forces in Afrin as holding forces against possible attacks and cannot fully concentrate her forces in just one, or even several, front(s).
On the other hand, invaders can pick where they want to invade and can thus create locally overwhelming superiority.
Given the above, SDF is doing really well and is fighting very bravely against the odds. Erdogan promised to walk over the region in 3 days and now is still hardly anywhere after 33 days, 11 times what he promised and without any real results.
Bloody Turkish regime trolls.mad men on the loose.