RE: Sources on the Syrian Civil War
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Originally Posted by CrowBat
I do feel to be in position to say: if this is the way Hoff's 'gauging' the Assadist regime, he's either plain dumb or a blind religious fanatic.
I wouldn’t say that Hoff is supportive of Assad so much as he is dismissive of the Sunni Arab rebels and sympathetic to the Christians, ignoring the wider historical context of Syrian communal relations.
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Originally Posted by CrowBat
And re. 'are there flaws in the FSyA': not that they are directly comparable, but tell me, are there flaws in the Democratic or Republican parties of the USA...? Are there flaws in the US or any other military...?
A more apt comparison would be between the Free Syrian Army and the White Army during the Russian Civil War. Unfortunately, winning both the war and the peace will require an ideological unity that the FSA does not posses at present. A common desire to oust Assad and expel the Iranians is not sufficient; there must be an agreed-upon platform for the day after Assad is gone.
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Originally Posted by CrowBat
And I didn't receive 1 cent from anybody. And still: I'm usually drawing similar conclusions to his, and that (usually) 12-24 months earlier.
Nevertheless, Qatar's intervention in Syria, Libya and Egypt, as well as its unabashed support for the Muslim Brotherhood, should be taken into consideration when receiving information from a source based in Qatar and reliant upon Qatari funding, no? After all, the Qataris have been rebuked by the Saudis...
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Originally Posted by CrowBat
Anyway, at some point in time during that party, I found myself chatting with (one of) US Army Attachés, and then spontaneously blurting the sentence, 'You're rapidly losing control of the situation (in Iraq)'. While I was still startled with what I said (and how frankly), he just looked me into eyes, then nodded in confirmation.
Was this before or after the CPA's Orders No. 1 and 2?
The CIA, State Department and many within the Defense Department knew that de-Ba’athification would be a disaster – and it was. The insurgency against coalition forces began within days of the anti-Ba’ath purge. The CPA blindly executed the OSP’s plan despite opposition, including the removal of the CPA’s first administrator, and it took over 4 years of casualties before the US began working to undo the damage. Petraeus was a fixer, not a strategic genius...
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Originally Posted by CrowBat
Even today, I would say that 'been there' is very important for understanding what's going on, for getting the 'picture' of people and (especially) terrain. But, many things have changed in these 'internet times': IMHO, nowadays it's far more important to have 'right contacts in right places' - and some sort of 'secure' or at least 'not too obvious' comms to the people in question.
I agree that the internet and social media permit a closer and rawer look at distant events as they unfold but are also more susceptible to deliberate misinformation as well. There are tweets, videos and posts tailored to every viewpoint, unfortunately.
Most of the Western commentators who question the existence of the FSA are actually stuck in the past:
- CIA coup d'etats against various governments during the Cold War
- CIA support for terrorists who are portrayed as "freedom fighters" to the public (e.g. Contras, UNITA, KLA)
- The fake intelligence used to justify the AUMF in Iraq
- The overthrow of Qaddafi under the aegis of "responsibility to protect" and a NFZ
- The misconception that the CIA supported Al Qaeda and the Taliban during the Soviet-Afghan War
- Official lies and cover-ups during the wars in Indochina
- The perception that Sunni Arabs are incapable of liberal democracy based upon the Islamist-secular authoritarian dichotomy of the past and present
As for Jack Murphy at SOFREP, the fact is that his narrative conflates the DOD’s program of training and equipping moderate/secular Sunni Arabs in Jordan and Turkey to fight Daesh exclusively, with the CIA’s program of supplying weaponry to Sunni Arab rebels who are fighting Assad, and who the CIA has determined to be moderate/secular.
Because the CIA program proved relatively successful in terms of stopping the Assadist advance and allowing the rebels to drive into Latakia in 2015, the DOD program was a failure. Clearly, the Sunni Arabs in the west of the country where the FSA is based, consider Assad a greater threat and are unwilling to fight Daesh whilst ignoring Assad’s depredations.
The whole point of my post is that we always have to be mindful of bias, not merely the blatant lies of those with opposing views. For someone who is “far from declaring” yourself as an expert, you refer to those with different opinions or observations as “plain dumb” or “a blind religious fanatic” or “an uninformed third person”.
You claim that your knowledge of the war’s dynamics are from personal contacts in the SyAAF made over decades as well as other Syrians who are still in Syria, presumably. But do these sources not have their own biases?
Ultimately, my concern stems from your glosses of history, specifically with regard to the Sunni-Shia divide and the rule of the Assads.
Where you see bloodletting instigated deliberately by the Assads, I see yet another example of minority rule collapsing. Where you see a Hitler, I see a dictator who is in far less control and is far less bloodthirsty than Hussein was. Where you see only Shia and Iranian supremacy, I see but one offensive in an ongoing conflict that includes the Iran-Iraq War, in which chemical weapons were used on Iranian civilians to a degree that would make Assad blush.
To Outlaw 09 RE: Syrian Civil War Sources
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Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Azor...you ask some interesting questions.....
1. having spent time also in Iraq when the Iraqi Salafists and QJBR then AQI were basically running a phase 2 guerrilla war that no one and yes no one even on the SOF side saw it....and I caught massive pushback or repeatedly pointing it out....I greatly distrust anyone who states I was there speak some Arabic thus "I understand the ME"....
I agree that exposure is not the same as knowledge, and intelligence requires the ability to acquire and apply one’s knowledge in a rapid manner, similar to OODA.
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Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
2. right now if we take just the work done by Lister...Orton....CrowBat....Hassan Hassan and Weiss for just say the last five years.....literally tons of articles and then compare them to other writers claiming to "know Syria" or the various Salafist groups as well as the moderate secular FSA and their reporting on the over 1000 Syrian self governing groups I then take them hands down.......Their accuracy in naming the groups and sub groups and the twists and turns of what is ongoing inside cannot be matched by another group of writers or single writers......I post them repeatedly just because of their accuracy.......
Basically, I am hesitant to accept any glosses of the opposition, because it is so diverse. You yourself have stated that the FSA includes Islamist units and that supposedly Islamist rebel coalitions (not JFS or Daesh) include moderate/secular units. Brennan and others at the CIA clearly believe in the FSA, but we would have to acknowledge that the CIA must have reasonable cause to discriminate on a unit-by-unit basis in terms of due diligence and approval for arms transfers. Unfortunately, civil wars are historically won by groups that are ideologically unified and operationally cohesive.
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Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Just a side comment....I was writing a series of intel reports one day in a BCT TOC when the BCT intel officer was writing his monthly intel summary for Baqubah Diyala Province which in 2005/2006 was like the Wild West for insurgent activities....
Well anyway he asked me....do you have any idea why we see almost like clock work a series of insurgent attacks on five major ISF controlled checkpoints in Baqubah.....about every four weeks.....
Without looking up I said take a look at the targets...five different styles of control points .....the insurgents are graduating a trainee class and are doing a live fire attack exercise.....as they have been doing indoor dry fire training and need to finally conduct true attacks.....
His response...but they do take loses and wounded..my response...that is the guerrilla Darwinian principle at work....only the good ones make it onto the attack teams.....
His response...that is to simple and higher will not accept such a short explanation.....and he did not report it that way....actually he fudged around and never did accurately reflect what was happening on the ground......
WHICH flew in the face of my interrogation reports which in fact verified what I had said....because that was a question I placed to a Salafist we had picked up by "accident"....because I had spotted the guerrilla tactic and had in fact checked the five objectives....and had photos taken of them to confirm my thoughts...
Yes, thank you Wolfowitz, Feith, Chalabi, et al, for the insurgency.
Sometimes the simplest explanation is...
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Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
I distrust to a degree many Syrian writers on a number of military type blogs...the group around Orton...Lister...Weiss....Hassan Hassan and CrowBat...inherently "know" the ground.....and basically reconfirm each other's analysis work and or sometimes critique each other which is academically healthy...BTW Hassan Hassan and Orton as well as Lister have published a number of articles on what the ME might look like without IS the "day after"...and how the US has sided with the "wrong Kurdish group YPG/PKK" and they gain no traction in the US MSM.....
Orton’s Twitter exchange with Hoff doesn’t indicate that the former is very inviting of critiques. As for CB, well, he can be quite the curmudgeon, but I suppose that personal attachments to the issues and the unending ideological warfare of the internet can do that.
Clearly, the CIA and DOD disagree over the YPG, which is why TOWs go to the FSA and not the YPG. Now, there are US SOFs embedded with the YPG and a certain amount of CAS deployed on their behalf, but only insofar as Daesh is concerned. Therefore, the YPG is not trusted beyond its willingness to fight Daesh.
Why are there no SOFs embedded with the FSA (unverifiable given that these would be seconded to the CIA SAD and not acknowledged)? Well, it is probably a combination of:
- Washington not wanting to be seen as being behind the rebellion and engaged in ousting Assad from the beginning
- Fear that US personnel will be captured, killed or injured by pro-regime forces
- Fear that Islamists within the FSA can turn on US personnel or that Islamists can infiltrate the FSA to do the same
- De-confliction with Russian and Iranian SOFs, which are on the ground fighting for Assad
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Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Azor....BTW.....I am probably the only SWJ commenter who has spent literally hours of face to face conversations with Salafists, Takfirists and Sunni secularist/nationalist insurgents....hours literally hours.....in Abu Ghraib and Baqubah Diyala Province...AND the only interrogator at that time using the Koran and Islam as the basis for those discussions......and that from someone who could not spell Koran before arriving in Iraq....I could even repeat the oath of allegiance of the Ansar al Sunnah a Kurdish/Sunni/Salafist Iraqi insurgent group......much to the surprise of those that we would capture from AAS....The Army interrogators were told to not use religion was a basis but how can one avoid religion in the ME??? Especially when Shia and Sunni's share the same areas....same towns...and sometimes share the same tribes.....???
But you would have to admit that others with your experience are continuing to serve either in-theater (CIA, DOD) or stateside (DOS, DOD, think tanks) and leveraging their experience as part of US policy and execution, no? Their opinions are classified at present, but would you say that they broadly agree with your desire to provide more support for the FSA and that Obama is hamstringing the effort, or that they are reserved about dialing up the weapons?
RE: Is the FSA fighting in Aleppo?
According to Wikipedia, Jaysh Halab, which is coordinating the rebel response to the Assadist offensive as of December 1, is comprised of 9 Islamist units and 3 FSA units (1st Regiment, 16th Division and Sultan Murad Division).
Yet the 16th Division has ceased to exist since July, the Sultan Murad Division is not the most savory or inclusive of the FSA's units, and I have no information as to the 1st Regiment. As for the Levant Front, it is Islamist, aligned with JFS and cannot be considered part of the FSA at this point, although some sub-groups may be moderate/secular.
AAS commanders seem to be in charge of both Jaysh Halab and the Levant Front. Is there any credence to the claim that after the Summer, the battles in Aleppo have been between Assadist and Islamist forces in the main?