Image is of Assad and his family.
After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.
Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah’s resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria’s collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like “this is bad” and “Assad is fucking up”; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.
There is still too much that we don’t know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah’s assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.
What is certain is that Assad’s time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Uyghur’s in Syria found missiles and warn china that they’re coming for them.
The sooner we find out what the new regime intends to with these guys the better, they gotta be crazy to let syria be a launching pad for terrorism into china. I don’t even know if china would invade to stop it, this whole syria thing has probably further convinced china that foreign intervention is a grift. Probably would just try to get some UN resolutions passed to resolve the issue, it’d be interesting to see if the US would veto it.
Obviously these fellas can’t launch these at china from syria but they could smuggle them out.
Chinese deradicalization campaigns in Xinjiang seemed to have worked pretty well. At the peak of ISIS there were like 10k Uyghurs that fought in the middle east that and them entering back to China kickstarted such campaigns in earnest. But beyind the deradicalization right now Xinjiang is in a much better place economicaly, China is much stronger militarily and intelligence wise, Afghanistan isnt occupatied by americans in order to easily ship terrorists back in China and the numbers of Uyghurs in Syria and ME arent im guessing nearly as big as in ISIS times.
So i doupt there is much danger for China here. Good luck to some couple of hundreds of Uyghur seperatists in getting back to China without getting blown up by some drone or thrown in jail immediately
Suggesting that China should have put pla boots on the ground in Syria over all of this is a bit ridiculous. Even if China was more interventionist they wouldnt. And as far as Assad falling the russians and iranians with larrge military presence for ages there couldnt dk anything with the speed of the saa collapse and demoralization. What would a thousand pla troops or equipment have achieved . Other than probably be captured by western stooges
It’s the belt and road you should be worried about.
What role does Syria play in B&R?
China won’t do a thing, they’ve surrendered the middle east to the US, they’ll keep their response domestic
china will surrender everything to the US because they’re unwilling to fight. All the US has to do is demand something and China will just give it up
That’s not true? When has china given something up this century?
And by that I mean something that they actually have or care about, like say, political recognition of taiwan as a part of china, not syria because they never cared about syria
when you define “something that China cares about” that narrows it to pretty much only domestic and trade issues.
They’ve completely abandoned even trying to be a geopolitical player or spreading revolution. They’ve abandoned de-dollarization, they’ve abandoned Palestine, they’ve abandoned trying to counter American hegemony, they follow American sanctions, they have let their allies collapse, they refuse to officially form an anti-imperialist bloc preferring to keep good relations with the fascists, etc.
imo they’re going to eventually regret this. you can’t ignore the world and just focus on internal development when the enemy is surrounding you and intent on destroying you.
We should start assuming the mindset of the average Chinese liberal is to bring about the eventual overthrow of the government and install a US occupation government
Every Chinese liberal with influence is a Yeltsin or Gorbachev in waiting
At the height of the Sino-Soviet split, China shared borders with three countries that it had border skirmishes with: the Soviet Union, India, and Vietnam. Afghanistan and Mongolia were Soviet aligned states during the 70s, so that’s at least 5 states that were openly hostile to the PRC. Add in the First Island chain, and 1970s China was truly encircled on top of being a bit of a pariah state. Modern day China in comparison is fine.
Man I wish the Soviet Union was still around to protect the world from NATO aggression.
China sided with NATO…
No they didn’t. Mao was the hardliner who got pissed at the USSR for trying to normalize relations with the west. The USSR fell because they trusted the west.
china definitely materially aided the imperialists for decades
China supported the same rebels that the West did in Angola and Afghanistan to fight Cuba, the Soviet Union, and their allies. They invaded Vietnam to defend Pol Pot. They did far worse than peaceful coexistence, they actively aligned with US foreign policy all in the name of “anti-revisionism.” It’s ultraleft nonsense
Sure that is what led to the eventual fall, but it was China that worked with the US to instate the Khmer Rouge, fought against Vietnam and helped mujahideen in afghanistan
I would argue that China purposefully handed the Vietnamese to America.
At first but I am more focusing on Nixon. (Also you know, socialism in one country was initially stalinstuff sooooo
China did that for thousands of years, might as well do it some more. (Honestly though if China can get rid of oil, it won’t need the middle east so long as the belt and road can pass through russia
the boiling frog strategy but we don’t even know who’s boiling who yet!
I think we’re just boiling the planet at this stage
At least they’re no longer working with the US to install people like the Khmer Rouge
Probably fire them at chinese companies and projects in Pakistan.