Syrian rebels enter Aleppo for first time in eight years during shock offensive

[Vambram]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/29/world/syria-rebels-aleppo-war-intl

Syrian opposition forces have entered Aleppo just three days into their surprise offensive, marking the first time they have set foot in the country’s second-largest city since government forces recaptured the city in 2016.

The rebels launched a surprise attack this week, sweeping eastward through several villages outside the city and reigniting a conflict that had been largely static for years.

By Friday evening, opposition forces had reached the city center, according to footage verified by CNN, which showed camo-clad fighters waving the flag of the Syrian opposition in a central square.

The offensive, which began Wednesday, is the first major flare-up in years between the Syrian opposition and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who has ruled the war-torn country since 2000.

The official Syrian military said it was confronting a “major attack” and claimed it is “reinforcing all locations along the various battlefronts,” but multiple residents of the city say regime forces have pulled back from several neighborhoods in the western part of Aleppo.

On Friday, the newly formed armed opposition coalition, the Military Operations Command, said it seized control of the Syrian government’s Military Scientific Research Center on the outskirts of Aleppo city after “intense clashes with the regime forces and Iranian militias.” It later shared a video of Syrian regime tanks leaving Aleppo as rebel forces advanced.

The armed opposition forces continued to edge further into the city throughout Friday afternoon. In a video geolocated by CNN, fighters were seen by the statue of Bassel al-Assad, the deceased brother of President Assad, on the eastern edge of the city’s New Aleppo district. One fighter was seen lowering a Syrian flag from its mast.

A fluid situation
The situation in Aleppo remained fluid as the day progressed, as armed opposition forces appeared to continue their rapid advance.

Two videos captured in the central Saadallah al-Jabiri Square show camo-clad fighters waving the flag of the Syrian opposition and yelling “Allahu Akbar”—meaning “God is great” in Arabic—in the nearly deserted plaza.

The armed rebels also appeared at Aleppo’s historic citadel, verified footage shows, nearly a mile (1.59km) to the southeast, verified footage shows.

Pro-Syrian government social media channels have disputed the extent of the opposition’s advance. Two videos posted on pro-government Telegram channels, purportedly show empty squares in northwest Aleppo, as men claim that there are no rebels in that part of the city.

 

[Nithavela]

From what I've heard, this is likely because of the Israeli attacks on the Heezbollah militia, an ally of the Assad regime. Also, there are speculations that Turkey has been egging on the rebels because of the syrian refugees in Turkey.

Goes to show what kind of ridiculous snarl middle east politics are.

 

[Laodicean60]

Syrian opposition forces have entered Aleppo just three days into their surprise offensive, marking the first time they have set foot in the country’s second-largest city since government forces recaptured the city in 2016.

Or, this could be the Trump effect it's no surprise our desire to remove Assad has been on America's minds for many years.

 

[Vambram]

Or, this could be the Trump effect it's no surprise our desire to remove Assad has been on America's minds for many years.

It could be "the Trump effect", but I doubt it because Donald Trump doesn't want the USA to get entangled in regime changes of other nations.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Or, this could be the Trump effect it's no surprise our desire to remove Assad has been on America's minds for many years.

Highly unlikely to have anything to do with trump. The Assad regime's primary backers and allies (Iran, Russia, Hezbollah) are all weakened by recent conflicts (Ukraine invasion, Israel-Hezbollah war) and it is a rather ideal time to attack and see if Assad will fall.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Assad regime in Syria may fall in days, US increasingly believes​

Biden administration officials, watching the remarkable speed of the Syrian rebel advance, increasingly see the possibility of the regime of Bashar al-Assad falling within days, five US officials told CNN.

“The question is whether regime forces actually stand their ground when it comes to Damascus,” they added.

Rebels are racing toward the Syrian capital after routing government forces in two of the country’s biggest cities in an advance that started just over a week ago. Homs, Syria’s third largest city, lies next in their path as they sweep south.

Beyond there, the capital Damascus.

 

[Nithavela]

Assad regime in Syria may fall in days, US increasingly believes​

Biden administration officials, watching the remarkable speed of the Syrian rebel advance, increasingly see the possibility of the regime of Bashar al-Assad falling within days, five US officials told CNN.

“The question is whether regime forces actually stand their ground when it comes to Damascus,” they added.

Rebels are racing toward the Syrian capital after routing government forces in two of the country’s biggest cities in an advance that started just over a week ago. Homs, Syria’s third largest city, lies next in their path as they sweep south.

Beyond there, the capital Damascus.

As far as I know, Homs is the actually important city that will decide the outcome. If homs falls, Damascus will be cut off from the coast, where most of Assad's power base lies. Syria is pretty big, but the eastern half is mostly desert. If Homs falls to the rebels, the fall of Damascus is likely only a matter of time.

 

[Hazelelponi]

Assad regime in Syria may fall in days, US increasingly believes​

Biden administration officials, watching the remarkable speed of the Syrian rebel advance, increasingly see the possibility of the regime of Bashar al-Assad falling within days, five US officials told CNN.

“The question is whether regime forces actually stand their ground when it comes to Damascus,” they added.

Rebels are racing toward the Syrian capital after routing government forces in two of the country’s biggest cities in an advance that started just over a week ago. Homs, Syria’s third largest city, lies next in their path as they sweep south.

Beyond there, the capital Damascus.

If they take Damascus and Homs it's all over. Erdogan called Assad today to negotiate "the future of Syria" (AKA terms of surrender).

Assad did not respond positively but Assads wife and children have fled the country and Assad is outside the country ATM.

So, we'll see, but if Damascus and Homs fall the war is officially over and Assad out of power.

It's the worst case scenario for Syrians.

We need out of NATO or Turkey does. We don't both fit. NATO stopped being NATO the second we added Turkey.

 

[Nithavela]

If they take Damascus and Homs it's all over. Erdogan called Assad today to negotiate "the future of Syria" (AKA terms of surrender).

Assad did not respond positively but Assads wife and children have fled the country and Assad is outside the country ATM.

So, we'll see, but if Damascus and Homs fall the war is officially over and Assad out of power.

It's the worst case scenario for Syrians.

Nonsense. Assad is a brutal dictator that has made his people suffer for decades, as did his father before him. It can certainly get worse, but it can also get a lot better.

 

[Hazelelponi]

Nonsense. Assad is a brutal dictator that has made his people suffer for decades, as did his father before him. It can certainly get worse, but it can also get a lot better.

Assad is a fine dictator. He kept a good country. Freedom of religion. That was what made the extremists angry, positive treatment for Christians.

 

[Nithavela]

Assad is a fine dictator.

If you mean that he is fine at torturing and murdering his people, you are correct.

 

[Hazelelponi]

If you mean that he is fine at torturing and murdering his people, you are correct.

Islamic extremists aren't anyones people but Satans.

 

[Nithavela]

Islamic extremists aren't anyones people but Satans.

Assad is a muslim, too.

 

[Hans Blaster]

If they take Damascus and Homs it's all over. Erdogan called Assad today to negotiate "the future of Syria" (AKA terms of surrender).

Homs has been liberated. Opposition forces are approaching Damascus from the south and north-east.

Assad did not respond positively but Assads wife and children have fled the country and Assad is outside the country ATM.

So, we'll see, but if Damascus and Homs fall the war is officially over and Assad out of power.

It's the worst case scenario for Syrians.

To be free of their dictator?

We need out of NATO or Turkey does. We don't both fit. NATO stopped being NATO the second we added Turkey.

Are you saying NATO stopped being NATO in 1952?

 

[Nithavela]

Homs has been liberated. Opposition forces are approaching Damascus from the south and north-east.

To be free of their dictator?

Are you saying NATO stopped being NATO in 1952?

Now it's NATOINO (NATO In Name Only)

 

[Hazelelponi]

Assad is a muslim, too.

Yes .. good to know that you noticed.

Have anything less obvious to add?

 

[essentialsaltes]

What if Assad fell, analysts asked, only to be replaced by groups that Washington regarded as terrorists? The scenario was given a name: the “catastrophic success.”

The same question is being asked with urgency as intelligence agencies around the world contemplate the sweeping gains over the past week by the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS — an Arabic name that translates to the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.

The group’s pedigree is well known, with historic links to both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

According to a broad array of analysts and Syria experts, HTS also has changed, not just in its rhetoric but in its actions, including at least an initial public embrace of pluralism and religious freedom in areas that it has come to occupy.

Whether HTS’s professions of reform are genuine is far from clear.

[How did HTS get so successful / How did Assad get so weakened?] By decimating Hezbollah’s leadership and destroying much of its military capability, Israel undermined an essential pillar in Assad’s security infrastructure. Syria’s other benefactors, Iran and Russia, had become distracted meanwhile by problems elsewhere, including Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

[HTS leader] Jolani has sought since then [since repudiating both ISIS and Al Qaeda almost ten years ago] to cultivate a more moderate, tolerant image and to root out — sometimes brutally — Islamic State supporters in his enclave as well as extremists within his organization, analysts say.

Syrian advocacy groups say Jolani has generally followed through on his pledge of moderation by allowing freedom of worship and granting rights to women — including the right to pursue professional careers and attend college — in HTS’s Idlib stronghold, as well as the cities that have recently fallen to the group.

Aleppo’s citizens have largely welcomed the HTS fighters. A prominent leader of the city’s Orthodox community told him that Christian neighborhoods were putting up Christmas decorations without rebel interference, Moustafa said.

 

[Vambram]

Trump Says US Shouldn't Intervene in Syria as Opposition Forces Gain Ground

He argued that Syrian President Bashar Assad did not deserve U.S. support to stay in power.

www.military.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria amid an opposition offensive that has reached the capital's suburbs, declaring in a social media post, "THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.”

Trump's first extensive comments on the dramatic rebel push came while he was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral. He argued that Syrian President Bashar Assad did not deserve U.S. support to stay in power.



Assad's government has been propped up by the Russian and Iranian military, along with Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied militias, in a now 13-year-old war against opposition groups seeking his overthrow. The war, which began as a mostly peaceful uprising in 2011 against the Assad family's rule, has killed a half-million people, fractured Syria and drawn in a more than a half-dozen foreign militaries and militias.


The insurgents are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the United States has designated as a terrorist group and says has links to al-Qaida, although the group has since broken ties with al-Qaida.” The insurgents have met little resistance so far from the Syrian army.

The Biden administration has suggested that their fast-moving advances toward Damascus demonstrate just how distracted those countries are by the war in Ukraine and other conflicts, but said that the U.S. is not backing the offensive and has not suggested the U.S. military will intervene.



The U.S. has about 900 troops in Syria, including U.S. forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group.

Gen. Bryan Fenton, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, said he would not want to speculate on how the upheaval in Syria would affect the U.S. military’s footprint in the country. “It’s still too early to tell,” he said.

What would not change is the focus on disrupting IS operations in Syria and protecting U.S. troops, Fenton said Saturday during a panel at an annual gathering of national security officials, defense companies and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.

Syrian opposition activists and regional officials have nonetheless been watching closely for any indication from both the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration on how the U.S. would handle the sudden rebel advances against Assad.

Robert Wilkie, Trump's defense transition chief and a former secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said during the same panel that the collapse of the “murderous Assad regime” would be a major blow to Iran's power.

The United Nations' special envoy for Syria called Saturday for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition” in Syria.

In his post, Trump said Russia “is so tied up in Ukraine” that it “seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years.” He said rebels could possibly force Assad from power.

The president-elect condemned the overall U.S. handling of the war but said the routing of Assad and Russian forces might be for the best.

“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he wrote in Saturday's post.

An influential Syrian opposition activist in Washington, Mouaz Moustafa, interrupted a briefing to reporters to read Trump’s post and appeared to choke up. He said Trump’s declaration that the U.S. should stay out of the fight was the best outcome that the the Syrians aligned against Assad could hope for.

Rebels have been freeing political detainees of the Assad government from prisons as they advance across Syria, taking cities. Moustafa pledged to reporters Saturday that opposition forces would be alert for any U.S. detainees among them and do their utmost to protect them.

Moustafa said that includes Austin Tice, an American journalist missing for more than a decade and suspected to be held by Assad.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham renounced al-Qaida in 2016 and has worked to rebrand itself, including cracking down on some Islamic extremist groups and fighters in its territory and portraying itself as a protector of Christians and other religious minorities.

While the U.S. and United Nations still designate it as a terrorist organization, Trump's first administration told lawmakers that the U.S. was no longer targeting the group's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani.

 

[essentialsaltes]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria amid an opposition offensive that has reached the capital's suburbs, declaring in a social media post, "THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.”

Trump's first extensive comments on the dramatic rebel push came while he was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral. He argued that Syrian President Bashar Assad did not deserve U.S. support to stay in power.

He must have Biden confused with Tulsi Gabbard.

 

[Vambram]

He must have Biden confused with Tulsi Gabbard.

wha???