The Battle for Aleppo - 10/19/2015

Russian airstrikes in Syria 'redrawing battlefield lines', sending ISIS fleeing

Russian bombers and assault planes have attacked 49 terrorist targets, making a total of 33 sorties over the last 24 hours. All the planes have successfully returned to the Khmeimim air base in Latakia, Russia’s Defense Ministry reports.

RT,

19 October, 2015

The airstrikes hit targets in the provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, Hama, Idlib and Latakia

Russian aircraft bombed two command headquarters, three arms depots, two underground bunkers, 32 firing positions in mountainous areas, nine fortified battlefield positions and a workshop producing missile launchers and rockets for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

“A direct hit into the facility caused the explosives stored there to detonate. This led to the complete destruction of the instillation,” Konashenkov said.

Reconnaissance missions on Sunday night established that several large groups of terrorists, made up of hundreds of jihadists each, have left their positions and are heading towards the village of Marj Al-Sultan.

A couple of Sukhoi Su-25SM assault jets delivered two successive high-explosive bomb strikes on a large terrorist training camp revealed by aerial reconnaissance in Latakia province. The attack resulted in a training camp and infrastructure in the vicinity of Duwayr Al-Akrad village being completely destroyed.

Meanwhile, a Sukhoi Su-34 bomber used guided bombs to destroy a vast underground system of tunnels in Hama province.

UAV air reconnaissance conducted over the Idlib province revealed a command post of Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria. A Sukhoi Su-24M bomber was dispatched to the area, eliminating the installation and two trucks with air-defense systems mounted on them, Konashenkov said.

In the Hama province, Russian jets destroyed a vast underground terrorist shelter network, the defense ministry spokesman mentioned, adding that following the Russian airstrikes, IS fighters are deserting their positions near the Syrian capital of Damascus en masse.

“Pinpoint airstrikes by the Russian operational air force in Damascus province have resulted in fundamental changes of the operative situation in the region. The groups of Islamic State militants are suffering a dire shortage of munitions and are abandoning their positions en masse,” Konashenkov said.

Reconnaissance missions on Sunday night established that several large groups of terrorists, made up of hundreds of jihadists each, have left their positions and are heading towards the village of Marj Al-Sultan.

A couple of Sukhoi Su-25SM assault jets delivered two successive high-explosive bomb strikes on a large terrorist training camp revealed by aerial reconnaissance in Latakia province. The attack resulted in a training camp and infrastructure in the vicinity of Duwayr Al-Akrad village being completely destroyed.

Meanwhile, a Sukhoi Su-34 bomber used guided bombs to destroy a vast underground system of tunnels in Hama province.

Syrian Showdown: Russia, Iran Rally Forces, US Rearms Rebels As "Promised" Battle For Aleppo Begins

Zero Hedge,

19 October, 2015

On Friday, we previewed the battle for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city prior to the war. 

It’s now run by a hodgepodge of rebels and militants including al-Qaeda, the Free Syrian Army, and ISIS and for the Assad regime, regaining control of the city is absolutely critical. As Reuters noted last week, "the assault means the army is now pressing insurgents on several fronts near Syria's main cities in the west, control of which would secure President Bashar al-Assad's hold on power even if the east of the country is still held by Islamic State." 

In other words, if Assad can secure Aleppo, Iran and Russia will have successfully restored his grip on the country for all intents and purposes. 

Here’s a look a map showing where Aleppo is in relation to Russia’s base at Latakia, along with the before and after images we highlighted last week which depict nighttime light emissions on the way to vividly demonstrating the effect the war has had on the city.

For reference, this is one of Syria's most war-torn areas. To give you an idea of what's taken place there since the war began, we present the following stark visuals from in and around the city ca. 2012 (as you might imagine, it's only gotten worse since):

The offensive is also notable for the scale of Iran’s involvement.

Between Hezbollah and Iranian forces, the battle for Aleppo is shaping up to be the largest ground operation orchestrated by Tehran to date. Underscoring how deeply involved Iran truly is, Quds Commander Qasem Soleimani (who we profiled here) showed up near the frontlines late last week to rally the troops. 

Here’s GOP mouthpiece Fox News (who are most assuredly not Soleimani fans): 

Iran's shadowy top military commander has been spotted in Syria addressing Iranian military officers and members of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, according to photos that emerged Thursday on social media.

Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani -- the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or Qods Force -- was pictured rallying Iranian military and Hezbollah members in western Syria in photos that appeared on Twitter.

On Thursday, Reuters confirmed Soleimani's presence in the western province of Latakia in Syria. The news agency said Soleimani was seen addressing Iranian officers and Hezbollah fighters with a microphone while clad in dark-colored clothes.

Here are the images Fox references:

As WaPo, goes on to point out, some of the fighters called to Syria by Soleimani are from Iraq's Shiite militias, supporting our contention that as soon as Syria is "secure" (whatever that means in this context), Russia and Iran will take the fight across the border, where militiamen loyal to Tehran are already battling Sunni extremists:

Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds forces and the public face of Iran’s military intervention in the region, has ordered thousands of Shiite militiamen into Syria for an operation to recapture Aleppo, according to officials from three Iraqi militias. The militiamen are to join Iranian troops and forces from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, the officials said. The Iraqi Shiite militia Kitaeb Hezbollah has sent around 1,000 fighters from Iraq, one said.

The new arrivals shore up the position of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose beleaguered forces had been losing ground before Russia began launching airstrikes three weeks ago. Pro-government forces have claimed victory in a string of villages around the Aleppo in recent days, in a conflict that Shiite militias frame as a single regional struggle between Shiites and Sunni extremists from the Islamic State.

“It makes no difference whether we’re in Iraq or Syria, we consider it the same front line because we are fighting the same enemy,” said Bashar al-Saidi, a spokesman for Harakat al-Hezbollah al-Nujaba, an Iraqi Shiite militia that says it has fighters around Aleppo. “We are all the followers of Khamenei and will go and fight to defend the holy sites and Shiites everywhere," he said, referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Lebanese group Hezbollah and the Quds Force, which is part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, have also sent reinforcements, he said. Last week, a U.S. defense official said hundreds of Iranian troops were near the city in preparation for an offensive.

“It’s not a secret. We are all fighting against the same enemy,” said Saidi.

His militia released a photo of Soleimani, the Quds Force commander, with its fighters near Aleppo on one of its social media accounts last week.

“The operation is an extension for our operations in Iraq because it’s the same enemy, and when we hit them there it means that it will get results in Iraqi lands,” the Kitaeb official said. Soleimani “specifically requested they go there for the launch of the operation for Aleppo,” he said.

And here's a look at an airstrike map which delineates bombing runs by date, thus giving you an idea of the extent to which the Russians targeted Aleppo last week to soften up the rebels ahead of the offensive:

Meanwhile, as Russia revved up the Sukhois and the shadow commander rallied the ground forces, the US rearmed the rebels. Here’s Reuters:

Rebels battling the Syrian army and its allies south of Aleppo say they have received new supplies of U.S.-made anti-tank missiles from states that oppose President Bashar al-Assad since a major government offensive began there on Friday.

Rebels from three Free Syrian Army-affiliated groups contacted by Reuters said new supplies had arrived since the start of the attack by the army backed by Iranian fighters and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

A number of rebel groups vetted by states opposed to Assad have been supplied with weapons via Turkey, part of a program supported by the United States and which has in some cases included military training by the Central Intelligence Agency.

And so, with the proxy war lines clearly drawn, the battle has begun. Via WSJ:

Syrian pro-regime forces backed by Russian airstrikes have expanded their ground offensive to the strategic city of Aleppo, one of the clearest signs yet of how Russia’s recent military intervention has emboldened President Bashar al-Assad and his loyalists.

In the bitterly fought multi-sided war, Aleppo is among the most coveted prizes. Losing partial control of the city, which was once Syria’s largest and its commercial capital, was an embarrassment to the regime. But with the backing of Russian warplanes, Iranian forces and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Mr. Assad’s forces could now be in position to regain large parts of the city and the surrounding countryside.

“I suspect Assad always wanted to take back Aleppo because it is such an important city and retaking it has such strategic and symbolic importance,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based military and security think tank. “And it would deny the rebels a foothold in any major city.”

Since Friday, the regime has netted a number of villages on the southern outskirts of the city and thousands of civilians are fleeing fighting in the area. On Sunday, the regime captured one additional village and U.S.-backed rebels destroyed two regime tanks using American-supplied weapons as they tried to stem the regime’s progress.

The regime appears to be advancing westward toward the strategic highway linking Aleppo with the capital Damascus, rebels said.

In a rare move, the offensive is being led by regime-allied Iranian fighters, according to Ahmad al-Ahmad, a spokesman for the moderate Islamist rebel group Faylaq al-Sham, which is involved in the battles.

The city of Aleppo is now divided in two, with an array of rebel factions controlling the eastern half and the regime holding the western half.

The regime’s ground offensives over the past two weeks have been led by fighters and military advisers from Iran and forces from Hezbollah, supplemented by Syrian security forces.

So far the battles in Aleppo are concentrated in the southern countryside on multiple fronts pushing toward the crucial highway that links the city with the coastal province of Latakia and the central provinces such as Hama, rebels said.

One of the goals of the offensive could be to prevent rebel reinforcements from Aleppo being sent to help fighters along other fronts. Rebels also report an amassing of pro-regime forces elsewhere in Aleppo province that could be aimed at cutting off the rebel supply route from Turkey.

Such moves could severely weaken the array of rebel forces in Aleppo, which include Islamist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and al Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front as well as U.S.-backed rebels.

Note how shockingly close this is to an actual shooting war between the US/NATO and the Iran-Russia "nexus."

CIA-trained rebels are now using weapons supplied by the US to kill Iranian soldiers backed by Russian airstrikes. The fact that the ground invasion is now clearly run by Iran and Hezbollah means that one side of the "rebels vs. SAA" proxy label has been removed. This is now "rebels vs. Iran and Russia", meaning there's literally but one degree of separation from an outright NATO vs. Russia-Iran armed conflict. And don't forget: the nation through which the US is suppliying the rebels at Aleppo (i.e. Turkey) just shot down a Russian drone. 

And so, as we wait to see whether the US will finally step in on behalf of its proxy armies before they are routed in the most critical battle yet in the war for Syria, we leave you with a few still shots taken over the weekend in Aleppo.

International Military Review & Analysis – Syria-Iraq Battlespace, Oct. 19.10.2015

Aleppo is absent from the Guardian today but yesterday they were focusing on the refugees as a result of the “regime’s” “invasion”.

Robert Fisk has a more realistic view.

Everyone Wrote Off The Syrian Army. Take Another Look Now

All this is only the beginning of Mr Putin’s adventure in the Middle East

Robert Fisk

the Independent,

19 October, 2015

While the world still rages on at Russia’s presumption in the Middle East – to intervene in Syria instead of letting the Americans decide which dictators should survive or die – we’ve all been forgetting the one institution in that Arab land which continues to function and protect the state which Moscow has decided to preserve: the Syrian army. While Russia has been propagandising its missiles, the Syrian military, undermanned and undergunned a few months ago, has suddenly moved on to the offensive. Earlier this year, we may remember, this same army was being written off, the Bashar al-Assad government said to be reaching its final days.

We employed our own army of clichés to make the case for regime change. The Syrian army was losing ground – at Jisr al-Shugour and at Palmyra – and so we predicted that the whole Assad state had reached a “tipping point”. 

Then along came Vladimir Putin with his air and missile fleets and suddenly the whole place is transformed. While we huffed and puffed that the Russians were bombing the “moderate” rebels – moderates who had earlier ceased to exist according to America’s top generals – we’ve been paying no attention to the military offensive which the Syrians themselves are now staging against the Nusra Front fighters around Aleppo and in the valley of the Orontes.

Syrian commanders are now setting the coordinates for almost every Russian air strike. They were originally giving between 200 and 400 coordinates a night. Now the figure sometimes reaches 800. Not that the Russians are going after every map reference, of course. The Syrians have found that the Russians do not want to fire at targets in built-up areas; they intend to leave burning hospitals and dead wedding parties to the Americans in Afghanistan. This policy could always change, of course. No air force bombs countries without killing civilians. Nor without crossing other people’s frontiers.

But the Russians are now telling the Turks – and by logical extension, this information must go to the Americans – their flight coordinates. Even more remarkable, they have set up a hotline communications system between their base on the Syrian Mediterranean coast and the Israeli ministry of defence in Tel Aviv. More incredible still is that the Israelis – who have a habit of targeting Syrian and Iranian personnel near the Golan Heights – have suddenly disappeared from the skies. In other words, the Russians are involved in a big operation, not a one-month wonder that is going on in Syria. And it is likely to continue for quite a time.

The Syrians were originally anxious to move back into Palmyra, captured by Isis last May, but the Russians have demonstrated more interest in the Aleppo region, partly because they believe their coastal bases around Lattakia are vulnerable. The Nusra Front has fired several missiles towards Lattakia and Tartous and Moscow has no desire to have its air force targeted on the ground. But the Syrian army is now deploying its four major units – the 1st and 4th Divisions, Republican Guards and Special Forces – on the battle fronts and are moving closer to the Turkish border.

Russian air strikes around the Isis “capital” of Raqqa may or may not be hurting Isis, although the Syrians like to boast that they have plenty of intelligence coming to them from the city. Interesting, if true, because Isis personnel are specialists in torturing to death “agents of the regime” and it would be a brave man to pass on information to Damascus. Yet travellers’ tales can be true. There’s a regular civilian bus route from Raqqa to Damascus – buses have an odd habit of crossing front lines in most civil wars – and if passengers prefer not to talk to journalists, they will talk of what they have seen when they get home.

All this is only the beginning of Mr Putin’s adventure. He is proving to be quite a traveller to the Middle East – and has already made firm friends of another pillar of the region, that President-Field Marshal who scored more than 96 per cent at the polls and who currently rules Egypt. But the Egyptian army, fighting its little war in Sinai, no longer has strategic experience of a major war. Nor, despite their dalliance in the air over Yemen, Libya, Syria and other targets of opportunity, do the present military authorities in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Jordan have much understanding of how a real war is fought. Libya’s own army is in bits. Iraq’s military has scarcely earned any medals against its Islamist enemies.

But there is one factor which should not be overlooked. 

If it wins – and if it holds together and if its manpower, which is admittedly at a low level, can be maintained – then the Syrian military is going to come out of this current war as the most ruthless, battle-trained and battle-hardened Arab army in the entire region. Woe betide any of its neighbours who forget this.

The Express is the one British paper that bucks the BBC/Guardian trend

Russia takes out 49 ISIS targets in ONE DAY causing quaking jihadis to flee their posts

RUSSIAN military chiefs have claimed to have bombed 49 ISIS targets in just ONE DAY of airstrikes in Syria.

And talking of Iraq

ISIS barbarity: How 100,000 Christians fled Mosul in ONE NIGHT

A PRIEST who was captured and tortured by Islamist terrorists has today lifted the lid on Islamic State's (ISIS) horrific persecution of Christians.

Father Douglas Bazi revealed how 100,000 Christians fled the Iraqi city of Mosul in one night after the jihadi fanatics embarked on a "genocidal" campaign of ethnic cleansing.


Giving a shocking insight into life under ISIS rule, the clergyman told Express.co.uk how the Christian population of Iraq has been decimated from a high of two million in 2003 to just 180,000 today.


He also revealed how jihadi fighters summarily torture and kill the families of those who speak out against them and regularly use girl sex slaves to pay for basic services including medical care.


Mosul's entire population was given a 24-hour ultimatum to either convert to ISIS's radical brand of Islam or face beheading when the terror group captured the city in June last year.