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Syria Sitrep – Army Liberates Daraa City
Today the current Syrian government campaign in Daraa governorate saw another highlight. The 'rebels' in the southern part of the city of Daraa gave up and reconciled with the government. Currently the Syrian army is taking control of the area. The Syrian flag has been raised over its buildings.
The whole Daraa governorate campaign in southwest Syria proceeded with astonishing speed. In just three weeks the government forces recovered 84% of the 'rebel' held territory and dozens of cities and villages with little force. Jordan and the U.S. had finally denied support for the 'rebels' and their only choices were to reconcile or to die. Almost all of them chose to give up. An enormous amount of weapons, including at least 18 U.S. made TOW anti-tank missiles systems and two British made armored infantry carriers, were handed over to the Syrian government.
The maps show the situation at the beginning of the campaign and as of today. (red – Syrian government; green – 'rebels' and al-Qaeda; grey – Islamic Statel; blue – Golan Heights occupied by Israel; Jordan is to the south) Note: The encircled southern part of the city of Daraa on the current map is still marked green as the government is only now taking control of it.
 
June 19 2018 bigger – July 12 2018 bigger
Israel is threatening the Syrian forces not to come near the deconfliction line on the Golan Heights. It wants to keep a buffer of Jihadis between itself and the Syrian army. Any attempt to achieve that will be in vane. Syria and its allies are determined to eradicate the Jihadis. As these are experienced fighters willing to die the fight will likely take several weeks. After that the Syrian army will move north and liberate Idleb.
Daraa was the first city where the foreign induced 'rebellion' was launched. In March 2011 protest over some dubious cause escalated into riots which soon turned violent. Shops and police stations were set on fire and policemen as well as demonstrators were killed. Raids by the police found weapons in Daraa's main mosque.
Sleeper cells of the Muslim Brotherhood, long prohibited in Syria, had found outside sponsors who fueled their campaign. The CIA spend at least $1 billion per year to direct the attack on the Syrian state. With the help of the British MI6 its media arms promoted sectarian mass murder in Syria. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait each spent several billions per year to pay the 'rebel' fighters and to provide them the thousands of tons of weapons and other needs. Nearly 100,000 foreign fighters moved to Syria and fought under the flags of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda against the Syrian state and later against each other.
Only with the help of its Iranian and Russian allies could the state of Syria and its people survive the onslaught. Since 2015 a systematic government campaign has turned the situation around. All parts of 'useful Syria' are under government control.
It had been expected that the 'rebels' holding the southern part of Daraa city would resist a while before giving up. They had years to prepare the ground and access to a huge amount of weapons as well as enough food for several months. But the local population, not only in Daraa, has long had enough of the 'revolution' nonsense:
Wide swaths of the millions residing under rebel control are disillusioned with the Syrian revolution, disgusted with the rebel factions, and dissatisfied with the local opposition government structures and NGOs operating in their region. The inability of foreign journalists to report from rebel-held Syria in addition to the ideological bent of local fixers and citizen journalists have contributed to the underreporting of this phenomenon. The Assad regime is already exploiting this reality to promote surrender deals with minimal to little fighting.
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The 'rebels' have long lost the support of the population. In Daraa city it was again the Russian reconciliation team that convinced the 'rebels' to give up without any serious fight. Those who do not want to live under Syrian government control will be transported in Idleb governorate in the northwest where various 'rebel' groups, Islamist from Uighur, al-Qaeda and ISIS are busy with killing each other.
The U.S. held and Kurdish controlled northeast Syria has also seen infighting and strife between the Arab population and the U.S. allied Kurdish forces who try to control it. This year the northeaster province of Hasaka, in normal times Syria's bread-basket, had a large crop failure after a devastating drought:
Unirrigated wheat crops, which constitute around 55 percent of the total wheat sown in Hasakah, saw losses of over 90 percent this year, the Syrian government-run Hasakah Agricultural Directorate told Syria Direct in an official written correspondence. Barley suffered similar rates of devastation.
The local Kurdish authorities who reject Syrian state control have no money to help the farmers:
But while local authorities plan to buy up a portion of this year’s wheat and barley crop, they have few other resources available to aid local farmers who have suffered losses.
“The volume of losses this season is too great for the Self-Administration to compensate [farmers] at this time,” says Shakir.
The devastated farmers will likely prefer to live under Syrian government control.
The U.S. neoconservatives still try to get the Trump administration to intervene and to again attack the Syrian state. Their arguments are unfounded and their campaign will be in vane. Trump has long decided to end the senseless Syria campaign his predecessor started to no avail.
@Don Wiscachio, to which I have a bone to pick with you.
So you can’t accept that Syria is a “foreign-induced rebellion”. So explain how these rebels of the rebellion got their US made TOW missiles and the other plethora of weaponry they have been using since the start of the rebellion? These so called rebels as you call them, are extremists of the Islamic faith. This has been documented and proven so many times that I find it absolutely abominable that you call these “animals”, rebels. They are not rebels, they are of the same ilk as Daesh and Al-Qaeda. Your statement about how “the rebellion gain so much traction so quickly”, is laughable! Lets get some perspective:
-Syrian “Day of Rage” begins the protesting during March of 2011.
-Now we know that during this period weapons fire was indeed coming from these so called protesters and so Assad force had to suppress them.
-Your no “foreign-induced rebellion” argument falls apart when Obama freezes all Syrian assets and strong arms the rest of the world to do the same, when? In August, only 4 months after. After what? After the protesting in Daraa and Homs. Do those places mean anything to you? They should. Homs was occupped by Jaish Al-Islam, an extreme Islamic group that subjugated their captive residence to Sharia Law. Out of nearly 1,000,000 people that lived in Homs after several years of futile fighting what happened? These rebels and families of theirs agreed to be evacuated to Idlib Provence in the north. How many of them left Homs? Out of 1,000,000 people that that lived in Homs, some 12,000 rebels and accompany families left. Go read the facts Wiscacho, you are out of touch with reality. That’s only 1.2% of the population, hardly the 20% you claim to think are in opposition to Assad! All this trouble and nightmare for a lousy 1% of unhappy people, whom wish to live in their own self-imposed Caliphate of Islamic horror. Let’s not forget these are the same filthy people that used the chemical weapons lie, which is now proven to be a lie, in an attempt to bring untold war to people (that is the rest of Syrian population) whom have done nothing to deserve it!
-That next July numerous bombings were made upon the government, where Assad’s own brother-in-law died!
-One year later in 2012, Al-Qaeda, holds Aleppo residents hostage, and the long battle starts. The British introduce the White-Helments as a propaganda tool, more false flags or chemical weapons use, and of course, the Syrian people of Aleppo are subjugated to Sharia Law, Al-Qeada style.
We can go on and on, cumulating with the weaponization of the Kurds and Daesh into Syria and 6 years of war, hardly a quick rebellion. Where do you think they got their weapons from Wiscaho? Iran (N.B. sarcasm)! Remember Iran is Shia, and these monsters including the Kurds are Sunni!. But hey, what do I know. Kurdish is not a religion, its a region, and guess what, many Kurds are Shia too! (FYI-Kurds came from a region called Kurdistan, its in Iran!). So how does it fit in with your narrative Wiscacho? How do you square Shia Kurds fighting Sunni Kurds, because they do, they are pro Assad. That’s right, do you think that the Kurds really are on the same side as the US? Are the Kurds the infamous 20% that are against Assad? Syria is only comprised of about 7% Kurds, and as I said not all of them are against Assad. Nothing you have written Wiscacho has any basis of truth, and I doubt very much you ever were in Syria, for if you were, you’d know better.
Oh and one last thing. About your 20/40/40 percentage delusion. Here is one for comparison but is based upon facts. Donald Trump obtained 46% and Hillary Clinton 48% of the vote. But turnout was only 55%. That means Donald Trump became President with only 25% of vote of the entire electorate. Think about that Wiscacho! Donald Trump is President of the USA and can wage war all around the world, all because 25% of the electorate voted for him. That is, 75% of the people of the US didn’t vote for him, and he can go around the world causing all sorts of mayhem. And you complain about Assad. Assad who has never invaded another country, has never provoked war, has never used chemical weapons, has never instituted Sharia Law, unlike how falsely elected Presidents of the USA (Bush, Obama, and Trump) have done these evil deeds directly or through their proxies like Al-Qaeda and Daesh, and much much more.
Wiscacho you’re blind to your own bigotry. That’s why we have wars, for people like you whom hate because you can’t see the truth. If you really want to help, start first by stop dreaming about things that may or may not have happened 10 years ago, and start looking at the horrible truth that is surrounding us today.
Posted by: Dorian | Jul 12 2018 20:53 utc | 24
DW @12
In “The Redirection”, written in 2008(!) – years before the 2011 uprising, Seymour Hersh wrote of plans to use extremists in Syria.
Excerpts:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
… the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria.
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition.”
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.
Others have written of the events leading up to the 2011 uprising, disputing the story of the uprising as told by ‘Assad must go!’ Coalition media. An example:
The day before Deraa: How the war broke out in Syria:
In reality, the uprising in Deraa in March 2011 was not fueled by graffiti written by teenagers, and there were no disgruntled parents demanding their children to be freed. This was part of the Hollywood style script written by skilled CIA agents, who had been given a mission: to destroy Syria for the purpose of regime change. Deraa was only Act 1: Scene 1.
The fact that those so-called teenaged graffiti artists and their parents have never been found, never named, and never pictured is the first clue that their identity is cloaked in darkness.
Deraa’s location directly on the Jordanian border is the sole reason it was picked for the location-shoot of the opening act of the Syrian uprising. If you were to ask most Syrians, if they had ever been to Derra, or ever plan to go, they will answer, “No.” It is a small and insignificant agricultural town. It is a very unlikely place to begin a nationwide revolution. Deraa has a historical importance because of archeological ruins, but that is lost on anyone other than history professors or archeologists. The access to the weapons from Jordan made Deraa the perfect place to stage the uprising which has turned into an international war. Any person with common sense would assume an uprising or revolution in Syria would begin in Damascus or Aleppo, the two biggest cities. Even after 2 ½ years of violence around the country, Aleppo’s population never participated in the uprising, or call for regime change.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 12 2018 21:08 utc | 26
@29 Once again, you are not getting the point. Let me spell it out, since I think you don’t understand metaphors very well.
There IS TOO much “anecdotal” garbage these days. Its called FAKE NEWS, SOCIAL JUSTICE whatever, and so on. People don’t need to hear your distorted anecdotal dreamscapes. The whole reason why so many people around the world, especially in the USA, believe rubbish, is because too many people in responsible positions talk rubbish. That is why the rest of us mere mortals whom frequent the comments, should hold them to task. What you are doing Wiscacho is pushing false narratives that the lying MSM (main stream media) will feed upon. That is very poor form.
We need facts. We need true stories. We need honesty. We need THE TRUTH.
As for my “patronizing history”, well sir (or is it ma’am, i ask respectfully), it is HISTORY. History is not patronizing, giving anecdotal hog-wash IS PATRONIZING. Why? Because you are expecting people to take it for true, that you believe to know what the Syrian people are thinking from a stay that was 10 years ago under Bush II, which should apply today! And that isn’t patronizing!!!! SERIOUSLY! That’s patronizing, 100%!!!!!
Lastly, on the 20/40/40 thing. I wrote that so you could reflect upon the hypocritical nature of the USA when in regard to Assad’s government. Here we have the bastion of democracy, said namely the U.S.A., electing what they call a democratic process, a leader of a super power that holds in one finger the power of life or death for the whole world, and is elected by a paltry 25% of the electorate. Think about that Wiscacho! THINK SERIOUSLY ABOUT THE IMPLICATION OF THAT. Does this mean that a US President if he can be elected by only 25% of the people that he can be elected also by 24%…22%…20%…how about 15% or how about just the top 1% of the electorate! Whereas, we have Syria, without any nuclear bombs, no chemical weapons, no belligerent acts outside of its boarders, has to be treated as if it is a cancer of Earth, and needs to be dissected as such. Do you now get it! No metaphor, straight explanation.
We have serious problems, and they are not just spelt T R U M P.
Scenario for every one to think about:
Pertaining to what I just wrote now. What if the next choices for President of the USA are so reviled by The People, that only the elites vote because they have a vested interest in them. So only 1 or 2% of the USA votes, and we get a Presidential Monster. Think that this will not happen? Well it did in Germany, it was a democratic election that brought in Hitler.
If it is really possible to only have 25% of the people to bring in a President, meaning that, people have have turned off so much that only 25% of the electorate are required to vote to give us a Trump, is it so hard to believe that one day, the Democratic and Republican Parties put two terrible prospects and no body votes for them, except the likes of Hollywood, Wall St and Silicon Valley, can you image what will happen to countries like Syria? There will not be any argument about what to do, it will be just done.
Democracy is broken. We need to start discussing about how to, may be not fix it, but at least make some patches. Like for example, no more secrets in government, The People should know what is happening about everything in government, after all, its their country, not just the elites’. Plot to over throw governments is evil that should always be exposed.
Posted by: Dorian | Jul 13 2018 0:14 utc | 60
The syrian government is finally getting on top of things, with assistance from Russia. Crucial assistance mind you, as the Russian effort mostly has been based on reconcilliation and according to various sources a softening of President Assad’ stances.
It is telling, that Russians , universally despised by the MSM, favor diplomatic solutions, rather than forceful. I sincerely hope that Syria can find peace, and people can return home to rebuild; hopefully also with EU support. The amount of people returning will be a measure of support for President Assad.
President Assad faces challenges, huge challenges, keeping peace being a minor one, but true reconciliation and rebuilding being a major one.
Russia has gained a tremendous amount of good PR in Syria, even among US and EU administration officials, they are seen as trustworthy and credible and among other nations in the world they have sprung onto the scene as true mediators. It goes without saying, this will help Russia solving the “Ukrainian problem”. Crimea is not up for discussion.
While Russia is sorting things out, and setting things straight, the US, with the Trumpoman in charge, is issuing directives to the vassals. Do this and do that, complete oblivious to the fact, we are not state nr. 51,52, 53, ect, ect. but that we are independent nations part of the EU.
As I have commented previously, the US main goal is the destruction of the EU, it is a threat to the US, especially if it leans eastward, that isolates the US completely.
But old cold war theoretic is still prevalent (I know, posted before), but fact is ice cold: Russia could devastate Europe with nuclear weapons, but does not have the manpower to conquer it. The ordinary Russian citizen would rebel at the thought, as it is outrageous.
Russia is part of us, and we are part of them (Read some history books, for those who don’t understand), Russia today is not Russia 1975. Like Eastern Germany is not like 1975.
But Trumpoman is persistent, goading the UK along in its demise: a hard brexit. While we care less on the continent, the sviwel eyed loons (Tory’s) will ‘prolly take GB that route, now goaded by the Idiot in Chief, further damage a GB that is down and out and counting. The US can in reality offer GB nothing in terms of Trade.
I am sorry if my commenting went of topic, but it is difficult to isolate events.
Posted by: Den Lille Abe | Jul 13 2018 5:41 utc | 85
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