It seems that this earlier assessment of mine of the situation in Syria was wrong:
As the conflict in Lebanon subsides Israel and the U.S. have reignited the war in Syria. There have been signs for a while that this was going to happen. Yesterday Al-Qaeda affiliated HTS fighters, which has been rebuild and sponsored with CIA money, have relaunched their attacks on Syrian government forces west of Aleppo. Syrian and Russian air force attacks have for now stopped their progress. Hizbullah's Rudwan forces have yet to intervene but are deployed to defend Aleppo.
I do not expect the situation to Syria to escalate further.
As of now the situation continues to escalate. I had underestimated the role of Turkey in this.
President Erdogan seems to have taken control of HTS and is using it to pursue his aims. These include to widen Turkish control over Syrian land, to further damage the anti-Turkish resistance movement within the Kurdish population of Syria and to impress on president-elect Donald Trump that he can be a reliable ally in a fight against Iranian influence.
Jihadists under Turkish control have attacked Syrian government position on the western side of Aleppo city and diversion commandos seem to have infiltrated the city itself. A large part of this operation is the (fake) news onslaught accompanying it. Current information from the area is way too confused to state with some certainty what exactly is under who's control.
There are several forces fighting in Syria. The Turkish 'rebel' side, supported by Israel, Turkey and the U.S., includes two distinct groups. The former al-Qaeda Jihadists in Hayat Tarhir al-Sham [HTS] under Abu Muhammed al-Jolani were, and likely still are, financed and armed by the CIA through proxy actors in Qatar. HTS includes a significant number of Turkmen and Uighur jihadists from Central Asia. The second group is the so called Syrian National Army which is a group of Sunni Syria mercenaries paid for and controlled by Turkey.
These 'rebels' immediately distinguished themselves through their depraved behavior:
Hala Jaber @HalaJaber – 17:40 UTC · Nov 29, 2024
🔴IMPORTANT🔴
I have just watched a most gruesome footage of the so called Erdogan-backed “freedom fighters,” beheading a Syrian soldier they captured. A POW in western military terms.
I thought those days of ISIS evilness were over, but here we are again as history repeats itself while we are again being told that these are the good “liberators.”
The footage shows a Syrian soldier surrounded by ‘rebels.’
He pleads with them & pleads to their Islamic faith.
They pull his hand away from his neck & one guy with a huge jaggered knife proceeds to slice his throat. When it gets stuck, he pounds the knife into the neck a few times, then proceeds to continue with the slaughter to the cries of “Allahahu Akbar.”
Whoever in the western world is supporting these NATO-Israeli backed extremists should really think again. …
On the other side of the conflict are the Syrian Arab Army (which seem to have forgotten all the lessons it had to learn during the previous phase of the conflict). It is supported by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps which has trained and is financing several groups of Shia fighters in Syria. This is done in strong coordination with Hizbullah in Lebanon which has some units of its Rudwan special forces stationed in Syria. Russia is backing the Syrian government in Syria and is currently using its air power to interrupt further attacks from the 'rebel' side.
The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) is an anti-Turkish movement. It forms a major part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which has been supported, on and off, by the Pentagon in east-Syria. It is currently fighting on the side of the Syrian government but has in own interest in securing areas with significant Kurdish populations.
While it was known that the conflict in Syria was soon to be revived the immediacy seems to have come as an surprise:
Sharmine Narwani @snarwani – 9:10 UTC · Nov 30, 2024
Russian newspaper Izvestia: The major terrorist attack on #Aleppo was coordinated between Turkish, Ukrainian and French intelligence with Israeli support and American approval. The planning was two months ago and the attack was supposed to be next March, but the events in Lebanon contributed to the urgency.
As said above there is no information yet that lets one make an unbiased assessment which side is really in control of what part of Aleppo or areas surrounding it. My impression is that many of the claims of Jihadist control here or there are only media operations without military significance.
But what can be said so far is that the Syrian government has obviously failed to secure its lines in the field and to prepare its army for a renewal of the conflict. The Syrian Arab Army seems to have given up many positions without a significant fight.
It will cost a lot of blood and treasure (again!) to regain control of them.