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Stilicho's avatar

3 days ago, it was crazy to see insurgents hold 3 villages they had just captured.

2 days ago it was crazy to see them enter Aleppo city.

Yesterday it was crazy to see them capture it.

Earlier today unthinkable to see the insurgents seize 3 airports under mere hours including 2 supposedly handed over to YPG/PKK

And now they are just walking freely in Alawite, Shias and Syriac communities of Nulb and Zahraa in North West Aleppo and North Hama. The former is the heart of IRGC Syrian Hezbollah while the later formed the backbone of some of the most vicious Assadists militias.

It is fundamentally different from the rebels entering freely in localities depopulated and left as pillaged no mans lands.

Did the Russian effort to rebuild the SAA only success was to effectively break the sectarian pact of loyalties between Assad and theses localities ? They used to be area bitterly defended (pretty much the only areas where Assadists defended strongly rather than flee and wait their airforce/artillery to pulverized everything in front of them).

Side note : is Liwa al-Quds even Palestinian dominated since 2016 ? I thought they effectively became open to anyone vetted by the intelligence services after their commander wasted their manpower in completely futile daily infantry attack just like "DNR" did on the Donetsk front in 2022.

Past 2017, it appeared the IRGC dropped them and the "NDF" in favour of their "LDF" project. The Russians became their backer to replace the dissolved Jaber's Desert Hawks and turned them into their second favourite auxiliaries task force (their favourite one are the so called "Tiger Force"/25th Division).

Afaik after 2016 Liwa al-Quds saw a lot of action across the entire country. Coincidentally in the same place Wagner would visit including a lot of action in the Homs desert ...

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Md. Al-Imran Abir's avatar

(Sorry abouy lots of questions again. This war seems very very complicated and I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it) How important is it for Russia to keep Assad in power? Who is the bigger concern for Turkey? I.e. Turkey supported insurgents' main target will be PKK or IRGC? And other than Qatar, any other Arab state involved in financing the insurgents or Assad or PKK? And lastly, why Qatar? They are a tiny nation (though huge wealth), what is their goal here?

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