Syria, 7 December 2024: Divide & Rule

Hello everybody!

The Second Battle of Homs is meanwhile in full swing. The CMO insurgents have secured the northern districts of the town, and are in the process of advancing into the centre (if not already there). The Assadists are fighting with what they can: trying to buy time for their other formations to withdraw either towards Damascus, or - and that seem to be a ‘more preferable solution’ for many of them - towards the coast.

Why that?

While the downfall of the Assad-regime in Syria is now ‘only a matter of time’, a growing number of readers are already asking, ‘and, what comes next?’

From my point of view, this war is already in its next phase: the post-Assad-one.

Indeed, a quick look at the map of general directions of advances is making it clear that already now this conflict is in the ‘grab-as-much-as-you-can’ and ‘divide-and-rule’ phase. The latter is foremost valid for the USA and Türkye.

1.) The US-supported PKK/PYD/YPG (‘Syrian Democratic Forces’) has secured a deep ‘buffer zone’ along the southern side of the Euphrates River.

2.) On its northern flank, the US-supported PKK/PYD/YPG is facing the assault of Türkye-controlled Syrian National Army (SNA) in the Manbij area, and areas further south (foremost the Jirah AB).

3.) In its rear, the US-supported PKK/PYD/YPG is facing multiple armed uprisings of local Sunni Arab tribes, several of which have meanwhile pledged allegiance to the CMO.

4.) The US-supported Free Syrian Army advanced from the Tanf area to secure Palmyra, and then rushed westwards to secure Quryatayn, about 50km east of the M5 Highway, connecting Damascus with Homs.

5.) The IRGC and the Russians are rushing towards the ports of Latakia and Tartous, respectively, with the aim of evacuating with help of several merchant ships.

6.) While their ‘rear guard’ is trying to hold out in Homs as long as possible, remaining Assadist formations are fleeing either towards the coast, or, if too far away from Homs, towards Damascus.

Why all of this?

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Assadists

Having lost the IRGC- and the Russian support, Assadists are going to try establishing something like ‘Alawitestan’ along the Mediterranean Plain, screened by the Jabal an-Nusayria Mountains. They are going to come out of this ‘final battle’ with perhaps 20,000 troops, but: these are going to remain relatively well-armed. And they were always completely crazed fanatics. From their point of view, if they go down, all the World is going down (not only Assad’s regime, and Alawites, or Syria). They’ll be able to reach back upon stocks of arms and ammunition left behind by the Russians, and are going to count on Jabal an-Nusayria mountains to protect them from attacks from north, east, and south.

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CMO

Even if the insurgents enter Damascus, literally, ‘tomorrow in the morning’, I expect that it’s going to take the CMO ‘days’, if not ‘weeks’ to establish control and stabilise the situation sufficiently to re-organise its forces and then push towards the coast.

Even if bolstered by a growing number of fractions that have abandoned the SNA, but especially by insurgents from Dera’a and Suwayda, the core of the CMO - the well-commanded, well-trained, combat-effective force that defeated the IRGC and Assadists - is still a relatively small force. Similarly, HTS’ civic services are so small they can barely take care about victims of Assadist and Russian bombardments in Idlib and Aleppo (which in turn is the reason why they are already pardoning thousands of captured Assadist military- and police-officers, and government: they need them to administer liberated areas, and to take care about supplying a population that is rapidly growing, as ever more refugees are returning from north-western Syria, and - meanwhile - from Türkye, too).

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Türkye

Having no control over the CMO, Erdogan is left without a choice but ‘to make the best from this situation’ and push the PKK/PYD/YPG from another section of the border to Türkye. The more the better - for him, especially considering the pending ‘Astana’ meeting in Doha, Qatar.

That said, what exactly do Erdogan’s, Khamenei’s, and Putin’s emissaries want to discuss there: no idea. In Syria, nobody is listening to them. At most, they might put up a show to impress various Arab dictators through pretending they are still relevant. That’s why the SNA (supported by Türkish Army, of course) now ‘must’ attack the PKK/PYD/YPG-conglomerate in the Manbij area.

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USA

Unsurprisingly, the USA are hard on ‘creating new realities on the ground’ - through bringing the PKK/PYD/YPG and ‘their own’ FSyA into as powerful positions as possible. I’m near certain that at least somebody there in the Washington DC is clever enough to expect some sort of future negotiations with the CMO, and aims to create some ‘autonomous Kurdish Zone’ (in Syria), through which it might influence the future of the country. De-facto the same the USA are already doing in Iraq (yes, even after realising the KDP is anything else than ‘democratic’).

This is of particular importance because not only the two (meanwhile: it might be three) of Operational Rooms of insurgents in the Dera’a and Suwayda provinces have already pledged their allegiance to the CMO: even the Arab Sunni tribes launching uprisings against the US-supported PKK/PYD/YPG/SDF in the Dayr az-Zawr area are doing the same. This is no surprise: regardless of its insistence on being ‘Syrian’ and ‘Democratic’ - the PKK/PYD/YPG/SDF-conglomerate is led by Türkish Kurds. You might not know this, your friends and usual sources of information might not know this, the PKK-fans abroad might never want to admit it, but: the entire leadership of this conglomerate are Türkish citizens. No Syrians.

The Syrians the PKK/PYD/YPG/SDF didn’t manage to ethnically cleanse from north-eastern Syria - wether Arabs or Kurds - do not like them. Just like they did not like Assad, nor Daesh.

Similarly - and regardless if the Pentagon, CENTCOM and the SOCOM are aware of this or not - the US-supported Free Syrian Army from Tanf is not welcome by the Syrians in Damascus and Homs. They are considered ‘traitors’, ‘trying to steal our revolution’ (BTW, the same happened to a number of preachers - mostly Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood - brought to Aleppo by SNA-fractions permitted by the CMO to pass the city, when they attempted to join local prayers, yesterday: they were not welcomed by the locals, and kicked out.)

Unsurprisingly, the - completely independent (even though sponsored by Qatar) - CMO is near-certain to come out as the dominating factor in the Syrian politics.

Which in turn means that both the USA (and thus the PKK/PYD/YPG/SDF-conglomerate) and Türkye - but, also all the other outside powers that might try to get involved and influence developments - have bet on the wrong horses, and are now going to face a very powerful (for Syrian circumstances) opponent, backed by the majority of the Syrian population (at least 75% of which - you like that or not, and at least along the census of 2004 - were the Arab Sunnis; and 85% of which were Sunnis, if one includes Kurds). No disunited insurgency, split into dozens and hundreds of factions at odds with each other, like back in 2011-2018.

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Israel

What is Israel going to do? It is already acting - through the USA, and sometimes directly, too. No doubt, in the future it is going to search for links to parties opposing the CMO. I.e the PKK/PYD/YPG/SDF is not going to remain its ‘sole ally’ in the country. Because, for Israel, the paramount issue is to have a weak, splintered, and destabilised - but ‘dangerous’ - Syria.

If nothing else, as soon as the CMO does not 'start creating democracy, right now… at least in the next five minutes’, we’re going to witness a ‘public outburst’ in the media about its corruption and incompetence. Just like presently all the Western media is still insistent calling the CMO ‘Islamist factions’ instead of what they are: armed insurgents, continuing (and, hopefully: concluding) an armed uprising against the Assad regime - and the mass of ‘journalists’ between Los Angeles and Berlin is still not sure if the CMO has really ‘captured’, ‘most’ of Aleppo.