Numbah one rule of remaining a dictator: never leave your country for any reason. Send your family and retainers on a “vacation” with bearer bonds, bags of cocaine and uncut diamonds, but don’t leave.
After few years of nothing particularly happening in Syria, SDF and SNA/HTS got a truce and advanced like 45km against SAA, taking Aleppo in three days and stopping only just before Hama. Now we also have HTS, who have Turkish support, encircling Kurdish area near Tal Rifat, and just today (news from last hour) they negotiated that Kurds from this area can go unimpeded to Rojava. This all while Assad sat in Moscow until today, and according to rumors his family is abroad still.
As of yesterday, large scale war crimes hasn’t happened yet, and civilians were relatively spared too, with only reports of police (on SAA side) shooting protesters in Damascus and civilian casualties from Russian bombing (requested by SAA). Today however, it looks like HTS will try to forcefully resettle Kurds from Tal Rifat enclave, and just because Assad gets weaker doesn’t mean that things will get better because HTS are islamists, with many coming from jihadist groups specifically
Ok I’ll bite, what did I miss?
Numbah one rule of remaining a dictator: never leave your country for any reason. Send your family and retainers on a “vacation” with bearer bonds, bags of cocaine and uncut diamonds, but don’t leave.
After few years of nothing particularly happening in Syria, SDF and SNA/HTS got a truce and advanced like 45km against SAA, taking Aleppo in three days and stopping only just before Hama. Now we also have HTS, who have Turkish support, encircling Kurdish area near Tal Rifat, and just today (news from last hour) they negotiated that Kurds from this area can go unimpeded to Rojava. This all while Assad sat in Moscow until today, and according to rumors his family is abroad still.
As of yesterday, large scale war crimes hasn’t happened yet, and civilians were relatively spared too, with only reports of police (on SAA side) shooting protesters in Damascus and civilian casualties from Russian bombing (requested by SAA). Today however, it looks like HTS will try to forcefully resettle Kurds from Tal Rifat enclave, and just because Assad gets weaker doesn’t mean that things will get better because HTS are islamists, with many coming from jihadist groups specifically
Also, Iran may have sent ragged bands of “militia” to “support” Syria’s ruling regime out of existence.
Rebels took Aleppo, which is kind of a big deal