Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and other Related Conflicts in the Middle East (read the rules in the first post)

Enestori said:

This is a truly pathetic performance by Assad. He's had literally 14 years to build an army since the civil war started. After 14 years of real combat experience, his troops are literally running away from the second-largest city in the country.

Just to go back in time, in 2011 China had one J-20 prototype and still had not commissioned a single aircraft carrier. In the same time, Assad apparently did absolutely nothing with his military despite fighting an actual war for the entire time. He doesn't even have the excuse of being an American occupier to explain away this truly massive failure.

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As I said earlier, the SAA is weaker now than it was before. It was recruits who were in the positions west of Aleppo, if HTS with some sources claims they mobilized 20k fighters, these SAA recruits were outnumbered and outgunned, while the SAA largely was never able to reconstitute itself and its combat experience is worth absolutely nothing because most of the experienced fighters are dead during the 10+ years of war.

Sinnavuuty said:

As I said earlier, the SAA is weaker now than it was before. It was recruits who were in the positions west of Aleppo, if HTS with some sources claims they mobilized 20k fighters, these SAA recruits were outnumbered and outgunned, while the SAA largely was never able to reconstitute itself and its combat experience is worth absolutely nothing because most of the experienced fighters are dead during the 10+ years of war.

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I think many of them fled as soon as their draft terms were up.

Index said:

I think many of them fled as soon as their draft terms were up.

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Most of the recruits fled after the first fighting and the others who remained surrendered to HTS.

mossen said:

I don't think so. Most of them will survive and will become even more radicalised. They can also influence Uighurs in Xinjiang. Remember that Europe had a lot of terrorist attacks in the mid-2010s as many of the returning jihadists came back from Syria.

Turkey is a hostile country towards China and I think China needs to start internalising it. Erdogan will yap about Palestine while helping Israel-backed jihadist trash. It's amazing how many jihadists are willing to fight Israel's enemies. Didn't some of them even apologise for once accidentally targeting Israeli soliders some years ago? Moslems really are in a pathetic place.

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Wouldn't this be enough reason for China to enter Syria with an emphasis on military support like Russia? There are many Chinese interests in Syria. Moreover, the PLA's entry will give experience to the inexperienced PLA in TTPs and POPs.

Sinnavuuty said:

Wouldn't this be enough reason for China to enter Syria with an emphasis on military support like Russia? There are many Chinese interests in Syria. Moreover, the PLA's entry will give experience to the inexperienced PLA in TTPs and POPs.

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"many" sounds like a big overestimate. The Syria reconstruction plan hasn't even started.

Bottom line is if China wants to go they will be able to use any excuse. Certainly there's many potential advantages, but we also need to consider that things are rarely exactly as propaganda shows they are. The old Afghan government was pro-US in rhetoric but useless in action, and because US went all in to support them, they've permanently lost Afghanistan.

the loss of large parts of Aleppo should not be described as just another instance of regular Arab militaries being incompetent. armies losing large parts within days is nothing new. remember Russia lost Kharkov within a very short while because they were outnumbered and determined that keeping Kharkov is unsustainable without huge losses.

if the SAA was massively outnumbered in that particular area then it makes sense why they withdrew like that.

Not enough information, too much speculation at this point. It's possible the Syrian troops chose not to fight too hard, or Syrian army might be more concentrated elsewhere, electing strong control over more important areas than tentative control over a city that might be easily cut off. Or they might have chosen to pull back expecting that if they put too strong a defence, Turkey might come in and it would cost them more than one major city... Or they're biding time until Russia can get more involved... We just don't know.

What did you expect Assad to do in just a decade after having his country destroyed and isolated by sanctions that everyone still fears? magic?

Only Russia is helping Syria to a limited extent, while the US, Europe and Israel continue to arm radical Islamic terrorists with a mindset more backward than any medieval sultan to keep the Middle East in a state of constant war and penury.

Assad is a secular and rational leader, he is doing everything he can under the circumstances. Those who promote religious extremism are the West, arming fundamentalist tribes to weaken rational leaders.

It is also not appropriate to compare China's situation and its role in the Global South with the case of the Syrian war, since China does not participate in any military intervention in the world. China's role is still just commercial and avoiding sanctions and confrontations as much as possible, it has nothing to do with military actions.

There are many Western and Israeli weapons killing Syrians, Russians, Lebanese and Iranians but no Chinese weapons killing Westerners. It's hoping for magic to think that the Global South will get rid of Western bullying without direct help to balance the forces. So as long as China does not change its doctrine, we cannot expect results other than these. And apparently China is not yet ready to challenge the West in every military adventures around the world.

quim said:

What did you expect Assad to do in just a decade after having his country destroyed and isolated by sanctions that everyone still fears? magic?

Only Russia is helping Syria to a limited extent, while the US, Europe and Israel continue to arm radical Islamic terrorists with a mindset more backward than any medieval sultan to keep the Middle East in a state of constant war and penury.

Assad is a secular and rational leader, he is doing everything he can under the circumstances. Those who promote religious extremism are the West, arming fundamentalist tribes to weaken rational leaders.

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It is the people themselves that are fundamentalist. Unless you want to remove all the people, you can't go against their will. It wasn't China and Russia that were responsible for the fall of secular Afghanistan either, the results were destined because of the people's wishes.

The natural history of fundamentalists mean they eventually become useful against the west. The mullahs, taliban, Hamas, Ansarallah and so on. From China's perspective of maximally fucking the west, I don't see a cause for concern.

But the rights of Syrian people and especially women will likely see a decrease.

It’s like we took a time machine back to 2014/2015. The frontline is back to that time. The rebels have total control of eastern Idlib,northern Hama and western Aleppo. The city hasn’t fallen. There is reports of large convoys of SAA reinforcements. Rumors of Iraqi Shia militias and even IRGC units being part of the large force contingent. Funnily enough the YPG is coordinating with SAA units to form a sort of defensive line to halt the rebel advance. Russian and Syrian air power is pummeling the rebels hard. We are a long way from a possible counterattack. First thing is to stabilize the situation and hit the rebels hard with artillery and air power. There is a motivation that this time deal with the Idlib problem once and for all.