The war’s not over yet, given that this ceasefire doesn’t even include all of the groups fighting in Syria, and the status quo most certainly could change (what happens if Assad keels over, for example? what happens if Assad doesn’t start bouncing when Putin says jump?). Russia hasn’t won itself a lot of friends in the Arab world, either.
Uh, no. Unless you’re relying solely on RT or Assad’s propaganda state-run media, the war is far from over. Russia’s air campaign did little to change the war in the past year. While Aleppo has been a target, so have a handful of other places where the front hasn’t really changed that much. Aleppo is the only significant lasting gain that Assad has made in the past year or so, since Palmyra and its surrounding area has been retaken by Da’esh. And since the rebels in Aleppo were evacuated, that means other fronts just got reinforcements.
For Assad to have “won the war,” Da’esh would have to be defeated first, let alone all of the myriad rebel groups. Assad’s negotiating posture seems to only allow for cosmetic changes to his regime, with any real change in his Alawite power base - let alone him stepping down at even a future date - off the table. That means that the upcoming negotiations in Kazakhstan probably won’t be more successful than past UN-brokered negotiations.
NM
Da’esh is a separate issue and the USA is helping Assad by focusing on Raqqa and elsewhere.
I’m sorry, but the opposition has a hugely diff supply route now Turkey is a partner of Russia, and the opposition is both fragmented and mostly out of the cities. It is over, things just have to play out.
The whole point of the civil war is who is going to rule Syria and whether Syria is going to be one country ruled from Damascus at the end. Since Da’esh still controls about 1/3 of the country geographically speaking, it is definitely a part of it, even though it also extends into Iraq. By the middle or so of this year, Da’esh will lose Mosul and only be in control of small portions of Iraq, with its only significant territory in Syria. The YPG and the slapdash Arab forces assembling to isolate and then attack Raqqah won’t likely produce additional significant results until well after Mosul is retaken.
Despite being cut off from black market supplies and personnel from Turkey for a while, Da’esh has managed to not only maintain several fronts in the face of persistent allied air strikes, diminished oil revenues from destroyed wells, refineries, and oil trucks, and significant offensives from the rebels, the YPG, Assad’s forces, and the Iraqis, but they even managed to regain the offensive in Palmyra.
Also, retaking Aleppo does not seem to be as monumental a victory when looking at the larger context that the rebels only controlled parts of the eastern side to begin with and were more or less under siege by Assad’s forces since 2014. The most significant aspect of the battle for Aleppo was its symbolic factor as Syria’s formerly most populous city. Even as the rebel-held parts struggled and shrank from 2012-2016, the rebels made significant gains elsewhere. To claim that it’s all over (especially not even the beginning of the end) simply because Assad retook the eastern part of Aleppo is wildly jumping the gun. How many soldiers and mercenaries has Assad lost just making it to this point? How many more would likely be killed just to retake the current non-Da’esh rebel territory? Even with foreign forces, Assad doesn’t seem like he has the manpower.
Ever since this civil war began in 2011, almost 7 years ago, pundits and ‘experts’ have been saying that Assad is on the verge of losing power. It was bollocks then and it’s bollocks now. The Syrian leader has a habit of making people eat their words.
The ceasefire is already broken, aldiboronti. So whaddya think now?
This is pure imagination.
The Russians are making themselves popular with the Shia and hated by the non-Shia.
This does not in any way exclude the USA or the West from the influence of much of the region.
Of course the Russian pattern of the lying and the massacres do not make them in any way popular among the Sunni populations.
The civil war is far from won by any side, it is only a kaliadeso
So we can repeat the Russian dezinformatsia? It does not seem any predication of a near fall of the regime Assad since the intervention of the Hezbullah and the Iranians on the side of the regime, back now several years.
(since you have no real knowledge of the history of the Syrian or the regime, the idea of making comment on the ‘habits’ of the son of Assad is amusing)
Let him update once the Putin dezinformatsia machine gives the new arguments…
It is funny that a certain faction of the American Right are now the cheerleaders of Putin’s Soviet style interventions policy, when we have the Afghanistan, the Caucasuses as the lessons of the long term failure of this approach.
But it is understood that it is better to have the Il Duce style of charismatic failure, because it feels better…