Ehem, guys. They have…broken into Aleppo proper. I repeat, they have broken into Aleppo proper. I don’t have time to inform you, but this is as big as it gets out of the blue. Assad troops retreating, Russians withdrawing, roads being cut left and right, domino stack falling. Unbelievable what is happening now.
Again, there are heavy clashes inside western Aleppo proper, HTS and friends have CAPTURED New Aleppo and western neighbourhoods this morning and battles ongoing and they are still moving, moving, moving and the Assad troops are still routing, routing, routing.
Civilians fleeing enmass to eastern Aleppo. This is of course going to be ugly.
Clashes now in the middle og Aleppo city centre, much of the western city taken. They have broken into the Old historic Aleppo, beyond the ring road.
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They… who are we talking about? Hopefully not ISIS?
Haven’t you noticed what I have been writing for a couple of days ? 
But… It’s a jihadist coalitiion, under former Jabhat al Nusra commander; al Golani
. A military genious (relative to Syria), former leader of an Al Qaida faction, but this is a long story and I don’t have time for those details. I used to follow this war almost daily from 2011.
But no, it’s not ISIS. They fight ISIS. But they are militant Salafist Islamists and not the guys we in the West want to win a war, if you know what I mean. Previously part of Al Qaida, they split with Al Qaida, became hayat tharir al Sham and Al Qaida in Syria became Huras al-Din. Tharir al Sham later mostly annihilated Huras-al din. That is the very short story.
They are not like ISIS, but the core cadre of its organisation are hardened Al Qaida veterans who broke with Al Qaida. Their war is local, not global.
But can I please escape out of this by saying that this is extraordinary complicated and that hundreds of thousands of secularly inclined Syrians are now cheering for them ? It’s not black and white. Syria is a shit show of complexity. And I would have to write a lot and long for me to be able to do it justice. One page is not enough when I am trying to explain these factions, why they fight, who they are and so on.
But sure, if you want a super duper easy American-style blanket answer without nuance, where you miss out of most of the important knowledge; then I suppose I can say that it is “Bad Guys” all around. Degrees of awful badness, everything is shit and so on. But it’s not like that of course.
But there are more factions involed. But Hayat is commanding this, Golani from his operations room. Turk backed rebels also moving in in to support. Kurds are afraid. Turkey has also started shelling Kurdish areas now and they will have an opportunity to take more Kurdish areas and so on.
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I have quite literally seen nothing about all this anywhere else.
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Norwegian NRK actually has an article from today. Fairly ok one as well.
All fo the information in it is of course now very outdated, but you may want to have a read.
I just translated it with google so the English is shitty but very readable.
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Ok, one super fast post because it is some what “WTF, is it possible to rout this hard and so fast”.
https://x.com/xumas_iq/status/1862489356876853537
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There is coverage on Reuters, but it just isn’t getting much prominence. The most visible coverage is around the bombing near the Turkish border…probably because it is being seen from safe inside Turkey.
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So much this:
https://x.com/APHClarkson/status/1862460078827229629
In the Middle East there were 2 giants in terms of warlords. Soleimani and Al-Jolani (Golani). One is now dead, the other is busy with a nation building project with little state support.
Lazy fucks with their ragtag dicipline and their Marathon-Rout tradition, It’s not that they are being attacked by a strong army, it’s that they are ludicrously incompenent with no dicipline what so ever. Ukraine faces assaults this size, many far, far larger and mechanised with air support and massive artillery preparation; every single fucking day on multiple areas of the front. There is absolutely no comparison.
The difference between the less numerous jihadists and the Assad-trash army of ill diciplined millitias, is dicipline and organisation.
https://x.com/M0nstas/status/1862491687794139198
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It runs to the fundamental purpose of the respective organizations. The jihadists have limited resources, but their function is to defeat a military opponent. That has never really been the purpose of the Syrian military. Their function from inception has been to maintain control over their population.
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The stronghold vital to supplying Aleppo. The so called fort.
https://x.com/VivaRevolt/status/1862500832211616068
The tiger, Bashar al Assad’s hero and firefighter (Almost all difficult conquest in Syria by SAA was done by Suheil and his Russian trained unit, the only actual normal unit in a trash army ) is fleeing with his 25th Special Operations Brigade, and probably his ever constant entourage of young boys
https://x.com/xumas_iq/status/1862504528911667371
Thanks mate. As you say, there is precious little information about the current situation in Syria in the mainstream media. So, your input here is precious to say the least!
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Aleppo has fallen.
And when I mentioned sarraqig earlier, recon units are way, way past that.
