Syria’s Fall: In-Depth Analysis

SYRIA IN CONTEXT, 23 Dec 2024

Simplicius' Garden of Knowledge - TRANSCEND Media Service

Dear reader, normally we would not publish anything by an anonymous writer. It’s non-academic and, of course, in these times you’d never know who is hiding there. However, with this analysis we shall make an exception. We’ve read it very carefully and it contains a series of facts, angles and documentations that seem to be valid and credible. It also reveals an extraordinarily fine grasp of mind-boggling complexity – and, thus, it is not an easy article to read. We hope you will, anyhow.

— Jan Oberg, TFF Transnational Foundation
— Antonio C. S. Rosa | Editor – TRANSCEND Media Service

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Sic transit gloria mundi

10 Dec 2024 – Syria has fallen, and history will be strewn with an endless banquet of takes and interpretations as to what happened, how, and why. Here I offer one humble middle approach to piece it together, supported by facts and some deductive reasoning, rather than emotional gut reactions.

What do we know so far?

Firstly, there are now indications ‘rebels’ informed Turkey of their intentions to launch an offensive on Aleppo six months ago, according to Reuters:

The armed Syrian opposition, which took power in Damascus the day before, informed the Turkish side six months ago of its intention to launch a large-scale offensive against the official Syrian authorities, Reuters reported.

“Syrian opposition groups… informed Turkey about plans for a major offensive about six months ago and believed that they had received its tacit approval,” the news agency reported.

At the same time, the United States said that Washington was not aware of Ankara’s “tacit approval” of the armed Syrian opposition’s plans to attack the Aleppo province in the north of the Arab Republic.

I mostly agree with Scott Ritter’s take here that the operation was never meant to topple all of Syria and that this became a kind of emergent improvisation after all the hyenas of the region saw how weak Syrian armed forces were in responding to the initial foray. There is ample ancillary evidence to suggest the assault was initially meant to be limited—but of course grew in scope as Israel, US, Turkey, and others began to see opportunity and activated their various sleeper cells, as well as began to secretly court Syrian generals and other influential army figures to essentially surrender or betray Assad in one way or another.

Here’s one analyst’s take on how the militants did not expect such success. It mentions that the Russian army reportedly offered to upgrade and train the SAA much more directly several years ago, but was for some reason refused.

We now have a better understanding of why, precisely, events unfolded, and how Syria had become so weak, directly from first hand sources. Though he’s the least trustworthy character, Erdogan explained that he had offered Assad a deal—in his words—to bring back some Syrian refugees as well as for Assad to influence Kurds on the Turkish border to pull back. One suspects there’s much more to the ‘deal’ than Erdogan reveals, but other figures have somewhat corroborated the above.

Here, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi openly reveals that Assad had become too inflexible in being open to the Astana process ‘dialogues’ with the opposition.

First he mentions that Assad himself was shocked at his own army’s collapse. The FM implies Assad had poor working knowledge of the internal situation of his own military, which we’ll get to in a moment.

Then he lays it out:

“It must be said that the path did not progress as well as expected, and Mr. Assad’s government in this regard was somewhat inflexible and slow in making progress.”

But now the Syrian ambassador to Russia himself, Bashar al-Jafaari, went even further in condemning the decadence under Assad:

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