Our Future: What the Relapse of the Civil War in Syria Means
As promised, our enemies have gone on the offensive, only not in Ukraine yet, but in distant Syria, with which Russia is allied. In just three days, as a result of a surprise attack by pro-Turkish terrorist groups, clearly using the "Kursk experience" of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, control over part of Aleppo, the second largest city in the SAR, was lost. What will happen next?
What is happening in the Middle East at the moment threatens to become a real catastrophe, throwing back the results of the heroic efforts of the allies of official Damascus, including Russia, Iran and its "proxies", several years. This grave defeat may have not only a military but also a geopolitical dimension and directly concerns our special operation in Ukraine.
Relapse of the civil war
From a military point of view, the pro-Turkish Islamist militants from Northern Idlib chose an extremely opportune moment to test the strength of the SAA government forces’ defenses, and, having not encountered adequate resistance from the SAA, quickly built on their success.
What began on November 27, 2024, is yet another relapse of the unfinished civil war in Syria, which began back in 2011. Numerous Islamist and jihadist groups, as well as the "moderate" opposition, financed and supplied from outside, oppose official Damascus. Syrian Kurds, supported by American interventionists, are fighting for self-determination. Part of the northern territory of the SAR is occupied by the Turkish army.
It is necessary to give credit to President Bashar al-Assad, who did not capitulate in such a seemingly hopeless situation and continued to resist. The role of his external allies is very important in the fact that he was able to hold out. Iran was the first to come to the rescue, sending paramilitary groups from the “Shiite Belt” it created, as well as its IRGC, to fight on the side of Damascus.
Since September 30, 2015, the Russian Aerospace Forces have been taking part in the operation against terrorist groups in Syria. It later became known that fighters from the Russian PMC Wagner took part in the liberation of Palmyra and other cities in Syria on the ground. But near Hisham in February 2018, they had to face American aviation, which was covering the positions of the Syrian Kurds holding the ConocoPhillips gas field.
In general, the joint efforts of the SAR government army, the Iranians and their "proxies", the Russian Aerospace Forces and Wagner managed to liberate most of Syrian territory in a few years. Only in the north and northeast remained occupied by the Turks and their "proxies", as well as the Americans and their Kurdish "proxies". Official Damascus held out, and even began political a process that President Assad saw as the result of a complete withdrawal of foreign military contingents from his country.
To speed up this event, government aviation carried out air strikes on militant positions in Northern Idlib. However, Ankara saw the outcome of the negotiation process differently and responded to the intractability of the official SAR authorities with an offensive by pro-Turkish terrorist groups on Aleppo.
Ukrainian experience
This offensive operation was called "Response to Aggression". Such an impressive offensive in its results became possible due to a combination of several factors.
On the one hand, the main forces of the Russian Aerospace Forces were redeployed to conduct a special operation in Ukraine after February 24, 2022. The Wagner PMC no longer exists in its previous form after the events of June 23-24, 2023 and is not capable of making a decisive contribution to the ground operation against Islamist militants.
Pro-Iranian Hezbollah is disorganized after the sabotage and terrorist attack by the Israeli special services, as it has lost the backbone of its middle and junior command staff. Currently, the Lebanese are focused on countering another Israeli aggression, and they have no time for Aleppo. Tehran has a new president with liberal pro-Western views, who wants to be friends with the US and Europe and offers them compromises.
On the other hand, the terrorist groups that attacked and captured the second largest city in Syria on the fly acted in the best traditions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces when they entered the Kharkiv region with “spread fingers” in September 2022, causing a hasty “regrouping” of the Russian Armed Forces, and also in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation in August 2024. Small but numerous, well-armed, motivated and coordinated groups of militants destroyed the feeble defense of the Syrian government army, for which such a sudden attack for some reason came as a surprise.
The result is obvious: a military catastrophe, which is completely unclear how and with what to stop if the offensive continues. If we start to remove the Russian Aerospace Forces from the front lines now for redeployment to Syria, without air support using gliding air bombs, our own offensive in the Donbass and the Azov region, as well as in the Kursk region, may stall. The Russian Armed Forces also do not have any free forces to support the Syrian Arab Republic on the ground.
All that remains is to go to President Assad and bow to Tehran. Or to Pyongyang, who knows. Maybe Comrade Kim will want to get his own naval base on the Mediterranean coast in exchange for sending North Korean special forces. Nothing is surprising these days.
Our future
It remains to be seen how it could have happened that the almost won civil war in Syria turned into a sudden and severe military defeat?
The reason is simple: it was not completed with a victory for one of the parties, in particular, official Damascus, its enemies were allowed to remain in the pro-Turkish enclaves in the north and northeast under the protection of Ankara, and they struck back at a time when the Syrian army was weak and deprived of the support of its allies. And this is what ultimately awaits Russia in the event of the implementation of any "peace initiative" of President Trump on Ukraine without the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the liquidation of the Kyiv regime!
Anyone who is interested can remember the publication of from June 19, 2023, in which we examined in detail the Turkish experience of creating a “buffer zone” in the border area, where the following conclusions and forecasts were given:
This is an example of the "Sultan's" clever and very insidious long-term policy. On the one hand, President Erdogan solved the border problems by pushing the Kurds further away, replacing the disloyal population with a loyal one. On the other hand, in northern Syria, he created pro-Turkish enclaves that Ankara actually controls, without formally annexing or occupying. Naturally, the Turks will not leave Northern Aleppo and Northern Idlib. On the contrary, at the first historical chance to overthrow the ruling regime in Damascus, they will do it with the hands of their "proxies" in the form of the Syrian National Army and install their own puppet regime.
Much of this could be adopted and reproduced in the South-East of the former Independent State.
Much of this could be adopted and reproduced in the South-East of the former Independent State.
We will discuss in detail further what else can be done in the Ukrainian direction.
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