The Syria War Will Not Be a Quagmire -- Because Putin and Assad Are Winning

[independentpiney]

Late in the night on Feb. 2, the news hit: "all communication and supply line[s]" between Turkey and Aleppo had been severed, according to a Elijah Magnier, a renowned Arab war correspondent with Alrai Media Group..

Of particular strategic importance is the village of Murassat Khan and adjacent towns north of Aleppo: by taking control of the area, Damascus ended the main Turkey-Aleppo insurgent supply line. The tourniquet around Aleppo can be pulled off the city -- and at the same time, one of the main ISIS oil corridors to Turkey is cut...But if we were to step back and take a look at more of Syria, as shown in the (slightly older) map below, a bigger picture emerges.If government forces, moving north, can make friendly contact with the Kurds in the northeast, almost all Nusra and allied rebel forces would be nearly surrounded. The insurgents would be caught in a cauldron with their backs to a lightly populated and forested territory.

Nor, it seems, is Syria heading toward a low-intensity guerrilla war in the aftermath of any military victory on the ground. The scenes below, showing people's jubilation when the Syrian Army and Hezbollah forces entered villages that had been retaken from rebel forces this week, tell a different story:..Syria has a very effective intelligence service. We may expect that within a year, most of the disbanded jihadists will have been found out and reported to the intelligence services by locals, who suffered grievously under their occupation. Most will be arrested or killed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/syria-putin-assad_b_9169998.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

An interesting article. I think support among ordinary Syrians of all sects for the regime has been under-reported.

[bemildred]

1. The Aleppo Pocket: Turkey Running Out of Time for Its Plans to Invade Syria

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"The Syrian army's success," the columnist noted, "has been made all the greater because at the start of January the rebels sent reinforcements to Aleppo to resist what they expected would be a government offensive there. Now those reinforcements, together with the rebel fighters previously in the city, are encircled and trapped."

Moving forward, as the Syrian Army and allied local militias, plus Syrian Kurdish forces in the country's north, move to take control of the Syrian-Turkish border, and to cut off the rebels' supply routes with both Turkey to the north and the Daesh terrorists to the east, the regional operation is turning out to have implications for the entire Syrian theater. This, in turn, "has given impetus to all sorts of geopolitical tremors," military analyst and Expert magazine contributor Pyotr Skarabahaty explains.

In a detailed analysis of the situation on the ground, the journalist suggests that the Aleppo operation has already had major political implications for the region, leading to the so-called 'moderate' Islamists walking out on the Geneva peace talks, to a reassessment of the situation by Washington, and to a new narrative in Western media "about tens of thousands of Syrian civilians fleeing evil Russian bombs."

"The situation is changing almost every day," Skarabahaty writes, "but so far [Damascus and Moscow have] the strategic initiative, interfering with regional and Western powers ability to facilitate an appropriate response" to reinforce the jihadists.

http://sputniknews.com/military/20160210/1034534915/aleppo-operation-significance.html