Slowly then all of a sudden:
Rebels fighting on the frontlines were not so certain. “The first line of defence fought hard. They were made up of Hezbollah and Iranian-backed fighters and they resisted, hard,” said Abu Bilal, a rebel who fought alongside HTS in north-west Syria. Once they broke through the first line of defence, however, “the army just ran away”.
The rebel advance was at first met with silence from Damascus. Then the defence ministry spoke of a tactical retreat designed to spare civilian lives. Syrian state media said that videos of opposition fighters entering formerly government cities were staged photo-ops: rebels were entering towns, asking residents if they could pose for a few pictures and then withdrawing.
But one after another, cities held by Assad’s forces fell to the opposition.
It doesn’t always happen of course – just like not everyone goes bankrupt. But when it doe4s it’s the same way. If this unit here is not sure about whether the unit to hte left and right is going to stick then they withdraw. And if the unit to the left and or right thinks the middie will withdraw then…..
Similar to the Prisoner’s Dilemma in game theory. When it happens the collapse is swift….
This sort of collapse is usually down to training and conditions.
Assad stopped paying his soldiers ( or more likely the generals were stealing the money ) and they had no incentive to fight. There was probably also a huge scam of overstating how many soldiers there actually were ( see also Afghan army ).
A properly trained and managed army would fall back to a preprepared defensive position. The Syrian, like the Iraqi or Afghan and dare I say it the Russian was neither.
“It is as if we are living in a dream”
Being a born pessimist, I suspect it’ll soon turn out to be a nightmare!!
“the army just ran away”.
Most of those who had been conscripted to fight for Assad just took off their uniforms and donned civilian clothes, especially after they were told in advance that HTS troops had been told not to look for retribution and to leave them and officials alone.
Syria was a hollowed out shell after all those years of sanctions and Turkey and the US stealing their oil.
Assad probably didn’t have any money to pay his army, you don’t export captagon because you’re flush with legit export opportunities. Obviously the foreign interests who bribed Syrian commanders into standing down had far deeper pockets.
A properly trained and managed army would fall back to a preprepared defensive position. The Syrian, like the Iraqi or Afghan and dare I say it the Russian was neither.
The Afghans and the Russians will fight, and can win – the Taliban offensive of 2021 was like Islamic Blitzkrieg and Russia did great work ~ 2015 stabilising Syria against the previous wave of Western backed headchopping nutters. Arab secular armies are something else tho.
Not because they’re cowards – individual Moslems are no more or less brave than other men – but because Arab blokes (rightly) sus that their officers and NCOs don’t have their back. If it’s me and my brothers against our cousins, and me, my brothers and cousins against the world that doesn’t leave a lot of trust for random army blokes.
@Steve:
– Syria was a hollowed out shell after all those years of sanctions and Turkey and the US stealing their oil.
Good to know that sanctions and denial of oil revenues can work after all.
– the Taliban offensive of 2021 was like Islamic Blitzkrieg . . .
It was very similar to recent events in Syria; once the locals know the foreign sponsor can’t or won’t support the regime anymore, the game is over and it’s just a question of whether the attackers can run faster than the defenders.
. . . Russia did great work ~ 2015 stabilising Syria . . .
☉ _ ☉
A bit like the great work the Germans did stabilising Warsaw.
The Turks must be leaning heavily on their proxies to let the Russians depart slowly. There’ll be plenty itching for a slaughter. Hopefully they won’t do the Syrian Christians in lieu.
PJF – Good to know that sanctions and denial of oil revenues can work after all.
They can, if the country is small enough and you can actually physically steal their oil, as the US and Turkey did to Syria. (Is that the “rules-based international order”?) Sanctions have a great record of making life for poor people in poor countries hell.
They don’t work so well against the largest country in the world and fourth biggest economy, otoh the anti-Russia sanctions have successfully poisoned Europe’s economy, with Germany now suffering an irreversible economic death spiral of rapid deindustrialisation that is so devastating it’s making Henry Morgenthau Jr’s ghost shoot ectoplasm ropes at Dan Ackroyd. Oops.
It was very similar to recent events in Syria; once the locals know the foreign sponsor can’t or won’t support the regime anymore, the game is over and it’s just a question of whether the attackers can run faster than the defenders.
No, what the Talichads did was a far more ambitious effort at big arrow mobile warfare and happened right under the Americans’ noses.
The Taliban didn’t have foreign intelligence services to bribe their enemy commanders not to fight, send exploding Jewish pagers to their opponents, or the combined air and naval forces of Israel, the US and Turkey bombing the way clear for them like ISIS 2.0 just did in Syria. The Syria jihadis were playing on easy mode.
Btw I think people want to misunderestimate the Taliban, because they’re smelly retarded goatherds. But they are among the most tenacious and successful irregular troops in the world. The average junior Taliban wallah has considerably more experience of successfully leading men under fire than the average British Army officer, even tho the former never delivered a Powerpoint slide deck in his life due to being illiterate in his own language. Like John Rambo, we should respect the brave fighters of the Mujahideen.
A bit like the great work the Germans did stabilising Warsaw.
Not really. The Russians were propping up the legitimate government of the country, while the West just put a ‘former’ Al Qaeda commander in charge of a broken and Balkanized Syria, because Middle East Christians haven’t been massacred enough.
Hans, we’re definitely the baddies.
The Turks must be leaning heavily on their proxies to let the Russians depart slowly. There’ll be plenty itching for a slaughter. Hopefully they won’t do the Syrian Christians in lieu.
It’s like putting Gary Glitter in charge of a nursery, and hoping he won’t nonce the children this time.
Come on, come on, come on.
Steve
Being selfish, my concern is that, when people push for us to take the Christians in as reffos, they’ll then screech that we have to take the Muzzies as well otherwise it’d be racism. Or whatever they call it these days.