Image is of Assad and his family.
After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.
Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah’s resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria’s collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like “this is bad” and “Assad is fucking up”; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.
There is still too much that we don’t know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah’s assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.
What is certain is that Assad’s time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
There is something that needs to be said about Syria - what is the message being sent to the Global South?
A lot has been said and asked about why Global South countries don’t dare to stand up and reluctant to fight the creeping Western imperialism being waged against them. Well, compradors aside, for one, most governments don’t want to end up like Libya. Many governments really don’t want to have a huge target being painted on their back, so it’s better to keep your head down and pray that the imperial hegemon doesn’t take an interest in you.
If one could still argue that Libya fell because Medvedev butt headed with Putin and refused to veto the UN resolution (though it is doubtful that would have made any substantial change to the situation, there are people who believe that if Putin had been in charge in 2011, Russia could have served as a counteracting force against NATO in Libya), then Syria shattered that illusion completely by demonstrating that even Putin’s Russia will abandon you.
This does not fare well for the anti-imperialist banner that Russia and Iran (and maybe even China) are attempting to portray themselves as the spearheads of the movement. If you piss off the empire, nobody is coming to save you. You’re going to be all alone. So, it’s better to keep your heads low and learn to know your place, then maybe, just maybe, the empire will let you live for another day.
Man the USSR was so fucking cool with protecting countries from NATO aggression. They were ready to start a naval war with the Americans to stop them from invading India. The global south will never have that kind of protection unless China actually steps up.
Yeah I don’t care how flawed the USSR was and I have had plenty of criticisms against the post-Stalin leaderships and their liberalism, but you cannot deny that for nearly 70 years, it represented a true alternative to Western capitalism, defeated fascism, formed a bulwark against foreign imperialism and played direct and indirect roles in the decolonization of the developing world and the rise of workers rights even in the Western world.
The fall of the USSR signified the end of that historical chapter and many of the hard fought gains (both in the imperial core and the Global South) were eventually reversed.
Just a couple of months ago, xiaohongshu was supportive of the PRC ‘crushing the USSR’. Sounds like xiaohongshu is reversing a lot of own opinions now.
There is no we, most people don’t even live outside the global North. We are reverting to what Lenin wrote about pre ww1, Russia is a shittily run empire but still an empire just like the others. They tried to win a war on their doorstep with mostly mercenaries, they won’t risk alot for proxies.
The real issue with the majority of the global South is that they are all in countries that mean nothing to the people living there. Africa and the middle east are nothing but lines drawn by former colonial empires that where handed over to corrupt puppets.
You have the might and violence of the West willing to level your country. And than you have the people with in your country that aren’t steeped in nationalism like the West is. There inter ethnic strife which has been excabated for decades by the West. Which leads you to a Syria type of conflict. Where it’s just mercenaries vs mercenaries and the ones that stop getting paid first with draw completely.
It doesn’t help that the ussr/Russia just seems to latch onto the buffoons running the place and rarely ever coup them out of power and install some one a bit more competent.
What I’m getting at is most countries are made up. Filled with people that have ions of conflict with each other. They look like a real country when a strong arm family takes power. And dissolve into what looks like chaos from the international view the minute that family gets to incompetent or is removed from power.
