External powers trying to carve out influence in northern Syria are Russia and Iran, to whom Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, owes his successes so far, and Turkey, in whom rebel groups continue to pin their hopes. There is also what remains of a fractured anti-Assad opposition, jihadist groups and a regime desperate to claim it has won the war.

Sharply criticizing Israel's conduct in the incident, Konashenkov said that Israel's military leadership "either has no appreciation for the level of relations with Russia, or has no control over individual commands or commanding officers who understood that their actions would lead to tragedy."

Russia also contradicted Israel's claims that the plane was downed while Israeli jets had returned to Israeli territory. "The Israeli jets saw the Russian Ilyushin Il-20 and used it as a shield against the anti-aircraft missiles, while they carried on maneuvering in the region," the Defense Ministry said.

Russia sent as many as 310 notifications to the Israeli military since the countries reached a cooperation agreement, Konashenkov said, while Israel only notified Russia 25 times. Konashenkov noted the discrepancy despite Israel carrying out more than 200 strikes in Syria in the past year and a half. "This is an extremely ungrateful response to all that has been done by the Russian Federation for Israel and the Israeli people recently," Konashenkov said.

Konashenkov also lauded Russia's efforts to secure the withdrawal of Iran-backed forces from the Golan Heights near the Israeli border, saying that a total of 1,050 personnel, 24 MLRSs and tactical missiles, as well as 145 pieces of other munitions and military equipment" were moved more than 140 km to the east of Syria. Konashenkov added that this was done at Israel's request.

Konashenkov noted that Russia is working to preserve Jewish sites and graves in the Syrian city of Aleppo, adding that Russian soldiers' are aiding in a special search operation for the remains of Israeli servicemen missing in action following prior conflicts.

He said Russian forces came under fire from ISIS militants while searching in coordinates provided by Israel. He noted that one Russian officer was wounded but the operation continued.

will be interesting to see if this ends israels direct military meddling

Edited by ilmdge (Sept. 25, 2018 14:14:21)

ghostpinballer posted:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45554188turkey seem to be worming their way into a bigger strategic role by the day. do we reckon this idlib thing will happen at all now, or have the turks bought their jihadist clients time to melt away?

turkey actually took a huge burden on itself and i m not sure why exactly. they are now shouldering the task of getting rid of the terrorists and i dont know what they will get in return. it cant be just an issue of the possible refugees fleeing the idlib operation, i guess they will either try to take over the land but even that doesnt seem very plausible because their commitment specifically says that the syrian state institutions will return to idlib. so they must have gotten some other concession from russia or syria or whatever. one of such possible concessions, in my (very stupid) opinion might be construction tenders about the reconstruction of syria, as construction is our "locomotive" sector at the moment and had been so for the last ten years and it started to run into huge problems. i heard from someone that one of the largest construction companies in the country which is also in cahoots with erdoğan started to build a cement factory very close to the syrian border and told me that he was expecting some shit to happen in syria. after a short while the "olive branch" operation began, so, yeah.

so because israel used a russian jet as fuel and got 15 guys killed, russia is giving syria better antiaircraft tech. shit they hadnt given them so far specifically because they were trying to play nice with israel.

a theory i have heard about the whole drama is that french frigates were also involved in the strike (this was mentioned in russia's initial claims) and russia was upset more that there is an organized attack coming from western countries instead of some solely israeli shit, which might explain the dramatic change in policy. like the official statements coming from the ministry of defense and foreign affairs and shit were quite aggressive and some of them blamed "the west" and not just israel. the attack came right after the deal struck between turkey and russia, which means that this is more than just a simple operation against the hezbollah/iran logistics stuff.

JohnBeige posted:

Maybe the plan is to bring them in and somewhat regularize them against Kurds in eastern Turkey. Could just a bluff too tbh

yeah i think that some agreement about the future removal of ypg might be more plausible

Whats going on with mycareer

— Cher (@cher) August 18, 2012

sovnarkoman posted:

i dont think that we have ever indulged in settlement policies in the southeast where we made turks settle there. instead we had "negative" settlement policies in the 90s where the army burned shitloads of villages

I think what makes turkoman/turkic central asian jihadist resettlement in the region a reasonable possibility is the fact that there's a host of these jihadists ostensibly under the eye of the Turkish state, and preventing fundamentalists from returning to the Caspian sea region is a big part of Russia's motivation to deal more fruitfully with Turkey.
A vast swathe of such people - loyal, militant - would be very useful as an asset to sic on neighbours or internal opponents, not unlike the way the four states with majority Kurdish populations have used various Kurdish entities as proxies against each other.

Syria has been a difficult object lesson for the left that has had a devastating consequence for the people of that embattled nation. Hundreds of thousands have died, and millions have been displaced primarily because left and progressive forces lacked the organizational, but more importantly, the ideological, political, and moral clarity to mount an opposition to the machinations of their national bourgeoisie in Europe and the U.S. The very idea that the bourgeois leadership of their respective states might have some benevolent justifications for military intervention in Syria revealed a dangerous nationalist sentimentality that is driving the left version of white supremacist national chauvinism.

Before the dramatic rightist turn of the left in the U.S. and Europe over the last two decades, the left –- at least much of the Marxist-Leninist left –- opposed Western imperialist intervention out of a theoretical and principled commitment to the national-colonial question in the global South. As citizens in “oppressor nations,” opposing their own bourgeoisie’s interventions into oppressed nations was seen as a responsibility for the left and indeed was a measurement of what was actually an authentic left position.

That stance has virtually disappeared.

The first response by the Western left to plans or actual interventions by their nation’s ruling class is a strange conversation regarding rather or not the intervention is justified or not based on the nature of the government being toppled by the intervention.

For those of us who are members of oppressed peoples and nations, it is quite obvious that without independent organizations and global solidarity structures buttressed by the few progressive states that exist on the planet, we cannot depend on any bourgeois state to really care about our humanity or on the radical or left forces in Northern nations to put a brake on repression and intervention against non-Europe states and peoples.