Red v Red for real in Syria

[sburke]

As for Russian gunships and missiles, I feel like this is a red herring. The world has come a long way since the 1980s-1990s. Chinese dealers will gleefully supply effective SA-18 / Stinger knockoffs to anyone with the cash. Also, there's a lot of mythology floating around about the devastating impact of Hind gunships in A'stan, Chechnya and 1991 Iraq; while they are useful tools, especially in patrolling mountainous terrain, they will not eliminate a popular insurgency on their own. It's not like NATO has been PWNing the Taliban with Apaches.

True, but we didn't target civilians and refugee camps, these guys will. They give the regime some mobility into areas the ground troops may not go. I also wouldn't count on China selling the rebels anything. They seem to be siding with the Russians on this. I wouldn't be surprised to see Turkey step up though.

[Sgt Joch]

This is a guerrilla war; the rebels are most active where the regime's hold is weakest -- at present that is in the hilly country around Hama. The regime has concentrated heavy forces in the area around Homs, so the rebels have obligingly shifted their efforts north. The moment the boot comes off the neck of Homs it will erupt in rebellion again.

And time is not on the regime's side; the rebels are rapidly importing IED knowhow and materials from Iraq. Those impressive looking mechanized forces are going to start becoming tracked coffins before long, as will the large numbers of supply vehicles needed to sustain those forces. The US Army had a hard enough time with these tactics; the Syrian army, corrupt, inefficient and poorly motivated, is going to lose its mobility and with it, control of most of the country.

The 1982 rebellion was led by a locally based group of clerics and clansmen. The current rebellion is far more broad-based, and its grievances are largely economic, not religious even though religious fanatics are present. There is no useful analog here.

I dont see a clear analogy to Afghanistan/Iraq. In a successful insurgency, the Rebels usually have a secure base (i.e. northern Pakistan) which the Syrian Rebels do not have. Unlike NATO troops, the Alawites know the language, culture, terrain. The Alawites also know that this only ends one way for them: victory or exile/death. The Rebels have already carried out executions of Assad supporters in the areas they "liberated", (i.e. the "Houla" massacre) so the Alawites are under no illusion as to their fate under the "new" Syria. If the Alawites were going to split from the Assads, it would have happened in the early days of the uprising.

[sburke]

Trying to make a direct comparison of any 2 insurrections is fraught with issues. While the Syrian rebels do not have a direct base of operations supported by a safe haven like Pakistan, they do have some support from Turkey, the Lebanese border and a very long hard to patrol border with Iraq.

Syria has little or no ability to pressure it's neighbors on trying top shut down movement across those borders. The Assad regime is isolated internally and externally whereas the Karzai gov't has significant external support and no talk of sanctions against it.

If the current trends continue, the Assad regime will have to have the full commitment of the Alawite minority in arms and shut down access to arms by the non Alawite majority. That could get pretty tricky if the Syrian non Alawite army units actually revolt and attempt to intervene. So far the Gov't has done a pretty good job of maintaining control over it's arms depots, but that could change rapidly. The problem with being a minority regime is you have to allow some access by the very folks you are fighting to continue to function.

Personally I think things have gone too far, the Assad regime is not going to be able to restore full authority. It will simply move from crisis to crisis. How long it survives has more to do with how quickly the international community decides enough is enough and attempts to clamp down on the Syrian army. The first step has to be a truce and whether that comes from an agreement sponsored by Kofi Annan (unlikely now) or from a military response from the international community there will have to be a serious peace keeping force inserted as in Yugoslavia, with hopefully more success. Barring that, this will simply continue to spiral into an ethnic cleansing bloodbath. It seems too much to hope that Russia will see the handwriting on the wall and realize it will completely lose any position in the Mediterranean if the new gov't feels Russia supported the Assad regime to the bitter end.

[LongLeftFlank]

The Syrian "FSA" has not fielded significant "main force" units a la the Taliban or the Viet Cong, so I deny that it is overly subject to disruption by regime airpower; the gunships can certainly kill smugglers, refugees and innocent goatherds aplenty, but smuggling and evasion of government authority has been an art form in these lands for about 4000 years now. There is simply no way to stop that; even the Israelis have had to build a Berlin Wall.

The FSA formations are a loose agglomeration of local militias, bolstered by army defectors and an as-yet small number of foreign volunteers (AQ and other). Typically these units are based in more densely populated areas; the hills and hinterlands are supply lines, not zones of operations.

FSA tactics resemble more closely those used by the Iraqi resistance against the US in Anbar than they do Taliban tactics; sniping, rapidly increasing mine/IED warfare and the periodic overrunning of isolated government positions. Since being pushed out of Baba Amr, the FSA has not attempted to create "liberated zones", other than briefly for propaganda purposes. Their objective is not to hold ground but to survive, bleed the oppressors, sap their morale and make it clear to the people that the regime's writ does not run beyond the range of its weapons.

While the Syrian army isn't nearly as casualty sensitive as the Western forces, a steady stream of Alawite boys heading home in coffins and wheelchairs will become as corrosive to support as the Russian body counts in A'stan and Chechnya. Neither side can deliver a knockout blow, but the regime's strength and credibility will ebb during the stalemate. Eventually local FSA warlords will start to make side deals with local commanders and that might be the beginning of the end for the regime. This was already happening in 2010-2011 until the Assads cracked down, but again, their core of support is concentrated in the 2 heavy armoured divisions plus the SF/Airborne and Air Force. Half these forces are needed to keep Damascus and Aleppo locked down, but the others will bleed and bleed whenever they move around to tamp down the hot spots.

Also, who said anything about the Chinese government selling missiles to the FSA? If there's a buck to be made, there will be a huaqiao arms trader happily diverting a few cases of Norinco arms from Bangladesh to Beirut.... and Chinese government policy will have no real say in the matter. Anyway, there's no oil here; unlike the Russians (maybe), the Chinese don't truly give a sh*t about Syria at the end of the day except inasmuch as they can screw around with us white boys.