cmeinel

HTS is pushing more to the south. All SDF territories are to the north and east, with the river Euphrates anchoring SDF territories on its southwest side.

Dateline 12-5-2024 NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @[email protected]

Rebel forces took Salamiya and Uqayribat, east of Hama, under control. Highway 45 to Palmyra is open. Expect a deep push south in the coming day(s).

Source: https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/113602510716592979

Influenced by @rene given https://www.randforecastinginitiative.org/comments/146931

Influenced by @PeterStamp given https://www.randforecastinginitiative.org/comments/149291

Following @DimaKlenchin 

Peace talks suddenly are likely, thank you, @DKC for this https://www.randforecastinginitiative.org/comments/149368

Why did none of us see this coming? Perhaps we need to develop a way to monitor Arabic language social media? The latest analysis on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani:

Dateline 12-5-2024 ...he has been positioning himself and his group as credible caretakers of a Syria liberated from al-Assad, who brutally repressed a popular uprising during the Arab Spring in 2011, leading to a war that has gone on ever since.

HTS ran the governorate of Idlib via the Syrian Salvation Government, which it established in 2017 to provide civil services, education, healthcare, a judiciary and infrastructure as well as manage finances and aid distribution.
[in 2003]
he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq as part of the resistance to the United States invasion that same year.
Arrested by US forces in Iraq in 2006 and held for five years, al-Julani was later tasked with establishing al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, al-Nusra Front, which grew its influence in opposition-held areas, especially Idlib.
Al-Julani coordinated in those early years with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of al-Qaeda’s “Islamic State in Iraq”, which later became ISIL (ISIS).
In April 2013, al-Baghdadi suddenly announced that his group was cutting ties with al-Qaeda and would expand into Syria, effectively swallowing al-Nusra Front into a new group called ISIL.
Al-Julani rejected this change, maintaining his allegiance to al-Qaeda.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/4/who-is-abu-mohamad-al-julani-the-leader-of-hayat-tahrir-al-sham-in-syria

Lowering to near baseline based on the comparison class of Nixon/Kissenger/North Vietnam dynamics. Nixon managed to get all US troops out of Vietnam in March of 1973 with minimal losses to the troops and domestic US support, with Kissenger warning that Nixon was crazy and might do anything if provoked.

Indeed, when Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974, he still was widely popular. He got us out of Vietnam! He only resigned because many Republican Senators foresaw that the Watergate scandal was likely to expand to the point that many of them might be evicted by voters in the November elections.

Similarly, it would likely take over six months from today to get US troops safely out of South Korea.  So Kim Jong Un will more likely hold fire until US troops are gone, waiting for a better opportunity.

And, who knows, dealmaker Trump might find a way to bring North Korea out of the 13th century. I remember a young Kim Jong Un partying with a famous US backetball player and reporters from Vice News, on camera for the world to delight and laugh. He might be tiring of his stilted life as an allegedly divine being, similar to Japan's Emperor until the US dropped two atomic bombs on his people. Whereupon...

Following @belikewater plus the map below. Way too much kinetic stuff is going on near Manjib.

Dateline 12-4-2024 Source: https://x.com/criticalthreats/status/1864500359634285050/photo/1

Dateline 4-12-2024 Russia may redeploy Africa Corps units to Syria to reinforce the Assad regime in Syria to prevent Assad’s defeat, which would harm the Kremlin’s strategic objectives in Africa and surrounding waterways such as the Mediterranean and Red Seas.

Source:  https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/africa-file-special-edition-syrias-potential-impact-on-russias-africa-and-mediterranean-ambitions?

The base rate is close to zero, and Russia's best hackers have fled.