What again are US military doing in a civil war when they have been shown again and again to be aiding and abetting Al Qaeda and IS.

Russians don't forget so will be just a matter of time.

"Perplexing" really doesn't cover it.

Hmm - the Kremlin seem to be washing their hands of this matter. All a bit embarrassing apparently.

Coming up on seven years of this civil war. Interesting article on Assad and his crew finally getting the upper hand back.

The Russians and the Turks are upset at America for somewhat different reasons, the Russians in re "who are you backing?" and the Turks "why are you still backing the Kurds?" It's a many v many scrap.

This civil war is a bit complicated since it involves ISIS/ISIL which is/was also active in Iraq where the US has a lot of interests. Theoretically, US forces only target ISIS/ISIL forces, but this being a many vs many conflict, deconfliction is very complex and the politics behind them even more so.

Interesting thread on incident on Maxim Suchkov's Twitter feed @MSuchkov_ALM

Upshot is that it was a case of comms breakdown/mistaken ID, and will have minimal impact on US/Russian interactions in theatre

A case of grey on grey?

Err who just died?

Who is trying to retain a foot hold in the Med by backing one who deploys WMD’s against his own people?

Leader of a country who wiped out around 20 million of their own population.

The world does not forget!

Totally correct :D

What always amazes me is history shows that Great Powers trying to influence local wars has little effect locally in the long run and even less in the Blance of Pwer worldwide

I don't think the USSR's efforts in Angola, Afghanistan Cuba etc or the US in Chile, Lebanon etc etc and both sides involvement in Syria and Vietnam have done anything to improve their security

HH,

Exactly. The main lesson learned is that there are no lessons learned.

Some truth there, but folks in the former Yugoslavia, Kuwait, Malaya, Israel etc. may disagree. Your mileage may vary.

Now this is getting really, really messy. You could have the Kurds, Americans and Syrians fighting against the Turks. God knows where the Russians and the Iranians would be.....

The Streetwise Professor seems prescient yet again...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-enclave-afrin

Streetwise Professor » Putin?s Rock-and-a-Hard-Place Situation in Syria

The end is coming.

well Megido (aka Armageddon) is not far away...................

Syria war: Pro-government forces enter Kurdish-held Afrin - BBC News


So, let's recap on how many nukes are left at incerlik and what the nut job Erdoğan would do to get hold of them if it turns into the US vs Turkey...

Turkey clashes with Assad regime in Syria for first time

Troops sent by the Assad regime to fight alongside a Kurdish militia in northern Syria were shelled by Turkey yesterday in a major escalation of the multi-sided conflict. Turkey had warned that it would continue its offensive against the Kurdish-held city of Afrin, even if the Syrian government carried out its threat to send its forces to fight alongside the YPG, the Kurdish militia defending the area.

President Erdogan of Turkey claimed that he had persuaded President Putin to intervene with the regime. However, videos posted online by pro-Assad journalists showed fighters cheering and waving Syrian flags as they headed off from a Shia-majority town near Aleppo saying they were going to fight in Afrin. Shortly afterwards reports came in that the convoy had come under Turkish shellfire, the first intentional clash between Turkey and the regime’s ground forces. “Turkish regime forces targeted the locations of popular forces with artillery fire as they arrived to the Afrin region,” the Syrian state news agency said. Turkey claimed that its action had compelled the advancing forces to retreat, but state media said that they had continued.

The intervention by Damascus came in response to an appeal by the Kurds as their defences began to crumble. They have held the Turks and their Free Syrian Army allies at bay for a month.The Turks took ten villages on Monday and more yesterday, and looked to link them to the border town of Azaz, already under their control. They are determined to stop the YPG — the Syrian branch of the PKK guerrilla group in Turkey — from establishing control of the border areas. “In the coming days, swiftly, we will lay siege to the centre of the town of Afrin,” Mr Erdogan told the Turkish parliament. “We will block the way of those who come to help from outside the city or the region.”.....

According to analysts, the pro-Assad forces wore the insignia of the Liwa al-Baqir militia rather than the official army. The regime had indicated that the troops it would send were from the “popular forces”, a term used for the local militias it has recruited from the start of the conflict. The Liwa al-Baqir, named after the fifth Shia Imam, was originally recruited from a local tribe in Aleppo province who were persuaded by Iran to convert to the Shia faith. They have been deployed against rebels and Islamic State.

Any escalation in the fighting between the regime and Turkey could further complicate the conflict. US, Russian and Iranian forces are already involved in the war on different sides, and Israel bombed Iranian positions in Syria this month, and suffered a rare loss of an F-16 jet shot down in response.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, called for direct negotiations between Damascus and Ankara. However, he did not confirm Mr Erdogan’s claim that President Putin had agreed to intervene on Turkey’s behalf.

This is just the old tussle over land, Turkey vs Syria, with the mobile element of the Kurds from both sides of the porous borders making up the triangle. The Kurds can and do play both sides.
Neither Sunni Turkey nor Alawite/Shia Syria want the Kurds to declare their own nation.
Turkey and the Syrian SDF rebels now happen to be allied and advancing south against the Afrin Kurds, who will accept help from anyone, even the Syrian government or supporters of. Syria would not like Turkey to succeed on Syrian lands, naturally. Syria is backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.


The Syrian FSA is backed by the US, and allied with Kurds east of the Euphrates. The US is playing a waiting game, but many of their sympathies probably still lie more with Sunni Turkey, and not with the Syrian Assad regime.


There we are, clear as mud.

Yeah, those nukes still being in Turkey strikes me as a crap idea for over 20 years. NATO retired a bunch of it's nuke plans in the 90's after the wall came down, and a lot of the tactical nukes were moved or removed. Why the US agreed to keep a modes pile of them in Turkey mystifies me. (Three administrations worth of stupid IMO: Clinton's, W's, and Obama's all should have pulled them out, but didn't.).

Investigation finds pilots of downed F-16 failed to defend themselves

The pilot and navigator of an Israeli F-16 downed by Syrian anti-aircraft fire failed to defend themselves as required, according to the conclusions to the IDF's investigation into the incident, which were made public on Sunday. A summary of the investigation released by the IDF said that the crew had chosen "to complete the mission and not defend themselves sufficiently. Their actions did not correlate with standard procedure while under enemy fire."

The events of February 10 began in the early morning hours when an Iranian drone infiltrated Israel. An IAF Apache helicopter shot it down, while fighter jets were scrambled to attack 12 Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria in retaliation. On their way back to base, the Israeli planes came under Syrian anti-aircraft fire, with one missile exploding near one of the planes and bringing it down. The pilot and navigator were able to bail out of the plane before it crashed near Kibbutz Harduf. The pilot was seriously injured, while the navigator was only lightly hurt. Both have since been discharged from the hospital.

The investigation into the incident, which was presented to IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, determined that the advanced planning for the operation was done properly, and the intelligence for the mission was sufficient, leading to the successful destruction of the targets, which were marked prior to the retaliatory strike. In total, the Syrian aerial defense apparatus launched 27 missiles at IAF planes throughout the night and early morning as events unfolded, 13 of them were fired while Israeli jets were attacking the Iranian drone's control and command center. One of the missiles, a large long-range outdated SA-5 missile, hit the Israeli F-16.

The warning systems in the F-16 that was hit were found to be in order and alerted the pilot and navigator of the threat on time. The seven other planes that went out on the bombing mission were all able to defend themselves from enemy missiles by and completed their tasks successfully. Despite this, the downed F-16's team failed to deploy countermeasures. The pilot and navigator failed to take heed of the SA-5 missile, which locked onto their plane. The Israel Air Force determined that to be a "professional error."

"In the operational theatre, there were a number of planes that did indeed defend themselves against the Syrian launchings while completing their mission. One of the planes that did not defend itself, was hit," senior IAF officer told reporters. The crew should have defended themselves as a priority over completing the offensive mission, the officer said. He said the "heart of the event" was "the hiatus between their completing the mission successfully and taking defensive measures and ensuring survivability.”

“The mission was completed successful and still, the plane should not have been downed, that is the standard we expect and we train for this," he said.

He did allow that the air force's control center could have been more persistent in alerting the pilots to the missile that locked onto their plane, "in a way that might have gotten the other shoe to drop sooner for the pilots." The IAF officer also noted the amount of Syrian anti-aircraft missiles fired at the Israeli jets was bigger than in past incidents, but this was taken into account when preparing for the mission. The teams on the other planes that went on the mission were instructed to attack the drone's control and commander center if the leading plane, which was eventually hit, is busy defending itself and cannot complete the mission.......