So I had been doing a catch all Bad Guys Doing Bad Guys thing post for some stuff of maybe interest, but then Israel shouted, “Hold my beer!”
Anyway, the reason I was getting around to the other post was because, since the bombings in Qamishli this morning, not much of note has happened on the ground.
I mean, people are getting wrecked. But territorially it seems like it’s a lot of back and forth and trading of villages, and Commander Kyrie Irving will tell you that that is one of the most difficult things to do in war.
So, dull day by war standards, unless you can’t get enough of pics of light armor and technicals and smoke wafting in the distance.
So we’ll go west to east this time.
Qamishli:
Aforementioned car bombs, priest killed traveling from there. Change in rock throwing behavior.
Tal Tamr-Hossakah region:
It seems like fighting is always reported to be getting a little heavier there each day, with heavier weapons. But it goes on.
Ayn Issa/Manbij/Kobanî:
Similarly heavy fighting by Ain Issa, though maybe a bit lighter than Tal Tamr-what do I know from my living room? But the area is most marked by two things, which seems to create some hesitancy:
- Anybody with a map and basic knowledge of shapes can tell see attempts to surround Kobanî area.
- Nobody seems to know what the hell the US is doing.
So there are SNA/TFSA types wary of them, and SAA folks complaining that Syria can’t maneuver properly with the US there and not knowing what they will do. Basically, the bear got bored rooting through the trash and wandered out into the street and is stopping traffic. People seem to feel roughly like they know what everyone else is trying to do except for this fucking bear… And that doesn’t even include the Bear, Russia. See…
I don’t know why anybody thinks they can reliably know what Russia is really doing, but they seem to be consistently adhering to their self-assigned role of policing a border that has fighting on the inside of it that they sometimes do something about sometimes, and not securing the air space over northern Syria which allows Turkish drone strikes. I guess some people have gotten used to it and consider it relatively predictable now, but I’m not seeing that as anything to rely upon.
Idlib:
Everything is pretty much the same, except, while not in Syria per se, the founder of the White Helmets fell off of a balcony in Istanbul and died.
I’m going to have to circle back to this when I can think clearly about it.
Rojava to Rock 