Every once in awhile you get a clear glimpse of one of the “miscellaneous” players in the conflict that demonstrates why this is so confusing to follow, i.e. it’s bug fucking insane.
Check it out:
So these are the same guys that Israel bombed the other day in Gaza and Damascus. I didn’t really write about it here because there was reason it was conducted independently of Syrian civil war considerations and I couldn’t find any good way to put it into this context.
Really, I still can’t. But I can now explain why I can’t easily do so. So check it:
Al-Quds Brigades (AQB) (Arabic: سرايا القدس, Saraya al-Quds meaning Jerusalem Brigades) is the armed wing of the PalestinianIslamist[1][2] organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ),[3] The head of AQB in Gaza was Baha Abu al-Ata, who has been described as “Tehran’s main man in Gaza”.[4][5] AQB’s leader is Ziyad al-Nakhalah, based in Damascus, Syria.[6] The PIJ is the second largest group in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas.[4]
So, to whit, the Iran-backed anti-Zionist Islamic Palestinian nationalists who Israel attacked in Damascus for firing rockets at Israel from Gaza are also here in Idlib fighting in the Syrian civil war, basically a couple hours drive north of their political and military installations in a foreign capital.
So, is their role in this conflict clear yet? The answer appears to be: Everybody hates ISIS. But it’s clearly subtle and complicated.
I’ve far from looked into this in any systematic way, but everything Iran feels like this. There’s just an Iran-y feel to Iran’s ops. I wonder if, as with so much lore, that there isn’t some grain of truth here—like there is with the Russian approach to strategy. So maybe there’s something to the whole Persian tradition thing and the stuff with the assassins thing some people are so into and with that weird illuminati video game with the guy who does parkour. Maybe that sounds weird. But man if they don’t do shadowy and make it look slick as fuck.
Or maybe it’s all just that Soleimani guy. Dude is an operator.
Rojava to Rock 