Syria: Creeping betrayal and a weak leadership?

Syria: Situation has considerably deteriorated, but Syrian army currently tries to resolve this situation in parts of the country.

The general impressions, that is based on the information of people residing in Syria and from the people who report out of Syria is – to say the least – depressing.

The operational situation has considerably deteriorated. The currents of weapons, which are smuggled from abroad into Syria, are beyond any imagination. Even what it is intercepted by the Syrian army are enormous quantities. Here, the Syrians are even aware that the Syrian army can intercept only a fraction of the total weapons smuggling.

In many cases, the Army is primarily busy with self-defense. The army does this partly more bad than good, the system of checkpoints throughout the country is far from complete, so the streets are partly controlled not simply over long distances, there are huge holes in this system of checkpoints.


Beside the streets, the situation is correspondingly bad in some regions of Syria. The losses among military personnel have risen dramatically and that does not even have a loss ratio of 1:1 to those of the armed bandits, but a much less favorable.

The armed terrorists understand that the Syrian army are only reluctant intervenes in populated localities without explicit instructions and the bandits absolutely operate cynical accordingly to this; they bring smaller towns and villages under their control and from there, they attack the control and observation points as well as other items of the Syrian army.

In cases where they can be dispelled, they murder the civilian population and they record videos of the dead bodies under the old scheme with the heading “victims of the bloody regime”.

Yesterday, as it is said, a part of the Syrian air defense has fallen into the hands of the armed bandits, including Russian S-75 (“Dvina”) systems and anti-aircraft tank type ZSU-23-4, in addition, and important part of the crew of this military base has supposedly “defected”. This operation was sure not carried out without various special units.

But at least, it is still the fact, that the Syrian army has a distinct advantage, when the army is able to catch the terrorist units in their movement between the Syrian towns and villages, and technically, the army is also still in advantage; for example the operation by a single Syrian military helicopter in the north-west of the country, this military helicopter has flushed and dispelled a larger amount of bandits who have infiltrated Syria across the borders and went to the border towns.

In other words, de facto, the Syrian state power still holds firmly to the Annan plan: the leadership hesitates when issuing commands react unduly slow, the Army has no clear rules of how to conduct and operate.

The Syrian population begins already, by realizing the apparent weakness of the state power (as it was also documented in the last reports of ANNA-News about the terrorist actions in al-Haffah (al-Haffeh) and al-Kusair (al-Kurseir)), to utter their indignation about the hesitant actions of the Syrian army.

The people are now almost everywhere of the opinion, that the Syrian army has to be much more active and has to use a much tougher line than it is still using against the threats of the armed groups, including criminals, jihadists, radicals, other religious fanatics and also foreign mercenaries; not to forget some Special Forces of foreign powers.

Despite the facts that among the bandits are a lot of Syrians from criminal groups, the proportion of foreigners has risen significantly recently. Lebanese, Jordanians, Libyans, Iraqis, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Algerians, Pakistanis – for Western people hard to differ (especially on Internet videos) if anyone is from Syria or from a foreign country, but the locals are able to to this very well, they can distinguish who is who and this often not only by the dialect.

That alone was a reason why the people have understood the words of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a foreign aggression and also were able to reconstruct it.

There are great fears that Russia will give up Syria. The most understand well, that the renunciation by Russia to play an active role of advocacy and an active role by the protection of Syria, could immediately psychologically overturn the situation.

The hopes of a lot Syrians on the protection by Russia are very large, should this protection continue to exist, at least, on the diplomatic level.

About the psychology: the majority of the population has not yet adjusted themselves to the reality of the raging war. Another alarming fact – the targeted murder of senior military and government officials take on enormous proportions. Here, these assassinations are carried out very professionally, for example, by not only using common weapons, but even those weapons with heat detectors.

A few days ago, an important person of the Syrian military was murdered while leaving his home. Three shots – two dead. The shots were not done (as usually) through the windows of the car, but through its doors, just carried out by professionals and no normal “peaceful protesters”. Professionally organized was not only the ambush, but also the escape of the murderers. Obviously, also the clearing up and the preparation of the assassination was professionally perfect.

In short, an aggravation of the situation is obvious. Sergey Lavrov’s words about the fact that it is a disaster were entirely appropriate to the events.

The problem is, as so often, related to a fickle and incompetent leadership. On a purely organizational level, both the Syrian army and Intelligence Services can dominate the situation in the most individual episodes, for which they get the allowance to react in a position, corresponding on the events.

As mentioned earlier, this is almost exactly the same situation as it existed in Russia at the time of the first Chechen war. It appears more evident that a part of the elite of the country commits a creeping betrayal. Assad should immediately cope better with these elements, because if he, like Gaddafi, only tries to persuade them, he talks himself up to the open aggression of NATO and has to hide in a sewer at the end.

Ultimately, it is actually almost the same like at the beginning of the Libyan campaign. The West knows the outcome of this game well in advance. One solution would be in the consolidation of the leadership and a hard hand. Probably, this is the only unique solution. What exactly should be done to improve the situation is clear in theory:

 

Improve the chain of checkpoints on the roads in the regions, catch the groups of terrorists and armed criminals in the deployment, clean the villages, destroy the communication networks of the armed groups and also decrease and destroy the possibilities of these armed formations. These things are quite feasible and technically able to be implemented by the Syrians.

The help from Russia could currently only exist in the first deployment of consultants with the abilities of decision-making; it`s more than strange that this turn, which offers itself obviously, was not implemented already a long time ago.

However, it may be that these consultants – which could already be there – not with the weakness of the leadership are sure that you do not give up and finally jump over the blade can be.

Such are impressions of the past days and by the events within and around Syria.

Source: http://apxwn.blogspot.de