Is it possible to turn the battles of Aleppo into attack and retreat? هل يمكن تحويل معارك حلب إلى كرّ وفرّ؟

Saturday, 13 August 2016

Is it possible to turn the battles of Aleppo into attack and retreat? هل يمكن تحويل معارك حلب إلى كرّ وفرّ؟

Many analysts and writers who are affiliated to Saudi Arabia, and leaders of Riyadh’s groups which hold the banner of the Syrian opposition as politicians and military members commenting on what is going on in Aleppo and across it in the Northern fronts of Syria, and say that it is not the first time in which the opposition is losing areas then it recaptures them, they say that the war is a contest an attack and retreat, and that the Syrian war has witnessed stages in which the Syrian army and its allies were able to achieve important achievements, but the opposition was soon able through its formations which include Al Fatih Army or Al Nusra front which has become today the front of Fatih Al Sam to change its path and retake the initiative, and say that a reverse attack has started or it will start. They say that the military solution by exchanging the control over military sites has proved that it did not change anything in the course of war. Moreover they say that the limits of what is going to happen if the matters remain as they are, will not be by recapturing the neighborhoods of Aleppo which are under the control of the militants by the Syrian army and its allies, because there are thousands of militants whose their sites are not easy to be plunged into without ten thousands of the attackers and the bearing of the huge losses. What will remain is the siege at best conditions, because it did not change anything in the history of the war, they say that Daraya is under siege for years and it did not fall and nothing has changed by besieging it.

Certainly, the talk about that the war is a contest; an attack and retreat is correct in principle but applying it on all the stages of the war is a visual trick. The contest, the attack and the retreat mean a negative balance of the balances of forces which resulted from the reaching of the opposed teams to the climax of their making use of the sources of power on which they based on. And the attainment of this insufficiency a limit of a balance that none of the two teams can break. This description is applied accurately on the US vision of the management of the war in Syria in the phase in which it was clear the inability of the armed groups supported by Washington, its allies, and including those who were mobilized from outside Syria from groups that are loyal to Al-Qaeda organization to make a violation that paved the way for the control over one of the large capitals; Damascus and Aleppo, and the emergence of the ability of the Syrian country and its army whenever the armed groups were able to make a qualitative breaking through by recapturing what it lost even after a while on one hand, and on the other hand, the preoccupation of the groups which affiliated to Al-Qaeda to serve the US vision and the demands of the regional operators in favor of private projects, that starts from the separation from the banners of the Syrian opposition which it accepted temporarily, making emirates that are managed by ideological manner and ruled by the thought of atonement that embarrasses the US speech regarding the crisis and the war in Syria, towards turning the areas that are under its dominance into reliance bases , training, and organizing the groups which their mission is to hit the countries of the West, and ending by turning into a burden and a threat that is difficult to coexist with, or to cover it, but the talk about its staying under control or the speculation of the success of the strategy of the dual containment in dealing with it.

The negative balance which led to the attack and retreat is the outcome of the investing of the team which is led by Washington of its whole capacity and its reserves, in exchange of resorting the Syrian country and its allies to the option of the steadfastness and receiving the strikes and absorbing them, and the resorting to effective attacks, when the opposed groups are able to have control over countries of geographical, military and moral sensitivity. It is clear that this negative balance has been broken since the signing on the understanding on the nuclear program with Iran and what has followed it of the military Russian positioning in the Syrian war, it based on Washington’s going out of the options of the military intervention and its entering seriously the stage of the negotiating engagement and making the understandings, as well as presenting an example of what can the strategic change make in the war’s plan, by the entering of the Russian technology directly with a political resolution, accompanied with the capacity which Syria kept for the period of starting the attack, and the elite forces which Hezbollah has prepared for this moment but not inserting in the war yet, accompanied with Iranian funding for the needs to break this balance and to impose new equations. What happened after the truce as a return of the attack and retreat was not good to say it is the ruling standard of the Syrian war, because it is an expression of a temporal moment through the lack of understanding of dealing with the necessary seriousness by Washington with what Moscow wanted, through being sufficient with presenting example of what can be done, in order to open the door of positioning in the option of the understandings through the truce and the political process. Therefore was the US manipulation for a test that the Turks wanted before resolving their option between going to negotiations with Moscow and going on in the wars, this was before the coup and its repercussions which have driven the level of the Turkish rashness towards understandings. The bet was on a storm of North that is implemented by Al Nusra front with what has been presented to it and equipped with it such as plentiful Saudi Qatari money. There were limited cases for the breakthroughs in the Southern countryside of Aleppo and the Northern and the Western countryside of Latakia, before Moscow, Tehran, Damascus, and Hezbollah take the decision to move to the second period through another example presented by Aleppo, entitled that the military game is over, and that the period of Al Nusra with an old name or with a new one has ended, so the only available choice for the international and regional forces is the positioning on the line of settlements, its content is leaving the Syrian presidency to the Syrians through the ballot boxes and the open cooperation in the war on ISIS and Al Nusra and who is supporting them.

The battle of Aleppo proves through the geography which it targets that the time of the attack and the retreat is over, because the targeted sites have not been fallen under the grip of the Syrian army and the allies, as was proven by the saying of the group of Riyadh, their militants, and the leaders of Al Nusra that the matter is a matter of life or death, and that they will not leave the solution as it was, and the control on Al Kestle and Leiramon means having control over the city. However the siege, the lack of the ability to plunge into , its cost, and the capacities of confronting it, are shown by the district of Bani Zeid when the units of the Syrian army and Hezbollah have entered it in one day, it is the most invincible and armament districts that is handled by the most extremist and brutal groups, there are more than three thousands militants in it, those have escaped from it when the attack began amid the intense fire and the progress of the soldiers and the fighters towards their positions. What has happened in Bani Zeid will happen in Salah Al Din, Al Sheikh Maksoud, Bustan Al Kasr and others when the ache- hour is announced, because the war before anything else is a war of morale, so it is enough to break the solid defense line, then to go ahead and break a second then a third line till the collapses begin. The one who reads the history of El Alamein war in the First World War knows the meaning of these words, and what has happened in Bani Zeid is repeatable surely in the other districts of Aleppo.

The issue is in breaking the time of the negative balance in the variables of the opposite bank in the war, this is understood by the two opposed teams in the Syrian war since the beginnings. It is represented by Turkey which is the crucial regional player and which plays a crucial role in the war’s balances in Syria in the opposite bank of the country and its allies. Without Turkey the project which aimed to overthrow Syria is losing the geographic demographic and the military pillar, Turkey which has an imperial project that is not complete without Syria, Turkey and its project constituted the central link in the American map for the management of Asia after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is known that Turkey has emerged from the war, and what the first battles of Aleppo showed confirm that. What Turkey was witnessing before the coup and which has increased after is putting its position in the map of the new positioning on the line of settlements instead of the trenches of war. Furthermore, according to Moscow the moral which was offered by the truce which was sponsored by Russia to grant the Americans an opportunity to interact with the political options seems enough, in order not to repeat the experience which provided a chance of an attack and retreat once again even for a limited time, while the American movement after the disappointments of the bet on the storm of the North and on achieving breakthroughs needed in Raqqa and the areas of ISIS’s dominance without the involvement into understandings with Syria and its allies across Moscow is more serious and committed to the requirements of the understandings.

After the beginnings which started with the battles of Aleppo, the Syrian war entered a phase of neither attack nor retreat, where the progress is settled in favor of one team it is the Syrian army and its allies, and the one who make his considerations otherwise than that is committing a mistake and will pay its cost alone, because the major players understood and knew, and thus they deal on that basis.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,