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[AcademicSaucer]

The advance, after heavy bombing from the air, is a major blow for the armed opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.
State TV said government troops were dismantling mines and explosives and continuing their advance.
Thousands of civilians have fled the besieged districts after a weekend of heavy fighting. Hundreds of families have been displaced within the area.

Rebel fighters have been driven out of more neighbourhoods of their long-held enclave in eastern Aleppo, as Syrian government forces continue to advance.
Both state TV and the UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the district of Sakhour had fallen to the Syrian army.
This would cut through the middle of the previously rebel-held territory, dividing it into two.

Thousands of residents of east Aleppo have fled to areas controlled by government forces and Kurdish groups since the fighting intensified on Saturday.

This advance follows two weeks of relentless aerial bombardment, as the government and its allies renewed their assault on the rebel-held portion of Aleppo.

It followed a three-week pause in the Russian and Syrian bombing of the area, which ended on 15 November.

Retaking the whole of Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, is a key aim of the Syrian government. The east of Aleppo has been held by rebel factions opposed to President Bashar al-Assad for the past four years.

The loss of eastern Aleppo would be a devastating blow for the rebels.

The tide is clearly turning in Aleppo in favour of the Assad regime - raising serious questions about the ability of the disparate rebel groupings to maintain a significant area of control in northern Syria.
The recapture of the city would be an important symbolic achievement for President Assad - underlining the fact that despite all the calls for his departure, Russian and Iranian support has been able not just to maintain him in power, but has enabled the regime to go onto the offensive.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38128370

GIFs:

 

[dapperbandit]

Good. The sooner the stalemate ends in the city the sooner the war does.

 

[Jackpot]

I don't even know who our governments support anymore. All I know is a lot of innocent people are going to be slaughtered.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

I don't even know who our governments support anymore. All I know is a lot of innocent people are going to be slaughtered.

Already there. Wonder what the first count of lives lost will be, it'll surely go up from there.

 

[Fularu]

Excellent news

The sooner we get rid of the ragtag calling themselves "the army of conquest", the better.

 

[Jackpot]

Excellent news

The sooner we get rid of the ragtag calling themselves "the army of conquest", the better.

But it's Assad who's dropping barrel bombs on hospitals. The civilian deaths from aerial bombardment alone outweigh those from rebel ground forces.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

This Gifs should make it easier to understand.

They are from a pro-goverment source but htye are really well made and explain the situation really well.

 

[Dr Funfrock]

I think Obama supports the rebels while we all know Trump holds much love for Putin so we know which way this goes.

Isn't this the same as overthrowing other dictators like Mubarak and Gadaffi? The people of Syria will loose this one. Assad has been in charge since his father, the former dictator, died. Assad has also used chemical weapons on his own people. I wouldn't call this "good"..

 

[ClosingADoor]

I think Obama supports the rebels while we all know Trump holds much love for Putin so we know which way this goes.

Isn't this the same as overthrowing other dictators like Mubarak and Gadaffi? The people of Syria will loose this one. Assad has been in charge since his father, the former dictator, died. Assad has also used chemical weapons on his own people. I wouldn't call this "good"..

Considering overthrowing those other dictators also didn't exactly go perfectly, looking back supporting all those rebel groups was a real bad decision. It all looked nice, like the people were taking control of their countries. But what happened instead is a ton of different factions fighting over control. Libya is a mess and Egypt is basically under military control again I think.

Just having one side win in Syria would at least end the conflict and hopefully the country can start rebuilding. But considering Assad is still in power then, a lot of people will suffer when he has taken back control also.

 

[Weckum]

I think Obama supports the rebels while we all know Trump holds much love for Putin so we know which way this goes.

Isn't this the same as overthrowing other dictators like Mubarak and Gadaffi? The people of Syria will loose this one. Assad has been in charge since his father, the former dictator, died. Assad has also used chemical weapons on his own people. I wouldn't call this "good"..

Assad has killed more people than ISIS, tortued people, killed kids, bombed hospitals, used chemical weapons.

So yeah, I wouldn't call this good either.

 

[TissueBox]

Seems Assad's forces are seeing a steady fortune; we'll see how long this city lasts under the rebels but considering the current affairs I could imagine desperation for control taking root.

 

[Oersted]

Considering overthrowing those other dictators also didn't exactly go perfectly, looking back supporting all those rebel groups was a real bad decision. It all looked nice, like the people were taking control of their countries. But what happened instead is a ton of different factions fighting over control. Libya is a mess and Egypt is basically under military control again I think.

Just having one side win in Syria would at least end the conflict and hopefully the country can start rebuilding. But considering Assad is still in power then, a lot of people will suffer when he has taken back control also.

The opposition aka democratic majority in Egypt,pretty much had no western support to speak of.

Assad has killed more people than ISIS, tortued people, killed kids, bombed hospitals, used chemical weapons.

So yeah, I wouldn't call this good either.

That stability tho

 

[Seth Enosh]

Good. The sooner the stalemate ends in the city the sooner the war does.

Assad is a terrible dictator and his army has committed many atrocities.

However life in his Syria, when peaceful, seems better than what life would be like under al qaeda or ISIS, who are the primary forces among the rebels.

Hopefully once Obama is gone and we stop supporting the Islamist rebels, we can help negotiate an end to this conflict that at least preserves some of the autonomy of the Kurdish areas.

This civil war is largely attributable to the Obama foreign policy and will be remembered by history as one of his biggest failures to live up to that Nobel Peace Prize.

 

[Sijil]

Assad is a terrible dictator and his army has committed many atrocities.

However life in his Syria, when peaceful, seems better than what life would be like under al qaeda or ISIS, who are the primary forces among the rebels.

Hopefully once Obama is gone and we stop supporting the Islamist rebels, we can help negotiate an end to this conflict that at least preserves some of the autonomy of the Kurdish areas.

This civil war is largely attributable to the Obama foreign policy and will be remembered by history as one of his biggest failures to live up to that Nobel Peace Prize.

Autonomy of Kurdish areas won't happen while Erdogan is in power, his whole intervention in northern Syria is to prevent an independent Rojava with fighting ISIS as a pretext.

 

[Fularu]

But it's Assad who's dropping barrel bombs on hospitals. The civilian deaths from aerial bombardment alone outweigh those from rebel ground forces.

So I guess the constant shelling of western Aleppo the past 4 years (specifially targeting schools, hospitals, checkpoints, markets and so on) or preventing families from leaving eastern Aleppo to keep them as human shields is fine because hey, it's the "rebels". The situation is that way with the SAA's offensive on eastern Aleppo because the population (the western part of town, you know, where 1.5 million people live) asked for it and had been for 3 years now.

 

[Jackpot]

So I guess the constant shelling of western Aleppo the past 4 years (specifially targeting schools, hospitals, checkpoints, markets and so on) or preventing families from leaving eastern Aleppo to keep them as human shields is fine because hey, it's the "rebels".

"So I guess the constant bombing of towns and cities all over Syria the past 4 years (specifially targeting schools, hospitals, checkpoints, markets and so on) and the use of chemical fucking weapons against civilians is fine because hey, it's the "government"."

See how dumb a strawman that is?

I can acknowledge the atrocities of the rebels whilst recognising that the lions share of actual deaths comes from Assad.

 

[Fularu]

"So I guess the constant bombing of towns and cities all over Syria the past 4 years (specifially targeting schools, hospitals, checkpoints, markets and so on) and the use of chemical fucking weapons against civilians is fine because hey, it's the "government"."

See how dumb a strawman that is?

I can acknowledge the atrocities of the rebels whilst recognising that the lions share of actual deaths comes from Assad.

Except that's not the case? Call me again when your family has to leave Raqqa then eastern Aleppo disguised as women because otherwise they would get slaughtered like pigs for beeing christians.

 

[Jackpot]

Except that's not the case?

Except, that is the case:

President Bashar al-Assad’s government has killed far more people in Syria this year than the Islamic State, monitoring organizations and analysts say, even as the extremist group grabs headlines with its shocking brutality.

Between January and July, Assad’s military and pro-government militias killed 7,894 people, while the Islamic State killed 1,13

Government forces are responsible for many more of the estimated 250,000 deaths in the four-year-old conflict than are the Islamic State militants and rebel groups, analysts and monitoring groups say. The figures, they say, underscore how Assad’s indiscriminate use of violence has empowered the Islamic State and other extremist groups and forced millions of Syrians to flee to neighboring countries and Europe.

“For all the Islamic State’s horrendous brutality, we can’t forget that the Assad regime has been the main source of death and destruction in Syria since 2011,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...150d0c-4d85-11e5-80c2-106ea7fb80d4_story.html

The regime led by President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for more than three-quarters of civilian deaths this year

The human rights organisation blames the Syrian regime's indiscriminate use of barrel bombs on civilian areas for the heavy death-toll.

Amnesty International UK’s Syria Campaign Manager Kristyan Benedict told The Independent: “It’s absolutely no secret that the vast majority of civilian deaths in Syria have been at the hands of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

“Syrian government forces have launched indiscriminate attack after indiscriminate attack on the country’s beleaguered civilian population.

“Barrel bombings have become the most notorious of Assad’s forces’ tactics, but we mustn’t forget that countless people have also died at the hands of army snipers, through starvation in besieged areas, and at the hands of torturers in government detention centres.

“It’s important that ISIS’s many crimes are properly documented and the perpetrators brought to justice, but the far bigger killing machine in Syria is the one made in Damascus."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-isis-human-rights-group-claims-a6673956.html

Call me again when your family has to leave Raqqa then eastern Aleppo disguised as women because otherwise they would get slaughtered like pigs for beeing christians.

"Call me again when your family has to hold a funeral for their 8 year old with an empty casket because he was one of 400 children tortured to death in government prisons."

You just repeated the same argument in your last post. Emotive appeals don't trump facts.

 

[Fularu]

The SAA's loses alone make up half of the 250k figure.

Yes the Syrian army has lost about 125k soldiers through the conflict according to SANA itself and large number of civilian casualities have been atributed to the SAA when the decimated population was made up of christians and alawis.

It's also very amusing that the sole provider of information regarding syrian civilian casualities is the OSDH, some unknown organisation operating from the back of a tailor shop in London with no backed up numbers/facts that the whole western press takes as gospel without having in any way shape or form been able to confirm anything he has said so far.

And yes, I HAVE an emotional connection to the fucking conflict, I lost a third of my family to it.

 

[Chairman Yang]

The realistic options right now are an Assad victory, a Sunni Islamist victory, or a stalemate that keeps killing people.

OK, Assad has killed more people than the others (maybe). Now what? Does that change the desired outcome? If not, what argument are the people who point that out trying to make? That all sides are evil? Everyone knows that already.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

It seems that the offensive continues, the rebel lost more in 3 days than in almost 3 years of battle in Aleppo, I wonder if the SAA wants to end it this year or if they are going to stabilize the front lines and wait it out.

 

[Jinroh]

I don't know how they can end it soon. One thing's sure they probably want to take Aleppo as quickly as possible before they end up clashing with the approaching Turkish military.

It'll then become really ugly.

 

[Fuchsdh]

And yes, I HAVE an emotional connection to the fucking conflict, I lost a third of my family to it.

Then perhaps you're a little too close to have any objectivity about this. Sounds like you've lost family and you're willing to demonize who you can to make sense of their deaths. If their numbers are so suspect, where are you getting numbers that show the rebels have killed far more than Assad?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The sooner the war ends, the better. Any outcome is better than the endless bloody stalemate which has been going on for years.

 

[QuantumBro]

Then perhaps you're a little too close to have any objectivity about this. Sounds like you've lost family and you're willing to demonize who you can to make sense of their deaths. If their numbers are so suspect, where are you getting numbers that show the rebels have killed far more than Assad?

Never thought I'd see the Opiate argument here again. I bet the Nuremberg Trials would've gone a lot better if those emotional holocaust survivors couldn't testify.

 

[davepoobond]

i think its safe to say Russia is getting what they want in Syria. there doesn't seem to be a way forward otherwise at this point.

 

[E-Cat]

Does anyone else see Trump in a blue suit?

 

[Jackpot]

The realistic options right now are an Assad victory, a Sunni Islamist victory, or a stalemate that keeps killing people.

OK, Assad has killed more people than the others (maybe). Now what? Does that change the desired outcome? If not, what argument are the people who point that out trying to make? That all sides are evil? Everyone knows that already.

Not hand the country to the guy with the vast majority of deaths on his hands.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-isis-human-rights-group-claims-a6673956.html

The SAA's loses alone make up half of the 250k figure.

Yes the Syrian army has lost about 125k soldiers through the conflict according to SANA itself and large number of civilian casualities have been atributed to the SAA when the decimated population was made up of christians and alawis.

It's also very amusing that the sole provider of information regarding syrian civilian casualities is the OSDH, some unknown organisation operating from the back of a tailor shop in London with no backed up numbers/facts that the whole western press takes as gospel without having in any way shape or form been able to confirm anything he has said so far.

And yes, I HAVE an emotional connection to the fucking conflict, I lost a third of my family to it.

I would welcome your own supporting articles and figures.

 

[Sijil]

Not hand the country to the guy with the vast majority of deaths on his hands.

Then hand it over to who? JFS? Nusra? Ahrar? ISIS? don't think for a second that those groups won't be killing so many if they had access to the firepower Assad has. Assad territories are the only places where Syrians with all their religious confessions live side by side where as "rebel" held territories have been depleted from minorities.

We're talking about groups whose fundamental ideals is to call religious minorities infidels and yes I'm talking about the FSA, the so called moderates. You should just monitor the "moderates" social networks to get a feel what they think about Shia, Alawites and Christians. Anyone who still believes that there exists an opposition that can enforce a democratic and secular Syria is delusional at best.

We've seen what happened to Libya, a country that is perhaps 99% Sunni, even then they descended into tribal conflict and couldn't build a democratic country.

 

[Chairman Yang]

Not hand the country to the guy with the vast majority of deaths on his hands.

Then which of the other two realistic alternatives are you arguing for? Islamist rule with Assad-level military resources over lots of minorities, or continued fighting?

 

[bonesmccoy]

I'm skeptical of SNHR and SOHR. Both seem to be closely related to the opposition/rebel forces.

(Quick edit: I'd say they're no more impartial than Russian or Syrian government sources)

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Then which of the other two realistic alternatives are you arguing for? Islamist rule with Assad-level military resources over lots of minorities, or continued fighting?

Honestly, I really dont see right now how the rebels can win or even negotiate favorable terms, their last hope was Hillary Clinton being elected and thats gone now.

 

[Patrick S.]

Is this good or bad?

 

[Madness]

Is this good or bad?

Good in the sense that the civil war is on the brink of ending in terms of a large scale sense. Bad in that Assad who has killed thousands and is a dictator and with support from Russia has pretty much destroyed all his opponents and critics. Never again withour foreign intervention will anyone have the ability to rise against him. ISIS is fading with losses in Iraq as well. Someone like Trump won't fund Syrian rebels any further. Assad will also eventually start jailing and killing anyone who was even involved when the dust settles. In the end, it isn't black or white, but gray. Syria will be better off than the nomadic and tribal failed state land of Libya, but worse off than Iraq which, once ISIS is ultimately defeated, could turn around again.

 

[Patrick S.]

Good in the sense that the civil war is on the brink of ending in terms of a large scale sense. Bad in that Assad who has killed thousands and is a dictator and with support from Russia has pretty much destroyed all his opponents and critics. Never again withour foreign intervention will anyone have the ability to rise against him. ISIS is fading with losses in Iraq as well. Someone like Trump won't fund Syrian rebels any further. Assad will also eventually start jailing and killing anyone who was even involved when the dust settles. In the end, it isn't black or white, but gray. Syria will be better off than the nomadic and tribal failed state land of Syria, but worse off than Iraq which, once ISIS is ultimately defeated, could turn around again.

Thank you for your explanation. I hope that someday something close to normality can return to that part of the world.

 

[allansm]

Is this good or bad?

Good. Assad is a dictator with lots of bloods in his hands and one can expect a wave persecution once this is all over, however, there are no secular rebels anymore, only islamists (mainly Al Qaeda and Isis) who will impose sharia law and kill any minority (be it either Christians, Shias or Alawis).

 

[Blablurn]

One cannot imagine the hell they are going through

 

[Chairman Yang]

Honestly, I really dont see right now how the rebels can win or even negotiate favorable terms, their last hope was Hillary Clinton being elected and thats gone now.

I think you're probably right, but it's really hard to say and lots of crazy diplomatic events could change things. If Russia and Turkey hammer out some sort of deal, for example, I can see a partition happening.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

I think you're probably right, but it's really hard to say and lots of crazy diplomatic events could change things. If Russia and Turkey hammer out some sort of deal, for example, I can see a partition happening.

I really doubt Russia will let Turkey decide anything outside the Euphrates Shield operation area

 

[cryptosporidium]

I havent been keeping up for the last couple months (besides paying attention to how the mosul offensive ends up) but the rebels are pretty damn interconnected with Al-Sham (formely al jabhat) by now I reckon.

Im pro-russian on the syrian issue (no, I dont support Assad, I dont like killing civilians, so dont use strawmans) and am hoping that the ties between assad and rojava (I am Kurdish so I have a invested interest in this) continue even after they take back Syria, and help keep Turkey at bay.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

The Syrian Army has now captured the Sheikh Sa'eed district in south Aleppo, the rebel lines seem to be collapsing all over the city, at this rate the battle could be over this year, its unbelievable how fast the syrian army is advancing in dense urban terrain.

 

[TwoDurans]

"What's Aleppo"

 

[norinrad]

We all know the end game if the rebels eventually take over don't we?

 

[Mesousa]

We all know the end game if the rebels eventually take over don't we?

We don't have to think about that at all anymore. Assad has all but won at this point. Its over.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Now is more than half what has been captured by the goverment

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ces-seize-control-of-more-than-half-of-aleppo


Here is a video that seems to be from rebels in one of the districts that was captured today by the army asking for support. kind of crazy really that with todays technology we can now have this kind of images from inside a siege.

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/805537696542134272/pu/vid/640x360/SFFsPM7a3iFDoLwA.mp4

 

[TheWasTheJoke]

So did the liberal elements of the FSA whittle away or were they a myth to begin with?

 

[dapperbandit]

Footage of the SAA advancing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq5KHWXohmE

 

[archnemesis]

So did the liberal elements of the FSA whittle away or were they a myth to begin with?

According to my local newspaper, the rebels in Aleppo are up to 20% former Al-Qaeda, 40% other Islamist groups, and 40% a coalition of moderate groups. I fear that the liberal elements is a small fraction of the so called moderates.

 

[TheWasTheJoke]

According to my local newspaper, the rebels in Aleppo are up to 20% former Al-Qaeda, 40% other Islamist groups, and 40% a coalition of moderate groups. I fear that the liberal elements is a small fraction of the so called moderates.

Sigh so the Arab Spring was just smoke and mirrors

 

[dapperbandit]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...trol-of-aleppo-old-city-after-rebels-withdraw

Looks like there are only a few southern pockets of the city still in rebel hands