ALSO IN THURSDAY FORECAST
Several Insurgent Commanders Killed or Wounded in Regime Airstrike
Tawheed Commander Calls On All Fighters To Join Ranks To Defend Aleppo, Aleppo Countryside
Kerry Was Not In Obama Meeting That Pulled Back from Military Intervention
Declaration of Autonomy by Leading Kurdish Party Provokes Strong Reactions
THURSDAY FEATURE
Photo Essay: Post-Traumatic Stress, Prosthetic Limbs, & Determination in Idlib & Hama
Regime forces have continued to bombard towns and villages across Dar’aa Province in southern Syria this week.
The heaviest fighting and shelling has been in the southern districts of Dar’aa City, particularly in Dar’aa al-Balad in the southeast and the Manshiya neighborhood to its north, where regime troops attempted a ground invasion on Wednesday.
The regime is particularly concerned about recapturing control of Dar’aa al-Balad, the gateway to the Dar’aa-Ramtha crossing on the Jordanian border. Insurgents from the Free Syrian Army and Islamist factions Jabhat al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham took the crossing and the Old Customs area last month. Though sources say that the insurgents are not receiving arms supplies across the Dar-aa-Ramtha border crossing — which is too open for smuggling of weapons — the control of the passage into Jordan is still significant.
Map showing areas of heaviest fighting (link here)
The regime is also concentrating on hitting towns along the road heading north from Dar’aa City: Athman, Da’el, and Al Sheikh Maskin. The insurgents, meanwhile, are attempting to choke off the regime’s hold over Dar’aa City. The insurgent capture of Tafas last month has helped that goal.
Footage of Wednesday’s fighting and shelling:
Insurgents in Nawa, captured from the regime in the summer, targeting regime strongholds:
Insurgents in Athman try to target regime warplanes using machine guns:
Destruction in Dar’aa city’s Tariq as-Sadd district following an air raid:
Several Insurgent Commanders Killed or Wounded in Regime Airstrike
Insurgent commanders were killed or injured on Thursday by a regime airstrike in an infantry school in Aleppo.
Activists report that Youssef Abu Al-Tayeb, head of the 4th regiment of Liwaa Al-Tawhid, died, and several others such as Abdul Qadir al-Saleh and Abdel Aziz Salamt — shown in the video below — were wounded as they were in a meeting.
Tawheed Commander Calls On All Fighters To Join Ranks To Defend Aleppo, Aleppo Countryside
A commander of the Tawheed Brigade issued a statement on November 11, calling on all factions in Aleppo and the Aleppo countryside to join ranks to fight the Assad regime, following “fierce attacks aided by Hezbollah, the (Shia pro-Assad faction) Abu Fadel al-Abbas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the city of Aleppo and its countryside in an attempt to re- occupy and torture its people.”
The statement warns that all those who refuse to participate will be “called to account, and strict action will be taken against him and his weapons will be confiscated, and handed over to the Islamic courts”.
The factions that are listed as signatories to the statement as well as the Tawheed Brigade are Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Nur ad-Din al-Islamiya Brigade.
Kerry Was Not In Obama Meeting That Pulled Back from Military Intervention
Tucked away in a lengthy Politico article about the White House handling of President Obama’s Cabinet is this revelation about Obama’s decision to pull back from military intervention after the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons on August 21:
On Aug. 30, [Secretary of State John] Kerry had just delivered an impassioned argument in the State Department Treaty Room for launching an immediate missile strike on Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, when Obama invited [Denis] McDonough — his most trusted national security aide before taking up the [White House] Chief of Staff portfolio—for a long stroll around the White House grounds….
Obama returned to tell a stunned group of aides gathered in the Oval Office that he had decided to seek congressional approval first, despite dim prospects of passage.
A few weeks later, sitting on the sunny patio outside McDonough’s West Wing office, I asked him if it was true that Kerry and [Secretary of Defense] Hagel weren’t around to hear Obama’s big decision. “They were not in the Oval, that is correct,” McDonough told me, though he said the notion of going to Congress had at least been broached during several contentious meetings earlier that week, at which both men had been present….
“I’m trying to figure out if I’m about to commit news here, but the President talked to both of those Cabinet members [later that evening by phone then they had another meeting the next morning.”
There was nothing out of the ordinary about the process, McDonough insists. But Kerry was taken aback, according to several people in his orbit—as stung by the West Wing’s planting of the “Walk” narrative in the media as by the snub itself.
Declaration of Autonomy by Leading Kurdish Party Provokes Strong Reactions
The opposition Syrian National Coalition called the Democratic Union Kurdish Party (PYD) “an anti-Syrian revolution organization” after the PYD declared a “Civil Transitional Administration for Western Kurdistan-Syria”.
The PYD’s military wing, the YPG, has won a series of victories against insurgent factions in Northern Syria since the summer, with the establishment of a belt of Kurdish territory in the northeast and control of other towns and villages.
However, the PYD’s declaration was opposed by other Kurdish groups, with the umbrella Kurdish National Council saying the move is premature.
The Coalition accused the PYD of being “a supporter of the Assad regime” with a link to “external agendas” such as that of the Turkish Kurdish group PKK.
