A torn poster of Bashar al-Assad on a wall in central Damascus (File)
The European Union has extended sanctions against Syria’s Assad regime for another year.
The European Council announced the extension to June 1, 2021, as “the repression of the civilian population continues”.
The Council explained:
The Syrian people have had to draw on extraordinary reserves of resilience in the course of the conflict. The EU’s sanctions target those responsible for their suffering, members of the Syrian regime, their supporters and businesspersons who finance it and benefit from the war economy.
The EU is determined to continue its support to the Syrian people and remains committed to use every tool at its disposal to push for a political solution to the conflict that would benefit all Syrians and put an end to the ongoing repression.
There are 273 people and 70 entities on the list. Measures include an assets freeze and a travel ban.
The sanctions were introduced in 2011, as the regime’s security forces tried to quell protests which grew to millions of Syrians.
The regime has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and displaced millions in the nine-year conflict. Tens of thousands have been executed, tortured to death, or perished from inhumane conditions in regime prisons.
The EU bans the regime’s import of oil, restricts certain investments, freezes the Syrian Central Bank’s assets, and restricts exports of equipment and technology that might be used for internal repression and surveillance.
Food, medicines, medical equipment, and humanitarian supplies are exempt from the sanctions.
The regime is facing economic crisis after a 75% loss of GDP during the conflict. Prices are soaring, the currency has lost 70% of its value since last autumn, and there are widespread shortages of fuel and cooking gas.. Electricity is frequently cut off.
Seeing as there’s alleged Syrian fighters fighting on both sides in the Libyan conflict I thought I post this video of GNA fighters using drone-camera live feeds to their operational rooms guiding the shelling of their mortar units onto Hafter’s armored vehicles:
.
https://twitter.com/TashfinLy/status/1266163789206036480
.
It sort of makes you ask whether the better trained rebel groups use this sort of camera-guided mortar shelling in Syria also.
.
Speaking of which, I’m re-upping this from last time:
.
If rebels wanted to improve the designs of the drones they use on Khmeemim/Hama airbase then here’s one design:
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k
.
If the drone operators amongst the rebels had brilliant manufacturing I would have suggested they create something that could similar to this:
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBmhJ-jrzrc
.
BTW in Libya Hafter’s men are already using loitering munitions as this link shows:
.
https://twitter.com/oded121351/status/1250144972172648448
.
Now before everyone says all these ideas are insane, won’t work, I’d like to point out that briefly during the Vietnam war the US military were using loitering devices as this wiki link shows:
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Model_147
.
Now imagine if you could create all these ‘loitering munitions’ and use them in a ‘drone swarm’ way (i.e. 8 to 12 flying into Khmeemim/Hama airbase on the same day, the same hour) in a multi-axis way (i.e. team 1 flying in from the north those Khmeemim/Hama airbase whilst on the same day and same hour team 2 flying in from the east) at the fast speed of 400 miles per hour as shown in the first video? It would overwhelm the Russian ‘anti-aircraft’ system at Khmeemim/Hama airbase in hours and panic the Assadists/Ruskies.