Al Masdar has provided a situation map showing the military situation in Syria as of the end of June 2017, which shows the dramatic transformation in the military situation which has taken place in the Syrian war. I reproduce it here
On Monday Sean Spicer, President Trump’s press officer, published a statement on the White House website purportedly ‘warning’ President Assad and the Syrian government against a chemical attempt which the US had supposedly detected the Syrian military preparing to carry out.
On 11th January 2017, shortly after publication of the now notorious Trump Dossier, I speculated that this obviously fictitious document might have been the cause of the whole Russiagate scandal.
After carefully explaining why the document is certainly a fiction I made the following point
Though the Western media is barely reporting the fact, the last few weeks have witnessed a total transformation of the Syrian war.
Until the liberation of eastern Aleppo in December the Syrian war was being fought mainly in western Syria along a narrow stretch of Syria’s Mediterranean coast in a grinding war of attrition between the Syrian army and various Turkish backed Jihadi groups all of which were led ultimately by Al-Qaeda.
The US is manipulating its people and global opinion by pretending that in Syria they are fighting ISIS (the so-called “Islamic state in Syria and Iraq”). The facts on the ground however tell a different story.
This illegitimate coalition of the US and its allies operating illegally in Syrian territory and airspace has done nothing to fight ISIS. On the contrary they provide ISIS with its air force, so that it can resupply unhindered its fighter, who are all foreign born militants.
The US has now confirmed that it was responsible for shooting down a Syrian SU-22 and the US led Coalition has now released the following statement explaining its move
Shortly after news of the huge concentration of 50,000 Syrian troops and allied militia in the Palmyra area has come news of the Syrian army storming the town of Arak on the main highway to Deir Ezzor from Palmyra, and preparing a major advance along the same highway towards the important town of Al-Sukhnah.
This map of Syria and Iraq gives a sense of the pace and direction of the Syrian army’s advances over recent days
The Al-Masdar news agency, which is known to have reliable contacts within the Syrian military, claims that up to 50,000 Syrian troops and allied militia have been concentrated in the territory of eastern Homs province in and around the recently liberated desert city of Palmyra.
Back in August 2016, at the height of the fighting in Aleppo, international media headlines were dominated by the story of the so-called ‘Aleppo boy’, who was supposedly pulled from the rubble following a Russian or Syrian air strike, and whose photograph was plastered across the Western media.
With the situation in western Syria relatively stabilised following the ceasefire and the declaration of the ‘de-escalation areas’ there, the Syrian army has been able to commit more of its forces to the war against ISIS in eastern Syria.
