Firn and Feanor, many thanks for your posts, which I look forward to reading always.
With Turkish warplanes and drones and artillery and tanks combat is obviously completely different and morale suffers accordingly. While local counterattacks had some success the SDF also reports that it has overall been slowly pushed back in the last weeks. The SAA was also involved but overall it is of course impossible to gauge the various losses correctly. Attrition will be an important factor and the side with the superior firepower and technology has usually an important advantage there. Still the TSF also suffer in the front lines and the rear, with small-scale guerrilla attacks also taking their toll in the more quite areas like Afrin.
Rebels fighting as light infantry vs Turkish armoured forces with air support is no contest. Turkey’s main goals are to prevent the Syrian Kurds from creating an autonomous state and to fend off attacks on its citizens. The Turkish use of partisans to pacify the conquered area seems to be the defining characteristic of this phase of the Syrian war. Unless Turkey has an analog to the ‘Briggs Plan’, IMHO they are in a quagmire in Northern Syria. For details see:
Who’s Who in Northern Syria?
The tragic fate of the Rohingya in Myanmar showed it once again.
The Robingya are a tragic story of communal violence. Some members of their community took up arms and rebelled against a military regime (that does not operate with the restraint of the Americans in Iraq or ISAF in Afghanistan). In 2012, large scale conflict broke out in northern Rakhine State — in 2017 Muslim insurgents calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) launched an assault on 30 Myanmar police posts and an army base. As fighting spreads between the Tatmadaw (aka Burmese military) and ARSA, thousands of Rohingya flee to Bangladesh. Reprisals against the ARSA attacks are so bad that Gambia has
submitted an application to institute proceedings against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, with the support of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), an intergovernmental organisation of 57 member states. The application argues that Myanmar is in breach of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The ICJ cannot directly indict generals, but could decide whether the state, is responsible for committing genocide.
Gambia’s application details widespread “clearance operations” against Rohingya civilians in Rakhine State, Myanmar, from 2016 and particularly in 2017, resulting in more than 740,000 people crossing into Bangladesh. It refers to a 1982 Citizenship Law that denied rights to members of the Rohingya, as well as “hate propaganda” spread via publications and Facebook. While Myanmar is a third world country and cannot afford a long drawn out rebellion, the Tatmadaw were disproportionate in wiping out entire Robingya villages who dare to give ARSA support. As expected, Myanmar’s government has denied that its military was primarily responsible for the current refugee situation, instead blaming Rohingya for the widespread destruction and displacement. A deal for the Rohingya to return to Myanmar has largely stalled as virtually no Rohingya have chosen to return due to security fears. ASEAN’s Emergency Response and Action Team (ERAT) produced a “preliminary needs assessment” on repatriation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. The 56-page report, was developed without input from Rohingya refugees and does not even use the term Rohingya. The ERAT report said it aims “to assess the readiness of Reception and Transit Centres, including potential relocation sites that have been identified by the Government of Myanmar,” but noted that whether or not conditions were in place for return was “beyond the scope” of the assessment.
Myanmar’s approach is extreme compared to the British fight against the Malayan Communists Party (MCP) in Malaya. The British Army in Malaya at that time consisted of 11 battalions of British, Gurkha, and Malay troops. The number of guerrillas bearing arms outnumbered the actual fighting men of the British Army as most battalions were under strength. The first task was to conduct a holding operation, keeping the guerrillas on the move by constant searching, patrolling and ambushing. The main problem faced by the British was that throughout the country there were some 600,000 squatters who lived on the fringes of the jungle on land to which they had no real title or right. The guerrillas used these settlements as a refuge and to store food.
As Mao pointed out, the insurgent needs the support of the population as the fish needs water. Due to this situation, the government decided to uproot and resettle these squatters in ‘New Villages’ where they could be isolated from the guerrillas. In these villages they were able to build their own houses and receive farmland that was to be legally theirs. This is the famous ‘Briggs Plan’ that was first introduced in Malaya by General Briggs who was appointed as the Director of Operation Malaya in 1950.
By the end of 1951, more than two-thirds of the squatters were living in 509 New Villages. The plan proceeded well and assisted in the effort to reduce communist influence. The MCP were thus cut off from their usual food supplies and were forced to move into the jungle areas. Throughout the Malayan Emergency (1948 to 1960), the Malayan Government maintained a policy of policing villages rather than destroying them, and of "winning the hearts and minds" of the people. Winning the hearts and minds of the people was deemed so important that the government had to change its military strategy and tactics. The air force conducted air reconnaissance; dropping of supplies to Army units operating in jungles; evacuating casualties; and providing mobility for the security forces with helicopters which were used very effectively to move troops from one point to another when searching out and subsequently attacking suspected camps.
There is plenty of evidence of large-scale plundering in the conquered areas and among the highest priced is ancient art. So those cash-flows will be give plenty of incentives for the fighters to hang around but how will it all develop? I suppose that a long-term strategy might be to extract wealth from agriculture and small scale service activities. The number of refugees shows that there will be plenty of land to seize and to profit from.
I suspect once plunder occurs and the original inhabitants are forced to go, this will not lead to a revival of the region. Wealth comes from working the land.
