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I am no historian but I have read enough about wars, especially WW2. I don't remember any battle quite like what is happening in Aleppo. The hallmark of the battle is the encirclement of the city, air raids but little street battle. Now, the siege tactic is nothing new but has there been one quite like this? It is surprising that the rebels trapped inside can still launch operations with all their resources coming from the outside. And there is the matter of the needs of 250,000 people still living there. I sometimes think of Stalingrad but I don't think that is quite the same.
I am no historian but I have read enough about wars, especially WW2. I don't remember any battle quite like what is happening in Aleppo. The hallmark of the battle is the encirclement of the city, air raids but little street battle. Now, the siege tactic is nothing new but has there been one quite like this? It is surprising that the rebels trapped inside can still launch operations with all their resources coming from the outside. And there is the matter of the needs of 250,000 people still living there. I sometimes think of Stalingrad but I don't think that is quite the same.
I think the term siege is perhaps misused here. This is not an instance of national troops fortifying a city against an invading force. Rather, this is a civil war. I'm not saying that 'siege' is an inaccurate term, but that it tends to bring to mind a different operation than we're seeing in Aleppo. So perhaps the best parallels in history are city-battles from other civil wars, where you have forces from multiple sides present in the city from the beginning.
Algiers in the 1950s.
Sarajevo in the 1990s, and other examples from the Yugoslav wars.
One non-civil war example of modern vintage might be Basra in 1987.
I think Sarajevo is the best example. Maybe Beirut as well.
There are certainly "parallels" to some of the major WW2 sieges like Warsaw, Leningrad, Stalingrad and Berlin. At least in terms of the localized human suffering and civilians being trapped in the combat zone.
It is surprising that the rebels trapped inside can still launch operations with all their resources coming from the outside. And there is the matter of the needs of 250,000 people still living there. I sometimes think of Stalingrad but I don't think that is quite the same.
It is not like Stalingrad. Rather, it is like other have mentioned, the five way factional fighting in the Lebanese civil war, or the three way fighting in Bosnia, or factional fighting in east Ukraine.
Who controls what can be nebulous, groups can switch sides, or sign seperate peace agreements. Other groups can be very large numerically, but only have a small number of 100% committed fighters that are deployable offensively.
The size of still other factions can shrink suddenly as fighters get disenchanted and go home, or think they were 'dissed by another leader, or once dedicated groups go "defensive only- if even that" until a large cash payment is made.
All the above leads to a lot of ground changing hands, ground that is held, but not controlled or supplies being allowed to enter enemy / "enemy" areas. Likewise, it leads to ground being lost, but still somehow "controlled". The above also leads to wars that go on and on and on.... .
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Originally Posted by NJGOAT
I think Sarajevo is the best example. Maybe Beirut as well.
I agree. Other examples could be Somalia, pre-Taliban Afghanistan, civil war Liberia and Sierra Leone etc.
Donno. Every time I watch reports from that "war" makes me wonder, if that actually even is a war. It looks more like skirmishes between loose bands with the so called government forces do more of "make belief" mock war. Sorry. I am used to real wars. Fronts, battles. Action. this in Syria to me is nothing but hand wrestling between super powers with stooges on the ground basically following directions from masters.
It's a joke, overblown in media. Any more or less serious military force would have taken care of all of those gangs in matter of days.
It's another TV show, nothing more.
and a map. It is a precarious situation. It appears that the Syrian regime is as much surrounded by the rebels as the other way around. The fact that Syria and its allies cannot launch a ground offensive despite massive air power on their side is quite telling.
One must understand Syrian regime strategy - they aren't necessarily trying to siege or overrun Aleppo (that will come in time) but to isolate all these various factions from each other and from the countryside. As Aleppo is the opposition powerbase, it's just as important that these forces and supplies and leaders don't get to the outside as much as supplies don't get into Aleppo. Also they must separate these factions because each has it's own motivation and tolerance to submit to the regime. What they don't want is them to join up.
Meanwhile the regime is happy to bomb them into submission, much easier than house to house fighting. Russia is now using bunker busters. Time is on Bashir's side, and he has free reign with Russian backing to be as ruthless as he needs to be. Why waste his troops in targeted operations with ground troops? Bombing does fine - Bashir and Russia don't care about collateral damage, dead civilians, bombed hospitals. No free press troubles them.
That being said, you are seeing some other moderns weapons deployed by rebels on the battlefield as well - I saw an article about remote controlled rifles being used. And amazingly rebels are still using WW1 era Italian Carcano rifles in combat and putting them to deadly use (yup, the same type weapon that Oswald used to assassinate JFK), also stg44 Nazi era assault rifles.
Repeats in history? Too many to mention. You can just pick any war where fortification or city was bypassed, isolated, and waiting to destruct from within.
The Second Battle of Grozny is also mentioned as something similar. I wonder how long it takes before Russia drops a nuke over Aleppo. They have used just about everything else. The scariest of all is the thermobaric bomb. It is said to be second only to the nuclear bomb in the devastation it causes. There are some scary videos on youtube.
The Second Battle of Grozny is also mentioned as something similar. I wonder how long it takes before Russia drops a nuke over Aleppo. They have used just about everything else. The scariest of all is the thermobaric bomb. It is said to be second only to the nuclear bomb in the devastation it causes. There are some scary videos on youtube.
I wouldn't hold my breath to see a nuke used here. Just attacking ordinary city buildings, ordinary HE bombs or even barrel bombs are more than good enough.
The Second Battle of Grozny is also mentioned as something similar. I wonder how long it takes before Russia drops a nuke over Aleppo. They have used just about everything else. The scariest of all is the thermobaric bomb. It is said to be second only to the nuclear bomb in the devastation it causes. There are some scary videos on youtube.
You actually think the Russians might nuke Aleppo?
It's not hard to perceive the intents behind Putin's actions. But it's virtually impossible to see any Russian interest in breaking the nuclear taboo to end the situation in Aleppo - unless you think Putin is some sort of one-dimensional James Bond villain who is governed by a motivation no more complex than "I like things that go 'boom'!".
While Putin certainly wants to see the Assad regime survive, he benefits from ongoing strife in Syria. ISIS is not going to be broken in Aleppo. So even assuming that there was no nuclear taboo, or that Putin was fool enough to ignore it, there's no self-serving reason for him to play the nuclear card.
Finally, it is abundantly clear that Putin understands how far he can push and how far he cannot, where he can meddle and where he cannot. There are limits to what he can do. It is obvious that he realizes that. So the notion that Putin is daft enough to even consider using a nuclear weapon over something so utterly inconsequential - from the Russian perspective - as Aleppo is, frankly, absurd.
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