Apocalyptic Conflict in 2016? | Akira

 

We have hit a series of critical inflection points in the Syrian conflict with recent events.

The most important is that Erdogan has now unmasked himself as a deep supporter of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Frankly there is no other explanation of why he would risk an open conflict with Russia in their defense. It was one thing to brazenly support terrorist proxies when there were no consequences, but to risk the whole economic relationship with Russia and quite possibly a real war?

Evidence pointing in this direction has been accumulating for some time. The Turkish intelligence service (the MIT) has had its fingerprints all over the post-Arab Spring Jihads, and not just in Syria. What we are dealing with is an out if control neo-ottoman/Islamist personality cult that has now brazenly adopted the Pakistani policy of deep state support for the salafist Jihad. I don’t like tinfoil hats, but I no longer see any other explanation for Erdogan’s behavior.

I have nothing against the Turkish people, and before the Syrian Jihad I regarded Erdogan as one of the few real leaders in the whole region, and the AKP as a perfectly legitimate expression of the politics of the majority of Turks. There was real reform and economic development and even a successful peace process with the Kurds. Like most I viewed the AKPs success as one of the most important bulwarks against Takfiri Jihadism, and one of the few success stories in the region. Were we all wrong?

Was Erdogan always a Takfiri Islamist or is he just completely out of his mind? Was either a radical shift or an evolutionary development? How else can we explain a deliberate plot to ambush a Russian aircraft, either to capture the pilot as a hostage to murder on video, or just to provoke the Russians into a full scale war?

This is a very radical conclusion but it is one that fits together all the events since the beginning of the Jihad in Syria into a more of a sensible picture than any other. It also explains how the Islamic State doesn’t run out of ammunition for all that American equipment it captured from the Iraqi Army. It explains how the Islamic State that rules over a burned out wasteland has enough logistics to launch highly mobile armored offensives across Syria and Iraq.

Most of all it explains why Turkey is brazenly continuing to arm and supply Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, when Putin has made it perfectly clear that the entire relationship with Russia is at stake and so is a war.

This unveiling throws my previous predictions out the window, as they were written under the assumption that Turkey would back down and make a deal with Putin. We are now looking at a whole new war if Erdogan continues on his present course.

The second major inflection point is that the Daesh death squad strike in Paris has shattered European support for the moderate democratic cannibal beheaders in Syria. This is a self-inflicted defeat for the Takfiris as Europe was perfectly happy to look the other way as these monsters slaughtered Syria and Iraq, as long as it unseated Assad. Now they have finally woken up to the danger, and have in fact already forgotten all their crocodile tears over the “Syrian rebels”.

It is quite noticeable in the western analysis of the Paris massacre that “state sponsorship” appearing to suggest Turkey is being reported by usually very pro-NATO analysts. France has not invoked the NATO charter and has instead involved the solidarity clause in the EU. The important difference between the two is that the EU is a much weaker alliance but it does not include Turkey. This suggests that the French understand perfectly well what side Turkey is on.

With the NATO/GCC alliance behind the Syrian Jihad crumbling, The United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will stand alone. The defection of the Europeans from the coalition will make Obama’s position increasingly untenable and I firmly predict he will throw Erdogan under the bus by January. The liberal narrative on Syria and Turkey is already turning for the Kurds, and suddenly the western media is discovering that Erdogan is a “corrupt” dictator building an Islamist police state on the ruins of Turkish democracy. Watch as the entire “Bad Dictator” narrative that has been used on Putin is seamlessly retasked to demonize Erdogan instead.

The third inflection point is yet unkown the Russian reaction to the Turkish provocation. If Erdogan thought his provocation would deter Russia, he could not have miscalculated more. The Turkish ambush of the Russian jet has opened the floodgates of popular support for the Syrian operation in Russia, and Putin is now free from any domestic political constraints. Putin’s political problem now is managing Russian rage and focusing it into useful actions. Erdogan mistook the Russians for the hamster-men of the west. Now he is about to feel the jaws of the enraged bear.

If Putin decides to risk a world war with NATO by striking the Turkish state, I expect a blitz of pinpoint attacks followed very quickly by overwhelming force. The initial attacks will likely be carried out by naval launched cruise missiles and strategic bomber forces that will destroy the Turkish air force and navy within the first day. Once Russian domination of the black sea has been firmly established the Dardanelles straits will either be seized by airborne and naval forces or rendered uninhabitable with sheer firepower.

I do not actually expect Putin to risk a nuclear war with NATO, but if he does I expect NATO will disintegrate rather than fight. The west is not going to sacrifice Washington or Brussels to save the Turks. The most dangerous aspect of all the NATO provocations of the recent years is that NATO is a hollow alliance, and it will shatter under any real stress. If the hysteria of western analysts is correct, and Russia truly determined to break the NATO alliance at all costs, they have themselves handed Putin the golden opportunity to do so.

Assuming Putin is not ready to risk World War 3, we will see an across the board escalation of actions already under way in Syria. Already the feared S-400 systems have been activated, and more jets have been dispatched. At minimum the border traffic from Turkey is going to be mercilessly interdicted and the Turkish staging areas on the Syrian side of the border will be completely annihilated. I also expect a major acceleration of covert warfare from the Russians. Overt and covert support for the Kurdish and Alevi resistance movements within Turkey is going to go through the roof.

 

Major Battlefield Events in the next month-

Aleppo is finally liberated by the SAA in a savage urban ratskrieg with high casualties on all sides. By the end of December the core urban areas of Aleppo have been completely cleared, as well as the areas around the Kuwaries airbase and the lake, and the door of the trap has been shut by linking up with the Kurdish canton and cutting the northern supply line to the Army of Conquest.

While the SAA/NDF conducts methodical frontal assaults with maximum firepower, the IRGC/Hezbollah forces wage highly mobile urban commando warfare with a little help from some little green men in Hind helicopters. The Jihadis fight to the death from fortifications with extensive underground tunnel systems, but the Russian 43mm thermobaric grenade launchers prove to be the perfect weapon for clearing tunnels, while the TOS-1 systems level entire city blocks.

The Turkish/GCC “Army of Conquest” in Syria begins to collapse as the “five star Jihad” tourists and assorted mercenaries flee the thermobaric onslaught in NW Syria. Shipments of ATWs and MANPADs are accelerated to Nusra and the Islamic State under heavy Russian air interdiction of the Turkish border crossings. Large formations of Turkish troops are moved to the Syrian and Iraqi border and Erdogan repeatedly makes open threats of a full scale war.

Russian supersonic nuclear bombers arrive in Syria by December and begin engaging in simulated high speed attack runs against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other GCC states, while visibly armed with nuclear tipped cruise missiles. Russian electronic warfare units are heavily engaged in constant harassment operations against Turkish ground forces and coalition aircraft. Drones from both sides begin to mysteriously disappear and fall out of the sky.

Country-wide guerrilla operations begin within Turkey against the MIT’s Jihadi supply lines into Syria. Large amounts of Semtex and a variety of Russian made weapons are used in these attacks, which are extremely sophisticated and so accurate as to suggest almost real-time intelligence on the targets. These attacks are largely blamed on the Kurds, but the evidence suggests Turcoman and Alevi involvement as well.

The Syrian Army has been consistently underestimated from the beginning of this conflict. It was supposed to have collapsed many times over, and it has not. This army was in bad need of a reorganization and complete recapitalization even before the war, it has faced a triple crisis of morale, manpower, and material since the civil war began, and yet it has often fought with unquestionable valor even in the most desperate of conditions. In countless cases small units of this army have fought on tenaciously from lost positions while surrounded on all sides and completely cut off.

Flush with new weapons from Russia and volunteers from the Shi’ite international, and backed by Russian air, staff, intelligence and logistical support, this Army finds its second wind on the battlefield.

The delivery to the SAA of new T-72b tanks, with active armor protection against the TOW missile threat as well as a murky new Russian electronic system that disrupts TOW guidance, works to restore the crucial advantage of armored mobility to the SAA. Close air support, Hind helicopters full of Spetsnaz, and new Russian artillery systems turn the tide on the ground against the Army of Conquest.

The AKP line takes an increasingly deranged tone against the “Russian-American-Gulenist-PKK conspiracy” as large numbers of Erdogan’s political enemies and top military commanders are arrested and convicted in absurd Stalinist style show trials. The state operations against Kurds, dissidents, and journalists continue with more mysterious bombings (blamed on the PKK) and more arrests and “suicides” of hostile western journalists. The flood of refugees into Europe continues and American operations at the Inclirk airbase grind to a halt due to increasing security “incidents”.

By 2016 the extreme polarization of Turkish politics has become so intense that the country is begining to slide into a communal civil war. Diplomatic relations with Europe, NATO & the US reach an all time low after the PKK is removed from NATO terrorist lists, and NATO (unofficially) makes it completely clear to the Turks that they are on their own in any ground war that starts with Syria.

After a secret purge of older top cadre who were still loyal to Ochelan, the decision is made is by the new PKK/YPG leadership to permanently abandon the “peace process”. The party mobilizes for a total war in support of Rojava (with the assistance of some old comrades in Moscow).

Within Turkey negotiations continue with other oppositionists to build a political “united front” against the AKP. The western cruise missile liberal/Borg narrative begins to turn completely against Erdogan, who is now subjected to an extended demonization campaign (produced mainly by Israeli apparatchiks.)

In Syria the YPG continues spoiling attacks against the Islamic State across the whole front but concentrates its main forces in a combined offensive for Aleppo to prepare for the major offensive to link the Kurdish cantons. By Jan the preparations for this offensive are complete and a series of probing attacks have been launched into the ISIS held areas between the cantons.

American help is welcomed and appreciated by the Kurds, but the real deal is made with the Russians for long term support because of past American treachery and the simple realities of America’s alliances with Turkey and the salafist gulfies.

While well prepared to defend against a ground attack, Nusra was caught completely off guard by the savage Russian air campaign, and lost most of its front line supply caches and a significant portion of its combat leadership during the initial phases. Russian strikes are both brutal and highly accurate because Russian signals intelligence has owned the twitter Jihadi cellphone networks for years, and the SAA has had a plenty sophisticated human intelligence campaign of its own.

With the rats abandoning the sinking Jihad and pressure increasing on all fronts, the hard core of Nusra digs in to fight to the death in NW Syria, as other factions of the Army of Conquest defect to ISIS or flee into Turkey. Deprived of the initiative and outfought on the operational level, Nusra’s veteran fighters still extract a stiff blood price, fighting hard and effectively at the tactical level. Pushed back across the front by the TOS-1 instant martyrdom machine, by Feb they are falling back to make a final stand in Idlib.

In the face of an increasing Russian air campaign and a revitalized SAA, the decision is made to move most of the Islamic State’s forces into Iraq. The remaining ISIS forces in Syria dig into the large urban areas for an apocalyptic fight to the death with chemical weapons. A small but elite mobile force continues to conduct hit and run counter attacks against the threats to the Turkish supply line.

ISIS veterans infiltrated back into Europe via the refugees begin operations. A series of insane atrocities rock Europe during Christmas. Returned veterans of the Ukrainian neo-nazi militias respond with an anti-muslim terror wave of their own in the style of breivik , inciting the political crisis over the Syrian refugees into a white heat that threatens to overturn governments across Europe.