Department of Strategic Research and Studies and International Relations, and Department of Security and Military Research and Studies 03-04-2024

Zionists resumed its bombardment of several points in the countryside of Aleppo, on the morning of March 29, 2024, accompanied by attacks launched by terrorist organizations, resulting in the martyrdom of civilians and military personnel.

They did not limit their targeting to the countryside of Aleppo but also bombed a residential neighborhood in Damascus, resulting in the martyrdom of two individuals.

The aggression is becoming recurrent at a significant pace. There is a concern within the Zionist entity and behind it, the Americans, about the growing capabilities of the Iraqi and Syrian resistance in northern Syria. This is accompanied by the increasing capabilities of the Syrian Arab Army after thirteen years of fighting and experience in the guerrilla warfare it has mastered.

The war is expanding regionally since Yemen entered the fray in November of last year, with the British and American navies directly engaging in the war.

There are preparations underway for Syria in these days, and it seems to be progressing rapidly before the Americans lose direct control of the initiative.

We can divide the operational arena in northern Syria into two sections:

The first is the northeast, where the terrorist forces of the SDF, supported by the American occupation, and the Syrian Maghawir army are deployed, which is an innovative name for the terrorist ISIS organization.

The second section is located in the middle of the north in the Idlib region and the countryside of Damascus, where elements of Jabhat al-Nusra, supported by the Turkish occupation, are present, which are offshoots of the Al-Qaeda organization.

Over the past thirteen years, militias of Jabhat al-Nusra and its affiliated organizations in Idlib and the countryside of Aleppo have been engaged in infighting, fueled by greed for spoils and power.

Only Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, remains, competing strongly with the so-called “Syrian National Army,” which the Turkish occupation has been trying to reorganize and restructure since the beginning of 2024 in Idlib.

Let’s start with the northern arena in Idlib, where the Turkish occupation controls the province and part of the countryside of Aleppo. Since March 19, protests have erupted in Idlib demanding the downfall of al-Jolani and the dissolution of his security apparatus and areas controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Some want to portray it as reverberations aiming to reorganize the “Arab Spring” project, which started in several Arab countries in 2011. The truth is that what is happening is a Turkish-American demand aimed at abolishing labels associated with classified terrorist movements and beginning to form military systems with secular names.

What is required in the region occupied militarily, culturally, and economically by the Turks is to establish the authority of the “Syrian National Army,” which the Turks formed in 2017 as part of Operation Euphrates Shield. The Turks are currently working on restructuring and training this army since February 25 of this year.

The important question here is, what do the Turks and Americans want by destabilizing this stable situation for them since February 2022, when the American-Russian war began in Ukraine until today?

Is the war in Ukraine related to what is happening on the Syrian scene, always intertwined with events in the Palestinian arena?

Certainly yes! Not directly, as the goals of the war are to destabilize Russian security and economic stability and thus divide Russia when it becomes weak.

But on the other hand, the war in Ukraine has shifted Russian focus to its national security and what is happening at its southern borders. This has made the war against terrorism in Syria, and securing a place for it in the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, or the Syrian Sea as the Greeks and Romans called it, not a secondary matter but rather something to work on ending in the coming stages.

It also required greater Russian openness to Turkey and an attempt to avoid conflicts with it, especially when Russia began exporting wheat to the world through Turkish mediation. As for the American side, they began forming what is known as the Free Syrian Army, the Army of Spades, which is a combination of the Maghawir army (formerly ISIS) and the Kurdish SDF forces.

Then the Americans began fabricating crises in Sweida province, and the crisis escalated to the point where southern Syria became a new terrorist threat with external French, British, and American support, attempting to create a state stretching from the al-Bukamal crossing on the Syrian-Iraqi border to Sweida, along the Syrian-Jordanian border, extending to Daraa province and from there to the Golan Heights, to form an independent Druze state aligned with the Jewish state.

The primary goal of establishing it was to prevent weapons from reaching the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon through Syrian territory from Iran and Iraq. The backbone of the protective military force for the temporary entity would be the Army of Spades. This was postponed after the emergence of new equations drawn by the resistance in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon, with extraordinary Yemeni support.

Through the Army of Spades, the American way of connecting arenas is established. However, after the launch of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 last year, the importance of the unity of arenas became evident, starting with Operation Sword of Jerusalem, which first introduced the concept of the unity of arenas in 2021, if the term initially indicated unity of arenas in Palestine between the West Bank, Gaza, and the occupied territories in 1948 in Palestine.

The concept of “unity of arenas” after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood extended its scope to Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Yemen, and to the entire world through global protests condemning the massacres and genocide committed by the entity in Gaza, standing with a free Palestine from the river to the sea.

Faced with this scene, it was necessary to arrange the cards in Syria. If the Americans did it and withdrew, especially with the continued pounding of their strongholds in Syria and Iraq by the Iraqi resistance, the autonomous administration and the SDF began to sense the impending danger and worry about their fate and their relationship with the Syrian state, especially since the relationship they had with the United States and the Israeli Mossad over the past ten years is considered a major betrayal.

Among the most important arrangements for the Turks is attempting to realize their dream of annexing Idlib and the Aleppo countryside through a buffer zone defended against the rebellious Kurds by what is called the “Syrian National Army,” which will be coordinated logistically with the Turkish army. The most important stage in the process of organizing is getting rid of al-Jolani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, especially in the most strategic location in Idlib province, in the cities of Jisr al-Shughur and Ariha, which militarily control northern Syria to Raqqa, and are controlled by al-Jolani’s forces.

There are certainly other arrangements related to eastern Euphrates, dangerous arrangements that have become apparent with the shelling of Deir al-Zour in northeastern Syria two days ago, especially in the region that was liberated from terrorism by the Syrian Arab Army with the support of its allies.

There are other arrangements related to the repositioning of the SDF, multi-directional arrangements indicating American preparations aiming to increase hope for its remaining in eastern Syrian Jazeera, in eastern Euphrates, or at least to support its clients from the SDF and others to become a gateway on the path of arms reaching the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine.