Long War

Turkey has moved missile batteries, anti-aircraft guns, and other military assets to its border with Syria. The Turkish Prime Minister said yesterday that his country will "support the liberation of Syria" from Assad's dictatorship. At that point Turkey was a heartbeat away from declaring war on Syria. I remind you that Turkey is roughly ten times more powerful than Syria and would win easily in a few months. Turkey would then have to occupy Syria for several years just as America had to occupy Iraq after a short conventional war. Long War occupations involve messy guerilla wars.

Syria has massed 170 tanks around a non-descript rebel held town that is right next to the buffer zone inside Syria that Turkey is drawing red lines under. Turkey is saying that Syria cannot engage in military activity within a buffer zone near the Syrian/Turkish border, or else. Syria does not need 170 tanks to retake the non-descript rebel town. It looks as though Syria is responding to the Turkish military build-up along the border with its own build-up.

With these two militaries building forces along their mutual border, and the Turkish PM all but declaring war, it did indeed look like a war was in the offing. At the height of all this tension, Russia said (in obtuse diplomatic language) that Assad should go. This would have been a huge breakthrough since Russia and Iran are Syria's only real allies. But then the Turkish PM backed off in his bellicosity and tensions ebbed. Russia then changed its mind and threw support back to Assad.

In Yemen, Al-Qaeda has been blasted out of the towns, cities, and villages that it once held. A gigantic whack-a-mole is taking place, where bad guys are leaving Yemen for other locales. At first it looked like the bad guys were mostly going to Somalia to join Al-Shabab. But the Somali Army stepped on Al-Shabab hard and conquered (liberated) a bad guy village three days ago. Yemeni officials are now saying most of the Yemeni bad guys are going to Oman, an Arab country sharing a border with Yemen. Oman has had almost no jihadist activity up till now so its security forces are weak, a good place to set up shop.

In Mali, Al-Qaeda has blasted the Tuareg rebels (good guys) out of all major towns in northern Mali. AQIM and its affilates have been massively reinforced by jihadist fighters from all over the globe including Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mali is very important for the bad guys and they are putting a lot of effort into this fire zone.

There are six major LW wars taking place right now: Afghanistan, Pakistan Tribal Lands, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Mali. The good guys are stretched thin and there doesn't seem to be much help for the Tuareg rebels in Mali.