Slashdot Mirror
Turkey Downs Allegedly Intruding Russian Fighter Near Syria Border (reuters.com)
jones_supa writes: Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian Sukhoi SU-24 fighter near the Syrian border on Tuesday after repeated warnings over airspace violations. Moscow said it could prove the jet had not left Syrian air space. Footage from private Turkish broadcaster Haberturk TV showed the warplane going down in flames in a woodland area. Separate footage from Turkey's Anadolu Agency showed two pilots parachuting out of the jet before it crashed. A Syrian rebel group sent a video to Reuters that appeared to show one of the pilots immobile and badly wounded on the ground and an official from the group said he was dead. This is the first time a NATO member's armed forces have downed a Russian military aircraft since the 1950s. The Guardian is following the developments with live updates.
Also covered by the BBC, which notes Russian aircraft have flown hundreds of sorties over northern Syria since September. Moscow says they have targeted only "terrorists", but activists say its strikes have mainly hit Western-backed rebel groups. Turkey, a vehement opponent of Syria's president, has warned against violations of its airspace by Russian and Syrian aircraft. Last month, Ankara said Turkish F-16s had intercepted a Russian jet that crossed its border and two Turkish jets had been harassed by an unidentified Mig-29.
I shudder to think how WWII would have ended if the alliance powers had each worried so much about what the other sides would do AFTER they defeated Hitler that they refused to ally with one another to begin with.
Oh, believe me - they worried. Churchill openly worried about it (especially post-Yalta, where he saw that the UK got screwed pretty hard.) Roosevelt worried about it, though not as much... now post WWII, his big worry was that Gen. Patton would decide 'fuck it', and start a fight with the USSR anyway (just to get it out of the way).
Incidentally, there were more than a few tense crises between East and West (towards and at the end of WWII) that never really made the papers - the relative silence was only because back then, the government would tell the press to shut the hell up about something, and the press (more often than not) compliantly kept quiet about it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It's really not, at least among the major players. In the north (where the most relevant fronts are, even if there is still lots of random fighting elsewhere) you have Daesh in the east, the YPG (kurdish "Peoples' Defense Units") to the north of them, and JaF (Jaish al-Fatah, "Army of Conquest")/FSA alliance in the center (down to just north of Hama, and edging into Latakia by the Turkish border). The FSA has many different brigades but they're all pretty unified by wanting to fight Assad and Daesh and being composed of members who explicitly didn't join the (formerly much more powerful) Islamist militias. JaF is comprised of a number of militias, mostly islamist, the two most powerful being Ahrar ash-Sham ("Supporters of the Levant") and Jabhat al-Nusra ("The Support Front for the People of the Levant").
Let's break down the players.
The YPG, opposed by Turkey (out of fear of links to the PKK), controls a long strip along Turkey's northeast border, as well as a couple of pockets west of there. They have a long border with Daesh territory and fight almost exclusively against Daesh (even though there's one or two Assad pockets within their territory). Recently they've launched a major anti-Daesh campaign, using US-supplied weapons, in an alliance with Arab anti-Daesh forces, under the banner of Syrian Democratic Forces. So far it seems to be progressing well.
Daesh (aka IS/ISIS/IL) is, of course, Daesh. A group of Islamists so radical that even al-Qaeda thinks they're nuts. That said, it should be reiterated that not everyone who fights for them shares their ideology. They literally do run what is effectively a state, with locally sourced money (based around oil pumping, refining with truck-mounted mini-refineries, and sales - both domestic, to Turkey (black market), and even to Assad, who they're vehemently against. This money funds a militia far larger than their ideological base, often made up of the poor and displaced in the conflict who need the work. That said, literally armed entitity who's not part of Daesh in this conflict is an enemy of Daesh, so it's hard to imagine them surviving in the long run.
The FSA was once the largest fighting force in early post-revolution Syria, but atrophied to a lack of financing and weaponry, becoming a paper tiger. Since 2014 however a joint US/Saudi/Turkey program under the auspices of the CIA (not to be confused with the gigantic-failure Pentagon program) has funnelled them a basically unlimited supply of TOWs, which they've been making good use of - their kill rate is reportedly about 6 out of 7 fired. Their numbers have increased since then. So far they seem to have managed their assets quite well, with reports stating that only 2 (some say 4) have fallen into other hands (Jabhat al-Nusra), and they seem to have used them. FSA works closely with JaF but is not part of the alliance itself.
Jaish al-Fatah is as mentioned a coalition, largely Islamist, although its individual members vary significantly. Let's go into the two biggest ones.
Ahrar ash-Sham can be thought of as sort of like the Muslim Brotherhood: Islamist, supporting sharia, but locally focused. Saudi Arabia and Qatar seem to have this group as their favored dog in the game.
Jabhat al-Nusra is a branch of al-Qaeda operating in Syria. Strangely despite this they haven't been behaving very much like al-Qaeda usually does, and they've been a very effective force against both Assad and Daesh. While they still take part in things like suicide bombings and human shields, they have a policy of not taking any anti-western activity and have worked hard to try to not engender local resentment, such as not imposing sharia on Christian towns. Qatar has been reportedly working to try to get them to break with al-Qaeda, but so far this campaign has not yielded any fruit. A large chunk of al-Nusra's fighters are foreign volunteers attracted by the name and they would risk losing them if they were to break with al-Qaeda.
JaF is really tricky on how one should deal with it. Ahra
I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
Ha. The USA made a wholesale business of such violations against the USSR with virtually no retaliation in kind. This little-known secret campaign began in 1946. There were losses, killed and imprisoned, kept secret. B-29s and Lockheed P2Vs were used; later C-130s and B-66s. By the 1950s, B-47 bombers were being repeatedly sent on deep penetration reconnaissance missions. Then came the U-2s. Francis Gary Powers' ill-fated spy flight was far from the only such.
All told more than 40 US aircraft invading Soviet aircraft were shot down. Question: can you identify a single Soviet or Russian aircraft which was ever shot down over US territory? As far as I know they have never violated it; certainly not systematically and purposefully.
Incidents of Russian aircraft probing the US which are drummed up as provocative are no more than Russians exercising their perfect right to range in international airspace "near" (gasp) to US territory.
And you lost me when you said oil, and helpers in the congo...
The US DOES have "helpers" in Africa-- when it comes to training, we actually spend more money and send more units there. We train nearly twice as many people in Sub-Saharan Africa compared to the Middle east and North Africa combined. source
Also note that special forces deployments are 10x what they were in Africa ten years ago, while presence in the middle east is actually going down. source
I know you want to make this about OIL, but I think this is a gross simplification. Even if it were about oil, none of this would apply to Syria, which is not a large producer. source
I'm not saying that oil companies have no influence in our government (I'm sure they do--- just like military contractors and a myriad other huge industries in the US and the world influence probably every part of our lives and governments) but the US is training and policing all sorts of areas of the world, regardless of whether or not they fit some predetermined "OMG OIL" narrative. Is this a great idea? Honestly I have no idea, I'm sure some citizens are happy to have the US intervene just as sure as some will hate us for it.