Thomas Wictor

I urge everyone to take some time and watch videos put out by the Syrian Democratic Forces (QSD). Although the QSD are fighters, they’re also a political movement that was created in the hopes of avoiding the many blunders that the West has committed in the Middle East since forever. It appears that the greatest obstacle to peace in the region was the US State Department and Europe.

The QSD announced its formation on October 11, 2015. Two weeks later it began launching the most successful series of offensives in the entire five-year Syrian Civil War. Although battle hardened and skilled, these Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens, and Syriac Christians are militias. They simply lack the weapons and equipment to carry out complex combined-arms assaults. I believe that thousands of Arab League special operators are helping them. All the videos depicting the QSD in action are carefully edited to avoid revealing too much. However, the vast distances the QSD is traveling while maintaining the element of surprise means that helicopter and fixed-wing transports are depositing troops close to the targets.

This video contains images of a dead woman and several dead Islamic State terrorists, so be warned.

Who killed all the terrorists in those tunnels? It takes training and night-vision goggles to be a successful “tunnel rat.” Have you seen anyone in the QSD with night-vision goggles?

And how about these words?

“We consider our participation in this campaign as a national duty to defend—alongside Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens—the entire Syrian territory.”

It’s not very often that you hear such inclusive language coming from the region.

[I]n the East and North of the country, where the Syrian Kurds in 2013 claimed autonomy, the recent creation of the Syrian Democratic Assembly (SDA), a political arm representing chiefly the Syrian Kurdish YPG and YPJ groups, may suggest that these groups, along with a pluralistic representation of other regional actors, are repositioning themselves to be more palatable in the post-Assad Syria.

The statements from the SDA conference surpassed Riyadh’s [Syrian rebel] conference in producing a document that declared their desire to be part of a democratic, pluralist future Syria made up of all its citizens.

Actually the SDA represents the QSD, which includes Turkmens, Arabs, and Christians. Syria’s population is about 74 percent Sunni Muslim, 10 percent Alawite Muslim, 2 percent Shia Muslim, and 1 percent Ismaili Muslim.

Below is a passage from a Sunni Muslim Website. It isn’t my own belief, since I’m not religious. I’m posting it to help give context to the Syrian civil war.

The Arab Alawis follow Ibn Nusair and that is why their sect is referred to as Nusairia. Many of their beliefs are very blasphemous from Islamic perspective. Their beliefs are probably the farthest away from Islam, compared to other Shia groups.

The following is a summary of their main beliefs of the Arab Alawis:

They believe in re-incarnation: unbelievers (Muslims, Christians, Jews) return as animals, whilst Alawis are re-incarnated into other Alawis and eventually they can reach the state of luminous stars. Faithful Alawis believe they must be transformed or re-born seven times before returning to take a place among the stars, where Ali is the prince. If blameworthy, they are sometimes reborn as Christians or Jews, among whom they remain, until their atonement is complete.

They deny the Resurrection, Hell, and Paradise after death, but rather they regard that people experience Hell or Paradise in the current World.

I’m absolutely certain that in Syria, the majority-Sunni Arab League is fighting the remnants of the Syrian Arab Army, the Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Syrian paramilitary National Defense Forces, the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade, multiple Iraqi Shi’ite militias, the Islamic State, the al-Nusra Front, and other jihadist groups. However, the Arab League has gone out of its way to make its contribution non-sectarian. How do I know that?

Because the Arab special forces are fighting in secret. They’ve given all the non-Sunnis, non-Muslims, and non-Arabs a way forward without being perceived as puppets, lackeys, or serfs. Or as an occupied population.

Avoiding the limelight

In the video above, you saw a man firing his rifle.

The red arrow shows a white van he was trying to hit. I found another video that explains what was going on.

It was a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED). A suicide car bomb.

How do I know that?

Because it was blown up before it got to the dam (red arrow).

Once again the QSD was very careful to not show us a weapon system. My guess is that someone hit the VBIED with a man-portable guided missile.

Here’s another thing. Look at the M16 rifle of the sniper (red arrow).

He’s wrapped most of it in camouflage tape. The pattern is called “multicam.”

I’ve never seen a Kurdish or Arab militia member use camouflage tape on his or her weapon. The American soldier below has a multicam uniform, but you can see that his M240 general-purpose machine gun sticks out like a…machine gun.

Special operators wrap reusable, nonadhesive camouflage tape around their weapons to hide them. The only Arab Special Forces wearing the mulitcam pattern are Jordanian.

I can’t say that the sniper was Jordanian, but there’s no question that these men below—the ones who took the dam—are special operators.

You know how I can tell? They’re advancing in pairs. It’s called the “buddy system.”

See the distance between each pair of operators assaulting the dam? That’s to prevent the entire unit from being wiped out with one artillery round. Those are professional warriors, and I’m certain that they’re Arab.

The way that the Arab League is avoiding all the mistakes that westerners made when trying to bring peace to the Middle East is that the help is being given clandestinely. None of the nations providing special operators will likely ever make it public. That way face is saved, and nobody can sabotage the effort with false accusations of imperialism or sectarian favoritism.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom the United States made the fatal decision to embed reporters with our troops. Author Karl Zinsmeister described how the global press hates the US military, Americans, and President George W. Bush. They were quite open about it. More than once Zinsmeister saw photographers put away their cameras when Iraqis happily greeted American soldiers.

“That’s not the story I’m looking for,” the photographers said.

I admire the Arab League approach: Those acting in bad faith have the door unceremoniously slammed in their faces. The vast majority of the world’s journalists have therefore been told to go pound salt. I hate the notion of extending courtesies to vicious, low-information drunks with agendas. The Arab League is under no illusions about who their enemies are.

Watch this video again.

The nighttime footage has to show an American AC-130A gunship that we took out of storage and gave to the Arab League. We retired all 19 of these aircraft in 1995, but I can account for only five. The AC-130A has two 40mm L/60 Bofors cannons. There’s no other fixed-wing gunship in the world with two medium-caliber guns mounted on the side, but you can clearly hear two cannons firing in the video.

In the daylight portion of the video, a Kurdish MT-LB armored personnel carrier (APC) drives up to the fortification after an air strike.

A five-man fire team dismounts from the rear of the APC and attacks the smoking ruins with rifles and shoulder-fired rockets.

They’re Arab special operators who display great skill and courage. But the Arab League will never confirm that. They see the big picture.

Good for them.