Russians Abandoning Khmeimim AFB

It appears Russia will NOT remain in Syria.

I wish these guys pelting the Russian convoy leaving Khmeimim had a better size of rock, but perhaps those are armored windows, and the volleyball sized stones are what are needed.

Suchomimus assumes these men in uniform, pelting the Russians, are rebels. I don’t think that is the case. Those could be Alawite Syrian troops that were loyal to Assad, who are contemplating their fate as the Russians abandon them. If they were rebels in that location they’d have arranged sterner measures than technology we’ve had for at least the last two million years.

Like the Sunni minority that ruled over majority Shia Iraq, the Alawites are entering the Find Out phase. They’re a step ahead of the Sunnis twenty years ago - a permissive neighbor to the south, a long coastline, and a regional power to the north that would prefer to do some damage to the Kurds.

Twenty years ago I had a housemate from Egypt who was a trained chef. His college classmates would gather to break the Ramadan fast, so I met people from all along the arc that runs from Morocco to northeast Syria. One of them was a ruddy, Germanic looking fellow, the first Kurd I’d spoken to since I was in college twenty years before that. One thing he said has stuck with me.

Your country is empty, you killed all the natives when you took it. Things are different for us, the Mideast, it’s FULL.

Terrible things happen to minority groups when whatever empire is losing (or taking) territory along the Levant’s west coast makes any substantial move. You can see some of this in The Syrian Conflict Spreads, which I wrote back in mid-2013, right before the rise of ISIS. I don’t have the stomach to even look at the summaries, but if you’re uncertain of what this means, a search for Yazidis and “war brides” will provide boundless nightmare fuel.