Sam Heller

3. Worth considering how different or misaligned U.S. and partners' interests and objectives really were, and how unreliable America's control proved to be over the partners it had empowered.

2. ... Arab T&E units that were, fairly quickly, scooped up by another state actor, one that yoked them to its own objectives and might even end up deploying them against America's Kurdish partners. (Or – if, yikes, something goes awry – might clash with U.S. troops themselves.)

1. The Syrian experience ought to prompt some introspection in Washington and at the Pentagon about the complications of relying on non-state partner forces – in this case, both a Kurdish-led force outside or even opposed to the region's existing state architecture, and these...https://twitter.com/AbuJamajem/status/1061839288671834113 …

6. "... standard contrary to the flag of the Prophet, peace be upon him, in color or shape, then that doesn't come from the jurisprudence of hadith. The Prophet – peace be upon him – had numerous flags, of differing shapes, and banners shouldn't be limited to a single color."

5. But Abu Malik actually argues against imposing a single flag, which he warns is divisive; whatever Syrian factions' differing flags, he sees their basis as fighting for God, so long as they don't state otherwise. "Whoever thinks that the 'banner' is every flag, rag or...

3. @abazeid89 warns: "HTS's continued presence, without a solution, means the entrenchment of its 'civilian' and economic network as a local reality, which is no less of a danger for Idlib's residents."

2. Syrian analyst @abazeid89 of HTS's "imposition of a hybrid banner" is "a continuation of "Jabhat al-Nusrah's project, since its inception, of war on Syria's revolution and the distortion of the revolution's image and symbols."https://twitter.com/abazeid89/status/1061710318559264768 …

Noo, it's actually more ironic than that – Firqat al-Hamzah was a participant in the U.S. Department of Defense's "Train & Equip" program to fight *ISIS*, not Assad.https://twitter.com/joshua_landis/status/1061736763448836099 …

2. Abu Malek: “... Today, after all the mujahideen have gathered in the liberated north, and we’ve approached the period of testing, some have begun to anticipate moving to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, looking for tamkin or tankil (bringing pain to the enemy), so they claim...

Farghali, cont.: “... But it is an opportunity to bring glad tidings to them and those like them of what will offend and enrage them: The Hayah’s word is one, on Sochi and otherwise, with the blessing of God Almighty.”

5. Tahrir al-Sham's ostentatiously wide release of its "internal communique," the lack of visual evidence from the raid, and the nil response from Russia after the alleged killing of seven Russian troops all suggest this may be another episode that's less than meets the eye.

4. SANA seems to report repelling the attempted raid ("around Tal Malah, on the Zillin and Zallaqiyyat checkpoints axis") as an afterthought in this report: https://www.sana.sy/?p=842251