Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sergarr]

Unless you're trying to starve them out, giving aid greatly helps the civies and won't help them that much, unless you're including bullets in your aid package.

As for letting them leave rather than forcing unconditionnal surrender, it's usually because it's much easier to negotiate a deal where they leave, so you don't have to spend as much time hunting them down in a city, killing people.

Yep. It's important not to win your siege and lose the war, especially when public opinion in the appeal to citizenry and real countries is a major part of the war.

Except Assad evidently doesn't care about public opinion very much.

He still does provide aid to some civilians in enemy-held territories, though. He doesn't care about opinion of people who back his enemies, yes, but he still takes care to maintain the semblance of... not legitimacy, but rather, normalcy, to his people:

The government has survived a failed revolution because it provides what the rebels can never do—a consistent wage and the promise of a modicum of governance. The regime deftly understood early on that it was necessary to preserve the façade of normalcy. The fate of Libyan leader Mu’amar al-Qadhafi provides a stark contrast. After Qadhafi lost the eastern half of his country in a matter of weeks in 2011, he severed rebel held areas from regime-held territory. He cut off the mobile telephone networks. He ceased providing government services there. Qadhafi was under attack and he ensured that all Libyans knew this.

But Assad drew from a different playbook. He continued paying government salaries to civil servants in rebel territory. Utilities such as electricity and water were only cut off in the most besieged of territories. And the government tried its hardest to make residents forget a war was raging outside their cities. Assad has certainly starved out his enemies (food shortages have been a way of life in places like Aleppo for years and shipments of emergency rations have even been intercepted in rebel enclaves such as Daraya outside of Damascus) in ways reminiscent of World War II. But Assad has justified it to his supporters and fence sitters as a necessary move to stomp out the foreign jihadists threatening their existence. While his critics in the West scoff at such claims they resonate among a population that looks around the Middle East and only sees chaos when governments are toppled in the name of freedom and democracy.

[Baffler]

Unless you're trying to starve them out, giving aid greatly helps the civies and won't help them that much, unless you're including bullets in your aid package.

As for letting them leave rather than forcing unconditionnal surrender, it's usually because it's much easier to negotiate a deal where they leave, so you don't have to spend as much time hunting them down in a city, killing people.

Yep. It's important not to win your siege and lose the war, especially when public opinion in the appeal to citizenry and real countries is a major part of the war.

Except Assad evidently doesn't care about public opinion very much.

Depends on what sort of public opinion, but yeah.

The rebels at Aleppo did take all of the food and medical supplies for themselves first and rationed the rest of it out to the civilian population, but that isn't super surprising. It's the bullets that matter, and a big part of why the remainder of the pocket fell so quickly is that the rebels were extremely short on ammunition, to the point where the crazier rebel groups were literally attacking the less crazy ones to get more.

And the SAA (and besiegers in general) allowed the defenders safe conduct if they surrender because it's much easier to drive them out in a green bus than clear them out of fortified positions in the city, and if they know they have no way out they'll fight all that much harder.

[Parsely]

Starving the defenders means starving the civilians too, and that's unacceptable.

[smjjames]

Starving the defenders means starving the civilians too, and that's unacceptable.

In modern times at least, but the whole point of a siege is often to simply outlast the enemies food (and possibly water, if it can be choked off) supplies.

[Tack]

You could hope that the besieged military forcefully taking food and water from the civilian population could result in a hostile population?
But I somehow doubt that ever goes anywhere.

[Parsely]

Starving the defenders means starving the civilians too, and that's unacceptable.

In modern times at least, but the whole point of a siege is often to simply outlast the enemies food (and possibly water, if it can be choked off) supplies.

I know what a siege is. If the civilians actually belonged to the defenders, it would be another story entirely, but that's not the case here. Not everyone in that city is friendly with the rebels.

I was under the impression at first that the Russians and Syrians were actually helping these people, but they're not, they're just attacking. Fair enough. That's probably the best way to help these people. Apparently the rebels are also actively preventing people from leaving and going somewhere safer.

This doesn't seem like a situation where you could actually supply these people who are cut off seeing as how apparently everyone who could leave has run away (around 100,000 people), but allow me to explain my position anyway. My stance earlier was that, given a situation where you can either:
A) Starve the enemy, but also starve civilian hostages who don't support them, and in return you win faster.
B) Supply the enemy, but keep civilians they have hostage from starving to death, and you prolong the battle.

I would choose B. The key word for me here is hostage. These are not the enemy's tax payers, they're bystanders. If the civilians are undeniably on the enemy's side, and they're not fleeing when they know combat is about to happen because they can't or don't want to, they don't deserve to be killed or raped when you take over the city, but if they starve as a side effect of winning the battle and not any direct action, then that's as acceptable as things get when it comes to war. That's how I'd prefer they die; only after all reasonable attempt to keep them alive without undermining the conflict too heavily.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the enemy is trying to work the hostage tactic and the Russians are bombing them anyways, and both sides get to look bad. Oh well.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I belive there is actually retarded variation of Katanas. Fat katanas, slim katanas, light katanas, heavy katanas, longer katanas, shorter katanas and whatever, which supposedly made them useful for various tasks, but that might be just modern thing.

The same way that there is absolutely ridiculous variation in weapons in every other country in the world.

The point was that there isin't just a single version of katana that was used for 200000000 years straight with no variation.
I think.

Whoa whoa whoa. 20, 000, 000, 0? 200, 000, 000. Two hundred million years ago. That was the end of the Triassic.

DINOSAUR KATANAAAAAA

[Kot]

Japan is the land of Katanosaurus Keks.

[Parsely]

T-rex wants a really long katana that he can use with his short babby arms.

[Tack]

T-rex wants a really long katana that he can use with his short babby arms.

He'll be looking for a Nodachisaurus.

[Eric Blank]

Tanto teeth

[Loud Whispers]

As an armchair general...
I fail to see the benefits of giving aid(for humane/any reason) when sieging an enemy entrenched with a civilian population.  I am of the opinion that giving the civilians aid also means giving the enemy aid.  They could take the aid directly from the civilians, end up directly getting some of that aid, and/or they simply have less people to provide for.

Using aid to entice your enemy into surrendering is good. There is the issue however of witholding aid from your citizens who are being held hostage by the enemy, how you keep them supplied without the supplies ending up in the hands of your enemy is a difficult dilemma to solve.
I can't really think of one, I suppose the only ethical thing to do is kill the enemy occupation as quickly as possible to minimize the disruption to ordinary life for civilians caught in the crossfire, or else abandon the siege entirely and allow the enemy occupation to consolidate their hold over your territory

[Kot]

Problem appears when your enemy is so deranged that your aid is a sign of weakness for them.
It should be noted that the only way an COIN operation is going to be 100% succesful is literally worse-than-Hitler military police and executions for slightest sign of breaking the law, to the point of literal genocide.

[Sheb]

Problem appears when your enemy is so deranged that your aid is a sign of weakness for them.
It should be noted that the only way an COIN operation is going to be 100% succesful is literally worse-than-Hitler military police and executions for slightest sign of breaking the law, to the point of literal genocide.

Which is why the nazis never had any opposition in the territory they controlled. Oh wait.

But frankly, I don't see the issue with letting enough food through that everyone in the besieged area can eat. It's not like the rebels are regaining HPs when they eat a sandwhich or anything.

[Kot]

Which is why I said worse than Hitler. And, all things considered, they would have finally succeed if not for external help.
I mean, all my crazy mad patriotism and shit, but Warsaw didin't have any real way to continue after Germans burnt it to ground (which was exactly what Russians wanted, because they would have to face the same problem as Germans otherwise). At some point there are only two choices - die or bend over for the invaders, and most people come to the conclusion that survival might be better idea than getting wiped out completly.
And Nazis were quite flawed because they did it because of racist and such reasons, not pure "we want to win" reasons - if they executed people involved in opposing them instead of just some random jews the message would be much more "do not oppose us so we can have peace and law" rather than "do not oppose us so we can murder you all anyway".