Hello, Prestige Heads, and welcome to American Prestige. I'm Danny Bessner, here as always with my friend and comrade, Derek Davidson.

And we needed to give you an update on the Syria situation, even though it is Thanksgiving weekend.

And I've called Derek out of, I don't know,

weekend retirement, but here we are.

Derek, let us know what, first of all, what happened?

So this started on Wednesday,

I believe Wednesday evening, maybe a few hours earlier than that, but

the, essentially, the rebel elements in northwestern Syria, and I'm talking specifically

about Hayat Tahrir Hasham, the former Jabhatan Nusra, which had ties to al-Qaeda that no longer proclaims such ties, at least not openly, and which HTS controls most of or a significant portion of Northwestern Syria's Idlib province,

joined by elements of the Syrian National Army,

which is basically a Turkish proxy group with a number of different factions of various shapes and sizes,

some jihadists, some Islamists, some Syrian nationalist.

It's got all kinds of options for you, I guess. But they're very heavily dependent on support from Turkey.

Those two groups launched a joint offensive, and I'm still kind of processing all this, so bear with me, but launched a joint offensive, and I'm still kind of processing all this, so bear with me,

but launched a joint offensive in Western Aleppo province that took initially, I think,

21 villages in that region. Now, this was the first time the rebels had made any kind of

meaningful territorial advance in northwestern

Syria since 2020 when the Turkish and Russian governments negotiated a ceasefire by proxy

effectively in that area. So that in and of itself was eye-opening, but it was in the context of several days of intensified,

reports of intensifying violence, Russian air strikes, Syrian government air strikes, artillery strikes,

going all the way back to really early October, you can find this stuff.

The UN was warning about an intensification of violence all over Syria in early October, you can find this stuff. The UN was warning about an intensification

...