🧵Geolocations of ALL sites that the Indian Army has claimed to have hit in Pakistan and Kashmir. 1. Masjid Syedna Bilal/Hazrat Bilal
34.385846°N 73.456974°E
It appears to have been a direct hit, according to after-strike ground photos. google.com/maps/place/34%…
2. Reported training camp in Gulpur, Kotli
33.402328°N 73.876957°E
No post-strike imagery yet. google.com/maps/place/33%…
3. Masjid Ahl-e-Hadis in Barnala, Bhimber.
32.867802°N 74.256469°E
Quadcopter-dropped munition appear to miss the target building and strike a courtyard around 50m away. google.com/maps/place/32%…
4. Masjid Abbas in Kotli
33.508495°N 73.906416°E
The strike-vision provided is too distant to determine the exact impact, but no reason to think it hit anything but the target. google.com/maps/place/33%…
5. Terakatlan Health Clinic, Sialkot.
32.360346°N 75.124897°E
This location appears to be a primary health clinic. Some nationalist bloggers are claiming it was used to 'house terrorists before crossing the border'.
Idk about that, it was a health clinic. google.com/maps/place/32%…
6. Kotli Butta site (health clinic?) 32.617123°N 74.505696°E
Google calls this a Basic Health Unit site, but with no pictures or reviews. It is not listed on HDX's health-sites database or OSM. So I'm really not sure, some sources called it a 'seminary'. google.com/maps/place/32%…
7. Masjid wa Markaz Taiba
31.838263°N 74.259836°E
The perimeter as mapped includes a hospital and several schools and colleges.
The strike imagery is distant but appears to show a pretty much a hit on the Masjid, perhaps slightly to the north-west. google.com/maps/place/31%…
8. Masjid Subhan Allah, Bahawalpur
31.838263°N 74.259836°E
Post-strike photos that appear real on their face seem to show the site nearly completely destroyed, including one of the domes. google.com/maps/place/29%…
This is the one site that has not been presented as either a slide or a handout by the IAF, so its exact location is impossible to pinpoint; it appears to be around here.
Can't say much else. google.com/maps/place/34%…
Overall, here are all the sites on a map.
And here are all the sites on an interactive Google Earth project.
I will add to this link if any new data becomes available too.earth.google.com/earth/d/1FDsRt…
Anyone is welcome to use these coordinates and points. Media, please credit Nathan Ruser/ASPI if you visualise the exact points for your reporting (and don't forget Airbus via Google Earth while you're at it)
The training camp in Gulpur, Kotli has been expanded in recent years. The image on the left is from May 2021, vs. Oct 2023.
'@Maxar has released post-strike satellite imagery of Masjid Subhan Allah and Masjid wa Markaz Taiba (h/t @Shayan86), which allows us to assess the approximate impact points for these sites.
These details have also been added to the Google Earth project above.
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There's a horrendous amount of violence happening over the past few days in Syria, and a tremendous amount of uncertainty in numbers, details & actors. Yet it's astounding just how few people (including mainstream journalists) are engaging with these incidents in any good faith.
So many people are visibly giddy at the idea that the new Syrian government is committing atrocities. And as a result, absolutely misrepresenting the violence that is occurring. It's pulling in the pro-SDF crowd (biji!biji!) the Assadist crowd (counter-revolution!), the pro-Israel crowd (only the IDF can protect minorities!), the idiot Westerners (Assad was the thin blue line!) and even mainstream journalism (finally some spice to report).
And as a result, its the most counter-productive information environment I've seen around Syria since the chemical attack information ops.
It's imperative we find the details of these atrocities, who is involved and hold them accountable. It's crucial this is prevented from becoming a wider sectarian conflict.
And it's wild that most reporting and commentary is acting as a barrier to this, not a help.
🧵Look towards the light.
As Rebel forces in Syria advanced across Syria & never stopped a key question was why the Regime evaporated. Syria by night provides some clues on how the Regime's social contract collapsed.
Read my analysis here
& read onaspistrategist.org.au/just-look-at-t…
There are three pillars to why the Regime collapsed so suddenly and drastically: 1. Complete lack of foreign firepower and air support 2. Increased professionalism and good governance in Opposition territory 3. Economic stagnation and the collapse of Assad's social contract.
I'm sure lots will be written on that first pillar, @azelin recently wrote a detailed and helpful article on the 2nd (warontherocks.com/2024/12/the-pa…), and @E_of_Justice's thread here is helpful too x.com/E_of_Justice/s…
I think the rest of the world just has to realise the US we thought we all knew probably just doesn't exist and hasn't for a while. We need to shift our assumptions and look at the US in the same way we look at India.
Harris didn't lose this race, and post mortems are useless. America made an informed and considered choice and picked the man they did. There's probably not much a reasonable democratic campaign could've done to change that. America saw Trump. And they liked him.
This also isn't a slight on India, it's a remarkable (and deeply flawed) country that we work with productively and well, it's just an entirely different ballgame (and sense of exceptionalism), and honestly the lens we will need to look at the States through imo.
🧵On May 17, fire swept through Rohingya neighbourhoods in Buthidaung.
Satellites show what burnt and when, and my new investigation reveals an arson campaign against 50-60 villages & demonstates who carried it out.
Through April and May, arson attacks burnt around 900 acres and over 10,000 homes across Buthidaung township in the most concerning and dangerous bout of sectarian and communal violence since the 2017 pogrom that expelled Rohingyas from much of northern Arakan state.
As flames rose above Buthidaung town on the night of May 17th, the activist community and eyewitnesses pointed the finger at the Arakan Army, an ultra-nationalist Ethnic Resistance Organisation rapidly capturing that part of Burma. Something the AA viciously denied.
🧵A very brief OSINT methods thread to share how I found the location of a Burmese junta camp that was captured by the resistance today, it's a method I've used a lot for more obscure unnamed places that would be nearly impossible to find otherwise.
Today news came out from a reputable local media source of a junta camp that was captured in Southern Myanmar, normally news in Burma is reported with the name of a nearby village or at least the township. But not here, only that it was in the KNLA's 4th Brigade 11th Battalion.
The KNLA's 4th Brigade operates in Tanintharyi Region, and google searching for info about the 11th battalion shows it is mainly active in Bokpyin township
But of course, finding one tower with a loose lead of maybe a township is going to be tricky.bnionline.net/en/news/killin…
I've started reading Our Enemies Will Vanish, a masterful book on the Ukraine War by @yarotrof. Highly recommend it. It contains heaps of tidbits and insights that even someone who followed the invasion closely (i'll count myself) had no idea of.
I'll share some threaded here.
@yarotrof (get your hands on the book if you possible can, the tidbits here are just the tip of the iceberg, truly recommend reading the whole thing).
Firstly, this account of a meeting between Bill Burns and Putin months before the invasion where Putin cited US' impotence post Afghanistan
@yarotrof And that Ukraine's military preparations on the heel of US intel warnings were so secret that even Washington had no idea about them (to prevent info going from GUR > DC > Kyiv > Russian Fifth Column)