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Syria Creates a Russian Safe Zone, Civilian Danger Zones
(Washington Times) Shaun Waterman - Syria's military may be hiding its most valuable assets inside a Russian naval base, betting that U.S. missiles will avoid it. "There is some evidence that the Syrian military is treating the Russian base at Tartus as a safe zone," said Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. "The Assad regime is moving tracked vehicles into Tartus." Jeffrey White, a defense intelligence analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has watched the Syrian military for many years, said he also would expect Syria to use more conventional denial and deception tactics, "like hiding artillery pieces under camouflage or in buildings, using decoys, fake targets [and] fake damage....They can make it a lot harder to hit what you want to hit and to work out afterwards whether you did or not. They have a repertoire of tricks they can use. The question is, is our intelligence good enough to see through them."