The Syrian Crisis
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Kshatriya87
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How did arms bought by U.S. end up in the hands of ISIS?
Originally published December 14, 2017 at 7:14 pm
A PG-9 missile modified to fit a Model 2 recoilless launcher system. It was produced in Romania in 2016, exported to the United States and documented in Mosul in 2017, according to Conflict Armament Research.
The report could become a vital tool for understanding the terror group’s deadly industrial proficiency.
By
Alex Horto
The Washington Post
The Islamic State (ISIS) group may stand alone in its brutality in Iraq and Syria, where it orchestrated civilian massacres and suicide bombings and salted people’s homes with thousands of improvised explosives. But a new report, three years in the making, describes the group as shrewd manufacturing and logistical planners who moved weapons, munitions and bombmaking materials throughout the war zone on a scale unprecedented for a terror organization.
Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a weapons-tracking group based in Britain, documented more than 40,000 firearms and munitions across Iraq and Syria by dispatching field investigators in an arc stretching from the northern Syrian city of Kobane to south of Baghdad, Iraq’s capital — a rough tracing of the group’s path to conquer wide swaths of territory and establish its caliphate.
The report, which the researchers call the most comprehensive to date about how the group obtained and fielded its weapons, was published Thursday and could become a vital tool for understanding the terror group’s deadly industrial proficiency. Here are a few takeaways:
• ISIS used rockets supplied by the United States — possibly in violation of agreements with weapons makers.
As The Washington Post reported in July, the Trump administration ended a secretive CIA operation to arm moderate Syrian rebels battling President Bashar Assad. Few details on what arms they received are known publicly, but researchers found numerous rockets in Iraq that appear to have been purchased by the United States and supplied to Syrian groups.
In one instance, PG-9 73mm rockets, sold by Romanian arms manufacturers to the U.S. Army in 2013 and 2014, were found sprinkled across both battlefields. Containers with matching lot numbers were found in eastern Syria and recovered from an ISIS convoy in Fallujah, the report says. The rockets, adapted by the group to use in their launchers, gave fighters a potent weapon against U.S.-supplied tanks and armored Humvees.
Records obtained by CAR from Romanian officials include agreements indicating the United States would not re-export those and other weapons, part of an effort to curb weapons trafficking. Saudi Arabia was another source of unauthorized weapons transfers to Syria, the report says.
CAR’s report says the U.S. government did not respond to requests to trace this and other weapons documented by its researchers.
• It took only weeks for ISIS to get its hands on U.S. antitank missiles.
On Dec. 12, 2015, Bulgaria exported antitank missile-launcher tubes to the U.S. Army through an Indiana-based company called Kiesler Police Supply. Fifty-nine days later, Iraqi federal police captured the remains of one such weapon after a battle in Ramadi, Iraq, the report says. In another instance, a U.S.-backed rebel group in Syria was photographed using a launcher tube with an identical lot number, indicating it probably came from the same batch, the report says.
The episode illustrates how quickly U.S.-supplied arms can be turned against its allies, reshape a battlefield and pose danger to the small teams of U.S. Special Operations troops who routinely travel in vehicles that aren’t made to withstand antitank weapons.
• Industrial-scale operations and experimentation were key to spread death and fear.
CAR investigators noted materials such as aluminum paste and other precursor chemicals from Turkey used to make charges for mortars and rockets were found in Tikrit, Mosul, Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq. That signifies a robust logistical operation for delivering raw materials to ISIS researchers and engineers manning captured industrial machines and churning out components for munitions, the report says.
“It confirms my theory that this is the industrial revolution of terrorism,” Damien Spleeters, head of CAR operations in Iraq and Syria, recently told Wired. “And for that they need raw material in industrial quantities.” Extremists also modified some shoulder-fired rockets using raw materials to reduce the severity of heat from rocket launches, which is dangerous in confined urban spaces, Wired reported.
Videos and images of U.S.-made small arms captured by ISIS, particularly M16 and M4 service rifles, are featured prominently in propaganda videos to tout defeat over groups supplied and trained by U.S. personnel.
While those weapons appear to be diverted to senior commanders as war trophies, CAR’s documentation concluded there was not a big influx of U.S.-made rifles on the battlefield. Only 3 percent of weapons and 13 percent of the ammunition documented by CAR researchers were NATO-friendly calibers. Virtually all other weapons and ammunition came from China, Russia and Eastern European nations.
• Iran was responsible for flooding Iraq with rockets during anti-ISIS operations.
Bulgaria, Iran and Romania produced the majority of newer 73mm rockets recovered from ISIS, the report says.
Yet the injection of new Iranian antitank rockets is a subtle measure of how much influence Tehran sought at the height of operations against ISIS, its ideological opponent. Nearly all Iranian rockets recovered from the Islamic State in Iraq were produced after 2014, with 59 percent manufactured in 2015 alone, the report says, flowing west during Iraq’s most unstable period during the conflict.
The presence of such weapons may point to at least some ISIS victories and the capture of equipment belonging to Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which include militias supplied and trained by Iranian military advisers. Iranian-backed groups were also used by Assad in Syria to bolster his hollowed-out army.
Originally published December 14, 2017 at 7:14 pm
A PG-9 missile modified to fit a Model 2 recoilless launcher system. It was produced in Romania in 2016, exported to the United States and documented in Mosul in 2017, according to Conflict Armament Research.
The report could become a vital tool for understanding the terror group’s deadly industrial proficiency.
By
Alex Horto
The Washington Post
The Islamic State (ISIS) group may stand alone in its brutality in Iraq and Syria, where it orchestrated civilian massacres and suicide bombings and salted people’s homes with thousands of improvised explosives. But a new report, three years in the making, describes the group as shrewd manufacturing and logistical planners who moved weapons, munitions and bombmaking materials throughout the war zone on a scale unprecedented for a terror organization.
Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a weapons-tracking group based in Britain, documented more than 40,000 firearms and munitions across Iraq and Syria by dispatching field investigators in an arc stretching from the northern Syrian city of Kobane to south of Baghdad, Iraq’s capital — a rough tracing of the group’s path to conquer wide swaths of territory and establish its caliphate.
The report, which the researchers call the most comprehensive to date about how the group obtained and fielded its weapons, was published Thursday and could become a vital tool for understanding the terror group’s deadly industrial proficiency. Here are a few takeaways:
• ISIS used rockets supplied by the United States — possibly in violation of agreements with weapons makers.
As The Washington Post reported in July, the Trump administration ended a secretive CIA operation to arm moderate Syrian rebels battling President Bashar Assad. Few details on what arms they received are known publicly, but researchers found numerous rockets in Iraq that appear to have been purchased by the United States and supplied to Syrian groups.
In one instance, PG-9 73mm rockets, sold by Romanian arms manufacturers to the U.S. Army in 2013 and 2014, were found sprinkled across both battlefields. Containers with matching lot numbers were found in eastern Syria and recovered from an ISIS convoy in Fallujah, the report says. The rockets, adapted by the group to use in their launchers, gave fighters a potent weapon against U.S.-supplied tanks and armored Humvees.
Records obtained by CAR from Romanian officials include agreements indicating the United States would not re-export those and other weapons, part of an effort to curb weapons trafficking. Saudi Arabia was another source of unauthorized weapons transfers to Syria, the report says.
CAR’s report says the U.S. government did not respond to requests to trace this and other weapons documented by its researchers.
• It took only weeks for ISIS to get its hands on U.S. antitank missiles.
On Dec. 12, 2015, Bulgaria exported antitank missile-launcher tubes to the U.S. Army through an Indiana-based company called Kiesler Police Supply. Fifty-nine days later, Iraqi federal police captured the remains of one such weapon after a battle in Ramadi, Iraq, the report says. In another instance, a U.S.-backed rebel group in Syria was photographed using a launcher tube with an identical lot number, indicating it probably came from the same batch, the report says.
The episode illustrates how quickly U.S.-supplied arms can be turned against its allies, reshape a battlefield and pose danger to the small teams of U.S. Special Operations troops who routinely travel in vehicles that aren’t made to withstand antitank weapons.
• Industrial-scale operations and experimentation were key to spread death and fear.
CAR investigators noted materials such as aluminum paste and other precursor chemicals from Turkey used to make charges for mortars and rockets were found in Tikrit, Mosul, Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq. That signifies a robust logistical operation for delivering raw materials to ISIS researchers and engineers manning captured industrial machines and churning out components for munitions, the report says.
“It confirms my theory that this is the industrial revolution of terrorism,” Damien Spleeters, head of CAR operations in Iraq and Syria, recently told Wired. “And for that they need raw material in industrial quantities.” Extremists also modified some shoulder-fired rockets using raw materials to reduce the severity of heat from rocket launches, which is dangerous in confined urban spaces, Wired reported.
Videos and images of U.S.-made small arms captured by ISIS, particularly M16 and M4 service rifles, are featured prominently in propaganda videos to tout defeat over groups supplied and trained by U.S. personnel.
While those weapons appear to be diverted to senior commanders as war trophies, CAR’s documentation concluded there was not a big influx of U.S.-made rifles on the battlefield. Only 3 percent of weapons and 13 percent of the ammunition documented by CAR researchers were NATO-friendly calibers. Virtually all other weapons and ammunition came from China, Russia and Eastern European nations.
• Iran was responsible for flooding Iraq with rockets during anti-ISIS operations.
Bulgaria, Iran and Romania produced the majority of newer 73mm rockets recovered from ISIS, the report says.
Yet the injection of new Iranian antitank rockets is a subtle measure of how much influence Tehran sought at the height of operations against ISIS, its ideological opponent. Nearly all Iranian rockets recovered from the Islamic State in Iraq were produced after 2014, with 59 percent manufactured in 2015 alone, the report says, flowing west during Iraq’s most unstable period during the conflict.
The presence of such weapons may point to at least some ISIS victories and the capture of equipment belonging to Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which include militias supplied and trained by Iranian military advisers. Iranian-backed groups were also used by Assad in Syria to bolster his hollowed-out army.
Kshatriya87
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ISIS: What Happened To All The Foreign Fighters?
A few hundred are believed to still be fighting as IS struggles to survive, having lost most of its territory to campaigns by Western-backed Syrian and Iraqi coalition armies.
World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: December 16, 2017 10:01 IST
WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES: An estimated 40,000 people traveled from around the world to take up arms for the ISIS as it occupied territory in Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014.
A few hundred are believed to still be fighting as IS struggles to survive, having lost most of its territory to campaigns by Western-backed Syrian and Iraqi coalition armies.
But what happened to the rest?
Many thousands were certainly killed in the intense fighting, but US experts believe many have survived, posing a formidable threat going ahead.
"The issue is: how many have died? How many are still there and willing to fight? How many have gone elsewhere to fight?" said Seth Jones, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corporation.
"How many have given up? I don't think we have a good answer."
International counter-terror groups are putting huge efforts into answering those questions, working hard to name, count and track IS foreign fighters.
In France, officials say, around 1,700 people went to Iraq and Syria since 2013 to join IS. Of those, 400 to 450 have been killed, and 250 returned to France.
Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on December 8 that about 500 are still in the Iraq-Syria theater, and for them it is now very hard to return to France.
But that leaves another 500 whose whereabouts are unknown, many of them with the skills of war, wielding weapons and making bombs.
'One-way ticket'
Terrorism specialist Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University estimated during a conference Wednesday that "thousands" have escaped the war zone.
"Today, some of them are most likely in the Balkans, lying low for the time being, waiting for the opportunity to infiltrate themselves to the rest of Europe," he said.
Some have traveled to other jihadist fronts, according to Thomas Sanderson, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Transnational Threats Project.
For example, he said, at least 80 IS fighters from Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have joined since May the IS-allied Abu Sayyaf insurgents battling government forces in the southern Philippines.
Local people in the northern Afghanistan province of Jowzjan have told AFP that French-speaking IS veterans -- from France or northern African countries -- have recently set up camp there.
And they also have the option of other conflict zones in northern Africa, like Libya, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere where jihadist groups akin to IS are conducting violent insurgencies.
The defeat of IS on the battlefield in Syria in Iraq did not close off escape routes. IS fighters were able to blend in with civilian refugees or bribe their way to sneak into Turkey.
Many don't have much choice but to continue to fight: they never had a plan to return to their home countries, where they face imprisonment in most cases, according to Jones.
"For many, it was a one-way trip. They wanted to live in the caliphate, permanently. So we don't see a major move back."
A few hundred are believed to still be fighting as IS struggles to survive, having lost most of its territory to campaigns by Western-backed Syrian and Iraqi coalition armies.
World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: December 16, 2017 10:01 IST
WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES: An estimated 40,000 people traveled from around the world to take up arms for the ISIS as it occupied territory in Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014.
A few hundred are believed to still be fighting as IS struggles to survive, having lost most of its territory to campaigns by Western-backed Syrian and Iraqi coalition armies.
But what happened to the rest?
Many thousands were certainly killed in the intense fighting, but US experts believe many have survived, posing a formidable threat going ahead.
"The issue is: how many have died? How many are still there and willing to fight? How many have gone elsewhere to fight?" said Seth Jones, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corporation.
"How many have given up? I don't think we have a good answer."
International counter-terror groups are putting huge efforts into answering those questions, working hard to name, count and track IS foreign fighters.
In France, officials say, around 1,700 people went to Iraq and Syria since 2013 to join IS. Of those, 400 to 450 have been killed, and 250 returned to France.
Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on December 8 that about 500 are still in the Iraq-Syria theater, and for them it is now very hard to return to France.
But that leaves another 500 whose whereabouts are unknown, many of them with the skills of war, wielding weapons and making bombs.
'One-way ticket'
Terrorism specialist Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University estimated during a conference Wednesday that "thousands" have escaped the war zone.
"Today, some of them are most likely in the Balkans, lying low for the time being, waiting for the opportunity to infiltrate themselves to the rest of Europe," he said.
Some have traveled to other jihadist fronts, according to Thomas Sanderson, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Transnational Threats Project.
For example, he said, at least 80 IS fighters from Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have joined since May the IS-allied Abu Sayyaf insurgents battling government forces in the southern Philippines.
Local people in the northern Afghanistan province of Jowzjan have told AFP that French-speaking IS veterans -- from France or northern African countries -- have recently set up camp there.
And they also have the option of other conflict zones in northern Africa, like Libya, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere where jihadist groups akin to IS are conducting violent insurgencies.
The defeat of IS on the battlefield in Syria in Iraq did not close off escape routes. IS fighters were able to blend in with civilian refugees or bribe their way to sneak into Turkey.
Many don't have much choice but to continue to fight: they never had a plan to return to their home countries, where they face imprisonment in most cases, according to Jones.
"For many, it was a one-way trip. They wanted to live in the caliphate, permanently. So we don't see a major move back."
bhramos
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there was a rumor that US airlift foreign fighters from Syria & Iraq to Afghan.........
bhramos
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actually Chinese are there in Syria for killing Chinese terrorists from Ughirs in Turkestan party and FSA gangs...
Kshatriya87
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Why afghanistan I wonder. And surely the russians must have noticed. Why haven't they said anything?
bhramos
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place close to Russian territories... always Chechen and Dagesthan terrorists have links their... to counter this move, Russia needs Putin for next 6 years... Russia wont shoot ISIS terrorists in US planes...
bhramos
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The Syrian army and allied forces advance and took control of the villages of Dirm El Sayal and Ubaid and the highlands west of Khanzir in the southeastern countryside of Aleppo after clashes with terrorists of the Nusra Front.
SAA is advancing in the Idlib from the northern front of Hama. In the video, soldiers celebrate the liberation of the city of Tall Khinzir. The forces of the Tigers direct operations.
SAA is advancing in the Idlib from the northern front of Hama. In the video, soldiers celebrate the liberation of the city of Tall Khinzir. The forces of the Tigers direct operations.
bhramos
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Russian aviation destroyed the Chechen leader of terrorists in Syria
on December 17, 2017, at once two influential figures among Syrian jihadists, connected with the Terr. Al-Qaeda (banned in Russia) Abdullah Muhajsini and Abdul Razzak al-Mahdi reported the death of the well-known Chechen leader Salahuddin Shishani in the Syrian province of Khama.
According to reports of Islamist leaders, Salahuddin Shishani was killed in the fighting between the alliance "Hayat Tahrir ash Sham" (HST) and the Syrian army in the north of the province of Ham. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) clarified that the terrorist was liquidated by a targeted Russian plane attack.
on December 17, 2017, at once two influential figures among Syrian jihadists, connected with the Terr. Al-Qaeda (banned in Russia) Abdullah Muhajsini and Abdul Razzak al-Mahdi reported the death of the well-known Chechen leader Salahuddin Shishani in the Syrian province of Khama.
According to reports of Islamist leaders, Salahuddin Shishani was killed in the fighting between the alliance "Hayat Tahrir ash Sham" (HST) and the Syrian army in the north of the province of Ham. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) clarified that the terrorist was liquidated by a targeted Russian plane attack.
pmaitra
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The pundits were wrong about Assad and the Islamic State. As usual, they're not willing to admit it
By MAX ABRAHMS AND JOHN GLASER
DEC 10, 2017 | 4:00 AM
Syrian President Bashar Assad gives a speech at the parliament building in Damascus, Syria on June 7. (Associated Press via Syrian official news agency SANA )
The Islamic State is a shadow of its former self. In 2014, the extremist group seemed to make substantial inroads in achieving its stated goal of a caliphate. It boasted tens of thousands of fighters and territorial control over an area roughly the size of South Korea. By almost every metric, Islamic State has collapsed in its Syria stronghold, as well as in Iraq. As a former foreign fighter recently admitted, "It's over: there is no more Daesh left," using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The rollback of Islamic State must come as a shock to the chorus of journalists and analysts who spent years insisting that such progress would never happen without toppling the regime of Bashar Assad — which is, of course, still standing. A cavalcade of opinion makers long averred that Islamic State would thrive in Syria so long as Assad ruled because the Syrian Arab Army was part of the same disease.
John Bolton, former United Nations ambassador under George W. Bush, insisted in the New York Times that "defeating the Islamic State" is "neither feasible nor desirable" if Assad remains in power. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham asserted that "defeating Islamic State also requires defeating Bashar Assad." Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution prescribed a policy of "building a new Syrian opposition army capable of defeating both President Bashar al-Assad and the more militant Islamists." Similarly, Max Boot, a contributing writer to this newspaper, argued that vanquishing Islamic State was futile unless the U.S. also moved to depose the "Alawite regime in Damascus." Like other regime-change salesmen, he pitched a no-fly zone across the country to facilitate airstrikes against the Assad government, while boosting aid to the so-called moderate rebels.
Prominent Syria analysts also claimed that Assad supported, even sponsored Islamic State. CNN's Michael Weiss pushed the line that Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin would not fight Islamic State and that Syria and Russia were the group's "unacknowledged air force." His co-author, Hassan Hassan, contended that the Syrian regime must go because "Assad has never fought [Islamic State] before."
For a while, everywhere one looked, the media was peddling the same narrative. The Daily Beast described Islamic State fighters as "Assad's henchmen." The New York Times promoted the idea that "Assad's forces" have been "aiding" Islamic State by "not only avoiding" the group "but actively seeking to bolster their position." Time parroted the pro-regime-change line that "Bashar Assad won't fight" Islamic State.
But these popular arguments were, to put it mildly, empirically challenged.
The case for regime change in Damascus was reminiscent of the one cooked up for Baghdad in 2003: Interventionists played on American fears by pretending that the strongmen were in direct cahoots with Salafi jihadists (the ultra-conservative movement within Sunni Islam). The evidence of Assad sponsoring Islamic State, however, was about as strong as for Saddam Hussein sponsoring Al Qaeda.
As the Syria expert Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi noted in February 2014, Islamic State "has a record of fighting the regime on multiple fronts, including the Sheikh Said area of Aleppo province, Kwiris military airbase (where an offensive is ongoing under the leadership of muhajireen battalion Suqur al-Izz, in coordination with the Green Battalion, [Islamic State] and Jabhat al-Nusra), Nubl and Zahara, Brigade 17 airbase in Raqqa province, Tabqa military airport, Qalamoun, Sayyida Zainab, Sakhna in Homs desert, the Qamishli area, and Latakia province. Besides these locations, one should also remember [Islamic State's] leading role in the capture of Mannagh airbase."
The notion that Assad "won't fight" Islamic State was always wrong. The notion that "defeating Islamic State also requires defeating Bashar Assad" was, likewise, always wrong. By now it should be obvious that the Syrian Arab Army has played a role in degrading Islamic State in Syria — not alone, of course, but with Russian and Iranian partners, not to mention the impressive U.S.-led coalition. In marked contrast to pundit expectations, the group's demise was inversely related to Assad's power. Islamic State's fortunes decreased as his influence in the country increased.
Equally contrary to analyst predictions, the group imploded right after external support for the "moderate" rebels dried up. The weakening of the rebels was a major setback for Islamic State because Assad could finally focus his firepower on the group. Fewer weapon shipments into the theater, moreover, meant fewer arms fell into the hands of Salafi jihadists.
How strange, then, that we haven't heard many pundits acknowledge their mistakes; they're not itching to atone for having almost forced another regime-change mission based on discredited analysis.
The now-defunct conventional wisdom was not only stubbornly anti-empirical, but unmoored from the political science literature. With few exceptions, international relations scholars seemed content to stand back and watch think tank pundits do the day-to-day Syria analysis while ignoring the red flags dotting the research landscape.
Some of the best political science research over the past couple of decades finds that militants are less likely to emerge in response to political grievances than from propitious conditions for them to organize. For Islamic State, the "opportunity model" of terrorism was always a better fit than the "grievance model." After all, this is a group that set up shop in the desert, far away from the Syrian military; preyed on soft targets like the Yazidis who never oppressed the Sunni population; and planted affiliates in countries known not for their anti-Sunni government, but the lack of a functioning one.
As in Iraq a decade earlier, regime change in Syria would have created the ultimate power vacuum for Islamic State to flourish.
Moreover, the notion that pumping arms and fighters into Syria would mitigate the unrest is actually the opposite of what study after study has established. The conflict literature makes clearthat external support for the opposition tends to exacerbate and extend civil wars, which usually peter out not through power-sharing agreements among fighting equals, but when one side — typically, the incumbent — achieves dominance.
The Realist paradigm reminds us that the U.S. need not share the same ideology of a nasty international actor to countenance working with him against a mutual foe. With its sensitivity to overspending and blowback, Realism also emphasizes the dangers of militarily picking foreign governments around the world.
Although the Islamic State's caliphate is dead, Assad's war on terrorists in Syria is very much alive. Let's hope future analysis of this conflict avoids the kind of anti-empirical ideological advocacy that helped give rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq and then Islamic State in the first place.
Max Abrahms is a professor of political science at Northeastern University and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. John Glaser is director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
By MAX ABRAHMS AND JOHN GLASER
DEC 10, 2017 | 4:00 AM
Syrian President Bashar Assad gives a speech at the parliament building in Damascus, Syria on June 7. (Associated Press via Syrian official news agency SANA )
The Islamic State is a shadow of its former self. In 2014, the extremist group seemed to make substantial inroads in achieving its stated goal of a caliphate. It boasted tens of thousands of fighters and territorial control over an area roughly the size of South Korea. By almost every metric, Islamic State has collapsed in its Syria stronghold, as well as in Iraq. As a former foreign fighter recently admitted, "It's over: there is no more Daesh left," using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The rollback of Islamic State must come as a shock to the chorus of journalists and analysts who spent years insisting that such progress would never happen without toppling the regime of Bashar Assad — which is, of course, still standing. A cavalcade of opinion makers long averred that Islamic State would thrive in Syria so long as Assad ruled because the Syrian Arab Army was part of the same disease.
John Bolton, former United Nations ambassador under George W. Bush, insisted in the New York Times that "defeating the Islamic State" is "neither feasible nor desirable" if Assad remains in power. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham asserted that "defeating Islamic State also requires defeating Bashar Assad." Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution prescribed a policy of "building a new Syrian opposition army capable of defeating both President Bashar al-Assad and the more militant Islamists." Similarly, Max Boot, a contributing writer to this newspaper, argued that vanquishing Islamic State was futile unless the U.S. also moved to depose the "Alawite regime in Damascus." Like other regime-change salesmen, he pitched a no-fly zone across the country to facilitate airstrikes against the Assad government, while boosting aid to the so-called moderate rebels.
For Islamic State, the “opportunity model” of terrorism was always a better fit than the “grievance model.”
Prominent Syria analysts also claimed that Assad supported, even sponsored Islamic State. CNN's Michael Weiss pushed the line that Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin would not fight Islamic State and that Syria and Russia were the group's "unacknowledged air force." His co-author, Hassan Hassan, contended that the Syrian regime must go because "Assad has never fought [Islamic State] before."
For a while, everywhere one looked, the media was peddling the same narrative. The Daily Beast described Islamic State fighters as "Assad's henchmen." The New York Times promoted the idea that "Assad's forces" have been "aiding" Islamic State by "not only avoiding" the group "but actively seeking to bolster their position." Time parroted the pro-regime-change line that "Bashar Assad won't fight" Islamic State.
But these popular arguments were, to put it mildly, empirically challenged.
The case for regime change in Damascus was reminiscent of the one cooked up for Baghdad in 2003: Interventionists played on American fears by pretending that the strongmen were in direct cahoots with Salafi jihadists (the ultra-conservative movement within Sunni Islam). The evidence of Assad sponsoring Islamic State, however, was about as strong as for Saddam Hussein sponsoring Al Qaeda.
As the Syria expert Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi noted in February 2014, Islamic State "has a record of fighting the regime on multiple fronts, including the Sheikh Said area of Aleppo province, Kwiris military airbase (where an offensive is ongoing under the leadership of muhajireen battalion Suqur al-Izz, in coordination with the Green Battalion, [Islamic State] and Jabhat al-Nusra), Nubl and Zahara, Brigade 17 airbase in Raqqa province, Tabqa military airport, Qalamoun, Sayyida Zainab, Sakhna in Homs desert, the Qamishli area, and Latakia province. Besides these locations, one should also remember [Islamic State's] leading role in the capture of Mannagh airbase."
The notion that Assad "won't fight" Islamic State was always wrong. The notion that "defeating Islamic State also requires defeating Bashar Assad" was, likewise, always wrong. By now it should be obvious that the Syrian Arab Army has played a role in degrading Islamic State in Syria — not alone, of course, but with Russian and Iranian partners, not to mention the impressive U.S.-led coalition. In marked contrast to pundit expectations, the group's demise was inversely related to Assad's power. Islamic State's fortunes decreased as his influence in the country increased.
Equally contrary to analyst predictions, the group imploded right after external support for the "moderate" rebels dried up. The weakening of the rebels was a major setback for Islamic State because Assad could finally focus his firepower on the group. Fewer weapon shipments into the theater, moreover, meant fewer arms fell into the hands of Salafi jihadists.
How strange, then, that we haven't heard many pundits acknowledge their mistakes; they're not itching to atone for having almost forced another regime-change mission based on discredited analysis.
The now-defunct conventional wisdom was not only stubbornly anti-empirical, but unmoored from the political science literature. With few exceptions, international relations scholars seemed content to stand back and watch think tank pundits do the day-to-day Syria analysis while ignoring the red flags dotting the research landscape.
Some of the best political science research over the past couple of decades finds that militants are less likely to emerge in response to political grievances than from propitious conditions for them to organize. For Islamic State, the "opportunity model" of terrorism was always a better fit than the "grievance model." After all, this is a group that set up shop in the desert, far away from the Syrian military; preyed on soft targets like the Yazidis who never oppressed the Sunni population; and planted affiliates in countries known not for their anti-Sunni government, but the lack of a functioning one.
As in Iraq a decade earlier, regime change in Syria would have created the ultimate power vacuum for Islamic State to flourish.
Moreover, the notion that pumping arms and fighters into Syria would mitigate the unrest is actually the opposite of what study after study has established. The conflict literature makes clearthat external support for the opposition tends to exacerbate and extend civil wars, which usually peter out not through power-sharing agreements among fighting equals, but when one side — typically, the incumbent — achieves dominance.
The Realist paradigm reminds us that the U.S. need not share the same ideology of a nasty international actor to countenance working with him against a mutual foe. With its sensitivity to overspending and blowback, Realism also emphasizes the dangers of militarily picking foreign governments around the world.
Although the Islamic State's caliphate is dead, Assad's war on terrorists in Syria is very much alive. Let's hope future analysis of this conflict avoids the kind of anti-empirical ideological advocacy that helped give rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq and then Islamic State in the first place.
Max Abrahms is a professor of political science at Northeastern University and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. John Glaser is director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
pmaitra
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SAAF attacked a group of militants.
The "Jebhat an Nusra" militants, fleeing from Rasm al-Siyal, were caught in an accident (1:30 sec) to the north of the village of Ramla with their accomplices, who probably went there with reinforcements. And how not to get, if still attacking from the sky ?.
The "Jebhat an Nusra" militants, fleeing from Rasm al-Siyal, were caught in an accident (1:30 sec) to the north of the village of Ramla with their accomplices, who probably went there with reinforcements. And how not to get, if still attacking from the sky ?.
