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The Islamic State Prepares For A Big Attack – Baghdad Or Aleppo?
A month ago I wrote that the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) is now the only game in town when it comes to insurgents fighting against the Syrian (and now also Iraqi) state:
In a few month the Islamic Front will no longer exist. It will vanish like that phantasy of a Free Syrian Army. Parts of it will swear allegiance to the Islamic State, parts will give up fighting and parts will change over to the government side. Then the real war against ISIS will start.
The "moderate rebels" Washington has been searching for for years are a unicorn. Whomever the U.S. gave weapons to and trained in Jordan and Turkey is now part of ISIS.
The Islamic State consolidates itself (recommended) in west Iraq and across the east and north of Syria:
The frontiers of the new Caliphate declared by Isis on 29 June are expanding by the day and now cover an area larger than Great Britain and inhabited by at least six million people, a population larger than that of Denmark, Finland or Ireland. In a few weeks of fighting in Syria Isis has established itself as the dominant force in the Syrian opposition, …
By now IS generates enough money from oil sales and blackmail to support itself. It has taken an immense haul of weapons from four Iraqi divisions and now also from the Syrian Brigade 93 which it defeated a week ago:
In addition to 5+ 122mm D-30 howitzers, the IS captured approx. 20 T-55 tanks & 1 ZSU-23-4 Shilka SPAAG
Note: The haul in Iraq was much, much bigger than this one.
The Islamic State has enough experienced soldiers to handle these weapons. How good its logistics are run though is an open questions. Those may eventually turn out to be its weak point.
The Islamic State also gained in numbers. Even the ardent promoter of the non-existent Syrian Free Army Hassan Hassan now admits that all these folks are under IS control. International forces so far aligned with Al-Qaeda are moving over to IS. Tribes in the newly captured areas pledge allegiance to the Islamic State and add to its forces.
One military expert says:
ISIL has now progressed from local victories to a regional strategy. They have moved from what is referred to in Counterinsurgency warfare as Phase II to Phase III operations, or transformation from fixed covert insurgency to an overt war of mobility. This is when a terrorist group grows strong enough to come out of the shadows to transform into a mobile “liberation army”.
Colonel Pat Lang remarks:
Today I am told that DoD has decided that the IS force is the most capable non-Israeli army in the ME. pl
IS has lots of light and heavy weapons, it has money, it is led by experienced senior officers from Saddam's old army and it has a large force of indoctrinated foot soldiers. What is it going to do with these capabilities?
In his speech declaring the Caliphate Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi promised to do something big. He needs a big event to consolidate his position. The former Saddam officers aligned with IS want to capture Baghdad and regain their old status. The current attack against the Kurdish Erbil is not the big one but just a sideshow. Baghdadi wants to eliminate it as a U.S. position that could otherwise be used to attack his back. As Pat Land sees it:
When they are done in the north they will return to the problem of eliminating the present Iraqi government. I doubt if they plan to occupy the Shia south of Iraq but the destruction of what remains of Iraqi government central authority is certainly possible.
If they succeed in doing that much, Jordan, Lebanon and the Gulf will beckon.
But over the last weeks the Islamic State also consolidated its position in Syria and connected the two battlefields into one.
Elijah J Magnier, a Middle East analyst and journalist with excellent sources, suggests a different target for the big attack as storyfied here. Excerpts:
Hundreds of tanks & sophisticated anti-air artillery gained from #Iraq & #Syria are gathering for a spectacular attack Baghdadi promised.
…
2my mind, #IS is pulling z attention on #Iraq 2hit harder in #Syria, knowingly that a) #SAA & #Assad would attract less interntionl help
Magnier suggests that the Islamic State will run a spectacular attack on Aleppo and will probably capture the city. He is right to believe that – should the Islamic State use its full force – the weakened Syrian army will have little chance to hold this important city. The result would be a huge bloodbath.
While the U.S. would probably try to stop an attack on Baghdad, though impossible with a few pinprick airstrikes, it is unlikely that any international help would come to counter an attack on Aleppo. Patrick Cockburn concurs:
Isis may well advance on Aleppo in preference to Baghdad: it’s a softer target and one less likely to provoke international intervention. This will leave the West and its regional allies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – with a quandary: their official policy is to get rid of Assad, but Isis is now the second strongest military force in Syria; if he falls, it’s in a good position to fill the vacuum. Like the Shia leaders in Baghdad, the US and its allies have responded to the rise of Isis by descending into fantasy.
In my view the Islamic State is at its core a genocidal and extremely dangerous force that should be defeated by all means as soon as possible. There are now believable claims that it just killed or buried alive some 500 Yazidi. This isn't its first or last massacre it committed. The Islamic State has thereby very different dimensions than the laughing stock Al-Qaeda threat we were told to fear over the last decades. If it has more time to gain additional resources it will become much more difficult to defeat.
Unfortunately, because the threat of the old Al-Qaeda was over-hyped, this new force has little to fear from the "west". Obama promised to only protect Erbil for its oil and for its value as an intelligence base. A few air attacks from a far away carrier can not hold a city against a determined capable force. Erbil may soon fall.
Obama withholds any further weapons or help to the government of Iraq because he wants to blackmail it into some phantasy of "national unity government":
The ongoing strikes, which began Friday, address “immediate” concerns of protecting Americans, besieged minorities and critical infrastructure in the north, Obama said. But comprehensive aid to push back advances by the Sunni Muslim extremists through much of the country over the past two months will require a new Iraqi government, he said.
For the first time I can think of I -in this case- agree with the neocon warmonger John McCain:
Mr. McCain said he would favor sending combat air controllers into Iraq to help identify targets for airstrikes. Heavy military equipment should be rushed into Erbil, the Kurdish capital, the senator said. And he said he believed the airstrikes must extend into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria.
Airstrikes can not win wars and can not take ground away from the Islamic State. Local forces will have to do that. But airstrikes can destroy its heavy weapons and the ammunition depots it captured. The Syrian air-force is too small to achieve this. An Iraqi air-force does not exists. Turkey and Jordan have some capabilities but are either unofficially allied with IS or fear its retribution. The U.S. could run such an air campaign. It would take the U.S. air-force supported by special operation groups on the ground only a few weeks to reduce the Islamic State to an infantry force incapable of larger geographic actions.
But Obama and the people informing him still believe that the Islamic State, which they partially helped to grow, is some cuddly homegrown Al-Qaeda that can be used to further this or that geopolitical phantasy. They are wrong to believe this.
ISIS has been able to ‘take over’ so much territory because of a void.
In places where the ‘State’, the ‘Governement’, the built-up institutions (justice for ex.), and long standing economic ties (stretching to local trade), functioning infrastructure, OK relations between neighboring ppls (countries, towns, territories) are broken or utterly destroyed, it is easy to sweep in and declare supremacy, domination, control.
ISIS uses targetted killing, intimidation, attempted or real genocide, and a ‘superior’, all-encompassing ideology – under an ostensibly religious banner. Imho that is total fakery, but who am I. Coupled with the ‘modernity’ of you-tube, gift shops, managing money, accepted mafia-type moves, some arms to intimidate, blackmail, extortion, etc. Kinda a trad colonialism model with modern frills.
It takes on board the clash of civilization scenario for its own benefit.
That says nothing about its military strength or plans. Except, perhaps, that it will prefer isolated / easy / marginal / targets and possibly calculated losses and failures, or double-pronged efforts, the struggle is not just guns on the ground, determined total dominance (which can’t be achieved) but ideology, adherence, social moves, etc.
So, Aleppo over Bagdhad.
Bagdhad though is enormous, not one solid entity, already split up into quarters, impossible to judge from outside.
Imagine the trucks with loudspeakers at home, not an ice-cream truck ding-trill-trill-ding-joy, but a blaring hooting siren.
We are here to help! We will restore order! We will subjugate enemies, the despicable infidels! etc.
Infidels not religiously defined but presented as potential threats to the ppl… and the PTB.
(I agree with Sorrentine about Cockburn. Trivia: Counterpunch banned Orwell, as an agreed-on policy, from their 100 best books in Eng. list.)
Posted by: Noirette | Aug 11 2014 17:29 utc | 146
The US has been protecting the Kurdish region for a quarter of a century- that was one of the justifications
of the No Fly zone maintained after the first Gulf War. So there is nothing new about it.
And they have been protecting the Kurds from an Iraqi government which, historically, has been dominated by sunni
muslims ready, when asked, as they were by Reagan, to fight the Iranians. Subsidised by the Saudis, who didn’t always
pay their bills, Saddam’s army attacked Iran on behalf of the United States, the Gulf-Saudi axis and, yes, Israel
which was very happy not only to see Iran attacked but Iraq, equally pinned down, carrying out the attack.
It fitted perfectly into the divide and rule scenarios that suited the imperialists.
Now ISIS is playing the role that Saddam played then and, very possibly, in the future, like Saddam
it may not do exactly what US imperialism wants it to do. In the meantime, however it is recreating
the shia/sunni internecine conflict of the Iraq Iran war. And, while it is doing so, the Kurds,
protected by the US and assisted also by, that US creature, Israel will further consolidate the
de facto state that they have been building since the late 1980s.
Everything that is taking place has been well telegraphed: the project of breaking up Iraq into
two parts, Kurdistan and the area to be fought over by the sunni and shia Arabs, is an old one.
Sometimes it is described as being a plan to create three states, and this may be the end result
but it is just as likely that the sunnis, when they reach their limits, will concentrate on creating
a new state including much of Syria and Jordan, while the shia will slip into to a federation with Iran.
The US is definitely behind ISIS and its policies have led to its arming and its empowerment.
One notable fact to take into account is that there is already at least one state in the region
which is ruled in the name of wild eyed wahhabi fanatics preaching death to heretics and, in effect,
all non-wahhabis. And that is Saudi Arabia which has never had much of a problem in maintaining
friendly relations with the US. Those who see ISIS as being very different and new, a political
riddle motivated by irrationality, might want to consider that. As to the other components of ISIS’s
forces, the former baathist military men, and the sunni tribal leaders, there is no reason to suppose
that they will have any problem in working within the wahhabi structure which, essentially, demands of
the population nothing more than lip service and submission to monarchical authority and religious norms.
And gives local chiefs complete power over their fiefdoms.
To see ISIS as an Israeli creation is to misunderstand the nature of Israel’s very tenuous position in the
region. Its power, notwithstanding its nuclear claims, is entirely dependent upon US support which, in turn,
depends upon Israel’s continued willingness to maintain itself in an attitude of perpetual war with its
neighbours as the Empire’s primary garrison and attack dog. Those who argue that the region is continually
at war, despite US wishes and because of Israeli (biblically based) expansionist dreams, are dead wrong.
Israel is at war not in spite of US wishes for peace (surely the emptiness of the Peace Process is by now
understood?) but because the US fears peace and, to maintain its interests (those of its corporations),
employs Israel to keep the region boiling, with strife between countries and communities. Israel is there
to prevent Arab Nationalism from taking a state form. The US has taken over the role that Britain and France
played from Sykes Picot to Israel’s attack on Suez in 1956.
It is a matter of enormous interest that so many people, in the face common sense and evidence, persist in the
belief that the tiny fraction of the population which practises Judaism or identifies with its culture
not only dominates the United States but virtually rules the world. It is a world view which is extremely convenient
for the imperialists who are from all religions and none and depend on false consciousness as man does on oxygen.
Posted by: bevin | Aug 11 2014 18:40 utc | 154
I don’t think I’d call it genuflection, I’d call it one half of the US ruling class congratulating the other.
And that’s, to me, how it must be perceived. In class terms.
And so it must be said that older view taken by the left needs some serious updating. The idea that people like Chomsky hold to – and
no one here will accuse me of not appreciating Chomsky – and bevin has forwarded, is due a new look. Because it is no longer enough,
especially with the investigations of Meashimer and Walt and the rise of the neocons, to say that Israel is the US attack dog, and Israel
is simply doing our bidding. That may have been true in the 1980s, when it was feeding arms into the Central American genocides when
we could not do so, legally, but this is no longer the case. Israel has tremendous strategic power. And even if we speak of its massive
nuclear arsenal, its position in global economics and banking, not the least of these strategic assets is its ability to influence affairs in the United States.
So we must ask how this happens. How it is so deep, and seemingly irreversable. And so I turn back to class terms.
The problem of Israeli power is the problem of the anti-democratic nature of the US, and the control of its policies in all respects by the upper classes.
And I see that Jews in the US have taken a very substantial position in the US ruling class, but managed, quite deftly, to keep out of
the way of the US centered interests of the “native” sector of that ruling class. Even as a small group in numbers, they
play a huge role in the top “1%”. And some of this congratulation – I have no doubt – is a psychological reaction to the anti-semitism
of the parents of the current ruling class. The explosion of growth in the US in the post war period was big enough for all, clearly.
And when the Jewish-Americans sidled into the ruling class, there was no objection. But as American prosperity has declined,
questions are beginning to arise.
This issue has split the left, certainly. And many Jews who were active during the anti-Vietnam movements in the 1960 turned to
identitly politics and, eventually, to complete rejection of their leftist internationalism in favor of support of Israel. John Stockwell,
famous American dissident whose moral objections to the CIA caused him to quit at the top of his career, notes that he saw this
occur at the time of the Gulf War. Perhaps no coincidence that it coincided with the ignoble fall of the Soviet Union, the birthplace and
spiritual home which beckoned many of these so-called “red-diaper” babies.
You have to consider that two things happened to the current generation of the ruling class: the split in the US over Vietnam,
compared with the seeming “triumph” of Israel over the Arabs in the ’67 war (and it was seen that way in this country, as I understand
there was hardly any support for “Palestine” before 1982). And you have to consider the rise of the Jewish population of immigrants
to the absolute pinnacle (though in a compatible position) of US ruling power in the post war period. And the massive funds injected into
Jewish organizations in the 1970s-1990s, described succincly in Finklestein’s “The Holocaust Industry”, is also an important key to this.
So, that’s my take. The old view that Israel is the mere cats paw of the US – though once correct – no longer holds and must be reexamined.
And with it, the fracture of the left. That said, the alternate view posited by others (not just JSorrentine), although vital to me coming to reflect
on this position, in some ways goes too far. It is not that Israel holds some dark power over the US, a power that, if ejected would “save” the US and return
the US to some peaceful power that the horrors of Vietnam and Indonesia surely show it never was. It is the simple fact that as part of globalization,
the ruling class has come together closer than ever.
And in that social closeness now displayed, the “native” elements of the ruling class praise the Israelis as their fellow conquerers.
They envy many of their traits, and, like any social scene, fear each others power and operate from a sense of mutual respect and understanding.
So when the US wants to assault Guatemala but can’t send arms, Israel steps in and a “good turn” is done, so the US feels it can do the work of Israel by invading Iraq so long as
it gets the oil revenue and give it a flat tax.
Its quite a grand relationship for the ruling class. For the rest of us? Not so much.
Our task is still the same. Fight the ruling class. And as support for Israel becomes a defining feature of the ruling class, and as the ruling class
uses builds up that nation at the expense of those around it, so naturally does our attack on the ruling class become one on Israel.
I think I mentioned this before. It isn’t enough to simply be anti-Israel. We should be anti-Israel because Israel is anti-democracy, anti-soverignty,
and anti-social. Is it some accident that Israel is now as much defined by capitalism and globalism and right wing fanatacism as the Good ole’ USA?
And we should be pro-Palestinian because they represent what is happening to us all – left to rot at the feet of the “privileged”
gated communities, hemmed in by police and by razor wire, pushed to the brink of hopelessness because we are simply unwanted and unneeded,
by all of those that “count”.
Posted by: guest77 | Aug 11 2014 23:45 utc | 173
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