generalspeaking

Syria's Uncivil War, Iraq's Misfortune

Syrian civil defence workers rescue man from rubble on Friday after a Syrian government helicopter dropped a barrel bomb on the Sakhour eastern neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo. Dozens have been killed in 24 hours of clashes in northern Syria. Photo: Zein Al-Rifai/AFP/Getty Images

They're called 'Western-backed rebels', the Syrian Free Army, but the backing is certainly of questionable value. They have implored the West, particularly the United States, to provide them with advanced weaponry for years and to no avail. Giving the advantage to the Islamists who flooded into Syria from Libya, Iraq, Jordan, Somalia and Saudi Arabia among other terror-breeding places.

Although Sunni Syrians had no wish to be associated with Islamists they first saw an advantage in their superior arms and battle experience.

When, ultimately, Sunni Syrian rebels, aghast at the atrocities committed by the Islamists attempted to separate themselves, and envisaged what would inevitably happen to Syria if they ever dominated, conflict broke out between the two. Leading to a situation where the Syrian regime battled the Syrian Free Army and so did the Islamists. A little reminiscent of what occurred when al-Qaeda entered Iraq and Iraqi Sunnis abhorred their vicious, indiscriminate slaughter.

How things have a penchant for returning to their sources. Al-Qaeda-associated Iraqi militias swarmed into Syria and began the advance of their Islamist agenda toward creating an Islamist State, in the process battling other Islamists militias who didn't quite share their level of brutality nor their agenda, creating a schism between the two al-Qaeda affiliated militias with al Nusra getting the nod from the al-Qaeda leader, and ISIS getting the boot.

The ISIS-turned Islamic State fanatics, having turned back to Iraq, succeeding in capturing Mosul and other key Iraqi cities then appeared prepared to march into Baghdad but now seem to have refocused and returned to Syria. Where they have succeeded in a series of attacks using the very military equipment they took possession of when Iraqi Army fighters left in a panic, abandoning their bases to the ISIS terrorists.

With their capture of Division 17 base east of Raqqa, they are now in possession of even greater stores of weapons.

Raqqa province has long been a stronghold for Isis militants, here seen with a captured tank

Well provisioned in both weapons from fleeing Iraqi soldiers and treasury from looting the Mosul bank of its half-billion in funds, with the declaration of its caliphate the Islamic State, the jihadist group par excellence now appeals to fighters from different areas of the jihadi universe including al Nusra and they're on a steamroller conquest of Syria, Iraq and then who-knows-where.

Jordan, for instance, where the air force shot down an "aerial target" which happened to be a Syrian drone. Most of the eastern province of Deir al Zour is now in the hands of IS, as well as the Syrian regime's oil fields. With the oil fields now in their hands in Iraq, they're well set up as rulers of the unfortunate people of both Syria and Iraq where they now hold sway, but have no idea of what constitutes the reins of government.

And the jihadi credentials of the Islamic State 'fighters' propensity for atrocities are once again consolidated with this latest venture, capturing senior Syrian officers, decapitating the head of Raqqa intelligence, Brigadier-General Sameer Aslan, sticking his head on a pole and circulating the photo on social media.

Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Iraq, ISIS, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 28, 2014