ISIS On a Winning Stretch?

According to the latest UN Security Council report foreign jihadists are flocking into the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham caliphate at an astounding rate. Some fifteen thousand foreign jihadists have joined the battle to continue creating the caliphate's expanding empire fulfilling the long promised ascendancy of fundamental Islamism, creating for the vast international ummah a true version of Islam as it was and as it is meant to be, pure and undefiled by modernity.

Smoke rises above the Syrian city of Kobani after an airstrike by the US led coalition, seen from a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, near the Turkey-Syria border Sunday, Nov. 2, 2014.

Among them are those arriving from 80 countries where Muslims have set down roots through migration, becoming citizens of non-Muslim countries. Even Muslim citizens from countries like the Maldives, Chile, China, Russia and Norway have been appearing to fight the righteous, sacramental battle of jihad. Imperial Islam is flexing its multitudinous muscles. Since the inspirational creation of Islamic State and the declaration of its caliphate the flow has increased markedly.

The report states that since 2010 the numbers of foreign jihadists "are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 -- and are growing." Inspiring pride in the bosoms of fundamentalist Islamists across the Middle East and North Africa, and fear and tension in the hearts of all those who feel themselves vulnerable to attacks sooner or later through the inspiring auspices of ISIS -- and they too are legion.

The U.S. Treasury Department estimates that ISIS is earning a staggering $1-million daily through the sale of oil on the markets eager to use that energy source and just incidentally support the mission of ISIS. Ransom payments so far this year from governments willing to buy back the lives of their unfortunate citizens abducted by ISIS have contributed an additional $20-million. And then there are wealthy Muslim supporters, near and far, who do their share in funding ISIS activities.

Although their presence, and their attraction for recruits is of huge concern to the countries abutting Iraq and Syria in the full knowledge that as ISIS expands with one conquest after another enabling and encouraging even greater exploitation of support and enablement, the Islamist jihadist advance will eventually address their very own as-yet-untouched existence for the purpose of extending their territory and expelling and slaughtering the current regimes in the process.

Yes, the U.S.-led coalition is busy with airstrikes against ISIS positions, but aside from taking bulldozers, trucks and fighters out of commission, those strikes have succeeded in paltry little to persuade ISIS it is in danger of eventual obliteration. ISIS faces a few setbacks, it reorganizes and reformulates, and presses on. No airstrikes will take place where ISIS is established within crowded civilian areas; only where they're vulnerable to attack, and they have the option to make themselves less vulnerable.

A running joke among Kurds in the threatened areas was that it was difficult for them to assess whether the Americans weren't fighting while busy pretending to fight; or on the other hand, fighting while under the pretense of not doing so. The Iraqi army is in poor shape, and made so because of the government dismissing the Sunni military leaders well trained by their U.S. mentors. The military capability was undermined, left in the hands of Shiite appointees clearly incompetent to their task.

The U.S. focused on bombing ISIS in north-eastern Syria, while the Assad regime has increased its air strikes on the Sunni Syrian rebels, relieved that other auspices are focusing on ISIS. So there it is; the United States, which once threatened to depose the Syrian regime in response to its bombing and strafing of its own Sunni civilian population with chemical agents, is unwillingly being of assistance to the regime as it demolishes its challengers.

Should the U.S.-led coalition meet with success in their determination to deter and defeat ISIS, the greatest benefit will accrue to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. What a miserable prospect.

Labels: Conflict, Islamic State, Syria, United States

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, November 05, 2014