By Mousumi Roy
The US war on Daesh (ISIS) started in 2014. Daesh’s territory is smaller than it was and continues to contract. The number of civilian casualties has been quite limited so the non-combatants on the ground are not being driven to join Daesh out of hopes of revenge against US bombers. Some Daesh officers were killed in Mosul by a bomb planted by unhappy constituents. You have never seen a US offensive like this one before. Of course the US has developed some excellent smart munitions that also have small blast radii so it is possible to engage in surgical air strikes. The pamphlets were dropped to warn drivers to stay away from their trucks that were then strafed by A-10s and C-130 gunship versions.
Daesh is popular in Saudi Arabia. That is one reason why the King fears Daesh. Al-Baghdadi has created himself in the image of al-Wahhab and as such is popular in Saudi Arabia. No doubt that money flows from wealthy privileged people in the Gulf states to Daesh. The US has urged the region to police itself. If I recall there was a prominent Kuwaiti who was moving Gulf money to Daesh.
Daesh sells refined oil products through distribution channels in Turkey. Daesh also sells refined oil products to the people who live in the Caliphate. The Caliphate carries on trade with its neighbours. People drive in and out of Daesh territory on a daily basis both into other parts of Syria and Iraq, and into Turkey. The Caliphate is not economically isolated. Its residents still generate income and still have money to buy gasoline. There are major checkpoints that people must pass through but traffic still goes in and out. Daesh trades gasoline for vegetables with rival rebel groups in Syria. Why the US was reluctant to destroy Daesh’s gasoline/diesel distribution capacity. It hurt the local population and it hurt the anti-Assad rebels. Prices have gone up dramatically and truck drivers are now refusing to transport Daesh oil for fear of being killed…
The new joint force comprising Arab rebels and YPG have liberated 200 villages in two weeks killing hundreds of Daesh fighters. The main issue is not whether or not a small force could capture Raqqa. It is how to hold onto it given that Daesh would resort to guerilla warfare involving suicide bombers. Al-Nusra is threatening the Syrian Kurds. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish forces to be enemies of Turkey. The US sees the Syrian Kurds as allies. All the players in the region agree that al-Nusra are part of al-Qaeda and; therefore, terrorists who cannot be supported. So where does al-Nusra get its funding and weapons? And why is al-Nusra attacking the YPG?
President Erdogan of Turkey is demanding that the US stop supporting the Syrian Kurds. Recently the US airdropped many tons of supplies to the Syrian Kurds but to placate Erdogan the US is calling the group the Democratic Forces of Syria. It is composed of the Syrian Kurdish forces known as the YPG and The Syrian Arab Coalition which is a small group of moderate Syrian Arab rebels most of whom come from the Raqqa area.
Daesh forces fight against the other Syrian rebels as well as fighting regime forces. US airstrikes have made it possible for the Syrian Kurds (and their new Arab allies) to advance on Raqqa. Daesh lost as many as 2,000 fighters trying to hold onto Kobani. Since being driven out of Kobani Daesh has had to pull more of its fighters back towards Raqqa to oppose the YPG advance. This reduces the number of Daesh fighters available to fight the other anti-Assad rebels. The rebels that Russia is helping Assad attack has pulled fighters out of areas where they were fighting Daesh. US support of the Kurds is making it possible for the other rebels to focus on Assad’s forces. Daesh is moving fighters and resources to Mosul to escape the current bombing of Raqqa. While France is using smart munitions to limit collateral damage the Russians are dropping a large mass of dumb munitions. Raqqa may be experiencing some serious damage. Russia has deployed 25 heavy bombers and many cruise missiles.
We know what kind of aircraft the Russians are using which tells us what kind of targets are being sought. We also know that the Russians are using dumb munitions because 1- they are cheap and 2- the Russians do not have many smart munitions. We also know what modifications are needed to the Russian aircraft in order to use smart munitions. Most of the Russian aircraft at Latakia do not have these modifications.
The US is not going to give MANPADS to the rebels. Up to this point the US has not declared war on Syria. US airstrikes on Syrian territory have Assad’s tacit approval. That is why the US is only bombing Daesh. Assad approves of the bombing of Daesh. If other rebels end up with MANPADS they could be used against Russian aircraft piloted by Russians. Obama has made it clear that he will not tolerate US allies supplying Syrian rebels with MANPADS. Saudi Arabia is abiding by that demand.
The US could carry out expensive drone surveillance of places it thinks the Russians have bombed but in most cases is that those places are battlefields that will have sustained damage from bombs, artillery, artillery rockets, mortars, tank rounds, and TOW missiles. How much of that could be attributed to Russian bombs? Since we know or believe that the Russians are just bombing rebel positions in support of Assad’s offensive what is there to be learned?
The US air strikes were not very effective until the day that Turkey allowed the Iraqi Kurds to reinforce the Syrian Kurds in Kobani. The Iraqi Kurds brought US target acquisition capabilities with them. From that point on US air strikes were very effective.The fact is that the US has targeted refineries and other fixed installations associated with oil production in Syria and Iraq. It could do so using high flying fighters because the fixed installations can be identified by satellites and GPS coordinates provided to the pilots. It makes sense that the US would have targeted the refineries but not the trucks based on the way it acquires targets.
The A-10 has been out of production for a long time. There are no spare parts being made anymore. The JSF was to take over the role of close air support but it is too expensive and it is running late. So a handful of A-10s have been gathered together to provide more close air support to troops on the ground. Any spare parts for operating A-10s have to come from scrapped A-10s. The JSF is a stealth aircraft. Russian MANPADS are even more lethal than stingers and they are guided by radar. The US presumed that non-stealthy close air support aircraft like the A-10 are obsolete. They are operating at considerable risk.
The CIA was tasked with trying to determine how many MANPADS are floating around Syria. The US has refused to supply any of the rebels with stingers even though that is what they have been demanding for some time. Daesh only has stingers because they captured them from the Iraqi Army in Mosul. That puts the A-10s at risk. The C-130 gunshsips are at even greater risk. They are just Hercules transports with huge guns. One variant fires a 105 mm shell. Stingers have an effective altitude of 14,000 feet. A-10s and C-130a operate at a few hundred to a few thousand feet.
Both the pentagon and the white house have been very cautious because they know that to succeed they need the support of the people in the regions occupied by Daesh. They are very much influenced by the experience of the Iraq war. Upwards of 75% of aircraft sent to attack a position return with all their ordnance because of a risk of civilian casualties.
We cannot compare Hamas, Gaza, & the IDF with Daesh, Syria, and the US air force. Daesh executes a lot of people on a regular basis but I would be surprised if they had executed 170,000. Most of its victims are muslims. The people fighting Daesh on the ground are Kurds, Iraqi soldiers, Iraqi Shiite militia members, rival Arab rebel groups in Syria and soldiers of the Syrian Armed Forces.
First Obama created ISIS out of the cesspool he left in Libya, reducing Africa’s wealthiest nation to rubble, because Gaddafi was too independent of Washington’s dictates. Then he lied about Assad because Assad was also too independent. Obama helped fund, train, arm and support ISIS terrorist brigades and their affiliates – along with his coalition of terror, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Qatar, Emirates – even as he publicly pretended to be fighting them in Iraq and Syria. It wasn’t until Russia entered Syria and wasted ISIS, that Obama and his fellow terrorist sponsors flew into a panic.
Russia is ensuring a safe haven for Assad….2016 is going to be a bad year for Russians. Forced austerity will lead to a loss of public services.
Mousumi Roy is a columnist based in Muscat
24 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org