Let's start with the news from the front. For the first time since the May 2015 retreat, the Syrian army has returned only 2500 meters from the Palmyra ruins. Reinforcements for 18 just rolled ina armored division, the offensive to the east will restart on a large scale with the support of the Liwa Suqour al-Sahra (the paramilitaries of the Falcons of the desert) and the National Defense Forces (trained by Iran). Military sources confirm that Russian aircraft continue to hammer the tankers that from the area, full of oil, are shuttling with Raqqa.
In the north the offensive to clean up Aleppo continues, where among other things the water supply has returned after almost three months. Within a month 50 are the villages freed by the troops of Damascus, now at the gates of the Governorate of Raqqa. The YPG Kurds meanwhile continue to secure the border with Turkey, of which by now only the 10% would be in the hands of Islamist groups.
Since September, the Islamic State has lost 20% of the controlled territory. Since the Russian air support began, the balance sheet of the Caliphate on the battlefields is in red, with withdrawing and escaping from all fronts.
Nevertheless, as we have been pointing out for weeks, ISIS still shows good vitality both on the "administrative" and on the military level.
The reasons for this ability, despite the fact that the whole world makes war on paper, are essentially three:
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First of all, as we have been writing for months, the supply of men and materials from abroad is proceeding undisturbed. Since in 2011 someone decided to distribute the weapons of Gaddafi's former arsenals to the so-called Syrian "moderate rebels", the influx has continued unabated in two ways: through the Turkish-Syrian border still controlled by the "rebels" and the Iraqi desert west of Ramadi, in the hands of the Islamic State and close to the Saudi border. The Syrian-Jordanian border holds, but it is clear that as long as the territorial continuity of the Caliphate between Iraq and Syria and between Syria and Turkey is not interrupted, the war will not end. Our assessment is purely logistical. It is elementary to assume that a simple political order would end the game with the Islamic State within a month.
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A second factor of great help to terrorists is the "humanitarian aspect" of war. Cities occupied by ISIS automatically become hostage to militiamen, slowing down air raids and government clean-ups. This is especially true for large urban centers, such as the metropolitan area south of Damascus and the suburbs of “Greater Aleppo”. Humanitarian organizations in Syria, on whose good faith there is much to be said, minimize this fact, hurrying vice versa to underline every slingshot shot by loyalist forces. Millions of people in Syria today are in fact human shields of Islamic fundamentalists. Nobody talks about it.
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Last but not least is the preparation of the Caliphate militiamen, often veterans with great experience. In addition to the foreign fighters lent by others Jihad (the Chechens for example), we refer in particular to the Iraqi fighters, the result of the invasion of the 2003. Among the many errors committed in the Iraq campaign (in addition to the campaign itself ...) the dissolution of the Iraqi Armed Forces, the police and especially the party must be highlighted Baath, backbone of the administration of Saddam Hussein. The power in Baghdad, in a tribal-patriotic-socialist climate, had ruled for a quarter of a century on the Sunni supremacy of the Tikrit clan, in a country with a Shiite majority. The conflict between the regime Ba'athist and the two other main souls of the country, Kurds and Shiite Arabs, have been creeping throughout Saddam's parable. The invasion of the 2003 broke the balance triggering a general settlement of accounts.
With the necessary differences, in Syria for years things have gone in a specular way. The heart of power Ba'athist he has always been Shiite-alauita with a delicate play of political weight between ethnic and confessional minorities.
The Iraqi squad generated the unification of the inter-Islamic and inter-Arab conflict: the Lebanese of Hezbollah and the Iranians arrived to help the Shiite brothers; to the Sunnis of Jihad of the Caliphate the ex Baathists Iraqi Sunnis, with no more flag but with excellent military preparation. Many of them are officers of the former armed forces of Baghdad with at least two wars behind them.
In essence, today in Syria, two separate wings of the party are shot at each other Baath (one Syrian and one Iraqi) with the Kurds, historical enemies of the Sunnis of Baghdad, on the side of the government until proven legitimate in Damascus.
The papocchio is the result of a more or less deliberate design of "reorganization" of the entire Middle East. Two historical state realities such as Syria and Iraq have been disrupted and the pieces of their power systems are now found in war.
In this respect the Russian intervention was not foreseen and allowing Damascus to survive, it changed the cards on the table: the process of dissolution of Syria, parallel to the de facto dismemberment of Iraq, was interrupted. Or so it will be if the course of the war continues as in the last few months.
Pending the release of many fundamentalists in other scenarios (Libya above all), those who armed and tolerated the Islamic State between Iraq and Syria will have to revise their plans for the Middle East in any case.
(frames: ANNA News)
