ISIS do seem to be able to pull off sophisticated tactics time and time again. It would also seem to be in their book to lure heavy units into ambushes or traps. At least they haven't resorted to suicide boats so far.
ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
ISIS do seem to be able to pull off sophisticated tactics time and time again. It would also seem to be in their book to lure heavy units into ambushes or traps. At least they haven't resorted to suicide boats so far.
Equation
Lieutenant General
They hit an Egyptian Coast Guard patrol boat, NOT an Egyptian Navy corvette type ships. Otherwise they would have been killed from the return fire by the naval ship. Naval ships have far more sophisticated electronics, radar, tracking, and weapons to at longer range than a coast guard ship.
No country with a significant Kurdish population is prepared to give any territories to a Kurdish state. Any Western move in that direction would beget fierce opposition. Of the four countries Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, the last has had most trouble with the Kurds that were until not long ago described as Mountain Turks and that were not allowed to speak their own language. The repression led to the formation of an armed opposition called PKK. Matters have improved very significantly to the extent that the mainly Kurdish party MHP is to become the coalition party of the AK party of Turkey's president Erdogan. But that doesn't mean that Turkey is prepared to accept an independent Kurdish country in any of the three other countries, even while Turkey has strong relations with the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq.
Of course Turkey was ( is? ) the main support of IS and also of other terrorist organization in Northern Syria. However the lack of success of this policy and the prospect of an important increase of economic relations with Iran is likely to lead to a reconsideration of this policy, no doubt helped by the presence of MHP ministers in the government.
janjak desalin
Junior Member
That degree of specificity would be impossible to ascertain from what is perceptible. Most likely others that made the Kornet determination used information similar to that which I did, i. e., the images and a (very) general knowkledge of ISIL's armory.
The Kurds, meanwhile, believe the only way to defeat ISIS is to fight it. It’s a disappointingly simple strategy. no brownie points
Who can devise the most convoluted way to wipe out the Islamic State?
5:30 AM ET
Everyone with a stake in Middle Eastern geopolitics publicly declares that ISIS must be defeated. Yet opinions range widely on how this should be achieved.
Saudi Arabia, for example, ISIS cannot be defeated unless Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is removed from power. Turkey has NATO nations that the war against ISIS can only be won if Turkey’s traditional Kurdish opponents are neutralized first. Israel only one way to defeat ISIS: destroy Iran’s nuclear program and clip its wings regionally.
So what explains these apparently contradictory aims? The cynical view would be that all these parties are less interested in defeating ISIS than in achieving their own regional goals, and that they’re only pretending to be concerned about wiping out the group. Clearly, however, there is no place for cynicism in Middle Eastern politics. Everyone involved in the region is known to be sincere, albeit in radically different ways.
A detailed analysis of the situation by the Institute of Internet Diagrams has led to a surprising discovery: It appears that all the players confronting ISIS are competing to see who can devise the largest number of steps, and most convoluted strategy, to overcome the Islamic State. We at the Institute are not sure why they are doing this, but our simulation suggests that they are secretly playing some sort of game. Few other explanations have been judged credible.
Leveraging all available data, we have mapped the various steps onto the diagram below, which seems to resemble a board game, thus confirming our theory.
Here are some of the scenarios that are unfolding:
Saudi Arabia proposes first dislodging President Assad in Syria, one of ISIS’s principal enemies, which will in turn strengthen the Islamic State. That may seem like a step backward, but fear not: There’s more. The Saudis will then attack Yemen to defeat the Houthis, who are allied with Iran. This will distract Iran in its fight against ISIS. The Kingdom will also away from U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq so that these states can participate in Saudi-led strikes in Yemen. Where, you ask, does defeating ISIS fit into all this? You may have missed it: Please return to the start of this paragraph.
Turkey has advanced the idea that defeating ISIS will require attacking the Kurdish factions who are doing the most to fight the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, thereby easing the pressure on ISIS. The Turks will then offset this by also the removal of Assad, and by asking their Western allies to deflect resources away from fighting ISIS and toward a “safe zone” in Syria. Turkey will subsequently move to weaken Western and NATO support for Kurdish fighters, turning the Kurds into both an ally and enemy of the West. This will so utterly confuse ISIS that the group will commit major strategic mistakes.
Iran’s plan for defeating ISIS relies heavily on arming Shia groups, thus giving the impression that the war against ISIS is a Sunni-Shia conflict. While this might appear to bolster ISIS’s propagandistic claims that it is defending Sunnis against Shia aggression, Iran will dispel this illusion by encouraging non-Shia groups battling ISIS to also fight under Shia banners.
Israel’s blueprint is quite straightforward by comparison: ISIS can only be defeated after Iran, which is fighting ISIS, is contained and defeated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cleverly unified these aims by Iran “the Islamic State of Iran.” No other leader has ever tried to conduct geopolitics through wordplay before, but the strategy seems to be gaining momentum. The popularity of the phrase “the ISIS of …” to describe things one hates attests to the resonance of this approach. Israel plans to escalate its anti-ISIS campaign by referring to anyone who opposes Israel as “ISIS,” including Hamas (the ISIS of Gaza), Hezbollah (the ISIS of Lebanon), and Sweden (the ISIS of Scandinavia).
America’s strategy is substantially different from everyone else’s. President Barack Obama wants to defeat ISIS by not appearing to be the force defeating ISIS. This is a difficult task, particularly when your air force is the one carrying out most operations against ISIS targets. But Obama is an astute strategist. His plan centers on supporting Kurdish factions as he also supports Turkey which is now attacking the Kurds while also supporting Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen which upsets Iran whom U.S. forces are collaborating with in fighting ISIS in Iraq as he simultaneously yields to pressure from allies to weaken Assad in Syria which complicates things further with Iran which he pacifies by signing the nuclear deal upsetting America’s traditional friend Israel whose anger is absorbed with shipments of advanced weapons escalating the arms race in the region.
The Kurds, meanwhile, believe the only way to defeat ISIS is to fight it. It’s a disappointingly simple strategy. The Institute’s sources suggest that the Kurds have yet to earn any points in the game, and may no longer even be playing.
Who can devise the most convoluted way to wipe out the Islamic State?
5:30 AM ET
Everyone with a stake in Middle Eastern geopolitics publicly declares that ISIS must be defeated. Yet opinions range widely on how this should be achieved.
Saudi Arabia, for example, ISIS cannot be defeated unless Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is removed from power. Turkey has NATO nations that the war against ISIS can only be won if Turkey’s traditional Kurdish opponents are neutralized first. Israel only one way to defeat ISIS: destroy Iran’s nuclear program and clip its wings regionally.
So what explains these apparently contradictory aims? The cynical view would be that all these parties are less interested in defeating ISIS than in achieving their own regional goals, and that they’re only pretending to be concerned about wiping out the group. Clearly, however, there is no place for cynicism in Middle Eastern politics. Everyone involved in the region is known to be sincere, albeit in radically different ways.
A detailed analysis of the situation by the Institute of Internet Diagrams has led to a surprising discovery: It appears that all the players confronting ISIS are competing to see who can devise the largest number of steps, and most convoluted strategy, to overcome the Islamic State. We at the Institute are not sure why they are doing this, but our simulation suggests that they are secretly playing some sort of game. Few other explanations have been judged credible.
Leveraging all available data, we have mapped the various steps onto the diagram below, which seems to resemble a board game, thus confirming our theory.
Here are some of the scenarios that are unfolding:
Saudi Arabia proposes first dislodging President Assad in Syria, one of ISIS’s principal enemies, which will in turn strengthen the Islamic State. That may seem like a step backward, but fear not: There’s more. The Saudis will then attack Yemen to defeat the Houthis, who are allied with Iran. This will distract Iran in its fight against ISIS. The Kingdom will also away from U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq so that these states can participate in Saudi-led strikes in Yemen. Where, you ask, does defeating ISIS fit into all this? You may have missed it: Please return to the start of this paragraph.
Turkey has advanced the idea that defeating ISIS will require attacking the Kurdish factions who are doing the most to fight the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, thereby easing the pressure on ISIS. The Turks will then offset this by also the removal of Assad, and by asking their Western allies to deflect resources away from fighting ISIS and toward a “safe zone” in Syria. Turkey will subsequently move to weaken Western and NATO support for Kurdish fighters, turning the Kurds into both an ally and enemy of the West. This will so utterly confuse ISIS that the group will commit major strategic mistakes.
Iran’s plan for defeating ISIS relies heavily on arming Shia groups, thus giving the impression that the war against ISIS is a Sunni-Shia conflict. While this might appear to bolster ISIS’s propagandistic claims that it is defending Sunnis against Shia aggression, Iran will dispel this illusion by encouraging non-Shia groups battling ISIS to also fight under Shia banners.
Israel’s blueprint is quite straightforward by comparison: ISIS can only be defeated after Iran, which is fighting ISIS, is contained and defeated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cleverly unified these aims by Iran “the Islamic State of Iran.” No other leader has ever tried to conduct geopolitics through wordplay before, but the strategy seems to be gaining momentum. The popularity of the phrase “the ISIS of …” to describe things one hates attests to the resonance of this approach. Israel plans to escalate its anti-ISIS campaign by referring to anyone who opposes Israel as “ISIS,” including Hamas (the ISIS of Gaza), Hezbollah (the ISIS of Lebanon), and Sweden (the ISIS of Scandinavia).
America’s strategy is substantially different from everyone else’s. President Barack Obama wants to defeat ISIS by not appearing to be the force defeating ISIS. This is a difficult task, particularly when your air force is the one carrying out most operations against ISIS targets. But Obama is an astute strategist. His plan centers on supporting Kurdish factions as he also supports Turkey which is now attacking the Kurds while also supporting Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen which upsets Iran whom U.S. forces are collaborating with in fighting ISIS in Iraq as he simultaneously yields to pressure from allies to weaken Assad in Syria which complicates things further with Iran which he pacifies by signing the nuclear deal upsetting America’s traditional friend Israel whose anger is absorbed with shipments of advanced weapons escalating the arms race in the region.
The Kurds, meanwhile, believe the only way to defeat ISIS is to fight it. It’s a disappointingly simple strategy. The Institute’s sources suggest that the Kurds have yet to earn any points in the game, and may no longer even be playing.
kwaigonegin
Colonel
I agree 100% which unfortunately means ISIS will be here to stay as the ONLY party with any sort of cogent strategy and real motivation to defeat ISIS are the Kurds and they have been effectively driven out of the game by world players.
Turkey needs to lose NATO membership and Saudi reclassify as a non ally of the United States but not going to happen due to $$$$$ and geopolitics.
please enlighten me, isn't Nusra Front Al Qaeda? And Uncle Sam expect their puppies work with them? WTF?
In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State.
BAGHDAD — A Syrian insurgent group at the heart of the Pentagon’s effort to fight the Islamic State came under intense attack on Friday from a different hard-line Islamist faction, a serious blow to the Obama administration’s plans to create a reliable military force inside .
The American-led coalition responded with airstrikes to help the American-aligned unit, known as Division 30, in fighting off the assault, according to an American military spokesman and combatants on both sides. The strikes were the first known use of coalition air power in direct battlefield support of fighters in who were trained by the Pentagon.
The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program.
In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure.
While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” said one former senior American official, who was working closely on Syria issues until recently, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments.
The Nusra Front said in a statement on Friday that its aim was to eliminate Division 30 before it could gain a deeper foothold in Syria. The Nusra Front did much the same last year when it smashed the main groups that had been trained and equipped in a different American effort, one run covertly by the C.I.A.
A spokesman for the American military, Col. Patrick S. Ryder, wrote in an email statement that “we are confident that this attack will not deter Syrians from joining the program to fight for Syria,” and added that the program “is making progress.”
Division 30’s leaders expected to play a role in an by the United States and Turkey to help less radical Syrian insurgent groups seize territory from the fundamentalist militant fighters of the Islamic State, also known as , ISIL or Daesh.
But the unit had no known plans to fight the Nusra Front, and the attacks on Thursday and Friday seemed to catch the unit off guard. Though the Nusra Front is allied with Al Qaeda, it is seen by many insurgents in Syria as preferable to the Islamic State, and it sometimes cooperates with other less radical groups against both the Islamic State and Syrian government forces.
A senior Defense Department official acknowledged that the threat to the trainees and their Syrian recruiters had been misjudged, and said that officials were trying to understand why the Nusra Front had turned on the trainees. The defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports, described what he called “silver linings” to the attack on Friday: that the trainees had fought effectively in the battle, and that coalition warplanes responded quickly with airstrikes to support them.
Witnesses described the attack as an all-out assault, with medium and heavy weapons, on a Division 30 encampment west of the town of Azaz in Aleppo Province, near the border with Turkey.
In a statement on Friday, Division 30’s leaders called on all nationalist Syrian insurgents to “stand firm and proactively” against what they called an unprovoked attack, and asked “the brothers in the Nusra Front” to “stop the bloodshed and preserve the unity.”
Yet witnesses to the attack on Friday and insurgent leaders said that most of the other groups in the area failed to come to Division 30’s aid. By staying out of the fight, they may have signaled that they have not accepted a central feature of the Pentagon’s program: that it be directed only at the Islamic State and not at the Syrian government forces of President Bashar al-Assad, against whom the rebels originally took up arms.
At a minimum, it appears that other insurgent groups were not ready to directly take on the Nusra Front, one of the strongest and best-financed forces on the ground in Syria. Neither did they join in the Nusra Front’s attack on Division 30, perhaps because of the coalition airstrikes. The Islamic State does not have a significant presence in that area.
Ahrar al-Sham, another powerful Islamist insurgent group, stayed on the sidelines, according to a spokesman, Ahmad Kara Ali. Ahrar al-Sham has often aligned with the Nusra Front, but it has been at odds with the group in some places lately over power and over how to govern areas they have conquered.
One group that apparently did side with Division 30 was Jaysh Al-Thuwar, a coalition based west of Azaz that includes several Arab and Kurdish factions. The group said in a statement that it, too, had come under attack after Division 30 fighters had fallen back to areas under its control, and that it tried to assist Division 30 during the battle.
Division 30 said in a statement that five of its fighters were killed in the firefight on Friday, 18 were wounded and 20 were captured by the Nusra Front. It was not clear whether the 20 captives included the six fighters and two commanders captured a day earlier.
Division 30 was formed from a number of smaller groups to streamline the recruitment and training of fighters by the Pentagon to fight the Islamic State. The program has produced only a handful of graduates so far, in part because of a screening process to root out suspected extremists that Division 30’s leaders say is too stringent.
Its first contingent of trained fighters — just 54 in all — recently re-entered Syria to join the rest of the division. An American official said that none of those 54 were among the eight captured on Thursday by the Nusra Front.
But the captives did include Nadeem Hassan, a defector from the Syrian Army who helped organize Division 30’s 1,200 fighters, and Farhan Jasem, a deputy who commanded the 54 trained fighters, according to a statement from Division 30.
The Nusra Front’s statement offered its view of the American role in Syria. Referring to the C.I.A. program, the group said that when the United States tried to “plant its hands inside Syria,” the Nusra Front “cut those hands off,” and that Division 30 was merely another proxy “aiming to advance the projects and interests of America.”
Sunni Arabs have formed the backbone of the revolt against Mr. Assad’s rule, which exploded into civil war after his security forces cracked down on protesters. As the conflict has dragged on, more groups have come to frame it the way the Nusra Front does, as a sectarian struggle.
The group’s statement said Sunnis would not hand the sacrifices of four years of war “on a plate of gold” to the United States “for it to establish its feet in the region over the graves of hundreds of thousands of the people of Syria.”
The war has killed at least 230,000 Syrians, wounded more than a million and displaced more than nine million, half the country’s population.
In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State.
BAGHDAD — A Syrian insurgent group at the heart of the Pentagon’s effort to fight the Islamic State came under intense attack on Friday from a different hard-line Islamist faction, a serious blow to the Obama administration’s plans to create a reliable military force inside .
The American-led coalition responded with airstrikes to help the American-aligned unit, known as Division 30, in fighting off the assault, according to an American military spokesman and combatants on both sides. The strikes were the first known use of coalition air power in direct battlefield support of fighters in who were trained by the Pentagon.
The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program.
In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure.
While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” said one former senior American official, who was working closely on Syria issues until recently, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments.
The Nusra Front said in a statement on Friday that its aim was to eliminate Division 30 before it could gain a deeper foothold in Syria. The Nusra Front did much the same last year when it smashed the main groups that had been trained and equipped in a different American effort, one run covertly by the C.I.A.
A spokesman for the American military, Col. Patrick S. Ryder, wrote in an email statement that “we are confident that this attack will not deter Syrians from joining the program to fight for Syria,” and added that the program “is making progress.”
Division 30’s leaders expected to play a role in an by the United States and Turkey to help less radical Syrian insurgent groups seize territory from the fundamentalist militant fighters of the Islamic State, also known as , ISIL or Daesh.
But the unit had no known plans to fight the Nusra Front, and the attacks on Thursday and Friday seemed to catch the unit off guard. Though the Nusra Front is allied with Al Qaeda, it is seen by many insurgents in Syria as preferable to the Islamic State, and it sometimes cooperates with other less radical groups against both the Islamic State and Syrian government forces.
A senior Defense Department official acknowledged that the threat to the trainees and their Syrian recruiters had been misjudged, and said that officials were trying to understand why the Nusra Front had turned on the trainees. The defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports, described what he called “silver linings” to the attack on Friday: that the trainees had fought effectively in the battle, and that coalition warplanes responded quickly with airstrikes to support them.
Witnesses described the attack as an all-out assault, with medium and heavy weapons, on a Division 30 encampment west of the town of Azaz in Aleppo Province, near the border with Turkey.
In a statement on Friday, Division 30’s leaders called on all nationalist Syrian insurgents to “stand firm and proactively” against what they called an unprovoked attack, and asked “the brothers in the Nusra Front” to “stop the bloodshed and preserve the unity.”
Yet witnesses to the attack on Friday and insurgent leaders said that most of the other groups in the area failed to come to Division 30’s aid. By staying out of the fight, they may have signaled that they have not accepted a central feature of the Pentagon’s program: that it be directed only at the Islamic State and not at the Syrian government forces of President Bashar al-Assad, against whom the rebels originally took up arms.
At a minimum, it appears that other insurgent groups were not ready to directly take on the Nusra Front, one of the strongest and best-financed forces on the ground in Syria. Neither did they join in the Nusra Front’s attack on Division 30, perhaps because of the coalition airstrikes. The Islamic State does not have a significant presence in that area.
Ahrar al-Sham, another powerful Islamist insurgent group, stayed on the sidelines, according to a spokesman, Ahmad Kara Ali. Ahrar al-Sham has often aligned with the Nusra Front, but it has been at odds with the group in some places lately over power and over how to govern areas they have conquered.
One group that apparently did side with Division 30 was Jaysh Al-Thuwar, a coalition based west of Azaz that includes several Arab and Kurdish factions. The group said in a statement that it, too, had come under attack after Division 30 fighters had fallen back to areas under its control, and that it tried to assist Division 30 during the battle.
Division 30 said in a statement that five of its fighters were killed in the firefight on Friday, 18 were wounded and 20 were captured by the Nusra Front. It was not clear whether the 20 captives included the six fighters and two commanders captured a day earlier.
Division 30 was formed from a number of smaller groups to streamline the recruitment and training of fighters by the Pentagon to fight the Islamic State. The program has produced only a handful of graduates so far, in part because of a screening process to root out suspected extremists that Division 30’s leaders say is too stringent.
Its first contingent of trained fighters — just 54 in all — recently re-entered Syria to join the rest of the division. An American official said that none of those 54 were among the eight captured on Thursday by the Nusra Front.
But the captives did include Nadeem Hassan, a defector from the Syrian Army who helped organize Division 30’s 1,200 fighters, and Farhan Jasem, a deputy who commanded the 54 trained fighters, according to a statement from Division 30.
The Nusra Front’s statement offered its view of the American role in Syria. Referring to the C.I.A. program, the group said that when the United States tried to “plant its hands inside Syria,” the Nusra Front “cut those hands off,” and that Division 30 was merely another proxy “aiming to advance the projects and interests of America.”
Sunni Arabs have formed the backbone of the revolt against Mr. Assad’s rule, which exploded into civil war after his security forces cracked down on protesters. As the conflict has dragged on, more groups have come to frame it the way the Nusra Front does, as a sectarian struggle.
The group’s statement said Sunnis would not hand the sacrifices of four years of war “on a plate of gold” to the United States “for it to establish its feet in the region over the graves of hundreds of thousands of the people of Syria.”
The war has killed at least 230,000 Syrians, wounded more than a million and displaced more than nine million, half the country’s population.
broadsword
Brigadier
The ME plot is so thick it reminds me of Kurosawa's Rashomon, in which various characters have their own motives for wanting the samurai dead. I wonder what will be the endgame considering there is no overwhelming power in the thick of the action at the moment, unlike the US-Iraq wars.
Miragedriver
Brigadier
Is ISIS going to enter ?
We have been reading reports in the press recently of young Muslims in the North Caucuses and from itself joining ISIS, and even of a possible spring ISIS offensive against Tajikistan.
How much truth is in these reports, and if a war should break out, who will counter ISIS? Joining me, John Harrison to be talk about these issues is Dr Theodore Karasik, a Dubai-based geopolitical analyst.
Q: Is it likely that ISIS will actually enter or not?
TK: I think within the Islamic State plans they seek to enter Central Asia sooner rather than later. The evidence of that is they have hundreds of fighters from the Northern Caucasus and the Central Asian States who have firmly undergone training in the Levant. On top of that they have other cells that are formed in Northern Afghanistan who intend to target Tajikistan and Kazakhstan as well as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Q: That’s pretty frightening scenario you are painting. Now, on the other hand, I understand that republics are Muslims, you know, people do believe in Allah. Why on earth should ISIS enter Central Asia? Who are they going to fight against when 95% of the population is Islam?
TK: You have to understand that the Islam that is practiced in is off course one of the Sunni variants. However it’s been modified through Russian history as well as local culture and customs. With the radicalization process that dash up, if you will, or Islamic State members go through, they tend to particular ideas in terms of fighting extremism that are evenly spread in communities in central Asia for those people who are outside of government control, in other words people in rural areas and perhaps in certain suburbs or mayor cities are susceptible to these kind of ideas.
Q: And as in Tajikistan and probably I don’t know about Uzbekistan but definitely Turkmenistan and I think that there are quite a large amount of areas which are rather government-controlled, right?
TK: In a sense yes, we have to remember that ever since the Soviet Union broke up, two decades plus ago, that has been evolving itself in the sense of governance, army, and so on, and we’ve seen a number of outbreaks of violence that were all ethnically based or clan-based if you will. We’ve also had incidents of Islamic terrorism and that label was given to some of these incidents because the perpetrators happened to be Muslims. Now we’ve entered into a new dimension were there are this areas were Islamic State can gain a threshold because the Islamic State represents an alternative government and economic model that people like, because their lives can improve and they get higher salaries under this .
Q: And that’s very attractive in an area of an average income of two or three hundred dollars a month, and very serious environmental problems particularly in Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan I understand.
TK: Yes, that’s correct. You have to remember that in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan and also in the mountain parts of the eastern part of Tajikistan, these locations have always been notorious if you will for being outside of government control or areas that we would call, in the western sense, rebels against the capitals of Bishkek or Dushanbe. These are areas that Al Qaeda and dash try to penetrate before and that was demonstrated in recent history by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Q: And I guess that’s the important thing: breaking people from a clan-based system, I mean, for westerners we think that things aren’t going so well in Central Asiabecause of repression and not very much freedom of speech and so on. But in fact, people’s consciousness is not really there, is in a different place is much to do with the clan-background or clan-warfare.
TK: Ever even before the Soviet Union seized to exist, in Central Asia clans always mattered and so still to this day you see it, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the other, and the clans are all based on region, and these clans occupied various ministries or security organs. The revolutions that we’ve seen in Kyrgyzstan are all between the various clans in the north and south fighting over power. The clan identity is very, very strong, is the main driver of the societies, but at the same time those tribes are been influenced by outside pressures and those that find themselves outside of this system of ethos are susceptible to Islamic State teaching.
Q: Let’s just dedicate to talking about the worse possible scenario. If large scale violence should break out, and lot of people is saying the Iraqi and Syrian scenarios is impossible for Central Asia, but let’s just say it happens. Who is going to counter this? Who is going to come in, China? Russia? US? EU? Iran? Turkey? Do you know?
TK: I think that what we’ve witnessed in an inner region with the formation of coalition led by a particular country, for example what the US would call a coalition in the Levant and in the Saudi a coalition against the Huthies in Yemen, I would likely see the formation of a SCO coalition to try to take back control of the area within the were a Caliphate appendix may appear but it also involve counter-terrorism, special operations on the ground near from the country in question or from the SCO as an organization. I’d not see America involved in a counter-terrorism operation in Central Asia, since Russia and China’s backyard, the de-facto intruders is their responsibility.
Q: OK, you mentioned the SCO, but what about what about the other organizations, like the CSTO, a defense alliance which formed out of the previous CIS arrangement?
TK: Right, this organization will also be involved but is actually the SCO that has more of the meaning edge if you will, in terms of their organized training, and equipping capability. The CSTO is indeed a collective military organization. It has flam peace, but the SCO has more bites. I think that when it comes to an issue such as having the Islamic State in Central Asia.
Link:
Back to bottling my Grenache
We have been reading reports in the press recently of young Muslims in the North Caucuses and from itself joining ISIS, and even of a possible spring ISIS offensive against Tajikistan.
How much truth is in these reports, and if a war should break out, who will counter ISIS? Joining me, John Harrison to be talk about these issues is Dr Theodore Karasik, a Dubai-based geopolitical analyst.
Q: Is it likely that ISIS will actually enter or not?
TK: I think within the Islamic State plans they seek to enter Central Asia sooner rather than later. The evidence of that is they have hundreds of fighters from the Northern Caucasus and the Central Asian States who have firmly undergone training in the Levant. On top of that they have other cells that are formed in Northern Afghanistan who intend to target Tajikistan and Kazakhstan as well as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Q: That’s pretty frightening scenario you are painting. Now, on the other hand, I understand that republics are Muslims, you know, people do believe in Allah. Why on earth should ISIS enter Central Asia? Who are they going to fight against when 95% of the population is Islam?
TK: You have to understand that the Islam that is practiced in is off course one of the Sunni variants. However it’s been modified through Russian history as well as local culture and customs. With the radicalization process that dash up, if you will, or Islamic State members go through, they tend to particular ideas in terms of fighting extremism that are evenly spread in communities in central Asia for those people who are outside of government control, in other words people in rural areas and perhaps in certain suburbs or mayor cities are susceptible to these kind of ideas.
Q: And as in Tajikistan and probably I don’t know about Uzbekistan but definitely Turkmenistan and I think that there are quite a large amount of areas which are rather government-controlled, right?
TK: In a sense yes, we have to remember that ever since the Soviet Union broke up, two decades plus ago, that has been evolving itself in the sense of governance, army, and so on, and we’ve seen a number of outbreaks of violence that were all ethnically based or clan-based if you will. We’ve also had incidents of Islamic terrorism and that label was given to some of these incidents because the perpetrators happened to be Muslims. Now we’ve entered into a new dimension were there are this areas were Islamic State can gain a threshold because the Islamic State represents an alternative government and economic model that people like, because their lives can improve and they get higher salaries under this .
Q: And that’s very attractive in an area of an average income of two or three hundred dollars a month, and very serious environmental problems particularly in Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan I understand.
TK: Yes, that’s correct. You have to remember that in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan and also in the mountain parts of the eastern part of Tajikistan, these locations have always been notorious if you will for being outside of government control or areas that we would call, in the western sense, rebels against the capitals of Bishkek or Dushanbe. These are areas that Al Qaeda and dash try to penetrate before and that was demonstrated in recent history by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Q: And I guess that’s the important thing: breaking people from a clan-based system, I mean, for westerners we think that things aren’t going so well in Central Asiabecause of repression and not very much freedom of speech and so on. But in fact, people’s consciousness is not really there, is in a different place is much to do with the clan-background or clan-warfare.
TK: Ever even before the Soviet Union seized to exist, in Central Asia clans always mattered and so still to this day you see it, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the other, and the clans are all based on region, and these clans occupied various ministries or security organs. The revolutions that we’ve seen in Kyrgyzstan are all between the various clans in the north and south fighting over power. The clan identity is very, very strong, is the main driver of the societies, but at the same time those tribes are been influenced by outside pressures and those that find themselves outside of this system of ethos are susceptible to Islamic State teaching.
Q: Let’s just dedicate to talking about the worse possible scenario. If large scale violence should break out, and lot of people is saying the Iraqi and Syrian scenarios is impossible for Central Asia, but let’s just say it happens. Who is going to counter this? Who is going to come in, China? Russia? US? EU? Iran? Turkey? Do you know?
TK: I think that what we’ve witnessed in an inner region with the formation of coalition led by a particular country, for example what the US would call a coalition in the Levant and in the Saudi a coalition against the Huthies in Yemen, I would likely see the formation of a SCO coalition to try to take back control of the area within the were a Caliphate appendix may appear but it also involve counter-terrorism, special operations on the ground near from the country in question or from the SCO as an organization. I’d not see America involved in a counter-terrorism operation in Central Asia, since Russia and China’s backyard, the de-facto intruders is their responsibility.
Q: OK, you mentioned the SCO, but what about what about the other organizations, like the CSTO, a defense alliance which formed out of the previous CIS arrangement?
TK: Right, this organization will also be involved but is actually the SCO that has more of the meaning edge if you will, in terms of their organized training, and equipping capability. The CSTO is indeed a collective military organization. It has flam peace, but the SCO has more bites. I think that when it comes to an issue such as having the Islamic State in Central Asia.
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