ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)

delft

Brigadier
"However, Iraq does NOT want Russia to send combat troops to fight on the ground"?? that says it all, now doesn't it?
Yes. It means the Iraqi army needs to learn to fight and the way to do so is to go out and do it, with Iranian instructors. The Iranians will be better instructors than the Americans or the Russians because they have experience with the type of actions required. The Russians and the Iranians will have told them so.
 

mobydog

Junior Member
Of course NATO aircraft violating the Syrian airspace is not irresponsible because these carefully avoid attacking moderate, democratic, Al Qaeda terrorists.
Actually, if I recalled reading from dailymail, it made a strange statement that goes something like "Russia fighter violated turkish airspace and nearly entered it's border". The rest of the western "free msm" would have same creative writing skill.

I bet 99.99% of Americans and British were unable to see absurdity in the above sentence, or even notice it's significant .

As it turns out, Turkey has maintained a buffer zone five miles inside Syria since June 2012
 

Zool

Junior Member
The Iranian groups are fighting in Iraq Syria and Yemen as well as the occasional boarder raid.
ISIL is fighting everyone across the region from the Golan to the Iranian boarder. Rockets at Israel, tanks in Syria attacks in Iraq threats and Antitank weapons fire at Egypt.
The Syrian army is trying not to loose any more territory. Well facing off against equipment from its own and Iraqi military bases captured and now flying the black flag.
The Kurds are divided between two political factions, with one being attacked by Iran, IS, Turkey and AQ well the other has to hold its lines against Bagdad, IS and AQ.
The Iraqi Army is gone replaced by militia who are dubious at best and are more likely to be at the call of Tehran then Bagdad.
Bagdad is more of a rump trying to please the US on one side and Iran on the other. To appease Iran they are asking the Russians to join and fight for them.
The Saudis are facing Iran in two proxy wars and the potential for internal problems after the Mecca stampede and two troublesome princes.
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Recently I heard a suggestion, that is starting to sound alot more and more reasonable.
The US backing of groups has been partially via Bagdad. Who has been part of the vetting process. The Bagdad government has been in bed with Iran now for years and trough that relationship Tehran has organized the Militias.
Via treaty with Iraq the US has to Back Bagdad and all US defense aide even to the Kurds has to go through Bagdad.
Except there is a loop hole.
If funds and aide going to the Iraqi government can be shown to be diverted to US recognized terror groups the US can cut the rope.
The suggestion I heard was for the US to use that opt out either as threat or actively. Then redirect military aide to the Kurds directly via the airbases on Kurdish controlled northern Iraq making a defecto Kurdistan.

You may hear it a lot but you need to truly grasp that this is a sectarian conflict - a religious war - and all that entails. This is not a simple proxy war between Saudi and Iran, it is Sunni versus Shia with the Kurdish trying to make gains in the short term but losing either way in the long term (my view).

Iraq, Syria and Iran partnering as a matter of survival was inevitable given the direct threat from Sunni Government military actions and sponsored terrorism. There is a reason why war and terrorist strife has come to Shia majority nations who seek fair representation rather than the yoke of a culturally hostile Sunni Regime (Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen etc) - and it's an archaic one - domination through killing and conversion.

My gripe is with Western nations of whom I am a citizen, supporting what amounts to a project of ethnic cleansing by Sunni powers, to the extent that we have. Interests, particularly after the Iran/Shah debacle, may have necessitated hedging with the Saudis to maintain a balance of power and stability in the region but that quickly went overboard. We now seem unable or unwilling to rebalance vis-a-vis the Sunni's, even after the events of 9/11. To anyone looking at all of these events it appears as if we are taking sides with the Sunni in this religious conflict. How can that do anything other than burn us?
 

Zool

Junior Member
"However, Iraq does NOT want Russia to send combat troops to fight on the ground"?? that says it all, now doesn't it?

See now Brat, I don't think that one quote does say it all. I prefer to take the entire piece of information in context of the big picture to decide it's meaning. Otherwise it's easy to misinterpret events. ;)

I know that probably comes across as snarky but it's not meant to (mostly - lol). Just want to point out how selective reading or "cherry picking" can be problematic.
 

janjak desalin

Junior Member
How Iranian general plotted out Syrian assault in Moscow
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Published: Wednesday October 7, 2015 MYT 1:35:03 AM

BEIRUT (Reuters) - At a meeting in Moscow in July, a top Iranian general unfurled a map of Syria to explain to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad could be turned into victory - with Russia's help.

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anyone else noticing no mention of actual Russian airstrikes in Rothschild media today

here's one, from RT
Russian jets hit 12 ISIS targets in Syria, cause panic among extremists – Defense Ministry
Published time: 6 Oct, 2015 16:57

Russian jets hit 12 Islamic State targets in the course of nearly 20 combat flights carried out in Syria on Tuesday, the Defense Ministry said. Command centers and training camps were destroyed in the attacks which threw the extremists into panic.

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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
They show start checking with car showrooms, perhaps.



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Okay well Here is part of the Skinny, we all know that the Self Proclaimed Caliphate has captured vehicles from the Iraqi Police and Military as well as the Syrian Military.
We also should all remember the Plumber earlier in the year who discovered his used Ford F250 Pickup truck was now being used to mount a AntiAircraft cannon.
Now that plumbers Truck is part of this but only part. What Treasury really want to know How The group is getting 2015-2016 model year Toyota Hilux In significant numbers. Not one or two or 10 from a dealership but hundreds. of course in the Middle East the White Toyota Hilux is as common a sight as sand. added to that The Caliphate has started to camouflage there Hilux with paint and sand, but the fact is the Toyota Hilux is there well and beyond any other Pick up so much so that the Toyota brand is now branded with Militants from across the middle east.

Now the first concern by Treasury is that American made models are getting into the Caliphates motor pool. Which seems unlikely for the Hilux as it's not made in the US.
Hilux the preferred militant ride is assembled in Argentina, Venezuela, Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa and the Guangzhou Toyota plant in the PRC.
The US Toyota Pickups are the Tundra or Tocoma built in San Antonio, Texas which although there were a number of those were brought in from the US by USSOCOM ( bought from dealerships stateside). Modified and shipped with SF teams those were limited and most in fact have come back stateside with some being surplussed well others are stored for future use.

The Models being used by the Caliphate are primarily new Hilux.
The key difference between the American made Tacoma and Tundra vs the Hilux is the Suspension and Frame. The Tacoma and Tundra are built for American Highways so they have a less impressive Suspension, Although That can be corrected by a good Off road shop also the American made pickups use a Gas engine which is actually quieter then the Diesel found in a Hilux. A advantage if you are a US SF team trying to sneak up on targets.

Now the Second reason for the Interest is the more pertinent issue. the Supply chain. Treasury is trying to map how the Self proclaimed Caliphate is getting it's bullets beans and pickups. If it can identify via this the Logistics chain, Then the US and allies can start cutting the chains. a weaker logistics line means a weaker enemy. If they can find that one dealer raking in money hand over fist selling Hilux by the hundreds they can take some of the umph out of the Caliphate.

Mean time the Toyota PR Guy wishes on all the stars that the Militants would switch to Great Wall Motors.
 
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Toyota did not get the contract by tender. Great Wall would have cleaned the floor with Toyota in any tender. But their supply line for sundries including bullets is through Turkey from what I gather.
I agree there was likely no formal bidding process on this one. but raiding showrooms is a limited option. It seems likely there is a third party involved hence the investigation.
 
Actually, if I recalled reading from dailymail, it made a strange statement that ...
... while trying to find out what you might mean, I noticed
NATO rejects Russia explanation on Turkish air space

NATO on Tuesday rejected Moscow's explanation that its warplanes had violated alliance member Turkey's air space by mistake and said Russia was sending more ground troops to Syria and building up its naval presence.

With Russia extending its air strikes to include the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was losing patience with Russian violations of his country's air space.

"An attack on Turkey means an attack on NATO," Erdogan warned at a Brussels news conference.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had reports of a substantial Russian military build-up in Syria, including ground troops and ships in the eastern Mediterranean.

"I will not speculate on the motives ... but this does not look like an accident and we have seen two of them," Stoltenberg said of the air incursions over Turkey's border with Syria at the weekend. He noted that they "lasted for a long time".

The incidents, which NATO has described as "extremely dangerous" and "unacceptable", underscore the risks of a further escalation of the Syrian civil war, as Russian and U.S. warplanes fly combat missions over the same country for the first time since World War Two.

The Russian Defence Ministry had said that an SU-30 warplane had entered Turkish air space along the border with Syria "for a few seconds" on Saturday, a mistake caused by bad weather. NATO says a plane also entered Turkish air space on Sunday, an incident Russia says it is looking into.

A U.S. official told Reuters the incursions had lasted more than a few seconds and described Moscow's assertion that they were an accident as "far-fetched".

The Turkish military said a further incident took place on Monday when a MIG-29 fighter and Syria-based missile systems "interfered" with eight Turkish F-16 jets patrolling along the Syrian border.

The MIG-29 locked its radar onto the Turkish patrol for 4 minutes 30 seconds, and a Syria-based missile system locked onto them for 4 minutes 15 seconds, the Turkish military said. Russia flies MIG-29s, as does Syria's own air force.

Stoltenberg said the U.S.-led alliance had not received "any real explanation" from Russia about the incursions.

AIR SPACE VIOLATIONS

Disagreement over the air space violations comes as Russia and the west dispute the aims of Moscow's air campaign. Moscow says it is attacking Islamic State, but most of its air strikes have hit territory held by other rebel groups fighting against its Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Western countries, Arab states and Turkey, who are waging their own bombing campaign against Islamic State but also want Assad to leave power, say Moscow is using Islamic State as a pretext to target Assad's other foes. Russia says the Assad government should be the centrepiece of international efforts to combat extremism.

With Russian and NATO planes now flying combat missions in the same air space, a danger is that the Cold War enemies could fire on each other.

The skies in the area have seen incidents in the past. A Turkish jet was shot down by the Syrian air force in 2012 over the Mediterranean and earlier this year Turkey shot down a Syrian helicopter that Ankara said violated its airspace.

Russia's NATO envoy said the alliance was using the accidental incursion into Turkish air space for propaganda.

"The impression is that the incident in Turkish air space was used to plug NATO as an organisation into the information campaign waged by the West to distort the aims of the operations carried out by the Russian air force in Syria," Alexander Grushko was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying in Brussels.

Russia's defence ministry said it agreed in principle with U.S. proposals on coordinating military flights in Syria. The ministry said it was ready to hold talks with Turkey to avoid "misunderstandings" and invited foreign military officers to Moscow for talks on how best to fight Islamic State.

President Vladimir Putin has said he will not put Russian ground forces in Syria, where the civil war has killed 250,000 people. However, Stoltenberg said there was a growing presence of Russian forces in Syria.

"I can confirm that we have seen a substantial build-up of Russian forces in Syria - air forces, air defences, but also ground troops in connection with the air base they have, and we also see an increased naval presence," Stoltenberg said.

RUSSIAN TANKS

Several senior officials in the Middle East told Reuters the Russian air campaign was part of plan that will also involve a ground offensive by Iranian troops, Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas and Syrian government forces against Assad's foes.

The ground campaign is being led by Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Quds Force, the elite extra-territorial special forces arm of the Revolutionary Guards who reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the officials said.

They said Soleimani travelled to Moscow in July to help plan the joint action after senior Russian officials met Khamenei and senior Iranians met Putin to agree it.

U.S. officials have previously said Russia has sent seven T-90 tanks, some artillery, and about 200 marines. It has also deployed temporary housing units, a portable air traffic control station and components for an air defence system.

Russian defence ministry sources have been quoted in Russian media as saying about 1,500 Russian servicemen are involved in supporting the air strikes and advising Syria's army.

The Russian Defence Ministry says it has more than 50 warplanes and helicopters in Syria. Russia's Tartous naval facility there is a logistics base and has been overhauled in recent years. It is being used to unload equipment, some of which is also being flown in.

In the latest strikes, Russian jets hit Islamic State targets in Palmyra and struck the northern province of Aleppo, Syrian state television said.

Islamic State forces captured Palmyra in May, an advance that brought them closer to the core of government-held territory in western Syria. It also put the city's Roman-era ruins under the militants' control.

Russia denied hitting civilian targets inside Palmyra or conducting strikes that might harm the ruins.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group tracking Syria's civil war, said the Palmyra strikes killed 15 Islamic State fighters.

"It was the heaviest Russian attack on Palmyra," Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said. Across Syria, Russian jets carried out at least 34 air strikes in the last 24 hours, the Observatory said.
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related, from Jane's:
Turkey protests second Russian air incursion in as many days
Turkey has complained to Russia over an unauthorised incursion of its airspace for the second time in as many days, with the Russian ambassador to Ankara being summoned to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 5 October.

The complaints came just two days after the ambassador was first summoned to the ministry to explain why a Russian warplane had entered into Turkish airspace without permission.

According to the Reuters news agency, the Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he was told by Russia after the first incident that the violation was a "mistake" that would not happen again. On that occasion, the Russian intruder departed the country's airspace after being intercepted by a pair of Turkish Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters.

While Russia has reportedly attributed this incident to 'poor weather', NATO has said that it does not consider the incursion to have been an accident. No details pertaining to the second reported incursions have been released, although there have been unsubstantiated reports that a Russian aircraft locked its radar onto Turkish fighters sent to intercept it.

At the same time as news of the incursions was breaking, the Russian Ministry of Defence released an image that purports to show a Sukhoi Su-30SM 'Flanker' fighter armed with R-27 (AA-10 'Alamo') medium- and R-73 (AA-11 'Archer') short-range air-to-air missiles, parked at an airbase in Syria's coastal Latakia province. This would suggest that Russian Su-24 'Fencer', Su-25 'Frogfoot', and Su-34 'Fullback' strike aircraft are flying with escort fighters, further raising the possibility of a NATO-Russian clash in the skies over Syria.
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delft

Brigadier
Okay well Here is part of the Skinny, we all know that the Self Proclaimed Caliphate has captured vehicles from the Iraqi Police and Military as well as the Syrian Military.
We also should all remember the Plumber earlier in the year who discovered his used Ford F250 Pickup truck was now being used to mount a AntiAircraft cannon.
Now that plumbers Truck is part of this but only part. What Treasury really want to know How The group is getting 2015-2016 model year Toyota Hilux In significant numbers. Not one or two or 10 from a dealership but hundreds. of course in the Middle East the White Toyota Hilux is as common a sight as sand. added to that The Caliphate has started to camouflage there Hilux with paint and sand, but the fact is the Toyota Hilux is there well and beyond any other Pick up so much so that the Toyota brand is now branded with Militants from across the middle east.

Now the first concern by Treasury is that American made models are getting into the Caliphates motor pool. Which seems unlikely for the Hilux as it's not made in the US.
Hilux the preferred militant ride is assembled in Argentina, Venezuela, Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa and the Guangzhou Toyota plant in the PRC.
The US Toyota Pickups are the Tundra or Tocoma built in San Antonio, Texas which although there were a number of those were brought in from the US by USSOCOM ( bought from dealerships stateside). Modified and shipped with SF teams those were limited and most in fact have come back stateside with some being surplussed well others are stored for future use.

The Models being used by the Caliphate are primarily new Hilux.
The key difference between the American made Tacoma and Tundra vs the Hilux is the Suspension and Frame. The Tacoma and Tundra are built for American Highways so they have a less impressive Suspension, Although That can be corrected by a good Off road shop also the American made pickups use a Gas engine which is actually quieter then the Diesel found in a Hilux. A advantage if you are a US SF team trying to sneak up on targets.

Now the Second reason for the Interest is the more pertinent issue. the Supply chain. Treasury is trying to map how the Self proclaimed Caliphate is getting it's bullets beans and pickups. If it can identify via this the Logistics chain, Then the US and allies can start cutting the chains. a weaker logistics line means a weaker enemy. If they can find that one dealer raking in money hand over fist selling Hilux by the hundreds they can take some of the umph out of the Caliphate.

Mean time the Toyota PR Guy wishes on all the stars that the Militants would switch to Great Wall Motors.
First point is: they have the money. They are selling oil to Turkey from fields in North Iraq that are not attacked by USAF presumably because otherwise Turkey would be angry.
 
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