On Monday (22/9/14) night into Tuesday (23/9/14) morning the United States along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan carried out air-strikes for the first time in Syria. The targets of these strikes were the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and a little known jihadist group who have been named the Khorasan Group.
The strikes against ISIL were on a huge scale involving both a range of ground attack aircraft including the B-1 Lancer strategic bomber and the new F-22 Raptor stealth multi-role fighter alongside 47 Tomahawk Cruise missiles. They focused on the ISIL strongholds of Ar Raqqah, Dayr az Zawr, Al Hasakah in north-east Syria and Abu Kamal which is on the border with Iraq along Euphrates River. The strikes were focused on barracks, training centres, command and control centres and logistics and storage facilities including what is being termed a finance centre. This was full scale strategic bombing intended to cripple the enemy by destroying its core structure. It also appears to have been highly successful with every identified target being either partially or fully destroyed. Apparently the operation was so successful that Qatari aircraft who were tasked with carrying out a second wave of attacks didn't need to drop their bombs because the first wave of strikes had already destroyed the targets.
This intensity of air-strike is what is needed to defeat ISIL rather then simply containing the threat it presents. They were also completely legal having being authorised by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) through resolution 2170 (2014) which as a Chapter 7 resolution authorises nations to do everything in their power up to and including military force. As such I only have one complaint about these strikes but it is a very serious complaint. Essentially the strikes have taken place at the wrong time in the wrong location. Although they are a very large terrorist group in conventional military terms ISIL are absolutely tiny. As such if air-strikes were to continue at this intensity I very much doubt that ISIL would last a month. However once ISIL has collapsed under aerial bombing you need ground troops to go into the area to tidy up after them by collecting up any fighters and weapons that are left over.
Due to US President Obama's rather bizarre insistence on training Arab insurgents groups in Syria to perform this task rather then working with the Kurds those ground troops aren't going to be available until January 2015 at the earliest. In neighbouring Iraq where ISIL are also operating the situation couldn't be more different with the Kurdish Peshmerga currently poised almost at the gates of Mosul ready to liberate it while the Iraqi military are already conducting an operation to liberate Ramadi and Fallujah. Therefore unless Obama is prepared to work with the Kurds in Syria it makes a lot more sense for the US-led coalition to carry out the type of strategic bombing that is currently taking place in Syria in Iraq instead while the type of pin-prick, highly targeted close air-support type strikes that are currently taking place in Iraq are used to contain ISIL in Syria until a ground force becomes available.
In short Obama has got this operation ass backwards making it much more difficult to control the outcome.
The attacks against the Khorasan Group which took place in north-west Syria close to the city of Aleppo are an entirely different story. Although the US is trying to portray the Khorasan Group as a stand alone terrorist group they actually function much more as special forces trainers that Al Qaeda have sent to Syria to help make other terrorist groups such as Al Nusra Front (ANF) better able to fight ISIL. This means that militarily the US-led coalition would want to keep them going for as long as possible because they will make life even harder for ISIL. As such the decision to target the Khorasan Group seems to be an entirely political one.
The main thing that is politically important about the Khorasan Group is that they are not covered by UNSC resolution 2170 (2014) meaning that there is no legal basis for them to be attacked. The US has been attempting to argue that because they are linked to Al Qaeda it has the authority to attack them under the 2001 Authorisation of Military Force Against Terrorists. However this is a hugely controversial position because as a piece of internal US legislation the 2001 Authorisation has little bearing on international law meaning that the US operation in Afghanistan was actually authorised under UNSC resolution 1363 (2001) which is Chapter 7 resolution passed back in July 2001. The 2001 Authorisation of Military Force Against Terrorists also formed the basis for the US' 2002 Iraq resolution which was rejected by the UNSC in the run up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
We are currently at the start of the two week opening session of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Obama has made it quite clear that he intends to use this period to press for a resolution to authorise military force in Syria that goes far beyond resolution 2170 (2014). The attack on the Khorasan Group raises all sorts of questions about how far any military action will go in terms of the scope of the groups that can be attacked and whether a group needs to be specifically listed in order for it to be legally attacked. By tangling this discussion up in the old arguments about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and by showing that it is prepared to act beyonds the bounds of resolution 2170 (2014) the US seems to be trying to bully the UNSC into passing a very broad resolution which will allow it and its coalition partners to do pretty much what they like in Syria. I on the other hand think that any resolution needs to specify that any attacks on the Syrian government - even instances of self defence - will have to be authorised by a separate UNSC resolution and that there will be consequences for anyone violating those terms.
The ways in which a resolution authorising military force in Syria could be abused are touched on by the name given to the Khorasan Group. "Khorasan" is a Persian word meaning "the place where the sun rises" and up until 2004 was the name of a large province in north-eastern Iran which has since been divided into several smaller provinces. The decision by US and most likely Saudi intelligence to assign the name Khorasan to this group seems like an attempt to strengthen ISIL by portraying anyone who fights them as puppets to the majority Shia Iran. In this specific instance they seem to be being used as a metaphor for Syria's majority Shia government which Saudi Arabia has long considered to be "terrorist" because they simply won't bow to Saudi dominance of the entire region. As such the attack on Khorasan Groups seems to be quite a clear signal that any resolution authorising military force in Syria will be abused by the coalition to carry out attacks against the Syrian government rather then ISIL.
The talk of an imminent threat of an attack by the Khorasan Group on western targets using advanced explosives also leaps straight into the murky world of support for terrorism in the middle-east. If there was actually a plot rather then simply false intelligence claiming that there was a plot is would have been led by Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri - a Saudi based in Yemen who is believed to be responsible for a number of questionable plots such as the 2009 Christmas Day underpants bomb plot and the 2010 cargo plane bomb plot.
As with its immediate neighbour Saudi Arabia Yemen is a nation with high levels of poverty and income inequality and a sizable Shia minority being ruled over by the Sunni majority - often highly unfairly. As such Saudi Arabia has long been terrified that the Shia and tribal uprising that began in Yemen in 2011 would spread to Saudi Arabia leading to the overthrow of the Saudi Monarchy. So in response Saudi Arabia has systematically been building up Al Qaeda in Yemen in order to get the US to conduct anti-terror operations - particularly drone strikes - which actually force the US to act as the protector of the Saudi Monarchy. From Yemen Saudi Arabia has gone on to export terrorists to Somalia, Syria, Libya and even possibly Nigeria. This is obviously a hugely controversial topic for conversation because given the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia for not well supported allegations of interference in Ukraine then Saudi Arabia should long ago have been expelled from the UN and invaded for presenting a very serious threat to global peace, security and stability.
The air-strikes in Syria also overshadowed a special meeting on the UNGA on climate change. It has long been well established that the oil rich states led by Saudi Arabia are totally opposed to any action to tackle climate change and are prepared to use their vast wealth to bribe and bully nations into not taking action. By pulling Saudi Arabia's questionable methods in sharp focus through these air-strikes it would have helped them to identify which nations support them in climate change negotiations and which nations need to be singled out for extra attention. Given the way that the US and the UNSC has repeatedly bent to Saudi Arabia's will at the expense of international law and global security over recent years this type of discussion is also likely to intimidate developing nations by making them worry that if they support action on climate change they'll suddenly end up with an ISIL or a Boko Haram of their own to deal with.
16:10 on 24/9/14 (UK date).
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