On Wednesday (24/9/14) the US-led coalition continued it's strategic bombing campaign Syria. In total they carried out 15 separate air-strikes. Three of these strikes took place in the area surrounding Dayr az Zawr which sits on the Euphrates River and is around 175km (105miles) from the border with Iraq. Each one of those strikes destroyed or partially destroyed a single armed "technical" truck belonging the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The majority of the air-strikes (13 in total) though were against Al Hasakah which is around 250km (150 miles) north of Dayr az Zawr and Al Mayadin and Abu Kamal which are respectively around 50km (30 miles) and 130km (78miles) to the south-east of Dayr az Zawr along the Euphrates River towards the Iraq border. All of these 13 strikes were targeted against what are termed "modular oil refineries." These are small, partially pre-fabricated oil refineries that are intended to be used close to oil fields mainly to produce fuel to operate the oil field. Although they are in construction terms easy to disassemble, transport and reassemble I wouldn't go so far as to describe them as "mobile."
The reason given from selecting these targets for attack is that they were being used by ISIL to refine oil from fields they hold in Iraq into petrol that they were selling on the black market for an estimated USD2million per day although I suspect the black market price would have been around 40% lower. Therefore the refineries were destroyed in order to starve ISIL of this revenue stream. I however think that it was an unwise target to strike at this time. As these strikes have not closed off the smuggling routes across Turkey that ISIL used to sell its refined gasoline they will simply switch to selling crude oil instead although admittedly that will reduce their potential customer pool and the price per barrel they can charge.
Secondly I think the main purpose of these refineries was not to produce a product for export but to simply provide fuel to people living in areas under ISIL control. Obviously disrupting that supply will have some impact on ISIL's ability to fight but it is likely that they will respond by introducing rationing meaning that the people who will be hit the hardest by these strikes are civilians such as the taxi driver who needs fuel to run his business, the motorcyclists who needs fuel to get to his job or the meat seller who needs fuel to run a generator to power his fridges. A disruption to the fuel supply is going to make those people very angry. In the short term that anger will likely be directed against ISIL which would be very useful if ground forces were in position ready to overthrow ISIL. However as it is likely to be several months before ISIL areas in Syria are liberated it is likely that any anger will be controlled and steadily built up against the people who are doing the bombing strengthening support for ISIL and making the areas harder to liberate when ground forces eventually arrive.
As such I think a much better idea would have been to focus strategic bombing efforts on Iraq where ground forces are in position. That way the Iraqi oil fields which supplied to oil to the Syrian refineries would be more easily recaptured preventing ISIL from selling any oil products. Plus by stopping the supply to the refineries you would be able to choke of the supply of gasoline but because no-one would see any bombing they would associate any shortages with ISIL rather then with the people doing the bombing. Also once big Iraqi cities such as Mosul, Ramadi and Fallujah start being liberated it creates this wave of inevitability that ISIL are going to be overthrown which will make it much harder for them to attract new support and consolidate the support they already have in areas under their control.
The telling thing about yesterday's strikes is that the majority of them were carried out not by the US but by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and primarily Saudi Arabia. This seems to indicate that the US is now nothing more then a high paying passenger on an operation that is being driven by the Gulf States.
Despite the large scale expansion of operations into Syria it seems that the US has not completely forgotten about Iraq where it continues some small scale, pin-prick strikes. On Monday (22/9/14) the US carried out four strikes which destroyed two unarmed ISIL vehicles, an ISIL tank and damaged an ISIL Humvee in the vicinity of Kirkuk which is around 125km (75miles) south of Arbil and 200km (120miles) south-east of Mosul. On Tuesday (23/9/14) the US carried out a single strike that destroyed a single ISIL technical just north of Baghdad. There is of course no indication that these strikes were undertaken either in support of the Iraqi army's attempts to retake Ramadi and Fallujah or that they were part of a strategic campaign intended to seriously disrupt ISIL's operations in the country.
Today it has been announced that France has carried out air-strikes in Iraq on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. As is common with the French they have yet to announce precise details about the aircraft used and the type of targets struck but as they are still being forced to operate from bases in the UAE it is likely to be similar to the strike on September 19th when Rafele jets destroyed an ISIL logistics depot in northern Iraq. That was an example of strategic bombing.
Another significant flaw in the coalition's current plan is the absence of air-strikes in northern Syria close to Kobane/Ayn al-Arab where ISIL are continuing their advance against Kurdish areas. Pin-prick strikes of the type currently being used in Iraq would be highly effective here in stopping the ISIL advance which would both reduce the amount of territory held by ISIL and the number of Kurdish civilians under threat of extermination by them.
On Friday (16/9/14) the British Parliament is being recalled to discuss and vote on a motion allowing UK forces to join in air-strikes. Obviously I will need to read the exact text of the motion before commenting fully. However if as has been indicated it will only allow for strikes in Iraq with a separate vote being required for strikes in Syria I would be inclined to support it because with both the permission of the Iraqi government and United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2170 (2014) there is no question over the legality of these strikes. Plus it is clear that a lot of experienced heads are going to be needed to nudge US President Obama into conducting this operation properly in order to stop it turning into a disaster.
Finally Obama chaired a special session of the UNSC yesterday that unanimously passed resolution 2178 (2014) which is intended to tackle foreign fighters attempting to join ISIL. The UK quickly responded to by arresting well known MI5 asset Anjem Choudary on unrelated charges to show that the UK is complying with the resolution and offering suggestions of how other nations could discreetly act to dismantle the pipelines they've built up to supply ISIL with fighters.
What is really interesting about this UNSC session though is that Obama had originally intended for it to be used to pass a resolution authorising broad military action in Syria. However I gather that in pre-negotiations so many nations indicated that they would not be supporting a plan that seems so poorly thought through Obama was unable to bring it to the table for formal discussion.
17:00 on 25/9/14 (UK date).
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