At the time of my previous post 10 days ago the US-led coalition had just carried out an intense series of air-strikes against Raqqa the de facto capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria. With 16 of the 17 strikes destroying roads and bridges in and around the city the purpose of the operation seemed to be to showcase the power of the US' strategic bombing campaign in the hope of getting the UK and other coalition partners to join in with the controversial air operation in Syria.
However all they succeeded in doing was demonstrating the folly of the US' strategic bombing campaign. In the weeks prior to the strikes the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) had unilaterally moved to liberate the village of Ayn Issa which sits just 50km (30 miles) to the north of Raqqa. ISIL clearly took the intensification of US air-strikes on Raqqa as a sign that the city would soon come under attack. Therefore in response to the strikes they launched a pre-emptive strike that forced the YPG from Ayn Issa.
Fortunately the YPG were able to quickly recover from this setback and on July 8th (8/7/15) they were again able to liberate Ayn Issa just two days after ISIL had re-taken control. Since then clashes between the YPG and ISIL have continued in the villages surrounding Ayn Issa but these seem to be contacts between rival patrols rather then the product of any significant offensive. The main focus in the area now seems to be in and around Hasakah City - the capital of Hasakah Province - which sits around 165km (100 miles) north-east of Raqqa at the southern border of the Kurdish Cizire Canton.
For many months Hasakah City has been divided between the YPG and Syrian government forces. With the YPG fighting ISIL in places like Kobane and the Syrian government fighting various insurgent groups all across the country its been in neither sides interests to attack each other in Hasakah so a stand-off has ensued. ISIL though have been keen to capture the city and since early March have been trying to achieve this by trapping YPG fighters in the city by cutting off their supply route at the village of Tel Tamr. After more then two months of trying and failing to capture Tel Tamr ISIL changed focus and started to attack the Syrian government forces in Hasakah directly.
Obviously if ISIL were to capture sections of Hasakah from the Syrian government they would then go on to attack YPG positions in the city and elsewhere in the canton. This has created a difficult situation for the YPG whereby they have to defend Syrian government forces in Hasakah in order to keep ISIL out of the city in order to protect the integrity of the canton. This is clearly part of the thinking behind ISIL's shift in focus with the hope being that they can point at Hasakah and use it to claim that the YPG are allied with the Syrian government and are therefore a threat to Syria's Sunni-Arabs who should rise up to support ISIL against the YPG.
Unfortunately there's not really a lot the YPG can do about ISIL's propaganda efforts because they have to fight as if Hasakah was entirely under their control. That is exactly what they have been doing and on Wednesday (15/7/15) the YPG completed a successful operation to cut one of ISIL's main supply routes between Raqqa and Hasakah. Having weakened ISIL fighters in Hasakah by cutting them off from re-supply the YPG are now trying to press home their advantage by attempting to capture ISIL held positions within the city. If this is successful it will see territory within Hasakah switching from Syrian government control to ISIL control and then to YPG control where hopefully it will remain at least until ISIL have been defeated.
In the week to ten days that this has been going on there has been a noticeable improvement in the US-led air operation in Syria. Although they have maintained the intensity of strikes seen over Raqqa the US-led coalition seems to have shifted their focus away from strategic targets to more tactical targets. Put simply strategic strikes will target the oil refineries that fuel a tank or the bridge a tank uses to cross a river while tactical strikes will simply blow up the tank.
The coalition is now engaging this type of target across ISIL held territory particularly on the front-lines where they are coming into direct contact with opposing forces. This includes in and around Aleppo City which may well be a sign that the US is no longer prepared to tolerate the unspoken allegiance between ISIL and the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) against Syrian government forces. While they are waiting for a new coalition government to be formed Turkey also seems more interested in stopping ISIL recruits crossing their border into this area.
Today it has been revealed that UK pilots seconded to unnamed allies have been engaging in combat operations over Syria. Although it would be nice to claim that it is this that has driven the improvement in operations it is likely something that has been going on since early February when France extended its operations to include Syria or early April when Canada announced that it was going to do the same.
It does though present a serious problem for the UK because the authorisation for military action against ISIL in Iraq was quite clear that it would require a separate authorisation by Parliament for UK military personnel to conduct combat operations in Syria. Therefore Parliament must address the issue to determine whether the Prime Minister has acted in contempt of Parliament in authorising these operations because it is exactly the type of mission creep that needs to be avoided.
I appreciate that it makes little military sense for UK aircraft to fly from Cyprus across Syria to bomb targets in Iraq before flying back over Syria to Cyprus but not to bomb targets in Syria. However politically there is a lot to be gained by making it clear that the NATO partners won't be joining US President Obama down this particular rabbit hole until he comes up with a coherent strategy to defeat ISIL by partnering with a ground force to swiftly remove them from the territory they hold. The first step of course would be Obama accepting that ISIL are an enemy and that they need to be defeated.
Although it doesn't relate directly to Iraq or Syria I should point out that yesterday (16/7/15) that the ISIL affiliated group Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (ABM) in Egypt succeeded in destroying an Egyptian Navy vessel in the Mediterranean Sea. In itself this is not too alarming because we've known that ABM have had access to the type of advanced laser guided missile used since they used a similar weapon in an attack in the Sinai at the start of the month.
What is alarming is that this type of "Kornet" missile is not known to be used by either the Egyptian or the Libyan military. So although Hamas have a limited stockpile it must have made it's way from Syria where ISIL have been known to capture them from the Syrian military. This would suggest that the allegiance between ISIL and ABM has progressed from simple pledges of allegiance and the electronic transfer of things like ideas and money to the physical transfer or military hardware.
15:20 on 17/7/15 (UK date).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment