The Islamic state

[bendeus]

That pic also circulating on twitter stating that the gringos are two US and one Brit volunteers who have joined the struggle.

 

[kebabking]

That pic also circulating on twitter stating that the gringos are two US and one Brit volunteers who have joined the struggle.

that i'd be more inclined to believe - as others have said getting SF to pose for piccies is difficult, but other stuff leaps out of the photo's: the blokes have got no kit or weapons, and the YPG folk don't look exactly happy, infact they look exactly like Guardsmen outside Buck House when tourists are having their photo's taken posing with said woodentop...

one of many lessons to come out of Iraq and Afghanistan is that you never leave your weapon out of reach when embedded with 'friendly' forces because you never really know what they all think - and given the bewildering array of different groups with different attitudes, that will only be intensified.

 

[coley]

Still not there, is Turkey buggering them about?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-kurds-turkey-isis-kobani-syria-islamic-state

 

[Patteran]

Usual twitter sources reporting 160 Peshmerga with gear have crossed into Kobani - multiple airstrikes/explosions reported close to the border crossing.

 

[Belushi]

this photo is starting to do the rounds on social media with claims it shows SF (yank or UK) in Rojava with YPG

That's not real! Those women would be tiny!

 

[SpookyFrank]

That's not real! Those women would be tiny!

The tall ones are at the back, obviously.

 

[Patteran]

Bit of good news - from the journalist jenan moussa on the border -
'Source inside #Kobane tells me: "All peshmerga & heavy weapons made it from #turkey into #kobane. V. welcomed; happy atmosphere in town"'
Kobani relieved - where in Syria will IS look now to regain momentum? Homs keeps coming up on twitter.

 

[FNG]

That would take them into direct conflict with Assad though? something both parties have been comfortable to avoid up to this point, and somewhere Assad has had the best part of a year to fix his defensive positions and his local troops have counter insurgency experience having cleared the FSA out . That would make little strategic sense at this point. More likely to consolidate their gains in Iraq over winter for a spring offensive. IMHO

 

[Patteran]

Cutting Palmyra off from Homs? Reports that Daesh have attacked Homs airbase, taken nearby refineries & oilfields, & are fighting with Assad's lot in the desert round Palmyra - maybe they're not looking to Homs city, but they don't seem to be avoiding conflict with the regime right now in that area.

 

[coley]

Hopefully we will see some good news soon, peshmerga said to begin operations about now.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/01/us-mideast-crisis-idUSKBN0IK15M20141101

 

[FNG]

Cutting Palmyra off from Homs? Reports that Daesh have attacked Homs airbase, taken nearby refineries & oilfields, & are fighting with Assad's lot in the desert round Palmyra - maybe they're not looking to Homs city, but they don't seem to be avoiding conflict with the regime right now in that area.

Sorry if i sounded skeptical, was in a rush to leave for work and didn't have time for a full fact check,the fighting around the airport looks like it could be a repeat of the capture of Tabqa Airport which Assad opposition believe was an attempt to consolidate ISIS power in Raqqa. If Assad continues to prevaricate in the face of continued ISIS provocation including the recent shooting down of one of his fighter aircraft its hard to see how he will be able to control military discipline and morale.Its probably only because most of his generals are there through nepotism that he hasn't faced a successful coup[/URL]

 

[Patteran]

(skeptical suits me, FNG, I'm asking, not telling)

 

[coley]

(skeptical suits me, FNG, I'm asking, not telling)

Has there ever been a better case in history of 'shifting sands' than the current ME situation?
No pun intended

 

[FNG]

I think it will become apparent if Assad removed his planes and heavy equipment from Homs leaving a skeleton security force to the whims of ISIS over the next few days as happened in Tabqa, niether options are good.

I am basing my assumptions on how Insurgent armies with a sizeable jihadist element (Mujahadeen,Taliban ect) have operated in the past, of course there is no guarantee that past behaviour is an indicator of current or future behaviour,however a full scale assult on Homs would require a serious ammount of logistical preparation,Even much more so than say Mosul where they faced a demoralised garrison. Campaigns of that size would in my opinion be launched in spring early summer and certainly not arranged on an ad-hoc basis and announced on Twitter, there is something about that "We're Coming Homs" tweet that irks me and reminds me of the Tabloid-baiting/echoing sensibilities of Anjem Choudarys various al-muhajiroun fronts.

I suppose really we should consider that whilst both ISIS and Assad have been more inclined to attack FSA,YPG and non aligned religious/ethnic minorities to varying degrees, neither party can fully realise its ambitions whilst the other lays claim to parts of syria. For isis their plans for an Iraq/Syria caliphate can't be realised without control of Damascus.Whereas for Assad the future of his entire Alawite clan looks increasingly bleak under an ISIS dominated syria,indead the future prospects of the Alawites probabally lays with the voices for national reconciliation amongst the FSA in a post Assad syria.

So given that both parties have no inclination to trust each other but have shown reluctance to engage in full blown hostilities, what do i think is happening around Homs? it could well be that by moving their front line close to Assads forces they will shelter them against American and Coalition airstrikes,detered by the proximity risk of accidently engaging with with assads AA batterys a variation on the old tactic of hugging the enemy.

 

[Patteran]

YPG video from inside Kobani, includes a rare English-language interview with a YPG fighter (from arounds 11m 26s).

 

[teqniq]

Syrian rebels armed and trained by US surrender to al-Qaeda

Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight both the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda.
The US and its allies were relying on Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front to become part of a ground force that would attack the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
For the last six months the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including GRAD rockets and TOW anti-tank missiles.
But on Saturday night Harakat Hazm surrendered military bases and weapons supplies to Jabhat al-Nusra, when the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria stormed villages they controlled in northern Idlib province.
The development came a day after Jabhat al-Nusra dealt a final blow to the SRF, storming and capturing Deir Sinbal, home town of the group's leader Jamal Marouf....

 

[coley]

Syrian rebels armed and trained by US surrender to al-Qaeda

Slight difference of opinion, the US were relying on them, from what I have picked up,other coalition partners have many reservations on the people the US endorses?

 

[FNG]

dug this up on Harakat Hazm's [HZM} background http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/19874 it seems proxy of choice for both Qatar and Turkey given HZMs links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

[coley]

dug this up on Harakat Hazm's [HZM} background http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/19874 it seems proxy of choice for both Qatar and Turkey given HZMs links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Can't get it to load, but this 'surrender' seems a bit contrived?

 

[butchersapron]

Joint YPG/Peshmerga operations taking back villages west of kobani this morning. The latters heavy weapons were let loose yesterday afternoon.

 

[butchersapron]

I've got some great stuff on the various rebels discussed above - or i had, half of my archive seems to have disappeared over the weekend. I'll try and sort that out.

Here's a useful summary of what sunday brought and what might happen now though.

 

[butchersapron]

Did you see the declaration of autonomous independence in Cizre? I don't know what sort of traction the announcement had in the area, whether it's symbolic or sustainable, but the idea is growing.

Looks like the heat is being turned up on the YDG-H.

 

[Patteran]

From the piece teqniq quoted -

These efforts have since been revamped with new operations rooms in Turkey, to manage the north of Syria, and in Jordan, to manage rebel operations in the south including Deraa and Damascus suburbs. The operations rooms are manned by representatives from Turkey, the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a Syrian source involved in the arms supplies told The Telegraph

That must be some collection of representatives in that room. Imagine running into their Christmas do. Who are these people? Diplomats, military attaches, intelligence analysts, civil servants, & the odd crown prince, I suppose, sitting round a cache of weapons & a google earth chessboard. It's fuckin feudal. And they don't seem especially good at it - unless the aim is local horror & regional instability.

 

[butchersapron]

General catch-up stuff:

Iraq says 322 tribe members killed, many bodies dumped in well

The systematic killings, which one tribal leader said were continuing on Sunday, marked some of the worst bloodshed in Iraq since the Sunni militants swept through the north in June with the aim of establishing medieval caliphate there and in Syria.

The Albu Nimr, also Sunni, had put up fierce resistance against Islamic State for weeks but finally ran low on ammunition, food and fuel last week as Islamic State fighters closed in on their village Zauiyat Albu Nimr.

See also: Iraqi tribal leaders' pleas for help ignored before massacre

Other stuff: bombs continue in shia areas of Baghdad, shia militia continue to persecute sunnis in iraq in their resistance and create the conditions for beard-growth (and the full story of what happened here is not told in the WP article - here's a taster).

Bits and pieces:

Whose side is Turkey on? - Patrick Cockburn

Critique of Patrick Cockburn’s ‘Whose Side is Turkey on?’ from Michael Karadjis. (and do read this other piece and his comments on it)

Airstrikes against Islamic State do not seen to have affected flow of fighters to Syria

More than 1,000 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month, a rate that has so far been unchanged by airstrikes against the Islamic State and efforts by other countries to stem the flow of departures, according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

Brecher come sup with a different reading:

The War Nerd: Crunching numbers on Kobane

If you assume that other countries with a history of sending a lot of recruits to IS are sending new troops at the same rate, you get something like 30 per week from Tunisia, 25 per week from Saudi, and a few from Russia, Germany, and France. That would mean a hundred new men per week—untrained amateur troops with little combat value, and not nearly enough to make up for the huge losses in Kobane.

But those recruiting numbers aren’t stable. They depend completely on image, the “CNN War.” And the one thing IS can’t afford to do, if it wants to win the war for the guys sitting around cafes in Tunis, is look weak.

So Omar al-Shishani has very little time to choke out Kobane. If he can’t do it—if the Peshmerga finally make it through Erdogan’s Islamist obstacle course and cross into Syria—then the number of recruits will fall very quickly. Some will join other Syrian groups like Jabhat al Nusra; others will decide to stick around Tunis (or Portsmouth, or Sarcelles) and see if a job turns up.

The First Shrine of Its Kind in Iraq Is Destroyed

Nearly a thousand years old — the “first of its kind in Iraq,” according to Archnet, and one of the last six standing, according to Iraq Heritage — the distinctive muqarnas-domed mausoleum is now a statistic. The tomb of Shia ‘Uqaylid amir Sharaf ad-Dawla Muslim is one of a number of sites that have been destroyed recently. Preceded by the Shrine of Arbaeen Wali (for 40 martyrs in the Islamic conquest of Tikrit) and the Syrian Orthodox “Green Church” of Mar Ahudama in late September, followed by the Yezidi Shrine of Memê Reşan (Meme Reshan) in late October, the Mausoleum of Imam al-Daur was destroyed by the Islamic State on October 23.

 

[butchersapron]

I've got some great stuff on the various rebels discussed above - or i had, half of my archive seems to have disappeared over the weekend. I'll try and sort that out.

Here's a useful summary of what sunday brought and what might happen now though.

And here's Michael karadjis rejection of that analysis. Must read this one.

 

[butchersapron]

Cockburn's book The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising here.

 

[FNG]

Looks like the heat is being turned up on the YDG-H.

Erdogans been briefing heavily against the PKK on his round robin trip around europe, only the Danes have given him short shrift.
Somewhat alarmingly the CHE have suddenly started for Ocalan to be cut out of the peace process along with increasingly meaningless calls for more transparency.

seeing the Peshmerga relief column being greeted by Turkish Kurds like an army of liberation by supporters of an organisation that had in recent years been deadly rivals must have sent chills down his spine, and those tanks he sent up to the boarder unheralded and uncheered, i dont think they are going there to keep isis out

 

[butchersapron]

Joint YPG/Peshmerga operations taking back villages west of kobani this morning. The latters heavy weapons were let loose yesterday afternoon.

The villages are named here.

 

[FNG]

Graphic footage of Syrian Airstrike in al-Waer district Homs one of the last areas in the city held by anti assad forces.heavy civillian casualties including children

 

[FNG]

Even with ISIS knocking on the gates taking another Gasfield they still divert resourses to terrorise their own civillians.Fuck Assad