Yesterday evening UK Prime Minister David Cameron made a surprise visit
to the Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Akrotiri in Cyprus which is the
standard route for Britons travelling to and from Afghanistan. Whilst in
Cyprus Cameron announced that 2 further RAF GR4 Tornado's will be
joining the operation against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) bringing the total up to 8.
Alongside France's decision earlier in the week to increase the number
of Rafele's deployed from 6 to 9 this brings the total number of strike
aircraft in the European (UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark)
plus Australia part of the coalition up to 44. This is just 1 aircraft
short of the number used during Operation Northern Watch making very
real the possibility that these nations could act as a coalition within a
coalition flying Northern Watch style armed patrols across the
front-lines of Iraq to prevent ISIL from making any further advances.
Today it has been announced that the Canadian Parliament is to vote on
joining the coalition potentially increasing the number of aircraft
even further. The obvious choice would be for this coalition within a
coalition to operate from the United States Air Force (USAF) base at
Incirlik in Turkey although there seems to be no indication that Turkey
is going give permission for this to happen or that the US is going to
put pressure on Turkey to make this happen.
It has also emerged that on Wednesday (1/10/13) through to Thursday
(2/10/14) the US alongside Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) carried out an undisclosed number of air-strikes against
undisclosed targets in undisclosed locations in Syria. However I suspect
that at least some of these strikes occurred in the north-eastern
Sinjar region close to the border with Iraq. Within Iraq the US carried
out a single strike in the Sinjar region that destroyed 2 ISIL armed
"Technical" trucks. They were joined by the UK who carried out a single
strike close to the Rabia border town that destroyed an ISIL technical
and a supply truck. The US also carried out a further strike close to
Fallujah which is around 50km (30 miles) west of the capital Baghdad
that targeted ISIL infantry units.
Sadly there has been no indication of any air-strikes close to the city
of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab. Sitting just 1km (0.6 miles) from the border
between Syria and Turkey Kobane is of vital strategic importance because
if it falls not only will it hand a huge propaganda victory to ISIL but
it will also give them a clear route to smuggle oil out of and weapons
and fighters in from Turkey. Due to the failure to conduct air-strikes
in support of the Syrian Kurdish forces who have been defending Kobane
it now seems that the city is being over-run with ISIL entering the
south-eastern sector of the city this morning. This seems likely to
provide Turkey with a pretext to invade Syrian Kurdistan to push back
ISIL and provide a buffer-zone.
The fall of Kobane however is not the most serious problem being faced
by the US-led coalition. As people have been warning for many weeks US
President Barack Obama's decision to only carry out pin-prick strikes
against ISIL has had the effect of inoculating them against air-strikes
meaning that they have moved away for Blitzkrieg type attacks. Although
this has inhibited their ability to fight and seize territory on a large
scale it means that it is now going to be much more difficult to
achieve Obama's stated aim of "Degrading and ultimately destroying
ISIL." That will now require much closer co-ordination with forces on
the ground and likely an increase in the number of special forces boots
on the ground who are already operating extensively in Iraq even if
Obama is not prepared to admit it. The decision to expand operations
into Syria before they were properly up and running in Iraq has only
made the problem much worse.
There remains though a high potential for a very successful Northern
Watch style operation which should start without further delay.
(Originally Posted) 16:25 on 3/10/14 (UK date).
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