Throughout Tuesday (14/10/14) and today the US-led coalition has
continued its intensified bombing of Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL) positions around the strategically important and besieged
city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab which sits just 1km (0.6 miles) from Syria's
border with Turkey. Adding to the 21 strikes on Monday (13/10/14)
through Tuesday the coalition has struck a further 18 targets which
destroyed 16 buildings that were being occupied by ISIL and 2 ISIL
fighting positions. Essentially what the coalition is trying to do is to
destroy all ISIL positions surrounding Kobane.
With their troop staging and re-supply areas on the outside of Kobane
thrown into chaos ISIL fighters within the city have been substantially
weakened. This has allowed the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG)
who are defending Kobane to start pushing ISIL back street by street.
This is obviously a slow and dangerous process that could take many days
and is not guaranteed to succeed.
Given that it has almost entirely crippled ISIL's operation within
Kobane the obvious question remains of why did it take the coalition
close to 3 weeks to start doing this? If this intensified level of
air-strikes had started as ISIL began their advance on Kobane there is a
very good chance that not only would have ISIL been prevented from
entering the city where they have committed numerous beheadings and
other unspeakable acts but they would also have been stopped from
seizing the territory around the town. The other advantage is that if US
President Obama had made it clear from the start that ISIL would not be
permitted to advance to the Turkish border in order to provide a
pre-text for a Turkish ground invasion of Kurdish territory then
negotiations over the use of United States Air Force (USAF) base
Incirlik would be at a much more advanced stage. After all it would have
helped make it clear to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he
doesn't get to make demands nor is he allowed to exterminate the Kurds.
Despite the increased intensity of the air-strikes and the YPG's
advances on the ground the situation in Kobane remains perilous because
the city has not been resupplied in more then a week. This means that
stocks of vital supplies such as food, ammunition and medical supplies
such as bandages and pain medication are running dangerously low. In
fact it was several days ago that Kobane ran out of the diesel it needs
to operate its fresh water pumps. If this supply problem is not solved
soon then the residents of Kobane will still die even if ISIL can be
kept at bay. For its part Turkey is still refusing to allow supplies to
cross it's border to Kobane although it seems perfectly happy to deport
Kurdish refugees across the border straight into ISIL's hands.
So if international pressure including the blocking of Turkey's attempt
to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Thursday
(16/10/14) fails to encourage Turkey to allow the re-supply of Kobane
then the coalition's next step will have to be carrying out air-drops
into the rural areas that have been liberated from ISIL.
Yesterday US President Obama hosted a meeting of the coalition at
Andrews Military base just outside of Washington, US. Tellingly the
Kurds were not invited to this meeting but the Turks were. Despite a lot
of hype in the run-up - particularly from the UK - it seems that this
meeting was less then earth-shattering. In fact its main purpose seemed
to be to provide the members of the coalition with an opportunity to pat
each other on the back and congratulate each other on how well the
operation was going despite all the evidence to the contrary.
The main problem that came out of the meeting is that the coalition continued to state that; "The root of the struggle [against ISIL] lies in the conditions of the region: Ethnic
and religious tensions, exclusionary governance, intolerance, and
economic privation."
This position is fundamentally flawed for two main reasons; Firstly it
is impossible to understand why the jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Turkey, Russia, the UK etc who make up ISIL get to have any say in the
governance and running of either Syria or Iraq. Secondly even if your
are somehow able to justify ISIL as stakeholders within those societies
there is still the problem that no government can find a way to include
the views of a group who believe that 75% of the population should be
exterminated because they are considered infidels.
As a result while the US may not be prepared to admit it publicly the
only way to deal with ISIL is militarily by treating them as an invasion
force that first needs to be stopped in its tracks then forced back
from the territory it has occupied. Finally their military capacity
needs to be degraded and destroyed to the point that they no longer
represent a threat.
The other major problem to come out of the coalition meeting is that
Obama couldn't even manage to concentrate on the task in hand for the
five minutes in which he spoke to reporters afterwards. Instead - as
always seems to be the case - Obama seemed desperate to forget about
ISIL and talk about Ebola instead.
Finally the US today christened the operation against ISIL as "Operation
Inherent Resolve." On one level I'm disappointed because after two and a
half months I was starting to think that we'd all agreed to just use my
name for it. After all the UK have long been referring to their role
in the mission as; "Operation Shader." However you can pretty much
predict how future discussions in the White House about ISIL are going
to go;
"Mr President we need to talk about Inherent Resolve."
"What's Inherent Resolve?"
"You remember. It's meant to be your response to ISIL."
(Originally Posted) 19:20 on 15/10/14 (UK date).
No comments:
Post a Comment