Before events in Australia got ahead of me this was intended to be a
continuation of my previous post that can be read here; http://100badones.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/operation-featherweight-month-5-week-2.html
Apart from the decision to take no action against Turkey for their
material support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and
to send a further 1,300 ground troops to Iraq the main outcome from the
December 3rd (3/12/14) meeting of the US-led coalition was to establish
a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR)
- the US' name for the operation. This brings all the nations with
combat forces in the coalition together into, well, a joint task force.
This represent the beginning of the centralised command structure that I
have been pressing for since the operation began. Although the exact
details of how this particular CJTF will operate remain elusive it is
the way that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members of
the coalition (incl Australia) are used to working together. While all
nations will be represented by senior officers in the command cell the
setting up of a CJTF means that there is an overall commander who is
responsible for identifying the jobs that need to be done and assigning
forces to get them done. This should make the coalition more effective
because it gets everybody moving in the same direction rather then
charging around all doing their own thing.
However this is merely a step forward rather then the task being
completed because although there is now a way to co-ordinate the forces
in the coalition there still needs to be an over-riding strategic plan
for them to carry out. For this we have to again look to US President
Obama because he either still hasn't understood how a military operation
functions or he has yet to come to terms with the fact that ISIL need
to be defeated on the battlefield.
The bit I liked the most about this development though is that after
choosing a logo featuring Arab-style swords CJTFOIR set up a Twitter
account (@CJTFOIR). I appear to have been pre-emptively blocked from
following this account which I suppose is a claim to fame of sorts.
Last Sunday (7/12/14) I was tempted to rush out a quick post before
lunch explaining that while I wasn't posting I continuing to keep an eye
on things and giving a quick update on the situation in Kobane/Ayn
al-Arab. However with my PC finally dying a death I was prevented from
doing so. This seems to have been for the best because on Sunday
afternoon the Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out air-strikes against
Syrian government positions at the international airport in the capital
Damascus and a military airbase in the town of Dimas which is around
23km (14 miles) north-west of Damascus and around 5km (3 miles) from the
border with Lebanon.
In 1967 Syria declared war on Israel during what is known as the Six-Day
War. As the name suggests Israel rapidly won this war and occupied
parts of the Syrian Golan Heights. Due to that occupation being
unresolved a state of war still exists between Israel and Syria which
means that these Israeli air-strikes against the Syrian government were
entirely lawful. The target of these strikes appear to have been stores
of and convoys moving S-3000 anti-aircraft missiles for the Syrian
government to the Lebanon based group Hezbollah.
It is well established that Hezbollah are now fighting in Syria on the
side of the Syrian government. Although this is an ideological
allegiance that goes back decades it is also well established that
Hezbollah are being compensated for their efforts with access to
military-grade rockets from the Syrian government arsenal. Therefore
this type of weapons shipment going back and forth is a pretty regular
occurrence. However the S-3000 missile is a much more serious piece of
equipment then anything Hezbollah currently has at their disposal. For
example if the missiles had been deployed rather then loaded on the back
of trucks they would have been more then capable of shooting down the
IAF aircraft that destroyed them. I dread to think what they would do to
a commercial airliner.
Therefore it is extremely likely that this threat and an opportunity to
eliminate presented itself to the Israelis so they took it.
However whilst the strikes were going on the Saban conference taking
place in Washington D.C, US. This is an annual conference on
middle-eastern affairs that the US think-tank the Brookings Institute
had rather unhelpfully decided to host slap-bang in the middle of COP20.
Obviously the fight against ISIL and international sanctions on Iran
over its nuclear program were high on the agenda. While I'm certainly
not going to account for every political view held and sentence uttered
in Israel particularly during an election campaign in the past I have
got the impression that when Israel has demanded action on Iran's
nuclear program they were in fact referring to Iran's supply of
conventional weapons to Hezbollah. Therefore it is possible these
strikes were timed to point out that US President Obama may be taking
things a little too literally in his efforts to end Iran's nuclear
program which even the Israelis describe as an existential threat.
These Israeli strikes though were particularly embarrassing for Syria's
Sunni-Arab insurgent groups who take great pride in their hatred of Jews
and their desire to destroy Israel. Earlier on Sunday the United
Nations Disengagement Observer Forces (UNDOF) which monitors the Golan
Heights presented a report to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
detailing co-operation between the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and the
insurgents.
For the most part this involved allowing Syrian civilians to be treated
in Israeli hospitals but there was also evidence of insurgents being
allowed to cross into the Israeli occupied areas to receive medical
treatment and to accompany their wounded comrades. I should point out
that this is predominately humanitarian assistance and the IDF troops
involved were from the Golani Brigades which was set up specifically to
guard the border. That means that while the Golani Brigades are elite
fighers they are also highly skilled at peacekeeping which this seems to
have been part of.
However UNDOF also detailed meetings between people in civilian dress
who were being guarded by members of the IDF and the insurgents. During
several of these meetings mysterious boxes were handed by what we assume
to be Israeli spies to the insurgents. These packages were very
noticeably indistinct however they could well have contained the type of
communication equipment used to identify ground targets for
air-strikes.
Therefore it seems that Syria's Sunni-Arab insurgents ideological commitments are certainly negotiable, for the right price.
(Originally Posted) 18:20 on 16/12/14 (UK date).
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