Posts Tagged ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’

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The Islamic State: Not Quite Dead

Thursday, December 20th, 2018

President Donald Trump is evidently pulling combat troops out of Syria, having declared:

This is not correct. While Hajin itself has just been taken, a core of Islamic State fighters still remains in the remainder of the Hajin pocket:

If President Trump actually means it, this withdrawal is probably some 4-8 weeks premature if the goal is to crush the last remnants of the Islamic State and stabilize SDF territory. Maybe we can let Syria crush the remaining Islamic State remnants, and maybe we can’t. Will we be leaving the Kurds enough weapons and supplies to stand up for themselves against an emboldened Syria, Russia and Turkey? It’s unclear that we will.

Note that the phrase “returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign” leaves a lot of wiggle room. There may well remain a small troop contingent to support SDF forces and direct coalition air power based in Iraq, where some 5,000 U.S. troops are still supporting Operation Inherent Resolve. Also, the British governemnt noted: “Much remains to be done and we must not lose sight of the threat they (ISIS) pose…. (but) as the United States has made clear, these developments in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign.” The French still have a hand in as well.

This comes two days after the Trump-skeptical David French called Trump’s previous policy in Syria both wise and unconstitutional. “The Trump administration is doing the right thing the wrong way, and that matters. The failure to follow the constitutional process means that American forces are in harm’s way without the necessary congressional debate and the necessary congressional approval.”

Cue Bunk Moreland:

Assuming it is a complete and almost immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria, I view President Trump’s move with some skepticism, and suspect that it is slightly premature. Clearly we need to exit Syria at some point, probably sooner rather than later, but I’d prefer Trump to wait just long enough (again, another four weeks) to make sure the Islamic State holds no significant territory upon which to claim the legitimacy of its caliphate. I fear we’re inviting more instability by leaving slightly too early.

I’d love to be proven wrong.

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Boko Haram Kills 100 Nigerian Soldiers in Base Attack

Tuesday, November 27th, 2018

Continuing our tour of ongoing wars the American media isn’t paying attention to, Boko Haram, AKA the Islamic State in West Africa, AKA Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Prophet’s Teachings for Propagation and Jihad), attacked a Nigerian army base over the weekend, killing up to 100 Nigerian soldiers:

The claims by Nigeria’s government that terrorist group Boko Haram has been “defeated” continue to ring hollow.

An attack by the terrorist group on an army base last Sunday led to as many as 100 soldiers being killed, Reuters reports. The attack has been attributed to Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP), a breakout faction of Boko Haram that’s affiliated with the Islamic State terror group. The attack is one of the deadliest by Boko Haram since president Muhammadu Buhari took office in 2015.

The brazenness of the attack on a military base raises questions on the lack of equipment for Nigeria’s soldiers in the front-lines—a recurring theme since the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009. Several reports have previously suggested Nigeria’s army lacked the necessary gear to combat the terrorists. Last year, Nigeria purchased arms valued at nearly $600 million from the US to boost its army.

The timing of the attack is also crucial given Nigeria’s upcoming elections in February. Insecurity was a prominent factor in the last elections as president Muhammadu Buhari strongly campaigned on his strengths as a former army general. Indeed, under his administration, Nigeria’s army quickly made gains on Boko Haram, winning back seized territory, rescuing some abductees and sacking the militants from their Sambisa Forest stronghold.

But regardless, the government’s claims of victory have proven premature. Boko Haram has continued to launch attacks in Nigeria’s northeast notably bombing the University of Maiduguri, once described as the safest place in the city at the peak of the insurgency. The group has also began increasingly targeting aid workers with two nurses abducted and executed in the last two months.

This is reportedly a splinter group, but remember that Boko Haram itself pledged allegiance to the Islamic State back in 2015. The split occurred when the Islamic State backed Abu Musab al-Barnawi over Abubakar Shekau in 2016.

Some reports say the attackers were foreign fighters:

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) responded with brute force following the attack on a military base in Metele, Borno State by Boko Haram terrorists, amid reports that the attackers were foreigners who spoke Arabic and French as they dished out deaths to a hapless unit by the hundreds.

A faction of Boko Haram led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, is affiliated to ISIS and is now known as the Islamic State West Africa (ISWA).

On Monday, November 19, 2018, members of terrorist sect Boko Haram, stormed the 157 Task Force Battalion in Metele and killed over 100 soldiers.

According to PRNigeria, an agency that dispenses information on behalf of the federal government of Nigeria, the latest air-strikes from NAF in the wake of the Metele attack, destroyed a convoy of vehicles linked to the Boko Haram fighters who wreaked havoc and deaths on the military base.

Boko Haram reportedly used rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and AK47 rifles to raid the base before destroying a slew of armored vehicles and killing every army officer in sight.

The foreign fighter angle may be true, or it may by a CYA face-saving measure to explain why Nigerian troops were taken unawares.

A South African mercenary lays the fault at the feet of President Buhari for cutting his group’s contract short:

Jihadist group Boko Haram’s continued killings and assault on Nigeria should be placed squarely at the door of its president, Muhammadu Buhari, former South African Defence Force commander and mercenary Eeben Barlow said at the weekend.

In a Facebook post, Barlow also criticised Buhari for claiming that Boko Haram had been technically defeated, adding that the militants were causing numerous casualties and capturing massive amounts of equipment and ammunition, the Premium Times reported on Monday.

The former mercenary said that Buhari’s government had cut short his contract after his company STTEP (Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection), helped reclaim swathes of territory back from Boko Haram at the peak of the nine-year Islamist insurgency in 2015.

“Pressure forced only a small part of the campaign to be successfully implemented before we were ordered to pack up and leave.

“Many of the men we trained as part of 72 Mobile Strike Force have remained in contact with us (STTEP), pleading for our return to Nigeria,” he said.

“They have also told us that they have been used to a point of exhaustion,” Barlow said.

That statement sounds both very self-serving and quite possible, given that the South Africa had the best military in Sub-Saharan Africa and that the SADF conducted a successful counterinsurgency campaign against SWAPO in Southwest Africa/Namibia in the 1980s, and even kicked the asses of Cuban troops in Angola during operations Modular, Hooper and Packer.

Insurgencies are notoriously difficult to put down, and African nations are relatively poor, even if Nigeria is the wealthiest state in west Africa. My guess is that the STTEP was effective, but also benefited from the factional split, giving a false impression of Boko Haram’s defeat rather than a mere pause while they regrouped.

Boko Haram doesn’t have the strength to take over Nigeria, but they can probably continue to wreck havoc on outlying areas for years to come.

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Islamic State Expands Hajin Pocket

Sunday, November 25th, 2018

I’ve needed to write this for a few weeks, but the torrent of election news and general busyness kept me from it. Instead of gradually being crushed as I (and most observers) expected, an Islamic State counterattack against Syrian Democratic Forces has actually expanded the Hajin pocket:

A sandstorm settled on areas of the Syria-Iraq border over the last week. It turned the air into a reddish soup, where people could not see more than a few meters in front of their faces. Through the haze and dust, Islamic State launched a coordinated counter-attack along a front line near the Euphrates in an area known as the Hajin pocket. This is the last area that ISIS holds in Syria; the US-led coalition and its Syrian Democratic Forces partners have been seeking to defeat ISIS in Hajin for the last two months.

On October 29, the SDF sent special forces to bolster the front line, according to a spokesman for the coalition. “The SDF is engaged in a difficult battle and fighting bravely to protect and free their people from ISIS. We salute the martyred SDF heroes as the intense fight against evil continues,” the spokesman wrote. More than a dozen SDF fighters were killed in the clashes; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said up to 40 had been killed.

This is what the Hajin pocket looked like back when the Islamic State started their counterattack back on October 15:

And this is what it’s looks like now:

(Both shots via LiveMap.)

The Islamic State has retaken areas to the north and south and expanded the southernmost portions east to the Iraqi border. There U.S. troops are supporting Iraqi troops fighting the Islamic State.

The biggest question is how the Islamic State pocket in Hajin continues to get resupplied with men and material despite theoretically being surrounded on all sides.

There are reports that Saudi Arabia and UAE have sent troops into Syria to support the SDF against the Islamic State:

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent military forces to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG group in north-east Syria, Turkey’s Yenisafak newspaper reported.

The paper said the forces will be stationed with US-led coalition troops and will support its tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons.

Quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the newspaper reported that a convoy of troops belonging to an Arab Gulf state recently arrived in the contact area between the Kurdish PKK/YPG and Daesh in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside.

All Turkish news on the Syrian conflict should be taken with several grains of salt.

Other Islamic State/Syrian theater news:

  • “US and Russian forces have clashed repeatedly in Syria, US envoy says.”

    American and Russian forces have clashed a dozen times in Syria — sometimes with exchanges of fire — a U.S. envoy told Russian journalists in a wide-ranging interview this week.

    Ambassador James Jeffrey, U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement, offered no specifics about the incidents on Wednesday, speaking to the Russian newspaper Kommersant and state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

    Jeffrey had been asked to clarify casualty numbers and details of a February firefight in which U.S. forces reportedly killed up to 200 pro-Syrian regime forces, including Russian mercenaries, who had mounted a failed attack on a base held by the U.S. and its mostly Kurdish local allies near the town of Deir al-Zour. None of the Americans at the outpost — reportedly about 40 — had been killed or injured.

    Jeffrey declined to offer specifics on that incident, but said it was not the only such confrontation between Americans and Russians.

    “U.S. forces are legitimately in Syria, supporting local forces in the fight against Da’esh and as appropriate — and this has occurred about a dozen times in one or another place in Syria — they exercise the right of self-defense when they feel threatened,” Jeffrey said, using an Arabic term for the Islamic State group. “That’s all we say on that.”

    Asked to clarify, he said only that some of the clashes had involved shooting and some had not.

    That’s all from Stars and Stripes, so presumably it’s not complete garbage.

  • It seems that Syrian army forces have destroyed the last Islamic State pocket in southwest Syria.

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    Allah Ack-FAIL

    Sunday, October 21st, 2018

    It’s been an exhausting week for me. So enjoy this video of members of the Islamic State display their lack of martial prowess with their motley assortment of ill-maintained weapons.

    Caveat: There are a few repeated bits of footage.

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    The Islamic State Counterattacks

    Monday, October 15th, 2018

    The outcome of the investment of the Hajin pocket seemed perfectly clear: As in Raqqa and Mosul, U.S. backed forced would slowly but surely reduce the pocket in grinding urban warfare until all of its Islamic State defenders were dead or captured.

    War has a way of throwing wrenches into the gears of things that seem perfectly clear.

    A few days ago, the Islamic State remnants in the Hajin pocket launched a series of counterattacks that were at least moderately successful, even allowing them to overrun a local refugee camp and took as many as 130 families hostage before the SDF forced them back. In other places the Islamic State appears to have overrun and taken SDF positions. Some even got far enough to attack a post on the Iraqi border. There was even a reappearance of some of the improvised armor vehicles the Islamic State used in earlier stages of the war, despite unquestioned allied in-theater airspace control.

    Every black rifle below represents an Islamic State counterattack:

    At least some of those positions the Islamic State took seem to have been retaken, but the situation right now is unclear and fluid.

    Jerry Pournelle used to say “In war, everything is very simple, but simple things are very difficult.” The Islamic State may be all-but-dead as a territory-holding entity, but it’s not dead dead yet..

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    SDF Fight Against the Islamic State Update

    Sunday, September 30th, 2018

    There are multiple problems reporting on the ongoing war against the Islamic State. First, the mainstream media hates reporting on any success that might give credit to President Donald Trump. Second, related to the first, none of the national media even seem to have reporters “in theater” where the Syrian Democratic Forces are slowly crushing the life out of the remnants of the Islamic State, and even the international press seems to have curtailed their coverage in the last few months. Third, everything seems to have three or four different names (Baghuz vs. al-Baghuz vs. al-Baghuz Fawqani, etc.), depending on the Arabic transliteration method used. Fourth, the war has reached the stage of “SDF has taken [village you’ve never heard of] from the Islamic State, has met stiff resistance in [another village you’ve never heard of], while also moving into [still a third village you’ve never heard of].”

    As of now, the SDF has taken al-Baghuz Fawqani, has met stiff resistance in Marashidah, and moved into the town of Sosah. Those lie (respectively) south-to-north in the Haijin pocket along the Euphrates just north of the Syrian-Iraqi border, in Deir ez-Zor province.

    Here’s an SDF video on the investment of Sosah, AKA Sousse, which shows footage of the SDF combat bulldozers that have evidently played a key roll in the fight.

    More video showing the liberation of Al-Shajla, a small village between Baghuz and Sosah:

    The general plan seems to be to roll up the pocket south-to north supported by coalition artillery and air support.

    Earlier combat footage:

    Expect more grinding combat in tiny villages you never heard of as the last Islamic State pocket in Syria is slowly, methodically destroyed.

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    France Kills Top Islamic State in the Greater Sahara Commander

    Monday, September 17th, 2018

    Here’s yet another Islamic State affiliate I was unaware of:

    A top commander for the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) was reportedly killed in a French military operation in northern Mali over the weekend.

    The French military announced today that its forces carried out airstrikes and a ground operation yesterday in Mali’s northern Menaka region. The airstrikes reportedly killed Mohamed Ag Almouner, identified as a top commander for ISGS, as well as one of his bodyguards. In a move of transparency, the French also took responsibility for killing two civilians and wounding two others and expressed their “regret and condolences to the families and loved ones of the two victims.”

    In May of this year, the US military identified an ISGS commander known as “Tinka Ag Almouner” as being involved in the deadly Oct. 2017 ambush in Tongo Tongo, Niger, in which four American Special Forces soldiers were killed. That Almouner was reported killed in the ensuing firefight during the ambush, however, FDD’s Long War Journal cannot independently verify the identity of the French target.

    France has taken part in several operations against the jihadist group in the Menaka region, however, Almouner would be one of the highest level ISGS commanders reported killed by the French.

    France’s statement did not disclose a specific location, but local sources reported the operation took place near Infoukaretane. That locality, which is south of the town of Menaka, has seen several clashes between pro-government forces and ISGS and is at the center of operations against the jihadist group and its supporters.

    Two pro-Malian Tuareg militias, the Imghad and Allies Self Defense Movement (GATIA) and the Movement for the Salvation of Azawad (MSA), have launched numerous military operations against ISGS in the Menaka region since February. According to the militias, dozens of ISGS members have been killed or detained, including another high-ranking jihadist commander identified as Djibo Hamma.

    Posting this because Islamic State in the Greater Sahara wasn’t in my previous roundup of Islamic State affiliated terrorist groups, and I was unaware France was fighting them in Mali.

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    SDF Begins Final Assault on Hajin

    Wednesday, September 12th, 2018

    After months of preparation, and while the world’s attention (such little of it that can still be focused on Syria) focused on Idlib in NW Syria, Syria Democratic Forces finally launched their much anticipated final push against the Islamic State’s Hajin pocket in SE Syria.

    The final phase of the assault to capture the remaining Islamic State-held territory in eastern Syria has begun, according to the U.S.-led Coalition and Syrian Democratic Forces, its main partner on the ground in Deir Ezzor.

    “The last phase of Operation Roundup kicks off soon with the Syrian Democratic Forces leading the way in the Lower Euphrates River Valley to destroy the final remnants of ISIS,” Colonel Sean Ryan, spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, told The Defense Post on Monday, September 10.

    “The Iraqi Security Forces have supported the SDF’s maneuver by establishing blocking positions along the southeast portion of the Iraqi-Syrian border and conducting precision strikes against ISIS targets.”

    An SDF source told The Defense Post that an official announcement was imminent.

    Earlier, AFP reported that the Coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces launched a fierce assault against the pocket of territory held by ISIS around Hajin in eastern Deir Ezzor province, citing an SDF commander.

    An SDF commander said the assault, relying heavily on artillery and U.S.-led Coalition air strikes, had killed at least 15 ISIS fighters.

    “Our forces today began attacking the last bastions of Daesh in Hajin, with intense artillery and air support,” said the SDF commander.

    More news of the operation:

    he US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured 27 positions around the villages of al-Baghuz Fawqani and al-Kasrah, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, during the last 48 hours, the SDF’s media center reported on September 12.

    According to the media center, US-backed forces killed 41 ISIS fighters and destroyed several artillery pieces and bulldozers. Furthermore, US-led coalition warplanes conducted 10 airstrikes on positions of the terrorist group in al-Baghuz Fawqani and al-Kasrah.

    Here’s the livemap look at the theater:

    Some tweets:

    Hopefully this will be the final push to eliminate the last Islamic State-held Syrian territory east of the Euphrates, though there have been previous operations that looked to do exactly that. The biggest difference is that the SDF has now cleared the big remaining Islamic State pocket along the Iraq/Syria border. That means that all their forces in theater (as well as coalition aircraft and Iraqi artillery) can concentrate on eliminating the Hajin pocket. Despite all that concentrated firepower, expect urban warfare to be as grinding and bloody as it was in Raqqa and Mosul, albeit it in a much smaller area…

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    Syrian Army Crushes Islamic State Pocket In Yarmouk Basin

    Wednesday, August 1st, 2018

    Saturday I covered the Syrian army’s offensive against the Islamic State pocket in the Yarmouk Basin along the border with Jordan and the Golan Heights.

    Now news reports indicate that pocket has been completely crushed:

    The Syrian regime’s army and its allies have taken full control of the Yarmouk Basin in southwestern Syria after routing Daesh, the Hezbollah group’s Al Manar TV said on Tuesday.

    The basin borders Israel and Jordan and had been the last embattled pocket of the southwest after a sustained advance by President Bashar Al Assad’s forces into the longtime rebel stronghold.

    The Iranian-backed Hezbollah has fought alongside Al Assad’s forces as he has turned the tide of the civil war against rebels and militants with the help of Russian air power since 2015.

    The regime’s army seized Daesh’s main redoubt in the town of Shajara on Monday, which left just a few villages in the hands of an Daesh-affiliated faction, the Khalid Ibn Al Walid army, that had controlled the Yarmouk Basin.

    Here was the Livemap snap Saturday:

    And here’s the map just after the pocket was crushed:

    Pocket by pocket, the last remnants of the Islamic State are being dismantled.

    Faster, please.

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    Islamic State Shrinks Again

    Saturday, July 28th, 2018

    The ongoing destruction of what remains of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is more of a process than a series of discrete battles at this point. A story I’ve been watching develop the last few weeks has finally achieved fruition: The complete elimination of the large, thinly-populated Islamic State enclave in eastern Syria along the Iraqi border.

    This was the situation at the start of Operation Jazerra Storm:

    Here it was two weeks ago:

    A tweet featuring a map of the operation a few days ago:

    (And yes, those blue areas near the Syria-Iraq border on the Livemap are salt plains, not bodies of water.)

    Now the pocket has been completely cleared:

    The hard nut of the Hajin pocket has yet to be cracked, but that should be next on the SDF list, since the the Islamic State has been completely driven from the rest of Syria east of the Euphrates.

    More news of the war against the Islamic State:

  • The Syrian Democratic Forces held their first direct talks with Assad’s government.

    The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are holding talks with the government in Damascus for the first time on the future of huge swathes of northern Syria under their control.

    The Kurdish-majority SDF, founded with the help of the US to fight Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) in northeastern Syria, now controls almost a third of the country and is looking to negotiate a political deal to preserve its autonomy.

    “We are working towards a settlement for northern Syria,” said Riad Darar, the Arab co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, the SDF’s political wing.

    “We hope that the discussions on the situation in the north will be positive,” Mr Darar said, adding that they were being held “without preconditions”.

    The SDF now controls 27 per cent of the country, accord to the UK-based monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, having seized Raqqa and much of the eastern province of Deir Ezzor from Isil militants with the help of US airpower.

    The Kurds have used the cover of the Syrian war to carve out a semi-autonomous enclave in the northeast of the country, which it calls “Rojava”.

    Rojava is also known as the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.

  • This is a very interesting development: “Political wing of SDF to open offices in Latakia, Damascus, Hama, Homs.” The caveat here is that it comes from Al Masdar News, a notoriously pro-Assad outlet, and that I haven’t seen it anywhere else.
  • At the other end of Syria, Assad’s forces are methodically destroying the Islamic State pocket in the Yarmouk Basin (again the Al Masdar News caveat, but they have the most recent story on the fighting), hard against the Golan Heights and the Jordanian border.

    • The Yarmouk Basin pocket is one of three pockets of Islamic State control west of the Euphrates. There’s another large, sparsely populated pocket northeast of there, where the Islamic State is active enough to still commit atrocities, and the large, sparsely-populated pocket immediately to the west of Deir ez-Zor.

    Likewise in Iraq, there are only two pockets of Islamic State control left: A large, sparsely-populated area east of the Syrian border in northwest Iraq, and a tiny sliver of land between Tikrit and Al Fatah Air Base.

    That little sliver has been static for months, with no fighting indicated, so it may just be a map artifact, or an area no one has been able to verify if it’s liberated or not. Keep in mind that the Iraqi government declared that the Islamic State was defeated in Iraq back in December, but counterinsurgencies tend to take time. Espicially counterinsurgencies against Islamic terrorists. It took 14 years to end the original Moro insurgency in the Philippines, and some would argue that it was never entirely eradicated…

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