Damn, There Are a Lot of Bombs Falling on Raqqa

[bemildred]

Last edited Wed Nov 18, 2015, 08:58 PM - Edit history (1)

The Syrian city of Raqqa was home to at least 220,000 people before the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. Today, it is Islamic State’s de facto headquarters, where the group has imposed its repressive rule on the remaining residents.

And the city has been subjected to over a year of air raids by many different states. It’s really remarkable just how many nations have sent warplanes to strike that small city — America, France, Jordan, Syria and Russia.

Some of the heaviest bombing in recent weeks came on Nov. 15 as French warplanes launched 30 air strikes on Islamic State targets in and near the city. But Russian strikes have caused the worst damage, according to anti-Islamic State activists in Raqqa who corresponded with Al Jazeera.

“People are horrified and everyone here lives in fear,” one anonymous activist told the network. “What the world needs to know is that we live under ISIL control on the ground, and constant air strikes from the sky. We are trapped.”

http://warisboring.com/articles/damn-there-are-a-lot-of-bombs-falling-on-raqqa/

[bemildred]

1. Reports: Russia Fires Missiles from Mediterranean on Targets in ISIL Stronghold Raqqa

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Russian military has launched airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) stronghold of Raqqa in Syria with cruise missiles from their ships in the Mediterranean Sea, France’s Le Monde newspaper said, citing a French official.

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940826001243

[bemildred]

2. Russia strikes IS stronghold Raqa after warning US

Washington: Russian warplanes battered the Islamic State stronghold of Raqa in Syria on Tuesday, after giving the United States a “professional” warning of an imminent strike, US officials said.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said it was the first time Russia had shared information on “some of their operations” since Moscow began its bombing campaign on September 30.

“I don’t have the exact amount of time they gave us, but it was professional,” Cook said.

“There was advance warning, giving us the opportunity if we had had aircraft in the area that we could have made adjustments. That wasn’t necessary in this case.”

http://www.defencetalk.com/russia-strikes-is-stronghold-raqa-after-warning-us-65870/

[bemildred]

3. IS militants dig in, anticipating assault on Syria's Raqqa

BEIRUT (AP) -- Islamic State militants are stiffening their defenses for a possible assault on their de facto capital of Raqqa, as international airstrikes intensify on the Syrian city in retaliation for the Paris attacks. IS fighters are hiding in civilian neighborhoods and preventing anyone from fleeing, former residents say.

The northern Syrian city's estimated 350,000 people are gripped by fear, rattled by powerful Russian and French airstrikes that shake the city daily. They are also worried they would be trapped with nowhere to go amid signs of a looming ground invasion by U.S.-allied Kurdish and Arab forces in Syria, according to the former residents who have fled to Turkey and now report on events in Raqqa through acquaintances and activists inside.

For months, the anti-IS forces have been advancing gradually toward Raqqa with backing from American-led airstrikes, capturing IS-held towns to the north and east of the city. After IS claimed responsibility for Friday's carnage in Paris that killed at least 129 people, there are calls for even stronger action in Syria.

Iraqi intelligence officials this week told The Associated Press that the operation was planned in Raqqa, where the attackers were trained specifically for this operation with the intention of sending them to France. The attacks came soon after IS claimed the downing of a Russian plane in Egypt and deadly suicide bombings in Lebanon and Turkey.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_ISLAMIC_STATE_SYRIAN_STRONGHOLD?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-11-17-15-04-39

[bemildred]

4. 15 opposition groups in Idlib, Aleppo join SDF forces

AMMAN: A group of 15 military factions in Idlib and Aleppo provinces joined the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces coalition on Monday amidst ongoing uncertainty about the potential for the combined forces to become significant actors in Syria’s north.

The 15 factions, both Arab, FSA brigades and Kurdish forces, declared themselves “fully prepared to fight in Aleppo and Idlib under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces” in a video announcement posted online by Jaish al-Thuwar, an FSA rebel coalition that is the most prominent Arab group of the 15 newest members.

The move came in response to “terrorism represented by the Islamic State, its sister [organizations] and the criminal Baath regime,” the announcement said.

In addition to Jaish al-Thuwar, the 15 groups in Aleppo and Idlib that joined the SDF Monday also include 11 minor Arab opposition factions, YPG/YPJ forces, and Jabhat al-Akrad, a previously FSA-affiliated Kurdish group.

http://syriadirect.org/news/15-opposition-groups-in-idlib-aleppo-join-sdf-forces/

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5. West Should Make Peace With Assad to Defeat ISIS, Says Ex-Army Chief

The U.K.’s former army chief David Richards says opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should cease their fire against him to concentrate on defeating ISIS.

Richards believes Assad’s forces, Hizballah and Syria’s Iranian backers are in the best position to lead the charge against ISIS in Syria, he told the BBC.

“The real issue is can you use the one army that’s reasonably competent which is President Assad’s army? In that respect I personally would see a ceasefire being agreed in the way people are now talking, allowing potentially Assad’s army and Hezbollah and their Iranian backers and others to turn their attention on Isis in a sequential operation. After that the politics would kick in and you would have to do something about the residual political structure within Syria” Richards told the BBC on Tuesday.

His also called the U.K.’s war aims ‘contradictory,’ and hopes that the British Prime Minister David Cameron and allied nations will broker a deal with Russia in dealing with ISIS.

http://time.com/4117843/ceasefire-syria-uk/

[bemildred]

6. . nt

[Jefferson23]

9. +1 The concept has been pushed by many. n/t

[geek tragedy]

18. The word is 'partition' but everyone is afraid to say it. nt

[KoKo]

7. At the end of the article:

An interesting if shuddering observation:

So for now, it seems the region’s warring parties will simply expand their air campaigns with the aim of crippling Islamic State. There’s a precedent for this. In the aftermath of the first Persian Gulf War, a UNICEF official remarked that American bombs turned Baghdad into “a body with its skin basically intact, with every main bone broken and with its joints and tendons cut.”

In other words, a state no longer able to function — and reduced to a state of disarray and paralysi

[polly7]

8. Yes. :( nt.

[Jefferson23]

10. Rubble Madness. n/t

[think]

11. Thank you for the posts. Appreciated..

[bemildred]

12. +1.

[bemildred]

13. Vladimir Putin, Leader of the Free World

Goldman seems to have come a bit unhinged, his last was this sort of petulant rambling too. But this has some interesting bits.

If Mikhail Bulgakov had come back to life and written a Levantine sequel to The Master and Margarita, he could not have devised a scenario more lurid than what we now observe in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin is now the leader of the Free World against Islamist terrorism, directing the efforts of France and Germany and setting terms for American involvement. Reeling from last week’s massacre in Paris, France lacks both the backbone and the brute force to avenge itself against ISIS, but in alliance with Russia it will make a more than symbolic contribution.

In 2008 I endorsed Putin for the American presidency, in jest, of course. Now he is leading America’s president by the nose and directing the anti-terror efforts of France and Germany. No-one could have anticipated Putin’s sudden ascent to global leadership during the past several weeks. Russia is in the position of a a vulture fund, buying the distressed assets of the Western alliance for pennies on the dollar. Faced with an American president who will not fight, and his European allies whose military capacity has shrunk to near insignificance, the Russian Federation seized the helm with the deployment of a mere three dozen war planes and an expeditionary force of 5,000 men. One searches in vain through diplomatic history to find another case where so much was done with so little. As an American, I feel a deep humiliation at this turn of events, assuaged only slightly by Schadenfreude at the even deeper humiliation of America’s foreign policy establishment.

The world runs by different rules than it did just a few weeks ago. Putin has answered the question I asked in September (“Vladimir Putin: Spoiler or Statesman?”). President Obama declared at the Nov. 17 Antalya summit, “From the start, I’ve also welcomed Moscow going after ISIL…We’re going to wait to see whether, in fact, Russia does end up devoting attention to targets that are ISIL targets, and if it does so, then that’s something we welcome.” After this week’s Russian and French airstrikes on ISIS’ stronghold in Raqqa, that is a moot point. It seems like another epoch when Mitt Romney declared that Russia was America’s greatest geopolitical threat. Russia, on the contrary, is pulling America’s chestnuts out of the fire. Obama is utterly feckless; by the time the next American president is sworn in, the world will be a difference place. Ukraine? Never heard of it.

Obama wants to follow, not lead, as he told reporters at Antalaya: “What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France.. I’m too busy for that.” Russia is happy to give him the opportunity to follow. Obama’s reluctance to put American forces on the ground took America out of contention, along with aerial rules of engagement so risk-averse that only one in four American sorties against ISIS released it bombs. The Russians are not squeamish about collateral damage and likely to be far more effective.

http://atimes.com/2015/11/vladimir-putin-leader-of-the-free-world/

[KoKo]

14. .....!

Yes...quite a read with some interesting bits and speculation.

However this bit from his article is interesting in light of a "France 24" Reporter (after Paris Bombing) talking about "blank Syrian Passports" being available to purchase in Turkey by anyone with the money--making it almost impossible for investigators to use a Passport as the only verification for the country of origin of a suspected terrorist.

So..interesting his mention of Turkey in connection with the Uyghur separatists use of blank passports.

China has a great deal to worry about from its Sunni Muslim population, especially the 15 million Uyghurs in its westernmost province of Xinjiang. Hundreds of Uyghur separatists are fighting for ISIS in Syria, and the Chinese accuse Turkey of providing passports and safe passage for separatists leaving China for Turkey through Southeast Asia. A Chinese official told me that Turkish embassies in Southeast Asia have stockpiled 100,000 blank passports for the use of Uyghurs. Wealthy Saudis are funding Wahhabi madrassahs in China, and a large part of China’s Muslim population has become radicalized.

[bemildred]

15. Yes that is one of the interesting bits.

The comment about China's lack of close air support, and consequent lack of territorial ambitions, was very interesting too.

[KoKo]

16. Update......Lotta Bombs Missiles, etc. falling Everywhere in Syria

according to the Press Releases from the various sources.

Wht will be left of Syria after this latest onslaught? Money to Rebuild? Iraq hasn't managed to have that kind of interest from the plunder of their Treasury and what Saddam had. Libya? Egypt? Syria? Rebuild?

One wonders "How Much More?"

[geek tragedy]

17. capital cities for sides losing a total war fare very poorly

Berlin and Tokyo being a couple of examples.

Question no one is answering: ifwhen ISIS is liquidated, who governs the Sunni Arab-majority territory it currently controls in Iraq and Syria respectively.

[bemildred]

19. That is an excellent question.

I've been wondering who would take on that job since ISIS took Mosul.

[geek tragedy]

20. 1) Not ISIS; 2) Not Assad 3) someone with guns

[bemildred]

21. Well, Iran has always seemed like the obvious choice, but I don't think that will work well.

In practice. And I don't think the current government in Baghdad is up to it. But they won't want to let someone else have it either.

The King of Jordan seems like a sensible guy, but he will need a lot of help to undertake such a job.

I mean really, who would want to do it? We are going to have to figure out a way for them to govern themselves without annoying the neighbors or the rest of us.

I've seen the Lebanese model suggested, that might work, if one can say that Lebanon works.

So much easier to make a mess than to clean it up.

[geek tragedy]

22. I think it has to be decentalized and tribal/clan-based for a while.

Which is tricky, of course, but there needs to be some kind of empowerment of the locals there so they never again feel tempted to throw in with extremists.

Iraq can maybe be held together. Syria needs to be partitioned. No way the Sunni areas will consent to Assad being their leader, and Assad controls the military so he's president for life in the Allawite areas.