Coalition Air Strikes Wipe Out More ISIS Oil Assets In Syria

Coalition military forces have carried out 10 air strikes against ISIS targets in Syria, destroying five supply routes, oil well heads and oil tanker trucks, the Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) said on Friday.

U.S., Russia say they are close to cooperation deal in Syrian war

Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meet in Geneva on Friday. (Martial Trezzini/AP)

The United States and Russia failed Friday to reach a final agreement on a U.S.-proposed deal to coordinate their air attacks on terrorist groups in Syria and to stop Russian and Syrian bombing of civilian and rebel-held areas, but said they were close and would continue discussions.

Syrian rebels are losing Aleppo and perhaps also the war

Syrian rebels battled for their survival in and around Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Thursday after a blitz of Russian airstrikes helped government loyalists sever a vital supply route and sent a new surge of refugees fleeing toward the border with Turkey.

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air strikes, broke through rebel lines near Aleppo just days after U.N.-backed peace talks were put on hold. (Reuters)

The Russian-backed onslaught against rebel positions in Aleppo coincided with the failure of peace talks in Geneva, and helped reinforce opposition suspicions that Russia and its Syrian government allies are more interested in securing a military victory over the rebels than negotiating a settlement.

Iran’s military and economic investment in Syria

Since the early 1980s, Iran has invested substantial political and economic capital into Syria. Tehran will continue to support the Assad regime, acting as a counter-point alongside Russia to the international community’s largely anti-Assad solutions for the Syria crisis.

It was announced last week that Iran would be invited to attend the upcoming peace talks in Vienna on the Syrian crisis, which took place among major powers from Oct. 30th to Oct. 31st. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif attended the discussions, which ended without significant progress towards a solution to the crisis, as was anticipated.

Why Obama Should Just Let Putin Have the Mess in Syria

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Nor can Vladimir Putin broker a political solution in Syria. In fact, as a result of his recent attempts to play diplomatic power broker in the Middle East, he will lose credibility. That will only grow more apparent later this week when officials from Iran — like Russia, a major backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — meet with their American and Russian counterparts in Vienna to discuss a political resolution to the Syrian conflict. Russia has reportedly been pushing for Iran’s inclusion in these high-stakes talks.

Russia Is Still Limited In What It Can Achieve In Syria

The Russian air bombing campaign in Syria began on September 30, with about 20 sorties a day. The bombing drastically increased on October 8, to over 60 sorties and reached 88 on October 13. The Russian mixed air task force deployed last month at a newly established airbase near Latakia has, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), over 50 jets and helicopters, but most of them are relatively short range, designed primarily for battlefield close air support. The Russian jets in Syria went into action in earnest only when the forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad began an offensive in northern Syria, primarily in the Hama and Idlib provinces (Vedomosti, October13).

The Middle East in 2015 Is a Lot Like Europe in 1914

Watching the events cascading in Syria makes it eerily easy to see how the political elites of 1914 stumbled into World War I while believing they were pursuing a sensible set of national interests.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and US President Barack Obama. In the background, German Red Cross paramedics and a burned Sanitaetswagen, or ambulance, on a World War I battlefield, between 1914 and 1918.

Photo illustration by Juliana Jiménez. Photos by DRK/ullstein bild via Getty Images and Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

The parallels are far from precise. The alliances bonding the players in today’s Middle East aren’t as interlocking as those in early 20th-century Europe. The war-mobilizing machinery isn’t as rigid. And, of course, today’s leaders have the precautionary example of World War I to rivet their attention: They know the pitfalls of escalation and the tragic consequences of unbounded warfare—though people don’t always heed the lessons of the past.

The insoluble Syrian problem: Only wrong answers?

Syria is the origin of many of Europe’s current security problems. Four years after the war there started, the West has no strategy for ending it; but neither does anyone else, including Russia.

It is understandable that Western leaders who have failed to end the war in Syria over the last four years should now be clutching at straws. They still need to clutch at the right straws, however. There are more ways to make things worse in Syria (and neighbouring countries) than to make them better. The EU needs to re-examine what it is doing, and have achievable objectives rather than lofty aspirations; and it should understand that all the other players in the conflict have their own objectives, most of which are incompatible with the West's. 

Does Putin Have a Plan for Syria?

There is no doubt that Russia is stepping up its military presence in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad. A Sept. 9 Reuters report documented Russian forces participating in military operations in Syria. Photo evidence published in a Daily Mail report suggests that Russian troops have been on the ground in Syria at least since April. Other reports of Moscow’s increased military buildup there have mentioned additional deliveries of advanced weaponry to the Assad regime, a military advance team, and prefabricated housing units sent to an airfield near Latakia. A new satellite image obtained by Foreign Policy confirms the scale of the construction to accommodate additional Russian troops and aircraft. If there was any doubt about who’s fueling this war, now Moscow reportedly plans to supply Assad with an annual 200,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas through Kerch, a port in the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in March 2014.

Turkish lira or Syrian pound? Currency debate sparks divide in Northern Syria

Opposition groups in Syria’s North are opting to use the Turkish lira over the Syrian pound to take advantage of a more stable currency, while also deliberately seeking to devalue the Syrian pound and undermine Assad’s power. But how much of a larger economic and political impact is this likely to have on the regime?

Some local institutions in opposition-held parts of northern Syria are opting to use the Turkish lira over the Syrian pound as their primary means of exchange. The lira is overall much less volatile than the Syrian pound, which has been hit hard after five years of conflict.

Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

 Illustration by Eva Bee

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

Bringing Turkey's Border Strategy Into Focus

Satellite images taken at the Turkey-Syria border corroborate what Stratfor predicted weeks ago: that Turkey, now partnered with the United States, will strike at Islamic State-controlled territory adjacent to the Turkish border. The Turks reportedly began to reinforce their southern border with troops and equipment as early as July 3. But according to these images, which were taken July 26, we now know that that equipment includes Turkish-made main battle tanks and support units poised in a defensive position on the Turkish side of the border.

The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War

International diplomats will gather Jan. 22 in the Swiss town of Montreux to hammer out a settlement designed to end Syria's three-year civil war. The conference, however, will be far removed from the reality on the Syrian battleground. Only days before the conference was scheduled to begin, a controversy threatened to engulf the proceedings after the United Nations invited Iran to participate, and Syrian rebel representatives successfully pushed for the offer to be rescinded. The inability to agree upon even who would be attending the negotiations is an inauspicious sign for a diplomatic effort that was never likely to prove very fruitful.

Turkey Goes to War

One month ago, Abu Mohammed al-Halabi painted a dismal picture of his fighters’ struggles against the Islamic State along a crucial geographical corridor north of the Syrian city of Aleppo. The jihadis had killed three of his men in a nighttime ambush in mid-June while using night-vision goggles more advanced than anything his group possessed. His brigade had been fighting for 10 days straight without any injection of money or equipment. If this continued for another week, the beleaguered rebel commander told Foreign Policy, “anything could happen” — even a complete collapse of rebel lines.

In new sign of Assad’s troubles, Syria’s Druze turn away from president

During four years of civil war, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could count on the country’s Druze to keep quiet. Like other religious minorities, the Druze community tended to back the strongman, fearing their fate could be worse under the rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslims.

Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt (center) stands during a meeting of Druze spiritual figures in Beirut, Lebanon June 12. Members of Syria's Druze minority have helped repel a rebel attack on an army base in the south, mobilizing to confront insurgents including a- Qaeda's Nusra Front. (Mohamed Azakir/Reuters)

Recently, however, the Druze have been defying Assad's government. Many are refusing compulsory military service. Increasingly, Druze spiritual leaders are criticizing the embattled president and urging their community to adopt a neutral stance in the conflict.

Trapped Between Assad, Israel, and al Qaeda

On June 5, a Druze sheikh in Qalb Lozeh, a village in Syria’s northwest Idlib province, sent out a desperate voice message over WhatsApp calling for help against fighters from the steadily approaching al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

“They’ve been coming to our homes, and [they] want to remove our sons, our boys between 10 and 14 years old, and put them in a training camp for two months. We don’t know what they’re going to teach them, and they’re threatening us,” the sheikh said in the recording. “They want to take away our weapons.”

Tartus, the Mother of Martyrs

Tartus is Syria's second largest port city, overshadowed only by Latakia. Located on the country's coastal plain, both sit within the Alawite minority's geographic core. Originally known as the "Nusayris," the Alawites became established along the Mediterranean coast under the Shiite Hamdanid dynasty. With the fall of this dynasty, however, they became an embattled minority, persecuted by Christian crusaders, the Sunni Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire in turn.

The French colonial regime favored the Alawites in order to balance power against the majority Sunnis and their Ottoman backers. Following independence, this privileged position made the Alawites a target of reprisals from the new government. By the 1960s, however, the Alawites had regained influence because of their presence in the military and their support for the Baathist movement. In 1971, after a tumultuous period of coups and counter-coups, Defense Minister Hafez al Assad gained control of the government. The Alawite general remained in power until 2000 and was succeeded by his son, Bashar al Assad.

How Islamic State Victories Shape the Syrian Civil War

Forecast

• The Islamic State will prioritize the defense of its core supply lines, used to provide equipment and much-needed recruits.
• The Islamic State will continue to demonstrate considerable flexibility in its offensive operations. 
• The Syrian government and rebel forces will have to increasingly devote their attention and resources to fighting the Islamic State, rather than prioritizing battles with each other.