The Syrian army regained control of a road southeast of Aleppo on Wednesday, state television said, taking back the government’s only supply route into the city from Islamic State fighters who had seized it last month.

Army forces took full control of the road which runs from Aleppo through the towns of Khanaser and Ithriya and links up with the cities of Hama and Homs further south, the channel flashed in a news bulletin. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group confirmed the report.

The road is the army’s supply route to government-held western parts of Aleppo, home to around 2 million people.

Rebels are mainly in the eastern sector of the city, which was Syria’s most populous before the conflict broke out in 2011.

Islamic State said late last month it had taken control of most of the Syrian army checkpoints on the road and seized large caches of ammunition from army outposts in the area.

Areas around Aleppo have seen weeks of heavy fighting after Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian fighters launched an offensive to retake territory around Aleppo from rebels and jihadist fighters.

The offensive has concentrated so far on clearing insurgent-held areas south of Aleppo rather than the city itself.

It is one of several assaults carried out by pro-government ground forces since Russian jets began carrying out air strikes on Sept. 30 in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian troops are also trying to advance to the east of Aleppo towards Kweires military airport, aiming to break a siege of the base by Islamic State and other insurgents.

On November 3, a U.S. fighter aircraft and a Russian fighter aircraft conducted a communication test in skies over south central Syria on Tuesday to validate safety protocols agreed between the two countries last month, a U.S. military official told Reuters.

The U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the two aircraft came within five miles (8 km) of one another. The test lasted about three minutes, the report says.

A U.S. defense official said the test did not amount to joint training with the Russians, as Moscow has described it in a statement.

“We put on hold all military to military cooperation following the onset of Russian aggression in Crimea, and that remains in effect,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

unian.info

David Ignatius is right to recognize the importance of historical legacy to the rise of ISIS. He is also right to criticize the embrace of an “80-percent solution” to the reconstruction of Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, whereby, as he puts it in his recent Atlantic essay on the roots of the Islamic State, “Kurds and Shiites would build the new state regardless of opposition from the 20 percent of the population that was Sunni.” Exclusion probably did encourage some Sunnis to first support the Islamic State of Iraq and then its successor, ISIS.

U.S. President Barack Obama has praised Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s “commitment to an inclusive government where Shia, Sunni, and Kurds” are unified. The mechanism that would make something like this work, Iraq’s ambassador to Washington, Lukman Faily, tells Ignatius, is a federal system that could give Sunnis some “skin in the game.”

But the emphasis on the Sunni-Shiite-Kurd divide obscures divisions within the Iraqi Sunni population. In doing so, it oversimplifies the political bargain that has to be struck in order to win the war against ISIS, given that there is no single “Sunni” perspective toward central governance in Iraq. Much will depend on how a future system is administered. Iraq isn’t so much innately divided along ethnic and sectarian lines as it is fractured within ethnic and sectarian lines. Understanding these divisions is critical to defining political solutions that will produce meaningful inclusion of tribal and regional interests, whether in a federal system or some other arrangement.

Western Iraq, for example—especially Anbar province, where ISIS has a strong presence, having taken the provincial capital of Ramadi this summer—has long posed a governance challenge to the Iraqi government in Baghdad. This can be seen as both good and bad news. ISIS “control” over its territory in Anbar is not necessarily secure. It is clear from documents belonging to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion, that even Saddam was hard-pressed to force his political will on the people of western Iraq, despite the sectarian identity they shared with his ruling Sunni regime. This tendency will complicate the process of governing the area for a Baghdad-based government, or ISIS, or any other party, as the United States learned after 2003. ISIS relies on extreme brutality to maintain control, but it may face resistance, just as Saddam did, even if it can keep the self-proclaimed caliphate intact.

The campaign to retake Ramadi is now the focus of the Iraqi government and its U.S. backers in the fight against ISIS. Abadi’s government is trying to take advantage of local enmities to organize Sunni tribal fighters to combat the Islamic State (just as these tribes came to oppose the Islamic State of Iraq, the parent of ISIS, during the U.S. troop surge beginning in 2007). But the effort is faltering due to distressingly familiar problems: Government-supported troops tend to be under-resourced and minimally trained, leaving them vulnerable to ISIS attacks or possible defection to the group.

Ignatius also hints at another problem in the battle with ISIS: that a Sunni military force “would have to operate from a secure base—not just a logistical base, but a base of trust, in which the Sunnis feel they are fighting for a part of Iraq that will truly be theirs post-ISIS.” And yet western Sunnis’ lack of trust in any Baghdad-based central government, however inclusive, can be expected to continue. This is not just because of the antipathy of Sunnis to Shiite rule, sectarian exclusion on the part of the Shiite-led Iraqi regime, or the misconduct of Shiite militias. Western Iraq’s location on the borders of Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia makes the smuggling of people and goods a highly lucrative industry there, and residents’ alliances and rivalries often transcend national borders. As a result, Iraqi state infrastructure has long been challenged in those areas, even when Sunnis led the government. The long-term loyalty of the tribes is not guaranteed.

All of which is to say that history did not start in 2003, and that Anbar’s political disaffection has deeper historical roots. One is Saddam’s favoring of his Sunni clansmen from his hometown of Tikrit and its surrounding districts—in central Iraq, east of Anbar—who formed the backbone of his special military units. Western Sunnis from towns now occupied by ISIS were less privileged than Tikritis going into the 1990s, and the sanctions imposed on Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait hit them harder, weakening national cohesion within Iraq and within the Sunni community. For example, Sunnis from areas like Ramadi suffered from higher rates of child mortality in 1997 than Sunnis from areas around Tikrit, according to data from the 1997 national census. Certainly some of the prominent western tribes and their leadership benefited from association with Saddam, who was well aware of their influence and the need to manipulate their allegiances. But these tribal alliances with the central government were opportunistic, not deeply felt, and prominent Iraqis from the west became disaffected over time as a result of the suffering of their clansmen. By the time of the 2003 invasion, extreme poverty in Anbar towns like Al-Ka’im was more than three times the rate of extreme poverty in Tikrit, according to information collected by the United Nations World Food Program.

In more telling evidence of the history of restiveness in the region, attempts to overthrow Saddam at multiple points during the 1990s came predominantly from Sunnis with strong ties to the western provinces. Members of the Dulaim tribe—one of the largest in Iraq, with strong regional representation in Anbar province—revolted against the regime in 1995 after the execution of General Muhammad al-Dulaimi, who was suspected of plotting a coup against Saddam, and other Dulaimi officers. In 1996, officers associated with the al-Duri tribe—also prominent in Anbar province—were accused of attempting a coup; it’s likely that more coup attempts went unreported. This willingness to take extreme risks in order to rebel against a ruthless regime capable of harsh punishment has almost certainly not disappeared, as ISIS may learn.

Another division within the Sunni community centers on Sufism, a mystical and inward-looking strain of Islam that has proven more deeply influential in Anbar than in others parts of Iraq. Saddam closely monitored clerics from across the country, and in a regime census of Iraqi clerics during the 1990s, Anbar had the highest percentage of mosques with a Sufi orientation in the country. The Naqshbandi Army, an insurgent group known by its Arabic acronym JRTN, was established after Saddam’s death in 2006 and grew out of a Sufi movement headed by the Baath Party insider Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri. During the initial rise of ISIS, the JRTN seemed to have opportunistically joined the winning side, forming an unlikely alliance of Sufi-oriented former Baathists and Sunni extremists against the Shiite-dominated regime of then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The union did not last long.

The complex—indeed confusing and contradictory—relationships among Baathists, ISIS, and the JRTN display the tenuousness of political loyalties in Iraq’s power struggle. JRTN’s position as a Sufi nationalist group with a strong presence in western Iraq suggests, however, that it will continue to be an important player in establishing political order in the area. The group certainly has the potential to be a spoiler in any negotiations for shared power between Sunnis and Shiites.

The Iraqi government’s retaking of Tikrit at the end of March represented a small but necessary step to securing territorial control over Iraq. Winning in Ramadi would be important for the regime’s credibility—especially if it is accomplished without the assistance of Shiite militias. But military victory won’t necessarily lead to political stability; as Saddam Hussein’s time in power teaches, the residents of western Iraq resisted control from Baghdad even when the Iraqi government was dominated by Sunnis. Saddam’s brutally repressive and ultimately narrow regime left many Iraqi Sunnis outside of his coalition. It is in the areas where these Sunnis were most numerous that ISIS is strongest today. The silver lining is that given the historical antipathy to authority in the region, ISIS may struggle to control Anbar province as well.

theatlantic.com

A series of reported Israeli airstrikes over the weekend, allegedly against weapons storage facilities in Syria’s Qalamoun region, raises questions on the limits of cooperation between Russia and Iran in Syria and on Israel’s operational latitude in a Syrian airspace today dominated by the Russian Air Force.

While Russia and Iran are battlefield comrades in defending the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the Israeli airstrikes suggest that Moscow has little interest in helping its allies protect arms stockpiles that are intended to bolster Hezbollah’s front against Israel.

On the other hand, the limited nature of these latest airstrikes, which did not see a breach of Syrian airspace by Israeli jets, poses the question of how far Israel is prepared to go in Syria to target what it calls “game changing” weapons destined for Hezbollah. Would Israel risk antagonizing Russia by dispatching aircraft directly into Syrian airspace to attack targets closer to the Russian operational core in Latakia Governorate?

The Israeli airstrikes, some of which were reportedly directed against Scud ballistic missiles, were the first such raids since April. They were also the first Israeli airstrikes on Syria since Russia launched its military intervention two months ago to prop up the Assad regime.

The first wave of airstrikes were reported to have been staged on Friday night, with Israeli jets firing stand-off guided missiles from Lebanese airspace to hit an alleged Hezbollah position near Ras al-Ain and the sprawling ballistic missile facility near Qutayfah, home to the Syrian Army’s 155^th Brigade. Israeli aircraft have in the past launched their missiles from Lebanese airspace to hit targets in Syria close to the border with Lebanon to avoid Syria’s dense air defense network around Damascus. Both of Friday’s targets were well within the range of Israel’s Popeye and Spice air-to-surface missiles, launched from aircraft above central Bekaa Valley. Security sources in South Lebanon said that 16 Israeli aircraft were detected breaching Lebanese airspace on Friday — an unusually large number.

A second wave of attacks reportedly occurred Sunday evening, again hitting the 155^th Brigade facility south of Qutayfah which includes more than two dozen underground missile bunkers dug into the side of a valley. Six Hezbollah personnel were killed in Sunday’s airstrike, according to security sources in Lebanon.

Israel, Hezbollah and the Syrian government have not confirmed the airstrikes and most of the reporting on the raids came from pro-Syrian opposition news sources.

Nevertheless, the pattern of air strikes and the subsequent reporting sources and lack of official comment from the antagonists echoed an Israeli bombing raid in the Qalamoun area in late April.

Israel has struck suspected Hezbollah arms shipments in Syria on 11 separate occasions since January 2013. The Syrian government generally refrains from commenting on raids that occur in remoter areas of the country while denouncing those that cannot be ignored such as the daylight strike against targets in Damascus airport last December. The only military response to past air strikes came from Hezbollah following the bombing of a suspected weapons transfer facility on Lebanese soil south of Janta in the Bekaa Valley in February 2014. Hezbollah subsequently staged a number of small attacks against Israeli troops in the Golan Heights, culminating in the wounding of four Israeli soldiers in a roadside bomb ambush.

Israel has repeatedly said that it will not allow Hezbollah to acquire “game changing” weapons such as ballistic missiles or advanced air defense systems. Given the relative rarity of Israeli air strikes in Syria, it is possible that Israeli intelligence had detected a convoy of weapons preparing to roll out to the Lebanese border and took preemptive action. Hezbollah often uses the bad weather of fall and winter to help mask its arms smuggling activities across the border.

Last month, Moscow announced that Russia and Israel had agreed to establish a “hotline” between their respective militaries to avoid any mishaps and misunderstandings that could arise from having their air forces operating in the same skies above Syria. The agreement coincided with a report in As-Safir on 16 October that Russian aircraft were scrambled two weeks earlier to intercept Israeli jets in North Lebanon that were approaching Syrian airspace.

Russia’s interests in Syria are related to safeguarding the Assad regime in the short-term and consolidating its influence in the country and the broader region in the longer-term. It has a battlefield alliance with Iran, Hezbollah and the Syrian Army and operates a joint operations center in Damascus. The Syrian Army and its allies from Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan are presently engaged in several offensives in northern Syria supported by Russian air power.

But Russia’s interests do not necessarily extend to providing protection for Hezbollah’s weapons stored in Syrian military bases, which, after all, are related to the conflict against Israel and not to Assad’s survival. The latest Israeli raids suggest that Israel does not expect Russia to actively confront its attempts to hit Hezbollah assets in Syria, at least when the attacks are launched from Lebanese airspace and the targets are far from Russia’s operational hub centered on Hmeymim air base south of Latakia.

It is unclear exactly what agreement, if any, has been concluded between Russia and Israel governing the use of Syrian air space.

“We don’t interfere with them and they don’t interfere with us,” Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a radio interview two weeks ago.

But any understanding will surely be put to the test if Israel detects “game changing” weapons appearing in Latakia Governorate in proximity to the Hmeymim airbase and chooses to attack them. Israeli jets have staged at least three previous attacks in the Latakia area, one of them against suspected P-800 Yakhont anti-ship missiles. If Israeli jets are dispatched again to destroy advanced weapons consignments in Latakia, it is hard to imagine Russia turning a blind eye to an aerial intrusion on its ‘patch,’ even if the anti-Israel agenda of Iran and Hezbollah is not Moscow’s concern.

mmedia.me/lb

A new photo series released by an unknown group of Syrian rebels shows Alawite Muslim women locked in cages on top of roofs to help deter airstrikes by Russians.

Rebel groups other than ISIS in the region the Free Syrian Army, the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda, and many others. All are fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime, which is currently being propped up by Russia and spearheaded by Putin. Assad himself is Alawite.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the people were military officers and their families who had been captured by rebels in the area. The rebels also want to make a statement that  whatever happens to Syrian civilians will also happen to Assad’s supporters.

Images of caged people transported on the back of pick-up trucks emerged on the Shaam News Network. They were said to be travelling in the area of Eastern Ghouta, northeast of the Damascus.

Alawites are a Muslim minority group that makes up about 12% of the Syrian population. According to About Middle East: “Alawites practice a unique but little known form of Islam that dates back to the 9th and 10th century.

abna24.com

Syrian forces have been preparing to storm a strategic suburb south of the capital Damascus, according to both pro and anti-regime sources.

Local anti-regime outlet Enab Baladi reported Tuesday morning that government forces launched a new military operation on the outskirts of Darayya in a bid to storm the rebel-held town that has been besieged by the regime since November 2012.

“Fierce clashes have raged on the town’s southern and western fronts from early morning and until the moment this report was made,” Enab Baladi’s correspondent in the town said.

The correspondent said that the Syrian army and allied militias were aiming “to storm [Darayya] after several days of continuous preparatory fire.”

The largest rebel group based in Darayya on Tuesday morning announced on Twitter that armed opposition groups in the town were coming under heavy attack by regime forces.

“The FSA are fighting fiercely in the town of Darayya on several fronts in reaction to attempts to advance by regime forces,” the FSA-affiliated Martyrs of Islam Brigade said.

The group claimed it had been inflicting heavy losses on regime forces, but warned that “Assad’s forces and his aides are continuing in their bid to control one of [the area’s] positions, using all available means.”

“They will try to storm us again and they will leave corpses, tanks and disappointment behind them,” it boasted.

Meanwhile, a pro-regime outlet close to a National Defense Force militia touted the regime’s offensive on Darayya.

“The Syrian army has begun storming the town of Darayya in rural Damascus from several fronts,” the Hadar al-Hadath Facebook page said.

Barrel bombing

The military moves outside Darayya coincided with heavy regime bombardment of the town.

“The number of barrel bombs dropped by regime helicopters on areas of the town of Daraya in western Ghouta has risen to at least 52,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Tuesday.

The SOHR also reported that a civilian from Daraya had died as a result of wounds sustained during a previous barrel bomb attack on the town.

Meanwhile, Enab Baladi said that heavy fire with various types of munition had caused civilian casualties in the town.

“At least five civilians were killed and dozens were injured after civilian areas were [targeted] with surface-to-surface missiles, heavy artillery and barrel bombs.”

Strategic importance

Darayya—which lies eight kilometers to the southwest of the capital and is mostly controlled by the opposition—has been besieged by the regime for the past two three years, after it failed to oust rebels from the Damascus suburb in fierce fighting spanning from November 2012 to March 2013.

The town is strategically important, lying near the Mezzeh Airbase less than three kilometers to the north as well as near the Republican Palace, the Republican Guard’s headquarters and the Syrian Army’s crack Fourth Armored Division.

In mid-June, reports emerged that the regime was razing hundreds of homes in the strategic area southwest of Damascus to fortify the capital against a potential attack by armed opposition factions.

The Syrian regime demolished on Monday and Tuesday 500 houses next to the Mezze Airbase in parts of Darayya controlled by the government, Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reported on June 16.

mmedia.me/lb

It is not the immediate problems with Isis and Syria that investors should be focused on in the Middle East, but the upcoming war of succession in Saudi Arabia, according to energy analyst Dr Karin Kneissl.

Speaking at the Wealth Manager Retreat at the Grove in Hertfordshire earlier this month, Kneissl examined the role of geopolitics in the oil market and asked how relevant it remains when there are so many moving parts.

On one hand, she said that in an oversupplied oil market, the role of Saudi Arabia and the return of Iranian production could have significant implications for the oil price.

Alternatively, despite escalating conflict in the largest oil-producing region in the world, supply has not dwindled and the oil price remains depressed.

‘Uncertainty will remain with us and volatility will remain with us, however, the war of succession in Saudi Arabia could change a lot,’
she said.

‘In Saudi Arabia, it is all about the welfare state that the Saudis have to finance to keep their young people at bay. When we look back at what has happened in the past 18 months, there was a fairly stable price, which contained the risk premium of $30,’ she said.

‘It was stable because Asia, and China in particular, was driving the demand. Despite all the wars, despite all the conflict, despite the situation in oil-producing and transit countries, the price went down so much.

‘We might also experience something like a peak in demand. This peak in demand becomes even more interesting when we look at the transport sector.’

Kneissl said that we could be witnessing what she has called the end of the ‘Westphalian’ order. This, she explained, was the advent of the territorial state following the wars in the Balkans creating a community around citizens and not believers.

‘That territorial state, the colonial powers exported to the Middle East and it now looks like it is being replaced by the “ummah”, the community of believers,’ she said.

‘When you look now into the Middle East and the Islamic State, the community of believers is apparently more important than the community of territory. We will see a Balkanisation which will end up in ethnic “statelets”.’

She also highlighted that there is still more supply from the conventional sector, led by Israel exploring the Leviathan fields.

Kneissl cited new findings by the Italian oil company Eni, off the shore of Egypt, which she said ‘turns the contract that the Egyptians were about to sign with the Israelis
upside down’.

‘Egypt used to export gas. Now we see a very fresh supply of gas in the Eastern Mediterranean, which might first and foremost be for regional consumption and then gas for the European market,’ she said.

‘There is more conventional gas coming to the market much closer to Europe, when you compare it to the unconventional American gas for which you need LNG terminals, which you don’t have in Europe.’

Kneissl pointed out that Russia has been increasingly looking to the East, while the West still wants to continue business ties.

However, she said, the engagement is moving east. There is increased cooperation between Russia and China, which she said started back in 2004.

‘The Siberia pipeline that should bring gas that was supposed to go to the European markets now goes to the Asian market. The pipelines are turning east for economic reasons, for political reasons and for many others. This cooperation will remain with us,’ she said.

The developments in the Middle East could also result in China becoming a more active player, she warned, as the world’s second largest economy will not just stand by and watch as events unfold in the Middle East. ‘Chinese foreign policy ever since the 1990s was shaped by its energy interest. Until 1994, China could satisfy its national oil consumption by its own national production. For the past two years, China has become the number one importer of oil,’ she said.

‘Everyone is affected by what China is doing in the energy business.’

Kneissl believes EU decision-makers have not quite understood the importance and intricacies of what is happening in the eastern Mediterranean, Syria or Middle East in general.

‘The price report for the past month shows us that the engine of China is slowing down. However, China remains an issue and a close monitoring is needed of whatever it does, not only as an oil consumer but also as a geopolitical actor in oil-producing countries.’

citywire.co.uk

A senior political figure in Turkey has accused some businessmen in his country of funding the Islamic State group. The veteran politicians said some Iraqi businessmen are “directly involved” in the process as well.

According to Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, some Turkish and Iraqi businessmen are buying oil from ISIS in the black market, financing the militant organization. The former deputy of the opposition of the Republican People’s Party in Hatay province has explained how ISIS manages to secure a huge amount of money.

According to Huff Post, ISIS gets funded by rich people from Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia even though the governments have either significantly reduced or completely stopped funding anti-Shia political and military movements. Leaders of such countries failed to take any measure to stop their citizens from financing the militant forces.

Ediboglu said that some people close to Masoud Barzani, the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, and some Turkish businessmen were selling oil from Syrian oil fields together with ISIS.

“There is evidence that the oil revenues amounted to $800 million, later this amount increased to 1-2 billion dollars,” Sputnik News quoted Ediboglu as saying. “There is information that 27 Turkish and Iraqi businessmen are directly involved in this trade.”

The former MP said it was likely that the United Nations had provided the names of the people involved to Turkish and Iraqi officials. According to Ediboglu, the Iraqi government has taken some measures against it. Syria will also be able take similar steps once it has greater hold on to the country with the help of Russia.

“If Russia continues its active operation and together with these airstrikes and ground attacks, these militants will suffer their final defeat,” he said. “I suppose that in the next few months, the Syrian government will be able to establish its influence in the large parts of the country.”

ibtimes.com

Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks in a Tuesday meeting with Iranian students in the capital, Tehran.

According to the Iranian calendar, Wednesday, Aban 13, marks the day when Iranian students took over the US embassy in Tehran, dubbed the “den of espionage,” back in 1979. It has been named the National Day of Fighting Global Arrogance.

In his Tuesday remarks, Khamenei referred to the 1953 coup d’état against former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, and noted the then-premier made a mistake by putting his trust in the US after the Iranian oil industry was nationalized.

Khamenei said the US has in recent years been involved in having certain individuals conceal its hostile intentions against Iran; the objective is to hide the real intention of the enemy from Iran so foes can harm the country, Khamenei said.

Some people do that with evil motives, some others out of folly, Khamenei said.

Khamenei urged Iranian students to learn lessons from the US embassy takeover, noting that those students who seized the embassy found out that it was a “den of espionage.”

“This shows that the Americans, at the height of the [revolutionary] movement and the victory of the Revolution, were conspiring against the Islamic Republic; that is what America is,” Khamenei said.

Khamenei pointed to the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries and said it was the strength of the Iranian nation that forced the countries that claim a world power status to join each other and rise up to the Iranian nation and employ the hostile measures that they did in the hope that the Iranian nation would no more be able to stand on its feet. “That is the power of the Iranian nation,” Khamenei said.

Taking insignificant internal issues as pretexts, some people forget who the enemy is, Khamenei said, adding that, “Of course, the society is free, and criticism leads to progress; however, one shouldn’t mistake the main enemy with secondary enemies and with friends with whom one has disagreements.”

“The main enemy is he who seeks to destroy the achievement of the Iranian nation,” Khamenei said.

“In the negotiations, claiming that they opposed war, Americans even shed tears in front of cameras. This is the very person who doesn’t bother when Zionists cut to pieces hundreds of children in Gaza. Is crying in front of the camera a sincere act?” Khamenei said.

albawaba.com