Russia’s defense ministry says its special forces are helping Syrian government troops fight Islamic State militants in the battle underway for the strategic city of Deir el-Zour, like reported by ap.org.

The campaign for Syria’s largest eastern city is caught up in a race between government troops and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

In the past two weeks, the pro-government forces, backed by Russian air cover and Iranian-allied militiamen, gained control of most of the city and crossed the Euphrates River to the area of SDF operations.

A statement from Russia’s defense ministry on Thursday says that Russian special forces have been deployed to help Syrian government forces fighting the IS militants outside the city.

The ministry also says a Syrian government offensive late on Wednesday captured two villages on the Euphrates’ western bank.

Iraq has launched an offensive to retake the town of Hawija, one of two remaining bastions of ISIS in the country, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced, like reported by aawsat.com.

“At the dawn of a new day, we announce the launch of the first stage of the liberation of Hawija, in accordance with our commitment to our people to liberate all Iraqi territory and eradicate ISIS’ terrorist groups,” he said in a statement.

“Greetings to all of our forces, who are waging several battles of liberation at the same time and who are winning victory after victory and this will be another, with the help of God,” he said.

Iraqi forces have now forced ISIS out of all its Iraqi territories except Hawija, 300 kilometers north of Baghdad, and several pockets of territory near the border with Syria. The town was one of the first areas to fall under the control of the terrorist group, which overran about a third of Iraq in 2014.

Artillery fire was heard Thursday morning, with the army heading towards Sharqat, southwest of Hawija, an AFP reporter said.

The US-led international coalition is providing air support to the Iraqi forces’ offensive on Hawija, Iraqi state TV said.

Iraqi and coalition planes have stepped up a campaign of airstrikes on Hawija earlier this month, targeting ISIS bases and weapons facilities.

Iraqi forces declared victory over the extremists in Mosul in July and in the western town of Tal Afar the following month.

The United Nations last week said up to 85,000 people could be displaced from the Hawija region.

The futuristic control centre on Al Udeid Air Base, in the Gulf State of Qatar, is where the air war against Islamic State (IS) is directed from, like reported by forces.net.

It is the hub of US air operations in the Middle East and is the size of a small town, with more than 10,000 American military personnel stationed there.

For the past three years, it has been the nerve centre of the coalition air war against Islamic State.

From the outside, the Combined Air Operations Centre or CAOC, resembles a huge bunker but on the inside, it is mission control.

Personnel from dozens of nations control the military airspace of Iraq and Syria and manage the daily missions.

Giant screens show aircraft movements and live feeds from the many drones currently circling the skies of Iraq and Syria.

Among the hundreds of people working at the centre are British troops.

Air Cdre Johnny Stringer, UK Air Component Commander, is the man in charge of the UK’s air campaign:

“It’s the intelligence to understand what is going on. Both for those people we’re fighting, those people who are operating in the same airspace – and the airspace is very congested. It’s a very complex operating environment.

On the tarmac outside is evidence of the vast American arsenal that is now aimed at IS.

KC-135 Stratotankers first entered service in the 1950s but they are still flying, providing the air to air refuelling so vital to the coalition air campaign.

Al Udeid is so busy it has the tempo of an international airport, with an aircraft taking off or landing every ten minutes.

This month marks the third anniversary of Op Shader – Britain’s contribution to the fight against Islamic State.

Since 2014, coalition jets have launched more than 26 thousand airstrikes against IS in both Iraq and Syria.

For Air Cdre Johnny Stringer, UK Air Component Commander, the British personnel at Al Udeid are playing a vital role in the defeat of IS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=o8cNxnGDjjY

This is the moment an RAF drone stopped a public execution staged by Islamic State with a single Hellfire missile, like reported by albawaba.com.

Astonishing footage released for the first time shows crowds of civilians being forced at gunpoint to gather in a Syrian town to watch an execution

Moments later, a Reaper drone operated by pilots 2,000 miles away at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, unleashes its deadly arsenal – obliterating a sniper keeping watch on a roof nearby. As the terrified crowds scatter in panic, the IS fighters are unable to stage their barbaric killing.

In an unprecedented move, the Ministry of Defence last night released the first footage from inside the Qatar military HQ of UK personnel in action against Islamic State to illustrate operations in the war zone. The MoD said it could not target jihadis on the ground directly in the May attack because civilians could have been caught up in the blast. By taking out the sniper, it forced the IS fighters to run for their lives.

The drone had been flying over the Syrian town of Abu Kamal when it spotted crowds starting to gather. As a van unloaded two shackled prisoners in front of the crowd, the RAF drone pilots watching on screens from thousands of miles away were clear that they were about to witness a public execution.

The mission was overseen from the heavily fortified combined air operations center (Caoc) at the Al Udeid air base in Qatar. The location of the center was kept secret until recently.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have seized more than 90 percent of the city of Raqqa from Islamic State, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, according to reuters.com.

The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, launched their offensive on Islamic State in Raqqa in June, backed by U.S.-led air strikes and special forces on the ground. The city had served as Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria.

Russian intervention in the Syrian crisis has caused a fundamental shift in the balance of power in the region, with Russian warplanes such as the TU-22M3 bomber and Su-25 attack aircraft and other sophisticated weapons systems including cruise missiles from its naval assets being used to attack Islamic State targets, like reported by ukdefencejournal.org.uk.

This has aided the Assad regime, and has led them to regroup its army to launch a counter-offensive in the areas where there are ISIS strongholds and other rebel strongholds.

Furthermore the Syrian state army (aligned with President Assad of Syria) have become highly professional, with much experience on the battlefield carrying out counter-insurgency warfare.

The horrific events in Tunisia, in which British 30 tourists were killed in 2015 created a stronger impetus for Britain to act.  This event and the increasing threat of more ISIS attacks since London, Manchester, Brussels, Barcelona, and Paris have persuaded some that a more muscular foreign policy is needed not just to contain the ISIS threat, but to roll it back.

Therefore in terms of grand strategy: the emphasis has shifted away from merely containing ISIS to rolling it back territorially – so as to destroy the enemy on the ground.  As we have seen ISIS retreat, its territory has shrunk both in Syria and in Iraq.  However, that does not mean that ISIS is now extinct.  Far from it.  It means that military planners are now seeing a new level to the conflict.

While limited action has composed of airstrikes, special forces operations and drone strikes by the West and also Russia which have forced ISIS to become embedded into the civilian population, it created conditions harder for Russian military as well as our own to know who to target which means the probability of civilian deaths goes up as a consequence.  Particularly controversial has been the Russian bombing of Aleppo.  While achieving in most part of its military goal to rid the city of terrorists, it has killed many thousands of civilians.

There is also a wider political issues at stake. As Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz in the 18th century said “War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.”.  Therefore any military action should and must be backed up by a credible long term political plan for the Middle East including key stakeholders in the region.  Furthermore we are now in a precarious situation where Assad’s forces are coming close to British and American special forces.  Wrong move to ignite a wider war in region.

Currently, the Wider Middle Eastern region is in a state of flux with failed states stretching from Libya, Syria, and now Iraq becoming a hotbed for activity for ISIS.  ISIS are filling this political vacuum and far from being contained by limited military action has grown like a cancer with affiliate terrorist groups as far afield as Bosnia in Europe, and Chechnya militants and Boko Harem in Africa now claiming identity with this group. Our political strategy has become a contradiction in terms with the Coalition military attempting to maintain the status quo while our political strategy in the past has served to do the opposite.

Our political strategy has been to apply a European nation-state democracy which served as a political blueprint leading to the invasion of War in Iraq in 2003 in the hope of democracy spreading to other states such as Syria and beyond.  This so called Domino theory was presumed to lead to a more stable and prosperous region. However, with the advent of the Arab Spring in 2010, and old Arabic autocratic regimes were threatened with rebellion, the uprising in Libya, with Gaddafi forces supposedly firing on civilians as well as rebels, provided the legitimation needed for NATO to overthrow the Gaddafi regime in Libya.  All of which has created more of a fertile ground for extremism to flourish, as there was no political end game.

While the Arab spring came to Syria, the regime entrenched itself, and it became a proxy war fought out by the likes of the Western states, United States, France, and United Kingdom to name a few, as well as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Russia providing aid and lethal weapons to differing sides.  This meant this became a war of attrition with no political end in sight.   While the Western powers hoped for Assad to go, this does not look likely, and it is now predicted by experts and commentators that soon with the help of Russia, Assad will declare a strategic victory against ‘ISIS’ consolidating his own political position, and leaving the future of the country uncertain.  Lately Israel launched an unilateral military action against a supposed chemical weapons depot in Syrian military hands, which could have sparked an escalation in the crisis.

A new political compromise is needed which (1) recognises the key actors such as Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and other affilliated groups, and (2) disable and destroy any potential for any new recruits to ISIS through political, diplomatic means, backed up by military means if necessary.  (3) By encouraging key actors in the Syria crisis to talk to the West, they could triangulate their activities better to destroy ISIS, and also start the ball moving for political negotiations to take place after Assad has declared ‘strategic victory’ in Syria.  While Assad may become victorious, the country is divided as ever, and the biggest challenge will be not to let it destabilize further and destroy itself inside out.

Therefore, two factors remain constant in this latest episode on the so called ‘War on Terror’. Firstly, ISIS while territorially shrinking in the Middle East has remained undefeated and has spread to other countries, while accelerating its attacks on European cities.  Secondly, while ISIS territory is shrinking in the Middle East, this causes another power vacuum which means that a political solution is needed there, to help bring about stable governance.  Another factor though needs to be added, and that’s the Russian dimension.

The West needs to be able to achieve strategic dialogue with Russia, to avoid direct confrontation between Russian forces as well as civilian deaths, and to prepare for an Assad victory in Libya in what remains a much divided country.  It may mean, that the West also has to deal a diplomatic compromise with Assad.  Furthermore in Iraq, the West will have to see whether it will truly be able to operate militarily independently from help of others, or will the West get dragged in there.  However, what remains the most important in the short term is the West to achieve a dialogue and communication with Russia before a conflict becomes more global.  While the risk of this becoming so is small is origin, it’s not totally unthinkable.

We now have to plan for a post-victory Assad Syria, while on its periphery are fractured states, from Bosnia, to Libya, to Iraq, to the continent of Africa where ISIS could still grow and flourish.  While the military goals of the West may have stayed largely the same, in terms of the destruction of the enemy ISIS, the dimensions of the conflict have fundamentally altered since Russia decided upon military action and sided with Assad by assumed its own role in ‘fighting terrorism’.  That’s why the stakes are even higher now, than they were a year ago, as this conflict has become one of a regional proxy war, as well as a global power competition between the West and Russia, and a conflicted defined by terrorism.  A political solution is needed now more than ever before.

When ISIS is all but destroyed in Syria, and Iraq, the battlegrounds will no doubt shift to Libya, and other parts of Africa, which I predict will become the new battleground for the Islamist extremists.

A senior Islamic State security commander was killed on Monday when warplanes pounded group locations in western Anbar, a security source was quoted saying like reported by iraqinews.com.

Fighter jets from the United States-led coalition killed Hussein Ahmed al-Abdullah, aka Abu Hamza al-Ansari, a Syrian, an an air raid on the town of Qaim, west of Anbar and near the borders with Syria.

According to the source, quoted speaking in a statement reported by SNG website, al-Ansari was an outstanding security commander within IS, and had been involved in the execution and detention of civilians and security members in Waim, Rutba and the Syrian Boukamal city.

War on ISIS Update

Islamic State has lost tens of thousands of local and foreign members in Iraqi, U.S.-backed campaigns since 2016.

Islamic State militants have held the towns of Annah, Rawa and Qaim, on Anbar’s western borders with Syria, since 2014, holding thousands of civilians there. Security reinforcements have reportedly been sent recently near those towns preparing for an attack against the group.

While the Iraqi government said late August that its next target of anti-IS military action was Kirkuk’s Hawija, some officials were quoted saying that parallel operations in western Anbar could also be carried out.

Iran possesses a ten ton bomb, said Amir Ali Hadjizade, commander of military-space forces of Iran, according to kaztag.kz.

“The defense industry organization by the order of the military-space forces made a bomb approximately 10 tons in weight which may be dropped from the Iluhin planes,” said A. Hadjizade to Trend news agency.

He said the bomb has high destructive capacity.

The commander made the statement in the interview to IRIB TV company commenting on his own words  “if the US has “the mother of all the bombs”, Iran has “the father of all the bombs”.

In mid April the US applied super powerful non nuclear bomb GBU-43 against the fighters of the “Islamic state” in Afghanistan. According to Pentagon, “the mother of all the bombs” has been the most powerful non-nuclear weapon of the US.

Yemen’s insurgency leaders have held a meeting with a number of elders loyal to former president Ali Abdallah Saleh to discuss the forcible recruitment of children following huge human losses within their ranks on the front lines, sources in Al-Mahwit governorate said, according to aawsat.com.

The sources confirmed that the meeting discussed the recruitment mechanism in areas such as al-Taweelah, Bani Saad, and Shibam. Houthi supervisors were assigned to follow up the enlisting.

Meanwhile, insurgency militias continued to enforce taxes in Hawit and Amran which fall under their control. They have forced stores and merchants to pay sums of money for the alleged funding of the celebrations commemorating the insurgency coup on September 21.

Meanwhile, the popular resistance in Tuhama district continued to target Houthi and Saleh military bases, amid intensified clashes in several battlefronts in Taiz, Marib, Nahim, and al-Baydaa.

Coalition warplanes carried out raids on Houthi and Saleh militias, destroying three vehicles, five motorcycles and killing and injuring several of them, according to military sources.

The coalition also staged raids on Houthi targets in al-Jawf district, leading to deaths among the insurgents.

Army troops advanced in Marib and regained control over new mountainous areas following severe clashes in Heilan and al-Mashjah.

National army troops also succeeded in thwarting an insurgency attack in al-Tebbah al-Sawdaa of al-Qabitah district in Lahij governorate, a military source informed Asharq Al-Awsat.

In addition, militias continued to attack residential areas in Taiz, killing and injuring several civilians including women and children.

A military source in Taiz reiterated to Asharq al-Awsat that several residents were killed and a child was injured. He added that the western front of Taiz witnessed severe clashes, forcing the insurgents to flee.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) condemned the shelling on residential areas in Shab al-Doubba and Souk al-Samil in Taiz on Friday September 15, which left three children dead and nine others severely injuring.

ICRC’s Regional Director for the Near and Middle East Robert Mardini urged all warring sides to take every precaution to spare civilians.

“We cannot turn a blind eye on the rising number of civilians injured or killed as a result of indiscriminate attacks in Yemen’s conflict. Too often in recent months, civilians, women, men and children, have been in harm’s way, becoming victims of shells and bombs,” said Mardini.

The Regional Director added that what happened on Friday is yet another stark reminder of the immense suffering that civilians across Yemen are enduring in their daily lives.

Iraqi warplanes bombarded Islamic State locations in Salahuddin province on Monday, killing a senior Islamic State security official, according to military media and like reported by iraqinews.com.

The Defense Ministry’s War Media Cell said Rachid al-Mulla, head of the Islamic State’s security division in the eastern side of Salahuddin’s town of Shirqat, died when military jets bombarded his DhSk gun-supplied truck in Sedeira village.

War on ISIS Update

Islamic State has lost tens of thousands of its foreign and local leaders since the Iraqi government, backed by a United States-led coalition and paramilitary troops, launched in 2016 a wide-scale campaign to retake areas the group had held since 2014. So far, the campaign has managed to recapture Mosul, Islamic State’s former capital in Iraq, early July and Tal Afar, a town west of Mosul, by the end of August.

Salahuddin province is among the next targets of Iraq’s anti-Islamic State military plans. The Iraqi Joint Operations Command had said its next target would be the town of Hawija, Islamic State’s enclave in southwestern Kirkuk. Preparations are also reported to retake the extremist group’s havens in western Anbar.

IS has waged occasional attacks on civilians and security inside Salahuddin and on the borders with Diyala province over the past months.