Isis hostage crisis: Militant group stands strong as its numerous enemies fail to find a common plan

[Jefferson23]

Patrick Cockburn

Wednesday 28 January 2015


Isis is surviving attempts to defeat it and holds about the same amount of territory in Iraq and Syria – an area larger than Great Britain – as it did at the end of its blitzkrieg offensives last year. Its enemies are numerous, but disunited and without a common plan. Neither the Iraqi nor the Syrian armies, its chief military opponents, are strong enough to over-run the jihadi state.

So long as Isis continues to exist, it retains the capacity to dominate the political and media agenda for days at a time by threatening the public execution of hostages. These grizzly events, as we have seen with the Japanese and Jordanian hostages, are stage managed in order to gain maximum publicity and inspire general terror.

Isis has suffered setbacks, but has also had successes. This week, its forces were finally driven out of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani after a siege lasting 134 days, in which it suffered heavy losses from 606 US air strikes. But elsewhere in Syria, Isis has been advancing towards the city of Homs as well as gaining strength south of Damascus and at al-Qalamoun, close to eastern Lebanon. By one account, Isis has won control of territory since last September where one million Syrians live, in addition to the area it already held.

In Iraq, government forces have made advances in the provinces around Baghdad, but earlier this week bullets hit a plane and wounded passengers over Baghdad International Airport, forcing major airlines to stop flying there. This isolates the Iraqi capital and, though the airport is not completely closed, Isis could probably achieve this at any moment. The Iraqi government’s victories against Isis have largely been the work of sectarian Shia militias. Iraqi sources say that regular army brigades, with a nominal strength of 3,000, may have only a few hundred in the frontline. Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga have been winning back territory around Mosul from Isis as they advance behind a curtain of US air strikes. But Kurdish officials say their forces would never assault a Sunni Arab city like Mosul, because this would infuriate Sunni Arabs in general.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/isis-hostage-crisis-militant-group-stands-strong-as-its-numerous-enemies-fail-to-find-a-common-plan-to-defeat-it-10009151.html

[Blue_Tires]

1. At least western countries are *trying* to do something about ISIS

Especially since so many ISIS fighters have western nationalities and can easily cross back over to their 'western' lives as a terror threat...

Meanwhile Boko Haram operates with impunity...

I disagree with Cockburn that ISIS has a snowball's chance of taking down Assad...He's personally backed by Putin, lest anyone forget...

[Jefferson23]

2. Well, we can at least agree it's a hell of dangerous mess..Boko Haram included. n/t