ISIS - Stronger than Anticipated?
Discussion
Timmy40 said:
I think people are forgetting the second bit of the name of ISIS referring to "In Syria", ISIS came out of a Western backed insurgency aimed at unseating Assad, who ( with some help from Russia ) proved to be more resilient than expected so they started going in the other direction. Ironic that we blame everyone ( Saudi mainly ) for ISIS but actually it was the West who armed and equipped them.
The West ONLY armed and trained moderate Islamic fundamentalists, the BBC said so, it must be true.
I do wonder how they determined who was moderate vs psychotic ? I am reminded of the old movie Airplane! where you have people with RPGs and machine-guns casually walking through the airport metal detector. The alarm goes off on a little old lady, who gets pushed against the wall and frisked.
Edited by QuantumTokoloshi on Tuesday 30th June 11:20
Transmitter Man said:
thetapeworm said:
So do the decent thing and enlighten us please.
Michael,My thoughts.
The leaders of IS have military experience. You do not take over half a country (Syria) in a matter of months without such experience and a clever strategy.
After Sadaam was overthrown and a Shia (read that as an Iranian puppet) government was put in charge of Iraq you suddenly have a 'very' experienced military machine AND police force predominantly, if not completely of Sunni Arab makeup, out of a job.
There are various theories as to who is financing IS, Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait Turkey, America, Israel, UK, the Daily Mail, I think I've read them all, however it's generally acknowledged that while this may not of started as a sectarian conflict it has nevertheless morphed into one.
The 'current' Syrian conflict, which kicked off in 2011 is a whole different story.
Syria has become a proxy war. Iran, Russia, Hizbollah (an Iranian proxy)in Lebanon + paid foreign Shia mercenaries and what remains of Assad's military machine on one side and a whole bunch of mainly Sunni Arab opposition groups + foreign supporters on the other with IS in the middle and the Kurds in the north doing their best to carve out there own state.
A mistake I read all too often, mainly by the pro-Assad supporters groups is in categorizing all the many opposition groups together as one. They are not. Excluding IS, you have non-Syrian extremes such as Al-Nusra, an AQ affiliate through to disaffected Syrians both former military operatives through to the local butcher with an AK. To make it all the more confusing and in effect helping Assad is that in the past there has been poor communications and coordination between the different more moderate' opposition groups. This has sometime limited their effectiveness. AN (Al-Nusra) has fought both with and against various opposition groups in different parts of Syria. They have their own ideological reasons for getting shot of Assad and for that reason are happy, for now, to fight alongside various free Syrian army groups.
There are a limited number of moderate Syrian FSA groups as well as foreign fighters assisting the Kurds fighting IS.
My thoughts above are but only 1% of the story.
Phil
I'm trying to learn more about all this stuff but it's hard to know where to look for information that isn't already tainted one way or another and a general overview of the whole situation seems to go back so far into history that it would be years of work to try and piece it all together to the point where I get it.
Transmitter Man said:
Michael,
My thoughts.
The leaders of IS have military experience. You do not take over half a country (Syria) in a matter of months without such experience and a clever strategy.
After Sadaam was overthrown and a Shia (read that as an Iranian puppet) government was put in charge of Iraq you suddenly have a 'very' experienced military machine AND police force predominantly, if not completely of Sunni Arab makeup, out of a job.
There are various theories as to who is financing IS, Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait Turkey, America, Israel, UK, the Daily Mail, I think I've read them all, however it's generally acknowledged that while this may not of started as a sectarian conflict it has nevertheless morphed into one.
The 'current' Syrian conflict, which kicked off in 2011 is a whole different story.
Syria has become a proxy war. Iran, Russia, Hizbollah (an Iranian proxy)in Lebanon + paid foreign Shia mercenaries and what remains of Assad's military machine on one side and a whole bunch of mainly Sunni Arab opposition groups + foreign supporters on the other with IS in the middle and the Kurds in the north doing their best to carve out there own state.
A mistake I read all too often, mainly by the pro-Assad supporters groups is in categorizing all the many opposition groups together as one. They are not. Excluding IS, you have non-Syrian extremes such as Al-Nusra, an AQ affiliate through to disaffected Syrians both former military operatives through to the local butcher with an AK. To make it all the more confusing and in effect helping Assad is that in the past there has been poor communications and coordination between the different more moderate' opposition groups. This has sometime limited their effectiveness. AN (Al-Nusra) has fought both with and against various opposition groups in different parts of Syria. They have their own ideological reasons for getting shot of Assad and for that reason are happy, for now, to fight alongside various free Syrian army groups.
There are a limited number of moderate Syrian FSA groups as well as foreign fighters assisting the Kurds fighting IS.
Just in on the wire: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/28/i...
My thoughts above are but only 1% of the story.
Phil
A good summary of the hornet's nest. The genesis of ISIS was the disbanding of the Iraqi military by the "USA and fellow coalition of the willing" participants, the subsequent creation of Shia paramilitary groups which (to pacify the Sunni insurgency) really got things moving by the sectarian nature of these squads and what they did to the Sunnis.My thoughts.
The leaders of IS have military experience. You do not take over half a country (Syria) in a matter of months without such experience and a clever strategy.
After Sadaam was overthrown and a Shia (read that as an Iranian puppet) government was put in charge of Iraq you suddenly have a 'very' experienced military machine AND police force predominantly, if not completely of Sunni Arab makeup, out of a job.
There are various theories as to who is financing IS, Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait Turkey, America, Israel, UK, the Daily Mail, I think I've read them all, however it's generally acknowledged that while this may not of started as a sectarian conflict it has nevertheless morphed into one.
The 'current' Syrian conflict, which kicked off in 2011 is a whole different story.
Syria has become a proxy war. Iran, Russia, Hizbollah (an Iranian proxy)in Lebanon + paid foreign Shia mercenaries and what remains of Assad's military machine on one side and a whole bunch of mainly Sunni Arab opposition groups + foreign supporters on the other with IS in the middle and the Kurds in the north doing their best to carve out there own state.
A mistake I read all too often, mainly by the pro-Assad supporters groups is in categorizing all the many opposition groups together as one. They are not. Excluding IS, you have non-Syrian extremes such as Al-Nusra, an AQ affiliate through to disaffected Syrians both former military operatives through to the local butcher with an AK. To make it all the more confusing and in effect helping Assad is that in the past there has been poor communications and coordination between the different more moderate' opposition groups. This has sometime limited their effectiveness. AN (Al-Nusra) has fought both with and against various opposition groups in different parts of Syria. They have their own ideological reasons for getting shot of Assad and for that reason are happy, for now, to fight alongside various free Syrian army groups.
There are a limited number of moderate Syrian FSA groups as well as foreign fighters assisting the Kurds fighting IS.
Just in on the wire: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/28/i...
My thoughts above are but only 1% of the story.
Phil
Here is the true father of ISIS.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/mar/06...
Al Baghdadi (ISIS) got his "road to Damascus" moment, while imprisoned and tortured by coalition or coalition sponsored groups, the imprisonment also provided a convenient meet and greet for all the like minded martyrs. There is very little doubt that ex-Iraqi military personnel are involved in ISIS.
Edited by QuantumTokoloshi on Tuesday 30th June 13:54
The Kurds have been smashing the s
t out of them it seems.
And Turkey wants to 'do something about the Kurdish menace'. Tchoh.
https://pando.com/2015/06/17/the-war-nerd-a-glorio...
t out of them it seems.And Turkey wants to 'do something about the Kurdish menace'. Tchoh.
https://pando.com/2015/06/17/the-war-nerd-a-glorio...
Elroy Blue said:
While the world concentrates on ISIS, Erdogan is turning Turkey into a dictatorship. He is corruption incorporated. Once again Western leaders turn a blind eye to this kind of 'leadership'
Erdogan had a little setback in the recent Turkish election, the Kurdish party put a little dent into his majority.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/07/turki...
Transmitter Man said:
After Sadaam was overthrown and a Shia (read that as an Iranian puppet) government was put in charge of Iraq you suddenly have a 'very' experienced military machine AND police force predominantly, if not completely of Sunni Arab makeup, out of a job.
Agreed. However I think if they were going to form the bedrock of IS they would have attacked the Shia in Iraq rather than ALawites in Syria. My guess is that it takes somebody with a more long term plan for the region to build and direct such an organisation. They may well be staffed by disaffected Iraqi sunnis. However their particularly virulent strain of Islam originated in Saudi.Transmitter Man said:
There are various theories as to who is financing IS, Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait Turkey, America, Israel, UK, the Daily Mail, I think I've read them all, however it's generally acknowledged that while this may not of started as a sectarian conflict it has nevertheless morphed into one.
It's never really been explored has it? Who IS financing and arming IS? They seemed to have done awfully well considering they've managed to do far more in conventional warfare than any of the AQ Franchises. The destruction of the Shia "crescent", from Lebanon all the way through to Iran would benefit the Saudis, Israel, and the US strategically (as well as the GCC).Timmy40 said:
I think people are forgetting the second bit of the name of ISIS referring to "In Syria", ISIS came out of a Western backed insurgency aimed at unseating Assad, who ( with some help from Russia ) proved to be more resilient than expected so they started going in the other direction. Ironic that we blame everyone ( Saudi mainly ) for ISIS but actually it was the West who armed and equipped them.
Remember Musab Al Zarqawi? The nasty little coward that beheaded Ken Bigley and other poor sods back in 2004, in Iraq? That was ISIS by any other name. The concept and ethos of ISIS took root a heck of a long time before the Assad / Syria thing kicked off.
What we currently know as "ISIS" has existed for a very long time, the only difference now is that they have a lot of land and are calling themselves a state.
Tonsko said:
The Kurds have been smashing the st out of them it seems.
And Turkey wants to 'do something about the Kurdish menace'. Tchoh.
https://pando.com/2015/06/17/the-war-nerd-a-glorio...
Erdogan has lost a few teeth in the recent elections.t out of them it seems.And Turkey wants to 'do something about the Kurdish menace'. Tchoh.
https://pando.com/2015/06/17/the-war-nerd-a-glorio...
In many peoples opinion he is on the wrong track as well as taking the country back becoming more Islamist as against secular.
In his early days he sacked and or imprisoned many of the military leaders reducing their opportunity for another coup.
Too many instances of Turkey being complicit with IS allowing free movement across the border with Syria and the treating of IS individual in Turkish hospitals.
This I believe is because he wants rid of Assad, at any cost.
He does not want the Kurds to have their own state in Northern Syria or Iraq however it already exists. It's just that it's not Internationally recognized.
In recent times and not just in the current conflict the Kurds are flavour of the times going back to the Northern Alliance in the Gulf Wars befriended by the west however they are not completely clean if you look back at history!
The Iraqi Kurds control the highest producing oil fields and this naturally puts them at odds with Bahgdad.
They also have no easy access to a sea port for oil movement as their territory is land locked.
Phil
Elroy Blue said:
While the world concentrates on ISIS, Erdogan is turning Turkey into a dictatorship. He is corruption incorporated. Once again Western leaders turn a blind eye to this kind of 'leadership'
well Erdogan has showed that he is not reluctant to cooperate with Russia, Western leaders will turn a blind eye ear and nose just to appease him Some good news for those living under ISIS rule in Iraq and Syria.
Soldiers celebrate Isis's defeat in Mosul as Iraq's greatest battle in war against jihadis reaches bloody conclusion
Battle for Raqqa: Fighters begin offensive to push Isis out of Old City
Soldiers celebrate Isis's defeat in Mosul as Iraq's greatest battle in war against jihadis reaches bloody conclusion
Battle for Raqqa: Fighters begin offensive to push Isis out of Old City
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