Fighters from the self-described Islamic State now control more than half of Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The announcement was made after the Islamic State seized control of both the ancient and modern cities of Palmyra in central Syria. Palmyra is home to some of the world’s most renowned historic sites, including the Temple of Ba’al, an ancient theater and a 2,000-year-old colonnade. The fall of Palmyra comes just days after fighters from the Islamic State seized control of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. The Islamic State attacked the city by sending in a wave of 30 suicide car bombs. Ten of the vehicles were packed with enough bomb-making materials to carry out explosions the size of the blast of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Iranian-backed Shiite militias are now staging a counteroffensive to retake Ramadi. The United States has begun carrying out aerial bombings to support the effort. Former State Department official Ramzy Mardini told the Military Times, “The U.S. has effectively changed its position, coming to the realization that Shiite militias are a necessary evil in the fight against ISIS.” The United States has also expedited shipment of 1,000 additional AT4 anti-tank weapons for Iraqi forces.
Charles Glass talking:
The Islamic State is fighting a two-front war, one in the east against the Iraqi army and the peshmerga of the Kurdish Regional Government, and then in the west against the Syrian army. They have substantial forces on both sides so that they’re able to attack in both places and, as now we’ve seen with Palmyra and Ramadi falling, successfully to fight this two-front war. The fact that they can do this means that they’re—they have not given up, they have not retreated. There were hopes in Iraq that there would be an attempt to retake Mosul—obviously, that is going to wait—while Baghdad itself is protected, because Ramadi is so close to Baghdad. And in Syria, taking Palmyra or the town of Tadmur next to Palmyra, where there was a notorious prison where there were many Islamist prisoners, is a major coup for them. But when we say that half of Syria is now under ISIS control, what that means is that half the territories, but three-quarters of the population is still under government control.
ISIS had already last year taken oil and gas fields near Raqqa, which is its—the capital of the Islamic caliphate. So this is simply expanding their access to more crude oil, which they are selling extremely cheaply on the world market through Turkey.
ISIS and the other extreme Islamic group, the Nusra Front, have been selling antiquities from northern Syria for the past couple of years. It’s nothing new. Traders are coming down from Turkey to buy the most valuable artifacts and then sell them in Turkey and in Europe. This will simply increase the plunder. So what they don’t sell, they will destroy, saying that they’re destroying idols. And they particularly would like to destroy pre-Islamic Roman structures that are in Palmyra. Palmyra is in the middle of the desert; it’s not really easily accessible from anywhere. But it is a most beautiful ancient city, which, if they behave the way they behaved in ancient cities in Iraq, won’t be there anymore.
The military conflict between the Syrian government and its Islamist opponents, this is part of the seesaw that’s been going on since the war began. The regime makes gains in certain areas, and the Islamists retreat, then the Islamists make gains. And this is a measure of the inability of either side to defeat the other. So, the fall of Palmyra militarily doesn’t mean very much. From there, there aren’t many places to strike out. However, psychologically, it means a lot because it’s an important part of Syrian and human civilization. But militarily, the struggle will go on. This war could go on for years as each side takes and loses territory, conquers and loses control of populations, and drives—and particularly with the Islamists, drives populations out of their homes.
I’m not sure what the antiquities chief in Syria meant when he said that there should be intervention, if he means military intervention or if he means UNESCO should act to rescue those—the things that can be moved and taken to a safe place, in safer parts of Syria or outside Syria, until the war is over. I’m not sure. It would be, I think, very demoralizing for Syrian people to see an international military intervention to protect ruins, but not to protect the 50,000 people who live around those ruins in the city of Tadmur. It would be saying—it would be a way of saying to the Syrian people, “Your lives are not important, but these stones are.” And that would probably reinforce the Islamic Front’s propaganda that the world doesn’t really care about you, but we do.
the alliances in Syria haven’t changed much. I mean, the Iranians and the Russians still back the Assad regime, and the United States, indirectly, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are supporting the opposition. The United States says it’s supporting a mythical moderate, non-Islamist opposition. But the weapons that it gives to those people end up in the hands of ISIS or the Nusra Front, anyway, as soon as they cross the border. The balance of forces, in that sense, have not changed for the last two years.
I think that one of the problems that the United States has is it has two different policies in this war. It is confronting actively IS in Iraq, because the United States supports the regime in Baghdad, but is allowing its client states—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—to support that same IS against a regime in Damascus that it doesn’t like because of its alliance with Iran and Russia.
Saudi Arabia’s role has been consistent from the beginning. It wanted to see Assad thrown out, and it would—it was giving funding and arms to anyone who would do that. And because of its own particular Wahhabist ideological bent, it gave the bulk of those supplies to people like that. And those were the people who formed the major—the two major Islamist groups in Syria, the Islamic State and the Nusra Front.
U.S. want the regime in Damascus to fall because of its relationship with Iran, its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and its alliance with Russia. They want that regime to go. In Baghdad, they want the regime, since they set it up after the invasion of 2003—they want that regime to stay. But the problem is, these two regimes, in Baghdad and Damascus, are the forces opposed to the Islamic Front, and it’s the Islamic Front that wants to overthrow both of them. So, until there’s a coordination of forces—the Syrian army in the west, the Iraqi army and the Kurds in east—to have a coherent strategy to squeeze the Islamists in the middle, the war will go on and on.
It seems to me obvious that the first measure should be to deprive the Islamic State of its arms and money from—coming through Turkey. Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States. It can close that border. It has not closed that border. The United States has not forced it to close that border. Until that border is closed, it has free and easy access to supplies and to funding and to places for its fighters to receive medical treatment and to get rest when they need it. Without that, they’re going to find themselves surrounded by the Syrian army, the Iraqi army and the Kurds, with no lines for outside—no lines of communication for outside support. I would think that if the United States wants to stay out of another war in the Middle East, which I think most of the public does want, that the correct strategy would be to cut off the supplies and the funding through Turkey.
first close the border. Second, there has to be coordination among the Syrians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Americans, who are all actively involved in opposing the Islamic State. Without that kind of coordination, it’s not going to work, because the—as we see, that the Islamic State can effectively pick which side it’s going to fight at which time and then go after the other side when it suits it. At the moment, it’s setting the agenda. I think that this coordination is vital. I think also it’s vital to bring an end to the war in Syria through discussions between the United States and the Russians. So, the United States supporting the opposition, the Russians supporting the regime, if they can come to an agreement between themselves, that would be a huge step forward, that they want—if they do indeed want to bring peace to Syria rather than simply force their own agenda at the expense of the Syrian people.
The Turks are still allowing fighters to go through their border and to take part in fighting in Syria and Iraq. No, that simply hasn’t happened. It probably should happen. I think one of the fears that all of the backers of these two big Islamic groups have is that if the fighting in Syria stops, that they’ll come home and make problems for them at home. In a way, the Saudis, by encouraging these people to fight in Syria against what they see as an idolatrous, Alawite, non-Muslim regime is a way of making sure they don’t come back and make problems in Saudi Arabia itself. And the Turks also would be very worried if some of these fighters decide to go after Turkey and try to set up an Islamic State in Turkey, or indeed any of the countries that have supported IS.
President Obama did allow the Islamic Front to be created during his term of office. al-Qaeda in Iraq played in being the nucleus of IS and of the Nusra Front. they did not exist before the American invasion under Bush’s brother took place in 2003. They didn’t exist at all. They are a function of that invasion.
— source democracynow.org
Charles Glass, former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent. His latest book is titled Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring.