Both Ends Against the Middle

"Militants are sustaining substantial losses under the Russian airstrikes and are having to change their tactics, to scatter their forces, to carefully disguise themselves and hide in settlements."
Russian General Staff deputy chief Lt.Gen. Igor Makushev

"At a time when the rebels are waging fierce battles against the Russian occupiers in Hama countryside, Daesh [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] seizes the Infantry Academy and a number of villages in Aleppo."
Hadi Abdullah, activist, Army of Conquest

Air strikes launched by the Russian regime struck Daret Ezza, Aleppo, Syria the morning of October 7, 2015.  Photo: NEWZULU/PA

The U.S.-led coalition's bombing missions against ISIL have failed to result in any meaningful slow-down of the Islamic State's position in advancing its territory and enlarging the caliphate's geography. The Russian military has  trumpeted that some of its attacks directed toward Islamic State have resulted in hundreds of dead ISIL fighters and destroyed materiel, but it's difficult to discern that Islamic State is suffering when it has advanced closer to Aleppo.

Islamic State embarked on another of their startling-swift and effective attacks to bring them closer to possession of northern Syria's major city of Aleppo; their new conquest of a string of villages approaching Aleppo brings them tantalizingly close to their goal. Russian airstrikes or not, their effectiveness appears headed to a similar status as that of the U.S.-coalition airstrikes. Not that ISIL is invulnerable, but their onward ground march has not yet been matched by an opposing ground troop confrontation.

The issue of deflecting and defeating Islamic State in any event, has largely been set aside by the Russian military and the Syrian regime in favour of aiming its major offensives against Syrian rebel groups. Syrian rebels state that the Russian strikes have hit mainstream rebels for the purpose of supporting the Assad government and the flagging regime troops. The very fact that the Russian/Iranian/Syrian triad focuses on Syrian rebels who themselves have been confronting ISIL confuses the issues and renders them needlessly complicated.

"Everyone who wants to fight the rebels says that they are coming to fight Daesh while in fact they want to fight the rebels", observed Bahaa al Halaby, an Aleppo-based activist. Boasting that Russian warplanes have conducted over 67 sorties in one day's work, Russian Lt.Gen. Makushev speaks of increased Russian air activities, but to what enduring practical end? Ah, the destruction of a neat one hundred 'militants' and annihilation of an ammunition dump near Aleppo.

According to the London-based, rebel-linked Observatory for Human Rights, the surprise advance north of Aleppo resulted in Islamic State seizing three villages close to the one-time commercial capital of Syria. Rebels have now lost the Infantry Academy captured two years ago from the Syrian army, to the Islamic State advance.  The claim by opposition activists is that ISIL was advantaged by Russian airstrikes on the rebel bases, sidetracking their attacks on ISIL toward defending themselves from the advancing Syrian military under Russian airstrikes.

The Army of Conquest, a coalition of rebel groups (and Islamists) which had succeeded in a string of advances against the military in recent months is now being fired upon from Russian warplanes. Islamic State had another victory, killing a senior commander from al Quds Iranian Revolutionary Guards who had collaborated with the Syrian military and trained Shiite militias in their advance against the rebels. General Hossein Hamedani's battlefield skills, honed in the Iran-Iraq war, will be missed by Iran.

The rebels have also successfully resisted a Syrian regime offensive backed by Russian and Syrian helicopters. Rebel groups have succeeded in destroying a number of regime tanks with TOW missiles manufactured in the U.S. and supplied by Saudi Arabia. Reportedly, the Saudis have approved delivery of an additional 500 TOW missile systems, responding to Moscow's intervention in the Syrian civil war.

A general view shows damaged buildings in the town of Darat Azzah, west of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, following reported bombings by government forces on October 7, 2015. Earlier in the day Syrian regime forces, supported by heavy Russian aerial bombing and cruise missile strikes from warships, launched a major ground offensive against rebels in a coordinated attack in Hama province.  Photo: Fadi al-Halabi/AFP/Getty

The Saudis in so doing have rejected the caution of the United States, refusing to accede to the demands of the Syrian opposition for surface-to-air missiles, an inventory the US. fears will make its way into the hands of jihadists.