Following the RAF’s first strikes against ISIS overnight, British Prime Minster David Cameron believes patience and persistence will be needed against the extremists in Syria.
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The US-led coalition has recently stepped up attacks on the Isis-controlled oil industry, a source of revenue for the group, but has struggled with targets in the Isis stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, where Isis members are nearly indistinguishable from the civilian population.
Two British Tornados warplanes fly over the RAF Akrotiri, a British air base near costal city of Limassol, Cyprus, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015, as they arrive from an airstrike against Islamic State group targets in Syria.
They “did not stack up”, he said, adding that Mr. Cameron had failed to convince that there were “credible ground forces” able to take back IS territory under cover of British air strikes.
Germany is planning to send up to 1,200 troops as well as six Tornado reconnaissance planes, tanker aircraft and a frigate to help protect the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in the eastern Mediterranean, but says it will not actively engage in combat.
Mr Cameron was happy that support in Parliament for “this necessary action” was so strong, with six different parties backing the decision.
Four Tornados from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus took part in the first British air offensive in Syria, a spokesman from the Ministry of Defense said.
Attacking IS’s oil facilities would deprive them of financing and undermine their operations in north-east Syria, “from where these threats to western Europe, these plots, are all being hatched and devised”, he said.
Meanwhile, Russia, which keeps frustrating the US and its allies by refusing to decide if it is more interested in helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or fighting ISIS, is still very angry at Turkey for shooting down one of its jets.
“We are faced here by fascists”, Mr. Benn said.
Leader of the opposition Labor party Jeremy Corbyn appealed for more time to seek a peaceful end to Syria’s civil war. “It is important symbolically, useful operationally, but not transformative”.
Ahead of the vote, addressing his MPs, Mr Cameron called on them not to “sit on their hands” and side with Mr Corbyn and others he labelled “a bunch of terrorist sympathisers”.
“They might bomb and they might carry out air strikes, but it won’t win the fight against terrorism”.
“I learnt from Iraq that you can’t intervene in a country without a solid plan of what to do to build a secure and stable future after military action”.
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Britain has officially voted to bomb ISIS and has launched an airstrike in Syria.
