“We are not at war with the Assad regime”, Davis said Monday.
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Shortly after the fighters were deployed they came under attack by al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front. “The Islamic State has said that they have “arrested” more than 100 Assyrian/Syriacs from the town of Qaryatain in Homs, Syria“.
Ankara and Washington may well have been a part of ways to provide focus on preserve and make…
“(Kerry) welcomed Turkey’s recent decision to open its bases to US participation in air operations against (the Islamic State) and its support for Syrian refugees”, a senior State Department officials told reporters, in summarising the meeting.
“Turkey feared the creation of a Kurdish belt along its longest land border, which would have cut off its access to much of Syria”, said Aaron Stein, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. At the commencement of the counter-ISIL campaign, we cautioned Syria not to engage U.S. aircraft.
While in February, Islamic State militants kidnapped more than 220 Assyrian Christians, after overrunning villages along the Khabur River in the northeastern Syrian province of Hassakeh.
Almost one year later, progress remains elusive.
Hasan quotes what he describes as a “secret” DIA analysis from August 2012 warning that the chaos in Syria could allow for the creation of a Salafist enclave in the country’s desert east. Hasan asked Flynn whether this meant the US actually predicted the rise of the ISIS caliphate and did nothing to stop it.
The Pentagon’s training program to create a pro-US Syrian rebel faction, now dubbed “Division 30”, has become a failure of colossal proportions.
She does point to one problem for the U.S. military: the burnout of drone operators.
Amid reports that some of the newly trained Syrian rebels were captured, one was killed and others are still unaccounted for, U.S. officials acknowledged they may need to rethink how they put what they are calling the New Syrian Forces back into battle.
Flynn agrees, arguing that it shows the US should have had a smarter policy of cooperation with Syria’s secular rebels. The goal is to train up to 5,000 fighters a year.
U.S. and allied forces have hammered ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria for nearly 13 months now, and have unquestionably degraded the group’s military capabilities across the board.
Still, Tabler said, the program is unlikely to thrive until the Obama administration drops its restriction that trainees must pledge to fight the Islamic State, not the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The worldwide human rights group referred to as on Islamic State to “respect the principles of struggle and instantly launch these civilians unhurt”.
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In the western coastal province of Lattakia bordering Turkey, state media reported government troops carrying out an offensive against the Nusra Front with the help of volunteer defense forces.
