Posted on 10/08/2015 10:05:57 AM PDT by Sam's Army
When Russia started bombing in Syria last week, it said it was targeting ISIS — a claim it's stuck to pretty consistently in the past week. But this map of Russian airstrikes in Syria so far, put together by the Levantine Group, tells a very different story.
The Levantine Group's analysts used a proprietary network of sources, cross-checked with open-source media and information released by the Russian Ministry of Defense, to determine the locations hit by Russian planes. This map shows those strikes overlaid on territory controlled by Bashar al-Assad's regime, by anti-Assad rebels, by ISIS, and by Kurdish forces.
The results are striking — Russian strikes have overwhelmingly targeted rebel-held territory in western Syria rather than the ISIS strongholds in the north and east:
"The Russian air campaign is not geared toward the so-called Islamic State," Michael Horowitz, a Syria analyst at the Levantine Group, told me via email. "Russian airstrikes are focusing on opposition groups controlling northwestern Syria, including the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, other Islamist groups such Ahrar al-Sham, and 'moderate' groups including the Free Syrian Army (FSA)."
Russia is targeting these rebel groups because they're the main threat to the weakening Assad regime, which lost 16 percent of its remaining territory in Syria in the first half of 2015.
The pattern of these bombings, according to Horowitz, suggests it could be a prelude to an anti-rebel ground campaign.
"The map also shows that the first week of airstrikes was meant to 'soften' opposition targets along the coast as well as inside the rebel-held enclave between Homs and Hama," he writes. "Russia is laying the groundwork for a ground offensive in these areas," likely involving Iranian and/or Hezbollah forces, given the depleted state of Assad's troop reserves.
"The Syrian regime’s most imminent threat comes from the presence of opposition forces near the Alawite heartland along the Syrian coast," Horowitz told me. "Beyond the image often depicted of a bold and assertive Russian operation that outmaneuvered the West, the intervention is meant to counterbalance recent regime losses (particularly in the Idlib province), rather than reclaiming Syria back."
Why Russia is targeting rebels rather than ISIS
From Russia's point of view, focusing on the rebels rather than on ISIS makes perfect sense. Assad's Syria remains one of Russia's few reliable allies outside of the former Soviet republics, a vestige of Moscow's former superpower status and a final military toehold in the Middle East. Russia has an important naval base on Syria's western coast, in Tartus.
"ISIS almost never fought the Assad regime," Glenn Robinson, an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me last month. "They were much more focused on fighting other opposition groups and gaining land their opponents had already acquired."
ISIS's growth has arguably helped Assad. His forces have tacitly tolerated ISIS in northeastern Syria while focusing military efforts on the rebels. This was part of what appeared to be a deliberate strategy to encourage extremism in order to discourage foreign intervention against him.
Both Assad and Putin win, in other words, if the West is forced to choose between Assad and ISIS in Syria. Which is part of why Russian airstrikes appear to be targeting ISIS's enemies in Syria — under the pretext of targeting ISIS.
That POS pedophile Putin is doing nothing to hit ISIS.
And now they sponsor themselves. If Russia wants to expand into the area they are guaranteed to suffer a long, bloody and ultimately futile conflict.
“rebel-held territory in western Syria rather than the ISIS strongholds in the north and east:”
same thing Rebel Held is obama supported ISIS!
They are clearly taking out all the Assad family’s enemies, and taking care of the closest threats first. It’s been so long since the US had a coherent strategy in the middle east that the government doesn’t even know what one looks like anymore.
Thats what will happen in a vacuum.
Me, I cannot wait for my country to provide a real ideological alternative to a resurgent USSR. Like the old days.
This dreck is from VOX. Vox makes the NYT seem sane & honest. Vox will defend their messiah Obama until the bitter end.
Agreed!
Many years ago I read with unbelieving eyes somewhere on the internet a prediction that the demise of the soviet union would bring a radical extremist group out, probably Islamic. It was written just before the USSR crashed.
Friends of the CIA and McCain perhaps. Or Obama. Not my friends.
If by ‘friends’ you mean Al Qaeda...
Excellent post. I would add that Russia has experience with restoring a state of Islamic rebels and killers to a functional one. Kidnappings, be headings, posting heads on fences, videos of hostages, terrorizing citizens and aid workers, cutting fingers off children, etc. It has all been done before - in Chechnya. Chechnya was a tribal warfare state holding human slave auctions in several major cities.
Putin bombed the crap out of them and kept at it until finally it is actually a somewhat functional and safe place. There are thousands of Chechens in Syria somewhere in ISIS or those rebel groups and Putin has said he does not want them returning. Better to kill them in Syria.
I say we let Putin do this clean up and be thankful for it getting done. Certainly our loser leader dropped the ball, so who are we to be armchair critics?
They are all ISIS.
Exactly.
Russia has had substantial economic and trade ties with Syria for years and was already moved in. They keep their Black Sea fleet at a Syrian port. Tartus. All of your concerns are late to the game.
Give Syria to the Kurds.
Kurdistan
Kurdland
Kurdita
Kurdil
Kurds N Whey
Whatever....
“Bad Guys Right?”
I consider the green areas to be Al Qaeda and have no problem with the rooskies taking them out, and it makes me very happy because I think we’ve been funding/training/arming the same fockers who attacked us on 9/11..
Hopefully they move on to ISIS, 2nd worst by a hair on the color chart...
I personally don’t have a problem with Assad - from what I’ve read his dad was brutal, but Jr. is not that bad.. not that I’d want to live there, but it seems those folks need at least a semi thug in charge or they go all out bat shit cut everybodies head off....
what’s missing to me is Saudi Arabia in flames... they have caused all of this-— outside of zero and his arab spring B.S.
Sadly, Russia taking out the Saudi’s would cause a hot war between the U.S and Russia... too bad we don’t just team up and split it... the Saudi’s are responsible for most of the B.S in our world today...
Just my humble 2 pennies..
It’s on the internet...it has to be true. Leventine Group has people on the ground to record every missile strike.
With a ground offensive in mind this strategy makes sense.
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