Airstrikes Move To Syria, Target More Than Just ISIS

A handout picture released by the U.S. Navy shows the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58) launching a Tomahawk cruise missile against Islamic State targets in Syria on Tuesday.

NPR

In a major escalation of the air campaign against Islamic extremist groups, the U.S. and Arab allies jointly hit targets inside Syria for the first time.

The New York Times says, "The intensity of the attacks struck a fierce opening blow against the jihadists of the Islamic State, scattering its forces and damaging the network of facilities it has built in Syria that helped fuel its seizure of a large part of Iraq this year."

 Missiles being launched off a Navy ship, bound for Islamic State targets in Syria. Video Credit By Associated Press on Publish Date September 23, 2014. Image CreditUnited States Navy                           

Besides the U.S., the Pentagon says that Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates "participated in or supported" operations against targets associated with the self-declared Islamic State.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki confirmed that "we informed the Syrian regime directly of our intent to take action through our Ambassador to the United Nations (Ambassador [Samantha] Power) to the Syrian Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

At a morning Pentagon briefing, Lt. Gen. William Mayville, the Joint Chiefs director of operations, said there were three waves of attacks and that coalition partners provided combat air patrols and conducted airstrikes as part of the final two waves.

"We warned Syria not to engage U.S. aircraft. We did not request the regime's permission. We did not coordinate our actions with the Syrian government. We did not provide advance notification to the Syrians at a military level, or give any indication of our timing on specific targets. Secretary [of State John] Kerry did not send a letter to the Syrian regime," Psaki says.

The remains of a house that was reportedly hit by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in the village of Kfar Derian in Syria. Credit Sami Ali/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images        

Who Was Targeted?

— The Islamic State in its Syrian headquarters of Raqqa.

— The Al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra, in northwest Syria.

— A shadowy group known as Khorasan that the U.S. says is planning an imminent attack against the United States and Western interests.

Most officials speaking publicly on Tuesday characterized the Khorasan threat as imminent. Lt. Gen. Mayville Jr., who is in charge of operations for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, said the terrorist group was nearing “the execution phase of an attack either in Europe or the homeland.”

 But one senior counterterrorism official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the group might not have chosen the target, method or even the timing for a strike. An intelligence official said separately that the group was “reaching a stage where they might be able to do something.”

 Khorasan is closely allied with the Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda’s designated affiliate in Syria, according to American intelligence officials. The group, they said, is made up of Qaeda operatives from places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Africa and Chechnya who have traveled to Syria on the orders of Ayman al-Zawahri, the Qaeda leader.

 

An unnamed U.S. official tells The New York Times that the Khorasan group is led by "Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior Qaeda operative who, according to the State Department, was so close to [Osama] Bin Laden that he was among a small group of people who knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before they were launched."

 

Mr. Fadhli, 33, has been tracked by American intelligence agencies for at least a decade. According to the State Department, before Mr. Fadhli arrived in Syria, he had been living in Iran as part of a small group of Qaeda operatives who had fled to the country from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Iran’s government said the group was living under house arrest, but the exact circumstances of the Qaeda operatives were disputed for years, and many members of the group ultimately left Iran for Pakistan, Syria and other countries.



Gary Cameron / Reuters

 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told Katie Couric of Yahoo News that the United States had followed the group for two years. “I can say that the enhanced security measures that we took” banning uncharged electronic devices on some flights were “based on concerns we had about what the Khorasan group was planning to do,” he said.

NPR's Deborah Amos tells Morning Edition that militants with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, were a major focus of the attacks. The Pentagon said the strikes "employed 47 [Tomahawk cruise missiles] launched from USS Arleigh Burke and USS Philippine Sea operating from international waters in the Red Sea and North Arabian Gulf, as well as U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighter, remotely piloted and bomber aircraft deployed to the U.S. Central Command area of operations."

According to Deborah: "What is striking about this air campaign is that it was expanded to include the Nusra Front.

"Those strikes took place in northwest Syria. The Nusra Front is an al-Qaida affiliate and has been at odds with ISIS. In fact, some of al-Nusra's fighters have been at war on the ground with ISIS, joining with more moderate groups against them."

NPR's Tom Bowman says not much is known about the Khorasan group: "The Pentagon says they took this action to disrupt an imminent attack plotting against the United States by this group that's made up of seasoned al-Qaida veterans. There were eight strikes around Aleppo targeting this group. [The Pentagon says] it had training camps, explosives and munitions productions facility, communications building and also command and control facilities."

Gen. Mayville said that "we've been watching" Khorasan and that the group "clearly is not focused" on fighting the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad but instead had been "putting down roots" to work toward attacks on the U.S.

Obama's War: Anything but Shock and Awe

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times        


DAILY BEAST, MICHAEL TOMASKY

So, another war in Iraq. On this superficial basis, some are saying that Barack Obama is somehow becoming George W. Bush, or that Bush is somehow vindicated. In a town where one frequently hears ridiculous things, I’ve rarely heard anything more ridiculous than this. What Obama laid out in his Oval Office address Wednesday is, within the context of war-waging, pretty much the polar opposite of what Bush did, the antithesis of shock and awe.

This is not necessarily to say it stands a better chance of success—the dice have to come up seven about 20 times in a row for Obama’s plan to work. But if somehow it does, it would offer a new model for how to engage in the world’s most volatile region and reduce its sectarian strife.

What Obama wants to do boils down to two goals.  The first concerns Iraq, where he wants to roll the Islamic State back through means both military and diplomatic. The military means include first and foremost U.S. airstrikes on ISIS positions, with the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga doing the work on the ground. The diplomatic means involve, of course, getting new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to assemble a truly representative government, one that gives Sunni leaders an actual share of power and makes regular Sunnis feel more invested in their nation-state’s government than in ISIS.

Of these two, the diplomatic part will probably be much harder, although we don’t really know how hard the military part will be. ISIS is rich and pays its soldiers very well, but the Peshmerga are tough fighters, as we just saw in Erbil, and the Iraqi army appears to be shaping up and at least not dropping their weapons and running as they did in Mosul. However, the Iraqi army is seen by many Sunnis as an arm of Shia Iran. And as for the diplomatic part, who knows? Al-Abadi has been prime minister for all of three days. We don’t yet know whether Tehran has him on the tight leash with which it controlled Nouri al-Maliki. There are lots of questions, lots of hurdles.

The second goal has to do with Syria, and it’s far more complex. It too involves both military and diplomatic elements, and both are much more complicated than in Iraq, which is saying something. Militarily, it’s clear that we are now throwing in with the Free Syrian Army, of which Obama has been needlessly and harmfully dismissive in the past. But the FSA is our only play. We can’t throw in with Bashar al-Assad, as some have suggested, and it seems clear that Obama is resolved not to do this.

So we will undertake airstrikes in Syria—themselves the subject of no small amount of controversy in Congress, although Obama clearly feels he has the constitutional authority to go after ISIS anywhere and everywhere because it constitutes a direct national security threat—aimed at ISIS strongholds. That part isn’t so hard. The hard part is the hope that once we’ve hit ISIS targets in eastern Syria, the FSA can go into those redoubts and gain some victories.

The United States is now going to put a lot more money into training and equipping the FSA than Obama has been willing to commit to in the past, and the administration is hoping that the FSA can take—and, crucially, hold—territory. If that happens, then the diplomatic part kicks in, because if the FSA actually takes territory from ISIS, then it, and the comparatively moderate Sunni opposition it represents, might have the leverage to get elements of the Assad regime to sit at a negotiating table. A post-Assad Syria is part of the larger plan here, if the FSA can take some ground and if the moderate Sunnis can be persuaded to accept a negotiated settlement and share power with members of Assad’s Alawite sect.

None of this is going to happen anytime soon. It’s a project that will outlast Obama’s presidency. And as if all the above weren’t fraught enough, its success really hinges on buy-in from Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Qatar and others.
This is the one aspect of all this that Obama didn’t explain in the speech to anywhere near the extent he might have, and he probably didn’t because, well, he doesn’t know. Those three countries are playing a lot of games and placing a lot of side bets here. If they can be persuaded to become true coalition partners here—if the Saudis really agree to put serious money behind the FSA, if the Turks do more to shut the Turkey-Syria border to ISIS—then this really might work.

It’s a big if, but even today, without knowing how all that will work out, we know that this coalition is at least an attempt to do something serious.

This is an attempt to operate within the parameters permitted by public opinion in our democracy, to get the major Sunni nations of the Arab world involved (for once!) in fighting extremism instead of winking at it or openly backing it, to stabilize the country that Bush wrecked, to direct (with any luck) a country led by a monster toward a new future, and to defeat a medieval terrorist organization, all without actually invading anyone.

There are a thousand ways it can go wrong. But what if it goes right? And how about—here’s a crazy thought—we all hope that it does? And not for Obama’s sake: This gambit will certainly—certainly—define his foreign policy legacy, but it’s not for that reason that we should hope it all works. It’s for the sake of Iraqis and Syrians, and ultimately, for us.

Obama didn’t communicate every aspect of this fight effectively in the speech, which was too short and too vague. But the goals are the right ones. It’s a strategy, and he didn’t wear a tan suit.