ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)

'On the brink'
The tide began to turn early this year. The Western-backed regional powers supporting the anti-Assad rebels - mainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey - started working more closely together.
On the ground, the rebel groups similarly began pulling more closely together.

The Americans - in addition to their ill-conceived and ill-fated "train and equip" programme - began pumping in more money and hardware.

As a result, by the spring, the rebels had made significant advances in both the north, (Idlib province) and the south.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Equation, Where have you been for the past 5 years... Iran is up to it's proverbial eye balls in this whole thing. They have been backing Assad since Day zero. And not just Syria but Iraq as well.

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Russia bombed Syria for a third day on Friday, mainly hitting areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting.

Washington, which is leading its own air campaign against Islamic State, says Moscow has been using its campaign as a pretext to hit other groups opposed to Russia's ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Some of the groups that have been hit are supported by countries which oppose both Assad and Islamic State, including at least one group that received training from the CIA.

Moscow said on Friday its latest strikes had hit 12 Islamic State targets, but most of the areas it described were in parts of the country where the militant group has little or no sway.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its Sukhoi-34, Sukhoi-24M and Sukhoi-25 warplanes had flown 18 sorties, describing targets in western and northern Syria, including a command post and a communications center in the province of Aleppo, a militant field camp in Idlib and a command post in Hama.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict with a network of sources on the ground, said Islamic State had no presence in the western and northern areas that were struck.

The Observatory's head, Rami Abdulrahman, said one of the targets hit in the latest Russian air strikes, the town of Dar Tazzah in northwestern Aleppo province, was controlled by a number of insurgent groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Russia has however also struck Islamic State areas in a small number of other attacks further east. The Observatory said 12 Islamic State fighters were killed near Raqqa on Thursday, and planes believed to be Russian had also struck the Islamic State-held city of Qarytayn.

President Vladimir Putin's decision this week to launch air strikes on Syria marks a dramatic escalation of foreign involvement in a 4-year-old civil war in which every major country in the region has a stake.

Lebanese sources have told Reuters that hundreds of Iranian troops have also arrived in recent days in Syria to participate in a major ground offensive alongside government troops and their Lebanese and Iraqi Shi'ite militia allies.

Russia's air campaign in a country already being bombed by a U.S.-led coalition of Western and Arab countries means that the Cold War superpower foes Moscow and Washington are now flying combat missions over the same country for the first time since World War Two.

COMMON ENEMY, DIFFERENT FRIENDS

The United States and Russia say they have a common enemy in Islamic State, which has proclaimed a caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq. But they also have very different friends and opposing views of how to resolve a war that has killed at least 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes.

Washington opposes both Islamic State and Assad, blaming him for attacks on civilians that have radicalized the opposition and insisting that he has no place in a post-war settlement.

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Jura said:

I think I found something ... sorry if it's a fake but ... could it be like this:

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Equation said:

Yes, but there's a difference between actual combat personnel and intelligent field agents on the ground (even with combat credits).

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Jura said:

again

? allegedly official charts from the Russian Ministry of Defense (if true, out of 24 air-strikes so far: six ISIL, 18 non-ISIL targets)
again, I just found it under a blog:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

EDIT
I realized it might not be obvious the second chart should be like to the east, or right here, of the first one ... I'm sorry I don't how how to do it here)

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Blackstone said:

It's correct for the Pentagon to think and draw up possible plans in response to changing geopolitical events all over the world. That's their job. In the end, President Obama makes the policies for Pentagon personnel to execute.

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delft said:

Perhaps they are changing. Sisi has been a frequent visitor to Moscow this year. He got his fighter pilot training near Moscow and in Central Asia so he probably speaks the language quite well.

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