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Crowded skies over Syria

In response to the Paris terror attacks that have so far claimed 129 lives and wounded 300 more, French warplanes have for the first time attacked Islamic State (ISIS) targets inside of Syria. Until now, France had limited its attacks to Iraqi airspace, matching the policy of a number of its coalition partners.
[additional-authors]
November 16, 2015

This article originally appeared on The Media Line.

In response to the Paris terror attacks that have so far claimed 129 lives and wounded 300 more, French warplanes have for the first time attacked Islamic State (ISIS) targets inside of Syria.  Until now, France had limited its attacks to Iraqi airspace, matching the policy of a number of its coalition partners.

However, with the skies over Syria increasingly full of combat aircraft, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of which factions on the ground are being bombed, let alone the safety of coalition air craft. Analysts suggest that despite being the focal point for fear and anger among Western media, ISIS might not even be on the receiving end of the majority of airstrikes launched from the Syrian skies.

Air strikes against fighters in Iraq and Syria can generally be linked to three main thrusts: attacks against forces battling the Assad regime and carried out by Russian and Syrian jets; targeting of Kurdish groups by the Turkish military; and the anti-ISIS strikes by the United States-led coalition. To add to the confusion, some of the US coalition partners operate in Syrian airspace while others only conduct sorties over Iraq.

“The coalition does not target non-ISIS (groups), but the US, Russia and Turkey do to various degrees,” Chris Woods, founder of the nongovernmental organization Airwars, told The Media Line. The US has conducted attacks against other groups, in particular the Al-Nusra Front, which the Americans conduct outside the coalition framework, Woods explained. Al-Nusra is the official affiliate of Al-Qa’ida in the Syrian Civil War and are rivals to the Islamic State. But these attacks are a small part of the operations reported by the coalition, roughly 30 attacks out of the more than 8,000 conducted, Woods said.

Yet, Russia is conducting a far higher proportion of strikes against groups other than ISIS. “Russians are targeting ISIS in places like Raqqa and Idlib but primarily it looks like only 1 out of 5 attacks are targeting the group,” Woods, whose organization monitors airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, said.

Previously the US State Department has accused Russia of avoiding targeting ISIS and instead hitting moderate Syrian opposition groups.

The majority of attacks by the Russian air force are against Ahrar Al-Sham and Al-Nusra, and have not targeted ISIS, Nikolay Kozhanov, a fellow at Carnegie Moscow Center and a visiting fellow at Chatham House in London, told The Media Line. But, he stressed, this was for legitimate tactical reasons on the ground and not to push a Russian agenda. “The (Syrian) government and ISIS have quite a limited frontline with each other…(and) even if they are more targeting Ahrar Al-Sham and Jabhat Al-Nusra, this is a good thing because these guys are no better than the Islamic State,” Kozhanov argued.

Ahrar Al-Sham, one of the many factions fighting on the ground in Syria, is estimated to comprise upwards of 10,000 fighters. The group has been seen as jihadist in nature with links to the Qatari government, but has apparently attempted to rebrand itself in order to become more palatable to Western backers. Ahrar Al-Sham fought against the Islamic State, which they have said represents a threat to the people of Syria.

Like the US, Turkey is a member of the anti-ISIS coalition but conducts its own unilateral operations. The majority of these strikes take place in Iraqi airspace and target the PKK, Chris Woods explained. The PKK, or the Kurdish Workers Party, is a left-wing Kurdish independence movement that has fought an armed conflict with the Turkish government since 1984. Ankara was accused of using the premise of striking at ISIS in order to target the group which is based in northern Iraq, and of ignoring the threat that ISIS represents in order to do so.

Yusuf Kanli, a journalist with Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News disagrees. He told The Media Line that on the contrary, the Turkish government does recognize the threat from ISIS, citing the suicide bombings in Ankara last month which were attributed to the Islamic State. As many as one hundred people were killed in the explosions.

But the government’s position is confused, Kanli suggested. “On the one hand, Turkey is a part of the anti-ISIS coalition and collaborating in every way possible in fighting that extremist group. On the other hand, we all know that that group is exporting oil through the (Turkish) private sector,” the journalist explained. Turkey’s border with Syria has previously been one of the main supply routes for the Islamic State through which weapons and foreign fighters from Europe have reportedly travelled. Oil revenues represent an important source of income for the Islamic State since it captured key petroleum infrastructure in Iraq and Syria.

While ISIS is recognized as a threat by the [Turkish] government, the Kurds are still considered “the real problem,” Kanli said, as “their objective is to carve out a Kurdish state along Turkey’s border.”

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