Vol. 79/No. 12 April 6, 2015
In Iraq, Washington is in a tacit alliance with Iran, backing Tehran’s increased military involvement there. Iran, one of Assad’s key allies, is leading a drive to retake the city of Tikrit from Islamic State. Meanwhile, leading U.S. government officials now say they see a place for Assad in Syria.
In villages in Hasakah province in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) are helping organize armed civilian defense forces to counter Islamic State attacks. YPG commander Dilshad told Haaretz newspaper the aim is to create an armed and trained civilian population ready to stop Islamic State advances.
“People may not think we, normal people, can protect this area — but we can and we will,” Moodie Ashlie, an ethnic Armenian, told the paper.
In late February, Islamic State captured a dozen Assyrian Christian villages in Syria, setting homes ablaze, blowing up several churches, razing historic sites and abducting more than 250 people, including women and children. Since then, YPG fighters and members of the Christian Syriac Military Council have been making gains in recapturing some of these villages.
The civil war in Syria is now in its fifth year. It began with mass popular protests demanding an end to Assad’s rule. Opposition forces took control of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and much of the country. Backed by Moscow and Tehran, Assad’s forces have far superior weaponry. His regime has dealt blows to the rebellion and devastated much of the population through starvation sieges and deadly barrel bombs.
More than 215,000 people have been killed since the civil war began. Almost half the country’s population of 22 million has been forced to flee their homes — at least 3.7 million to other countries and 6.5 million internally displaced.
Wide swaths of Syria have no electricity, with 83 percent of all lights in the country cut off, according to satellite images. In Aleppo, 97 percent of the lights have gone out.
Government airstrikes March 15 against opposition forces in Doma city, northeast of Damascus, killed 18 people and wounded at least 100. The following evening, six members of one family were killed in northwestern Syria when a government plane dropped a bomb filled with chlorine gas on their home, reported the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Assad has often refrained from attacking Islamic State strongholds, allowing the Islamists to focus on fighting the Kurds and other opposition groups.
In an interview aired on CBS “Face the Nation” March 15, Secretary of State John Kerry called for negotiating with Assad, as part of seeking “a political solution.” His remarks stirred protests from Paris and Ankara, governments that are part of the coalition against Islamic State.
If the Syrian regime collapsed, CIA Director John Brennan told the Council on Foreign Relations March 13, “The last thing we want to do is to allow them [Islamic State] to march into Damascus.”
U.S., Iran have common interests
In early March Baghdad launched an offensive to retake the city of Tikrit from Islamic State. Spearheading the drive are Iranian-trained and equipped Shia militias, many of which have a history of sectarian violence against Sunni residents in these areas. Last January, for example, 72 Sunnis were shot dead in northeastern Baquba province, massacred by Shia militias, reported Al-Jazeera.In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee March 11, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed to Iranian involvement in Iraq and the Pentagon’s openness to its military implications in fighting Islamic State. Dempsey said the offensive involves about 20,000 Shia militia forces, 3,000 Iraqi troops and some 1,000 Sunni tribal fighters.
“The activity of the Iranians and their support for the Iraqi Security Forces is a positive thing in military terms against ISIL [Islamic State],” Dempsey said.
Iranian military advisers led by Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, are on the ground leading this effort, reported The Associated Press. Soleimani has also organized Iranian and Hezbollah forces fighting for Assad in Syria.
After surrounding Tikrit and entering parts of it, the drive has stalled as Islamic State forces holed up in the city have inflicted heavy casualties on Tehran-backed forces.
Islamic State, led militarily by a number of officers from the former regime of Saddam Hussein, rapidly seized control of one-third of Iraqi territory last June, as the Iraqi army disintegrated. Since then it has been pushed back from some 20 percent of what it took — most in the north by Kurdish Peshmerga troops.
Washington and its imperialist allies in Europe staunchly oppose formation of an independent Kurdish state and refuse to provide Kurdish fighters with needed heavy weapons.
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