If Russia is hitting a rival coalition that fights ISIS what is going on here?
Russia Said to Carry Out 30 Airstrikes in Syria on 2nd Day of Raids
| New York Times | - |
BEIRUT,
Lebanon - In a second day of raids in Syria, Russian warplanes carried
out 30 airstrikes on Thursday in the northern province of Idlib that
targeted not the Islamic State but a rival insurgent coalition,
according to a Lebanon-based news ...
BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a second day of raids in Syria,
Russian warplanes carried out 30 airstrikes on Thursday in the northern
province of Idlib that targeted not the Islamic State but a rival
insurgent coalition, according to a Lebanon-based news channel that
leans toward the Syrian government and is well sourced there.
The channel, Al Mayadeen, also said that Russia
was targeting “a known list of terrorist organizations” that it had
agreed on with the Syrian Army. If confirmed by Russia, that would be
the first official admission that its military is targeting insurgents
other than the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS.
The
strikes on Thursday targeted the Army of Conquest, a coalition of
insurgent groups that includes the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in
Syria, and a range of less-extreme Islamist groups. Often fighting
alongside it are relatively secular groups from what is left of the
loose-knit Free Syrian Army, including some that have received United
States training and advanced American-made antitank missiles.
Graphic
Mapping the Battle for Syria: Russian Airstrikes Hit Rebel Areas
Maps show that most of the areas hit by the airstrikes
are controlled by rebel groups and that they are not in Islamic State
territory.
This
year, the Army of Conquest dealt Syrian forces a serious setback by
seizing the city of Idlib, and later, the entire province, advances that
posed the war’s sharpest threat to the coastal areas where support for
President Bashar al-Assad is strongest. Russia has a naval station on the coast and has concentrated much of its recent military buildup there.
The
choice of targets underlined a fundamental dispute between the United
States, its allies, and Syrian opponents of Mr. Assad on one side; and
Mr. Assad and Russia on the other.
Mr.
Assad, and now Russia, make little distinction among Islamist insurgent
groups, and their supporters suggest that any such distinctions are
meaningless hairsplitting. United States policy appears to reflect an
acknowledgment that the Nusra Front and its allies — while many of them
are unpalatable — often clash with the Islamic State and have differing
goals and tactics.
The
Syrian uprising began in 2011 with peaceful protests, and turned
violent in response to repression by the government. But relatively
secular groups led by army defectors have been eclipsed by
better-financed, better-organized Islamist groups.
The
United States, along with Syrian opposition groups, decried Russia’s
first round of airstrikes, on Wednesday, because even as President Vladimir V. Putin
said they were targeting the Islamic State, they did not hit known
strongholds of the group. Instead, they targeted areas held by other
insurgents, including some American-trained ones, in strikes that killed
40 people, including some civilians.
But
the Army of Conquest itself embodies the ambivalence of American
policy. The United States considers the Nusra Front a terrorist
organization, but other groups, including some that have received
American funding, fight alongside Nusra, saying that they have no choice
if they want to unseat Mr. Assad.
The
United States has been reluctant to increase support to those groups
because some weapons have ended up in the hands of the Nusra Front, and
Washington does not want to see the militant group take over Syria any
more than it wants the Islamic State to take power.
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