 Russia-Third Syrian base: The Russian army has quietly started construction of a new military base in the countryside near Damascus, writes Sami Moubayed. This will be Moscow’s third base in Syria – the other two have troops, sophisticated weaponry and support systems to bolster the military operation against ISIS – and this new one will help implement the eight-point ‘deconfliction’ program for the border area agreed upon by Russia, the US and Jordan while also working to ensure humanitarian aid reaches besieged villages and towns. READ THE STORY HERE
 Egypt’s military destroys arms convoy approaching from LibyaThe Egyptian military said that its warplanes had destroyed a convoy of 12 vehicles loaded with weapons, ammunition and explosives as they gathered at the border with Libya on Tuesday. The military said that the strikes resulted from intelligence that “criminal elements” were about to enter Egypt, but did not specify when and where the attacks took place. Last month, Egypt’s air force launched strikes against militant camps in Libya just hours after masked gunmen massacred 26 Copts in the southern province of Minya
US may continue arming Syrian Kurds after Raqqa battleUS Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Tuesday that the United States may continue to supply Syrian Kurdish fighters with weapons even after the Islamic State is ousted from Raqqa. Speaking to reporters in Germany, Mattis said the recovery of arms depends on the next phase of the operation, noting, “It's not like the fight's over when Raqqa's over.” The Donald Trump administration decided last month to arm the Kurdish People's Protection Units despite furious objections from NATO member Turkey, which considers them a terrorist group.
 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Washington was implementing a “double standard” for its counterterrorism operations in Syria, allowing groups like Jabhat Fateh al-Sham — the rebranded al Qaeda cell formerly known as Jahbat al Nusra or Nusra Front — to run roughshod over Russian-backed Assad forces on the ground in the country. – Washington Times As the fight against the Islamic State moves beyond its de facto capital in Raqqa, the Pentagon is readying itself for an increasingly complex battlefield in northern Syria, where U.S.-backed forces, pro-Syrian government troops and Russian jets will likely all be fighting near one another. – Washington Post’s Checkpoint The U.S. will not slide into an expanded role in Syria’s civil war despite recent incidents that led to U.S. warplanes firing on pro-regime forces there, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Monday. – Stars and Stripes U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday left open the possibility of longer-term assistance to Kurdish YPG militia in Syria, saying the U.S. may need to supply them weapons and equipment even after the capture of Raqqa from Islamic State. - Reuters
Frederic Hof writes: In its agonizing, slow-motion campaign against ISIS in Syria, the United States will, in the end, have made the whole country safe for Assad, for Iran, and for whatever forms of resistance arise in response to the triumph of misrule, collective punishment, and humanitarian abomination. For an administration rhetorically committed to pushing back against Iran’s regional expansion, it would be a remarkable reversal and a precipitous climb-down. – Atlantic Council  AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Promotes 4 Previously Unidentified Training Camps in Afghanistan By Bill Roggio & Caleb Weiss, FDD's The Long War Journal: “The Afghan Taliban promoted its network of training camps that it claims are in operation throughout Afghanistan in a recent propaganda video that was published on its official website. Four new Taliban camps have been identified by the Taliban.” The head of a violent, Kashmir-based terror group fighting for control over the hotly disputed territory in Southwest Asia is the latest addition to the State Department’s terror list. – Washington Times
U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have called on Pakistan to “ensure that its territory is not used to launch terrorist attacks on other countries,” the White House said. – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty  The Importance of the F-35 to Israel
By Larkins Dsouza, Defence Aviation: “The F-35 will give the Israeli Air Force better capabilities, both near and far, to help strengthen its national security. Syria, South Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and the Islamic State are a constant threat to Israel's security and they are facing increasingly crowded skies in the neighborhood.”  F-16s Built in India? Thinking Through the Strategic Impact
By Danny Lam, Second Line of Defense: “The F-16 deal for India – if it goes through – has the potential to become a game changer for not just the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.”  Winning the War Against Terrorism (Again and Again)
By Christopher Bolan, RealClearDefense: “By most measures, the U.S.-led coalition military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) is on the verge of yielding significant battlefield victories in both Iraq and Syria. The last major ISIS strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa will in all likelihood soon be liberated by a combination of local Iraqi/Syrian/Kurdish forces backed by U.S. airstrikes, limited U.S. combat and Special Forces, and Iranian-backed militias. As the frustrating and inconclusive military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, however, the larger challenge for U.S. policymakers is to develop a comprehensive and integrated political and economic strategy that can translate these operational military victories into sustainable outcomes that restore stability and improve long-term governance in the region.”  One-Size-Fits-All Approach Fails in Afghanistan By Anthony H. Cordesman, The Cipher Brief: “This is an insurgency. We are talking about an ongoing struggle for hearts and minds, and we are talking about different rebel factions. The fact that the government in Kabul may have an interest doesn’t mean that it’s really the government in control – often it’s a power broker. We really are watching what is an expansion of threat influence. But none of these statistics are particularly reliable. In the past, there has been a tendency to exaggerate government control and to give the government credit if it has some kind of presence in a district capital, even if that presence wasn’t really doing anything and was grossly corrupt.” A key House lawmaker is sponsoring legislation to downgrade Pakistan’s status as a major U.S. ally and limit its access to American-made weapons, just as President Donald Trump intends to take a harder line toward Islamabad. – Defense News
 U.S.: Strategic Objectives in the Middle East By Peter Huessy, Gatestone Institute: “The tectonic plates in the Middle East have shifted markedly with President Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and his announced new regional policy.” Aykan Erdemir and Merve Tahiroglu write: Turkey chose Qatar in the recent Gulf crisis. Indeed, it would have had little choice to discard such a lucrative partnership at a time of brewing economic crisis at home. But as the intra-Gulf row deepens, the Turkish-Qatari partnership will likely force Ankara to recalibrate its already uneasy relationship with the Saudi-led Sunni bloc. Turkey stands to become further isolated in the region and grow increasingly dependent on Doha for political and financial support. Ankara’s international image is poised only to be further tainted by this move. Erdoğan, aware of all the drawbacks, had already cornered himself into this choice. – The National Interest
Maher Farrukh writes: The U.S. must orient on changing the conditions set by the civil war that AQAP exploits in order to put the group on course to permanent defeat. AQAP will expand its support zones as long as the Yemeni civil war persists. The U.S. must take the lead in shaping the Saudi-led coalition’s policy in order to reach a political settlement to the civil war and focus the coalition on countering AQAP. - AEI's Critical Threats  It used to be one of the most coveted jobs in Afghanistan: a position on a sprawling American military base, the biggest in the country…All that has changed over the last year, as the deaths late Monday of eight Afghan guards who worked at Bagram Air Base dramatically demonstrated. And it was yet another indicator that the Taliban have spread their areas of operation to most parts of the country. – New York Times
The Pentagon wasted as much as $28 million over the past decade buying uniforms for the Afghan army with a woodland camouflage pattern appropriate for a tiny fraction of that war-torn country, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. – USA Today After nearly 16 years of war against the Taliban, the Afghan government is starting to develop a "road map" for breaking a battlefield stalemate that has been prolonged by the insurgents' ability to use Pakistan as a sanctuary, the Pentagon said Tuesday. – Associated Press  Dennis Ross writes: Regrettably, if the Trump administration cannot do more to counter Iran’s actions in Syria, it is not likely to be able to “demolish” ISIS and prevent its return. Iran is using its Shia proxy militias both to fight ISIS and to challenge U.S. efforts to train local forces in southeastern Syria. - Politico Frederic Hof writes: One doubts that the Trump administration has a fully formed Syria strategy. One fears that a major obstacle to its creation may be fear of the heavy, sustained lift required to implement something meaningful. It was this fear, along with a misplaced and inappropriate respect for Iranian interests in Syria, that paralyzed a scholarly but operationally illiterate Obama administration. Perhaps its successor will also be content with “no-can-do” instead of deciding what to do and how to get it. Syria is an excellent test case. – Atlantic Council
 Saudi’s big gamble: The aging king of Saudi Arabia issued a stunning royal decree on Wednesday when he removed his nephew, the Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Nayef, from office and appointed his own son, Mohammad Bin Salman, as heir to the Saudi throne. Sami Moubayed writes that Bin Salman is popular with younger Saudis – he looks set to be the youngest king in Saudi Arabia’s history – but is also viewed by many as erratic and impervious to advice. READ THE STORY HERE The Saudi Succession Shuffle
By Anthony Bubalo, Lowy Interpreter: “Today's announcement that Saudi Arabia's King Salman has reshuffled the line of succession in favour of his son Mohammed bin Salman is surprising, but not unexpected. Nevertheless, what makes me a little more cautious about continuing to wager on Saudi stability are the aggressive reforms and policies that MBS has been driving in a country long known for its conservatism and caution.”  President Donald Trump's administration appears ready to harden its approach toward Pakistan to crack down on Pakistan-based militants launching attacks in neighboring Afghanistan, U.S. officials tell Reuters. - Reuters
Pakistani separatists riding motorcycles killed two naval officers in the restive southwestern province of Baluchistan, police officials said on Tuesday, near the site of a major Chinese-funded project. - Reuters 
In recent months, the government has quietly provided the breakaway faction — popularly known as the Renouncers — with weapons, safe passage and intelligence support in their fight against the mainstream Taliban. The result has been a series of successes in areas where the government has otherwise suffered repeated defeats, particularly in Helmand, a southern province where the mainstream Taliban still control 90 percent of the territory. – New York Times
Drug addiction in Afghanistan, once mostly limited to men who spent years as laborers or war refugees in Iran, has exploded into a nationwide scourge that affects millions of people, including a growing number of women and children. – Washington Post  Bolstered by coalition air-power, Kurdish forces in Syria have entered the second week of fighting to seize the city of Raqqa, where nearly 2,000 ISIS fighters are battling to maintain control of their de facto capital in a bloody street-by-street battle. – Military Times The top Iraqi-Kurdish representative to the U.S. said Iranian-backed Shia militias could undermine the security and stability of the Kurdish region once the Islamic State threat to the country is defeated. – Washington Times
 U.S. Quietly Publishes Papers on 1953 Iran Coup By Jon Gambrell, AP: “Once expunged from its official history, documents outlining the U.S.-backed 1953 coup in Iran have been quietly published by the State Department, offering a new glimpse at an operation that ultimately pushed the country toward its Islamic Revolution and hostility with the West.” The Trump administration has released a long-suppressed and classified government report disclosing U.S. clandestine action in Iran that outlines America's role in the country's 1953 coup, the State Department announced last week in a move that is likely to roil the Islamic Republic. – Washington Free Beacon Iran-Syria, what next? Iran says it fired six ground-to-ground missiles from Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps bases in Western Iran and claims they hit Islamic State targets in Syria “with high precision after flying through the Iraqi airspace.” M.K. Bhadrakumar writes that although the missile strike clearly constitutes a snub to the US, there are other more important downstream implications. READ THE STORY HERE
As American military officials complete plans that are likely to send several thousand additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, a flurry of setbacks in the war have underscored both the imperative of action and the pitfalls of various approaches. – Washington Post
Former commanders and military scholars said that in sending troops before having a strategy, Mr. Trump has put the cart before the horse, eroded the tradition of civilian control over the military, and abdicated the president’s duty to announce and defend troop deployments. – New York Times Seven American soldiers were shot and wounded by an Afghan commando on Saturday, the second such insider attack in a week, according to Afghan officials. – New York Times Five Afghan police officers were killed and 18 people were wounded in a Taliban attack Sunday on a major base in the eastern province of Paktia, Afghan officials said. – New York Times A spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday pushed back against news reports that he's already approved sending 4,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. – Military.com Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has dropped several big hints about what will be in his new strategy for Afghanistan, an almost 16-year war he told Congress this week that the U.S. is "not winning." According to one source, beyond tactical moves in the country, the plan involves focusing on terrorists just over the border in Pakistan – Washington Examiner Gen. Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, called the United States' 16-year-long involvement in Afghanistan a "disgrace" and said some 10,000 to 20,000 additional troops were needed to win the war. – Fox News The military has confirmed the death of a senior member and the destruction of a media hub of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the Afghanistan branch of the terrorist group. – The Hill Editorial: President Trump’s resolution to delegate decisions on troop levels in Afghanistan to the Pentagon is a worthy corrective to the approach of President Barack Obama, who micromanaged U.S. military forces in a way that badly undercut their ability to achieve their goals. – Washington Post |
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