US Air Strikes in Syria Proceeding as Expected: Civilian Deaths Documented, ISIS Recruitment Up
Last week, besides pointing out the obscene fact that the US Senate approved $500 million for the US to get more involved in the Syrian civil war on the same day the UN announced a $352 million funding shortfall for feeding civilian refugees of the war, I predicted that the “training” of Syrian rebels would fail just like training in Iraq and Afghanistan but civilian deaths from the US air strikes and at the hands of the rebels would greatly aid recruiting in extremist groups like ISIS.
It turns out that ISIS recruiting shot up even on Obama’s announcement of the US effort:
At least 162 people joined the radical al Qaeda offshoot in northeast and eastern Aleppo in the week after Obama’s speech on Sept. 10, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which gathers information on the conflict.
Islamic State has put particular pressure on rival insurgent groups in this part of Aleppo.
An additional 73 men had joined the group on Sept. 23 and 24 in the northeast Aleppo countryside since the start of the strikes, the Observatory said, bringing the total number since Sept. 10 to at least 235.
“This means these people are not scared. Even if there are air strikes, they still join,” said Rami Abdelrahman, who runs the Observatory.
And, just as could be expected from the “pinpoint” US air strikes, for which we have virtually no on-site intelligence to guide the strikes (other than reconnaissance flights by drones), we are now getting reports of civilian casualties. From Reuters yesterday:
U.S.-led air strikes hit grain silos and other targets in Islamic State-controlled territory in northern and eastern Syria overnight, killing civilians and militants, a group monitoring the war said on Monday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes hit mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij, in an area controlled by Islamic State, killing at least two civilian workers.
Isn’t that nice? Our intelligence-gathering for the air strikes can’t distinguish ISIS bases from silos used to distribute grain to starving civilians. How many new recruits will ISIS get from families whose only food supply was bombed in that strike or whose family members were killed by it?
Of course, the US military refuses to believe any evidence that it could possibly make a mistake. From the same Reuters story:
The U.S. military said on Monday an American air strike overnight targeted Islamic State vehicles in a staging area adjacent to a grain storage facility near Manbij, and added it had no evidence so far of civilian casualties.
“We are aware of media reports alleging civilian casualties, but have no evidence to corroborate these claims,” said Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman at the U.S. military’s Central Command. He promised that the military would look into the report further, saying it took such matters seriously.
You betcha. I’m sure Central Command will get right on that investigation of how it killed silo workers (and see below for the military admitting that it can’t properly evaluate the effects of strikes). Just as soon as they get the next fifty or so new targets for air strikes put on their targeting lists.
Sadly, this strike on the silos is not the only instance of civilian deaths from the US strikes. The Daily Mail has more information from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights about yesterday’s strike and the overall civilian death toll from all strikes:
Mr Abdulrahman, said today: ‘These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people.’ The airstrikes ‘destroyed the food that was stored there’.
The group says at least 19 civilians have been killed so far in coalition airstrikes.
And, of course, the US has not acknowledged any of the previous civilian casualties, either. All they will say is that the evidence is “inconclusive”:
Earlier Monday, the Pentagon admitted that some assessments of civilian casualties were “inconclusive” since the U.S. was only using drones to assess the results of strikes from the air.
“The evidence is going to be inconclusive often. Remember we’re using [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] to determine the battle damage assessment,” Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren said Monday.
A defense official told The Hill earlier this month that accurate assessments of damage from strikes are impossible without U.S. forces on the ground to exploit the attack sites, since Iraqi and Syrian partners did not have the capability.
Gosh, I don’t understand how we can have sufficient analytical ability to select targets but insufficient ability to assess the results of strikes on those targets. Sounds to me like the military is just bombing Syria for shits and giggles.
And to help contractors sell more bombs.
The US “strategy” is to continue the airstrikes, while locating and training “moderate” anti-Syria forces to fight ISIS, first 5,000 and then up to 12-15,000.
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But the Pentagon has said that U.S. air power alone will not destroy ISIL, and there are no “moderates.” They are all defunct. Washington can’t even conjure one up to make statements.
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The Free Syria Army was formed in 2011 by Colonel Riad al-Asaad, who was replaced by Brig. Gen. Mustafa Al-Shaikh., the new FSA go-to guy. In the FSA were the Al-Tawhid Brigade with Abdel Qader Saleh as commander, and other brigades. Last December two senior commanders with the American-backed Free Syrian Army were kidnapped and executed by al Qaeda fighters, highlighting the increasingly violent schism between the country’s secular opposition and the Islamic radical groups fighting alongside them. The Free Syrian Army has announced that it will not sign up to the US-led coalition to destroy Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria. But the FSA doesn’t really exist any longer.
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Then in December 2012 was formed the Supreme Military Command (SMC) which was intended to improves upon previous attempts at armed opposition unification through higher integration of disparate rebel groups and enhanced communication, chief of staff General Selim Idris.
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Neither of these organizations has been mentioned recently, and SecDef Hagel has said there is nobody in charge of any “moderate rebels” — which are the basis of the current strategy.
It is interesting to me that failures in the Secret Service have become the new jangling keys to divert the babies in the Beltway.
When it is clearer than ever that the very expensive US intelligence institutions and their parasitical contractors are delivering information to the military that is both inaccurate and dangerous to US national security.
I found this quote fascinating:
What exactly would that evidence look like? Especially when the assumption is that any adult male is a “militant”. The claim is that the civilians were employees at the silos. Would they likely be adult? Would they likely be male? So convenient for the US military that human beings are dual-use when it comes to conflict, easily switching from civilian to military uses. Any human being can now be a “militant”. Almost as magical as insta-declassification or pixie dust.
The Institute for the Study of War’s latest are a couple of retrospective analyses of al-Quada in Iraq’s past year, the first an analysis of the strategic use of VBIEDs throughout Iraq, the second an analysis of AQI’s recruitment drive summer a year ago–exactly in the time frame that the US was drawing that bright red line and thinking about arming moderate Syrian rebels but letting the Saudis and Qataris do the arming instead. Of course, none of this was mentioned in the context of the ISW reports, whose technology sponsors are Palantir and Praescient.
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Thanks. I had meant to put in a mention of all adult males being classed as militants and then didn’t get there.
Clearly the strategy is working. For ISIS. Like our ‘war’ on al-Qaeda, it’s another failure for us.
Is that a bug or a feature if doubling down by going to Teheran is the intended next step?
Nicolas J.S. Davies, AlterNet: Why the Showdown with Islamic Extremists Is the War the Pentagon Was Hoping For
I found this assumption fascinating.
Declassified documents from the history of all sorts of US involvements tend to indicate that that it would not be naive at all to find out that someone actually in an area understood more than US intelligence analysts and certainly more than decision-makers of the real picture. Especially when field agents are collaborating in their contacts’ spin for the benefit of futhering their relationships.
This is much easier to see in the formula: It would be naive to think that major US media news bureaus knew less that barely-funded bloggers.
Size, power, technology, and focus do not produce competence automatically.
The Iraq insurgency was exacerbated because of the misguided policy of midnight raids on houses, zip-tieing the wrists of any MAMs (military age males) present, then tossing them in the back of a vehicle and carting them off to a prison to be mistreated, tortured, retained without notice, etc. All MAMs were suspected militants. In Afghanistan they simply killed “suspected militants.”
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This is war. That’s what they do. There is no “clean” way to run a war, and killing citizens is always a part of it. At least they don’t carpet-bomb cities and bomb dams any more. That’s “progress,” I guess.
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So this policy results in “recruiting enemies,” which is much of the population. And then the US eventually quits, allowing the warmongers to carp that the US “didn’t stay and finish the job” i.e. killing everybody, apparently. There is no good end to a war. The only answer is to not start a war, but the US has found that to be impossible, a form of “isolationalism” the hawks say.
Americans were fed the “unconditional surrender” myth in World War II. The post-war narrative of that surrender never was explicit about the political tradeoffs in either theater. The illusion the national security institutions built was that anything short of unconditional surrender was a defeat. Given the built-in agenda institutionalized in 1947, anything less than unconditional surrender and a new war was indeed a defeat–for them. They were staring into that abyss in 1994.
Gorbachev is said to have remarked that he knew how to defeat the US — make peace with them and take away their enemy.
The US goes crazy-nuts-bonkers internally without a war. Its unaddressed internal conflicts surface. And that drives the search for another war. Which works great for its political leaders.
This is war. That’s what they do. There is no “clean” way to run a war, and killing citizens is always a part of it. At least they don’t carpet-bomb cities and bomb dams any more. That’s “progress,” I guess.
I wonder, Don, with Obomber announcing today; White House exempts Syria airstrikes from tight standards on civilian deaths Not that they have any standards to begin with, but, dayam…! 8-(
It is hard to understand. CENTCOM has a propaganda site dedicated to showing videos of their airstrikes. Of course nothing shows up when you search for Manbij. Maybe possible civilian deaths mean the videos will stay classified—which is just one way to show that CENTCOM “takes such matters seriously.”
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Apologize if this shows up twice
Hey it’s all good – it’s officially OK to kill civilians in Syria
White House exempts Syria airstrikes from tight standards on civilian deaths.
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Wow. Thanks for that. So “near certainty” of no civilian deaths, instituted for drones in Pakistan, doesn’t apply to bombs in Syria.
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And that’s probably not even the least untruthful description of the policy…
That way they don’t have to lie about there being no civilian deaths. Or else they just simply lie about there being no civilians in the region.
Oopsies, I see Ellie posted it already…! ;-)
If the scalps are not sent to lil obama, they are not counted and all claims are therefore “inconclusive”. That’s genocide 101! The rich matter and there’s no evidence the others count.
Why are so many smart people so stupid? Doesn’t this happen in every war? It seems to me that this is the military / foreign policy whack a mole version of the Streisand Effect. IE they’re advertising ISIS as the best way to fight the great satan (US gov)
Why are so many smart people so stupid?
*heh* “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” ~Upton Sinclair
Btw, Jim, I cited your Dostrum post yesterday on my Mashup…! ;-)
In depressing Afghani news… US might hold detainees from secret Bagram prison indefinitely
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Ack. That would be another aspect of why they worked so hard to get the BSA signed. Never ending war. Never ending imprisonment.
It’s the “leave no witnesses to torture” policy.
we agree, airstrikes are working just as we predicted, they are making things worse http://thebiasedreporterblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-airstrikes-are-working.html
Why don’t they like us…?
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Last Updated: April 10, 2014
….because they’re all terrorists, all of them. Suspected militants. Billions of them.
They are ‘bombing blind.’
They don’t really know what they’re bombing, or what the effects are.
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Fox News:
Tom Englehardt’s Intelligence Failure is Success article looks at strategic failures. But tactical failures kill by a thousand cuts.
17 agencies, $68 billion in annual appropriations, and they can’t identify valid targets in sufficient time to be actionable. On the battlefied.
Or is the US pursuing a policy of destroying the food supply of all people within the area of ISIS control? Which if memory serves well is a war crime.
I think they’re willing to commit war crimes, knowing that they won’t have to face justice in the US or the UK: those governments don’t want their crimes revealed.
I’m excited!! We, the Brits, have ISIS on the run! The BBC reports this morning that two (only TWO!) “RAF Tornados bomb Islamic State pickup truck”! [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29456841]
Apparently the Tornados have conducted “a successful precision attack on an armed pickup truck with a Paveway IV guided bomb”. That would be one of the “heavier Paveway IV bombs, estimated at £30,000 apiece” mentioned in the Guardian [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/30/bombing-isis-futile-air-strikes-iraq]. So the war is cost-effective as well – only a $48,000 bomb to take out a $20,000 (?) pickup. Way to go!
You just wait – pretty soon there won’t be an ISIS pickup truck left in one piece, and ISIS will give up and hand themselves in in disgust. Aren’t you all glad we’re in with you on this one?
Sounds to me like the military is just bombing Syria for shits and giggles.
And to help contractors sell more bombs.
I’m this may be essentially correct though a narrow lens- as in one war after another.
But, if the overarching point (ultimate goal) is to keep the Middle East destabilized, then it seems that that it is working extra fine