[AlAram] The defeat of Islamic State needs the simple recognition that all of us have a stake in the battle against it
Friday's carnage on three continents, in which scores of people died in Tunisia, Kuwait, and La Belle France has appalled the global community and reinforced international condemnation of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS), which has grabbed credit for them.
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Posted by: trailing wife ||
07/02/2015 00:00:00 ||
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Blasphemous, Pagan, Apostate religion from hell.
It's all going to rot in hell.
It already IS rotting in hell.
My main beef with the premises in the article is that the Rooshuns would deploy troops for an attack without air support and without the masses they need for a quick victory. Ukrainian military leadership and Maidan supporters including the Right Sector members of Dnepr-1 have long been claiming the Rooshuns will further an advance using their own troops rather than the cannon fodder the rebel leadership has worked so assiduously to amass so far.
What the news article revels is that a Rooshun FOB has deployed with equivalent of a reinforced rifle company, which is not a particularly large formation to begin with, with a contention by the writer and his sources that more are to follow.
Another beef of mine is that even were the Rooshuns to deploy a much larger formation, they still need air support and massive artillery support to penetrate into a hostile, fortified zone any deeper than about 16 kilometers, otherwise all the Ukrainians have to do is to mount brief but fierce, local mobile counterattacks to pin enemy troops down and prevent their advance. Despite all we have seen of how grossly incompetent the Ukrainian military has been to date, if the Ukrainian military reacts quickly to such a move by the Rooshuns, and makes good use of the road nets to their rear, dreams on enveloping Mariupol in a single pincer will go up in the smoke of smoldering T-72s.
From Volnovakha to a point just eight kilometers west of Mariupol is more than 40 kilometers, and a single pincer exposes a large open flank ripe for counterattack. The rebels may be able to breakthrough to such a point, but they can't keep the break in the line open without air support of a lot more troops than they can muster.
Consider Debaltsevo last February. It took the rebels a week to mount an offensive to penetrate to close to salient and another three weeks to hold that position, and this was without determined counterattacks by the Ukrainians. With a Russian tank unit helping.
Think about that: Three weeks to go a total of less than ten kilometers and hold it from nearly non existent Ukrainian counterattacks.
So, for the author of this report to suggest that even a Russian ground combat unit can penetrate a fortified zone, which is mined, to move some 40 kilometers and to hold that pincer is simply absurd.
None of the forces deployed; not the rebels, not the Ukrainians and not the Rooshuns have the ability to force the issue through sweeping offensive operations, not without air support and massive artillery support.
Dnipro-1, one of Ukraine’s many pro-government volunteer regiments, today released a video compiling drone footage of a Russian military camp just south of the village of Sontsevo in the Donetsk region.
Two drone flights were made over the same area, two weeks apart. Over that time, the camp grew from a small collection of tents and engineering vehicles into a fully-fledged forward operating base (FOB), complete with tanks, communications equipment, personnel quarters and even new roads.
What makes this already impressive discovery even more startling is the location—less than 12 kilometers from the Ukrainian front-line settlements of Granitnoye and Novolaspa. This area, to the east of Volnovakha and the Donetsk-Mariupol highway, has seen a slow but steady intensification of violence over recent months, as well as a buildup of Russian troops and armor in separatist-held territory behind the front lines.
What’s significant about where this Russian FOB is located is that it’s sandwiched between (Ukrainian-held Volnovakha) and (separatist-held) Telmanovo, and would therefore play a lead role in any forthcoming Russian offensive on Mariupol, the port city on the Sea of Azov which also happens to the economic powerhouse in the Donetsk region. The separatists have nothing comparable to Mariupol in their possession and they want it, as Alexander Zakharchenko, the head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, has stated repeatedly to journalists. Reinforcements from this FOB would allow separatists to mount a pincer maneuver to cut Ukrainian forces in Mariupol off from support from the north. I outlined such a plan at the beginning of this year and the evidence is now mounting that the Russians are indeed preparing for such a move.
Aerial footage finds smoking-gun evidence of Russian army involvement in the conflict. More war is inevitable.
Earlier this month, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe reported spotting large quantities of armor and troops in Komsomolskoye and Razdolnoye, which respectively lie 15 and 10 kilometers from the base found by Dnipro-1.
On June 17 our team at The Interpreter reported on evidence culled from social media that proved the presence of a training camp in Razdolnoye, equipped with tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and Grad rocket launchers.
But today’s video shows something much greater in scale.
When Dnipro-1 first flew over the area on May 20, they filmed around 70 troops, several trucks and engineering vehicles and construction equipment. At least two T-72 tanks and a communications vehicle can also be seen.
Only 15 days later, on June 4, the regiment carried out another drone flight. Russian military engineers had moved fast, constructing a large base, complete with new roads, a parade square, and trenches covering an area of around a hectare. The roads are even lined with reflective markers.
150630-vaux-russia3-embed
We can now see at least nine T-72 tanks, one of which is equipped with mine-clearing gear, and several fuel bowsers, some of which are parked in protective dugouts. At least one communications vehicle and an anti-tank gun can also be seen. Tents for accommodation, meetings, and cooking are laid out across the camp. Structures have been erected to mask some of the tanks from being seen from ground level and the whole complex is sheltered by woods.
This is quite clearly a base intended for a large-scale future deployment, one that could be instrumental in an assault to the west toward Volnovakha.
Just this morning, the Ukrainian military reported that Russian-backed forces had shelled Granitnoye and Starognatovka, two of the nearest frontline towns to Sontsevo. This has been a regular occurrence, despite the “ceasefire” signed between both parties in Minsk last February, mere hours before the fall of Debaltsevo to the separatists. But June has seen an increase in the number of attacks and, the military command in Mariupol said today, the range.
For the first time since the second Minsk talks, the past month has heralded renewed attacks on Ukrainian positions on the Donetsk-Mariupol highway itself. Last night, the Ukrainians report, the frontline town of Novotroitskoye, just north of Volnovakha, was shelled.
It is in this context that the repeated assaults on Marinka, a southwestern suburb of Donetsk, should be evaluated. Pushing the Ukrainians back from the area southwest of Donetsk and off the highway would allow the Russians to isolate and pin down the defenders of Mariupol from the north, while their forces continue to press through Shirokino on the Azov coast.
The rapid development of this base suggests the time for such an attack may be drawing nearer.
[DAWN] THE decade-old insurgency in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... is no longer the monolith that it had so far appeared to be. Twenty people were killed and several injured in the early hours of Tuesday during a clash between two Lion of Islam groups belonging to the banned Balochistan Liberation Army and the United Baloch Army that took place near the border of Kohlu and Dera Bugti districts. With both sides using heavy weapons, the skirmish lasted several hours. Elsewhere in the province on the same day, in the Mashkay area of Awaran district, 13 faceless myrmidons were killed in an encounter with security forces. Reportedly, among the dead are a brother and nephew of Dr Allah Nazar who heads the Baloch Liberation Front, another banned separatist group.
For several years, the unity between the various Lion of Islam groups has been a distinguishing feature of the Baloch insurgency; areas of their operations even overlapped in many places without reports of friction. That seems to have effectively come to an end with the death of veteran Baloch nationalist Khair Bux Marri in June last year when a rift between his sons Mehran and Hyrbyair -- who heads the BLA from self-exile in London -- led to the creation of the UBA with other groups also aligning themselves with one side or the other. Such a rupture was perhaps inevitable at some point: prolonged Lion of Islam movements become susceptible to internal crises stemming from differences over ideology and/or finances, which can then lead to disagreements about operational strategies. Where the security forces are concerned, the fracturing of the insurgency offers a tactical advantage for them to comprehensively crush the movement. In 2013, nature afforded them a similar opportunity when a devastating earthquake struck Awaran, a stronghold of the BLF. In its aftermath, the security forces -- under the umbrella of providing relief to earthquake victims -- managed to access parts of the very volatile district that were hitherto 'no-go areas' due to risk of bully boy attacks. However, corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds... in the process they also employed highly questionable tactics such as allowing unfettered leeway to the ultra right's 'charity' wings to establish a presence in the area's secular and multi-sectarian -- if deprived -- society. Extremist forces are part of the problem that bedevils Balochistan, a fact highlighted by Dr Abdul Malik on Tuesday. They can never, in any viable sense, be part of the solution.
Recent events indicate there is, at last, perhaps some realisation that a new approach is needed. There was the announcement of an amnesty for Baloch faceless myrmidons turning their backs on violence, and an initiative to hold talks with the Khan of Kalat in London is in the works as a means of reaching out to hardline separatist leaders. However, corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds... unless the state discards its old proxies and prejudices, and takes the long view that actually addresses legitimate Baloch grievances, the province will remain a powder keg.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/02/2015 00:00 ||
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h/t Instapundit
I started the day on Bill Bennett's radio show, which is always fun. Jonah Goldberg was on before me, and advanced the proposition, after the Supreme Court's almighty constitutional bender last week, that it wasn't so bad; conservatives who just pottered around in their own world and tended to their families would still be able to lead lives largely unbattered by the forces of "progress". A few minutes later, one of Bill's listeners, Claudine, came on and said that's what Germans reckoned in the 1930s: just keep your head down and the storm will pass. How'd that work out?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
