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The ANSF is unprepared to counter the Taliban militants’ summer campaign. Northern warlords will take advantage of Taliban militants’ gains to establish themselves as security providers and gain leverage against the fragile National Unity Government.
Aleppo Province stands to become the focal point of a new round of violence in the Syrian Civil War even as the Geneva III Talks to end the conflict are scheduled to resume on April 13. Continued violations of an ongoing ‘cessation of hostilities’ by both pro-regime and opposition factions have fueled the largest outbreak of violence in northern Syria since the agreement went into effect on February 27, threatening to drive a wider breakdown of the tenuous ceasefire.
ISIS continued to pursue ongoing campaigns both regionally and further abroad throughout March. The group carried out a spectacular, sophisticated terror attack in Brussels on March 22. The attack, which was unprecedented in Belgium, is part of ISIS’s ongoing campaign to attack and polarize the West, sowing disorder to make way for future expansion to a global Caliphate.
Since the publication of ISW’s last ISIS sanctuary map on March 3, 2016, ISIS lost control of the Syrian city of Palmyra to pro-regime forces. Additionally, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) launched an operation on March 12 to recapture Hit district, and as of March 31 the ISF recaptured the subdistricts of al-Muhammadi, south of the town of Hit, and Kubaisa, west of Hit.
Pro-regime forces seized Palmyra as well as the adjacent Palmyra Airbase in Eastern Homs Province on March 27 after ISIS withdrew from the city, completing an operation that began on March 7 with the aim of recapturing the strategic crossroads.
ISIS is using its foreign fighters and safe haven in Iraq and Syria to execute a terror campaign within Europe. ISIS’s March 22 Brussels attacks support a larger strategy to punish, destabilize, and polarize the West. ISIS will likely continue to attempt attacks in France and Belgium in 2016, using its large Francophone foreign fighter population and local supporters.
ISW’s new ISIS Global strategy map places Chad and Niger in ISIS’s Far Abroad campaign to reflect recruitment by ISIS’s Libyan affiliate and attacks by ISIS’s Nigerian affiliate (also known as Boko Haram), respectively.
In February, ISW analysts spoke out frequently on Russia in the Middle East, Aleppo, ISIS in Libya, and Iraq. Our Russian airstrikes map continued to figure prominently as well as our Aleppo maps showing how Russia helped the regime almost complete its encirclement of this key city.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely attempting to leverage his gains in the Syrian Civil War to expand Russia’s freedom of action in eastern Ukraine. Russia and the separatists began to escalate operations in eastern Ukraine in mid-February, directly coinciding with the implementation of the Syrian cessation of hostilities agreement on February 27 and subsequent drawdown of Russian forces.
President Vladimir Putin presented Russia’s active military campaign in Syria as complete with the announced withdrawal of the “main part” of the Russian air group beginning March 15. The reported withdrawal of roughly 15 Russian bombers and close-support aircraft, however, represents a drawdown rather than Russia’s extrication from the Syrian Civil War, the intended message behind Putin’s announcement.