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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.
A new map from ISW showing the viewshed for Palmyra as of March 2016. Regime troops continue their attack and advance on the city and its environs.
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.
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.
"The Russians have developed a way of getting the U.S. formally to permit offensive Russian military operations against American partners on the ground, all the while calling it a ceasefire." Kimberly Kagan, Fox News Opinion, "How Russia Controls U.S. Policy"
Supporters of Sadrist Trend leader Muqtada al-Sadr began a large sit-in in front of the entrance to the Green Zone on March 18.
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. The withdrawal of idle strike aircraft from Syria does not inhibit the continuation of Russia’s air campaign, which had already been reduced following the February start of the U.S.
International negotiations to reach a political settlement in Syria have resumed, although serious challenges remain to reaching a political settlement. The talks follow two weeks of a “cessation of hostilities” in which the Russian air campaign in Syria decreased notably, though it did not entirely cease. Putin announced that he would withdraw some airframes from Syria on March 15, incentivizing both Assad and the opposition to engage in Geneva.