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The United States faces a geostrategic inflection in Syria that it has not yet fully recognized. The “cessation of hostilities” declared on February 11, 2016 permits Russia and the Assad regime to continue targeting U.S. allies in Aleppo under the pretext that the opposition in the city consists predominantly of al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra.
The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) agreed to secure immediate humanitarian access to six besieged locations in Syria during their most recent meeting in Munich, Germany on February 11, 2016.
We’ve seen this movie—now playing in Syria-- before. 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.
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Chief, Vincent Stewart, noted that a Mosul operation was unlikely to occur in 2016, underscoring that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) have far to go before being ready to recapture the city.
This third report in the series "U.S. Grand Strategy: Destroying ISIS and al Qaeda" assesses the strengths and vulnerabilities of ISIS and al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra to serve as the basis for developing a robust and comprehensive strategy to destroy them.
American strategy toward ISIS has misidentified the group’s center of gravity and is inadvertently strengthening Syrian al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra. The US approach presumes that regaining Mosul in Iraq and ar Raqqa in Syria will cause ISIS to collapse, and it is not operating against Jabhat al Nusra in any meaningful way.
"According to a report, Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, is a greater threat to the United States in the long term than is ISIS. The report, which suggests the U.S. is spending too much time focused on ISIS, was released last week by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute." Source: CNN
Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and Sunni Arab tribal fighters backed by Coalition air support recaptured central Ramadi on January 9, the completion of a six-month operation.
Russian warplanes concentrated their airstrikes in opposition-held territory in northwestern Aleppo Province in support of an ongoing regime offensive to sever the primary opposition ground line of communication (GLOC) from Aleppo City to the Syrian-Turkish border.