Read this and then decide who are the good guys and by comparison who are the bad guys. Your choices are Bashar al-Assad and his loyal armed forces, Russia's bombing of ISIS and other jihadi forces such as ISIL (also known as Da’esh), al-Qaeda, and the al-Nusrah Front. Don't forget the CIA who smuggle arms to rebels. And then there is Turkey, which sees to it that ISIS and other murderous groups get arms, ammunition, and food daily. Finally think of the people who have had to flee Syria to keep their families from being killed by the jihadis.

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Logistics 101: Where Does ISIS Get Its Guns?

By Tony Cartalucci                                                                             Region: Middle East & North Africa 
Global Research, November 26, 2015                                                  Theme: Politics and Religion
New Eastern Outlook 9 June 2015

Note: Article originally published in June 2015

Since ancient times an army required significant logistical support to carry out any kind of sustained military campaign. In ancient Rome, an extensive network of roads was constructed to facilitate not only trade, but to allow Roman legions to move quickly to where they were needed, and for the supplies needed to sustain military operations to follow them in turn.

In the late 1700′s French general, expert strategist, and leader Napoleon Bonaparte would note that, “an army marches on its stomach,” referring to the extensive logistical network required to keep an army fed, and therefore able to maintain its fighting capacity. For the French, their inability to maintain a steady supply train to its forces fighting in Russia, and the Russians’ decision to burn their own land and infrastructure to deny it from the invading forces, ultimately defeated the French.

Nazi Germany would suffer a similar fate when it too overextended its logical capabilities during its invasion of Russia amid Operation Barbarossa. Once again, invading armies became stranded without limited resources before being either cut off and annihilated or forced to retreat.

The other half of the war is logistics. Without a steady stream of supplies, armies no matter how strong or determined will be overwhelmed and defeated. What explains then ISIS’ fighting prowess and the immense logitical networks it would need to maintain it?

And in modern times during the Gulf War in the 1990′s an extended supply line trailing invading US forces coupled with an anticipated clash with the bulk of Saddam Hussein’s army halted what was otherwise a lighting advance many mistakenly believed could have reached Baghdad had there been the political will. The will to conquer was there, the logistics to implement it wasn’t.

The lessons of history however clear they may be, appear to be entirely lost on an either supremely ignorant or incredibly deceitful troupe of policymakers and news agencies across the West.

ISIS’ Supply Lines

The current conflict consuming the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria where the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) is operating and simultaneously fighting and defeating the forces of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, we are told, is built upon a logistical network based on black market oil and ransom payments.

The fighting capacity of ISIS is that of a nation-state. It controls vast swaths of territory straddling both Syria and Iraq and not only is able to militarily defend and expand from this territory, but possesses the resources to occupy it, including the resources to administer the populations subjugated within it.

For military analysts, especially former members of Western armed forces, as well as members of the Western media who remember the convoys of trucks required for the invasions of Iraq in the 1990s and again in 2003, they surely must wonder where ISIS’ trucks are today. After all, if the resources to maintain the fighting capacity exhibited by ISIS were available within Syrian and Iraqi territory alone, then certainly Syrian and Iraqi forces would also posses an equal or greater fighting capacity but they simply do not.
 
And were ISIS’ supply lines solely confined within Syrian and Iraqi territory, then surely both Syrian and Iraqi forces would utilize their one advantage – air power – to cut front line ISIS fighters from the source of their supplies. But this is not happening and there is a good reason why.

Recent maps showing ISIS’ territory show obvious supply lines leading from Jordan and Turkey. Should Syria and its allies manage to cut these supply lines, one wonders just how long ISIS’ so-far inexplicable winning streak would last.

SIS’ supply lines run precisely where Syrian and Iraqi air power cannot go. To the north and into NATO-member Turkey, and to the southwest into US allies Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Beyond these borders exists a logistical network that spans a region including both Eastern Europe and North Africa.

Terrorists and weapons left over from NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011 were promptly sent to Turkey and then onto Syria – coordinated by US State Department officials and intelligence agencies in Benghazi – a terrorist hotbed for decades.

The London Telegraph would report in their 2013 article, “CIA ‘running arms smuggling team in Benghazi when consulate was attacked’,” that:

[CNN] said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels.

Weapons have also come from Eastern Europe, with the New York Times reporting in 2013 in their article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” that:

From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large procurement from Croatia, and have vetted rebel commanders and groups to determine who should receive the weapons as they arrive, according to American officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

And while Western media sources continuously refer to ISIS and other factions operating under the banner of Al Qaeda as “rebels” or “moderates,” it is clear that if billions of dollars in weapons were truly going to “moderates,” they, not ISIS would be dominating the battlefield.

Recent revelations have revealed that as early as 2012 the United States Department of Defense not only anticipated the creation of a “Salafist Principality” straddling Syria and Iraq precisely where ISIS now exists, it welcomed it eagerly and contributed to the circumstances required to bring it about.
 
Just How Extensive Are ISIS’ Supply Lines? 
 
While many across the West play willfully ignorant as to where ISIS truly gets their supplies from in order to maintain its impressive fighting capacity, some journalists have traveled to the region and have video taped and reported on the endless convoys of trucks supplying the terrorist army.

Were these trucks traveling to and from factories in seized ISIS territory deep within Syrian and Iraqi territory? No. They were traveling from deep within Turkey, crossing the Syrian border with absolute impunity, and headed on their way with the implicit protection of nearby Turkish military forces. Attempts by Syria to attack these convoys and the terrorists flowing in with them have been met by Turkish air defenses.

Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published the first video report from a major Western media outlet illustrating that ISIS is supplied not by “black market oil” or “hostage ransoms” but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey’s borders via hundreds of trucks a day.

German national broadcaster DW reported on convoys of hundreds of trucks per day crossing into Syria from NATO-member Turkey with impunity, enroute to ISIS terrorists, finally explaining the source of the terrorist army’s fighting capacity. The trucks were reported by DW to have originated from deep within Turkish territory – most likely NATO air bases and ports.

The report titled, “‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey,” confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 – that ISIS subsides on immense, multi-national state sponsorship, including, obviously, Turkey itself.

Looking at maps of ISIS-held territory and reading action reports of its offensive maneuvers throughout the region and even beyond, one might imagine hundreds of trucks a day would be required to maintain this level of fighting capacity. One could imagine similar convoys crossing into Iraq from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Similar convoys are likely passing into Syria from Jordan.

In all, considering the realities of logistics and their timeless importance to military campaigns throughout human history, there is no other plausible explanation to ISIS’s ability to wage war within Syria and Iraq besides immense resources being channeled to it from abroad.

If an army marches on its stomach, and ISIS’ stomachs are full of NATO and Persian Gulf State supplies, ISIS will continue to march long and hard. The key to breaking the back of ISIS, is breaking the back of its supply lines. To do that however, and precisely why the conflict has dragged on for so long, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and others would have to eventually secure the borders and force ISIS to fight within Turkish, Jordanian, and Saudi territory – a difficult scenario to implement as nations like Turkey have created defacto buffer zones within Syrian territory which would require a direct military confrontation with Turkey itself to eliminate.

With Iran joining the fray with an alleged deployment of thousands of troops to bolster Syrian military operations, overwhelming principles of deterrence may prevent Turkey enforcing its buffer zones.

What we are currently left with is NATO literally holding the region hostage with the prospect of a catastrophic regional war in a bid to defend and perpetuate the carnage perpetrated by ISIS within Syria, fully underwritten by an immense logistical network streaming out of NATO territory itself.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

The original source of this article is New Eastern Outlook Copyright © Tony Cartalucci,  
New Eastern Outlook, 2015

Reuters reported on Thursday that "Western officials say that in strategic terms, Russia's new air strike campaign in Syria appears designed to help reverse rebel gains increasingly endangering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, protect Russian military assets in the country including its sole Mediterranean port, and reassert Moscow’s place as a big international power competing with the United States." He ends with some remarks of a Bagdad artist: "I have been waiting for Russia to get involved in the fight against Daesh," he says, referring to the Islamic State group that last year declared a 'caliphate' straddling Iraq and Syria. "They get results. The United States and its allies on the other hand have been bombing for a year and achieved nothing,"

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NATO Threatens To Send In Troops After Russia Stations Ground "Battalion" In Syria

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/08/2015 13:56 -0400




Caspian Sea          headlines            Iraq           Reuters           Turkey           Ukraine

As the propaganda “war” between East and West intensifies ahead of what might ultimately transform into an actual war in the skies above Syria, the world is transfixed with the scope of Russia’s week-old military campaign in support of the Assad regime.

Thanks to the fact that the West selected Islamic militants as its anti-Assad weapon of choice, Putin gets to pitch the entire effort as a “war on terror” which means The Kremlin effectively has a license to brag and sure enough, slickly-produced ISIS videos of beheadings have now been definitively replaced by slickly-produced videos of Russian warships launching cruise missiles at terrorist targets.

In short, Moscow is on a roll both militarily (of course that’s not difficult when you’re a superpower playing against a couple of JV militias) and perceptually, which makes it possible to continually ratchet up the pressure on anti-regime forces as the global applause only seems to grow with each incremental escalation much to chagrin of both the Pentagon and Washington’s Mid-East allies and as we said earlier this week, "a very likely course of events is that despite Russia's denials, the Pentagon will use the gambit of a Russian ground campaign, credible or not, to get permission from Congress to send a 'small', at first, then bigger ground force of US troops in Syria to, you guessed it, 'fight ISIS', but really to do everything to prevent Russian troops from taking over key strategic positions."

On Thursday we get the latest set of headlines from Syria, starting with NATO asserting that Russia has a ground battalion at the ready supported by tanks. Here’s Reuters:

Russia's military build-up in Syria includes a "considerable and growing" naval presence, long-range rockets and a battalion of ground troops backed by Moscow's most modern tanks, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said on Wednesday.

Speaking on the eve of a NATO defense ministers meeting to be dominated by Russia's intervention in Syria's civil war, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute said Moscow had managed a "quite impressive" military deployment over the past week to its Syria naval base in Tartous and its army base in Latakia.

"There is a considerable and growing Russia naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean, more than 10 ships now, which is a bit out of the ordinary," he told a news briefing.

"The recent Russian reinforcements over the last week or so feature a battalion-size ground force ... There is artillery, there are long-range rocket capabilities, there are air defense capabilities," Lute said.

A battalion is typically around 1,000 soldiers.

Western officials say that in strategic terms, Russia's new air strike campaign in Syria appears designed to help reverse rebel gains increasingly endangering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, protect Russian military assets in the country including its sole Mediterranean port, and reassert Moscow’s place as a big international power competing with the United States.

"The force that they have deployed down there is actually quite impressive for a rapid deployment of a week or so," Lute said. "(It is) all arms, combined arms, attack aircraft, it is the attack helicopters and artillery, rocket artillery."

And that means NATO needs to indicate that it too is willing to deploy troops via Turkey, where Ankara will simply acquiesce to anything the West wants to do as long as Washington turns a blind eye to Erdogan’s “war” with the PKK which is far more important domestically than any conflict with ISIS or Russia because Erdogan is effectively fighting to secure the “right” to change the country’s constitution and thereby consolidate his power. Here’s Reuters again:

NATO said it was prepared to send troops to Turkey to defend its ally after violations of Turkish airspace by Russian jets bombing Syria and Britain scolded Moscow for escalating a civil war that has already killed 250,000 people.

Officials at the U.S.-led alliance are still smarting from Russia's weekend incursions into Turkey's airspace near northern Syria and NATO defense ministers are meeting in Brussels with the agenda likely to be dominated by the Syria crisis.

"NATO is ready and able to defend all allies, including Turkey against any threats," NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters as he arrived for the meeting.

"NATO has already responded by increasing our capacity, our ability, our preparedness to deploy forces including to the south, including in Turkey," he said, noting that Russia's air and cruise missile strikes were "reasons for concern".

As Russian and U.S. planes fly combat missions over the same country for the first time since World War Two, NATO is eager to avoid any international escalation of the Syrian conflict that has unexpectedly turned the alliance's attention away from Ukraine following Russia's annexation of Crimea last year.

The incursions of two Russian fighters in Turkish airspace on Saturday and Sunday has brought the Syria conflict right up to NATO's borders, testing the alliance's ability to deter a newly assertive Russia without seeking direct confrontation.

This, of course, is nothing more than an attempt to create an excuse to counter the Russians. The Russian warplanes that allegedly crossed into Turkey’s airspace obviously were not intending to bomb Ankara, so the only reason the West continues to focus on the story is to build a narrative that justifies sending ground troops in via Turkey.
Meanwhile, the Iran-sponsored ground cleanup crew is apparently on the move and advancing quickly:

Syrian troops and allied militia backed by Russian air strikes and cruise missiles fired from warships attacked rebels forces on Thursday as the government extended a major offensive to recapture territory in the west of the country.

Rebel advances in western Syria earlier this year had threatened the coastal region vital to President Bashar al-Assad's control of the area and prompted Russia's intervention on his side last week.

In a further show of force, the Russian defense ministry said missiles fired from its ships in the Caspian Sea hit weapons factories, arms dumps, command centers and training camps supporting Islamic State forces.

Ground forces loyal to the government targeted insurgents in the Ghab Plain area of western Syria, with heavy barrages of surface-to-surface missiles as Russian warplanes bombed from above, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a rebel fighting there.

It said rebels had shot down a helicopter in Hama province in western Syria. It was unclear if it was Syrian or Russian.

Syria said a major military operation was under way.

Yes, "ground forces loyal to the government" or, stripping away the facade, "Shiite ground forces loyal to Tehran" who, once the campaign in Syria is over, will cross right back into Iraq and continue the fight against Sunni extremists only now they'll be backed not only by the IRGC, but by the Russian army, and on that note, we close with the following from AFP:

Russian President Vladimir Putin's bullish entry into the Syrian conflict has worked wonders for his popularity in neighbouring Iraq, where some await "Hajji Putin" like a saviour.

Sitting at his easel in his central Baghdad workshop, painter Mohammed Karim Nihaya touches up a portrait of Putin he copied from the Internet.

"I have been waiting for Russia to get involved in the fight against Daesh," he says, referring to the Islamic State group that last year declared a "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria.

"They get results. The United States and its allies on the other hand have been bombing for a year and achieved nothing," the bespectacled artist says.