Saturday, January 03, 2015

Is Jordan Now Holding Back?

If this report is to be believed, we made a fairly major effort to rescue a Jordanian pilot captured by ISIL when his plane went down in Syria.

I'm not sold on the source of this report, but there is a story about a January 1st attempt:

ISIS hostage rescue attempts by U.S. Special Forces were abandoned after the team took heavy fire in Syria. Jordanian fighter pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh was reportedly being held in the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa – in northern Syria.

The U.S. Special Forces were carried to Syria to rescue the Jordanian fighter pilot via two gunships. Muadh al-Kasasbeh was captured by ISIS on December 24. Heavy raids on Islamic State fighters were carried out by coalition troops during the rescue attempt last night.

I'll just say that I've been wondering how ISIL's control of that pilot would affect Jordan's role (which I'm assuming is in play) in a fight against ISIL in Iraq's Anbar province.

Rescuing the pilot would certainly help in maintaining that cooperation.

Hopefully, just making the effort will keep Jordan on board.

I freely admit I may be constructing a picture by connecting dots with no actual relation to each other.