While it is disturbing that al Qaeda has marched into Syria and then expanded back in to Iraq to reverse much of our gains, al Qaeda in Syria has lost territory and half its strength, while those in Iraq are getting hurt as they try to hold Fallujah and other terrain.
Strategypage discusses the situation here, as well as the Syrian Kurd situation.
This is also interesting:
[In] largely Shia Basra in the south there are now over a hundred dead a month coming from Syria, casualties of the Syrian fighting. Efforts are made to return the bodies of those killed in Syria and bring them back for burial in Iraq. For over a year now pro-Iran Shia militias in Basra and other Shia areas of Iraq have been recruiting young men to fight (for good pay, plus a death benefit to the family if killed) for the pro-Iran Syrian government. These volunteers are more enthusiastic than most Syrian soldiers and, along with Hezbollah militia fighters from Lebanon have halted the rebel advance in Syria. Iran pitches this service in Syria as part of the centuries old Shia-Sunni conflict as the most fanatical rebel troops in Syria are from the Sunni ISIL, which is responsible for most of the terror attacks on Shia civilians in Iraq. So thousands of Iraqi men have gone off to fight in Syria, where nearly 20 percent of them are killed or injured. Iran covers all the costs (equipment, transportation, medical and good monthly pay). It’s a job as well as a Mission From God.
A hundred a month dead just going to Basra seems like an awful lot. How long has that been going on? Just how many thousands are going to Syria to fight for Assad? Are 500 per month going to Syria? And how long do they commit to going? Six months? That would keep several thousand fighting (less casualties) Or is it for a shorter period? That would make this Shia foreign legion shock troop contingent to spearhead assaults by the less enthusiastic Syrian army pretty darned small.
On the bright side, the types who might be willing recruits to kill Iraqi Sunnis are instead either dying in Syria or possibly getting enough killing out of their system to come home and get a quiet job when their term of service is up.
Although some will survive with a taste for killing, of course.
And the Iraqis will regret it if they allow this Iranian recruiting machine to keep going. Assad is surely regretting his decision to set up a Sunni Arab pipeline through Syria to fight in Iraq, no? That pipeline just stops in Syria, now.
One day the war in Syria will be over. Who will the Iranians want this Iraqi recruiting base for Tehran's Shia foreign legion to fight next?
And what will the Kurds do?
