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tweakabelle -> RE: ISIS Destroying Relics (8/8/2014 2:52:57 AM)
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The regions If everyone could just stop calling each other names for a moment, and focus on the topic - the activities of IS (formerly ISIS):
This analysis by veteran war and ME correspondent Patrick Cockburn makes for particularly depressing reading:
"The very speed and unexpectedness of its rise make it easy for Western and regional leaders to hope that the fall of Isis and the implosion of the Caliphate might be equally sudden and swift. But all the evidence is that this is wishful thinking and the trend is in the other direction, with the opponents of Isis becoming weaker and less capable of resistance: in Iraq the army shows no signs of recovering from its earlier defeats and has failed to launch a single successful counter-attack; in Syria the other opposition groups, including the battle-hardened fighters of al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, are demoralised and disintegrating as they are squeezed between Isis and the Assad government. Karen Koning Abuzayd, a member of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry in Syria, says that more and more Syrian rebels are defecting to Isis: ‘They see it’s better, these guys are strong, these guys are winning battles, they were taking territory, they have money, they can train us.’ This is bad news for the government, which barely held off an assault in 2012 and 2013 by rebels less well trained, organised and armed than Isis; it will have real difficulties stopping the forces of the Caliphate advancing west."
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/patrick-cockburn/isis-consolidates
Cockburn sees little hope of reversing IS's gains and reports the Caliphate declared by IS could mark the most radical change to the region since the days of Sykes-Picot and the imperialist division of the region into spheres of UK and French dominance.
The legacy of Bush-Blair-Howard and the neo-cons is being written in blood by Iraqis and Syrians who continue to dies in their thousands. The region's prospects continue to oscillate between horrible and horrifying.
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