WORLD AT WAR: 12.9.16 - Hezbollah vs ISIS vs Israel

Hezbollah vs ISIS vs Israel - By Jonathan Spyer - http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/ISIS-Threat/Hezbollah-vs-ISIS-vs-Israel-474233

 

Two incidents this week showcase the complexity of the challenges facing Israel on its northern front.

 

In the first, an air strike killed four members of the Islamic State-affiliated Khalid Ibn al-Walid Brigade after a patrol of the Golani reconnaissance unit in the southern Golan Heights was targeted by the organization. Israeli aircraft then targeted a facility used by the group in the Wadi Sirhan area.

 

In the second incident, according to regional media reports, Israeli aircraft operating from Lebanese airspace fired Popeye missiles at targets in the Sabboura area, 8 km. northwest of Damascus.

 

There were no casualties, according to SANA, the official Syrian news agency.

 

London-based Arabic newspaper Rai al-Youm reported that the Israeli strike was targeting a Hezbollah-bound weapons convoy. The paper also reported that Israeli aircraft carried out a second strike on a facility of Syria's 4th Armored Division, near Damascus.

 

Israel neither confirmed nor denied the second incident. But on a number of occasions over the last four years of war in Syria, Israel has used its ability to operate in the skies over Syria to prevent weapons transfers to Hezbollah in Lebanon from the Syrian regime. It is possible that this incident was the latest act in this effort.

 

These two events are of tactical importance only. Neither is likely at this stage to lead to broader engagements, but they reflect a reality in which some of the world's most powerful non-state military organizations are deployed close to Israel's border with Syria, making war against one another while planning and organizing for a future war against the Jewish state.

 

The Khalid Ibn al-Walid Brigade is a franchise of the Islamic State. It was formed from the merger of two Salafi organizations operating in southern Syria - the Shuhada al-Yarmuk group and the Muthanna organization. The group controls an area of the border east of the Golan Heights, from south of the town of Tasil, down to Syria's border with Jordan.

 

From this area, the brigade is conducting a war against the Syrian rebels to its north. It does not fight the forces of the Syrian government because they are not deployed in its immediate vicinity.

 

Israel has long eyed the Islamic State-affiliate with particular suspicion, expecting that sooner or later a clash would be inevitable. This week it came.

 

The volume of the Israeli response was clearly intended to reestablish deterrence against the Sunni jihadis, with the hope that it will cause them to think again before engaging with Israeli forces.

 

Islamic State is facing battle for survival in its main domains farther north and in Iraq and it is unlikely that it is in a position to contemplate opening a front against a newer and more powerful enemy farther south.

 

The non-Islamic State rebels who control the rest of the border, with the exception of a small-regime controlled part at the northern edge near Beit Jinn, are of lesser concern to Israel. Indeed, a relationship of tolerance and cooperation exists between Israel and elements among those rebels.

 

Israel's main concern, rather, is the Iran/Assad/Hezbollah side. The reported strikes in the Damascus area, if they took place, were the latest incidents in a limited Israeli campaign against these elements intended to produce two outcomes: first, to limit the transfer of complex weapons systems to Hezbollah, and second, to keep the Iran-supported militia and its allies from replacing the rebels along the borderline.

 

As of now, it is difficult to assess the extent of the success of the first objective.

 

Hezbollah is known to now possess advanced SA-22 anti-aircraft missiles and Yakhont anti-ship missiles. So, as might be expected, it appears that the sporadic Israeli efforts have not succeeded in sealing the Lebanese-Syrian border from efforts by the Assad regime and Iran to supply their ally to the west.

 

Regarding the border, however, as of now, it remains almost entirely out of government hands, reflecting greater Israeli success.

 

Nevertheless, Israeli planners are carefully observing events farther north. President Bashar Assad's regime, with Russian help, is set to reconquer the northern city of Aleppo. This will represent the greatest setback for the rebels since 2012. Once the reconquest of eastern Aleppo is completed, regime forces will hope to move against remaining areas of rebel control in Idlib Governorate.

 

If they succeed also there, then eventually the southern front will come back on to the agenda. At this point, the Israeli concern will be that similar methods to those that helped the regime to prevail elsewhere will be used here too. The Russian entry into the Syrian arena has tilted the balance for the regime and complicated the picture from Israel's point of view. It is Russian air power that is enabling the regime to advance in the north. If employed in the south, it can be expected to eventually produce similar results.

 

It is probable that Israel will be quietly lobbying Moscow to take account of Israel's security needs on the border when contemplating action in the south. The Russians are not hostile to Israel, but will act according to how they perceive their own interests. Their decision as to whether to allow Assad to reconquer the southwest of his country - and by so doing to allow Iran and Hezbollah to reach the border with Israel - will be decisive.

 

Of course, even in the worst case scenario in which they decide to allow this, the task facing Israel on the border will not fundamentally change. It will mean that instead of needing to deter hostile but relatively weak Sunni jihadi forces from contemplating action against the hated Zionists, Israel will need to deter hostile and less weak Shi'ite jihadis with the same intentions.

 

Iran/Hezbollah and Islamic State agree about relatively little, but on the goal of destroying Israel and returning Jerusalem to Islamic rule they are entirely in consensus.

 

Israel, naturally, prefers the weaker, non-state enemy in close proximity to the stronger. The events of this week show that it is engaged in a tacit, ongoing, unstated and limited war against both.

 

"Syrian 5th Corps" is new Shiite foreign legion - www.debka.com 

 

Syria and its allies came closer than ever to taking Aleppo on Friday, Dec. 2, when they captured the Tariq al-Bab district to gain control of 60 percent of the rebel-held eastern part of the city.

 

Drawing on the lessons of this success, the winning forces have begun building a military outfit modeled on the format of the victorious coalition. It is designated the "Fifth Corps" of the Syrian army, but debkafile's military and intelligence sources can identity the new unit as the framework for an international Shiite brigade or foreign legion.

 

It is the brainchild of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iranian Mid East operations, who is in Iraq at present, supervising the Shiite militias on the Mosul front. However, his officers are overseeing its construction of the new military legion. It is composed of the remnants of the Syrian army's First and Second Corps, which took a bad beating in the five years of conflict, the Hezbollah expeditionary force in Syria and the Shiite militias which Tehran imported from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight for Bashar Assad.

 

The new framework aims to field 50,000 to 70,000 fighting men.

 

Its command structure is already taking shape in a form that is new for the Syrian army and indeed any other fighting force in the region. Syrian, Hezbollah and foreign Shiite officers will make up this command, but not direct their own forces, only mixed units composed of Iranian, Syrian, Shiite and Hezbollah servicemen.

 

It will be the first Shiite army or foreign legion ever seen in the Middle East.

 

An oblique reference to the novel force came from a Hezbollah source this week who said: "The Fifth Corps is an important turning-point for the ties between allied forces within the same axis - Syria, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah."

 

Russia? debkafile's sources have heard no hint of the Russians joining the new Shiite legion. But Hezbollah has been spreading reports in the past fortnight about its deepening ties with Russian officers, mainly on the Aleppo front, and their supposed appreciation of the Lebanese Shiites' fighting prowess.

 

The Syrian high command has meanwhile moved forward on the new scheme with a decision this week to send the entire next class of military recruits to the new Fifth Corps.

 

The new Shiite foreign legion or international brigade presents a major headache for Syria's neighbors, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. It provides a cover for Iran and Hezbollah to sneak troops right up to their borders. Whenever this happened in the past, Israel and Jordan pushed back hard. But this will be more difficult once the Fifth Corps is set up as an integral part of the Syrian army.

 

Western and Arab observers following the Syrian war believe that, as soon as they finish off the rebels in Aleppo, the new foreign legion's forces will turn south to repeat the exercise there with Russian support.

 

The Russian bombardment of rebel concentrations outside the southern towns of Jasim and Daraa Sunday, Nov. 27, was seen a message from Moscow to Jerusalem and Amman that southern Syria is now in line for the next battle.

 

 

Islamic State Just One Element of The 'Chaos' At Israel-Syria Border - Ariel Ben Solomon - http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=860

 

The recent attention-grabbing exchange of fire between Israel and Islamic State is just one aspect of the Jewish state's assessment of the current threats at its northern border with Syria.

 

Israeli forces killed four fighters from the Islamic State-affiliated Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade Nov. 27 after the terrorists had fired at Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers in the Golan Heights border region. The exchange drew significant attention because it was the first report of an Islamic State attack on Israel from Syria.

 

Islamic State has previously threatened Israel, but until now the terror group did not appear to open such a front at the Israel-Syria border. 

 

Yet despite the numerous news headlines that followed the Islamic State attack, the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade does not have nearly as large of a footprint in the region as Hezbollah or its patron, Iran, which have been increasing their presence in Syria to back President Bashar al-Assad's regime in that country's civil war. 

 

The IDF estimates that about 120,000 Hezbollah rockets are aimed at Israel. Hezbollah has a full-blown army with around 45,000 members, 21,000 of whom are regularly in service, Haaretz reported in July. 

 

By contrast, the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade has between 600 and 1,000 fighters, according to a report in The Economist in January. The report quoted Israeli officers as calling the brigades "Daesh lite," using an alternative name for Islamic State.

 

Given that Hezbollah's forces amount to a far greater security threat to Israel, the Islamic State attack may have been no more than an effort by the jihadist group to distract from its losses in Syria and Iraq.

 

Israeli Deputy Regional Cooperation Minister Ayoub Kara (Likud) told JNS.org that three groups--the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, and Islamic State--are struggling for control of the area near Israel's border. 

 

These groups "sometimes fight each other," Kara said. Three enemies of Israel--the Syrian army, Hezbollah, and Iran--are on the other side of Syria's civil war, he noted. Besides the rebel group led by Syrian opposition leader Kamal al-Labwani, "all of these groups in the area are against us," said Kara.

 

"Islamic State is trying to get close to our border to attack in order to gain popularity," asserted the deputy minister. But he added, "Islamic State, Assad, Hezbollah, and Iran have no interest right now in getting Israel involved."

 

Syrian rebel leader Labwani told JNS.org that there is "chaos" on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

 

"We need to create one authority," said the rebel activist, who has many sources on the ground in the area.

 

Speaking from Sweden, Labwani claimed that Hezbollah could have been behind the Nov. 27 attack rather than Islamic State. Hezbollah is paying rebels to carry out attacks on Israel, he claimed. Israel's Kara, however, maintained that Islamic State carried out the recent attack.

 

Labwani, who snuck out of Syria in 2012 and who has visited Israel, has supported the implementation of a safe zone that buffers Israel's border with Syria, though he admits that such a move would need to be approved by the U.S. and/or Russia.

 

Asked how the southern Syrian region is fairing from Israel's perspective, Labwani responded that the situation is manageable, but that the Jewish state should be more proactive in bringing about the safe zone.

 

Mendi Safadi, an Israeli Druze political activist who has traveled in the region and met with leaders of Syria's opposition, said the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade was responsible for the Nov. 27 attack and that the brigade is comprised of Syrian Palestinians. 

 

"Yarmouk is not a typical Islamic State group, but has taken advantage of the popularity of Islamic State in order to raise funds," said Safadi, adding that this represents another example of the radicalization of Islamist groups. 

 

He added, "Yarmouk's abilities are limited compared to the core Islamic State [organization], but they presumably will continue operations against Israel unless Israel launches pre-emptive strikes."

 

Moti Kahana, an American-Israeli businessman and founder of the American Jewish NGO Amaliah, which delivers humanitarian supplies to Syrian civilians, said that because of the humanitarian crisis in the southern province of Quneitra bordering Israel, the Nusra Front and Islamic State have sought to provide aid to win the hearts and minds of the Syrian population. 

 

Amaliah is the only organization delivering aid to Syrians from the Golan Heights in coordination with the IDF. Syrian women and children are also being brought into Israel for medical treatment. Kahana said his group is stepping up funding for aid because "if we don't bring humanitarian supplies to the area, radicals will fill the vacuum." 

 

He worries that if President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration stops U.S. support for Syrian rebels, Islamist-supporting Qatar would step in, emboldening the Islamist nature of the Syrian opposition.

 

Indeed, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Reuters last month that if the U.S. cuts funding for the rebels, Qatar's support for rebels "is going to continue, we are not going to stop it."

 

Kahana is a Democrat who explained that for the past four years, he tried to get the Obama administration to implement safe zones in Syria, but got no support. Now, Kahana is optimistic about the Trump administration's Syria policy because Trump himself has voiced support for safe zones. 

 

"The Trump administration does not want Syrians coming to America, but for them to stay in their country," Kahana told JNS.org. "And the only way to do this is by creating safe zones."

 

 

Syria Is Training Ground for Hezbollah's Next War with Israel - http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=869

 

Arab language media is reporting that fighter planes from the Israeli Defense Forces have attacked a Syrian military airport in Damascus as well as Hezbollah targets near the capital which killed and injured a number of fighters in the Shiite militia. 

 

The moves come after Prime Minister Netanyahu previously had announced in April that Israel had struck Hezbollah targets in dozens of strikes to prevent the terrorist group from obtaining "game changing" chemical and advanced anti-aircraft weapons. 

 

For those following the looming terrorist threat that now faces Israel, the strikes sound like foreshadowing of the next war on Israel from an increasingly well-armed and funded terrorist army.

 

Hezbollah, originally Lebanese and supported by the Shia regime in Iran, has been instrumental in turning the tide of the Syrian civil war in Assad's favor over the past year as its now battle-hardened fighters help government forces retake rebel-controlled cities and push back against the Islamic State. 

 

Hezbollah's involvement in the Syrian government's offensive began in 2013 as the conflict entered a far more bloody phase of near total war. 

 

It is estimated that Hezbollah has suffered casualties of 1,500 fighters, including some of its top military commanders and veterans from the 2006 war on Israel. At the same time, however, it has both swelled its ranks and gained invaluable combat experience, emerging as a far more capable fighting force.

 

Redoubled recruiting efforts and a call to arms against the Sunni Muslim Islamic State have resulted in a militant force of just under 50,000 with roughly half in full-time service to the cause. 

 

Of those, a full 10,000 are believed to be currently deployed in Syria. Apart from ramping up its Lebanese membership, Hezbollah has created Syrian affiliate groups that it now directs, such as the National Ideological Resistance and the Al-Ridha Forces. At the same time that it has experienced an influx of green recruits,

 

Hezbollah has continued to train and cultivate elite units skilled in urban warfare, sharpshooting, improvised explosives and battlefield tactics. What is emerging is the largest and now most well-equipped stateless military force in the world.

 

When Hezbollah launched its rocket attacks on the civilian population of Israel in 2006, it had several thousand rockets equipped with rather crude guidance systems along with a few hundred anti-tank and anti-ship missiles. 

 

Now, thanks to funding and access provided by the Tehran and Damascus, Hezbollah possesses between 70,000 and 90,000 rockets, to include long-range variants and a far greater store of anti-tank missiles, advanced Yakhont anti-ship missiles and the dreaded SA-8 and likely the SA-17 and SA-22 surface-to-air missiles. 

 

In the next war, Hezbollah won't be blindly launching dozens of rockets per day into Israeli neighborhoods. No, it will be able to coordinate thousands of precision strikes calculated to cause mass-casualties and suffering within Israel.

 

Hezbollah, the so-called "Party of God" now even fields its own armored unit comprised of several dozen main battle tanks and armored vehicles. As for funding, Hezbollah has been receiving a reported $200 million per year from Iran, a number than is sure to rise with the lifting of sanctions under the nuclear deal. 

 

Saudi Arabia provides $3 billion in aid to Lebanon, money that is also being siphoned off by Hezbollah which has become for Lebanon a "state within a state". Indeed, the past decade has seen the terrorist guerrilla force transform into a true army.

 

Though the Israeli Defense Force remains far stronger and Hezbollah's newly acquired tanks wouldn't last long against IDF air power, the rise of an increasingly well-equipped, well-funded and battle-hardened extremist fighting force that has pledged itself to the destruction of Israel cannot be ignored for long. 

 

As a Hezbollah special-forces commander recently revealed to VOA News, "in some ways, Syria is a dress rehearsal for our next war with Israel." Just as Hezbollah will enter the next war as a proper fighting force, Israel has also learned from its mistakes in the previous conflict.

 

One of those mistakes according to military analysts was holding back it's firepower on Lebannon for fear of civilian casualties.  Hezbollah has purposely embedded itself ever deeper in the civilian population near the border to make sure civilian casualties make Israel look bad in the worldwide media.

 

To make sure Hezbollah knows their will be a price to be paid should they try anything, the Israeli military on Tuesday posted a map of southern Lebanon to Twitter, on which it marked Hezbollah positions, infrastructure and armaments along a section of the Israeli border. 

 

The map details over 200 towns and villages which the organization has turned into its operations bases, and shows over 10,000 potential targets for Israeli strikes in the event of a new war with the terror group.

 

 

 

With Syrian government forces edging closer to victory against the rebels, it looks like Hezbollah may soon be ready to turn its violent ambitions on its long-time enemy, Israel. 

 

With this latest Israeli attack on targets in Syria, both Hezbollah and Syria are itching for revenge and may not wait until their conflict with ISIS and the Syrian rebel groups are over.  

 

Russia flies Chechen commandos to Syria - http://www.debka.com/article/25828/Russia-flies-Chechen-commandos-to-Syria

 

Moscow started to deploy Chechen special operations forces units to Syria this week, debkafile's military sources reveal. The troops come from elite units of the Chechen military with extensive field experience in urban warfare. Some of the units fought in eastern Ukraine in the past two years and, before that. in Chechnya for suppressing radical Islamic terror organizations linked to Al Qaeda and the Salafi movement.

 

The soldiers called up for the deployment in Syria were ordered to report to the Khankala base east of the Chechen capital Grozny. They are being vetted by Russian officers who determine which are suitable for the Syrian mission.

 

In the initial stage, the deployment will consist of three divisions totaling about 1,000 soldiers. Since like Russia, Chechen law bars regular army troops from being sent beyond the country's borders, the soldiers assigned to Syria will wear the uniform of the Chechen Interior Ministry's security forces, which are not part of the regular army.

 

They will be flown directly from the Russian air force facility at the Khankala base by giant Ilyushin-76 transport planes to Russia's Hmaimim Air Base, about 1,200km away.

 

Moscow has never before dispatched a substantial number of ground troops to the Syrian battlefield. The deployment of the Chechen proxies has three goals:

 

1. To free the forces of the coalition supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad, including Russia, of responsibility for holding and defending territory they captured in Syrian cities, especially Aleppo.

 

2. To reinforce the Russian, Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah troops with highly-trained commandos capable of spearheading the next challenging battles in places like the Idlib region in the north and Darra in the south.

 

3. To save Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu from having to send Russian ground troops to finish the Syrian war. The return of a rising number in coffins would set off a loud popular outcry against the government.   

 

In the past month, three Russian servicemen lost their lives in Syria, including a colonel. Until now, the Russian military had sent only small groups of Spetsnaz (special forces) troops, whose task was confined to guarding Russian military, air and missile facilities in Syria.

 

The latest batch of Chechen fighters is not the first Moscow has dispatched to the Middle East. On Sept. 2, Russia's Interfax news agency reported that "a self-organized group of young people from Chechnya had undertaken to combat the terrorist organizations." They were described by Russian spokesman as young people who had offered to gather information on Russians and Chechens who had joined ISIS. In other words, they had "volunteered" to infiltrate ISIS units as spies. What befell those young people was never reported.