The Fallout From The Gaza War In Syria And Iraq

Syria became a playground for the American empire, Turkey, Russia, Israel, and the Islamic Republic in the last decade. And Iraq was the piñata that offered up Jihadists of all stripes when it was broken to pieces in 2003.

Both were weak states artificially created by the British and the French in the aftermath of WWI. It’s a surprise it took this long for them to come undone. 

Cold War politics, hard-nosed realism, and imperial patronage enabled their survival. At one point Syria was mooching off of the Soviet Union, getting billions of dollars of weapons basically for free, and the next day it was marching under the leadership of American commanders in their invasion of Kuwait. 

Of course, 9/11 changed everything, as the neocons no longer saw a need for Syria in their new vision of the Middle East.

Talks of reform and American democracy in the first decade of the new century didn’t amount to much. The domestic politics and foreign policies of both countries are currently irrelevant. Neither is a sovereign polity. War has ravaged their armies, and corruption has incapacitated their political classes. 

There is no Iraq or Syria to speak of, not any that can lift a finger to an outside foe. Industrial equipment in Syrian cities, what little it had, was looted by Turkey, along with its olive trees, and oil. Syria could do nothing but look on. It didn’t even protest at the U.N. 

Iraq is equally beholden to Turkey and Iran. 

And the U.S. still looms large over both, albeit with a smaller, and more lethal footprint.

What has taken center stage now across Mesopotamia and Syria is a collection of foreign bases and militias. Washington and Tehran trade blows, knowing they won’t suffer any political or legal consequences.

II.

An excerpt from, “U.S. Intelligence Chiefs Say Iraq, Syria May Not Survive As States” Radio Free Europe, September 11, 2015:

U.S. intelligence chiefs have repeated their assessment that Iraq and Syria may have been permanently fractured by war and sectarian strife and may not survive as nation-states.

Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, repeated his belief that Iraq will break up into three different regions — Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi’ite — using the same frank analysis that drew a rebuke from the Iraqi prime minister earlier this summer.

An excerpt from, “Iran-Iraq-Syria Plan to Move Ahead on Historic Transnational ‘Land-Bridge’ Railroad” The International Schiller Institute:

In November 2018, Iran, Iraq, and Syria reached a provisional agreement to build a “land-bridge” railroad and highway corridor extending from the Persian Gulf in Iran through Iraq to the Mediterranean port of Latakia in Syria, a distance of 1,570 km (975 miles). In combination with the Belt and Road Initiative, it could transform the intervening three nations. The construction of the first phase of the project is soon to begin.

The first phase is to build a 32 km railroad between Shalamcheh in southwestern Iran on the Iraq border, and Basra, Iraq. This involves building a few sections of rail line that are needed, and a bridge that would arch over the Arvand Rud/Shatt Al-Arab, a marsh-influenced waterway below the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

The second, longer phase of the transport corridor would build the railroad, and some sections of highway, from Basra, 1,545 km to the Syrian port of Latakia on the Mediterranean.

An excerpt from, “Gaza War Shows Heightened Risk of Escalation in the Region” By Andrew J. Tabler, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, November 17, 2023:

Arguably the most worrisome trend for Washington involves Iranian militia attacks against US bases in Iraq and Syria. Detailed tracking of Iranian attacks and US counter strikes by my Washington Institute colleagues shows that since October 18—again immediately after the Al-Ahli Hospital explosion—Iranian-backed militia have launched approximately 77 separate attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria. This has involved 43 strikes on US bases in Syria and 34 in neighboring Iraq, with rockets, missiles, and increasingly more accurate drones.

The US Department of Defense announced on November 14 that since October 18 there have been 28 attacks against US forces in Syria and 27 in Iraq. (The Pentagon does not count some open-source reports of attacks unless they can be proved to have been launched specifically at US forces, hence variations in attack counts.) No matter the exact number, the frequency of attacks is dramatically well above pre-October 7 baseline numbers.

Analysis of the data to date shows that the attacks are launched from three areas. The first focuses on US bases west of the Euphrates, in western Iraq (al-Asad), and al-Tanf in southern Syria. A second launches attacks from within northern Iraq against US bases east of the Euphrates in Syria at Shadadi, Rumaylan, and in northern Iraq at Erbil airport and Harir. A third set of attacks are launched from a slew of Iranian militia bases on the west bank of the Syrian Middle Euphrates River Valley, including short-range rockets at US bases and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the oil fields of Deir az-Zor. Some longer-range drone attacks on Shadadi, Rumaylan and Tal Baydar are also launched from the same area.

In response to the attacks, the Biden Administration has launched three separate strikes on Iranian-militia targets in Syria on October 27, November 8 and November 13, each respectively with an immediate statement that President Biden was doing so in support of US forces. While the October 27 and November 8 statements made clear the United States did not want further escalation with Iran, such words were missing from the November 13 message—a tacit but clear message that further attacks would likely garner a greater response. The attacks continued for another two days before finally a night of peace on November 16—nearly a month after the Al-Ahli Hospital explosion.

An excerpt from, “How a 4-Hour Battle Between Russian Mercenaries and U.S. Commandos Unfolded in Syria” By Thomas Gibbons-Neff, The New York Times, May 24, 2018:

The outcome of the battle, and much of its mechanics, suggest that the Russian mercenaries and their Syrian allies were in the wrong part of the world to try a simple, massed assault on an American military position. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States Central Command has refined the amount of equipment, logistics, coordination and tactics required to mix weapons fired from both the air and ground.

Questions remain about exactly who the Russian mercenaries were, and why they attacked.

American intelligence officials say that the Wagner Group, known by the nickname of the retired Russian officer who leads it, is in Syria to seize oil and gas fields and protect them on behalf of the Assad government. The mercenaries earn of a share of the production proceeds from the oil fields they reclaim, officials said.

The mercenaries loosely coordinate with the Russian military in Syria, although Wagner’s leaders have reportedly received awards in the Kremlin, and its mercenaries are trained at the Russian Defense Ministry’s bases.

Russian government forces in Syria maintain they were not involved in the battle. But in recent weeks, according to United States military officials, they have jammed the communications of smaller American drones and gunships such as the type used in the attack.

“Right now in Syria, we’re in the most aggressive E.W. environment on the planet from our adversaries,” Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of United States Special Operations Command, said recently, referring to electronic warfare. “They’re testing us every day.”