THE URBAN COMBAT OF ISRAEL IN GAZA

The Israeli Tsahal.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Tsahal, is a fairly capable national army, with modern military doctrine and well equipped and regularly trained. It has about 190 thousand professional personnel (permanent). Which can be increased in two or three days to near 750 thousand troops.

Mobilizing for this up to around 550 thousand men and women, who are in the active reserve. These have a varied combat training, depending on their age, profession, training and missions carried out. The first 300 thousand are the most outstanding to decisively join the fight. The other quarter of a million are called according to needs to update and finish training them effectively.

ISRAEL DOES NOT HESITATE TO USE PUNCTUAL MASSIVE BOMBING

The ugdot or Israeli brigades (ugda is its singular name) of mechanized or motorized infantry are the main Israeli units to carry out a fight in enemy urban terrain. They fight against a much less capable enemy. But, with equal resolve and motivation, because they consider themselves muyahidin or warriors of Allah.

Let us see some aleyas or verses from the Quran, to realize the catechized and motivated Palestinian enemy:

“Oh, Believers, persecute the infidels (all others) until all Worship on Earth is given to Allah.”

“War has been prescribed for you and you shun it. Well, Allah will find another more obedient people and will disown you.”

The infantry ugda consists of 3 infantry battalions, another tank battalion, a field artillery group, 1 anti-tank fighting company, one motorized engineer company and 2 combat and tactical reconnaissance companies. The armored ugda consists of 3 tank battalions, one special forces battalion, one motorized engineer battalion, one armored reconnaissance battalion and a mixed artillery group.

FORCES OF THE GIVATI BRIGADE MAKE A STOP ON THE ROAD

The infantry ugdot are better known. Tanks are, however, the most effective weapon that Israel generally has in its wars. And, within the deliberate concealment and lack of precision of the data that reaches the public, which is practiced on these issues in Israel. Among the five infantry ugdot available, the “Givati”, “Golani” and “Kfir” stand out.

Characteristics of the fighting terrain.

Fighting in “urban or factory terrain” means that the combatants’ views are short in most directions. And, on the other hand, the enemy has a multitude of “relative hiding heights” that hide him and even, sometimes, cover him from opposing fire. This is a source of tension due to the uncertainty it creates.

HAMAS MOBILE REACTIVE ARTILLERY WITH ITS TEAM AND INFANTRY SECURITY

Physical and mental loneliness also act here. The combatant is separated from the officers commanding him. And, he is part of the squad or crew of the organic support weapons. Whose members are as affected as he is.

Automatic and more precise fires allow and force extreme dispersion and camouflage of combat forces in presence. And, the terrain of struggle here is particularly empty and hidden.

The maneuvers here consist of relatively very short movements. This also affects the loneliness and uncertainty of the combatants. The operational movement capacity of the units in motor vehicles is almost unnecessary, if we discount the direct heavy fire support from their weapons to the combatants. Other marches are simply “marches to combat.

A SECTION OF HAMAS IRREGULARS MANEUVER INTO COMBAT

Hamas members and others have built an immense defensive “fortress”. It is a structure of tunnels at two levels of depth (circa 9 ms and 50 ms) studied and created over years. This structure qualitatively resembles those used by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Vietnamese Vietcong in the Mekong area of southern Vietnam. But, it is more elaborate, larger and capable. Level A is used in the militants’ rejection fighting: here they fight, obtain shelter and temporary hiding place, allows them to move parallel and covertly to the ground of the Strip, use alternative delay positions against advancing or reorganizing soldiers, launch short and middle distance range rockets. Level B acts as a large refuge and general warehouse for Hamas forces and his men and relatives. Intermittently, there are direct paths between both levels of the structure.

HAMAS IRREGULARS POSING FOR THEIR PEOPLE

This “main protective cover” cushions the heavy fire of Israeli attackers. And it forces soldiers to fight at close range with Hamas irregulars. Thus, the “combat capabilities” of both enemies are quite equal and the sum of military casualties will inexorably rise to figures not expected by the population of Israel. The Israelis’ attempts to flood some tunnels with sea water or a kind of propelled lightweight foam rubber inside them, did not meet expectations.

General situation.

More or less, so far, there is talk of about 6,000 militiamen and about 200 Israeli soldiers as total casualties in Israel’s attack on Gaza. Also, there are just over 23,000 Gazeti civilians dead and 250 inhabitants of Israel’s cooperatives, party places and small barracks captured as hostages, in an unnecessary massacre that is overdone by its cruelty and ferocity.

On Saturday, October 7, irregular Hamas forces launched a “swarm attack” on southern and south-central Israel. Supported by the prior and/or simultaneous launch of thousands of short and medium range ballistic rockets. And, the small “action units” of Hamas, strong in about 3 thousand militiamen employed in total, achieved their tactical objectives: the defeat and/or destruction of Israeli positions (cooperatives, villages and small military posts), causing about 1,300 total casualties to the population and the Tsahal and capturing the said precious hostages. And, producing a strong and general commotion in Israel and in the Tsahal, much greater than the sum of the individual effect of each small attack received.

YAHYA SINWAR, MILITARY CHIEF OF HAMAS IN GAZA, PROTECTED BY A CLOUD OF «PALESTINIANS». ISRAEL CANNOT DESTROY IT, BECAUSE IT LIVES SURROUNDED BY HOSTAGES.

We are not going to repeat now the operations to be carried out by the Tsahal in the Gaza Strip, since in our recent article “The Urban Defense of Hamas in Gaza” they are already described.

We are going to discuss some ideological and strategic positions of both enemies.

Israel has estimated more than 12,000 Hamas military targets destroyed. Which include command centers, medium and short tunnels and their accesses, communications centers, storerooms, military materials, unit locations and small militia units. Also, it has killed (according to Hamas’ Health Department) 23 thousand civilians and injured tens of thousands of people; not exactly from chafing, punctures and large scratches or fractures. Israel is carrying out not only a military liquidation of armed enemies, but an “ironing” of the Gaza Strip with blood and fire.

This has no signs of progressing towards a stable and secure solution.

The total annihilation of enemies is a devilish mission or total objective. That would require a long and very high commitment of human resources and material means. A close comparison would be between artillery fire to neutralize or destroy.

A VIEW OF THE LARGEST TUNNEL IN THE HAMAS NETWORK OF TUNNELS IN GAZA

The Nazis were unable to eliminate the Jews of Central Europe and the West of the USSR in four years of presence in the territories of the Gehime Statz Policei and Himmler’s SS.

Nor could they eradicate Bolshevism from the USSR, inhabited, according to them, by “untermensch”, subhumans, an inferior race or severely degraded race by their vices. Which was supposed to be, therefore, affordable and easy.

The human soul, essential and shunned.

When you put a people, race, or large community under the threat of destruction, new “soul energies” emerge from it, generated in the depths of the human soul. They boost his “national morale” and lead him to fight fiercely. Recovering that certainty of survival that was taken from him.

Israel’s bombing has seriously damaged or destroyed more than a hundred buildings, including churches and mosques, some up to 4,000 years old. Belonging to the Gazan Arab cultural heritage. The attacks targeted the social cultural essence of Gazans, their identity. And the Israelis had to respect them, so as not to give serious arguments to the enemy.

Hamas’ Urban Defense in Gaza:

Irregulars mixed with Civilians against Regulars

Introduction:

The structure of Hamas‘s military deployment is based on the «short brigade«, which is a tactical operational unit widely used by irregular or partisan or guerrilla forces, when they reach a certain development in their military capabilities and deployments. These Hamas´short brigades” have between 1,000 and 1,500 men in their combat order, depending on their basic weapons. The most numerous are infantry and elite. They also have some independent companies specialized in adequate short staffing.

The brigades lack defense against aircraft or armored units as such or organic field artillery. This necessarily turns them into light irregular forces, capable of fighting in a mobile manner and using irregular fighting tactics. Looking more for their mobility and areas not adequately defended in the enemy deployment. The rejection in urban areas gives them extra effectiveness, protection and security against the regular military enemy. Since populations form or are molded into a multitude of hiding places, passageways, tunnels and relative hiding heights (floors, parks, gutters, windows, balconies, roofs and gaps in different classes of walls).

Intersections of major urban streets, high-rise buildings and steel-frame buildings (especially factories) can mainly form the core of defense delay points. The nests of resistance depend on these strong positions. Of them there are a large number, also as alternative positions. These nests, when active, are manned by two or three men and may be staffed by riflemen or a light machine gun, also forming an anti-tank or sniper position. In the interior patios of the houses, even on rooftops, they deploy their 80 or 60 mm mortars, whose position is changed as soon as they launch a few bombs. All of this gives cohesion to a defense position that operates in a sector of the Gaza Strip.

Normally, except in the final moments of an assault, civilians remain intertwined with irregular Hamas positions. The loss of Palestinian civilians is one of the collateral objectives “desired” by Hamas. To present to the world and discredit Israel for its “Asymmetrical against Unarmed Civilians” fight. Until now, the Palestinian civilian death toll is about 300 a day on average. A disturbingly tolerable number of “martyrs of Islam and its Minor Jihad.” The Mayor or Real Jihad is the Muslim Effort in the Path of Allah.

Development.

Among the few tens of thousands of Hamas militiamen, no more than 30% are currently trained to use time-limited defense as a form of fighting. These “urban irregular Islamists” protect themselves by extending their defensive positions beyond what is necessary in a conventional defense, thus covering a greater controlled surface. These “fortress” are diffuse, hidden and even imperceptible to outsiders. In just a few hours, the previous works are completed and reinforced. Their communication ways require more work time, but are also less obvious. You have to enter houses to detect perforated walls and find passageways or real tunnels under a piece of furniture or a rug. In their defensive struggle they try to cause the military enemy the highest possible losses and force him again and again to reorganize and redirect his deployment. But they always do it without exposing themselves excessively to a fight at short distances, to being overwhelmed or to losing their freedom of action. This is inexorably linked to the cession of urban space to the military. To do this, they withdraw at the moment they deem appropriate from the direct attack of their enemy, not from their extensive, imprecise bombardment or cannonade. And so it is announced, again and again, that this or that city has been liberated from “bitter enemies.”

Occupying towns is technically the same as raiding a block, an apartment block or a house. How is this? Because the structure of the objectives is similar: walls, spaces between walls and gaps in the walls. There are three stages of attacking a town: isolating it, entering and settling in it, and fighting inside against the defenders.

Isolation implies occupying or covering with effective and seamless medium and heavy fire all possible obvious and hidden escape routes for the rebels, from a certain distance to the population. Likewise, all water, energy and communications services must be cut off externally. As there is a possibility that a nearby enemy band will come to harass or distract the surrounded group to help them escape, it is necessary to establish an external fence at a certain distance from the inner fence, equally ferreous and without views or fire gaps, which covers all possible approach routes. We will call ring the sufficient space created between both discontinuous fences to provide protection, supplies and shelter to the assault forces. Throughout the ring, double sentries will be placed at sensitive points, reinforced by small mobile patrols, intended to thwart rebel infiltration in both directions. The ring will contain 2 mobile reserves of variable size, placed in opposite directions (e.g. north-south), to repel serious breach attempts. Command of the defense of the ring will be carried out by a single commander, different from the attacker command.

A good approach route must allow the attacker to take advantage of a space not covered by the defense and reach his objective without initial loss of his combat capacity. Sewer networks may contain booby traps. And here there are no adjoining forests to provide concealment and cover for the heavy fire. Given that the rebel defender is surely going to retreat from the urban edges, defended only by combat outposts, it will be best to reach the first selected positions inside the urban perimeter in a first push. Entries can be searched from multiple directions. And even to avoid civilian casualties, do some prior preparation on the exterior prominent buildings, starting with bursts of heavy machine guns and then using artillery or helicopter gunships.

As an example, a platoon would advance following the layout of an Arab street. One section would go inside the buildings on one side and the other through those in front, covering him with their light automatic fire. The third section would follow behind, alternately on either side. The forward observers attached to the Ugda (or Israeli brigade), whose plural is Ugdot, could go with it, while the direct heavy fire means would follow behind down the street. Tasks would be exchanged between sections. The reinforced company would advance along one or two semi-parallel streets and relieve the sections after a time. You would have a section in reserve to eliminate flanking attacks or hidden snipers.

The reinforced battalion would attack in a sector of the city, maintain the cohesion of the effort with the higher command plans, give the initiative in combat to the companies and guarantee a continuous and sufficient flow of equipment and material from its rearguard. It would also facilitate heavy fire support and have sections for clearing enemy, hidden or flanking positions.

Why is it not used?

And why is this not done systematically? I still vaguely remember the news about the high award-winning Captain Palacios and his comrades, after years of harsh captivity as prisoners of war in the USSR, arriving on the “Semiramis” at the Barcelona port.

I am also very fresh with the views and statements of all kinds of the 15 British sailors and marines, in March 2007: after their capture in supposed Iranian waters, their illegal display (against the Geneva Convention) before the cameras, their emotional farewell to President Mahmud (it could be pronounced Mammoth) and to Iran and his return home, immediately selling profitable news exclusives, in exchange for sensitive data not being leaked to the public.

They are examples of what we can expect in general from the ultra-technical Western soldiers of the 21st century. Radicalized fanatical Islamists will be rubbing their hands and renewing their resolve, inside and outside our borders. Well, that’s why…

Hamas attacks Israel in 2023.

General introduction.

Hamas commandos knew they would fight deep in Israeli territory. Very far from their supports, supplies and other Hamas units. Their targets were there: Israeli civilians and military personnel killed or taken hostage. And they knew that once 2 or 3 days had passed, the Israeli forces, superior in human and material resources, would attack, pursue, and ambush them. Their end, in general, was death. Since the Israelis would in this case still have a surplus of captured enemies. To interrogate and learn the parameters that Hamas used, to surpass them for a time: surprise them and establish combat superiority over their troops in many parts of Israel.

The various attackers carried out a “swarm attack” on positions in central and southern Israel. Several of the principles or norms of military forces in a conventional attack were disregarded. For example, the unity of the objective and the unity of command of the forces and the maintenance of a structure, of a deployment for all attacking forces. Here, each small Islamist “unit of action” had its own leader and its own objective. And, it is the set of actions of the “attacking swarm” that defines the strategy and complex real objective of Hamas.

YAHYA SINVAR, PALESTINIAN MILITARY CHIEF OF THE GAZA STRIP.

Here, Hamas forces attacked divided into a multitude of independent groups, small and sufficient, in charge of striking and/or destroying. Or occupy the Israeli military post, kibbutz or cooperative, and take Israeli or Western foreign hostages to send them to Gaza.

All of this reveals and shows us that the military effect sought by Hamas‘s multi-objective attack is an Internal Moral Shock, increased by the surprise factor of the action, already installed in the military establishment and in the populations of Israel. The aura of invincibility of the Israeli Armed Forces and the effectiveness attributed to Mossad and other affected security agencies, not so conspicuous, have been broken.

It is the set of «action units» of the militias, composed of variable weapons or branches of the FA: infantry, airborne, anti-tank, light armor, health, military police, which carries out, through these multiple and quasi-simultaneous actions on the Israeli Nation: The effect of shock, shattering, heartbreaking material and moral.

SEMI IRREGULAR HAMAS TROOPS PARADING

This multiple and general effect is inexorably transmitted to Israelis in arms through social mechanisms. The effects of damage to people and property not protected by the army, the invasion of cruel and vengeful Palestinian forces, which occupy and destroy different points in Israel, commotion and produce shock and disorientation of the troops.

Israel says it has mobilized almost 300,000 reservists to attack the Gaza Strip. They are not the best troops to maintain combat readiness and combat alert.

The geographical and military social scenario of the Islamist radicals.

The so-called Gaza Strip is a narrow, flat and small coastal corridor next to the Mediterranean Sea, located south of Israel. More than one and a half million people live crowded together in its approximately 363 km2 of surface. 99% of the inhabitants are Muslims and Christians number between 15 and 20 thousand souls. The strip reaches a demographic concentration of around 4,150 people per km2, which is one of the highest in the world. Its shape is that of an elongated rectangle, about 45 km long, measuring 12 km at its widest part. At the south is its border with Egypt of about 11 km, around the strategic city of Rafah.

To the east and north the Gaza border with Israel extends for about 51 km. The most important population of the strip is the one that gives it its name, Gaza, located in its northern third. The other prominent towns in the strip actually constitute “districts”, “peripheral neighborhoods” or “satellite towns” of the “ecumene” of Gaza. Among those not yet mentioned we will highlight Beit Hanoun (in the extreme north), Beit Layla, Sheikh Zaid, Dayral Balah (in the center), Jabalia and Kan Yunis (in the south, but not on the border with Egypt).

The unemployment rate of the population is between 35-40%. This makes it very dependent on external aid. And, furthermore, it excites their identity and social demands and defines as “solely” responsible for their evils the most visible, socially and culturally different, and close enemy, Israel. The search for a quick and utopian solution for this population necessarily requires a sufficient defeat of Israel, the oppressive and imperialist power. This makes its population very inclined to embrace “radical Islamist militants” doctrines and parties (the RIM). They allow them to glimpse and evaluate a solution, even in an indefinite and imprecise future. And at least they give them the hope they all need. Islamic Jihad and Hamas are the two main Islamist organizations with implant in Gaza.

Ideology of radical Islamist Palestinians.

Hamas, as a totalitarian socio-political-religious organization, exercises extensive power in all areas of civil coexistence of the inhabitants of Gaza. This power is also conditioned by the nature of the struggle in conditions of isolation, encirclement and hardship. This allows Hamas to invoke in its “general defense” the oppression to which the entire Palestinian population of Gaza is subjected, whether real, felt and/or magnified. Without, in practice, the tremendous suffering of the Palestinians being clearly distinguished from the victimhood wielded by Hamas or the Islamic Jihad. Between 100 and 200 thousand are the actual active militants of both radical organizations. In addition, there are their sympathizers and collaborators, with different degrees of involvement in the services and time dedicated to supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

ISRAELI SOLDIERS DISCOVER FIRST HAMAS TUNNEL SINCE 2014 WAR

Hamas mesmerizes, tenses and grows due to the prospects of a more or less close confrontation with Israel. A people cannot be kept permanently in arms, much less in “combat readiness.” But, the reason for being of Hamas is to recover and imitate doctrinally, socially and militarily the epic and glorious times of the first century of Islam, which approximately coincides with our 7th century and the first part of the 8th. It was the era, after the death of Muhammad, extended in time beyond the first 4 caliphs, from Abu Baker to Ali, called by the Sunnis the Rashidun, the “rightly guided (by God)”.

Because its radical totalitarian ideologists have decided that, when Islam practiced armed Jihad and was rigorous in its faith and customs, Islam convinced, overwhelmed, spread prodigiously across three continents and was almost invincible… And they believe that by reproducing the “basic conditions” of that social context, of that booming civilization, today’s Muslims will once again be great, feared, respected and accepted. There is nothing more and nothing less.

We verify that every few years a “casus belli” occurs or is caused, worthy of its name and with its pernicious effects for the corresponding populations. Thus, there are not many possibilities of being able to truly dialogue with this, to reach common ground and reach peace agreements that are consistent and acceptable to all.

Operational considerations of the Defense of Gaza against Israel.

The land defense of Gaza is very difficult to sustain over time. The strip lacks geographical space to establish a flexible, mobile and echelon in depth defense. This is necessary to give power, solidity, continuity and support to the rejection struggle.

Furthermore, the external supply of weapons, ammunition and military equipment to Hamas would be strangled by Israel. To ensure the sealing of Gaza, the Tsahal could establish “locks”, located transversely in the strip and occupied with reinforced mechanized infantry. They would prevent the transit of military equipment from Egypt. Iran‘s weapons and equipment have their hub or logistics center in Yemen. From here they are transported across the Red Sea to northern Sudan, from where they depart in caravans of trucks. They cross into Egypt halfway along its southern border and head to Rafah.

The Israelis sporadically carry out bombing raids on this “evil route”, concentrating on the intermediate depots along the route and on cargo vehicles. In October 2012, an unexpected explosion destroyed a weapons factory near Khartoum, the capital, and other times, truck convoys are destroyed. The naval persecution of this smuggling flow, through detection and exploration drone flights over the Red Sea, is carried out by the USA. And it is the scarce and reluctant collaboration of the three countries involved, Yemen, Sudan and Egypt, which does not allow the transit (traffic is merchandising) of heavy reactive artillery weapons to be made excessively burdensome for intermediaries and with little return for the end user.

(to be continued)

AL-ZAWAHIRI, A FANATICAL DOCTOR AT THE COMMAND OF AL-QAEDA

Presentation.

On July 31, 2022, at 06:16 Kabul time, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the well-known visible head of the “The Network», the Sunni Islamic terrorist organization” (al-Qaeda), was eliminated by the US Air Force.

Together with Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, now 71 years old, participated directly in planning and deciding on the «multiple irregular aerial attack» on the United States on 9/11. Less charismatic than Obama, after the latter’s death, al-Zawahiri occupied the effective command of the Network.

In this role, he stood up the attempts by Abu Baker al-Baghdadi to break away from the Network and found the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq. Until some time ago, this last supremacist terrorist organization reached a great extent and power in the lands of Southwest Asia, particularly Iraq and Syria.

Today, the ISSI resists disappearing, and survives as a guerrilla organization in the first stages of the irregular political-military process. Touching his followers in many times and places, the difficult and painful situation defined by Mao Zedong as «wandering insurgents«. Those whose bases are not secure, do not offer rest and shelter to the irregulars and, when they are known, offer the military men an affordable, hard and ideal target.

Ayman al-Zawahiri‘s command was decentralized, strategic, giving lines of action to the different local groups and confirming only important blows.

His radical conversion.

The organization of the Muslim Brothers, one of the sources of the modern islamist salafist, has suffered throughout the 85 years lived from his foundation by Hassan al-Banna, all kinds of vicissitudes, worries and pursuit. He and his followers tried to create an Islamic network, which was using as counterweight nothing less than to the Egyptian State. In 1948, counting the Brothers with near 3 million members and active sympathizers, began a State pursuit against them. Al-Banna died in a street attempt at the beginning of 1949, transforming he in the «Martyr Imam» for the Muslim Brothers. The live and path of the confraternity has hidden itself of the alien sights during long and intermittent periods. One of the politicians tics or mantras of the Brotherhood says: «Nasser killed us, Sadat pardoned us, Mubarak silenced us». And now they can add «Abdul Fatah al-Sisi disillusioned us».

The ideology, the organization and his action, cohesion their community in a «unit of general action» motivated, effective and resistant. That is of very difficult repetition or reply for the laymen, the not communist atheists, the democrats and other potential enemies.

The islamists not recognize neither the states, nor the nations. Nor, certainly, they do not even accept the liberal western democracy. Only Allah is Legislator of the men. The phrase used by the Western Chanceries, asking for a «Democratic legitimization of the elect president Mohamed Mursi» is really a blasphemy for them. Theocracy and democracy are essentially excluded and are actively rejected in the fundamentalist Islamic ideas. The Islam does not admit a political modernity, far from it a religious one. Everything is already legislated and given to the men, through Mohamed, for his personal and in the Believers Community or Umma «submissive fulfillment«. The Egyptian Liberty and Justice party, which won the presidential elections, is a political «appearance«, as food for the international gallery, created by the Muslim Brothers, using the infidels political jargon.

As a college student, al-Zawahiri joined the Muslim Brotherhood. After the deadly attack on Egyptian President Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, carried out by a group of soldiers during a parade on October 6, 1981, the Muslim Brothers were blamed for their participation in the assassination plot. Al-Zawahiri was arrested and spent several years in jail, during which he suffered beatings and torture. This radicalized his views on the need for practical and violent action to achieve the liberation and purification of Muslims from Western influences.

The End.

After the fall of Kabul in hands of the Taliban movement in August 2021, al-Zawahiri‘s family moved to the city. Despite the Taliban verbally assuring the Americans that they would not house terrorists on their soil.

Fleeing bloodshed and useless collateral damage, Ayman was attacked at a moment when he was alone on the balcony of his house. To do this, the family behavior and customs were detected and analyzed by the aerial teams of Exploration and Attack Unmanned Aircraft of the U.S., located far beyond the horizon… Probably, his first presence was detected and communicated by a silent collaborator of the security services on enemy land. That thereby ensured his economic future.

At least a couple of Hellfire R9X missiles were launched against Ayman. In the jargon, it is also called flying ginsu, in honor of that Japanese knife.

Once launched by the US drone and within striking distance, the missile arms itself, spreading out 6 large knives around its central axis. With them, it effectively attacks its human target. Its great operational precision was the reason that decided the high commands to use this attacking means in the drones.

Ayman‘s family was unharmed, as were the other residents of the building.

The Defense of the Societies against the armed Attackers

Almost by definition, the military and police available means in an internal war against the armed attackers are very scanty. And, even, they can be scandalously insufficient. And this does not depend so much of the security forces, not of the established authorities, but it is a direct function of the inherent strategy to a correct terrorist process. The number of possible, potential aims, which offers an organized modern society, more or less developed, to the solvent operational strategy of an armed insurgency is almost countless and inexhaustible.

The targets of the sociopaths sworn-in in the rearguard civil areas.

Attacks to civil and religious authorities and to isolated members or little groups of the armed forces and policemen. Acciones coactivas y punitivas contra los colaboradores y espías de aquéllas. Coercive and punitive actions against the collaborators and spies of those.

Imagen relacionada URBAN GUERRILLA WARFARE IN KIEV.

Destruction and sabotage of the plants and energetic networks: thermal plants, dams, combined cycle plants, wind fields, refineries, fuels deposits, crude oil, petroleum products and gas pipelines, electric transformers and high tension lines and their centers of control and distribution.

Assaults to the lines of communications: television and mobile telephony repeaters, broadcasting stations, radio antennas, telegraphic wires, bridges, tunnels and viaducts, halts and railway stations, railroad tracks and catenary parts, trains and buses, great tonnage trucks and distribution transport vehicles, temporary obstacles in the roads and railway tracks, covered or not by rebels indirect or direct fire.

Destruction or incapacitation of directly economic means of all sizes and importance: mines, plantations, industries, shops, hotels and resorts, groups of tourists. In these cases the insurgency must value the direct loss of working places and the probable alienation of part of the popular sympathy towards it. The effect is similar if there gets depressed the economic activity, but the employment is not destroyed directly.

Direct assaults against the population for, demonstrating the vulnerability and the defenselessness of all, to spread the irrational fear in the social attacked target, affecting his political and religious decisions. Generally, they will use explosives and the fire of automatic weapon, in infinites «mixes» or combinations in the practice, attacking places of great human concentrations. Where the aims are the human spread set and where it is not necessary to lose action time selecting them.

Resultado de imagen de Vigilancia policial militar POLICE PROTECTION OF THE DUOMO PIACE, MILAN. ¿WHICH IS THEIR «TARGET»?

Assaults against churches, mosques and synagogues in celebrations periods. Attacks to the peregrinations of the enemy religions and to their rest centers in them and of worship. Assaults in the parks, avenues, great streets and concentrations during the leisure, the holidays and social celebrations of all kinds. Assaults to the malls, markets and commercial department stores; the theatres, cinemas and auditoriums; the bus and railroad stations, the civil airports and the means of transport; the principal school centers and the offices of the public administrations.

This way, the terrorist attackers exert with his possible and remote presence, which must be always active, an effect of generalized grieveness in the modern societies. Whose members devote themselves to the production and purchase and sale of goods and services. And do not understand well what threatens and happens to them. An invasive action happens in the societies, working as an invisible and subtle gas, that has corrosive and pernicious properties. That penetrates and reaches everything. Demolishing slowly the defensive foundations of a civilized society, not trained for her defense.

The vigilant action of the policemen and military men.

The security agents, who guard here numerous «critical points», «sensitive areas», «strategic zones» before the observation of the present or pedrestrian public, exercise a deterrent, passive function and action. They try to avoid directly that the sociopaths attackers operate in them. And their active task is to look at short and medium ranges, the particularities, behaviours and characteristics that certain persons exhibit. That determine them as «suspects» and whose identification is immediately communicated to the companions in the area. And that allow them to center in them and in the follow-up of their immediate activities.

Resultado de imagen de turkish people TURKISH WOMEN. ¿EUROPEAN OR ARABS?

But, the «appearances» can remove of the objective reality. The Arabic features of a person, for example, will attract nowadays the interest of the security agents. Though the Arabs do not get a third of the Muslims of the world. And though the frantic rash of al-Shabab and Boko Haram are blacks. This way, the Turks, almost 85 million Muslims of sunni faith, that of the armed assassins, are more caucasian, as the Europeans. And they would easily passed as them. The Turks always insist before the foreigners, in emphasizing that they are not Arabic: of skin soft ocher/sallow colour  and thick lipers.

The alienated Attackers.

To overcome the men natural repugnances to commit an outrage against others people, it is necessary to temporarily appease and neutralize the normal human instincts. Let’s see some motivations used for it.

A «negative» motivation is the chronic loss of the basic natural needs: sustenance, family, safety, refuge and cover, expectations and reasonable progress. It is an effective spur to induce the employment of the liberating violence to a part of the society, specially the idealistic young men. The «positive» motivation would be the economic prizes that different radical Islamic organizations give to the families of the martyrs. And these are the fallen in combat against the ufaithfuls.

Resultado de imagen de madrasasEDUCATION OR BRAINWASHING PLACES?

Following the way towards the human psychology and soul, the religious motivation is another powerful mean of conviction and rooting. The followers of the Jihad are methodically and intensely catechized. The Koranic verses related with the Jihad, are known by heart by them. The other fighters «example» surrounds them in their daily life. In the way of photos, manuscripts, testimonial videos and destiny companions. Their preachers, we refuse to call them imames, clarify their doubts and encourage them to prematurely reach the Paradise. That is destined specially to the martyrs of the Jihad. That are those who die in the way of Allah.

A «ideologist» of al-Qaeda, Abu Yahya al-Libi, developed a theory of «religious» base on the «not looked hurts», related to persons. According to her, it is allowed to their militants to kill Muslims when this is inevitable. And sometimes, more than that, when it is also useful. This way, in a message where they assumed the authorship of an assault of August, 2009 in Baghdad, al-Qaeda wished a rapid recovery of the wounded sunnis and expressed her hope that the dead men should be accept by Allah also as “martyrs”.

Locating, hunting and neutralizing them…

There are practical problems in the location and neutralization of the Moslems living in our countries during their violent radicalization process. We can identify potentials jihadists with certain sureness and after a specialized and methodical work. But we cannot detain them, while do not commit an offence during their activities: to try to arm and to train them; to conspire with others in his actions; to create bands structures to commit offences; to spread the exaltation and the use of the violence as ideological weapon; the militants’ recruitment for their ideological and armed radicalization; to gather funds for the organizations with intention of committing offences; to collaborate in the movements of politicallly active and possible militants in their trips towards the interior (countries of the Southwest of Asia, the Magreb and the Sahel) or exterior (enemy western countries: the «crusaders») Jihad.

Resultado de imagen de yasser arafat SEE HIS LOOK. HE WANTS TO KISS YOU…

As for the intelligence labors, great difficulty exists in the penetration of the islamist networks by own agents or collaborators. In general, the mujahidins, the sympathizers and collaborators: usually speak Arabic; do not belong to European or Spanish Americans races; the Moslem civilians do not collaborate in the tasks of espionage and reconnaissance against the armed islamist organizations.

On the other hand, the glamorous exhibition of pairs or groups of armed military men by the streets of the cities is operationally useless. Since they do not have a definite hunting target. His mission is the ostentatious and indefinite patrolling. Seeking to calm the pedestrians parishioners with their menacing own presence.

Resultado de imagen de Abu Yahya al-Libi Abu Yahya al-Libi, DEATH BY A DRONE ATTACK.

What do we still have? The information turned into intelligence. That must be contrasted, taken part to all the authorized agencies and user groups (including foreigns), constantly updated and necessary and sufficient. Excluding the undue plethora of excessive, routine information, not elaborated as intelligence. That is a way of poisoning and boring the own commands at all levels.

When the individual has done the psychological and volitional step (the «decision»): already has broken the sufficient bonds with his vital environment; including the family. And his mind is absorbed and directed to his new “situation” and to the offered and assumed identity. This way, he is almost irrecoverable for himself, for his family, for the society.

If the individual is one more of the «disoriented», emotionally confused and not integrated people. That are mental besieged by the resentments produced by the long-suffering, or believed as such, «offenses»: it is possible to recover him, is relatively simple to do it and is enormously laborious to obtain it.

The enormous necessary work, prolonged in the time, does that it could not rehabilitate all. It is necessary to fight against the inequalities that have mentioned. To look for temporary works is more rapid. To give them an education and a labor formation is slower. But it is indispensable in the medium and long term. To separate them of the «rotten suburbs» and of the pernicious influence of environment, friends and relatives, is very complicated and long. Because the «chunks» extracted from these, have created the poor and only identity that they have. That takes them to the personal and social failure and to the frustration.

The Russia of Putin. 2nd. Part.

(FINAL)

In the great core of the Russian Federation, Putin practises an internal centripetal strategy. It is the complement of the expansive exterior strategy that we have just seen. Both form another pair of “complementary but not antagonistic opposites”. That can stem from the philosophy of the “dialectical materialism” (his core of ideas) and the historical one (his practical application and his evolution). This internal social strategy seeks to keep and extend the hegemony of the Slavonic oriental etnia, which is more than 85% of his population, and his centenial civilization. And incorporate into her everything possible of the ethnic and religious minorities of his geographical periphery. The Turkoman are 8,5%, the inhabitants of the Caucasus rise to 3% and those of the Urals, 2% of the population. Russia combines very well the strategic means at the disposal of the State, realizing with them combinations, «mixes», adapted to every external conflicting situation. For example, to uncontrollable countries with the USA, as some Spanish-American nations, he can offer them modern armament.

Putin bet for the Economy and the Diplomacy in Spanish America.

The president Putin is using all the resources and means of the global world, to extend with surprise, skill, conviction and security the influence of Russia all over the world. This way, in August of 2012 Russia stopped being the only world power out of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and turned to be the 156th partner of the institution. Which mediates in the conflicts between countries and establishes the basic procedure of the international trade. The equipment of the president Putin bet for the integration, to be between whom formulate the rules of game. And to have legal instruments against the protectionism, which stops the Russian exports to the European Union and the USA. The Russian secretary of Economic Development, Andrei Belousov, declared that the WTO gives instruments against the monopolies and the disadvantageous contracts and facilitates the participation in international projects. This way, he said, «it gives stability to the exterior trade and makes predictable the juridical conditions of the operators».

The central idea of this commercial penetration and his perspectives is that the USA never trusted in the Spanish-American armies, they did not even collaborate seriously with them. The applied cliche, even after pompous «Alliance for the Progress» of the president Kennedy, is that the Spanish-American armies are «minor partners» of the Pentagon. And, these armies must fulfill police-military local functions: to attack the insurgency, to monitor the borders, to control the territory. In the conference of Defense Secretaries of the countries of the Western Hemisphere celebrated in 2002 in Santiago of Chile, Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of Defense of the USA, declared: «One of the principal threats for the national security of the USA consists in the fact that the «Latin-American» governments cannot control his own territory, especially the remote, frontier territories. Of what the terrorists take advantage. Because of it, the task of every country of Latin America lies in strengthening the control of their own borders».

Resultado de imagen de Putin Erdogan Maduro in World Congress of the Energy in Istanbul

Till now, the Pentagon does not even propose to debate with the Spanish-American military men the creation of a system of regional security. The Inter-American Agreement of Reciprocal Assistance does not work, when it would be more important: in the conflicts of interests between the “high contracting parties», supposedly equal and associate. This remained demonstrated in the War of the Malvinas between Argentina and Great Britain. In that occasion, the USA and Chile supported Great Britain. Russia found this way a commercial and ideological niche, neglected by his more serious and nearby competitors. And where he is presenting a wide, interesting and permanent offer for an opened collaboration with his clients during an indefinite time.

The modern trade of Russian weapon and complex systems, his partial local manufacture, the temporal transfer of equipments and supplies, while this is not in march and the integral and constant formation of the users are the characteristics of the way decided by Putin, to increase the influence and the rooting of the Russians in Spanish America. A geopolitical zone that is distant and is very different of Russia in civilization. This way, the Russian vice-minister of Defense Anatoly declared that «Our external politic, is not only to sell products and finished equipments in the exterior, but to go to the joint production and develope the technician-military cooperation». He added that, » We are for it finalizing several documents, including the protection of the rights of intellectual property. The worry is that we will share reserved information. And the strategic association implies a major volume of the confidence, a major degree of cooperation, included the supply of weapon and special sensitive equipments. And this needs a certain level of the relations between both countries». Russia is the second weapon systems seller in the world.

The pirouettes of Vladimir, the new Czar of the «Only Russia».

The civil war of Syria was dangerously languishing from the last quarter of 2014. After three years and a half of the beginning of the conflict, the course of the war was determined by several different, simultaneous and synergics parameters.

Resultado de imagen de syrian army SYRIAN SOLDIERS SALUTE TO CAMERA.

The National Syrian Army of al-Assad was physics and morally exhausted. No more than 50 thousand men are now in his ranks.

The USA had intervened with few results, less opportunity and scanty commitment and decision in the conflict. Using the air ground support in favour of the moderate insurgents; facilitating them intelligence and punctual supports with limited aims of his elite forces. And successively training several groups or contingents of those, which were finishing, the majority of the times, joining the islamist radical insurgents. As the Front al-Nusrah for the Liberation of the Peoples of East, of Mohamed al-Golani, the delegate of al-Qaeda in Syria, now called Front Fatah al-Sham; the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria of al-Baghdadi; the Islamic Front anti al-Nusrah; the Army of the Conquest, who was operating at the east of Damascus, etc. And the USA was not daring to imply more in the civil war.

 Resultado de imagen de russian bombers in syriaRUSSIAN AIR BASE (SYRIA)

The unsteady and elusive politics of the USA in Middle East and concretely in Syria, created an «emptiness of power» that the Russian autocrat proposed to occupy. This time, he waited to assure him that the USA was not and they were not even waited there. In effect, the Americans neither had consistent allied rebels (with duration, stability and solidity, in conjunction) on Syria, nor were possessing own deployed forces. And the hereditary tyranny of al-Assad was, since the epoch of daddy Hafez, a systemic enemy of Israel and the USA. That included it in the list of destabilizing States of Middle East and sponsors of terrorists (Black September, Yasser Arafat’s al-Fatah, Hezbollah, etc.)

Fatah flag.jpg AL-FATAH’S COAT OF ARMS

Russia was seeking to justify a mediating and relevant paper in the damned board of the regional powers in the Southwest of Asia. Also his military intervention was going to assure an increased sponsorship on Syria, with the elevation of his military bases in the country to permanent. And neither the life, nor the personal and familiar sufferings of the Syrians were mattering for him, if they were converting into an obstacle to his political or military operational strategy in the defense of Bachar al-Assad.

This demonstrated, in a brutal and sociopath way, the degraded use of the heavy fire support that Russia gave to the attempts of al-Assad for recovering Alepo «at all costs». A siege without fissures (operational, not physical) of the city was not realized, nor an attack of combined forces to the irregular rebel forces that were surrounding and partially occupying her. The military Russian doctrine would praise this. But, the easy and sure thing was to shell up to the exhaustion the supposedly rebels positions. That were firmly intermingled with the houses of the upset neighbors of Alepo. But, destruction is almost metaphysically impossible. The buildings, walls and squares turn by the heavy fire in accumulated debris; these are grinded little by little in smaller debris; and, then, in stones and smaller stones. The same thing happens with the human bodies. And the rebels can slip away by tunnels, trenches and alleys between the walls of the buildings. But they do not take the civilians with them. And largely it is for the enormous logistic hindrance that they suppose for them.

 

Putin also receives «in kind» for the «favors and helps» that he grants. Russia is planing to increase the capacities of his naval base in Tartus, Latakia, Syria. That Russian will turn this way into a «naval permanent base» in the Mediterranean, fulfilling this way the dream of the Great Russia, previous to the USSR. The documents of transfer and installations are already prepared for his signature. The superstructure will possess docks, systems of detection, control and command and of anti-aircraft defense (against planes, drones and rockets) and antiships (of surface and submarines), stores, quarterings, etc. To all it is necessary to add the ground defense units of, his quarterings and warehouses, the fixed and of mines barriers, the network of roads and the advanced mobile and in prepared positions defense. This way, already at the beginning of October, 2016 there came equipments of the S-300 anti-aircraft Russian system, that deploys for the first time out of Russia. Also the nearby air Russian base in Hmeydin, one of that integrate the «network of bases for the air operations» in Syria, will be turned into an «air permanent base». To allow to increase the air sheltered fleet, her installations and her contingent for crew, support and defense.

 Resultado de imagen de russian bombers in syriaRUSSIAN BOMBERS HIT USA SPONSORED GROUND BASE IN SYRIA.

The meeting of the XXIII World Congress of the Energy in Istanbul, initiated on Monday, the 10th of October, 2016, allowed the bilateral meeting of the presidents Vladimir Putin and Erdogan. Russia and Turkey, from the middle of last July have brought over positions, smoothed the previous pitfalls and increased their collaboration bonds. Both presidents signed there the agreement for the construction of the Turkish Steam gas pipeline, which will join both countries across the Black Sea. And that will supply Turkey up to 63 billion m² of natural gas annual, when it is operative. The president Maduro, whom the president’s position and to exercise the succession of a «chavism» without Hugo Chávez are too great for him, did all possible during the summit conference to tie personal and institutional bonds with both chief executive men.

Erdogan assured that «Turkey will reinforce all the economic, energetic and of tourism bonds with Russia». His relations with the USA. and the European Union have substantially weakened in the last months. In spite of being Turkey a strategic ally of both within the NATO and of being a (eternal) candidate for the entry with full right in Europe.

Also Maduro celebrated his personal meeting with Putin. When in November, 2015 a Russian bomber was beaten on the northwest of Syria, close to the Turkish border, the Venezuelan governmental press took sides for Russia. Echoing the speculations on the incident and the accusation of Moscow that Erdogan was supporting in certain ways the ISIS. Given his systemic hatred with the Kurds of the YPG (the Kurdish Syrian party, to which he systematicly accuses of relations with the terrorist Kurdish PPK of the southeast of Turkey) and his pursuit of his «peshmergas» or Kurdish soldiers, who join the militias of self-defence of the Syrian Kurdish territory.

Resultado de imagen de Putin and Maduro Istanbul PUTIN WILL HELP MADURO AGAINST BAKERIES’ MAFFIAS…

The meeting was ending on Wednesday, the 12th of October. And, so much Putin as Maduro were waiting that in his conclusions and final record, was remaining clear a producers’ new alliance of crude oil («emergent countries»), which was seeking to stabilize the production of crude oil and his prices during a sufficient period of time. Some projections were overcoming a five years period.

These totalitarian, subsidiary States of Russia, need to affirm his identity, for questionable and/or perverse. And they do it replacing, in his cases, the real capacities of his mentor (military power, natural resources, armament industry) for a major radicality and a fervent enthusiasm in his attitudes and actions in the public thing or res publica. What takes them, in some moments, to flee ahead, without knowing well were they will come. The doubtful and/or contradictory attitudes and actions, in some moments, prove this. It suits to examine the erratic Turkish exterior politics in the last 4 years, in relation to al-Assad, the Kurds of the YPG and of the Autonomous Kurdish Region of Iraq, al-Qaeda, the collaboration with the USA and the Islamic State.

Only Putin keeps a line and a conduct enough constant and coherent in the public topics, exterior specially.

Resultado de imagen de russian bombers in syriaRUSSIA USES CARPET BOMBING IN SYRIA.

The implication of the political and strategic interests of Russia in Syria has taken him to veto in the Security Council of the UNO, the recent offer of France for a ceasefire in Syria. Presented after the failure of the agreement of September, 2016 between the USA and Russia. That was aborted by the Russian bombardment of a marching group of humanitarian help from the Turkish border towards Alepo’s northwest. And by the bombardment of the USA to positions of the Syrian National Army (SNA) at the south-east of Zeir er Zour, the capital of province placed at Palmira’s North-East. And also motivated by the qualitative and quantitative accumulation of misdeeds against the civilians. Realized by the ground support aviation of Russia and Syria and by the Syrian heavy artillery. Against the neighborhoods at the west of Alepo and over the approximation routes to her, from the North-East (Idlib’s province) and the Turkish border, used by the rebels who fight in the city.

On the other hand, France insisted on treating with Russia the ceasefire in Syria. Which was out of the programmed topics for the visit of Putin to Paris at Wednesday, the 19th of October. And Russia answered on Tuesday, the 11th, by the spokesman of the Kremlin, that Putin «decided to annul the visit … and he will go to Paris when the president Hollande feels comfortable».

THE IDEOLOGIC AND STRATEGIC PREFERENCES OF THE JIHADISTS.

The radical fundamentalist Islamic insurgents or jihadistas devoted themselves between the 60s and 80s to attack those that they were qualifying as corrupt and false or socialist or westernized and liberal «Moslem governments». Their fortune was small for all their commited effort. On one hand, the retreat of the Soviets of Afghanistan. But, possessing the logistic western support and the indispensable military action of pashtuns groups and other Afghans etnias, commanded by the regional «lords of the war». That is to say, the out-standing and charismatic maliks of the clans and regional tribes. Between them the most famous was Ahmad Sah Masud, the Lion of the valley of the Panjshir. And, for other one, they got the capture of the power in Sudan, inspired by al-Turabi, a «spider captain», having managed to get strong in its Army. This is still the only case in the sunni world. The propaganda was not appearing between his priorities and the informative fingerprint that they left in the western world was wretched. Few found out that they existed and of those are more less who remember their wanderings of then. From the 90, the jihadist aim turns against the unfaithful West. Considering the Great Satan personified in the United States of North America and his democratic western coreligionists, as the first agitators and corrupters of the Islamic peoples.

The Jihad allowed the rapid spread of the Islam.

The Jihad, expressed in the precise concept that we all understand, is not gathered in the Koran. Nevertheless, though there appear in the Koran approximately 8 «pacifists» verses, exist near 100 aleyas or verses which encourages the Muslims to the defense of the community or Umma, to the fight against the unfaithful people and to the armed spread of the Islam. Established the main lines, rapidly the political chiefs of the Umma, including the Prophet, threw hand of the instrument that so clearly was offering them and that they needed in a “struggle of life or death”.

At the beginning of the Islam, when was reigning the “jahiliyya” (definition of the barbarism previous to it) in the Arabs, the Jihad was indispensable and inevitable for the defense of the new religion. That was arising in the middle of a “stormy sea” of pagan and idolatrous and more or less nomadic tribes and clans, which were populating Arabia. It had not even begun the first expansion of the Islam to the whole Arabic world, and the Muslims groups could be easily eliminated by their enemies. And any radical change, even only new, finds always an initial rejection. Which originates in the conservative «ideological and tradition inertia», which always exists in the society where it appears.

Resultado de imagen de THE FOUR RASHIDUN THE 4 RIGHTLY GUIDED (BY ALLAH) CALIPHS (THE RASHIDUN)…

Three were the reasons that stimulated the Arabic tribes to starting a way of conquest of the wide and distant peoples and lands, strangers to the Arabic Peninsula. The first one was the religious reason. As in any religious primitive community, the Umma was the center of the Allah’s mandates and benedictions. And so, being lived collectivly and keenly, the fulfillment of a monotheistic and simple doctrine. This religion was demanding, in addition, an active and coercive, constant and expansive proselytism, directed to the unfaithful persons and the frontier hostiles. The obligation of the Jihad was similar to other “five basic rules or pillars of the Islam”. The Koran given to Mohammed in the birth of the Islam, has numerous verses or aleyas that demand the armed fight to the faithfuls ones.

Resultado de imagen de muslim conquest in the middle ages

In the side of the mundane interests, the extension of the Arabic conquests, in his uncontrollable advance during more than one century, brought the control over the goods and households of the new and numerous subjects and the political and military power on them. The Moslem domain was established by the presence of a governor with his military garrison, in every conquered important city or region. The relation of the new subjects with the Islamic regime was establishing and regulating by the payment to the governor of the periodic taxes. Owed to the imposed subjection and for practising, by the moment, a different religion. This flow of important and constant money began to come to the conquerors, who established diverse intelligent enough mechanisms for his distribution. The third reason, attainable to the nobles, chiefs and more out-standing Muslims, was the distribution of the quotas of power.That were generating the domain, the defense and the governance of the new territories of al-Islam. That are the lands of the domain of the Islam, the lands given by Allah to his faithfuls, the lands that they must keep or recover, if they are temporarily snatched. This way, the emirs, sheikhs and caids were proliferating, occupying and shaping the political Arabic structure of the islamized territories.

Resultado de imagen de muslim conquest in the middle ages VISIGOTHIC SPAIN WAS CONQUERED IN A FEW YEARS, BY FEW MEN AND WITHOUT MARTYRS… PROBABLY WITH THE HELP OF THE POWERFUL HISPANIC ARRIANS…

The Arabic original tribes of the Islam were receiving a part of the taxes and of the plunders of the conquest, though they were not taking part in any military expeditions. Another part was given to the participants in the Jihad against some bordering people or region with the caliphate. An important part belonged to the authorities of the Umma, centred on the caliphate of Damascus or of Baghdad, and regionally represented by his emirs or caides, to support the expenses of the governing and the maintenance of the theocratic State. From the later was stemming a part destined to pay, equip and forming up the new Jihads, towards the frontier territories of dar al-Islam, that were appearing. Finally, there was the Zakat or the canonical alms, given to the ulemas and muftis. That had as purpose to solve and compensate the Muslims for the punishment and the randoms of the life, with the contribution of their community. And that was distributed to the poor, the disabled and the patients, the orphans and the widows of the Umma. This was closing the process of distribution of the wealth and the power. That was mundanely welding and assuring the religious aspirations of the believers of the new faith.

Strategic contradictions of the jihadists in the irregular war.

The principal characteristics of the irregular war are his prolongation in time, consequence of his low military intensity, and that is civil and political. What imply a great social tear and inevitable acts of great cruelty. By the «ascent to the extremes» of the war, which Clausewitz was saying, without the safeguards of the laws and accepted customs, that get lost in this «born within itself chaos».

To reach the power or his strategic aims, the guerrilla has three aims in his total strategy: the military annihilation of the enemy, who can be simply appearing his disability to solve the problem of the bands in an acceptable time for the popular enemy rear; the destruction of the military and economic infrastructure that supports it and the capture of the people or of his religious, ethnic and/or social base to his ideas. In this dialectics of wills, ideologies and efforts the strategic aspects of the irregular bands of any ideology are three: the guerrilla bases, his forces correlation with the regular enemy and the communications in general.

The deficiencies and miseries of the jihadists, in relation with the strategy and the operative strategy are:

1) The jihadists have failed in actively and firmly joining to a social large group, which gives cover and permanent impulse to their «imperialistic social religious movement». The most mentally ill activists are slowly isolating themselves (at least, emotional and ideologically) of the society in which «they live». And they do it in altars of his violent methods, to which they sacrifice everything for obtaining the efficiency in the action. They continue to be prepared a process of segregation, purification (in his unexpected not orthodox rites fast, use water from sacred places and green, yellow or black banderoles with inscriptions of the aleyas that favor them), consecration and radicalization. This «catechizing of the violence» allows them to mentally come to the glorious and in peace death, and, even to the suicide, in the accomplishment of his punctual actions.

 2) The jihadists groups act with an unnecessary and indiscriminate brutality, which discredits them before his religion and unquestionably separates them of the pure Muslims and, still, of the normal ones. Let’s see some aleyas or verses from the Koran:

Sura (chapter), 4 aleya 33 «… Oh, believers … do not kill yourself (do not kill between you, is another description) …».

2, 10 » When it is said to them: do not commit disorders (voice that defined the crimes) in the Earth, they answer: Far from it, we introduce in it the good order (the Good)».

2, 11 «Alas!, they commit disorders, but they do not understand it».

28, 77 «As Allah makes the Good, also make you the good and do not foment the corruption (the Evil)» (murder of innocent and of peoples that receive you -the lands of dar-el-Ahd-, drunkenness, drugs, unnecessary damages of the things).

They despise and not comply with these moral aleyas, without Allah had changed them for they. Sura 2, aleya 100 «We do not abrogate any verse of this Book, nor we will make erase any one of your memory, without replacing it by other one equal or better».

3) The absolute absence of venerable and pious ulemas and muftis in their side.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

 

THE WAR AGAINST THE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS.

The global war against the organized terrorism, proclaimed by the president Bush after September 11, 2001, has gone flat. And with it, the military strategy of attacking the many-colored islamist jihadism, always threatening, in his nests and in his infected areas. Without existed for them neither bases, nor sure refuges in the world. Seeking to suffocate this certain, threatening, watched and already long-suffering danger. And to remove it from home, from the territory of the USA. Mr. Obama qualitatively and substantially cut down in 2011, the antiterrorist aims in the exterior American politics.

The new National Strategy of the USA.

For it, the Stategic Plan establishes aims more political than military in the Islamic Central Asia. «This one has been a difficult decade for our country. (Now) we can be glad to know that the pressure of the war is yielding». Is admitted that the Americans are not capable of «leave a perfect Afghanistan». Neither the western democracy is perfect. But it is comparatively the least unjust of the political known systems. And, due regulated by the play of the public powers and the honesty of his agents, it was the one that allowed the advent of the middle, numerous, polite, laborious and progressive classes. This way, they bet for the political negotiation with the moderate Taliban, to lower the activity of the armed groups. Bringing over the possibilities of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. But the major premise fails. The moderate Taliban do not exist. This name is disgusting to the logic. Since it is a contradiction in the used terms. Like the «negative growth», of which some politicians speak to us. The Taliban apply rigorously the sharia. That are the civil laws and penal social derivatives of the literal and rigid application of the Koran and Sunna or tradition, in the profane matters. And they impose it by the force. And with a foreign yielding enemy, without firm convictions, with internal contradictions; why the Taliban are going to negotiate, having the victory already smelling them as the aromatic flowers of Allah’s garden?

Obama proclaims, with fiscal and exterior deficits running away, the need to save in military resources. To dedicate them «to constructing a nation here, at home». This way, he qualitatively lowers the strip of the exterior terror. Putting the Base (al-Qaeda) and the IS as the violent not national enemies of the USA. The salafista internationalist terrorists with his known, fled and not wished as guests in a normal country, operational chiefs, is a more attainable and manageable aim for the schemes, the budgets and the aspirations of the «diminishing American defense». And it stays within range of the actions: of the CIA and of the Pentagon’s flaming spies; of the not crewed airplanes (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) of reconnaissance and atack; of the military punctual actions of the elite forces of the Pentagon; of the assaults of small expeditionary forces and/or of amphibious assault of the Marines, transported in «control and/or transport warships» with his naval escort; of the penetration of the terrorist groups or, at least, the approximation, the observation and the information, by local related elements, paid by the espionage of the USA. The deployments of tens of thousands of American soldiers and their complex equipment and specific supply for several years in a theatre of operations, are indefinitely rejected by the new «doctrine». The American people infected with the adherent and complex economic crisis, with the lack of political effective control, with the costs of the wars against the terror (it speaks about 1,6 $ trillions – not thousand millions – spent till now in Iraq and Afghanistan and around $60 million per month en the deployment of Libia, without taling part in offensive actions), is tired of the exterior actions and constantly reflects it in the surveys. As in the old times, in other national crises, a country that is almost a continent, partially withdraws towards himself.

The Need of a new formal and international “Legal Setting».

The laws give juridical character and institutionalizing for what the needs, the customs and, finally, the social norms have been looking and establishing in the evolution of the societies. There does not exist in the History an example similar to the operational, legal and institutional picture that that pose the USA and the islamist violent rebels in their antagonistic armed dialectic by the whole global world. Therefore, almost all the laws of the countries where develop episodes of this war, the international laws in use and the social existing norms, lack practical meaning and aptitude to establish an operational sufficient frame for this warlike conflict. Both great conflicting rivals use more or less freely the whole world bullring, included the space, as local «fields of action» to realize all kinds of operations against his enemy, his allies and his means and properties.

The real terms of application of this violent dialectics are changed, are new or different: total internationalization of the warlike scene. Will mention some of the significant or more known: the borders and the operations strips or sectors are diluted or are not significant in these. The operations precede and mark the combats or small battles. Violent, dispersed, slightly decisive, unexpected, discontinuous in the time actions; which obtain their transcendence by accumulation, not by successive or simultaneous concatenation. There take place large movements of units or small units in very short time. Great concentrated and rapid firepower capacity used by the rivals: the explosive vehicles manage to have the demolition capacity of a “smash block bomb”. The employment of these small units, which do not constitute a «useful target», protects them from the enemy heavy support fire. The digital capacities of the wireless communications and of the treatment and custody of the information are a new weapon in the fighting field for the sensitive information. This has taken the enemy to the employment of old means, which were put away: couriers, manuscript or typewritten reports, heads of local reports, which successively deliver the orders, etc. Qualitative increase of the importance of the dissimulation, concealment, disguise, mishap and enemy disinformation capacities.

This demands the creation of a new legal and normative frame, which gathers and regulates the new warlike conditions that are appearing, they are maturing and are developing since several decades. And everything, having a sufficient vision of future, in order that the evolution of the rivals and of the circumstances and the events do not invalidate the legal and moral means, at not much time of being defined and accepting by a majority of countries and persons. Because, the agents and the units and the reconnaissance means cross and will constantly cross the space and/or the territory of the rivals and of numerous foreign countries in their conflict. Because, the enraged contenders will continue skipping the borders, to realize their harassment punctual actions. They are of harassment because they suppose the destruction and/or the punctual abduction of persons and/or units. Without with them the operational capacity is significantly altered in the theatre or area.

The Use of Drones in the War against the Islamic Terrorists.

The drones are used in the irregular war in reconnaissance tasks and follow-up and in assault actions against small targets. The US Air Force of the Pentagon has more than 1300 pilots of drones, being employed at 13 air bases of the USA. And calculates that at end of 2015, will have around 2000 pilots of drones. Already she is training more pilots for remote-controlled planes that for the conventional flights: around 350 in 2011. From 2012 the formation is specific for them: the pilots only pass 40 hours on board of a Cessna, without flying in fighters, to pass to learn to direct a drone. The equipment in the air base for the guide and control of the drones is very simple and highly elaborated: the control or helm of the drones, several television screens, surrounded with numerous auxiliar visual indicators and controls and a pedal. Everything arranged in pairs in front to both ergonomic chairs of the pilots. The drones have cameras that transmit in live time their sights to his pilots. A deliberate observation precedes an assault. The pilot of the drone and the camera controller of the, which form a «killer team», observe to his «designated aim» during long time, verifying his environment and his activities. The assault would be realized when, for example, the possibility of not wished human hurts («collateral damages») was minimal. The plane is capable of, once caught and authorized by the pilots an aim to beating, initiating by itself the assault, but this function has never allowed it.

The reconnaissance of the enemy and his exact location, both units and commands and local chiefs, and the recognition of the operations area is an old dream of the commands of all the times, to free themselves of part of their dreads and uncertainties. Because the modern maneuvers, even at the close distances, are changeable and plastic for the rivals commands. If we add the possibility of a constant follow-up of that one, this is “honey on small leaves of cereal”. In these tasks, the capacities of the drones allow his deep insertion in the enemy territory, without any danger for the reconnaissance specialized own forces and a clear, fluid and effective transmission of the results that they catch. It might say that they are a weapon designed with fortune to fulfill the opportune missions, if his employment is reasonable, controlled and shown restraint.

Because, the use of «not crewed planes» in reconnaissance missions of the enemy, raises a problem of difficult solution for the Americans Intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. Is thought that only the CIA can be receiving daily near 2000 photographies and 2000 hours of recordings of video from his spìes «drones». And all this nonsense informative, this undue plethora of images, only can drive to the clogging of the transmission, processing and valuation channels of the information. And to the tedium and disorientation of the intermediate commands. All this, though are used powerful computers and «key images and signs» to discriminate them in the process of selection. This result only can drive to a few routine and shallow analyses in «importance content» and to a profusion of non asked reports.

That they would be late years in turning in real intelligence, because here it is necessary to think for it. That one is the confirmed and valued information for the different operational and strategic controls. That clear and sufficiently orientates them of a situation, of his probable evolutions and changes and of the own possibilities of action, in agreement with the military strategy and the operational one or the received mission. With the abuse, already it is not a question of «obtain relevant and sufficient information». But the information that is obtained is overflowing, relarge and indigestible. And it is an information that poisons and disorients all. The essential and decisive criterion, is that the efforts go to the sectors and the most sensitive and important aims of the complicated process of the massive espionage. Which allows to discriminate the gathered information with unit of criterion and respecting the Universal war principle of the saving of the means. And that, continuing proven and effective alogaritms, other aims and neutral topics are chosen and sift with a given periodicity.

The destructive capacity of the explosive charges that carry the not driven assault plane is limited in his number and in his total power. The essential characteristic of his use is that is destined to limited goals, well in his size (a small number of not very spread enemies) or in his protection (not fortified targets). Nevertheless, they are useful to beat combat armoured vehicles, included the main battle tanks, with his hollow load missiles, which attack them in their vulnerable parts or zones (tracks, roofs).

(TO BE CONTINUED)

THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA IN THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT

REGIONAL PRECEDENTS

The Organic Structure of Social Power in the Arabic Countries.

The internal relations of the families and the groups of local families and clans, are characterized by incorporating into them certain rites, rules, attitudes and taboos. This set of «social procedures» gather, value and quantify his vital needs, his primary emotions and his beliefs. The Moslem religion is followed in the wide geopolitical zone that we treat. Almost all they are of the sunni branch. This accepts the Koran and the Sunna of the Prophet, his facts and sayings (hadithes) due gathered by the disciples, as the orthodox sources of Allah’s revelation to the men. The differences between they reside in the rigor with which they examine and accept the sources of the Sunna. And this assumption of the Islam forms a part of the social inculturation, affirmation and cohesion of these groups.

The social code, which receives different names according to the countries, establishes certain rights for the individual and demands of him certain social duties, towards the family, the clan and the tribe. The disputes on women, gold or valid money and lands are in the origin of the sustaiined hatreds between the tribes. And they must be sustained up to avenging the perceived affront. The own fragility and weakness of the society demands the appearance of the protective values. These might be the hospitality, the loyalty, the friendship, the scorn to the foreigns, the revenge of affronts and hurts, the individual and collective honor. Each of them protects and enlarges in some measure the human group. The relations are interpersonal, in the areas of the family, the clan and the region. They are projected by the opportunity, the nearness, the exchange of goods and the relation. And they become strong with the loyalty, the respect of the accepted procedures and the time of treatment. And depending on the accumulation of these elementary successive acts. The hospitality takes implicit the reciprocity, when one travels, is alone and is not aggressive. This sometimes is perfected by the endowment of an escort to the traveler in insecure zones. The violation of this «escort» by an assault supposes a serious affront for the clan that provided her. The loyalty between the members of the group, for very unstable that is sometimes, cohesions the group. The honor inflates the autoesteem and the appearance before everybody. The revenge, in absence of a real institutional justice, looks for punishment and then repair of the hurts and affronts real or perceived. The scorn of the foreigns not adorned with good qualities or menacing to the group, seeks to prevent them “a priori” his integration in him, as a form of passive defense. The tied friendship tightens the bouns with the equals and the group. If someone joins these elementary groups, it is an object of loyalty and friendship in a personal way. These values would increase by his action, modes and personal behavior.

TWO SELFISH «ALLIES»…

The natural tribal authority is organic, born from himself, structured in his familiar units or social cells. The smaller and isolated is the social group, the power of his natural authority will be the more moderating and of integration, acting as the first between the «equal ones». In these cases, the meeting of the active members (men, hunters) of the clan in assemblies, yurgas, etc., have the supreme and decision-making value. And it is sanctioning of the deviant or solvent conducts to the group. The local chiefs are like favoured negotiators with the different regional and national governments. They enjoy a personal authority more than institutional. And, sometimes, his decisions can be ignored by the adult males, if they are not confirmed by these assemblies. The more be perfected and advance towards the exterior the society, modernizing and being complicated, the power of this authority will become strong and grow and will spread in economic and political areas of action.

This natural tribal structure gives the real practical value and sense to the loyalties and the mundane interests, always relative and still opportunists, of the Arabs. Graphical, paradoxical (for going abreast against the educations of the Islam) and still excessively, we might express it this way: «My tribe and I, against the world; my clan and I against the tribe; my family and I, against the clan; my brother and I, against the family; I, against my brother».

The acelerated Development of the Syrian Civil war.

From the pacific multitudinous manifestations for almost the whole country that was realized at the beginning of 2011, the social revolt has given an important qualitative step in his development and extension. It has become more radical and has «taken the weapons» against the regime. Extending his «social commotion waves» all over the country, to all the participants, to the neighboring countries and up to the foreign powers

Far there already are the manifestations of the young opponents, which did not see to the violence as an acceptable option of national liberation. Nevertheless, some analysts defend that the illegal executions of soldiers, policemen and civilians sympathetic with the regime began almost from the beginning of the widespread protests. And others attributes this radicalization of positions to the selective and progressive repression of the regime.

  PESHMERGAS IN KOBANI (A CANADIAN VOLUNTEER)

To this joins the increasing islamization of the armed opposition. Initially the manifestations were beginnig from mosques or central places. And then, worship was begun to give to the «martyrs» and using the islamist rhetoric in the communications and declarations and in the name of the irregular revolt groups. From the shout in the first videoes hung on the Network or sent outside the country «the people wants the fall of the regime», they have passed to «the people wants the proclamation of the Yihad by the ulemas and mufties». This raising is not lay. It is a raising led by more or less practicing Muslims of the Islam. Lay is the corrupt and greedy regime of the Assad, where the not Islamic confessions were respected and protected. And that has lost the aptitude to defend and to represent the people. This is the “social justification” of supporting and respecting an exclusive dictatorship, almost always dynastic, in exchange for his class privileges.

IRAQIS TRAINING TO FIGHT HOUSE TO HOUSE.

The government of the Assad and his political equipment have left forming a lot of time ago a socialist and national regime. Since they neither represent, neither defend, nor integrate the particular and collective interests of his nation. Now they only lead and protect the members of the wide social religious oligarchy, that monopolizes and distributes in different degrees the institutional, social and economic power of Syria. The Syrian regime is crystallized, without fluency, so much socially, as ideologically and administratively. And is turning into the rind of a «political social fruit», withered, sterile and empty.

For the schemes of the foreign, calm television viewers in his houses at many Km. from the violent facts, the combats are ferocious. But it resides in that to the enemy who tries to kill or to mutilate you from covered and reinforced positions, first he is softened by the direct heavy fire, you cut his retreat occupying a crossing street beyond and his defensive position is assaulted from the ceiling or from the soil, by successive assured bounds, if he has managed to last so much (very strange). Unfortunately here are of no use the romantic resources of «shoot you first, gentlemen rebels». To obtain the decision and to come to the end, the better thing is to show the teeth from the beginning and acting with determination. Though neither the military men nor the rebels have the doctrine or the experience of the urban fighting…

THE INTERVENTION OF THE FOREIGN POWERS

American Initiatives against the EI.

In September, 1914, the USA coordinated a global alliance of western and Arabic nations to stop militarily the sweeping advance of the Islamic State, before the urgent request of help of Iraq. For it, the allies would not deploy combat ground units. It has passed a year of daily dedication to the air selective bombardment, producing more than 7 thousand air attacks to him over individual targets in Iraq and Syria (combat and of heavy fire positions, command or communication buildings, vehicles, training centers) and a vague number of effective falls, between 5 and 8 thousand militants of the EI, with diverse degrees of training and implication. But, the conceptual and operational coherence of the air allied action, has not managed «to debilitate, nor to degrade, and not even, to destroy», paraphrasing the president Obama, the Islamic State with his actions. Which has counter-attacked lately in al-Ramadi, the Anbar’s capital, removing, by the fault of a sandstorm, the glorious armed forces of Iraq; in Palmira, establishing a projection towards Damascus; in Deir ez Zour, occupying the capital and surrounding the Syrian military forces deployed at the west; in Hanaka, disputing the great frontier northeastern Syrian province to the peshmergas of the YPG and relieving the pressure that the EI receives at the east of Alepo and on Raqqa.

MR. ASHTON CARTER.

The artillery, the aviation, with his heavy and precise fires, allow to blind, disturb, neutralize and still to destroy the groun enemy, in increasing order of hurts and effects. The heavy fires support the ground forces, in an employment of combined arms. And to beat the fortifications, the positions of combat, of heavy fire and of antitanks, the enemy bolts, perpendicularly established to the own advance, and the enemy reserves in the different levels of action and to realize the fight counter batteries. The ground forces are those that occupy, clean, clear and keep in the own hands, the attacked enemy positions. Frustrating the reappearances of the enemy between the rocky debris or the nearby bushes and rejecting forceful and definitively his local counter shocks and his more deliberate counterattacks.

THE HEROE OF THE GREAT TASK, GEN. JAMES TERRY…

In the summer of 2014, the United States began to train to Syrian sunnis young volunteers to integrate them, at a beginning, in the weaken and demoralized Free Syrian Army (FSA). His tasks were to attack so much the military forces of Bashar the-Assad, the National Army of Syria (NAS), as the salafists yihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in the Syrian zones where they were deployed. Reinforcing, this way, the order of battle of the FSA. The training fields of this light irregular infantry were placing in the oriental center of Jordan. Before the recruits’ acceptance, it was established an ideological political filter, directed to detecting possible yihadists or governmental volunteers and that turned out to be a fiasco, for its results. In this training of several weeks also took part, according to the sources, France and Great Britain, and even, apparently, Israeli commands. The initial plan was to manage to train up approximately 5 thousand men, using several batches of recruits. But the attempt got reduced to graduate from the » boots camp» around 3 thousand men, of which, the majority simply deserted. And the rest of the mediocrely formed joined different radical rebel armed groups in Syria.

IRAQIS WILL FIGHT FINE AGAINST THE WIND…

Another attempt of forming Syrian soldiers of lay or moderate ideology was based on a training plan of «up to 15 thousand Syrians voluntaries » on Turkey. Other sources talk of forming 5 thousand soldiers. But both numbers turn out to be ridiculous for the magnitude and complexity of the tasks that would entrust them and for his poorly «combat specific capacity», which would say the expert colonel Trevor N. Dupuy. The date of ending of his «plan» never was ventured by the American oficials in charge. In view of the «deficiencies» previously detected, a very high level of exigency was established in the selection of the men to forming. As consequence of it, only a few dozens of volunteers have been trained since then. And we think that they possess a conviction and motivation flaccid and blurry. It is of indicating the case of the «so called» 30 ª division of the FSA, formed by less than 80 soldiers and that entered Alepo’s zone on July, 2015. In less than one week of «operations», 12 were kidnapped and 18 were hurt, by the irregular of the Front al-Nusrah. It was the first group or batch of Syrian rebels that Washington instructed in the neighboring Turkey. Also was get prisoner by the yihadists, the commander of 30 ª division, Naim Hassan. Al-Nusrah also attacked his barrack at the north of Aleppo, and the rest of the divisional force, around 30 terrified soldiers, ran to sheltering in Afrín, a Kurdish enclave in the north of the province. We think, simply, that the rebels trained by the USA refused to face the salafists yihadists of the al-Qaeda’s franchise and simply broke and got dispersed.

NOBODY IS SHOOTING AT THEM…

This way, the ground forces with could count the USA and his Coalition in this geopolitical zone, to attack the EI in his controlled territory, are: the Iraqi army, who in the spring of 2014, before the Great Disaster, was possessing 200 thousand theoretical men in his battle order; the peshmergas of the Syrian YPG and of the autonomous Kurdish government of Iraq, and the sectarian shiis Iraqi militias, theoretically obedient to the government of Baghdad, but trained and guided by the Iranians. The Iraqi peshmergas received permission of Turkey to cross his territory to attack from the north Kobane’s frontier city, occupied by the IS. Managing to liberate it in a joint effort, including the allied aviation. But, in February, 2015, they were unable to at least harass the «wreckers escorted squads» of the Islamic State, who were demolishing Nimrud’s archaeological deposit, in Niniveh’s province, placed half a way between Mosul and Erbil, his capital.

IN AMERLI, BEFORE THE SUNNIS VILLAGES’ MASACRE, AUGUST 2014…

The shiis militias were activated from the summer of 2014 by the general Qassem Suleimani, sent urgently by Teheran, in support of the shii government of al-Maliki. To compose a rapid containment dike to the advance of the sunnis of the IS. After Mosul’s capture and his appearance in force for all the north and center of Iraq in June and July, 2014. And to realize the enormous task of giving these militias, supported by units of the Revolutionary Guard of Iran (the pashdaran: the army of the guardians of the Islamic revolution), a sufficient action unity and a combat motivation. And to try, by measured, short and successive steps, to be defeating and displacing the yihadistas of the IS, in hard combats, which will be fundamentally urban.

Russia takes an Initiative in Middle East.

From around the beginning of July, 2015, the Russians have been increasing his military direct presence in Syria. His armed forces have principally established in the Latakia, covering Tarsus’s surroundings, his only naval base in the Mediterranean. They include fighterbombers, assault and of troops movement and of rescue helicopters, not driven aircraft of exploration and bombardment and the ground corresponding units of support and of security. And now, from the ends of September, they are bombarding the positions of the armed rebels to al-Assad’s regime, at the southwest of Aleppo; in the Latakia; close to Hama, Homs and Damascus, in the Orontes basin; in Raqqa and other enclaves of the IS, in the north-east of the country and in the great Syrian eastern desert. A spokesman of the Russian Defense Department declared that «they would not indefinitely operate there» and that they were calculating that they would need «approximately 100 days» of air assaults. The Kurdish peshmerrgas of the YPG, the national allies of the USA, deployed by the whole center eastern border with Turkey, have not been bothered. Between those who have suffered his unexpected assaults are the irregular forces of the Front al-Nusrah for the Liberation of the Peoples of the East, the national subsidiary of al-Qaeda. That are so dangerous and ideologically radical as the muyahidines of the Islamic State, but less cruel and less militarily capable.

THE USELESS AND SECTARIAN IRAQ’S EX-PRIME MINESTER.

To the reproaches of some western countries against this intervention, Putin and Lavrov argued that the «multinational Coalition of the 60 allies» was bombarding the salafists yihadists from September, 2014, without having for it a mandate of the UNO. Sure that Obama’s coalition was attacking in Iraq, with the theoretical «previous daily permission» of the Iraqi government. In fact, the four stars’ general James Terry, who is the commander of the American forces in Iraq from November, 2014, acts as an undeserved speaker for his high graduation, with the government and the Iraqi discredited armed forces and militias. But the assaults on Syria of the allies were not possessing the consent of his regime and were operationally going to supporting the peshmergas and debilitating the IS. Let’s stand out that the Russians, as the mentioned leaders have justified themselves, » are very polite and are operating in Syria with invitation of his government».

  OF WHOM ARE THEY LAUGHING…?

It is of remembering that Syria was during decades the allied in the Middle East of the USSR, and today of Russia. And that Syria was also considered during decades a “terrorist antiwestern state”. Of the style of North Korea. Literally flooding the whole geopolitical Islamic region with the assault rifles AK and the grenade-launchers of hollow load RPG, for the guerrilla groups of “popular libration”…

Russia wants to recover his international protagonism and respect. In spite of his diminished demographic, economic and structural capacities and his democratic and political loss of prestige, gained with the conflict of Crimea and Ukraine. With the military intervention in Syria, Putin attacks the root of the problem of the fled Syrians: that is the pressure of a cruel and long civil war on them. And it allows him to calm the Europeans with the short-term containment of the massive and constant invasion of those. Looking for an attenuation of the economic sanctions of the European Union to the government of Putin, for his shameless actions in Ukraine for more than year and a half.

Russia also supports and gives a strong accolade to the Syrian regime with his intervention. After 4 and a half years of war, the NSA is exhausted and impoverished by a bleeding of more than 60 thousand dead men, suffering continuous desertions towards the different rebel groups (from the FSA to the yihadists groups) and having great difficulties to mobilize recruits. The soldiers in ranks in April, 2011, if still are suitable, have not been licensed from the service. The militias sent by Hezbola’s chiíes in 2014 to support them have not been sufficient to change the course of the war against al-Assad. The government already did not have sufficient men to realize a few effective operations of counterinsurgency, against the armed rebels who were harassing it from numerous and different fronts or «assault strips» in the whole Syrian geography.

Obama said: «the moral leadership is a much more powerful weapon than the brute force». This is true, when the concerned speakers possess and exhibit the same civil virtues that a democrat. But, when it is a question of beasts, of selfish, of madmen, of unscrupulous opportunists, of peoples that still perceive the force as the instrument of the strongest, this does not serve. It does not matter in the social level in which they are. The leadership is to convince, to direct with the example, to attract the persons towards yourself, for pure pleasure and affinity. To realize a joint labor in benefit of the social group to which one belongs.

And this social role has been left by Obama. And also some time ago is ignored, by carelessness or disability, the European Union. That is not waited in “these fights in these homes”. But, the “political thing” has horror and abomina of the «emptinesses», of the «absences». And, this way, the opportunist of Putin has been attracted by the suction of both, anxious to lead another more international episode. For which his people, since the first of 2014, endorses it proudly. To compensate his impoverished national revenue and his diminishing demography.

The intervention of Iran in this Middle East conflict.

At the eastern end of the Middle East is the mumified Shii theocracy of the ayatollahs. These, when they want important and rapid results against his neighbors, use the commands or units of the Republican Guard (the Pashdaran). Which is training, equipping and supporting by diverse ways his coreligionists allies of Syria and of Iraq. The Republican Guard is overlapped in the Iranian regime, forming the unconditional and effective military wing of the Islamic Republic of Iran. She, as the Egyptian military men, possess an economic own very wide support. That guarantees them the operational independence and that generously rewards her dedication and loyalty in the fulfillment of his tasks and missions. The “al-Quds brigades” are a special elite group of he Republican Guard. He devotes himself to the espionage and to realize military actions as “deep incursion forces”. And they exhibit the whole capacities panoply for the surreptitious or dirty war between enemy nations. His commander in chief, the general of division 58-year-old Qassem Suleimani, is included in the list of the most sought terrorists by the USA. A detail: the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ali Jamenei, considers him to be a «living martyr of the revolution». Whom he incorporated in 1980, whith 23 years, in the incipient Republican Guard.

«YOU WILL BE A FATHER FOR HIM. HE WILL BE A SON FOR YOU».

After the advance of the Islamic State by the north and center of Iraq and the call of the Iraqi shii ayatollah Ali Sistani to the fight against him, Suleimani was sent by Teheran to activate the shiis militias. That were dispersed after the sectarian war. And Suleimani has obtained in a few months the vertebration of all the Iraqi militias against the IS. It has been the IS that who has extracted from the «shades and underground of the State» the general Suleimani. At the end of August, 2014 he appeared in Amerli, Saladino’s province, where it forced the yihadistas to move back. Iran immediately distributed photos of his general operating. But, after the setback of the IS, the shiis militias devastated dozens of sunnis villages of the zone, as collaborators or sympathizers of the enemy. Which is not a good omen for an evolution without sectarisms of the conflict in Iraq.

Likewise, units of the Pashdaran are also operating in Syria against the sunnis enemies os Bashar al-Assad. Reinforcing the Syrian National Army (SNA) and the weared out and insufficent Hezbola iregular forces.

THE FIGHTING AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAK AND SYRIA III.

(CONTINUATION)

Between the minor international branches of the salafist jihadist terror, that also have recognized the supreme authority of al-Baghdadi, emphasize the al-Shabab Somali militias. This is an excretion of the extinct Union of the Islamic Courts, which spreads over the south and east of the country. Al-Shabab follows a strategy of generalized terror, that resembles that practiced by Boko Haram against the black Christians of the fulani and yoruba etnias in the provinces of the North-East of Nigeria, where he has the bases. From time to time and with increasingly sickening efficiency, the al-Shabab bands penetrate into the neighboring Kenya, even they have come up to Uganda, looking for Christians «hunting trophies». And this in spite of the USA commands assaults with limited aims, directed by his regional command for Africa (Africom), which has forces in Uganda. And of the presence in Somalia of an important African pacification military force, that forms the Mission of the African Union in Somalia (Amisom), principally integrated by Ethiopians and Kenyans troops.

The Evolution of the Conflict.

After the retreat of the DAESH of Kobane, the jihadists have again begun to  kidnap Christians in Hasaka’s Syrian province, in the Jabur valley, a tributary of the high Euphrates. The attrition air raids over opportunity targets or locally supporting and with different fortune, the Syrian or Iraqi peshmergas, as in Tikrit, the Sinyar mount, Kobane or Mosul, and the successes achieved by these, based on time, enormous caution and great effort, finally have done notch in the military capacities of the ISSIL. That now seek to reinforce against the bombardments and the ground attacks and to renew his varied financing sources. In these moments, the influence zones of the Syrian jihadists are in the basin of the Euphrates and in the mountains of the north of Syria. And they try to create them in the Orontes wide basin, with incursions in the Latakia.

The Christians captured as sheep, have in the hands of the ISSIL two hard and exchangeable destinations: to serve as hostages, looking for the rescue price, preferably paid by international organizations or to be used as human shields of the positions, fortifications, formation and training centers, mosques and marching columns of the jihadists against the aircrafts of 60 Allied nations of the Americans against the DAESH. This is the acronym of his name «al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham «, that use the majority of the Arabic countries to refer to the salafist jihadist group that operates in Iraq and Syria. And whose use allows not to call them State in the European languages.

Around the Jabur and up to the population of Qamishli, in the mountains of the Syrian Kurdistan, the jihadists are gathering hundreds of Christians, clustered by families and neighbors. To serve to his harmful and genocidal aims. Father Yatroun Colliana, from The Lebanon, has denounced, how not, in Naharnet’s local newscast, the passiveness of International Community, that limits herself to silently look in the face of the violations to the local Christian community. Finally, we will indicate that are the Arabic local chiefs, the negotiating intermediaries with the humanitarian organizations, the Christian Assyrians, the Kurdish peshmergas and the local self-defense militias, which are like policemen, only capable for labors of vigilance, parade and demonstration.

And now, in the middle of March, the Pope Francisco has not could less that to support the use of the civilized military force against these dressed in black vermin, which offend even their own religion. We will indicate, also, that, in the last months, several dozens of American former military men and civilians have gone to Iraq or to Syria, to help the Kurdish or Christian minorities chased by the ISSIL. Concretely, between December and February a small group of former soldiers trained a «battalion» of Christian Assyrians at the west of the Iraqi Kurdistan. They were approximately 300 civilians, who were joining the Christian self-defense of the territory forces and who received a basic formation in techniques and military tactics. Four voluntary American «advisers» already returned to home, as reports 35-year-old Matthew VanDyke. «We are where the governments fail. We need neither possess the vote of the Congress, nor to surrender to his limitations. And we can work very rapidly», concludes him.

At the beginning of June, 2014, the ISSIL threw a strategic offensive in Iraq, destined to consolidate his dispersed Iraqi enclaves (al-Ramadi, Faluyah, etc.) of the northern and center provinces in an only and extensive territorial unit. After assaulting Samarra, burst into Mosul and threw an «area action» in the provinces of Saladin and Diyala, in which the terrorists also appealed to their «sworn suicides». The assault of the ISSIL to Mosul added to the successively happened in several populations of Nineveh’s province. Confirming with all this the military and organizational capacities and the aggressiveness every day more clear of the salafist imperialist group and the governance and the leadership of his leader, Abu Baker al-Baghdadi. The expansion of the territory that the ISIS controls, so much in Iraq as Syria, are the accomplishment of the intention of al-Baghdadi of displacing the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, not as chief of al-Qaeda, but as the authentic successor of Osama Ben Laden in the modern jihadism.

The Middle East is the most convulsed and burning geopolitical region of our world. And for his nearness, energetic importance and forming a communications hub between three continents, is specially transcendent for us. In this region of the Southwest of Asia are solving several armed and parallel conflicts. Some, as the so called Arabic Israeli conflict extends for more than 66 years, three generations, between the Muslims, singularly the Arabs, and Israel, for a minuscule chunk of highly wished land. Which is a war between States, independently of his functional, religious and social asymmetry. It is also the » open war» between the Shiite and Sunnis branches of the Islam, some incredible «separated conflicting brothers», for the political social and religious hegemony in this religion. This makes concrete nowadays in the Near East in the civil wars of Syria and Iraq.

THE PASDARAN DISPLAY THEIR FLAG.

At the eastern end of the Southwest of Asia is the anti western Shiite theocracy of the mummied ayatollahs. These, when want important and rapid results against his neighbors, use commands or units of the Republican Guard. Also, they are called the Pasdaran, Persian for Guards. Which is training, equipping and supporting in diverse ways his allies co-religionists of Syria and Iraq. The Republican Guard is overlapped in the Iranian regime, forming the unconditional and effective military wing of the Islamic Republic of Iran, acting as the modern “Immortal of the Shas of Persia». She, as the Egyptian military men, possess an own very wide support economic. That guarantees them the operational independence and that generously rewards their dedication and loyalty in the fulfillment of his tasks and missions. The al-Quds brigades are a special elite group of the Republican Guard. He devotes to the espionage and to realize military actions with incursion forces. He exhibits the whole panoply of capacities for the surreptitious or dirty war between enemy nations. His commander in chief is the general of division 57-year-old Qassem Suleimani, of middle stature, beard and white hair, and is included in the list of the terrorists most looked for by the USA. A detail: the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ali Jamenei, considers him to be a «living martyr of the revolution», to which he incorporated in 1.980, when was 23 years old, in an incipient Republican Guard.

HE WILL BE A FATHER FOR YOU AND YOU WILL BE A SON FOR HIM…

After the advance of the Islamic State in June of 2.014 in the north and center of Iraq and the call of the ayatollah chií Ali Sistani to the fight against him, Suleimani was sent by Teheran to Iraq, to support the activation of the shiits militias, dispersed after the sectarian war. This way, Suleimani has obtained in the latter months the unity of action of all the Iraqi militias against the IS. It has been the IS that who extracted general Suleimani from the shades. And now he appears and there conforms the ideological military clash between the Sunniss followers of the Drawn Sword of the Islam and the foreign mercenaries of the al-Quds Brigades of Iran and the Shiites militias, that they encourage, support and train. At the end of August he appeared in Amerli, Saladino’s province, where he forced the jihadists to move back. Iran immediately distributed photos of his general operating. After the setback of the ISSIL, the shiies militias devastated dozens of Sunniss villages of the zone, as collaborators or sympathizers with the enemy.

Tikrit is a city of approximately 270 thousand habitants, which lengthened embraces both Tigris‘ banks, where from it takes his name, at approximately 140 Kms. from Baghdad. It is the capital of Saladino’s province and was occupied at the end of the June‘s offensive of the IS. In March, Suleimani threw to his conquest with a combined force of 30 thousand men, formed by disconstructed Iraqi military men, who contribute with heavy weapons, Shiites militias (now called Popular Units) and the Anbar‘s Sunniss militias, enemies of the IS, and supporting forces of the Iranian Pasdaran. It is not easy that the EI keeps there more than 5 thousand men for a rigid defense, with which Suleimani’s victory was sung. The Shiites attacked on March 6 at the north of the city and by Saturday, the 13th, already only were resisting 3 principal neighborhoods and a luxury urbanization. The Coalition did not give air support to these operations until the end.

ENCOURAGING THE MEN AND POSING FOR THE NEWS MEANS…

The treatment that they give to Saladino’s Sunnis and of other areas will be an acid test to avoid another sectarian civil war in Iraq. It is not lawful to demand a loyalty due to the civilians, if the authorities are not capable of protecting them from the abuses of his enemies. The secretary of the Army of the Mahdi paramilitary organization, the militias of the clergyman Muqtada al-Sadr, Hadi the-Amari, asked his militias that were trying to save the habitants of Tikrit and that take care of them. But, Sadam Hussein’s extravagant mausoleum, placed near Tikrit, was reduced to a heap of rubbles. Saudi Arabia already has protested for this arrival in force of Shiites militias supported by the Iranian Guard, and the prince Saud al-Faisal, his Secretary of State, has accused Iran of militarily meddling » to take control of the country». Also the Council (Sunni) of Cooperation of the Gulf (Persian), formed by Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar (Bahrain, which is Shiite, does not integrate it), has protested for the entry of foreign ground sectarian military forces in the Iraqi conflict. Iran, for his part, does not conceal his participation in the recovery of the Iraqi forces and constantly transmits photos of the general Suleimani in activity. Before this intervention, the general only was appearing in public photos taken during his prayers.

The Destruction of the Bases of the EIISL.

The areas of this great geopolitical region lack in general of concealments and natural covers, in the shape of forests, extensive bushes and mountains. This does that the only refuges and temporary stays for the rebels bands are in the villages and populations and the nearby grounds. Which are gathering, forming elongated rows, which luminous are appreciate in the night from the sky, along the rivers, which relieve his thirst, and theirs banks. For their defense and cover they have to disperse for them, forming «mujahidins squads» of not more than 35 or 40 men. This group is the major one that can be coherently led by a local «sheikh». Throughout this environment are spies eyes. And the guerrilla movements are realized in view of all. In addition, not all the populations are defensible against the powerful military means, not even the rebels have the intention of doing so, in a rigid defense.

These bases are the geographical locations indefinitely controlled by the jihadists. They physically found on the bases to reform, consolidate, train and increase their forces. From them, operating as their principal «departure bases», they throw incursions and assaults with limited aim on their enemy, seeking to scourge or to expel him from the immediate territory that he occupies. The creation of these jihadists permanent cores depends on the measure in which the armed enemy is defeated and expelled from them, with consistency and certain duration. From the bases are carried out the captivation of sympathizers and militants of the revolutionary group, which is scarcely effected among the settlers, but, in its most, they already come motivated and decided from out. And this is like that though a part of their effort in the area of action and propaganda is realized producing videos, interviews, gazettes and papers for audio-visual wireless varied means: the edition, the production and the emission is located in the bases. In the bases, the socio politics action of the ISSIL is as intense or more than the formation and the military training of » mujaidines of Allah». She is necessary to establish and assure the motivation and the loyalty of the fightiers to the jihadist cause in the hostile mean that surrounds and harasses them.

The salafists jihadists groups have failed in active and firmly joining to a social wide group, which gives coverage and permanent impulse to their «social religious imperialistic movement». Their «violence catechizing» allows them to be mental prepared for the glorious and in peace death, and, even for the suicide, in the accomplishment of their military actions and goals. But this insane sermon is not a method for the conversion of social groups. And there is a fundamental reason for it: his radical «creed» lacks possibilities of acceptance, victory and permanency between the all masses, out of the needs in the temporary vicissitudes of a war. The jihadists groups act with an unnecessary and indiscriminate brutality, which discredits them before the Islam, the Koran and the Sunna or Islamic tradition, gathered in the Hadithes or Mohammed’s «comments and facts» wrote. This lack of religious legitimacy, provokes the absence of venerable, respected and pious ulemas and muftis at their side. His supposed «Islamic original ideology» is only based on a few favorable verses of the Koran (this has approximately 4.200 verses, which varied with the versions; the only exact and precise are his total of Arab letters) and on some historical favorable facts and not on the integrity and the intention of the message of the Islam. This socio emotional withdrawal from the local masses unfailingly does that the support of the neighbors to the occupants terrorist groups is involuntary, not attractive, always interested and dismotivated. With it the bases of the ISSIL lose their function of education of the settlers masses, to catch, create and incorporate new volunteers and active sympathizers to the groups; to practice and perfect the methods of action, education and propaganda; to assure to the active groups a strategic protective and received rear, in which they should not need to also be in guard towards those of inside.

The bases are social military forms with «regular and firm structure» of the jihadists. They present continuous and numerous targets to the action of the heavy means of their enemies, the aviation and artillery. Some are “opportunity targets», as all kinds of movements of the terrorists and the discovery of new positions. And others are «hard targets», known or to be reconnoitered: roar or railroad infrastructures, stores, refuges, meeting or command or communications centers, war material warehouses, infantry, heavy fire and defense against aircraft combat positions, observatories, goods transport, crude oil distilling, etc.

Traditionally, the guerrilla or rebellious bases have been protected from the assault of the military men by the distance, as in China; the inaccessibility (mountains, jungles) or the difficulty of the fighting forms (the fight inside a village presents immense secret islands to the sights and protected by all classes of walls, which are reinforced by their partial destruction and the debris accumulation). These jihadists bases are the only substantial, still and definite target that the terrorist bands offer. Where to be able to make them feel all the superior and available military power. Where it is possible to isolate them by sectors, to beat them by parts, without them could collaborate in the decided defense plan. Nor to flee, if the village siege is firm. And where they might act, if they had another spirit and other motivations, which neither offer the trainings, nor the military equipments, the peshmergas, Shiites and Sunnis militias and the national armies of Iraq and Syria.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

AN UNSUCCESSFUL AND DEGRADED CALIPHATE III.

(FINAL)

The Islamic State of Syria, Iraq and Levante (southwest of Asia)

Al-Qaeda makes to the Sunnis great part of the difficult, despicable and awkward «fieldwork». And her existence and threat is a trick to play by the Sunnis. Always they can agree with the Shiite government to exercise more or less control over al-Qaeda in some areas. This was the function for general Petraeus re-turned them from 2007 into self-defense forces, the Sahwa militias (of the Sunni resurgence). Strategy that followed without counting with the government and paying the Americans the salaries of these appeased militias. With it, as only antiwestern visible enemy stayed the AQI and next the Islamic State of Iraq, that is to say al-Qaeda. The area of operations is as arid and difficult that that of Syria. The «groups» movements can be detected from the sky and for many eyes of chance observers. The targets of the «punctual assaults with explosives» are the mosques, the markets, the peregrinations, the concentrations of civilians and military men and Iraqi policemen and the frequent passages or in mass of the Shiites. In many of these places always are several members of the same family. The Network uses the uncontrolled violence and taken to her unnecessary, immodest and insanity extremes, not hesitating to sacrifice their «suicide muhaiddins». That will never have «expectations of life and promotion» within the terrorist organization. So, the Network betrays even their «more effective militants», as demonstrates the correlation of caused hurts and suffered losses.

And this is not all. These “fatherland sellers” terrorists are the principal persons in charge of the genocide (systematic extermination of a collectivity for reasons of religion, race or ideology) that the Christians suffer in Syria and Iraq. And that are provoking their massive exodus, probably without return, from their native lands. Where they were living and working from several centuries before the Islam flags were appearing in these Christian lands. Only a brushstroke, probably already forgotten. On Sunday, the 31st of October, 2010 the cathedral.of Our Lady of the Perpetual Help of Baghdad was assaulted during the celebration of the Eucharist by a group of the AQI. Blowing, shooting and throwing grenades, they attacked the present faithfuls and celebrators, in a delirious drunkenness of blood and horror. And shot the crucified Christ, who was presiding. Dozens of persons, major and children, and two priests, remained died in the sacred place, sacrilegiously profaned. This way, on following December 14, the cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Roman Congregation for the Oriental Churches, had to dedicate again the cathedral to the divine worship. It was the response of the Christian faith to the aggression of the subhuman assassins. The cardinal breathed the community to live through a response of love to all the Iraqis, under the protection of the Virgin of the Perpetual Help. In the first letter to the Corinthians, 1 can be read: » do not you know that you are God’s temples? So, that who profanes His temple, God will destroy him». The Justice belongs to God, the Wise , the Merciful, the Compassionate, which knows the deeds of all men and they will be pay for them the Day of the Resurgence…

At the beginning of 2014, the forces of the ISSIL invaded Faluya. «Already there is no presence of the Iraqi State in Faluya. The police and the army left the city. Al-Qaeda has taken off the Iraqi flags, has burned them and hung her own flags on all the buildings», exaggerating narrated a local journalist to “The Washington Post”. At the end of the Friday central prayer, the 3rd of January, followed even in the street by thousands of Muslims, dozens of jihadists, with the «black banners embroidered with the Shahada» of al-Qaeda, appeared in the downtown, to proclaim the establishment of an «Islamic emirate» in Faluya. The Shahada is the profession of faith of the Islam and his alone recitation turns the neophyte into Muslim. It is his Islamic personal and intimate baptism, without necessary presence of an imam. The Shahada is sometimes «adorned» with a cutlass extended to all the long of his text. Al-Ramadi is also partially occupied. There, the Government troops killed on Friday the local commander of the ISSIL, Abu Abdelrahman al-Bagdadi. In the combats of this day in these two cities of Anbar’s province, died more than 100 military men and jihadists.

The combats began on Monday, the 30th of December in al-Ramadi. There, the forces of Baghdad devastated a camp of anti-government protest, raised at the end of 2012 and considered as “al-Qaeda’ barracks», and untied an islamist counter-offensive, that they were not waiting. The march 2 years ago of the American forces, created a dangerous deterioration of the Iraq capacity to face the irregular insurgence, in his double aspect of military fight and civil action of development, education and politics. And this encouraged the Sunnis militias in general and the jihadists of al-Qaeda especially. The Sunni Iraqi minority is frustrated by her loss of rights and freedoms at hands of the Shiite government of the prime minister al-Maliki. The last elections dedicated the «democratic» right of the Shiite majority over her. And «Sunni Resurgence» of general Petreaus, is already without «stimuli». And the lack of perspectives to obtain civil advances in the negotiations with the majority, returned the latent and bellicose Sunni’s «local and regional forces of self-defense» to the active rebel rows.

The operational strategy of the jihadists groups centers in never get involve by the Army in combats lost in advance. Their technologies and tactics are the constant and beforehand mobility; the dispersion and the infiltration in the urban fighting, going forward in a flexible and wearing out defense, yielding space; the small, dispersed and more or less simultaneous or sequential actions in an area; the staggered flight; the fight with limited aims and in advantageous temporary conditions; the systematic abandon of positions, forcing once and again the enemy to deploy and prepare. They can win for the ISSIL the necessary time to survive in Iraq.

In the temporary occupations of large populations, they extend their defensive positions beyond the necessary in a conventional defense, covering a great surface. Their «delay points» are diffuse, disguise concealed and cover. So are imperceptible for the strangers. It is necessary to enter the houses to detect perforated walls and to find passages under a furniture or a carpet. The destruction that generates the heavy vague fire, reinforces their combat positions, surrounding them with debris that divide and impede the enemy accesses, except when are reached by a direct impact. The resistance nests have more importance in this form of fight, because the occupation of the defense zone is more tenuous, they cannot strengthen too much the positions, the sights are more short and exist numerous approximation routes. They depend on the delay points and to them return if the nests are invaded or destroyed. Numerous alternative positions exist. This defense structure allows to deceive the assaulting enemy about the forward limit of the defense position, her real extension, the limits of the sectors that form her, the interest of the rebel command in the defense of the zone and to disperse the attacker heavy fire.

AN UNSUCCESSFUL AND DEGRADED CALIPHATE.

The Islamic State of Syria, Iraq and Levante (southwest of Asia)

Ayman al-Zawahiri disallowed at the beginning of February 2014 the use of the brand “al-Qaeda» by the ISSIL. This organization was using that “seal” as «guarantee of terrorism, robbery and anti-Christian unrestraint», in her raids and assaults in these countries and Lebanon. The mentioned managing director of «Terror International Partners» or “The Network” (al-Qaeda, in Arab) reached his incompetence level on having replaced, by premature and unexpected death, the founder of the «Consortium for the Islamic complete Terror». Lacking the charisma and the capacity of action that had Osama Ben Laden, the direction of al-Qaeda is today more an ideological «think tank», that a respectable and respected «strategic conductive command».

The Geographical Stage of the Islamic State.

This organization acts in a band of 100 thousand Km2., that spreads over Iraq and Syria and that forms a rectangle of 800 km length for 125 km width, from Baghdad up to Aleppo and the mountains of the west center of Syria. The width changes along the tour. The pillaged territory begins in Faluya, approximately 60 km west of Baghdad, and includes the nearby cities of Habbaniya and al-Ramadi. And, following the Euphrates towards the northwest, it reaches the riverside cities of Haditha and Âna, before penetrating in Syria by Abu Kemal’s city. In the middle of the desert of the south and east of Syria, only relieved by the river, is the Dayr al-Zawr city. And continuing for the river, we come first to Raqqa, close to the mouth of the river Belikh in the Euphrates. And then to the al-Assad artificial lake n the great meander of the Euphrates, to continue up to Aleppo and the Kurdish mountains of the west center, in the border with Turkey.

It is not easy to move in these lands, which are infertile, beyond the irrigations of the Euphrates and the lake al-Assad, without leaving a «tactical fingerprint of the march». Here are advised and prescribed the Obama’s drones and the profuse collection of information and analyses of his agencies of espionage. That can carry out a continuous exploration and follow-up labor on the human movements in the whole zone we treat. This, completed with the ground labor of collaborators and allied forces, allows to create a sufficient and constant intelligence on the plans, deployments, concentrations of the ISSIL’s forces.

The grounds of this great area lacks concealments and natural covers, like forests, extensive bushes and mountains. This does that the only refuges and stays for the yihadists groups are the villages and populations along its backbone: the river Euphrates and his banks. For their defense and cover they have to disperse in them, forming one or several «squads of muhaidins» of not more than 35 or 40 men each one. This irregular group is the major one that can be coherently commended by a local «arraez» or chief, with poor discipline and military formation.

The Jihadists in Syria and their Contradictions.

The deep crisis of the Syrian civil society and the mismanagement produced by a civil war «in crescendo», that already extends for three years, causing approximately 140 thousand deads, have allowed the jihadists groups in the Near East to settle in Syria. Their refuge zones or influence areas are not big, nor continue. They are rather dispersed, nearby between them, but split. And none of them would resist the serious harassment of the NSA (the National Syrian Army) or of the principal rebel forces: the SFA (Syrian Free Army), the recent “Islamic Front”, the newest “Army of the Syrian Mujahidins” anti al-Qaeda or the Kurdish forces, defending their frontier zone with Turkey. The occupied zones form as amorphous and fluent in evolution «spots», from which they withdraw if the military enemy pressure is strong and continued. To establish in alternative, as nearby as possible, positions, which allow them to keep a minimal operational connection with other temporal regional positions.

Since they do not have enough rooting between the Syrian, to leave their temporal positions does not suppose to abandon their habitants to the military or rebel enemies. The habitants of the occupied areas are not gained for the “Holy War”. These settlers are frightened, threatened and, at least, neutralized, in order that they give cover, subsistence and support to the jihadists bands and neither hinder, nor importune them in their activities. Only those that cooperated with the «Enemies of the Jihad» can be in real danger before them. When the jihadists occupy a population, always prepare their evacuation routes towards the suburbs of her, and of retreat, from those to the meeting points established nearby. To go from them to regional positions of reception and/or of occupation.

When they are liberated of the jihadist presence, many habitants, specially in the small towns, try to temporarily flee and shelter in the nearby major populations. The reason is that the imperious, inconsiderate and striking despotism of the jihadists, is joined by the heavy fires of their enemies, used during the recapture of the population. Both the military men and the rebel major groups prefer to avoid their losses and hurrying the eviction of the jihadists, using the aviation (only the government) and the artillery, if they have her. Even, the free flight hollow load antitanks missiles RPG-7V type (the poor artillery), launched in double or triple volleys, cause a devastating effect In the masonry or adobe buildings. This already would serve to make withdraw towards the town interior the security jihadists forces from their advanced and of observation positions, placed in the limits of the town or in adjacent points. And already finally, the military men, very occupied now, usually move back in a short time, to realize other missions; so, the constant, fluid and even reversible character of the irregular military operations; then, the jihadists can return and purge responsibilities. Because of it, many civilians think: «once and not more».

In Syria have proliferated the «groups of supporters» or bands of al-Qaeda. The reasons of which they have not been articulated in an only terrorist Syrian group are different. One is the distance and the lack of control and power of al-Qaeda’s «central core». This is the tails of her operational decentralization, which “the Network” is proud of and with what threatens to reach her timid enemies for half planet. The communist parties, specialists verified in the capture of the Power, always exhibited an ideological, operational and military monolithic unity, proper of warlike filled with enthusiasm monks, in their so called «national liberation fights» for three continents. Another reason is that these «separated brothers» hate between them. The egalitarianism derived from the brotherhood in the salafists sunnies doctrines, soon originates between the «equal ones», a purulent and contagious infection of envy, ill-will and rancor. And vice versa, the existence of a capable, just hierarchy, respected and accepted in an organization, favors the emulation and the ascent of many of the most capable members. A reason is also that the ambition, the audacity, the overflowing aggressiveness and the lack of scruples of his arms chiefs, sheiks, local maliks and peeled leaders, only are equalized by their scanty formation, a poor interpretive knowledge of the Koran and the Sunna and their broken military knowledge. Their first bitter enemy is neither the Army, nor the SFA or the self-defense militias of Kurds, Alauits, Christians or Druzes, according to the regions. Their more hated and fearful enemies are the commands of other jihadists groups of Syria. Because they are the most related, their rivals for the control and command, their competitors for the direction of the jihadist movement in Syria. This way, the foolishness (lack in the knowledge that supposes them and they need) of all the jihadists groups leads them to want to distribute the booty of war, before having put, at least, in reasonable conditions to aspire to conquer it.

On the other hand, touching already the strategies of the 2 groups pro al-Qaeda in Syria, the Front al-Nusrah seeks to establish only an «Islamic radical emirate» in Syria. The ISSIL, born in the guerrilla warfares fights in Iraq after 2003, wants to create a more extensive salafist caliphate. And to install it, for the moment, in Syria and Iraq. Though it has already done punishment assaults to the Lebanese Shiites, in response to Hezbola’s support to al-Assad. The first answers and goes in parallel to al-Qaeda’s strategy of favoring the creation and the functioning of national or regional «representative cores». That from his large physical distance and with the structural laxity of the Network, could be controlled by her, as for orders, strategies and operations and the use of the «al-Qaeda brand». But, the ISSIL looks for a functional independence and, probably also ideological, with «head office core» of the Network. Since it would act as a «leader operational command» in a supranational zone, which might include the whole southwest of Asia. This way, an administrator and absentee high headquarters would immediately be in the way to the ISSIL.

Ayman al-Zawahiri confirmed, as we said, the link of the Front al.-Nusrah with al-Qaeda and denied any relation with the ISSIL. And he had to intervene in other occasions to deprive al-Bagdadi of authority. «The ISSIL must be abolished, whereas the Islamic State of Iraq must continue working», al-Zawahiri declared In November, 2013. «Al-Bagdadi committed a mistake on having established the ISSIL without asking us for permission», and, continued, al-Golani the Syrian «has been wrong on having announced his rejection of the ISSIL, without our permission». Al-Zawahiri ordered then that the Islamic State of Iraq should circumscribe his operations to that country, whereas the Front al-Nusrah is “an independent branch of al-Qaeda, that reports before the general command (as a franchisee)». In addition, he recriminated both «brothers groups» for their violence acts against other Muslims. In response, and in spite that the original group «al-Qaeda in Iraq» (AQI) of Musab al-Zarkawi had sworn loyalty to al-Zawahiri, al-Baghdadi declared himself in rebellion towards him. Producing an important crisis of leadership in the Network, which they tried to relieve separating from al-Bagdadi. This could not less that debilitate the fight against al-Assad, as the jihadists groups were spreading in Syria and the army was centering towards the large populations. And during the recent clashes between the rebels, al-Golani offered to a mediation to the groups, which has not come to fruition, in order to give priority to plant face against al-Assad.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

MODERN WEAPONS: THE DRONE AND THE SUICIDAL MUJAIDIN

If Plutarch was living today, surely he would write one of his «Parallel Lives» (one of two collections of his works), dedicated to trying and comparing the not crewed planes («death from above») and the suicidal yihadists («Allahu Akbar»). In effect, both are annoying and asymmetrical weapon, directed against the personnel and the mental and volitional factors of the enemy. That are not tactically decisive. And whose military effects are limited, but accumulative.

The Not Crewed Planes of exploration (reconnaissance) and ground recognition and of bombardment.

They are technologically advanced weapons, which began to develop several decades ago, destined to eliminate a minimum of «designated enemies», so much real as «ideological or potential «. And to minimizing the own losses. Which does irrelevant his economic cost for their rich owners. They have a highest effective range and are of the category of «intelligent». Though are not yet authorized to decide the moment to throw their missiles, once acquired the target. Their operational strategic use might be named the «War of the Drones».

The specific tasks that were distinguishing the CIA and the Pentagon, were intermingling during the first decade of the 21st century. This was owed to the operational and strategic failure of the USA in the long asymmetric wars of IV th generation (be read of guerrilla warfares and, be added or not, as be the hostiles, of national liberation) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Actions that they carried out after their short «armed conflicts» after 11/09/2001 against the masses armies (of second generation) of their tyrannical regimes. And using in them their trained and very technologically equipped forces (of III rd generation). Closed in false the Iraqi front and initiated the retreat in Afghanistan, the White House is endowing the CIA of more military means to give hunt to the salafists terrorists. So she has increased his drones or planes without crew fleet. And is considering to authorize an increase of the Pentagon’s spies’ network, to exercise a bigger control on the refuges of al-Qaeda in the Arabic peninsula and in the east and north of Africa.

These changes in the strategic and operational aims of the CIA and the Pentagon and the suitable endowment of means, culminated during the Barack Obama’s first mandate. The CIA has taken more active part in the eradication of the international jihadism, and has expanded notably his program of assaults with missiles thrown by drones. In the summer of 2011, Obama nominated the former director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, chief of the Pentagon. And the commander of the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and chief of the Central military Command, David Petraeus, was nominated director of the CIA. Petraeus, before resigning 9/11/2012, for that of the erotic (his biographer) of the Power, asked Obama for a reinforcement of the drones fleet of the Agency. To be able to effect assaults beyond the habitual aims in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. The Agency and the Pentagon have their looks put in Mali and Libya, in view of the increase of the activity in the zone of the franchise «al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb”, the Ansar Dine group and the Anzawad’s Islamic Republic, seated at the north of Timbuktu. The tuaregs have changed his former employer Gaddafi for the salafists terrorists. To whom Gadafi accused of being his armed opposition. And that are destroying the universal heritage of Timbuktu, under the pretext that its monumental representations rival with Allah. Sources of the North American intelligence say that the drones fleet of the CIA does not excel 35 at the end of 2012 and Petraeus requested ten more.

The CIA has a list of «threats» to the USA, of which he has authorization to kill. In September, 2011 he got a famous success on having killed in Yemen the imam Anuar al-Aulaki, an American well-known personage of al-Qaeda. The Pentagon also has his «ist of authorized targets». That are checked every week by approximately 100 security analysts of the Administration. Their function is to recommend to the president the changes of names in the list. The procedure is semi officially called the «Tuesday of the terror» in the White House. The CIA and Joint Command of Special Operations of the Pentagon cooperate in many of these attacks. Their targets are supposed leaders and even simple militants of al-Qaeda and associate groups of jihadists. And the tactic is to exterminate them before they act. This is one more step in the foundations of the military doctrine of the USA. Determined for decades by the contradictory parameter of «not suffering losses in any war or conflict «.

The Obama’s «war of the drones» has much of «preventive» character”- before that crime has been committed–and the executions are summary, without judicial sentence. And ,for this reason, it supposes attributing the right to realize extra judicial executions in any part of the world. So, Obama’s right hand in this theme, John Brennan, a veteran of the CIA, is called the «Czar of the Assassins». The program «Death of the Sky» (Death from Above) is legitimized only » by the person of the president «. The executions are legal, because the president decides and arranges them. Obama has obtained with the drones a weapon to appear «hard and effective» in the fight against al-Qaeda, without turning out to be unpopular with the voters. But, according to Christopher Griffin, in an article published by «Rolling Stone», «Obama’s secret war supposes the major air offensive not driven by human beings, never realized in the military history». And paraphrasing Churchill, he adds «never so few had killed so many people by remote control».

The Administration does not admit explicitly the existence of the program of drones, for safety motives. Though the White House declares in her calculated filtrations, that the not searched victims are almost non-existent. Not all the analysts accept this “surgical precision” without authentic information, attributed to these assaults from well away the horizon. An important problem is that the drones terrify entire areas, with some of them flying a lot of time over the settlements. On the other hand, as is the case of Pakistan, the «basic information» for the creation of intelligence for the mission, is facilitated by the local paid people. That also offers false information. More important and controversial is the question of the euphemistically so called «collateral falls», as if they had less importance on having been caused by the imprecisions and the operational mistakes. Some assaults with drones have caused tens of civilians deaths, including women and children, as is the case of Saleh Mohammed al-Anbouri in Yemen in December, 2009. And only in Pakistan, according to The Guardian, the drones would have killed around 3000 persons, of which a third were clearly civil, between 2008 and 2011.

The assaults against the human aims are realized by missiles thrown from drones. Since 2002, the USA has realized almost 450 missions of this kind in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. President Obama authorizes the assaults in Somalia and Yemen. But he is consulted only about a third of the missions in Pakistan. Where the «operational at charge» decide on the basis of “general received orders”. The Pentagon also uses the drones in his operations of exploration and of assault in Afghanistan. The CIA has his principal role in Pakistan. Where exists internally an ambiguity calculated of the FFAA, the intelligence services (the ISI is the most important, with much) and the Government in the relations and preferences towards: his foreign ally, the USA, the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban and the pashtunes tribes of the frontier zones, near the former Durand line, and the southern baluchis (the Baluchistan). A strategic national aim for Pakistan is to support an important, preferably decisive influence, in the internal Afghan matters. And a strategic military aim at the east of the country is to have monitored, controlled and neutralized his own Taliban and other hostile minor groups, at the east of Peshawar’s meridian, and without they act at the east of the Indus river.

George Bush’s strategic national doctrine established, but without being due explained, not accepted tacitly by both Parties, that «asymmetrical wars» (irregular and with low level of military means) were carried on and were necessary, to keep away from the American territories and those of his allies, the threats of the “foreign fundamentalist terrorism” of any origin, religion or ideology. This justified the post war occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But, with an exploded fiscal and exterior deficits and with a democrat Administration, is necessary for the USA to save more in military resources. To dedicate them «to constructing a nation here, at home». This way, the USA qualitatively lowers the bar of the exterior terror, putting al-Qaeda as almost the only not national violent enemy. This terrorist salafist internationalist «network», without own territory, with his operational chiefs known, fled and not wished as guests in a normal country, is a more attainable, adaptable and manageable aim for the American forces and means of «rapid punctual incursion».

This justifies the increase of the use of the drones, spy satellites, own or local agents in the hostile area, attacks with limited aim by elite small units and small expeditionary forces and units of Marines amphibious assault, transported in «ships of control and transport» of strategic projection with his naval escort. The deployments of tens of thousands of military men and his luggage and equipment for several years in a theater of operations, are rejected indefinitely by the new «doctrine» of the «diminishing defense». This way, the Pentagon has to operationally center on the counter terrorist tactics and technologies. And he seeks to reinforce his own espionage branch, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The reason is simple and clear: as the CIA has been effective giving hunt to terrorists abroad, the Pentagon wants to be more like it, and less as an army at use, to adapt to the new aims and national strategies. In November, 2012, Panetta asked Obama to allows him to recruit 1600 new spies. It would double the size of the DIA. At the end of this month, the secretary of Defense declared that: «The campaign against al-Qaeda will take place out of “declared combat zones”. And using tactics that leave little track, with precision operations».

The principal not crewed planes are the Predator and the Reaper. And cost more than $13 millions of dollars per unit. The Pentagon possesses approximately 19000 for the tasks of espionage and combat. The CIA has his own fleet, with reserved information. The General Atomics makes the drones. Their weapon more devastating are the missiles AGM-114 Hellfire II, the Lockheed Martin. In October, 2012, the USA entrusted 24000 missiles for his use and that of allied authorized countries. There exist the variants of antitank hollow load (HEAT), antipersonnel (with diverse types of explosion and fragmentation, reinforced or not) and with self guided (fire and forget). Each one weighs 47 Kg., with 20 % of useful load (warhead), it is guided by laser with diverse technologies and has a range of 8 Km. The effect of a volley of several of them on a block of houses of adobe or masonry is devastating. But it guarantees the elimination of the human selected target.

The equipment of the base is very simple and highly elaborated: the remote control of the drones, several screens and a pedal, in front to the ergonomic chairs of the pilots. The drones have cameras that transmit their views to the pilots in land. A deliberate observation precedes an assault. The pilot of the drone and the controller of the camera, which form one «killer team», observe to his «designated aim» during the whole day, checking his activities. The assault would be realized when, for example, his family has gone shopping. In fact, all the «teams» talk about an «established intimacy» with the Afghan families, observed during up to weeks. Thing that, for example, the foreign soldiers of the ISAF on the area would not know. Neither it seems, according to the medical statistical studies realized, that the pilots and observers were affected by the enemies dead in an important way. Also they reject that their work is like a video game. Though some of them argue that they do not know any video game that is required to observe the aim for hours.

The US Air Force of the Pentagon possesses more than 1300 drones pilots, being employed at 13 bases in the USA. And he would need at once approximately 300 more, at least. The majority of the military missions are in Afghanistan. The Pentagon calculates that for 2015, the Air Force will have to count with 2000. Already he trains more pilots for drones that for the conventional flights: 350 in 2011. And from 2012 the formation is specific for them: the pilots only pass 40 hours on board of a Cessna, without flying in fighters or bombers, learning to direct a drone. The chief of the Air Force HHQQ, general Norton A. Schwartz, recognized that the pilots of drones might overcome the classic ones in the next years. The halo and the combat pilot’s profession change for that of “armchair screen viewer civil servant”. And air bases in the USA increasingly stop dealing with traditional flights «to «direct» drones.

In November, 2011, after an assault with drones in the border with Afghanistan, where died at least 24 Pakistanis soldiers of a control fort, Pakistan blocked the way of the logistic convoys of the NATO following the routes of Khyber and Shaman to Afghanistan, from Peshawar. They are two crucial routes in order that the soldiers of the ISAF, that have used them during the last 10 years of asymmetric combats, receive fuels, equipments, provisions and military material. The Pakistani Defense minister, Ahmad Mukhtar, indicated at the end of 2011, that they might reopen them to the ISAF, if they pay for it. And, according to sources of the Pentagon, Pakistan forced them to dismantle also a platform of drones installed in a base in the southwest of the country, principally manned by the CIA. Washington lost temporarily one of his more powerful weapon: the permission to throw missiles from the not driven planes against the insurgents in the provinces of the northwest of Pakistan, tactics that generalized there from 2008. In turn, Panetta, also indicated then that the USA is «coming to the limit of his patience» with Pakistan,»for his disability to act against the armed groups in the tribal zones». At the beginning of 2013 the drones pulverized the so called mullah Nazir in the province Pakistani of Southern Waziristan (in the tribal zones). The volley of rockets thrown to reach him, also killed two of his more nearby collaborators, Rafey Khan and Atta Ullah, who were accompanying him in the vehicle. Already the USA had previously realized several assaults to finish with his life. This guy belonged to the «neutral» Taliban in Pakistan. And, at least, it was giving cover, helps and logistic support to the members of al-Qaeda and to the Afghan Taliban, who operated at the other side of the border. And probably he was a collaborator of Pakistani «authorities» during some long periods. It is confirmed by the fact that in November, 2012 Nazir was object of an unsuccessful suicide attack at Wana’s market, the provincial capital.

In a declassified report of the Central Command of the Pentagon, published in December, 2011, is assured that «the catalyst of the assault was the opening fire by the PAKMIL (the Pakistani Army)”. But are added that «the cooperation and collaboration in the border were disabled by a mutual distrust climate»; that the orders given by the NATO «were lacking clarity and precision», and that the goal of the mission was «inadequate». The final result was that the Marines’ James Mattis, in charge of the Central Command, ordered a series of changes in the protocols for the frontier operations. And, would not it be that for routine and lack of commitment with the missions, those which existed were not fulfilled well? Finally, bureaucracy will kill the initiative and the inventiveness. And it will turn out that, as with the black greyhound of the Han Chinese, when, being tied, he was asked to catch unattainable hares…

The mutual distrust exists in all the cooperation areas between the USA and Pakistan. Since both countries were sealing an alliance after 11-S, to fight al-Qaeda, the Congress of the USA has sent $ 20000 millions as «economic aid» to Islamabad. The real and practical results of this «alliance» are lean and scanty and the loyalty of Pakistan to the interests of the USA, for which this collaboration is paid, is questionable. Because Pakistan keeps his firm loyalty to the aims of his great or national strategy. Several members of the USA Congress asked for a change of approach in his relations in this geostrategic region. The representative to the Chamber, Duncan Hunter, declared that «Afghanistan needs economic and political stability, to guarantee that the victory of the USA is lasting. And the relation between the USA and Afghanistan must be also a point of interest, not only for the future of Afghanistan, but for the whole region». And Frank Wolf indicated: «It is clear that to manage to triumph in Afghanistan, we must solve first a series of problems in Pakistan. To obtain a military victory in Afghanistan is a thing, but our general success depends on more factors».

The authorities of Pakistan and Yemen, allied of the United States against al-Qaeda, have protested several times, so much for the violation of theirs sovereignties with war actions, as for the death of people who did not have any relation with the conflict. And they warn that this war carried out secretly, destabilizes them and gives arguments to the jihadists.

(to be continued)

THE BEGINNING OF A CIVIL WAR IN SYRIA II.

(continuing)

About the «Muslim Brothers» (MB) as political modern «organization» there is profusion of available information, which is constantly updated. But the MB are different from a «political association», according with our Western use and understanding. Their function is eminently social in a wide and deep sense. Like is the Islam as religion. That is based on five props represented by a «opened hand». The jihad is added to those, as a collective blood effort in Al-lâh’s path, for the defense and extension of the lands of Dar-al-Islam. The Islam expresses by sacred actions (rites), necessary to be imbued and blooms in the personal and collective soul of the believers. And these «acts and ritual actions», from the Salat (his daily prayers, which re-join the whole present group), passing for the Roza or fasting in the Ramadan month and the Hajj or multitudinous peregrination to the Mecca, to the Zakat or charity (expressed as canonical alms for the Umma, administered by the ulemas, imams or sheiks). They are collective and highly composing the local or regional Muslim community. The MB are like a legal «confraternity», with the due distances, of the Islam. And with the Zakat they support services of social attention of all kinds (schools and madrasas, clinics, hospitals, help to persons and families). These forge the community in a «unit of general action» effective and resistant. That is of very difficult repetition or reply for the laymen, the atheists and other potential enemies.

On February 4, 1982, after a time of pacific active opposition, the Syrian MB Sunnis, tried an armed revolt in Hama’s city against Hafez al-Assad. His brother Rifaat al-Assad directed the military repression. Surrounded, isolated, without heavy armament, or supplies, the uprising MB were squashed by February 28. It is calculated in more than 20 thousand the rebels dead men during in the combats and in the later pursuit and mopping up. The consulted values range between 10 thousand and 40 thousand. Which indicates that they neither are checked, are not even trustworthy, coming from antagonists sources or fickle authors.

It was the epoch in which these mobs were not constituting a part of a social extensive, deep and determined action. But rather an activate «rebel military area». That was seeking to attract, after his first armed successes, wide sectors of the Sunnis Syrian population. Then, they were seditious without sufficient popular support. Not all the MB were even revolted. And that, therefore, could and must be submitted or swept by the established authorities, as irretrievable and odious rebels.

The dynastic government of the Assad and his political equipment have stopped forming a socialist and national regime a lot of time ago. As they neither represent or defend, nor integrate, the particular and collective interests of their nation. Now only support and protect the members of the social religious oligarchy. That monopolizes and distributes in different degrees the institutional, social and economic power of Syria. The Syrian regime is crystallized, without fluency, so much socially, as ideologically and administratively. And is turning into the shell of a «social political fruit», shriveled, sterile and empty.

A Panorama of national and military Strategy of the Civil War in Syria.

Strategically and in the medium term, the regime of the Assad and his institutional skeleton of the Baaz lay party and their supporters of the Republican Guard and the Air Force, the chiefs and many officials of the Army and the high ranking posts in the Administration, is finished.

Their outrages, the social fractures and the grinding time applied and caused to their heterogeneous people are too much. In order that the beginning revolutionary process (of abrupt change of regime and of political structures) has an acceptable and permanent “reverse” in Syria.

Operatively and in the medium term also, the SNA «monitored and encouraged» by the Republican Guard and the Military Security, has a wide operational movement capacity; a consistent logistic network of stores, warehouses, long distance transport and distribution transport and an IT system, that allows the control and direction of her; a sure flow of armament and equipments for replacement and a simply resounding combat capacity, against their armed semi regular and irregular enemies.

In this level of activity, it is of emphasizing the absence of the Syrian Air Force, in the combats, harassments and skirmishes that take place. It is an Army branch, technical, minority and loyal to the al-Assad, where came from daddy Hafez. That would act as air support, rebel movements interdiction and bombardment of their volatile and slightly definite “support rears” and bases of all kinds. She does not have counterinsurgency specific planes. That allow, flying at low speed, to fix the target and concentrate in it the fire, minimizing his action over not belligerent. As those of the Bronco and his derivatives family and even the old Mig-17.

Then, her employment in a revolt against poorly armed rebels and with diffuse and intermingled “fronts” with populations and neighborhoods of cities. It might give place, though more remotely that in the Lybian case, to the decision of a “military foreign intervention” of variable implications against the regime. The intervention, in this case, with the thorny and difficult political and geostrategic exposition that imply: the reluctance to her of China and Russia; the frontier nearness of The Lebanon and Iran;the natural and inconvenient allies of the regime alauí (chii) and the considerable major population of Syria, in comparison with Lybia. So, she Is stopped by the lack of direction, leadership and moral courage and of ideological and political definition of the so called Western «powers». The artillery, which is less visible and spectacular for the present and absent public, is freely used by the SNA, including the heavy organic tubes of the infantry. It is of emphasizing that in the Eastern Front war, the campaign, heavy and reactive artillery caused up to 45 % of the total losses of both rivals, against to 5 % attributed to the assault artillery and other 5 %, to the aviation. And 35 % of the losses assumed by the heavy organic weapons of both infantries. And this, taking apart that other tasks of the artillery also were to disorganize the enemy movements, to destroy equipments and fortifications and the harassment.

Tactically, the Syrian regime supported by the SNA is in conditions to defeat indefinite but not perpetually all his armed opponents. Any rebel armed force that faces him directly or that tries to defend her positions in a rigid defense without yielding space will be annihilated. The only opportunity that the armed opponents have is precisely not to be drawn by the Army to a lost combat in advance. His technologies and tactics must be the constant and far-sighted mobility; the dispersion and the infiltration, for the moment, in the urban fighting; the small, dispersed and more or less simultaneous or sequential actions in a sensible area; the echeloned escape; the fight with very limited goals and with advantageous temporary conditions; the systematic giving up of positions, forcing the enemy to deploy and prepare again. They can win for the rebel armed forces the necessary time to survive. And to manage to glimpse the victory, against the brutal national and international, political and social wear, which will suffer Bachar al-Assad’s regime, in exponential proportion to the repression time he exercises.

THE BEGINNING OF A CIVIL WAR IN SYRIA

The Syrian troops cause hundreds of dead and injured civilians in their attack to Homs’ city since Friday, 3rd of February. Justifying themselves with making “hot pursuit” of a group of supposed regular rebels in retreat. These actions in force spread already to other cities and small populations of the west of the country. This would be the summary of the news that are received from Syria during February. And with them an important qualitative change has taken place in this masked war. That is increasingly near to burst out and to develop and spread, with the typical characteristics of an armed sustained internal conflict.

Geographical Conditionings of the military Theater of Syria. His operational Characteristics in the Modern War.

Syria is fundamentally a flat country. The life and activity of his inhabitants is assembled and supported by 2 great rivers, the Orontes, which flows from north to south, and the high section of the Euphrates, which crosses his extensive and desert plains of the East, in south-east direction. A thin heights chain, the Ansariyya, which extends in its southern part in the Antilibano and Hermon mountain ranges, now close to Damascus, limits his narrow coastal plain, with Mediterranean crops. At the east of this heights succession, the Orontes, which feeds the irrigation of different crops from the Gab natural depression, allows different urban emplacements, principally Hama and Homs, from north to south. Around the Euphrates, the life sustains, thanks to the irrigations from the river and Tabqa’s dam, in the cities of Raqqa and Day the-Zawr and other minor populations.

As we have seen, the Syrian territory offers a favorable area for the operational movement and marches of the mechanized and motorized units and small units. That are capable of rapidly crossing large and surprising distances for their enemy. Using for it departure bases in their operational rear. This allows also that, any semipermanent concentration of the Syrian Free Army (SFA) could be easily reached, isolated and annihilated by the National Syrian Army (NSA) of Bashar al-Assad.

The Prolegomena of the Civil War in Syria.

Till now the combats between the rebels and the NSA were harassments, skirmishes, ambushes and small assaults to populations, which did not have the character of a «circle and siege», even partially and temporarily. All those had two key characteristics: they were very limited in time and did not have any operational projection. The falls of both «rivals», compared with those of any armed conflict that boasts, were ridiculous. On the other hand, many «minishocks» were not even detected by the normal observers or the international press.

The NSA has made one more step towards the crushing of the revolt, still in his tender buds. But already armed and spreading in «spots» over the whole west of the country. Using also in his «task», the artillery, the infantry heavy weapon and the heavy direct fire of the tanks. Heavy fire that, till now, seeks to sow the panic between the enemy soldiers and his civil supporters and the neighbors of the redoubts and strong temporary rebel points. Without that, with the direct and indirect support of their fires, take place military ground actions of operational transcendence. Only there happens the employment of «groups» of snipers by both parts. The select military men infiltrate and establish themselves, forming a short, discontinuous and broken front line, that covers a sector or strip of great frequency of movements in the population or city. And the rebels realize the neutralization action of the military snipers. And, while the panic produces the people’s move out, but rarely the flanks overflow, the soldiers advance, rolling in the created «emptiness». But without penetrating in it in force and decisively, to dismantle the rebel defense. Or to divide in sectors the enemy enclaves, as maneuver before their mop up by parts.

The self named Syrian Free Army in the Syrian Civil War.

It is a conglomerate of dispersed and unlike forces. That come from the intermittent desertion of small groups of members of the different forces of the NSA. There do not exist elements of the Air Force, which we know, between the rebels. The SFA is far from constituting an organic stable and consolidated structure. His order of battle is constituted, in his pinnacle, by the regional «brigades». These operate tactically in the “urban bed” of the Orontes. Looking only for limited goals of harassment or sudden attacks against the security forces and local important authorities. They do not have intention of defending the goals that are occupied. And they shelter at once, more or less deployed, in the nearby mountain chains. Or, forming small but integrated units, in some neighborhoods of the turbulent cities of Homs, Hama and other populations.

This rebel Syrian army, is better qualified and trained that the local «brigades» (hundreds of Lybian improvised «qatibas», in the style of «sans cullottes» or of the Iranian «basijs») of the questionable Libyan National Counsel of Transition. At least, his men possess a unit of doctrine, regulations and armaments. They have plenty of the varied personnel weapons, including the RPG family and her improved HEAT rockets of hollow lcharge and free flight and some heavy infantry armament (mortars and machine guns). His great weakness is his penury of armored vehicles, of artillery and of the antitank organic weapons of the companies and the specific battalions for antitank fighting. And the lack of a logistic stable network, sufficient and provided regularly.

Here also exists the social psychological phenomenon of raising in 2 or 3 degrees the category, the real size and the capacity of the real deployed and operative units. And that, for stale, does not cheat anybody.

Other active Protagonists of the Civil War in Syria.

The Syrian Army is the army of the nation. And it is formed proportionally as her, by a majority of sunnies recruits. That is which feeds, together with NCO s and junior officials of same origin, as an exuberant nursery, the ranks of the FSA. The Army is formed by approximately 200 thousand persons, most of recruit. The potential of the nation for a supported annual recruitment is around 220 thousand men. And it can reach even more than 320 thousand persons, with the first mobilization. Army is integrated by 3 army corps and varied and numerous independent units, with all the branches and available services. Within his upbringing is included a «political indoctrination». Not as severe, extensive and constant as that in the Communist armies, that look to imbue them with hatred towards the Zionist enemy and with loyalty to the Government and the Party.

The Army is «observed and controlled» by a younger brother of Bashar, Mahir, from his headquarters of the Republican Guard (the Haras al-Jumhuriyya). And by his brother-in-law Asef Shawkat, who directs the whole State Security, through his different institutional branches. In all the military «units» are «observers» of the Military Intelligence. Also there are several «Special Forces»units, formed exclusively by alauits volunteers, that nowadays received the joint name of «Force of Rapid Deployment», at the usage of other national armies. They are light infantry reinforced units, with the highest level in motivation, training and combat readiness.

If we want to speak about the combative efficiency of the Syrian Army, we have to depart from his specific “combat capacities». Definite and calculated by colonel Trevor Dupuy. And that refer to real values exhibited in conflicts. The last ones, calculated from the Yom Kippur’s War, were giving a value of 2,54 Syrian soldiers for one of the Tsahal. This was placing them over Jordanians and Egyptians, with values below 2. For more than 20 years, an improvement is perceived in the quality of the military personnel. And the junior officials receive now more tasks and are promoted also by his value, within the habitual parameters of the Arabic armies.

In this multicolored social military scene, are also present a few purely local autonomous militias, without operative connection between them. They do not exist in all the places and neighborhoods. There are out of the Baaz and his politician paramilitary militias that, for the moment, are inactive. Those try to keep a minimum of social internal order and the safety and the movement of the citizens and goods in the different enclaves, small populations and slums where they act. Their armament is merely the infantry personnel weapons and hunting firearms, in very varied number and composition depending on their location and contacts. Both the «task groups» of the SNA and the rebel bands keep, in this period of development of the fighting, a tolerant status quo with these civil militias. Which realize a suitable civil police labor for all.

In many alauits neighborhoods operates a paramilitary governmental militia (the «habiha»), formed by select militants of the Baaz. In different Sunnis neighborhoods act irregular armed rebels from the Muslim Brothers. It is very scanty the presence of radical religious Salafists and his furthermore exiguous local appendices. The past suicide attacks in Damascus were ascribed to them. This introduces a “social instability factor” in the “real parameters” of this war. That performs major effect and importance, that would correspond to it by the number and aggressiveness efficiency of these social religious radical Islamic. Finally, there also are «Sunnis irregular volunteers» from Iraq, without pays since the retreat of the USA. That would be crossing the Syrian border and her Eastern desert, to join the armed fight against the regime of the Baaz.

(to be continued)

THE NETWORKS WAR II.

(continuation)

The urban effective guerrilla war. Another principal domain for the swarming groups in the networks war theory.

It is not easy to use and defend the urban zones of repulse. Its employment demands high requirements to the rebel combatants:

An enough motivation, which encourages them to follow the arms way and risking their lives for their cause. And appeases and rationalizes them the inevitable fear of the fighting in the close distances with a superior enemy, until the seniority offers to them new impulses.

A good training in the infantry fighting, which gives them trade and confidence. A successful cooperation between the small units that garrison the zones, that guarantees them a cohesion without fissures in their tenuous and lean deployment. And that allows and facilitates the command conduction and the accomplishment of his plans. To get iron nerves tempered by everything previous, that accustom them to fight in solitary or in small groups, refusing to flee in face of the implacable threat of the military heavy fire. For all this, among the few tens of thousands of armed rebels existing, not more than 15% of them can in these moments use this kind of defensive fight. The military networks and the swarming of «small sections» have in these two operational characteristics, their major deficiencies.

These urban irregular enemies are protected extending their defensive positions beyond the necessary in a conventional defense, covering this way a major occupied surface. In the defense zone they establish delaying points, more or less reinforced. These protect the most critical positions of the zone, that incorporate in the defense the buildings with steel structure, specially resistant, and form fire bags to trap the enemy that gets through. The resistance nests have here more importance, provided that the occupation of the zone of defense is more tenuous, that they cannot strengthen the positions too much for covered reasons, the sights are more short and exist numerous approximation routes. They depend on the delaying points and to them they fall back if are invaded or destroyed. Numerous alternative or extras positions exist, more of the habitual in the urban fighting. This allows to deceive the military enemy about the forward limit of the defense position, its real extension, the limits of the sectors that form it, the intentions of the rebel command of the zone about its defense and to disperse the heavy fire of the attacker. In the edges of the urban zones they never establish these fixed positions. Those are occupied by combat advanced parties, which mission is to receive the possible explorers or civil observers, to avoid surprises and to deceive about the tracing of the defensive zone. The occupants of combat advanced positions, distributed in pairs of sentries and some very small mobile patrols, fall back in their moment towards the more interiors delaying points.

These «fortresses» are diffuse, secret and imperceptible to strangers. In a few hours the previous works are reinforced and occupied. Its communication routes need more working time to get done, but also are less evident. It is necessary to enter the houses to detect perforated walls and to find alleys under a furniture or a carpet. These positions are not complex. They need a few interlaced firing sectors, an immediate protection against the enemy irruption in mass or with elite commands, some covers against the heavy normal fire and a sufficient concealment that covers them from the sights of the enemy probable successive positions and his approximation avenues. The obstacles and the mines, even false in certain percentage and always distantly to not betray them, will serve to break the enemy assault and to offer to them more static targets, for example for the mortars, which will have registered its fires. The destruction that generates the wide heavy fire support without aiming a precise target, reinforces the rebel combat positions, surrounding them with debris that divide and impede the accesses of the military, except when they are reached by a ordnance direct impact. To operate this defensive structure the rebels have prepared numerous and narrow tunnels, dragging trenches and gaps in garden walls and interior walls of the buildings. In such a way that, away from the enemy sights, allow them to occupy the combat and observation positions at wish, to defend them more or less time or not, to move among them and to reinforce the most threatened or pressed places.

Generally they try to shoot from the front, with isolated or couples snipers armed with the SVD or M-14 sniper rifles, at individual and small groups of enemies. And to attack from the flank or the rear at the enemy units that penetrate in their defensive zone, which already are disintegrated in squads or sections with one or two armored vehicles. Those prepared communications allow them to appear, always in small number, behind or at the flanks of the units, while these stop, regroup, ask or receive instructions, or decide where to advance, and to erode them, causing some casualties. For example, from a basement or a floor, through an irregular hollow in a yard or garden wall, under a parked or destroyed vehicle in the street, where it emerges a narrow tunnel with a covered and disguised exit. From these positions the armed rebels throw some RPG-7V rockets or several short blasts, always aiming, of the RPK light machine gun or the obsolete RPD. The interior houses courts serve them to place the mortars, which constitute their the only «heavy fire» source, protected by an infantry position. They fired them with the maximum angles on the abundant, large and always excessive military concentrations. The usual mortar is the 82 mm. Russian modern M-1937 model. Here that the attacker presents three times more men (in means the proportion must be 20 to 1) neither favors nor facilitates their labor. But this offers the persecuted defender more targets to be able to use his exiguous fire power. Especially because, in a given moment, is small the attackers’ proportion that are putting in real distress the defenders.

Also they possess an effective and increasing anti-aircraft defense of short range. From other courts and roofs, always protected by a nearby infantry resistance nest, several teams of light anti-aircraft rocket shoulder launchers carriers are arranged. Their location in the deployment is done depending on the most probable and most dangerous aircraft approximation directions for the defense. If they are sufficient and shoot skilful, they could use two nearby, but not contiguous launchers, whom form a team, and that shoot successively and rapidly (the SAM-18 flies at 2 Mach) against an aircraft or towards an enemy air formation in immediate approximation to its target. A typical rocket would be the SAM 7, called «grail» and «strela» (arrow) in not Cyrillic Russian. It had successive improvements and today is replaced in the military arsenals by the SAM 18 former mentioned, that has a useful attack height of 3,5 km (the double). And guides, a fuel rocket, an explosive head and a bait detector, all improved. The shoulder shooter limits himself to direct the launcher already loaded towards its target, wait until the missile confirms the target’s acquisition and then squeeze again the trigger. And to get hide.

The crucial moment for the defense comes when the zone commander decides to evacuate it, after having stopped and delayed the enemy for some time. Trying to cause him losses as high as possible, but without been exposed excessively to a fighting at the close distances, or to be outflanked or to lose his freedom of action. This is inexorably tied to the transfer of space to the military enemies. For it the rebels avoid in opportune moment the direct assault of their enemy, not his extensive or vague bombardment. The rebels must have sufficient exit tunnels directed to not very nearby buildings (often official and even respectable (mosques), offices, companies and some houses) or not evident dry riverbeds (wadis) and bushes in the open land. From there they could disperse through the ground in very small groups towards friends reception positions, in the first moments. The protection of the evacuation is therefore vital and both entrances or exits from these tunnels are always covered by resistance nests, which take to end their rigid defense.

All this cohesion, discipline, formation, training and firm and effective command of the irregular classic units, are distant of those of a military lax structure of networks or of the swarming of independent groups over an enemy or defending itself from him. Where are in this new theory, the center of gravity or the reiteration of efforts or the saving and optimization of the material and human means?

The effective operability of the units and small military units.

The war of networks tends to a too extensive subdivision of the military units. Turning out the «little group» or the net «knot», as tactical independent effective unit (TIEU). With them they would seek to extend the front (so the actions) on a more awkward or passive enemy, to disturb to his command and to alter his plan of fires.

But this is not practical in the operational level of the war.

The subunits tactically related need to have and keep a strip of advance or, at least, the little ones, a direction; a protected and concealed support fires (antitank and anti-aircraft defense and for neutralization and blinding of the enemy); the operational and permanent nearness of a logistic vehicles team, at least for health and to re-put ammunitions; a depth of the deployment, with a certain reserves; and his protection towards the exposed flanks and rear. All this supposes a minimal «tactical entity united and commanded», to keep both his security and resistance to the surprises, his combative efficiency, his deployment and his capacity of tactical movement.

And that they have to share with their companion units, a part of the fulfillment of the aim of their high command. And to have a combat mission directed on the enemy, as part of the gravit center of the efforts of the «major unit» of her. To avoid that these “group or nude” type units roam through the operational field, without a clear, effective and operatively transcendent intention.

All this reduces capacity and possibilities of employment to the networks and to the clusters of multiple «micro or small independent units», within the spectrum of the «situations of efficiency» that are raised and offered by the theory.

Here is an example of the correct employ of modern conventional military units. Against a reinforced infantry position that has advanced antitank weapons, a typical defensive zone, if it cannot be outflanked, an enemy dismounted infantry can break through or destroy it. It can be follow by tanks advancing by covered bounds to offer protection and direct fire support. The defender’s antitank will look for a relatively large and protected target, that it can hit from covered positions or, at least, from well-camouflaged positions, that are flanking the armored vehicles. And will fire by batteries with dispersed guns, so that the same enemy heavy fire can not incapacitate them. The infantry’s heavy weapons (machine guns in tripods) neutralize by «sweeping and searching» a more or less narrow frontal zone, that is occupied in depth by small, soft, dispersed targets such as an infantry platoon.

Attacking tanks can use H.E. and H.E.S.H. shells to overcome infantry strong positions and their infantry squads can attack with light machine guns the enemy antitank weapons, to prevent them from sighting or fix a target. All this destruction and neutralization, once irruption is achieved, proceeds in worm-like movements deep into the tactical zone of the assault sector of the interarms unit. Other parts of the enemy’s position that could collaborate in the rejection are blocked by smoke and/or neutralized by indirect fire.

At the same time, advanced observers from artillery and aviation corps will be defining new targets to its units, in addition to those found by assault units along the flanks and deep (through combat exploration) in the advance sector. The criterion of the gravity center of the fire of support at least will be neutralize all the targets that are opposed to the advance towards the enemy position, to the irruption and to the struggle inside the defense position of in the assigned sector. This will facilitate the direct fire and shock produced by the ground attackers, by means of concentrated and precise fire blows.

This optimizes effective action in a given environment at the level of the tactical groups of action or combined arms systems, whose complementariness has been described. In broken, undulating, wooded or urbanized (housings and factories) areas (not necessarily mountainous), the lack of sight control and the abundant “concealing relative heights” reduce the sector of “interfaces of action” with the enemy.

The suitably-sized “combined arms system” continues to be the element of effective action. The action is effected by companies or reinforced interarms platoons, with heavy fire support provided by battalions (medium and heavy mortars). Except in areas that are very flat and with few “sight obstructions”, ground “transitability” (more than simply “ground on going”), which physically limits the possible “interfaces of action” with the enemy, can prevent the fight using concentrated resources that are beyond those of a company. The battalion role will be to reinforce the efforts and distributing supports.

In these cases, existing communication ways, especially those more or less perpendicular to the front, are critical to land actions. Blockading these ways affects tempo (the total speed of the operation) enormously, by the difficulty presented by sloping or obstructed areas that surrounds them (forests, gullies, constructions, un-reinforced fords). The advance slows down or the forces have to be dispersed onto parallel available routes, forcing them to enter other difficult bordering areas.

Otherwise, contingency plans for units must provide for overcoming four types of unforeseen situations that can impede or endanger a mission. These include:

a) Possible direct action by the enemy in using or recovering initiative. This might take the form of an interdiction bombardment or counterattack. The solution is to tactically neutralize his action, without compromising the mission.

b) Possible encounter with the enemy. This could occur during combat exploration patrols or could be confronted by sentries, advanced security forces and advanced detachments and deep exploration patrols. It is necessary to submit or push back the enemy and to rapidly and temporarily change positions or direction, to not compromise the mission.

c) Possible unforeseen obstacles. These could be ditches, slopes of more difficult soil, blown-up bridges, floods, and storms that affect an area’s transitability. It is important to overcome these as rapidly as possible, while maintaining security and extending exploration.

d) Possible defensive/passive action of the enemy. These can take the form of an ambush, minefield, reinforced cut defended by fire, rejection fires of a defense position or antitank obstacles. These must be overcome as soon as possible, as in the case of natural obstacles, to avoid being moved by the enemy in a direction that is favorable to a counterattack or toward a zone covered by artillery or by convergent fires (bag fires zones).

In general terms, including in the commander’s plan, these must always be pursued:

1) To overcome or repel the enemy and/or unforeseen obstacles which hinder one’s forces and provide information to the enemy.

2) Avoid losing resources (or resources that are neutralized, detached or repulsed) that are important for fulfilling the mission. The surviving enemy can use compromising information, but he may receive it too late to be effective intelligence for him.

3) Resources necessary for the mission must be available for its execution. This multiplies efficiency, after commotion and the incident losses, to maintain a high momentum of execution: this being the product of combat capacity by the average speed of movement in a given period and in a certain direction.

The example of the preparation and action of General Patton’s 3rd American army in counterattacking the German penetration in the Ardennes illustrates the difficulties (its «incident» was a sudden change of mission, direction and execution) and the possibilities gave by the «momentum» of execution.

None of this is improvised. It is the result of practice and is the fruit of frequent training, the organization of work and the coordination of the H.Q. and all commands. These sayings remind us of this: «it is performed as it is trained» and «the man is an animal of habit».

In practice the degree of general military obtained efficiency, will be determined by the idiosyncrasy of the nation, the character more or less gregarious or independent of her peoples, both her military doctrine and tradition, the defense budgets, her » national moral», which feeds and holds her «will of defense», the political national and international situation, the integration of her institutions and national organisms in the regional or international area, etc.

THE NETWORKS WAR

An Innovation or a Rhetorical Redundancy?

In the last five-year periods diverse theories are appearing on the action of military units in networks, or forming a «cluster», around a slower tactical aim This with minor combative alert and/or deficiencies in exploration or intelligence and with worse shooting sectors for his rejection fires. An analysis of his mechanisms and operations demonstrates that they really lack the structural originality and the wide combative efficiency that they raise and offer.

The operational of the «netwars» and the «clusters» of small units of action.

The «little groups» that would create the hived of erosive actions on the enemy or the «networks» that wrap, scourge and/or isolate the goal, not always are or have to be such “small units” «almost independent». An example of the efficiency of the centripetal action of a whole Army, maneuvering on the enemy by Army Corps, in an dislocating and constrictive action, is the battle of Ulm.

In September, 1805 Napoleon moved his «Army of England» to the Rhine, deploying his 208000 men between Mainz and Strasbourg and renamed he the «Great Army». The French “Grande Armée” was formed by 145000 infantrymen and 38000 troopers, joined 7 Army Corps, each one at the orders of a French marshal, a great cavalry reserve commanded by the marshal Prince Murat and the Imperial Guard, directly under Napoleon; to them 25000 allied Bavarians were added.

Taking as usual in him the initiative, Napoleon decides to give the first strategic blow against the army of 72000 Austrians that, at the orders of the general Mack and the archduke Fernando, son of the emperor Francisco II, was advancing towards Ulm, without waiting the arrival of help from their allied Russian.

Napoleon is going to use against the Austrians what we can call an operational effort of gravity center. It would form, if you like so, a network. But an immense network with very fat knots. Whose «singular functioning», already was satisfactorily and profitably offering and explaining by the operational strategy. The characteristics of the process of establishment and functioning of it are the originality, the flexibility of the deployment, the consistency, its not predictability by the enemy and the efficiency.

The operational gravity center supposes the centripetal action of all the means and their lines of action, of the «branched out» activity of all the units and services. Not necessarily coincidental, but convergent and resultant in their synergy, in their efficiency and in the result. By means of the different and coordinated lines of advance or of action, we induce uncertainty and insecurity in the enemy, disperse his rejection capacity and disturb his Defense Plan and its systematic conduction by his commands.

In an ample advance of his independent Army Corps, the Grande Armée (around 210000 men) quickly crossed the center of Germany, from the Rhine to the Danube, between September, 25 and October, 6. With this, it operationally interposed between the Austrians (about 40000 men) and their allied Russian forces that went to help them. The Austrians did not understand the need of the rapidity of the movements, thinking only about the battle, as the only instrument of the decision. The French initiated the crossing of the Danube on October 7, 1805 and, during the following week, Napoleon converge most of his Army Corps in an enormous restricting spiral on Ulm, while a Corp with enough forces watched for the arrival from the east of Russian General Kutuzov.

General Mack made, in vain, several attempts at rupturing Napoleon’s forces, applying his greatest efforts in Haslach and Elchingen. Both Austrian commanders quarreled among themselves and Archduke Fernando, with his 6000 troopers, separated from the main force and tried to escape to the northeast. But Archduke Fernando’s forces were surrounded and beaten by the cavalry Corps of Murat, near Trochtelfingen. Another 12000 Austrians surrendered in Neustadt.

General Mack and the rest of his men (about 27000, after the mentioned battles), with Napoleon’s overwhelming forces at the doors of Ulm since October, 14, came out the city and laid down their weapons at the feet of mounts Michelsberg. The capitulation was signed by General Mack on the 20th. The campaign, without properly battles, cost Austria more than 50000 men (around 70%) of her initial forces of about 70000 troops.

The explanation of this Napoleon’s paradigmatic success, being served the habitual theories of the war, the exploitation of the human weaknesses (emotional intelligence) and the “correct sense” of the command, seems to us more natural, appropriate and established.

The subversive Islamic networks. The case of al-Qaida. His real «military» operational.

The operational actual characteristics are:

His unnecessary and indiscriminate brutality, which discredits them with his religion. We can mention a minimum of 4 important moral “aleyas”or verses, that they despise and disobey, without Allah had changed these for them. Sura 2, aleya 100 «We do not abrogate any verse of this book, or we will not make erase one alone of your memory, without replacing it by an equal or better other one».

The absolute absence of venerable and pious ulemas and muftíes at his side. These are the doctors of the Koranic Islamic Law and of the Sunna.

His great operational decentralization because the universality of the Umma, which comes out the idea of nation or race. This prevents them from obtaining permanent strategic aims. Though his punctual actions are important, painful and fearsome.

This way, his fighting area is tactical, using «actions of bite and flee». Which, paradoxically are very similar to those of the regular armies who fight them. That, avoiding the personal risks and the close distances fighting, use their elite forces in «actions of hunt, capture and extraction or death». And use their “drones”, as expression of their confidence in their technological support. This is the military reason of the lack of efficiency of the western soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. And not mixing in a superior aim at operational level, the different and costly actions that carry out in these countries. Which deprives of real results the labors of education, social and civil development and pacification of their governments and the foreign military forces and expatriated civilians. Since those need the complementarity of the military victory and the progressive physical and/or social isolation of the radical rebels, to be effective and permanent.

The accumulated cost of the military American interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (so called «war against the terror») was till now 2,2 trillions of dollars. This bleeding throughout a decade to the income of the USA Administration, has specially helped to increase the deficit of his National Debt. And to giving reasons to the Obama Administratiion to initiate an extraordinary political and strategic retreat, «to attend now to the things at home» and «to limit ourselves to the war against al-Qaida». Without leaving our allies and friends, of course.

And his action primer element is the terror. This way, his victory is thanks to those they can terrify or, at least, worry very much. And in the plethoric and slightly effective mobilization of the economic and social resources of the enemy nations. And, because the major vigilance, capacity and means of the western countries, they do not hesitate to operate against other Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, etc.

His failure in active and firmly joining to a social wide group, which would gives coverage and permanent impulse to his movement. The most mentally ill activists are in the habit of being isolating progressively from society (at least, emotional and ideologically), though they «live» within her. For the sake of his violent methods, to which they sacrifice everything for the efficiency. They follow a process of segregation, purification (in his unexpected not orthodox rites they fast, use water of sacred places and green streamers with inscriptions of the verses that favor they), consecration and radicalization. Up to coming to the death and even to the suicide in his punctual actions.

His zeal for advertising, to which the West contributes insensitively, stupidly and tast.

His aim to strike all governments, as the radical and aggressive caliphate in «dar-el–Islam» (Muslim integrated independent lands) does not exist nowadays.

Al-Qaida is an Islamic radical movement organized vertically and from below to above, that spreads and makes concrete in his «franchise swarms». His structure, flex, decentralized, release, makes that his «cells» do not know exactly which are the higher chiefs. They only know where they have to go to receive support or to send or receive information or to communicate with another «equal» cell. The high commands of this movement act by exception, not by presence or by deliberate action.. This way, they give doctrinal orientations, establish great lines of military and proselytizing action for the different territories and areas, they throw threats and notices to the enemy governments and indicate punctual important aims (seudo strategic) at the level of the whole organization, though they should be realized in a given area. This allows them to work enough good, without the intervention of their high commands. Among these chaps or «barons of the fanatical death», are Addel Malek Droukdel, leader of al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghrib, and Abu Bakar Bashir, called the «clergyman militiaman», founder of the Jeemah Islamiya or al-Qaida of Indonesia and condemned in June, 2011 to 15 years of prison in his country. The «martyrdom» of Ayman al-Zawahiri al-Masri (the Egyptian), former «managing director» of Bin Laden, in a bombardment with drones or ordnance, would affect little to their efficiency, at their current levels of military irregular action.

How work the networks and the swarms of small units and in which circumstances?

The battle of mount Majuba (February 27, 1881) was a case of effective employment of the «small independent units». That hived on an enemy conventional unit, type battalion, and destroyed he, finishing with it the First Boer War.

At the end of this, general Colley directed a small British army to Transvaal territory. Here he decided to occupy Majuba’s extinct volcano with 600 m. height and that was dominating the right exposed flank of the camp of wagons (laager) of the Boers. The British force was consisting of approximately 650 men, integrated in 4 companies from different regiments, and lacking field artillery and machine guns. They occupied the flat summit, which was free and established positions in her, in his edges and in the south base of the height, to protect their retreat to the nearby base of mount Prospect.

Though surprised, when the Boers verified the absence of artillery of the British, they prepared to recover the mountain. To their favor they had the total knowledge of the area and their great mobility in it. The mount was formed by alternative strata of schists and limestone, with deep gullies and masses of rocks and thick bushes of dark mimosa. With what the sights of the different defensive British sectors were intermittent and of short range. All this was ought to the independent and irregular character of the Boers shooters and riders. That, even, were feeling free to move to any part of a battlefield, where they believed themselves more useful. Till then, the Boers were keeping a defensive strategy in the war.

The first group of 50 men came to the Majuba’s north slope and were taken by the «general» Smit round the hill, to its south side, to fix the British placed there. Boers’ clusters were appearing from all the sides and continued waiting for their chiefs’ arrival for directing them. Approximately 150 Boers began to climb over the hillsides in different moments, while a similar number was supporting them with a neutralization fire on the edges of the summit. The men who were rising were gathering in independent clusters. In them, a part of the Boers was climbing from a refuge or concealment to other one, whereas other part was offering to them a barrier of gunfire. The latter part, under the protection of the first one, was climbing then up to the last reached level. This work of approximation to the top extended for approximately 6 hours.

The British were kept under cover in the edges, but soon they realized that the enemy was approaching below them. The first assault crowned in the west side. The company of 92º infantry regiment of lieutenant Hamilton began to be attacked from the front and its reverse. Some subunits kept as reserves in the center of the small plateau were advanced to the west. The British were keeping their disciplined fire by volleys. The Boers were shooting individually, resting on ground and loading and began another shooting cycle. The British moved back towards the center of the position. Some Boers, which were coming almost to the top from the west, moved to the north and also attacked the right enemy flank. Others reached also the top from the south, also attacking lined up to the left flank.

The British tried then the break for the south side, lowering in a hurry and taking the way to mount Prospect. In the pursuit there took place the majority of his casualties. The British suffered 96 dead, 132 injured and 56 prisoners. The Boers had 1 dead and 5 injured men. Several are the operative and tactical mistakes of the Red Coats in this final campaign of the war: to lack campaign artillery to beat the camp of the Boers, that had served them to repel to the «clusters» enemy that were appearing in the top; his shooting technique was ineffective against fleeting and dispersed targets; they were not knowing and did not explore the area in which the battalion spread out; the Boers, as all the irregular soldiers, highly displease the close combat and/or by the bayonet, but, in this case, they did not avoid and used it, which surprised the enemy.

But also, this approximation work to the assault distances and without losses of the own combat capacity, can be perfectly realized by many military «action units», without engineers’ training. Divided in teams and still in men pairs or buddy teams, they can take advantage of small drops, flooded fields, verges, ditches, bushes zones, ravines, etc., and even with the concealment of the night and/or the smokes. To close on the enemy and realize an non too deep incursion or to reach his flanks or his rear, even slipping between his combat positions. And though the enemy is strengthened and provided with heavy fires, it can be done by more upbringing and trained units. For it is necessary to have and to keep a previous exploration of the enemy, his movements and habits. The employment of the grenades and not the individual fires of is fundamental to confuse the sentries and the enemy combat positions, of the scope and intentions of the attacker.

Also the war networks and the military clusters can work in favorable circumstances with cavalry irregular mobile forces. An example is the battle Carras (in Latin, Carrhae, nowadays, Harran, in Turkey), where the Partian archers riders of the general Surena defeated the triunviro Marco Licinio Craso and his Roman legions in 53 B.C. The Roman army of approximately 39 thousand men, only was possessing 4 thousand light infantry or vélites and 4 thousand riders. Craso penetrated in the northen plains of Syria in pursuit of the enemy, who was refusing the fight. Finally, near Carras the battle raised up, in an area totally favorable to the cavalry.

The Romans formed a defensive rectangle, which was surrounded by the Partian cavalry, that only the Scitians overcame they in quality and capacity. After some initial skirmishes with the vélites, the Partians were hived on the formed infantry. And they began a long harassment from the effective shooting distance of their arrows and lances, out of the range of the Roman pila and gladius. The legionary deployment faced a dilemma: if they were keeping such closed formations, they would end hurt by the enemy missiles, and, if they were trying to charge on them, breaking a little their formation, simply they were avoiding by them. The Partians squadrons were attacking following a given direction. His riders were approaching by rows, were throwing his missiles and were moving back to his rear following their sides, in an endless and infernal cycle. The harassment lasted up to the dusk.

During the night, a part of the legions sheltered in Carras. The following day, they continued their retreat up to the nearby Armenian mounts, where the cavalry had a difficult area. Surena offered to negotiate to Craso. But, during the negotiations it arose a fight and Craso was dead. After this, the remains of the Roman army dispersed or gave up themselves. Only approximately 5 thousand men came back to their departing camps, approximately 10 thousand were caught and the rest was dead. After this experience, the Romans progressively increased the cavalry of their armies and legions. And at the beginning of the 4th century A.D., she supposed 25 % of their forces.

The one that believes that in similar circumstances, favorable to the mobile swarms and with direct effective fire capacity, these results always repeat, can be wrong. In effect, on the 27th and 28th of October, 1942 in the Egyptian desert a series of comat meetings took place between German and Italian units of the Afrika Korps and 2 º battalion of the brigade of Rifles of the British army. This one took fixed positions in an opened place called Snipe, at the west of the Kidney hill. With the reinforcement and concealment of the positions and the support of a group of 19 6 pounds (53 mm.) antitank cannons, the Britishs could surprise their enemies on their limits and location, reject several direct assaults of the tanks of the Afrika Korps and resist several bombardments of artillery and assault cannons.

At the end of the second day of combats, the Germans left their attempts of squashing and invading the Snipe position. They had lost in them more than 50 diverse armored vehicles. Snipe was resisting and was kept. Though a third of the garrison had fall and only had 6 useful antitanks. Almost all the Bren machinegun vehicles of the battalion were destroyed. Finally, the Britishs left the position and withdrew.

The circumstances and the epochs that can favor the “units clusters” or the networks war are very selective and exclusive. This way, the own theory, though correct, is at least insufficient and not much elaborated and, therefore, probably unnecessary. In effect, any new theory that looks for his implantation, respect and acceptance, must explain satisfactorily all the aspects known about a given phenomenon (the tactics, the logistics, the operational level, etc). This is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient. And, here his innovation and principal value will reside, it must make clear new ways of approximation and advance to a major knowledge and domain of the mentioned phenomenon.

(to be continued)