Global SITREP D8-14: General Observations

Islamic State on the move in Syria and Iraq

UPDATED 15 October 2014: Here are some rather significant things I have been keeping an eye on lately.

Egyptian forces have located and destroyed a large rocket production facility in the Sinai that had been operated by the jihadist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis ("Supporters of the Holy House"). This group of approximately 2,000 jihadists rise to prominence occurred rapidly after the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi by the Egyptian Army. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis' funding comes largely from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) in Egypt; it is allied with the jihadist groups in Gaza, and has declared is loyalty to the Islamic State.

In Syria and Iraq there is very strong evidence that Islamic State forces have used chemical weapons against Kurdish forces in their unrelenting assault on the Kurdish border town known as Kobani (a/k/a Ayn al-Arab) and against Iraqi Shi'a forces in ongoing battles in Anbar Province since this past July.  Within the past couple of days photographic evidence has emerged pointing to the use of mustard blister agent against the defenders in these battles. Where did Islamic State get this kind of chemical weapon? From the depot that formerly belonged to Saddam Hussein at the Muthanna CW bunk complex and that the Obama Administration has said would be of no use to the Islamic State. US forces controlled Muthanna prior to the unilateral Obama withdrawal from Iraq three years ago. Islamic State captured the Muthanna CW bunker complex in June 2014. Islamic State fighters are reported to be within 1 mile of Baghdad. Most Iraqi soldiers are not professionals, they are soldiers merely because they need money. At the first sight of IS soldiers inside Baghdad they will remove their uniforms and flee.

Also in the Middle East the headquarters of the 1st Infantry Division has deployed to Iraq for the fight there against Islamic State. Without much fanfare the US DoD has tasked the Marine Corps with deploying a Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) unit to Kuwait as part of a regional Quick Reaction Force (QRF). The 14,500 Marines and sailors of the MEB will augment the 13,500 US troops already deployed to Kuwait, bringing the full complement of this force to 27,800 troops.The name of the less than successful thus far US-led anti-Islamic State military venture was announced by the Pentagon today: Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR).

I am most curious to learn the answer to these questions:

1) Upon what warfighting doctrine will OIR be based?
2) What is the identified ideology of the enemy?

The Russian-instigated war in Ukraine continues irregardless of a supposed ceasefire being in place. The Ukrainian government claimed today that more Russian troops have been crossing into the eastern oblasts instead of withdrawing deeper into Russian territory. According to the Ukrainian military public affairs office reported today their forces in southeastern Ukraine have come under attack thirty times in the past 24 hours by Russian-led rebel forces.

Despite most appearances on the surface, the newly installed 13th Secretary General of NATO, Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg (he replaced Anders Fogh Rasmussen on October 1st) is good news for Russia's Vladimir Putin. Jens Stoltenberg has a life-long history of being far more flexible than Barack Obama has been toward Russian military ambition, so much so that in years past Stoltenberg was actively recruited by the Russian KGB to become one of their Western agents in the latter years of the so-called Cold War. In days past Stoltenberg was one of Europe's best known anti-war activists. Watch what he does more than what he says in the days to come.

Ebola, the deadly virus officially known as EBOV, continues to spread in pandemic fashion. The UN World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland reports 70% fatalities among all known human infections and predicts upwards of 10,000 new human infections per week being a distinct possibility in the near-term. There is also WHO data which strongly indicates that the incubation period of EBOV is not the widely reported 21 days, but a significantly longer period of 42 days. This makes the current quarantine regimen wholly inadequate in preventing the spread of EBOV. Also, two tests a minimum of 48 hours apart are necessary to determine if an individual is not infected within the 42-day incubation period. This is a catastrophe of Biblical proportions in the making. The US is deploying 3,000 to 4,000 hastily trained combat troops from the 101st Air Assault Division as our contribution in the global effort to contain EBOV in western Africa.

In strategic Yemen, on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, Iranian-backed Houthi tribesmen (i.e. Shi'a muslims) seized the country's main seaport and airport at Hodeidah (a/k/a al-Hudaydah) located on the center of Yemen's Red Sea coast. Hodeidah is Yemen's fourth largest city with a population of 400,000.