What a clusterfuck. The Russkies bitch slap Barky, again. Welcome to the new Cold War.
From the Daily Beast.
Iraqi militias who once fought ISIS with U.S. help are now working with Russian and Iranian forces to crush American-backed rebels in the strategic Syrian city of Aleppo, two defense officials have told The Daily Beast.
At least three Shia militias involved in successful battles against ISIS in Iraq—the Badr Brigade, Kata’ib Hezbollah, and the League of the Righteous—have acknowledged taking casualties in fighting in south and southeast Aleppo province. U.S. defense officials confirmed to The Daily Beast that they believe “at least one” unit of the Badr Brigade is fighting in southern Aleppo alongside other Iraqi militia groups. Those groups are backed by Russian airpower and Iranian troops—and all of whom are bolstering President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army.
Reports on social media say the Iraqi militias in Syria are armed with U.S. tanks and small arms they procured on the Iraqi side of the border.
The presence of militias fighting on behalf of Assad—a dictator that the U.S. has pledged to depose—is yet another reminder of the tangled alliances that the United States must thread as it pursues seemingly contradictory policies in its battles against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. In Iraq, these Shia militias were battling on behalf of the U.S.-backed government. In Syria, they are fighting against an American-supported rebel coalition that includes forces armed by the CIA.
In other words: The forces the U.S. once counted on to take back Iraq’s cities are the same ones the Russians now are counting on to get Aleppo back. And those militias are fighting units of the American-backed Free Syrian Army—including the 16th Division, elements of Jaish al Nasr, and Sultan al Murad—according to Nicholas Heras, a research associate at the Center for a New American Security.
In other words, the Russians are taking advantage of Barky’s dicked-up foreign policy to coral the Iraqis into their efforts to fight for their ally Assad. B. Hussein flushed everything we accomplished over there. The Iraqi forces, who were supposed to help stabilize Iraq, were abandoned in 2011 when Obama withdrew all U.S. forces, including any follow-on units that could have remained in place to provide security.
Russia started an offensive against U.S.-backed Syrian rebels last year with a series of airstrikes and rekindled their old relationship with Iran. Thanks to Barky’s total failure in the Middle East, there’s a resurgence of Islamofascist aggression coupled with Russia establishing a new foothold in hostile Islamic nation-states.
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