{"id":13210,"date":"2015-10-10T07:14:26","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T12:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13210"},"modified":"2015-10-10T07:14:26","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T12:14:26","slug":"war-on-islamic-state-a-new-cold-war-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13210","title":{"rendered":"War on Islamic State: A New Cold War fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

War on Islamic State: A New Cold War fiction<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The Islamic State group is little more than the proxy bastard child of a New Cold War that looks set to escalate<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Russia is bombing \u201cterrorists\u201d in Syria, and the US is understandably peeved.<\/p>\n

A day after the bombing began, Obama\u2019s Defence Secretary Ashton Carter complained that most Russian strikes \u201cwere in areas where there were probably not ISIL (IS) forces\u201d.<\/p>\n

Anonymously, US officials accused Russia of\u00a0deliberately<\/a>\u00a0targeting CIA-sponsored \u201cmoderate\u201d rebels to shore-up the regime of Bashir al-Assad.<\/p>\n

Only two of Russia\u2019s 57 airstrikes have hit ISIS,\u00a0opined<\/a>\u00a0Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in similar fashion. The rest have hit \u201cthe moderate opposition, the only forces fighting ISIS in Syria,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Such claims have been dutifully parroted across the Western press with little scrutiny, bar the odd US\u00a0media watchdog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But who are these moderate rebels, really?<\/p>\n

Moderate al-Qaeda<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0first<\/a>\u00a0Russian airstrikes hit the rebel-held town of Talbisah north of Homs City, home to al-Qaeda\u2019s official Syrian arm, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the pro-al-Qaeda Ahrar al-Sham, among other local rebel groups. Both al-Nusra and the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs) in Homs City, which is 12 kilometers south of Talbisah.<\/p>\n

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports that as part of \u201cUS and Turkish efforts to establish an ISIS \u2018free zone\u2019 in the northern Aleppo countryside,\u201d al-Nusra \u201cwithdrew from the border and reportedly reinforced positions in this rebel-held pocket north of Homs city\u201d.<\/p>\n

In other words, the US and Turkey are actively\u00a0sponsoring<\/a>\u00a0\u201cmoderate\u201d Syrian rebels in the form of al-Qaeda, which Washington DC-based risk analysis firm Valen Globals\u00a0forecasts<\/a>\u00a0will be \u201ca bigger threat to global security\u201d than IS in coming years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

– See more at: http:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/columns\/war-islamic-state-new-cold-war-fiction-1608242142#sthash.mAgLlnu2.dpuf<\/p>\n

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War on Islamic State: A New Cold War fiction The Islamic State group is little more than the proxy bastard child of a New Cold War that looks set to escalate Russia is bombing \u201cterrorists\u201d in Syria, and the US is understandably peeved. A day after the bombing began, Obama\u2019s Defence Secretary Ashton Carter complained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[135,149,9748,1239,445,446,447,6741,2092,1150,694,827,834,862],"class_list":["post-13210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-cia","tag-cold-war","tag-cold-war-fiction","tag-is","tag-isil","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-middle-east-eye","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-proxy-war","tag-russia","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13211,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13210\/revisions\/13211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}