Kurds Take Key Military Base Close to IS ‘Capital’

Kurdish-led forces announced they captured a military base from the Islamic State deep inside the radical group’s stronghold province of Raqqa.

Observers were surprised at the speed of the Kurdish advance on the military base called Liwa 93, which the Islamic militants captured from the Syrian military last year.

The advance on Monday night, which was supported by U.S.-led air strikes and some smaller Syrian rebel groups, pushed the Kurds deep into Islamic State territory to within 7 km of the town of Ain Issa, a spokesperson for the Kurdish forces, Redur Xelil, told Reuters.

Ain Issa is 50 km north of Islamic State’s de facto capital, Raqqa city. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, said “dozens of Daesh mercenaries were killed,” using an Arabic acronym for the extremist group, according to the Associated Press. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State militants transferred to Raqqa the corpses of 26 of its fighters killed by U.S. airstrikes.

However, the Observatory also reported that thousands of people had fled from Ain Issa towards Raqqa city in the past two days. After the Kurds captured the town of Tal Abyad on the Turkish border last week, thousands fled the area and some accused the Kurds of expelling native Arab and Turkmen from the area.

Syrian Military Has Dropped Barrel Bombs on Aleppo ‘Daily’: U.N.

The Syrian government dropped barrel bombs on Aleppo’s civilians almost every day for the past year, U.N. investigators said, calling it a war crime. Investigators also said insurgent shelling caused mass casualties.

The U.N. said both the Syrian military and rebel groups, including Islamic State, imposed sieges to “devastating effect” and residents were deprived of food and medicine, leading to malnutrition and starvation, Reuters reported.

“The government’s campaign of shelling and aerial bombardment sits alongside the besieging of areas and the arrest and disappearance of predominantly fighting-age males from restive areas at its checkpoints,” Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the U.N. commission of inquiry, told the Human Rights Council.

“Shelling of civilian-inhabited areas by non-state armed groups – including but not limited to ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam – have terrorized men, women and children living in localities held by the government,” he said.

The report stated that: “The continuing use of barrel bombs in aerial campaigns against whole areas, rather than specific targets, is in violation of international humanitarian law and, as previously documented, amounts to the war crime of targeting civilians.”

The investigators, who have drawn up five confidential lists of suspected war criminals on all sides, also warned: “The flight paths of helicopters responsible for the dropping of barrel bombs are being documented. Those in command of the bases and airstrips where helicopters are loaded and from where they take off must be held accountable.”

Syrian Ambassador Hussam Eddin Aala rejected the inquiry’s findings, accusing the U.N. investigators of “collusion and bias” for not denouncing Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for supporting the rebels.

Syria on Verge of Economic Collapse: Think Tank

Syria is on the verge of economic collapse, a leading British think-tank reported.

The Chatham House report, called “Picking up the Pieces”, said the Syrian economy has retracted by over 50 percent in real terms, the Syrian pound has lost 80 percent of its value and inflation has averaged 51 percent.

It added that outward migration and an estimated 250,000 deaths have caused Syria’s population to decrease by more than 15 percent, from 21 million to 17.5 million.

With a sharp drop in output in the energy and manufacturing sectors, agriculture now accounts for a greater percentage of the nation’s overall output, Chatham House said. But overall food production has fallen sharply due to the conflict.

The report’s author, David Butter, said the economic failure could lead to military collapse within the Syrian army.

“During the first half of 2015 the regime has shown increasing signs of strain on both the military and the economic fronts,” he said, according to the Independent.

“This gives rise to the question as to whether a dramatic worsening in the economic situation may be the catalyst for the regime’s military collapse or for an externally imposed political settlement against Assad’s wishes, or whether further military setbacks might be the catalyst for the regime’s economic collapse.”

Recommended Reads

• Chatham House: Druze Unrest Could Transform Syrian Conflict
• The Globe and Mail: Syrian Class Divisions Growing During Civil War, Helping Assad Regime
• The Conversation: Syria’s Refugees: Time to Get Serious About Preventing a Lost Generation of Arab Youth
• Bloomberg: Iran’s Forces and U.S. Share a Base in Iraq
• CNN: ISIS Defeat Could Give Coalition Blueprint for Success