US claims major damage on ISIL leadership
American airstrikes have killed ten ISIL leaders, inclusion one figure thought to have been behind the November 13 Paris attacks. Killing or capturing leaders of ISIL or al Qaeda here and there isn’t significant, but ten in the last months constitutes a significant blow to the coherence and effectiveness of ISI. Nonetheless, ISIL is unlikely to be on the ropes.
Turkey rejects Kurdish call for autonomy
Turkish president Erdogan has vociferously rejected the Kurdish position of autonomy. In doing so, Erdogan has called it treason. Turkey’s leadership sees its neighbors Syria and Iraq breaking apart and dies not want his country to follow. This of course means a protracted and probably unwinnable war with about 20% of his population, which is concentrated in the country’s southeast.
ISIL establishing a presence in Israel
Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, has arrested five Palestinians in Nazareth for their ties to ISIL. Nazareth is not in the West Bank; it is in pre-1967 Israel, about twenty miles east of Haifa. Shin Bet also assets that forty Palestinians have crossed over into Syria and Iraq to join jihadi groups. The position here is that the absence of progress on a Palestinian state will lead to the radicalization and internationalization of the Palestinian movement. They will no longer seek statehood; they will join in the international jihadi movement.
Iraqi PM visits Ramadi, says ISIL will be expelled with in a year
PM Abadi toured Ramadi, the Anbar capital that his forces are retaking from ISIL. ISIL fighters are still fighting from isolated pockets in the city. Abadi went on to state that ISIL will be driven out of Iraq within a year. This is bold talk. Mosul is much larger than Ramadi and will take a long effort.