1,000 Per Month: US Airstrikes ‘Fail’ To Stem Tide Of Foreign Fighters

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1,000 per month: US airstrikes fail to stem tide of foreign fighters (RT, Oct 31, 2014):

Hundreds of US-led airstrikes and daily multi-million dollar military operations have failed to stem the tide of foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria, who continue to pour in by their thousands, according to multiple reports.

“The flow of fighters making their way to Syria remains constant, so the overall number continues to rise,” a US intelligence official told the Washington Post.

Concrete changes might not be apparent for weeks the official said, noting the natural lag between the actual situation on the ground versus the scenario painted by analyzed intelligence.

With US intelligence estimating that 1,000 foreign fighters continue to enter Iraq and Syria every month, the Post estimates that their numbers now exceed 16,000. That figure eclipses the number of foreign fighters who took up arms in any analogous conflict over the past decades, including the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan.

The figures fall within the same ballpark of a recent UN Security Council estimate. According to documents seen by The Guardian, 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, the report states, “including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to Al-Qaeda.”

The figures mirror US intelligence estimates in September, which also reckoned some 15,000 foreign fighters had entered the region via 80 different countries.

Reflecting the Post’s assessment, the UN committee notes that overall numbers since 2010 “are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 – and are growing.”

The committee, tasked with monitoring Al-Qaeda, did not mention the 80 states by name, though the overall geographical diversity of the fighters was unprecedented.

Meanwhile, the reports sharply underscore how expensive US-led military efforts have so far proved ineffective at stemming the tide of the IS advance in Syria and Iraq.

The United States and its allies have carried out more than 600 strikes so far in Syria and Iraq, with the strategic aim of allowing moderate opposition forces some breathing space to regroup. Since August 8, the US has flown 6,600 manned and unmanned sorties in Iraq and Syria at an estimated cost of $8.3 million a day, Defense News reports. Last week, it was reported that 32 civilians have died so far in the strikes.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press, citing Pentagon data, estimated that the United States alone had spent approximately $1.1 billion on its military operations in Iraq and Syria since mid-June.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said this week that the bombing campaign was disrupting IS, though he admitted that any major offensive “may still be a ways off,” the Post cites him as saying.

US officials have said that the uninterrupted flow of fighters is not a proper metric to measure the effectiveness of the airstrikes, which have killed an estimated 460 IS fighters since last month, on top of 60 more fighters from the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

Officials have attributed the number and pace of foreign fighters arriving in the region to several factors, including sophisticated IS recruiting techniques, and the relative ease with which would-be jihadists can travel from the greater Middle East and Europe to Syria and Iraq.

The UN report similarly recognized “the terror and recruitment value of multichannel, multi-language social and other media messaging,” being conducted by the Islamic State.

A recent CNN/ORC International survey found that 54 percent of respondents believe the strikes will degrade and destroy the military capability of IS. That figure is down from 61 percent in September.

Meanwhile, the number of respondents who support sending US ground troops to engage the jihadists was 45 percent – a seven percent jump over the previous month. A majority, however, still oppose putting boots on the ground.

++ Iraq: al Baghdadi appare in immagini in moschea Mossul ++
A welcome distraction: the Islamist dude with the $6.500 James Bond watch.

Related info:

George Galloway On ISIS (Video )

Israel And Turkey Are Directly Supporting ISIS And Al-Qaeda Terrorists In Syria

The Khorasans: As Fake As the Kardashians

What Iraq Thinks: “It Is Obvious To Everyone That ISIS Is A Creation Of The United States And Israel”

The Fake Beheadings of the Arch-Zionist Crime Syndicate

ISIS EXPOSED 100% AS CIA OPERATION: ‘The Next Osama Bin Laden is Here’ (Video)

Meeting ISIL (Documentary)

ISIL Leader Al-Baghdadi Is Mossad Agent Simon Elliot

McCain and his buddy, ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi:

ISIS-leader-Al-Baghdadi-Mccain

McCain-ISIS

The U.S. has armed and trained ISIS:

Veterans Today: CIA And US Military Fight Under Al Qaeda Command In Syria (Video)

U.S. Special Forces Train Syrian Rebels In Jordan (Le Figaro)

Americans Are Training Syria Rebels In Jordan: Spiegel (Reuters)

CIA-Armed And Trained Syrian Rebels ‘On Way To Battlefield’

‘Military Intervention In Syria’, US Training ‘Rebels’ Since 2011 And The Complete Grand Plan – The March 2012 Leak

mossadISISmeme

Baghdadi Mossad Trained
Source

Flashback:

… all of them coming directly from from our Al-CIAda unit …

Robin-Cook-There-is-no-al-qaeda

Why Was A Sunday Times Report On US Government Ties To Al-Qaeda Chief Spiked? & Gladio B

Hillary Clinton: ‘We Created Al-Qaeda’ — The Protagonists Of The ‘Global War on Terrorism’ Are The Terrorists (Video)

‘GLADIO, THE LIVING PROOF THERE IS NO AL-QAEDA, NO WAR ON TERROR’ – ‘GLADIO Is AL-QAEDA’ (Veterans Today)

Just one month after this article has been published in the Guardian Robin Cook DIED:

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook: ‘Al-Qaida, Literally “The Database”, Was Originally The Computer File Of The Thousands Of Mujahideen Who Were Recruited And Trained With Help From The CIA To Defeat The Russians’

Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist or How The US Created Al Qaeda (Documentary)

BBC: Al-Qaeda Does Not Exist (Documentary)

Retired U.S. General Wesley Clark

… at the Commonwealth Club of California:

U.S. 4 Star General Wesley Clark, Oct 3, 2007: ‘We’re Gonna Attack And Destroy The Governments In 7 Countries In 5 Years’ … ‘Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan And Iran’ (Video)

… or here in this interview with Democracy Now:

Interview With US General Wesley Clark (Ret.): US Government Planned To ‘Take Out 7 Countries In 5 Years’: ‘Starting With Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan And Finishing Off Iran’ (Video)

2 thoughts on “1,000 Per Month: US Airstrikes ‘Fail’ To Stem Tide Of Foreign Fighters”

  1. The more evil the US does, the more people who get blown out of their homes thanks to bombs……the bigger the army against the US will grow. What do they expect?
    Idiots in power have destroyed the US.

    Reply

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