marshall.lewis's blog

Someone in a comment thread asked some questions about why there were any US troops in Niger in the first place, and what the general situation is. Here are my answers, posted here for curious minds:

Q: Exactly what the fuck are we doing in Niger?

The Iraqi Kurds continue to lose vast swaths of territory. Forces loyal to Baghdad have now secured all of Kirkuk's oil fields, along with all of the disputed border crossings. Yazidi PMU have also taken control of the Sinjar region, finally solidifying the region's already ongoing shift away from the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and towards Baghdad.

The regime's Tiger Forces have finished their bizarre expedition to the north, capturing Maadan and eliminating the last ISIS position northwest of Deir-az-Zor. The Kurdish SDF has reached and mostly surrounded the city of Suwar, thereby effectively securing most of the Khabur river. They also took the Conoco plant, and are approaching the Jafra oil field. Once it falls, ISIS will no longer control any oil fields north of the Khabur (except the Derro oil field, which is way to the north).

The regime ended up crossing the Euphrates at Mazlum, a little to the north of where I'd expected, and the Tiger Forces are pushing north, not south. No movement from the Kurds. It looks like Assad's goal is to deprive the Kurds of all of the oil fields, even the one northwest of Deir-as-Zor, which would require a second river crossing. I'm guessing that tomorrow we'll see the regime push from Mazlum to the adjacent Tabiyah oil fiels, and then probably north to cut the N-7. The result is total strategic failure for the Kurds.

I had realized so many of the oil fields were on the left bank of the Euphrates. There's no way in hell the regime will let the Kurds cross south of the Khabur. The question is whether the regime is willing to accept the Kurds taking the three oil fields to the north of it. Kurdish forces are only a few kilometers away from the closest one, so the regime would need to cross the Euphrates as soon as possible in order to secure them. This also makes it considerably less likely that they'll cross at Mayadeen, since it would take too long to secure the town.

The Kurds and the Assad regime have both reached Deir az-Zor. The general working arrangement between the two has been that the Kurds get one side of the Euphrates and the regime gets the other. However, the regime is preparing to deploy pontoon bridges across the river, which would cross a stated red line by the US.

OK, so I'm back from vacation, and just starting to get caught up on what I missed. It looks like the big things are as follows:

Now announcing: MOOSHCARE, a healthcare reform plan better than anything the Republicans can come up with.

I know, it's been forever since I did one of these, but that's because nothing newsworthy has been happening. The Kurds are continuing to slowly grind through ISIS's capital city of Raqqa, which has turned out to be a very long and difficult fight. The rebels are mostly occupied with fighting against each other. The regime has been slowly clearing ISIS out of the desert in preparation for an eventual assault on Deir-az-Zor. Things are progressing slowly.

I'm of several minds as to what the regime is likely to do here. First of all, I don't buy the idea that they have 6500 tribal fighters. Their numbers are probably much more limited than that, and I doubt they have the manpower to really properly hold these long front lines. In particular, I suspect that capturing the Rusafah-Palmyra road would be less beneficial than South Front thinks, because the lack of manpower will make the encirclement porous.