Schneier on Security

Skeptical • December 31, 2015 11:33 AM

@Gerard: I am not really sure whether Skeptical likes this news. Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq

Well, happy Christmas.

You link to an opinion column by Seumas Milne written in June. It is neither “news”, nor “now”, nor “truth”, nor is anything but Milne’s usual reality-defying tripe “emerging.” And the notion of the CIA funding ISIS in 2011 or after is laughably absurd. It’s the equivalent of claiming that the CIA was funding the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program in 1960.

See here for a good description of Milne’s character and stance on other issues: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2015/10/i-wanted-believe-jeremy-corbyn-i-cant-believe-seumas-milne

Regarding ISIS, a fair analysis would conclude that there were a number of conditions that enabled the possibility of such a group emerging. Foremost among them would be the collapse of the Syrian state. Failed states in an area stretching from Northern Africa through the Middle East spawn Islamist insurgencies with remarkable regularity (from northern Nigeria and Mali, through Algeria, to the Horn of Africa, to the Sinai, Syria is not an outlier in this respect.

The collapse of Syria had nothing to do with the United States. This is a fact impossible for Milne to see – in his worldview it’s still 1970 and the fall of any government hostile the US must be caused by the US. Milne’s argument is easily dismissed by anyone remotely familiar with the history Assad’s regime, the brutal lengths to which they went to hold on to power, the depth of hatred for them by a majority of Syria’s population, and the events of 2011 that flamed into a full civil war.

However, one of the key enabling conditions of ISIS’s successful – though temporary – invasion of Iraq has been the alienation of Iraqi Sunnis from the Iraqi Government, and the corruption of the Iraqi Government and much of its military by Iranian influence and Shi’ite militias (with huge overlap between the two). And THAT, in turn, was made more likely by the US-led toppling of Hussein and the departure of all but a few US forces from Iraq under President Obama.

So, appropriately given the messy state of reality, the conclusion is mixed. Certain factors of ISIL’s rise were enabled by US actions – though the most proximate of those actions is actually the US withdrawal from Iraq, which allowed far more influential actors in the form of Iran and certain Iraqi factions to alienate Sunnis and hollow Iraqi military forces, setting the stage for ISIL’s incursions to turn into occupations.

But ISIL, in one form or another, simply needed a failed state in that region to incubate (as similar movements have incubated in other failed states in the region – obviously I’m simplifying here, but surely the comment is long enough already). Once the Syrian state collapsed in 2011, the emergence of a group like it was a high-probability outcome.

Less predictable was ISIL’s success in focusing upon seizing oil infrastructure to produce revenue for itself, or the Assad regime’s willingness to purchase that oil.

Assad knows, and Russia knows, that while the world and most of Syria believe that Assad must go, if the only choices on the menu are Assad and ISIL, then the choice is obvious. And so Assad, with Russia’s help, is attempting to eliminate those other choices.

It’s Assad’s best option, but in attempting to do more than preserve a friendly Syrian government that permits continued Russian access to important assets on Syria’s coast, Russia is overreaching.

Ultimately – and this is my prediction – a settlement will involve:

— the Alawite dominated Syrian Government maintaining control of key western regions and cities (with Assad at the helm for a time);

— Syrian Kurdish forces – in conjunction with US, NATO, and KRG forces – being given primary control over a stretch of northern Syria;

— the deserts of central and eastern Syria, along with the cities and villages – and oil rigs – that sprout along water sources and oil resevoirs – will be controlled by a coalition of Sunni governments, with the involvement of the US, the UN, and other countries.

Regarding the Kurds: the complexity of their relationship with Turkey isn’t well understood. The Kurdistan Regional Government has a fair relationship with Turkey – though it may have escaped the attention of some, recently the Iraqi Government protested the presence of Turkish forces inside KRG (Iraqi) territory. The Turkish forces were not attacking the KRG – in fact they were providing training.

In other words, it’s true that the PKK, the YPG, and the KRG, are all Kurdish organizations, but not all Kurdish organizations are the same.

To take a conflict more familiar to some readers here, the Irish Government, the IRA, and the P-IRA (or pick your favorite violent offshoot), are all Irish organizations, but they’re not all the same, and for most of recent history have not been viewed as the same by the British Government.

Skeptical • January 2, 2016 9:34 AM

@Dirk: The review and summary linked to paints an entirely different picture of an administration obsessed with destabilising Syria to get rid of Assad and going against repeated warnings of its own DIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

No, Hersh’s article (published, like his previous UBL conspiracy theory article, in the London Review of Books, something I’ll return to in a moment, alleges that the US military deliberately undermined the Obama Administration’s effort to arm Syrian opposition (by, for example, supplying inferior/ancient weapons).

It further alleges that such efforts to arm the opposition began long after the Syrian state descended into civil war.

So the article doesn’t contradict what I said: the collapse of the Syrian state had nothing to do with the United States.

Aside from that, the article itself is contradicted by numerous, quite public, disagreements between the administration and certain Congressional leaders (not to mention some within the administration who opposed its ultimate policy position).

For those who don’t follow such matters, until last year the President’s policy has been to avoid involvement in Syria so far as possible. Enormous skepticism was both leaked and explicitly argued concerning the strength and existence of “moderate” opposition groups. Indeed, when ISIL expanded, administration opponents (and internal critics of its policy) blamed the administration’s reluctance to provide arms or support to moderate groups.

Some may remember Hersh as the investigative journalist who exposed the 1968 My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, and for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. In 2004 he reported on the US military’s mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

More recently he claimed that the US knew where Bin Laden was for years, that the operation to kill Bin Laden was essentially staged, and that the operators who killed him threw pieces of Bin Laden out of their helicopter as they returned to Afghanistan.

That too was published in the London Review of Books – probably because The New Yorker, Hersh’s preferred venue, wouldn’t accept the article.

Skeptical • January 3, 2016 5:55 PM

@Dirk: What I read is that both current and past US administrations have been trying to destabilize Syria for years, financing opposition, going against their own DIA and JCS advice that there was (and is) no such thing as “moderate rebels” and that toppling Assad would only make the situation worse.

You have to be somewhat removed from the debate that’s occurred about Syrian intervention in the US over the last three years to buy into that reading.

Obama was, according to multiple named sources who opposed his decisions, and according to Obama himself, disinclined to intervene at all in Syria.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview of Obama two years ago (Jan 2014) in The New Yorker:

It is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which our involvement in Syria would have led to a better outcome, short of us being willing to undertake an effort in size and scope similar to what we did in Iraq. And when I hear people suggesting that somehow if we had just financed and armed the opposition earlier, that somehow Assad would be gone by now and we’d have a peaceful transition, it’s magical thinking.

And he goes on to say:

Very early in this process, I actually asked the C.I.A. to analyze examples of America financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn’t come up with much. We have looked at this from every angle. And the truth is that the challenge there has been, and continues to be, that you have an authoritarian, brutal government who is willing to do anything to hang on to power, and you have an opposition that is disorganized, ill-equipped, ill-trained, and is self-divided. All of that is on top of some of the sectarian divisions. . . . And, in that environment, our best chance of seeing a decent outcome at this point is to work the state actors who have invested so much in keeping Assad in power—mainly the Iranians and the Russians—as well as working with those who have been financing the opposition to make sure that they’re not creating the kind of extremist force that we saw emerge out of Afghanistan when we were financing the mujahideen.

The study that Obama refers to here, incidentally, was leaked in substance 10 months later to The New York Times, after two persons who opposed Obama’s decision – Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta – wrote books in which they described Obama rejecting a proposed plan to supply lethal weapons to rebel factions in 2012. You can read about the study here – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/politics/cia-study-says-arming-rebels-seldom-works.html – along with some additional background on the policy debate at the time.

So Dirk, everything you’ve said about the danger of simply pumping arms into Syrian rebel forces, the possibility that those arms would end up in the hands of Islamists, and the dangers posed by simply deposing Assad, have been very public parts of the debate in the United States, and in the US Government, for years.

Indeed, even in 2013, when considering launching attacks on Assad’s regime in response to their use of chemical weapons, he explicitly ruled out a strike that would depose Assad in the process? Why?

Because:

I don’t think we should remove another dictator with force — we learned from Iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next. But a targeted strike can make Assad, or any other dictator, think twice before using chemical weapons.

If Obama wanted to remove Assad, he had everything he needed to do so after the chemical weapons attack in 2013. If he wanted to flood opposition forces with weapons, he had everything he needed to do it. He did neither – and was the subject, and remains the subject, of criticism from many for it.

So when I read items from certain outlets that the US has eagerly fomented chaos in Syria and desires above all else to remove Assad, it’s like reading a travelogue about a city by an author who has never visited it and manages to get everything almost entirely backwards.

If anyone is stuck in cold war thinking, it’s the USG. Russia and Assad are not the enemy. Da’esh is.

Which is why the US has launched thousands of airstrikes, multiple raids, and lost personnel in combat against ISIL.

As to which nation in the world is trapped in Cold War thinking, that’s likely the one led by a man who called the fall of the Soviet Union the greatest catastrophe in history.

And can we finally dispense with the “murderous regime eating babies for breakfast” narrative too? Same thing was said about Saddam and Khadaffi. There’s no doubt that they’re all undemocratic, authoritarian regimes, but are Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar or Bahrain any better? I think not, and the same goes for most other regimes in the region.

Is Turkey any better than the Syrian Government? Seriously?

And where is that USG’s protest against the 47 people executed in Saudi Arabia today, among which an influential Shiite cleric? Yet another move of pure genius by this highly enlightened medieval regime by the grace of $DEITY that will make sectarian violence in the region even worse.

A concern voiced by the US State Department as well (cited to http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/01/250934.htm in case not shown in browser):

We have previously expressed our concerns about the legal process in Saudi Arabia and have frequently raised these concerns at high levels of the Saudi Government. We reaffirm our calls on the Government of Saudi Arabia to respect and protect human rights, and to ensure fair and transparent judicial proceedings in all cases.

The United States also urges the Government of Saudi Arabia to permit peaceful expression of dissent and to work together with all community leaders to defuse tensions in the wake of these executions.‎

We are particularly concerned that the execution of prominent Shia cleric and political activist Nimr al-Nimr risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced.

In this context, we reiterate the need for leaders throughout the region to redouble efforts aimed at de-escalating regional tensions.

And returning to your comment now…

For the USG, the world is simple: the Shia nations of Syria (Alawites are Shia sect) and Iran are the enemy. And for that purpose, they have knowingly and willingly aligned themselves with Sunni allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey,

You believe that the US aligned itself with Sunni allies because Syria and Iran are enemies?

Turkey joined NATO in 1952. Zero to do with opposition to Iran or Syria.

The US and Saudi Arabia have been on friendly terms (with exceptions) since well before there was any enmity between Iran and the United States.

Indeed, prior to 1979, Saudi Arabia and Iran were part of the “twin pillars” approach to US foreign policy in the Middle East. And if we go back even further, you find the US viewed by certain Iranian factions (I can’t recall names) as a possible ally against the imperialist powers they struggled against (Russia and Britain).

US foreign policy is many things, some good, some bad, some neither. But simple it is not, and especially not during the Cold War.

who in their turn finance, arm and otherwise support the Sunni jihadis of Da’esh and Al Nusra. That these are in fact murderous terrorists is just a bit unfortunate, but also explains why until recently the offical US position was one of no involvement as others were doing their dirty work for them. And which would have worked too, if it hadn’t been for those pesky Russians.

I’m afraid I can’t understand the logic of this statement. You believe that the US countenanced the funding of ISIL as a means of destroying Assad, and that Russian air support of regime forces – coming a year after the US had launched thousands of airstrikes against ISIL, in addition to US-led raids on the ground and US air support of other forces against ISIL – is what stopped it from “succeeding”?

If that’s the view you’re putting forward, it’s just factually incorrect.

Skeptical • January 5, 2016 3:11 PM

@Dirk: arms and money were pumped into “moderate” rebel forces and which eventually ended up with Da’esh and Al Nusra. And which is common knowledge, unless you know of some 3rd party selling them Abrams battle tanks and stuff.

You’re off the mark again. You’re thinking of equipment captured from Iraqi forces (no one has sold or given tanks to ISIS). And the US hasn’t supplied anything even approaching tanks to any rebel faction.

I don’t think you appreciate how late to the game the US was in supplying any lethal aid at all, or how limited its contribution was.

Here’s a good article on the initial decision by the President to begin a covert lethal aid program:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/world/middleeast/obamas-uncertain-path-amid-syria-bloodshed.html

The weapons ISIL is using aren’t those that must be acquired from the United States, but rather which existed in abundance in Syria and Iraq already, and which were supplied in ample numbers by neighboring countries in support of various groups.

Serious US involvement began only in August 2014, when it conducted airstrikes and infiltrated special operations forces to aid the Yazidis (in conjunction with Kurdish forces – to which many minorities have fled for protection). And as should be obvious, it has been extremely tight-fisted in supplying weapons to any rebel factions in Syria even after that point.

Which for a long time have been questioned as to their efficiency and results. Allow me to quote Sen. John McCain who in September last year said: “Indeed, this committee is disturbed by recent whistleblower allegations that officials at Central Command skewed intelligence assessments to paint an overly positive picture of conditions on the ground”.

The airstrikes are intended to be one part of an effort that will take years – they’re not intended to be a quick fix, as there is none. They’re used to support forces fighting against ISIL, to grind away ISIL’s capabilities, and to buy time and confidence for local ground forces that will eventually be in a position to eradicate ISIL.

That air support has been integral to the success of the YPG against ISIL forces in Kobane and elsewhere, to the success of combined Kurdish forces in the retaking of Sinjar, to the success of Iraqi forces in retaking Ramadi.

There’s a long way to go. Mosul and Fallujah seem likely to prove substantial challenges. But ISIL lost much of the territory it captured in 2014, and it will continue to lose men, key leadership, equipment, and morale. In fact I would guess that its losses in those areas will accelerate, though I would not expect Mosul or Fallujah to be retaken before 2017.

You don’t have to be a military genius to know that it’s already hard to get results without boots on the ground, but that you’re not going to get anywhere soon as long as several of your own key allies are financing, arming and supporting the very people you’re bombing.

Although I’d suspect, without any real knowledge, that arms flows from neighboring countries into Syria were less controlled prior to 2014, I think that’s far from the case today. Sunni nations are actively involved in bombing ISIL targets, and arming and training ground forces against ISIL.

Actually, yes. However much Erdogan would like to join the EU, it’s not going to happen due to their abysmal record on human rights, treatment of the Kurds and quite some other issues. Ask any European politician.

Turkey has many serious issues and shortcomings. But the Turkish Government and political/legal system is far better than Assad’s regime.

A truely harsh condemnation indeed. But perhaps it would be better to quote POTUS himself from a last year CNN interview: “Sometimes we have to balance our need to speak to them about human rights issues with immediate concerns that we have in terms of countering terrorism or dealing with regional stability”. Which is rather pathetic in light of the fact that SA is actively financing terrorism and creating regional instability.

The Saudi Government isn’t financing AQ or ISIL, if that’s what you mean. You do realize that most of those executed were Sunni militants affiliated with AQ, right?

As to the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, the US expressed its concerns as to the effect on regional stability. What more should the US do?

The decision by elements within the Iranian Government to allow the storming and destruction of the Saudi Embassy was much more serious. Though that decision is likely tied to domestic Iranian politics (the storming was condemned by the Tehran commander of the Revolutionary Guards – notably a hardline group – and Preisdent Rouhani, but welcomed by other conservative figures), it’s much more of a direct attack on another nation, and has obviously proven far more destabilizing.

Perhaps I should have phrased my statement differently by saying “aligned themselves with traditional Sunni allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey in their common goal to topple Assad and contain the influence of Iran”.

Again, if the US wanted to “topple” Assad, it had ample opportunity to do so. If toppling Assad were priority #1 for the US, missiles would have launched in 2013. The problem isn’t toppling Assad – the problem is what happens afterward. Until 2014, the US Government’s position on the Syrian Civil War was essentially: “this is horrible, we’d like for Assad to step aside and for the various groups to come to a peaceful settlement, but it’s a conflict that we cannot resolve by force and in which we do not wish to become involved.”

I’d rather replace “countenance” by “turning a blind eye”, but that is exactly what I’m saying.

The US takes a pretty dim view – to put it mildly – of anyone funding AQ affiliated groups like Nusra, or Islamist extremists like ISIL. If you have evidence that the US turned a blind eye, please state it. Such an extraordinary claim, if backed by evidence, would certainly be worthy of a large amount of media interest.

And I don’t think you’ll find anyone denying that without Russian intervention Assad would have been long gone by now.

The US, for obvious reasons, doesn’t desire the Syrian Government to simply be defeated. The result would be a massacre and continued chaos. And I cannot imagine why you think the US would prefer ISIL gaining control over Syria’s most populated areas, not to mention some of its more sophisticated weapons, to Assad. Russia, and Assad himself, seem to have a far better understanding of US preferences here than you do, if that is your view.

Skeptical • January 10, 2016 9:29 PM

@Dirk:

In support your conclusion that my

claims that the US had “nothing” to do with the situation in Syria are thus demonstrably false

you provide the following evidence:

it is rather well documented that POTUS around October 2013 gave the CIA’S Special Activities Division (SAD) green light to arm and train “moderate” Syrian rebels with as ultimate purpose the overthrowing of the Syrian regime. The operation was an abysmal failure.

I linked you to an article reporting the Presidential finding for a covert action program to arm and train certain Syrian rebels. As you noted, the operation resulted in little difference in Syria – and had nothing to do with either causing the Syrian Civil War (2 years old at that point) or the rise of ISIL (which had already solidified its hold on territory in Syria and was soon to expand into Iraq).

So this isn’t evidence in support of your conclusion. You also adduce:

Wikileaks cables published in 2011 also show that the US State Department had been secretly financing Syrian opposition groups and projects since at least 2006 in order to destabilize the Assad regime. Other sources confirm illegal CIA activities in Syria since the 1950s, and which have included coup attempts, assassination plots, and in more recent years, also extraordinary renditions and paramilitary strikes.

Aborted CIA operations in the 1950s, and small US State Department funding of human rights organizations, did not cause the Syrian Civil War nor contribute in any way to it. Your failure to even attempt to draw a connection between those things and the Syrian Civil War speaks for itself.

Look, this is the simple truth:

Decades of brutal suppression of majority Syrian ethnic and religious groups – millions of people – in conjunction with economic deprivation and other examples set during the “Arab Spring”, caused the hold maintained on Syria by Assad’s security forces to slip, and once it did underlying sentiment and existing social structures drove forward open rebellion along with defections from Syrian military units.

Believe it or not, the sentiments of millions of Syrians and Assad’s treatment of them mattered more to the collapse of the regime’s hold over Syria than 60+ year old aborted or failed operations or the US State Department’s funding of human rights organizations.

As to Saudi Arabia, you claim:

I probably don’t need to remind you that 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi nationals and that there are still 28 missing/redacted pages from the official 9/11 commission report, alledgedly pointing the finger at connections to Saudi officials. Everyone knows the Saudis have been financing terrorist movements for years. In a December 2009 cable released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan] and other terrorist groups.”

And in the same memorandum notes that while Saudi Arabia has been aggressive in countering funding to AQ, it has been less so in acting against charities that also serve as conduits of funds/resources to other terrorist organizations.

The Taliban, and especially LeT, are not as obvious threats to the Saudi Government as AQ, and the delicate internal politics of Saudi Arabia probably imposes some friction on the movement of the Saudi Government towards limiting the activities of certain charities with respect to organizations other than AQ (and, quite obviously, ISIL). But there’s no doubt in the memorandum that the Saudi Government has targeted funding for AQ and continued to do so.

Indeed, the key talking point to be used in persuading the Saudi Government to pay more attention to charities that aid the Taliban was that the Taliban is aligned with AQ.

You go on to write:

Although the cable clearly shows the US’s knowledge of and concern about the matter, it also points out the huge reluctance on behalf of Saudi authorities to adequately deal with it. As well as the US’s de facto inability or unwillingness to do anything about it other than secretly working diplomatic channels.

As the memorandum you cite states, due in part to US pressure the Saudi Government became “increasingly aggressive” and pro-active in countering funding to AQ. The US also established US Treasury Department units within Saudi Arabia to assist and train Saudi personnel and organizations. There are numerous reports you can find on Saudi efforts to combat terrorist funding. Suffice to say that the Saudi Government, with US help, went from a country with little of the infrastructure or institutions needed to conduct this type of financial surveillance and control to a country with vastly improved and more sophisticated capabilities, which it uses.

Finally, you write:

And even if you’re not buying any of this, there is just no way that Da’esh could have become a formidable military force without substantial funding and arms supplies from regional supporters, and which I doubt were either Syria or Iran.

Your view is flatly contradicted by evidence in the public domain regarding ISIL’s sources of funding. Remember that ISIL derives from al Qaeda in Iraq. ISIL’s primary sources of funding were, and remain, various operations (extortion, oil smuggling, kidnapping and ransom, robbery) that produced healthy revenue streams. There are a number of good studies of this available. Here’s a place to start on AQI: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG1026.html

As to this question:

Given the context of the regional powerplay, the US’es actions, inactions and results thereof, are you in any way suggesting that the Assad regime would still be standing if it hadn’t been for Russia’s intervention? And without which the Da’esh black flag would now be flying over Damascus, a genocide against the Alawites in full progress and the US or the so-called Free Syrian Army unable to do exactly zilch about it.

I think Assad’s regime would be under considerably more pressure, but I don’t think it would have collapsed at this point.

Skeptical • January 11, 2016 2:44 PM

@Dirk:

The elements I summed up show the US has a long history in overt and covert attempts at destabilising and overthrowing the regime. I never said the US directly caused the Syrian civil war, but it surely contributed to it in more than one way, and not in the least by their invasion in Iraq that lead to a cascade of events that ultimately gave birth to Da’esh.

The Syrian Civil War would have occurred regardless of the existence of ISIL, and would have occurred regardless of State Department memoranda speculating about factors that might show weaknesses in Assad’s control.

Look, the crux of this argument is the implication that somehow the US is to blame for Islamist terrorism, for ISIL, for 13 November, for the Syrian Civil War, etc.

Belief in such a thing obscures the actual drivers behind the phenomena and events listed above, and in doing so it prevents us from understanding both the actual scope and nature of the problem, but also the policies that might best address it. Such a false belief also makes it very difficult to parse the propaganda from the facts.

The bottom line of the memo remains that despite ongoing efforts and collaboration with the US “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan] and other terrorist groups.” Note the word “critical”.

Sure. The United States has an extensive system to prevent money laundering, fund transfers to criminal, terrorist, or otherwise sanctioned entities, and so forth. And yet very large sums were successfully laundered in US banks by drug cartels.

The memorandum never defines what it means by critical. Bear in mind it’s also a memorandum meant for wide distribution and intended to communicate talking points for embassies in various countries during discussions with host governments. It’s not intended to be a nuanced analysis. So I’d be wary of reading too much into choices of words.

1) They are estimates, partially based on incomplete Da’esh accounting records found in the field as well as other research most of which draws upon equally incomplete and unofficial data. It’s not like they’re an official general ledger.

So far as I’m aware, neither AQI nor its successor entity ISIL has contracted an accredited accounting firm to conduct an independent audit of its bookkeeping.

But don’t underestimate the extent to which this organization, and similar organizations, keep careful track of funds and expenditures. They have all the headaches (and more), and much of the paperwork, of any other bureaucracy. And it’s vital that they do so if the leadership is to have any idea as to where funds are coming from, how they’re being spent, and how to decide where funds should be allocated.

Frankly, I’m only slightly surprised there’s not some version of al-Qaeda Quickbooks floating around those networks.

So while I agree that we should take those estimates with an appreciation for the existence of a margin of error, I don’t think those estimates are likely to be dramatically off.

2) Whereas the bulk of Da’esh revenue today comes from oil exports, it is counter-intuitive to think that they could ever have achieved sufficient critical military mass to take over major cities with extortion and ransom moneys alone. I know of precious few other criminal or terrorist movements in history that ever pulled that off.

They also had weapons in ample supply, an ample base of alienated young men to draw upon, and a cohesive, violent, and ruthless organization, all in an atmosphere of lawlessness and corruption. That’s more than enough for such a group to take control of an urban area without funding from foreign states. Examples of this are unfortunately legion, ranging from parts of Jamaica to vast areas of Central and South America to the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

I don’t think anyone actually shares that opinion. Even Assad in a last July speech admitted that a shortage of manpower was forcing him to make strategic decisions which positions to defend. Again, it is counter-intuitive to assume that Putin intervened just for the heck of it, knowing only too well that it would cost him and that he’d be drawing flak from all sides. It’s way more likely that the Russians had reliable intelligence that the Syrian army was about to crumble, which would have meant them losing their Syrian bases.

I think Putin’s intervention had multiple motivations.

As to whether Assad’s regime would have crumbled by this point, can you point to any prediction, prior to Russian intervention, that by January the Syrian Government would be completely overrun – much less overrun by ISIL?

The more likely outcome is that Assad would have lost ground in certain areas, increasing the pressure on him to step aside, and increasing the motivation of those in the Syrian Government to encourage him to do so, which would open the door to a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement with some rebel groups. ISIL and Nusra would continue to be the targets of coalition efforts, and their strength would degrade rapidly relative to other rebel groups and the Syrian Government’s forces.