Russia and U.S. Near De Facto Alliance in Syria
April 6, 2016 — 7:00 PM EDT
Updated on April 7, 2016 — 5:42 AM EDT
Fighters allied with the U.S. and Russia, long on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, are both zeroing in on Islamic State’s center of gravity.
After routing the self-declared caliphate in the ancient city of Palmyra March 27 with the help of Russian air power, the Syrian army’s next major objective is cutting off the terror group’s main supply route between Iraq and Syria. Kurdish-led forces backed by the U.S. are also getting closer to ISIS’s capital of Raqqa, raising the possibility of a pincer movement that would bring the U.S. and Russia into a de facto alliance. That would have the effect of bolstering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power, analysts say.
As the U.S. and Russia step up efforts to complete a peace deal to follow a partial cease-fire they brokered in February, their interests are converging in fighting the radical Islamist group even amid American reluctance to legitimize Assad. A successful campaign could prove critical for Europe as it grapples for a solution to rising terrorist attacks and the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
After Kremlin talks involving U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry late last month, “it’s clear that there is an understanding, even if it’s not on paper, that we need to keep the cease-fire on track as well as coordinate our actions” against Islamic State, said Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense committee in the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament.
Islamic State seized swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, which it’s used as a base to expand across the region and plot terrorist bombings from Beirut to Paris and Brussels. The group’s territory has shrunk by more than a quarter since the start of last year as the U.S. and later Russia backed an offensive against it, according to the London-based research group IHS. Its sources of revenue have also been squeezed because of U.S.-led and Russian airstrikes on its oil facilities since late 2015.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-06/raqqa-siege-in-sight-as-russia-u-s-proxies-plan-pincer-move
