The Syrian regime and its allies began a slow push into eastern Syria in March. Having recaptured Palmyra that month, pro-government forces increased their presence in the sparsely populated Syrian desert and ultimately reached the borders near Iraq and Jordan by mid-June.
The push to establish what was dubbed by media as a “land bridge”, linking Iran’s allies in Syria and Iraq, disrupted any prospect for an American-led ground assault against ISIL from the Syrian desert. Instead, the United States-led coalition would have to focus on expanding its campaign against the group from southern Hasakah in the north-east.
Forces aligned with the Syrian regime continued their slow march into Deir Ezzor. Division of labour between Russia and Iran enabled these forces to open a supply line into Deir Ezzor, then under siege since 2014. Iran significantly expanded its support for the ground campaign to seize key outposts in the road networks along the way. For example, Hizbollah-aligned Mayadeen TV featured what it described as the first footage of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fighting against ISIL to have been officially released. (Previously, Tehran had insisted it only had "advisers" operating along the Syrian Arab Army, not as fighting units.)
By the first week of September, the pro-government forces announced that they broke the siege around Deir Ezzor, which compelled the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces on September 9 to start their own campaign to expel ISIL from Deir Ezzor, even though the operation was scheduled for later. One of the US concerns was that Iranian-backed forces could advance towards the Iraqi border, close off the area and potentially disrupt the SDF's ability to move south — as they did near Palmyra.
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At this point, though, Russia and Iran managed to establish a sprawling corridor throughout the Syrian desert to enable the expansion inside Deir Ezzor, and potentially to march down to the city of Mayadeen and the oil-rich countryside on the other side of the Euphrates River before the US reaches it. Before launching an offensive to recapture the urban neighbourhoods inside the city of Deir Ezzor, Russia moved to secure the strategic airport to its south and to cross the river. It built two bridgeheads to link the two river banks near the airport.
Then something unanticipated happened. A counter-offensive by ISIL undid much of the work and heavy lifting by both Iran and Russia in the areas around Deir Ezzor and Palmyra over the past five months. ISIL recaptured several enemy outposts and the pro-government force's defences began to crumble in some areas. The counterattacks significantly disrupted the flow of the Russian and Iranian plan for Deir Ezzor, and demonstrated that the gains made in that region were fragile and largely inflated.
Clashes continue, and the regime’s allies will probably regain the initiative and reverse ISIL’s advances. But the episode should give observers pause about the regime’s capabilities. Despite the significant gains made by those forces, the regime failed to protect the areas liberated from ISIL while Iran and Russia surged forward.
The fighting in that region, including in Palmyra, has been spearheaded by Iran-supplied forces. Both Russian and Iranian forces suffered high-level casualties in the clashes. Those include senior IRGC officers killed during a series of hit-and-run ISIL operations against their bases near the border. Lt Gen Valery Asapov, head of the 5th army in Russia's eastern command, was killed in the area where forces he commanded built a bridge near the Deir Ezzor airport. On Tuesday, ISIL also released a video of two Russian soldiers it said it had captured during its counter-offensive last week.
The method in which such losses were inflicted highlights another problem for these forces, namely that the losses were made in large part because one side knows the terrain better than the other. The senior Iranian officers were killed in surprise attacks on their bases. The Russian soldiers were captured in Al Shula, as ISIL made its way into the desert town. Al Qaryatayn, a significant city that changed hands a number of times, was reportedly recaptured by ISIL with the help of sleeper cells and support from some of the population.
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Gains made in recent months, mostly due to a surge in support by Iran and Russia, were widely celebrated by the regime and its allies. These gains also shaped much of the narrative about the regime and its capabilities in this period. But those gains were clearly fragile, as this author has frequently pointed out. The setbacks should serve as a reminder that the regime-aligned forces have a long way to go before they could win the war. This war will not be won by a “temp army” supplied by Damascus’s backers if the regime is unable to keep the gains.
The lesson is not limited to the Russian camp. The US has similar, even worse, illusions about its war against jihadis. The fight against ISIL in that region is not necessarily harder than elsewhere. It can be easier. The problem is that both campaigns are led largely by complete strangers, while jihadis have their eyes fixed on that border area.
Judging from other precedents during the conflict, though, the lessons that should be learned from the ISIL counter-offensive and the regime gains over past few months will be soon forgotten. Headlines will go back to portraying a resurgent regime that could win back the country. In the meantime, the situation will only get worse.
Hassan Hassan is a senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy
Stats at a glance:
Cost: 1.05 billion pounds (Dh 4.8 billion)
Number in service: 6
Complement 191 (space for up to 285)
Top speed: over 32 knots
Range: Over 7,000 nautical miles
Length 152.4 m
Displacement: 8,700 tonnes
Beam: 21.2 m
Draught: 7.4 m
Monster
Directed by: Anthony Mandler
Starring: Kelvin Harrison Jr., John David Washington
3/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: BorrowMe (BorrowMe.com)
Date started: August 2021
Founder: Nour Sabri
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: E-commerce / Marketplace
Size: Two employees
Funding stage: Seed investment
Initial investment: $200,000
Investors: Amr Manaa (director, PwC Middle East)
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
The specs
Engine: 77.4kW all-wheel-drive dual motor
Power: 320bhp
Torque: 605Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh219,000
On sale: Now
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Singham Again
Director: Rohit Shetty
Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone
Rating: 3/5
The Sky Is Pink
Director: Shonali Bose
Cast: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Farhan Akhtar, Zaira Wasim, Rohit Saraf
Three stars
Company%20Profile
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COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
The specs
Engine: 4-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: nine-speed
Power: 542bhp
Torque: 700Nm
Price: Dh848,000
On sale: now
HWJN
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Coal Black Mornings
Brett Anderson
Little Brown Book Group
The Uefa Awards winners
Uefa Men's Player of the Year: Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool)
Uefa Women's Player of the Year: Lucy Bronze (Lyon)
Best players of the 2018/19 Uefa Champions League
Goalkeeper: Alisson (Liverpool)
Defender: Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool)
Midfielder: Frenkie de Jong (Ajax)
Forward: Lionel Messi (Barcelona)
Uefa President's Award: Eric Cantona
The specs
Engine: 2-litre or 3-litre 4Motion all-wheel-drive Power: 250Nm (2-litre); 340 (3-litre) Torque: 450Nm Transmission: 8-speed automatic Starting price: From Dh212,000 On sale: Now
The specs
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Power: 620hp from 5,750-7,500rpm
Torque: 760Nm from 3,000-5,750rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch auto
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh1.05 million ($286,000)
The specs
Engine: 2.2-litre, turbodiesel
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Power: 160hp
Torque: 385Nm
Price: Dh116,900
On sale: now
Five expert hiking tips
Always check the weather forecast before setting off
Make sure you have plenty of water
Set off early to avoid sudden weather changes in the afternoon
Wear appropriate clothing and footwear
Take your litter home with you
Founder: Ayman Badawi
Date started: Test product September 2016, paid launch January 2017
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Software
Size: Seven employees
Funding: $170,000 in angel investment
Funders: friends
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
Directed by: RS Prasanna
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar
Tree of Hell
Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla
Director: Raed Zeno
Rating: 4/5
