'Free Syria and Assad's Syria': Islamic State Editorial on Insurgent Offensive

For Islamic State observers, it was very predictable that this week’s editorial in the group’s al-Naba’ newsletter would be about the insurgent offensive in northwest Syria that has captured the cities of Aleppo and Hama. These insurgents, for the Islamic State, are ‘Sahwat’ (referring to the fact that they have fought against the Islamic State, just as the ‘Sahwat’ of Sunni Arabs fought against the group in Iraq during the years of the U.S. occupation), and therefore they are ‘apostates’ from Islam. The Islamic State in Syria primarily operates in the central and eastern regions of the country, fighting the Syrian government and its allies as well as the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

To summarise the editorial’s main points:

. The conflict cannot be separated from timing and location. It is a proxy war between Turkey and Iran, with Turkey seeking to annex part of northern Syria as a buffer zone where it can deport refugees, and also seeking to exert pressure on Assad and his allies amid the failures in getting the normalisation process started between Syria and Turkey.