We are not a news site or current affairs site (because it takes too much time)……but…a few things of note in the middle east:
- Mosul has still not fallen. Offensive started 17 October….we were on the outskirts of Mosul by the beginning of November, and now in a grind that some said would take 6 to 8 weeks. So far, it appears to be taking longer than that. We are claiming that 2,000 ISIL fighters have been killed or wounded. 2000-Islamic-State-militants-killed-or-injured-in-Mosul-offensive and us-says-2-000-is-fighters-killed-gravely-wounded-in-mosul
- The Syrians appear to be pushing hard to take all of Aleppo before the new U.S. president arrives in office. I suspect this is an attempt to get a negotiating advantage in light of what they perceive to be Trump’s attitudes towards Russia and Syria. According to this report, they have at least 85% of the city: thousands-flee-heavy-aleppo-fighting.
- ISIL has retaken Palmyra. latest-syria-says-98-percent-east-aleppo-retaken and recaptures-palmyra
The odd claim is the one made in the second article of this link, where Russia Foreign Minister Lavrov claims about the taking of Palmyra by ISIL that: “…it has been staged to give a respite to bandits in eastern Aleppo.” Of course, one person’s freedom fighters is another person’s bandits.
To take a quote from the first article from Lt. General Townsend: “‘At the start of the campaign, we estimated somewhere between at the low end 3,500, at the high end, about 6,000. By our calculations we think we have killed or badly wounded over 2,000. So if you do the math, that’s still 3,000-5,000’ militants remaining in Mosul, Townsend said.”
We assume he is talking 2,000 killed or seriously enough injured to no be able to return to action in the next couple of months….so, maybe 1,000 killed and 1,000 seriously wounded (kind of grabbing numbers out of thin air here). So, total losses are 4,000 – 6,000 if you count all wounded? That is kind of the entire opposing force.
Then there is the estimates that coalition has lost 14,000 killed and wounded since the start of the offensive (see our post at: Casualties in Iraq (November)). Does that mean that trained conventional counterinsurgency forces are losing something like 2.3-to-1 fighting the insurgents. That would be significant if that was the case.
Something if off somewhere in these various numbers. I not sure which number not to believe (although the estimate of insurgent strength has traditionally always been way too low).
