Syria making real gains against Daesh: Academic

Press TV has interviewed Nabil Mikhail, a professor at George Washington University, about recent achievements by Syrian forces against terrorists.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It looks like we are seeing all these gains on behalf of the Iraqi army and also the Syrian army, and yet there is this propaganda campaign coming from Western media and the United States and its allies talking about Russia’s airstrikes being ineffective.

Mikhail: This is not true. I mean what we are seeing are real gains on the grounds and the Syrian army and the Iraqi army scoring real success and real progress. No one can deny this. But there is also one important thing, which is that Russia and Syria both have introduced a new method of warfare. In the two [Persian] Gulf wars, the technique was one of a heavy bombardment campaign that would last for a month or six weeks and then ground troops would move in. But what we are seeing is a coincidence or a parallel effort between the air force and the ground campaign.

The Syrian armed forces and the Russian advisors did not wait for five, six weeks to start a ground assault; quite the opposite. It took them few days to follow up on what the air force has achieved in terms of cleaning up the landscape.

So there are many important lessons to be learned from this new warfare strategy and technique, and I will not ignore the political dimension. I will not be surprised if President Vladimir Putin would issue a call for the Syrian refugees to come back home. I am quite sure this will echo very favorably in Europe. So definitely a great deal of progress has been made in two weeks.

Press TV: So why do you think that world powers like US President Barack Obama, very recently, talked about the Russian airstrikes in Syria as ineffective. Why do you think talks like this, discussions like this, are going on in Washington?

Mikhail: I do not think that Obama is fully apprised of what is going on. He is not interested in Syria and this, as I said, was a major problem of Arab diplomacy… they put a great deal of reliance on Obama to change things and he was not willing to intervene in Syria. But I am quite sure the experts’ opinion count. The Pentagon with its top experts are assisting the situation differently and they are not happy with the way Obama is acting as commander-in-chief. They are not pleased with the way he handled or mishandled Syria. So the wise opinions are from the Pentagon but they are silent. They are behind the scenes, but for sure they are very critical of Obama and his performance as commander-in-chief.

Press TV: You are talking about these gains, calling them major, and yet we know the US and NATO and all its allies have been targeting Syria for quite a while now, a lot of collateral damage, that is what they call it, damage to infrastructure, all that going on, yet we know that Russia is helping Syria, they have made serious gains and they have actually managed to wipe out ISIL (Daesh) partially.

So what does this tell us about what the United States was doing there and about the effectiveness of that campaign going on in Syria? Were they really trying to root out ISIL in Syria?

Mikhail: They were trying to but there were not enough military orders to pursue them. I mean what Russia has done is to prove the correctness of an old Arab piece of poetry, ‘the sword is mightier than the word.’ So Russia applied power. Russia was not hesitant to use force. That was Obama’s problems in Syria.

I should add also that Russia is positioning its strategy and power configuration in a way to be a magnet for other forces’ effort. I said earlier that the Shia militias, the Kurdish militias, many Sunnis, Christians will all find the presence of Russia military appealing. This is why I expect the surrender of ISIL troops, and forces soon will find many surrendering scenes on the screens of TV, and we will [hear] about this [on] the radio. We will find also many coordinated efforts between different militias - Kurdish, Shias, Sunnis, Christians, whatever - with the Russian-Syrian/Iraqi troops and we will find the campaign becoming more comprehensive. So if we have all these elements, I would not worry too much about the lack of coverage in any media for that important, important military and political action.

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