Da'esh / ISIS

[ArmChairCivvy]

Not sure if they remembered to put this onto the Daesh recruitment ads:

[Smokey]

That's some serious, "Shake'n'Bake!"

Who's doing the shootin'?

[ArmChairCivvy]

A New York Times view of the "end game" in narrow military terms
"All have their eyes on the province of Deir al-Zour, where Islamic State forces surround an estimated 200,000 people in a government-held section of the provincial capital of the same name.

The contested area also includes desert regions farther south that include several border crossings, including the critical highway connecting Damascus and Baghdad — coveted by Iran as a land route to Lebanon and its ally, the Shiite militia Hezbollah.

But what is really at stake are even larger issues. Will the Syrian government re-establish control of the country all the way to its eastern borders? Will the desert straddling the Syrian-Iraqi border remain a no man’s land ripe for militant control? If not, who will dominate there — forces aligned with Iran, Russia or the United States? Which Syrian factions will wield the most influence?

The moment is a “major crossroads” in the conflict, said Kamel Wazne, who studies Hezbollah, the United States and the Middle East and teaches at the American University of Beirut.

The Americans want to prevent the establishment of a “Shiite crescent” of influence from Iran to Lebanon, Mr. Wazne said, and to maintain “a piece of what is taking place in Syria.”"
- that last sentence, even though it is an outsider's assessment, shows how little store is set on Iraq being anything else than an accomplice to Iran in the greater, regional context
- the good news is that the area is landlocked, so there isn't another E. Libya in making - that could be building something funded with revenues from oil