This Was Your Week at War
Sniper duels and stealth fighters in Syria & Ebola as warfare
In the final days of September, the U.S. Air Force sent six fresh F-22 stealth fighters from their base in Florida to replace the six F-22s from Virginia that have spearheaded the American-led air campaign targeting Islamic State and Al Qaeda forces in Syria since Sept. 23.
The pricey stealth jets have struck the militant targets closest to the Syrian regime’s deadly air defenses—just in case the regime decides to interfere with the aerial raids. The Air Force says the F-22s with their advanced sensors can also help guide other warplanes—but in fact, the stealth fighter’s secure data-link is incompatible with older planes.
Besides openly broadcasting on voice radio, there’s just one way for an F-22 to share data—by interfacing with one of the Air Force’s special Battlefield Airborne Communications Node planes. Is a BACN plane helping the stealth fighters communicate? That’s just one of several mysteries surrounding the F-22’s combat debut in Syria.
Under the cover of allied air strikes, Kurdish and Yezidi forces are fighting back against the marauding Islamists. In the twin towns of Rabia and Al Yarubiyah, straddling the Syria and Iraq sides of the border, respectively, snipers from the Kurdish YPG and women’s YPJ militias stalk Islamic State’s own snipers in a slow, deadly dance.
Matt Cetti-Roberts accompanied the Kurdish snipers in battle—and met one Kurdish trooper named Mazloum just hours before a militant sharpshooter shot him dead on a rooftop.
Shortly after Cetti-Roberts’ visit in late September, the Kurds launched a major attack in Rabia. “The combined might of the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Iraqi army, the YPG and American and British air strikes [drove] the Islamists from the town,” he reported.
Meanwhile in Sinjar, the center of Yezidi society in northern Iraq, a growing band of volunteers Yezidi fighters under legendary warrior Qasim Shasho made a last stand against invading Islamic State forces—and won. With the Kurds providing weapons and supplies, Shasho’s men counterattacked, liberating several outlying towns and rescuing scores of captives.
And when they captured several militant fighters, the Yezidi troops were ruthless. “Shasho says he and his men held an impromptu trial … and executed the militants,” Vager Saadullah reported.
Over in West Africa, the deadly Ebola virus continues to spread. The U.S. military is deploying thousands of troops to build a hospital and help train local health workers. But the armed forces are not the ideal organization to combat a disease, according to Peter Dörrie.
A civilian, rather than military, response “would have strengthened those individuals and organizations, both in West Africa and in the international community, that will have to deal with future public health emergencies—by providing money and establishing channels of communication.”
On the bright side, Ebola makes a terrible bioweapon, Robert Beckhusen explained—so that’s one less thing to worry about.
But this is worrying. In Lake Rweru between Rwanda and Burundi, no fewer than 40 bodies have turned up recently. “We can’t rule out either country as the source of the dead,” Dörrie asserted. “And whichever country produced the bodies, the actual cause of the victims’ deaths is very likely political in nature.”
