Islamic State Gets Weapons and a Porous Border With Syria Gains

As the United States began reconnaissance flights over Syria on Tuesday ahead of likely air strikes on Islamic State (IS) fighters, concerns are being raised over the mostly Soviet made weapons the Islamist forces seized when they overran the Tabqa air base in Syria.

Turkey, the NATO member state struggling to man its long border with Syria to prevent the flow of foreign fighters joining IS, is at great risk from the arms cache, including MiG fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles (MANPADS)  captured at the Tabqa airbase on Sunday.

While Tabqa is not the first military base IS forces have taken, “The Tabqa base was the main radar center where the Syrians kept track of the Turkish border,” says Vishay Prashad, professor of international studies at Hartford’s Trinity College. “That means [the Assad government forces] have no real surveillance of their northern border. They have gone blind a little bit.”

That puts much greater pressure on Damascus to defeat IS fighters, Prashad says. The Syrian government can still monitor the Turkish border, but not with the same intensity of coverage as before.

The capture of Tabqa is a bid by IS fighters to “further ease the passage of foreign fighters and supplies,” Reuters reports. Thousands of foreign fighters, including at least 500 from the U.K., have left their home countries to join IS forces and Turkey is usually the point of their entry into Syria.

Now that Tabqa is in IS hands, one objective for IS fighters “is to capture the Azaz border crossing with Turkey,” Prashad says. “The Islamic State doesn’t rely on foreign fighters, but it has a lot of foreign fighters. The Turks have been rather loose with their borders."

#شامرقعہ کے طبقہ ائربیس سے ملنے والا مال غنیمت جس میں مگ فائٹر طیارے بھی شامل ہیں pic.twitter.com/oOvdxUogei

— دولة الاسلام #اردو (@ISIS_Urdu) August 25, 2014

President Barack Obama, who has been reluctant to engage in military action in Syria, approved airstrikes over that country on Tuesday in an attempt to push back against IS fighters who are expanding their reach within Syria. The Tabqa airbase, located in northern Syria, was the last remaining Syrian government stronghold in the Raqqa province.

Photos posted online by IS fighters show what appear to be surface-to-air missiles, MiG-21B fighter jets and a large cache of artillery, according to Charles Lister, a fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.

“It does pose a threat. Those weapons systems are fairly technical and there’s an implied learning curve there and they probably will get trained on [them],” said Lt. Col. D. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret and founder of The Stability Institute, an organization that works to stabilize regions to reduce the threat of terrorist attacks.  

But while the captures weapons pose a threat, it’s not necessarily a new one. “I’m actually not sure that they didn’t have them before,” Prashad says of the MANPADS.

#شامرقعہ کے طبقہ ائربیس سے خلافت اسلامیہ کے مجاہدین کو ملنے والے مال غنیمت #AzadiAurInqilab#AzadiSquarepic.twitter.com/XPoukwGNAt

— دولة الاسلام #اردو (@ISIS_Urdu) August 25, 2014

For IS to capture the Tabqa base is another example of their propaganda prowess, says Prashad. “The Islamic State, as a child of Al Qaeda, is very good about propaganda,” he said.

“If you captured a bunch of aircraft and you’re proud of having captured the aircraft, what would you demonstrate to the world?” Prashad says. “You’d show the best aircraft, right? You’d show, ‘I’ve captured the best-looking MiG.’ But if you look closely at the [IS] photographs, the MGs they have all look decrepit.”

“I think they’re a dangerous organization, but the MiGs, the helicopters, this is not part of how they’ve been fighting,” Prashad said. “They don’t need aerial support. Obviously they would like it, it would up their game, but it hasn’t been essential to them.”

IS fighters have captured SA-16 MANPADS, AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles & MiG-21B jets in #Tabaqa Airbase, #Raqqa. #Syriapic.twitter.com/c33TB56XdL

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) August 24, 2014

“Whether they’ll develop the proficiency to fly a MiG head-on to our guys, I don’t really see that. That’s almost a symmetrical fight you’d like to see those guys take,” Mann said. “I worry more about their ability to take those weapons systems and weaponize them in a different fashion -- more asymmetrical.”

“They’re a dangerous force. OK. So now they can shoot down an American plane. Fine. The most important threat is that they’ll reopen the door, they’ll reinforce themselves with foreign fighters, more of them can come in again through Turkey,” Prashad says. “Once again they can make a real push towards Lebanon.”