ISIS Readies to Storm Tabaqa Air Base

ISIS’s fighters issued an ultimatum for commanders of Tabaqa air base to surrender the base located in Al Raqqa province. Yahya Maktabi, member of the Syrian Coalition, said earlier that ISIS’s takeover of Brigade 93 north of Al Raqqa is “part of Assad’s strategy to abandon the eastern region to ISIS in order to commit more troops to the battle against moderate rebels. While much of eastern Syria is being handed over to ISIS, the Assad regime is seeking to tighten its grip on the northwest region. Assad’s strategy seeks to reduce the influence of the Free Syrian Army and squeezing it through abandoning large swathes of land to ISIS, thus dividing Syrian between himself and the extremists. Assad’s Machiavellian policy is placing the Syrian people between the hammer of authoritarian rule and the anvil of fanatic extremists. The international community’s reluctance to empower moderate rebels is conceived as a direct support of ISIS, consequently throwing the Syria and the region and even the whole world into a vortex of terrorism and extremism that no one will be able to control in the future.” Maktabi also said that “the Assad regime has been sacrificing his troops in certain areas of Syria to convince the world that he is fighting terrorism, just like what happened in the 17th Division and now in the 93rd Brigade north of Al Raqqa. This vicious policy must awaken Assad’s loyalists to rethink their calculus and stand on the side of the Syrian people. Having seen their comrades abandoned by the Assad regime, Assad’s army units should dissociate themselves from the leadership of the armed forces which have been taken over by Iran and its sectarian militias. We also call upon the young people who are being exploited by ISIS to break up with this terrorist organization. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Al Hayat)