RAQQA MUST FALL!

Isis/Daesh has scored a stunning and daring success against the Syrian Government forces and their Russian and other allies supporting them in the war against the opposition forces in the Syrian proxy and civil war.

As well as having reportedly killed upto two hundred people and injuring as many more, the attackers will probably have caused an even greater psychological blow to the people living in the government controlled loyalist areas of the country. People in these areas are now likely to be thinking that, if Isis/Daesh can carry out such devastating and obviously well-planned and executed attacks in the heartlands of loyalist areas, then nowhere in Syria is safe from them and others amongst the opposition forces. 

I am reminded of a recent report in which the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia is reported to have threatened that President Assad will be removed from power either through political negotiations or other means. The other 'means' can be taken to mean military action by the Saudis, directly or indirectly. 

Considering the role of Saudi Arabia in supporting the opposition forces, it is quite possible that that country could have a hand in this attack, but whether it is a probability is another thing. One might wish to consider the question of how is it that Daesh/Isis is able to carry out this kind of action, now, as opposed to earlier, when it has been pushed more on the defensive?

One can imagine that no sooner than these murderous attackers have carried out their atrocity, any surviving members of the group will have scurried back or to the safety of their den in Raqqa.

The world will have to wait to see how the Syrian Government and the Russians forces respond to this daring and murderous attack, but one this is certain, and that is that it should not go unpunished. It might have been only a coincidence, but it is probably timely that it was less than a week ago that Hezbollah was reported to have said it would be upgrading its forces in Syria. 

Although Russia has made much of having reduced her forces in Syria, this blatant attack is clearly meant to be as much of a threat/message to the Syrian Government as to the Russians in Latakia and elsewhere in Syria.

Arguably, Daesh/Isis should not be allowed to have any 'safe haven' in any parts of Syria, as that would be like according them the status of being a state within a state. Raqqa, unfortunately, is seen as representing just that; a state within a state, and there are sound military and political reasons to attack and defeat the Daesh/Isis forces that have occupied and made it into their fiefdom. This should clearly be done sooner rather than later, if the more recent successes of the Syrian Government and its allies are not to become unconsolidated, but even rolled back by Daesh and other opposition forces. 

It would be surprising if the Russians and the Syrians and their other allies do not already have advance plans to carry out a concerted and sustained attack on Raqqa.  Indeed, if they have no such plans, this spectacular and atrocious attack by Daesh/Isis forces, will have provided them with both the provocation and incentive to formulate, resource and implement such a plan.

It is not a matter of whether Raqqa should fall; it really must fall, even if it were to transpire, at some point in the future, that this attack implicated other opposition groups members, taking advantage of the tentative ceasefire arrangements.