Russia Attacks ISIS or Syria - An Islamic State? : LATITUDE

Since re-assuming the post of Russia's President Vladimir Putin has lost no time in addressing the geo political threats to Russia internationally. And now at the centre of its agenda is the explosive situation in the Middle East, most of all in Syria. President Putin has drawn a deep hard-line on the sand around the survival of the Bashar al-Assad regime. But Russia's intervention in Syria is also about Moscow preserving the port rights to Russia's only Mediterranean naval port at Tartus. In the event of the showdown with NATO, this base becomes strategically important for the Russia. Russia's intervention comes at a time when a $500 million US arms programme to train and equip 5000 Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State militants has ended in total failure, a fact confirmed by the New York Times. Many of these strange fighters had turned over the gear and ammunition and possible weapons to the Al-qeda linked al-Nusra Front operating in northern Syria. And US President Obama's reluctance to play a proactive role after the reversal over his Syrian chemical weapons redline in September 2013 destroyed what little credibility he had in the region, signalling perhaps that he was not an iron willed leader. With no solution insight in to the four year war in Syria, there are now four million Syrians scattered throughout the region making them the world's largest refugee population under the United Nations mandate. At this rate the UN predicts, there could be 4.27 million Syrian refugees by the end of 2013, the worst exodus since the Rwandan genocide 20 years ago.