josa0512 wrote:
> Dr. Xenakis, You wrote "ISIS entered the big Russian-Syrian T-4
> air base outside the town, carrying off substantial quantities of
> Russian armaments including assault rifles, ground-to-ground
> missiles, anti-tank missiles, and anti-air rockets."
> I'm curious, what is your source for this information?
> Based on what I've read, ISIS captured the armaments and weapons
> when they captured Palmyra and the surrounding area. Immediately
> after recapturing Palmyra, ISIS laid siege to the Tiyas (T-4) air
> base and were able to damage 3-4 aircraft with mortar and rocket
> fire, but I haven't seen any credible sources that report that
> ISIS actually breached the defenses of the Tiyas air base. The
> only sources that I can find claiming that ISIS captured the T-4
> air base is bellingcat.com and syria.liveuamap.com but those
> sources are wrong and that information is false. It is true that
> ISIS attacked the T-4 air base but their attack was repulsed and
> the SAA still controls the T-4 air base. I just wanted your
> Generational Dynamics weblog to be as accurate as possible.
> If ISIS did succeed in capturing the T-4 airbase (which is the
> largest air base in Syria), this would indeed be a major military
> development in the Syrian Civil War but this has not happened yet.
> Bashar al-Assad still controls the T-4 air base and always has,
> unfortunately. During the Syrian Civil War, neither the rebels or
> ISIS have ever managed to capture the T-4 air base. ISIS
> previously captured the Taqba air base, which is near the Tiyas
> T-4 air base.
As indicated by the quoted sentence that you extracted from
my article, I didn't say that ISIS "captured" the T-4 base.
I said that ISIS "entered" the T-4 base. That's completely
consistent with what you're saying, that the attack was
repulsed.
However, the main point to be made was that ISIS captured a
collection of weapons. That's supported not only by the Debka
article, but also by the Guardian article that my article
links to.
I guess that there's a semantic issue as to whether the warehouse
from which the weapons were stolen was or was not officially
part of the T-4 base, but that question probably isn't as important
as the fact that tht weapons were stolen.