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But sure enough, the usual safety instructions were read, passengers
were ordered to buckle their seat belts (a good idea on this particular
flight, I thought) and Captain Zaher gave us a flight schedule on the
ATR’s journey that would take us far over the deserts inhabited by the
Islamists whom Washington describes as “apocalyptic”. Amazing that
anyone climbed aboard, if you ask me. But the little plane was packed,
and Zaher – his real name – invited his rare Western guest to the flight
deck, where I sat mutely on the jump seat behind First Officer Mohamed
as we soared into the ether, east over grey-black deserts.
The aircraft’s Acas (Aircraft Collision Avoidance System) dial searched the skies for 20km around us. Who, after all, wants a close shave with an American drone or a low-flying Nato jet? But the pale blue sky was empty. No other commercial flights dare to fly these airways. But these pilots turned not a hair. They gained their licences in the US, Zaher training at Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Mohamed at Dallas, Fort Worth. Zaher, who is 38, has three children. Yes, he said, the two older ones understood his job. So did either Zaher or Mohamed, I asked, see American planes in the skies over Syria?
READ MORE
Zaher
flicked through his diary. He had spotted a Hercules C130 over Qamishli
at 21,000ft on 24 October, while Mohamed said he had spotted several
Nato fighter-bombers to the east some days earlier. They saw no air
strikes. The aircraft appeared to have crossed the Turkish border and
flown over Hassake province, probably from the direction of Incirlik in
Turkey, en route to Kobani – which, of course, the Syrians call Ain
al-Arab. Far below, a gas plant appeared, then the Shedadi oil and gas
wells, a grey smog spreading south, pumping out money for the “Islamic
State” that stretched far in front of us, all the way to the gates of
Baghdad. At night, Zaher and Mohamed can see the butane gas flaming
below them, proving that Isis is working these Syrian treasures.
No Syrian passenger aircraft any longer routes over Raqqa – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Syrian “capital”, where his lads occasionally do a little beheading and even crucifixion in the town square – but we flew directly over the city of Deir el-Zour, where government troops still hold part of the town; there was brown smoke eddying from the eastern sector, one bridge over the green Euphrates broken in half, Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra fighters still trying to wipe out the last garrison. Neither pilot believed Isis had ground-to-air missiles – not yet, at least – and they dismissed the reports that two captured old MiGs had been put back into the air by the Islamists. “They don’t fly because they can’t fly,” Zaher said. “They’ve not even got any radar.” I certainly hoped not.
Robert Fisk flew from Damascus to Qamishli
Almost at the line of the Iraqi border – the 99-year-old Sykes-Picot
frontier which Isis says it has smashed – Zaher turned the ATR north, so
close to Iraqi territory that I could see the Tel Afar air base which
the Americans used to control. Indeed, I once interviewed a Palestinian
family in Lebanon whose son had blown himself up against a US convoy
down there. In those days, we’d never heard of Isis, or even al-Nusra.
The Palestinian was just part of Iraq’s foreign resistance force against
Western occupation. Looking back, of course – how good we Westerners
are at hindsight – that was when the seeds of Isis were spread over this
land.
The desert now appeared white under the sun. Isis country spread off
east into the horizon, a huge black mountain rising to our starboard.
Flying north, it took only 20 minutes before the mountains of southern Turkey fringed the horizon, white to the east near Cizre, cold grey to the west, and it was comforting to hear Qamishli’s ground control telling Zaher he was clear to land. Neither captain nor first officer had served in the Syrian air force – contrary to the old myth that every Arab commercial flyer trained in fighter jets – and the airstrip came up amid the southern fields of this most isolated of Syrian towns. A perfect landing, of course; Syrian pilots used to win international awards for their flying, one of them at Manchester, in the days when the airline flew to Western Europe.
And there beside the strip were batteries of anti-aircraft guns and long-range artillery, Russian 155s and more boxes of ammunition stacked in the triangular firebase than I’d seen since the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war. A smiling colonel greeted me with a handshake that almost broke my fingers, and a soldier asked him casually whether the local Syrian fighter jets should be re-armed. Yes, said the colonel casually. Another mission was to be operational the same day. In Syria, you can’t forget the war. Why, you can even look down from the heavens with a cyclopean eye on Syria’s enemies.
The aircraft’s Acas (Aircraft Collision Avoidance System) dial searched the skies for 20km around us. Who, after all, wants a close shave with an American drone or a low-flying Nato jet? But the pale blue sky was empty. No other commercial flights dare to fly these airways. But these pilots turned not a hair. They gained their licences in the US, Zaher training at Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Mohamed at Dallas, Fort Worth. Zaher, who is 38, has three children. Yes, he said, the two older ones understood his job. So did either Zaher or Mohamed, I asked, see American planes in the skies over Syria?
READ MORE
War with Isis: The militants will remain until the region's Sunnis feel safe
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 'critically wounded' in air strikes near Mosul
The brutal reality of life in Mosul under Islamic State - 'We are dying'
Zaher
flicked through his diary. He had spotted a Hercules C130 over Qamishli
at 21,000ft on 24 October, while Mohamed said he had spotted several
Nato fighter-bombers to the east some days earlier. They saw no air
strikes. The aircraft appeared to have crossed the Turkish border and
flown over Hassake province, probably from the direction of Incirlik in
Turkey, en route to Kobani – which, of course, the Syrians call Ain
al-Arab. Far below, a gas plant appeared, then the Shedadi oil and gas
wells, a grey smog spreading south, pumping out money for the “Islamic
State” that stretched far in front of us, all the way to the gates of
Baghdad. At night, Zaher and Mohamed can see the butane gas flaming
below them, proving that Isis is working these Syrian treasures.
No Syrian passenger aircraft any longer routes over Raqqa – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Syrian “capital”, where his lads occasionally do a little beheading and even crucifixion in the town square – but we flew directly over the city of Deir el-Zour, where government troops still hold part of the town; there was brown smoke eddying from the eastern sector, one bridge over the green Euphrates broken in half, Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra fighters still trying to wipe out the last garrison. Neither pilot believed Isis had ground-to-air missiles – not yet, at least – and they dismissed the reports that two captured old MiGs had been put back into the air by the Islamists. “They don’t fly because they can’t fly,” Zaher said. “They’ve not even got any radar.” I certainly hoped not.
Robert Fisk flew from Damascus to Qamishli
Almost at the line of the Iraqi border – the 99-year-old Sykes-Picot
frontier which Isis says it has smashed – Zaher turned the ATR north, so
close to Iraqi territory that I could see the Tel Afar air base which
the Americans used to control. Indeed, I once interviewed a Palestinian
family in Lebanon whose son had blown himself up against a US convoy
down there. In those days, we’d never heard of Isis, or even al-Nusra.
The Palestinian was just part of Iraq’s foreign resistance force against
Western occupation. Looking back, of course – how good we Westerners
are at hindsight – that was when the seeds of Isis were spread over this
land.
The desert now appeared white under the sun. Isis country spread off
east into the horizon, a huge black mountain rising to our starboard.Flying north, it took only 20 minutes before the mountains of southern Turkey fringed the horizon, white to the east near Cizre, cold grey to the west, and it was comforting to hear Qamishli’s ground control telling Zaher he was clear to land. Neither captain nor first officer had served in the Syrian air force – contrary to the old myth that every Arab commercial flyer trained in fighter jets – and the airstrip came up amid the southern fields of this most isolated of Syrian towns. A perfect landing, of course; Syrian pilots used to win international awards for their flying, one of them at Manchester, in the days when the airline flew to Western Europe.
And there beside the strip were batteries of anti-aircraft guns and long-range artillery, Russian 155s and more boxes of ammunition stacked in the triangular firebase than I’d seen since the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war. A smiling colonel greeted me with a handshake that almost broke my fingers, and a soldier asked him casually whether the local Syrian fighter jets should be re-armed. Yes, said the colonel casually. Another mission was to be operational the same day. In Syria, you can’t forget the war. Why, you can even look down from the heavens with a cyclopean eye on Syria’s enemies.
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The aircraft’s Acas (Aircraft Collision Avoidance System) dial searched the skies for 20km around us. Who, after all, wants a close shave with an American drone or a low-flying Nato jet? But the pale blue sky was empty. No other commercial flights dare to fly these airways. But these pilots turned not a hair. They gained their licences in the US, Zaher training at Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Mohamed at Dallas, Fort Worth. Zaher, who is 38, has three children. Yes, he said, the two older ones understood his job. So did either Zaher or Mohamed, I asked, see American planes in the skies over Syria?
READ MORE
War with Isis: The militants will remain until the region's Sunnis feel safe
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 'critically wounded' in air strikes near Mosul
The brutal reality of life in Mosul under Islamic State - 'We are dying'
Zaher
flicked through his diary. He had spotted a Hercules C130 over Qamishli
at 21,000ft on 24 October, while Mohamed said he had spotted several
Nato fighter-bombers to the east some days earlier. They saw no air
strikes. The aircraft appeared to have crossed the Turkish border and
flown over Hassake province, probably from the direction of Incirlik in
Turkey, en route to Kobani – which, of course, the Syrians call Ain
al-Arab. Far below, a gas plant appeared, then the Shedadi oil and gas
wells, a grey smog spreading south, pumping out money for the “Islamic
State” that stretched far in front of us, all the way to the gates of
Baghdad. At night, Zaher and Mohamed can see the butane gas flaming
below them, proving that Isis is working these Syrian treasures.No Syrian passenger aircraft any longer routes over Raqqa – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Syrian “capital”, where his lads occasionally do a little beheading and even crucifixion in the town square – but we flew directly over the city of Deir el-Zour, where government troops still hold part of the town; there was brown smoke eddying from the eastern sector, one bridge over the green Euphrates broken in half, Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra fighters still trying to wipe out the last garrison. Neither pilot believed Isis had ground-to-air missiles – not yet, at least – and they dismissed the reports that two captured old MiGs had been put back into the air by the Islamists. “They don’t fly because they can’t fly,” Zaher said. “They’ve not even got any radar.” I certainly hoped not.
Robert Fisk flew from Damascus to Qamishli
Almost at the line of the Iraqi border – the 99-year-old Sykes-Picot
frontier which Isis says it has smashed – Zaher turned the ATR north, so
close to Iraqi territory that I could see the Tel Afar air base which
the Americans used to control. Indeed, I once interviewed a Palestinian
family in Lebanon whose son had blown himself up against a US convoy
down there. In those days, we’d never heard of Isis, or even al-Nusra.
The Palestinian was just part of Iraq’s foreign resistance force against
Western occupation. Looking back, of course – how good we Westerners
are at hindsight – that was when the seeds of Isis were spread over this
land.
The desert now appeared white under the sun. Isis country spread off
east into the horizon, a huge black mountain rising to our starboard.Flying north, it took only 20 minutes before the mountains of southern Turkey fringed the horizon, white to the east near Cizre, cold grey to the west, and it was comforting to hear Qamishli’s ground control telling Zaher he was clear to land. Neither captain nor first officer had served in the Syrian air force – contrary to the old myth that every Arab commercial flyer trained in fighter jets – and the airstrip came up amid the southern fields of this most isolated of Syrian towns. A perfect landing, of course; Syrian pilots used to win international awards for their flying, one of them at Manchester, in the days when the airline flew to Western Europe.
And there beside the strip were batteries of anti-aircraft guns and long-range artillery, Russian 155s and more boxes of ammunition stacked in the triangular firebase than I’d seen since the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war. A smiling colonel greeted me with a handshake that almost broke my fingers, and a soldier asked him casually whether the local Syrian fighter jets should be re-armed. Yes, said the colonel casually. Another mission was to be operational the same day. In Syria, you can’t forget the war. Why, you can even look down from the heavens with a cyclopean eye on Syria’s enemies.
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