Posts Tagged ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’

Dispatches From A Non-Genocide

Saturday, November 23rd, 2019

Remember back when President Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Northern Syria, and Democrats not only told us this was The Worst Thing In The World (at least until the next Worst Thing In The World) and would inevitably lead to Turkish genocide against the Syrian Kurds?

Given that the mainstream media has largely stopped covering the conflict, that does not appear to be the case. In announcing the withdrawal, President Donald Trump announced that Turkey’s intention was to set up a 20 mile buffer zone in Syria against Kurdish PKK terrorists that operated among the larger YPG/SDF forces there. Looking at a map of Syria today, more than a month into the incursion, that appears to be largely what they’ve done.

Most of the fighting now seems to be Turkish-backed troops slugging it out with Assad-backed troops around Ayn Isa (including Syrian army regulars, who have reoccupied the 93 Brigade base just south of there). There’s sporadic fight elsewhere, but the line of control seems to have stabilized largely along the M4 highway.

This doesn’t mean that things there are all hunky dory, or that it won’t change, or that the incursion was justified, or that Recep Tayyip Erdogan isn’t a power-hungry jihadist scumbag. It just means that when Turkey announced that their objectives in the incursion were just that 20 mile buffer strip, they may not have been lying. All this adds up to considerably less than the genocide Democrats and their MSM allies foretold.

And that’s why we’ve ceased to hear much about the Turkish incursion in Syria: the issue can no longer be used to bash President Trump, so it’s no longer “useful” to report on it…

Turkey vs. The Kurds

Saturday, October 12th, 2019

Following the withdraw of a small number of U.S. troops in the area (I’ve seen estimates range from 25 to 100), Turkey has launched it’s threatened offensive against Kurdish held Syrian territory along the border (which seems to bear the Orwellian name “Peace Spring Operation“). Lots of airstrikes and shelling, but so far actual ground forces seem to be primarily Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (AKA The Army Formerly Know As The Turkish-Backed Free Syrian Army, which is different than the previous Free Syrian Army, which revolted against Assad) supported by small units of Turkish armor, plus artillery and air power. They’ve thus far made five modest incursions from Tell Abyad (AKA Tall Abiad and half a dozen other variations) to Ras al-Ayn. Thus far they haven’t exceeded the 20 mile buffer zone, and the deepest incursion seems to be about 12 miles in toward the Syrian M4 road.

There are a couple of pieces that cover some of some of the same ground I did on the situation. First, Andrew McCarthy covers the complexity of the fight:

The president at least has a cogent position that is consistent with the Constitution and public opinion. He wants U.S. forces out of a conflict in which America’s interests have never been clear, and for which Congress has never approved military intervention. I find that sensible — no surprise, given that I have opposed intervention in Syria from the start…The stridency of the counterarguments is matched only by their selectiveness in reciting relevant facts.

I thus respectfully dissent from our National Review editorial.

President Trump, it says, is “making a serious mistake” by moving our forces away from what is described as “Kurdish territory”; the resulting invasion by superior Turkish forces will “kill American allies” while “carving out a zone of dominance” that will serve further to “inflame and complicate” the region.

Where to begin? Perhaps with the basic fact that there is no Kurdish territory. There is Syrian territory on Turkey’s border that the Kurds are occupying — a situation that itself serves to “inflame and complicate” the region for reasons I shall come to. Ethnic Kurds do not have a state. They live in contiguous parts of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Most are integrated into these countries, but many are separatists.

The Kurds have been our allies against ISIS, but it is not for us that they have fought. They fight ISIS for themselves, with our help. They are seeking an autonomous zone and, ultimately, statehood. The editorial fails to note that the Kurds we have backed, led by the YPG (People’s Protection Units), are the Syrian branch of the PKK (the Kurdistan Worker’s Party) in Turkey. The PKK is a militant separatist organization with Marxist-Leninist roots. Although such informed observers as Michael Rubin contend that the PKK has “evolved,” it remains a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law. While our government materially supports the PKK’s confederates, ordinary Americans have been prosecuted for materially supporting the PKK.

The PKK has a long history of conducting terrorist attacks, but their quarrel is not with us. So why has our government designated them as terrorists? Because they have been fighting an insurgent war against Turkey for over 30 years. Turkey remains our NATO ally, even though the Erdogan government is one of the more duplicitous and anti-Western actors in a region that teems with them — as I’ve detailed over the years (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and in my 2012 book, Spring Fever). The Erdogan problem complicates but does not change the fact that Turkey is of great strategic significance to our security.

While it is a longer discussion, I would be open to considering the removal of both the PKK from the terrorist list and Turkey from NATO. For now, though, the blunt facts are that the PKK is a terrorist organization and Turkey is our ally. These are not mere technicalities. Contrary to the editorial’s suggestion, our government’s machinations in Syria have not put just one of our allies in a bind. There are two allies in this equation, and our support for one has already vexed the other. The ramifications are serious, not least Turkey’s continued lurch away from NATO and toward Moscow.

Without any public debate, the Obama administration in 2014 insinuated our nation into the Kurdish–Turk conflict by arming the YPG. To be sure, our intentions were good. ISIS had besieged the city of Kobani in northern Syria; but Turkey understandably regards the YPG as a terrorist organization, complicit in the PKK insurgency.

That brings us to another non-technicality that the editors mention only in passing: Our intervention in Syria has never been authorized by Congress. Those of us who opposed intervention maintained that congressional authorization was necessary because there was no imminent threat to our nation. Contrary to the editorial’s suggestion, having U.S. forces “deter further genocidal bloodshed in northern Syria” is not a mission for which Americans support committing our men and women in uniform. Such bloodlettings are the Muslim Middle East’s default condition, so the missions would never end.

A congressional debate should have been mandatory before we jumped into a multi-layered war, featuring anti-American actors and shifting loyalties on both sides. In fact, so complex is the situation that President Obama’s initial goal was to oust Syria’s Assad regime; only later came the pivot to fighting terrorists, which helped Assad. That is Syria: Opposing one set of America’s enemies only empowers another. More clear than what intervention would accomplish was the likelihood of becoming enmeshed, inadvertently or otherwise, in vicious conflicts of which we wanted no part — such as the notorious and longstanding conflict between Turks and Kurds.

Barbaric jihadist groups such as ISIS (an offshoot of al-Qaeda) come into existence because of Islamic fundamentalism. But saying so remains de trop in Washington. Instead, we tell ourselves that terrorism emerges due to “vacuums” created in the absence of U.S. forces. On this logic, there should always and forever be U.S. forces and involvement in places where hostility to America vastly outweighs American interests.

I disagree with McCarthy’s contention that Obama didn’t help create ISIS: Some of our funding of anti-Assad elements helped create it, along with the vacuum of not getting a status of forces agreement with Iraq (you know, the country we actually did invade and conquer).

The easily foreseeable conflict between Turkey and the Kurds is at hand. We are supposed to see the problem as Trump’s abandoning of U.S. commitments. But why did we make commitments to the Kurds that undermined preexisting commitments to Turkey? The debate is strictly framed as “How can we leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks?” No one is supposed to ask “What did we expect would happen when we backed a militant organization that is tightly linked to U.S.-designated terrorists and that is the bitter enemy of a NATO ally we knew would not abide its presence on the ally’s border?” No one is supposed to ask “What is the end game here? Are we endorsing the partition of Syria? Did we see a Kurdish autonomous zone as the next Kosovo?”…

The easily foreseeable conflict between Turkey and the Kurds is at hand. We are supposed to see the problem as Trump’s abandoning of U.S. commitments. But why did we make commitments to the Kurds that undermined preexisting commitments to Turkey? The debate is strictly framed as “How can we leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks?” No one is supposed to ask “What did we expect would happen when we backed a militant organization that is tightly linked to U.S.-designated terrorists and that is the bitter enemy of a NATO ally we knew would not abide its presence on the ally’s border?” No one is supposed to ask “What is the end game here? Are we endorsing the partition of Syria? Did we see a Kurdish autonomous zone as the next Kosovo?” (We might remember that recognition of Kosovo’s split from Serbia, over Russian objections, was exploited by the Kremlin as a rationale for promoting separatism and annexations in Georgia and Ukraine.)

It is true, as the editors observe, that “there are no easy answers in Syria.” That is no excuse for offering an answer that makes no sense: “The United States should have an exit strategy, but one that neither squanders our tactical gains against ISIS nor exposes our allies to unacceptable retribution.” Put aside that our arming of the Kurds has already exposed our allies in Turkey to unacceptable risk. What the editorial poses is not an “exit strategy” but its opposite. In effect, it would keep U.S. forces in Syria interminably, permanently interposed between the Kurds and the Turks. The untidy questions of how that would be justifiable legally or politically go unaddressed.

President Trump, by contrast, has an exit strategy, which is to exit. He promises to cripple Turkey economically if the Kurds are harmed. If early reports of Turkey’s military assault are accurate, the president will soon be put to the test. I hope he is up to it. For a change, he should have strong support from Congress, which is threatening heavy sanctions if Turkey routs the Kurds.

Americans, however, are not of a mind to do more than that. We are grateful for what the Kurds did in our mutual interest against ISIS. We should try to help them, but no one wants to risk war with Turkey over them. The American people’s representatives never endorsed combat operations in Syria, and the president is right that the public wants out.

Kurt Schlichter offers similar thoughts:

Donald Trump came into office promising to not start any new wars and to get us out of the old ones our feckless elite had dragged us into, and now that he’s doing it in Syria the usual suspects are outraged. How dare he actually deliver on his promise not to have anymore of our precious warriors shipped home in boxes after getting killed on battlefields we can’t even pronounce, while refereeing conflicts that began long before America was a thing, in campaigns without any kind of coherent objective?

Conservatives like me still think of ourselves as hawks, but after hard experience we have learned to be hawkish only where America’s interests are directly at stake. We’re not doves. We’re just not going to spill our troops’ blood when we do not absolutely have to. The elite may not like our attitude, but then it’s generally not the elite that ends up having to bury its sons, daughters, husbands and wives. We do.

I generally like the Kurds. I generally dislike the Turks. But they’ve been killing each other for a long time and no one has yet offered a sufficient reason why America should stick its troops in the crossfire between them. We hear words like “betrayal” tossed around, often by people whose track record re: honor is (charitably) lacking, but that assumes America had a say in this latest round ramping up. If the Turks are intent on invading, a firm “No” from the Oval office is not going to stop a battalion of Leopard tanks. If you want to stop them, you have to be prepared to stop them. That means war, and the president – along with millions of us – say “No thanks.”

Some solid conservatives who I respect disagree with the president’s take. They point out that the Kurds have fought with us and that they’ve had a raw deal. They also point to the Turks’ sordid history of genocide, like with the Armenians. These are good points – I spent 16 months away from my family deployed helping Muslims avoid a genocide in Kosovo – but they are not good enough to justify us doing the only thing that can stop the Turks if they are committed to their threatened aggression, i.e., being willing to have American troops fight them.

Let’s have some real talk, because the Orange Man Bad side of the debate – the side that suddenly is all hopped up on war juice – offers nothing but hack clichés to support its amorphous position. The Kurds helped destroy ISIS, true. It’s also true that the Kurds would have fought ISIS anyway, since the psycho caliphate was right next door. Let’s be honest – the Kurds didn’t show up for us at Normandy or Inchon or Khe Sanh or Kandahar. The Syrian Kurds allied with us in their homeland because we shared a common interest in wiping out the head-lopping freak show that was ISIS. Moreover, all Kurds are not equal. The PKK – the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – are a bunch of commie terrorists who have been fighting the Turks for a long time. Those reds are no friends of ours, and it’s their antics that seem to be inspiring the Turkish campaign. I have little use for the Turks, but they aren’t just picking this fight for Schiffs and giggles. The fact that it’s all so confusing is a really, really good reason for us to stay the hell out of it.

Most of the counterarguments to this position seems to be “Turkey would never dare invade if American troops were there, no matter how few!” Maybe. But American troops abroad are there to serve defined purposes, not to act as a living tripwire to force America into war should a random dictator decide we’re bluffing.

The Kurdish Conundrum

Tuesday, October 8th, 2019

Before getting into the latest developments in Syria, let’s not forget that the entire reason we’re there is the Obama Administration’s foolish decision to try to overthrow Assad’s government on the cheap, actions that precipitated us showering pallets of money onto various jihadi groups and (along with the failure to achieve a status-of-forces agreement with a still wobbly Iraq) engendering the rise of the Islamic State, all with very little to show for our efforts except some eight years of Syrian bloodshed.

Unless you’ve been keeping up with every twist and turn of that very long war, it’s hard to understand how Syria has come to the current pass, since there were over a dozen different factions at various points in the civil war, including Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, and Russia. Basically, Syria ended up crushing just about all rebel forces in the south (thanks to a goodly amount of Russian help), while stalemating with jihadist groups and the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army in the north. Meanwhile, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces crushed the Islamic State with American/allied logistical backing and airpower, leaving them in control of Syria east of the Euphrates, all the way up to the Turkish border.

Given that Kurds are our allies, as well as the closest things to goods guys in the Middle East outside Israel (and maybe the Druze), many were disturbed to hear that the Trump Administration is withdrawing American troops from northern Syria in advance of a Turkish invasion.

Is this concerning? Yes it is. Recep Tayyip Ergodan’s jihadist regime deserves no support from America, and the safety of our Kurdish allies is a legitimate issue. But the news also brought about a number of wild overreactions from all points of the political spectrum.

The first overreaction is “Oh my God, Turkish ground troops will be entering Syrian territory! This is unprecedented!” No, Turkish ground troops have been fighting in Syria since 2016.

The second overreaction is “Oh my God, the Islamic State will spring back to life!” In truth, the Islamic State was already going to live on in some form as a transnational jihadist terrorist group, but is effectively finished as a territory-holding Caliphate, no more viable a state than Biafra or the Don Republic. And even if the SDF is forced to abandon some or all the Syrian territory they currently hold, I don’t see Turkey or Syria letting the Islamic State stage a serious comeback.

The third overreaction is thinking that this is a big shift of American forces. In fact, there were less than 25 U.S. troops relocated.

Fourth, while we are pulling back troops, and it sucks for the Kurds, I doubt this is the “betrayal” some are making it out to be. I sincerely doubt we ever said to the Kurds “Hey, take out the Islamic State, and we promise that we’ll use America’s military power to protect you until the end of time!” I also highly doubt we promised the Kurds we would support an independent Kurdish state no matter what the four states with significant Krudish ethnic minorities (Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran) might say in the matter. I suspect the Kurds came to us and said “Give us arms, training and support and we’ll destroy the Islamic State for you.” We did and they did. It’s been six months since the last of the Baghuz pocket was mopped up. Since there’s no plans or appetite for a permanent U.S. protection force in Syria, we were always going to pull our troops out sooner or later. Sooner or later turns out to be now.

Fifth, we are not consigning the Kurds to annihilation. If we are to believe Turkey (a dubious but not entirely impossible proposition) the goal of their incursion is to establish a 20 mile buffer zone, mainly aimed at preventing the PKK from launching attacks into Turkish territory. The PKK itself is indeed bad news, a communist-rooted terrorist organization that never really reformed. (The flip side is that the Turkish government loves to call any Kurdish Party in Turkey an arm of the PKK, which is mostly a lie.) When it comes to Turkish statements on the Kurds, there are half-truths, quarter-truths, eighth-truths, all the way down to quasi-semi-demi truths, where the remaining grain of truth is so tiny it’s a homeopathic tincture. I suspect there are PKK units among the SDF, but far fewer than Turkey claims.

If there’s a reason to believe Turkey’s aims actually are limited at this time, it’s because their existing incursion into northern Syria is already very unpopular with the Turkish people. An actual war against the entirety of the SDF is probably not in the cards for all sort of political, military and logistical reasons.

Also, in the event of such an all-out war, there’s very little reason to believe that Turkey could take out the entire SDF (and the Iraqi Kurdish Pershmerga, who would probably come to the SDF’s aid) before bogging down into quagmire of counterinsurgency warfare the way American forces in Iraq did following the 2003 invasion. The Kurds are no pushovers, and Turkey is already losing Leopard 2 tanks at an alarming pace in their existing Syrian deployment. (Turkey has a newer, locally produced (with South Korean help) main battle tank called the Altay, that hasn’t seen combat yet. Looks good on paper, but I bet it can’t stand toe-to-toe with an M1A2.) Finally, keep in mind that there’s still significant British and French military presence back-filling for withdrawn U.S. troops.

So why did President Trump accede to Turkish wishes? Is there any of that 4D chess going on here? Maybe. Trump seems to approach things through a persuasion/negotiation lens, using both carrots and sticks, and Turkey has already seen the stick in the F-35 order cancellation. Also, Trump may be leveraging Turkey to take a more active role against Iran, such as enforcing economic sanctions (and Iran is currently far more regionally disruptive). The majority Sunni Turkey has longstanding linguistic and ethnic differences with its Persian Shia neighbor, and (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) fought a series of wars with Persia between the Sixteenth and Nineteenth centuries, the last ending in 1823 (which is practically yesterday as far as Middle Eastern blood feuds are concerned). Finally, there’s the possibility that Trump is simply going to Yojimbo every Muslim nation in the Middle East against every other Muslim nation, keeping all of them too busy to make trouble for us…

Kurt Schlichter has a succinct summary:

Caliphate Caput: Take Three

Thursday, March 21st, 2019

This time for sure!

The very last bit of the Baghuz pocket (formerly the Hajin pocket), the very last defended territory of the Islamic State, AKA Zeno’s Caliphate, appears to have finally been cleared. By the end of battle yesterday, the Islamic State had been reduced to a tiny sliver, and today that sliver was conquered.

Here’s what the Livemap looked like on March 2, 2019:

Here’s what it looked like yesterday:

Livemap finally shows it completely cleared today:

Syrian Democratic Forces are now searching tunnels to capture or kill any remaining Islamic State members.

Why did it take so long to clear the pocket? (I first thought the end was a matter of days a month ago.) For one thing, 60,000 civilians were trapped in the pocket, and there have been pauses as a steady stream of them exited over the last two months. For another, the terrain was more daunting than I realized; the last of the Berghuz pocket was smack dab right up against an escarpment that’s too steep to use armor in an attack from the west. Here’s a few tweets that may give you an idea of the geography:

What all that adds up to is the “Stalingrad” problem: as the front narrows the density of fighters facing you increases.

Anyway, it seems that the Islamic State, at least as a land-holding caliphate, is finally well and truly crushed. Here’s the same conclusion I used the first time I erroneously declared it dead:

The media, which seemed to avoid reporting success after hard-won success in the war against the Islamic State, not only ignored the final destruction of the Hajin pocket, is now writing articles about how the Islamic State continues as a transnational terrorist organization. This is both true and largely irrelevant. There are plenty of Islamist terrorist groups to worry about, but the Islamic State’s primary claim to legitimacy, the thing that drew foreign fighters from around the world, was its presumed legitimacy as an Islamic caliphate:

To be the caliph, one must meet conditions outlined in Sunni law—being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority. This last criterion, Cerantonio said, is the hardest to fulfill, and requires that the caliph have territory in which he can enforce Islamic law. Baghdadi’s Islamic State achieved that long before June 29, Cerantonio said, and as soon as it did, a Western convert within the group’s ranks—Cerantonio described him as “something of a leader”—began murmuring about the religious obligation to declare a caliphate.

In late 2014, the Islamic State controlled some 40,000 square miles of territory. Now it controls nothing. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is no longer a credible caliph, capable of claiming the allegiance of all Sunnis worldwide, but a loser and a failure, assuming he’s even still alive. Ambitious worldwide jihadists no longer have any incentive to pledge bayʿah to al-Baghdadi, and it’s entirely possible that the ones who previously had will drift away or declare their support to another transnational Islamic terrorist group like al Qaeda.

For this we can thank cost-effective strategy by the U.S.-led coalition to arm and support the Syrian Democratic Forces against the Islamic State, greatly aided by the Trump Administration’s decision to loosen the rules of engagement from what they were under Obama.

The Islamic State wasn’t completely destroyed today, but the last shred of it’s claim to a caliphate was.

Caliphate Caput: Take Two

Saturday, March 2nd, 2019

Remember two weeks ago, when I said that the Islamic State has lost its last remaining territory in the Hajin pocket?

Turns out that pronouncement was premature:

U.S.-backed forces in Syria are closing in on the last patch of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Syria.

Syrian Democratic Force spokesman Mustafa Bali said Saturday three SDF soldiers have been wounded. Militants have been killed, he said, but he could not confirm a number.

“Fighting continues and heavy weapons are being used,” Bali said. “SDF forces have advanced significantly and have moved into Baghuz. Militants are still planting and using IEDs and bombs are exploding as the SDF forces are advancing. There is also heavy street fighting.”

The advance on the terror group’s remaining fighters began late Friday.

The final assault, announced on Twitter by Syrian Democratic Force spokesman Mustafa Bali, began just a day after the lead commander said the northeast Syrian village of Baghuz would be liberated within a week.

Remember that Livemap image that showed no more Islamic State-held territory left in Baghuz?

Well, this is what it looks like now:

Some of the confusion stems from the American media’s apparent complete disinterest in covering the end of the Islamic State, meaning that reporting on the conflict tends to vary between spotty and distant to non-existent. Part of the pause in the final assault was apparently to evacuate remaining civilians.

Hopefully the final final assault is no underway, and the utter destruction of the last of the Hajin/Baghuz pocket is underway.

Some related tweets:

Caliphate Caput

Saturday, February 16th, 2019

The last stronghold of the Islamic State, the former Hajin pocket along the Euphrates, has fallen:

The general commander of the operation by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to eliminate the Islamic State in eastern Syria on Saturday confirmed the fall of the extremist group in the East Euphrates and said victory would be announced in a few days.

“Da’esh [ISIS] has fallen militarily and their militants are under fire from our fighters in a small space of about 600 square meters,” Chiya Firat, the general commander of the operation launched to defeat the Islamic State in the East Euphrates, told reporters at the Omar Field SDF military base in Deir al-Zor governorate.

Livemap shows no Islamic State territory remaining there, with the Syrian Democratic Forces occupying Baghuz and surrounding territory.

Closeup:

This is what the pocket looked like January 6:

This is what it looked like back on December 20:

Hundreds of Islamic State fighters have surrendered, but expect ongoing mop-up operations where jihadists continue to be be pulled from tunnels and spider holes for several days, as was the case in Mosul.

Back when President Donald Trump declared an end to the Islamic State on December 20, I said he was premature, but only by about 4-8 weeks, and the eight week estimate proved right.

There are other areas of Syria and Iraq that Livemap shows as still under Islamic State control, but I get the impression these are largely desolate areas with no significant population that Syrian and Iraqi authorities have simply failed sweep and declare cleared.

The media, which seemed to avoid reporting success after hard-won success in the war against the Islamic State, not only ignored the final destruction of the Hajin pocket, is now writing articles about how the Islamic State continues as a transnational terrorist organization. This is both true and largely irrelevant. There are plenty of Islamist terrorist groups to worry about, but the Islamic State’s primary claim to legitimacy, the thing that drew foreign fighters from around the world, was it’s presumed legitimacy as an Islamic caliphate:

To be the caliph, one must meet conditions outlined in Sunni law—being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority. This last criterion, Cerantonio said, is the hardest to fulfill, and requires that the caliph have territory in which he can enforce Islamic law. Baghdadi’s Islamic State achieved that long before June 29, Cerantonio said, and as soon as it did, a Western convert within the group’s ranks—Cerantonio described him as “something of a leader”—began murmuring about the religious obligation to declare a caliphate.

In late 2014, the Islamic State controlled some 40,000 square miles of territory. Now it controls nothing. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is no longer a credible caliph, capable of claiming the allegiance of all Sunnis worldwide, but a loser and a failure, assuming he’s even still alive. Ambitious worldwide jihadists no longer have any incentive to pledge bayʿah to al-Baghdadi, and it’s entirely possible that the ones who previously had will drift away or declare their support to another transnational Islamic terrorist group like al Qaeda.

For this we can thank cost-effective strategy by the U.S.-led coalition to arm and support the Syrian Democratic Forces against the Islamic State, greatly aided by the Trump Administration’s decision to loosen the rules of engagement from what they were under Obama.

The Islamic State wasn’t completely destroyed today, but the last shred of it’s claim to a caliphate was.

Islamic State Remnants in Hajin Pocket Crumble

Thursday, January 24th, 2019

It appears that the Syrian Democratic Forces have just about finished crushing the last holdouts in the former Hajin pocket:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on Wednesday claimed the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are getting close to defeating the Islamic State in the countryside of Deir al-Zor.

“The SDF managed to achieve an important and strategic advancement in the area, through advancing into and taking the control of about the half of Al-Baghuz Foqani town, which is the last town left under the control of the “Islamic State” organization in Syria,” the SOHR said.

Ranya Mohammed, a Syrian Kurdish journalist, also tweeted that SDF fighters have reached the town of Baghuz and that many Islamic State families had fled to SDF-held areas.

Currently, the jihadist group holds only about 10 square kilometers in that region. According to some sources, morale among the remaining Islamic State fighters is at an all-time low with many surrendering to the Kurdish-led SDF.

“The rest of ISIS members who are still in an enclave east of the Euphrates refuse to surrender,” as “hundreds” of their members have surrendered to the SDF “in the past 24 hours,” the monitor group asserted.

Here’s what the remnants of the Hajin pocket look like today:

And here’s what it looked like January 6:

In other Islamic State news:

  • There was a firefight between Filipino government troops and Islamic State-linked Maute gunmen in Lanao Del Sur province on Mindanao.
  • Here’s photographs of Yazidis trying to rebuild their lives in Iraq following the Islamic State’s campaign of genocide against them.
  • Three Kenyans living in the United States have been arrested by the FBI for conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State.
  • War Against the Islamic State Update: Hajin Pocket Squeezed

    Sunday, January 6th, 2019

    Despite President Donald Trump’s announcement of a pullout of American troops from Syria, the war against the Islamic State contains apace.

    Information is scanty, but Syrian Democratic Forces appear to be systematically crushing what remains of the former Hajin pocket. Their offensive has rolled south into Shafa, AKA Al Shaafa, AKA Asi-Sha-Fah, and two British soldiers were wounded in an Islamic State missile attack there.

    Here’s what the remnants of the Hajin pocket look like today:

    This is what it looked like back on December 20:

    There’s at least some evidence that other Arab countries are stepping in to pick up some of the slack:

    In the last few days, Egyptian and UAE military officers visited the contested north Syrian town of Manbij. They toured the town and its outskirts, checked out the locations of US and Kurdish YPG militia positions, and took notes on how to deploy their own troops as replacements. On the diplomatic side, the White House is in continuous conversation with the UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Muhammed Bin Ziyad (MbZ) and Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi. The deal Trump is offering, is that they take over US positions in Manbij, where the Kurds have sought protection against a Turkish invasion, and American air cover will be assured against Russian, Syrian or Turkish attack.

    As DEBKAfile has noted, the Egyptian president, during his four years in power, was the only Arab leader to consistently side with Bashar Assad against the insurgency against his regime. Assad may therefore accept the posting of Egyptian forces in Manbij so long as Syrian officers are attached to their units. The Syrian president would likely also favor a UAE military presence. Not only was the emirate the first Arab nation to reopen its embassy in Damascus after long years of Arab boycott, but unlike most of its Arab League colleagues, the UAE can well afford to contribute funding for the colossal reconstruction task needed for getting the war-devastated country on its feet.

    Approval of the Egyptian-UAE forces to Manbij would kick off the stationing of mixed Arab forces in other parts of Syria, including the border with Iraq. If the Trump administration’s plans mature, then countries like Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Algeria would send troops to push the Iranian military presence out of key areas where they have taken hold.

    That sounds swell. So swell that I’m suspicious that Syrian, Turkish and Russian leaders will actually let it happen. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that U.S. trops would not complete their withdrawal from Syria until the Islamic State is defeated and the safety of the Kurds is guaranteed.

    I would take this pronouncement with several grains of salt.

    Even after Hajin falls, there are still large tracts of uninhabited land in Syria and Iraq the Islamic State hasn’t been cleared from. Just today, U.S. special forces conducted an operation near Kirkuk, Iraq that killed three Islamic State fighters who had reportedly been attacking the country’s electrical transmission infrastructure.

    Also, the Islamic State in West Africa reportedly captured the town of Baga in northeastern Nigeria in late December.

    The Islamic State: Not Quite Dead

    Thursday, December 20th, 2018

    President Donald Trump is evidently pulling combat troops out of Syria, having declared:

    This is not correct. While Hajin itself has just been taken, a core of Islamic State fighters still remains in the remainder of the Hajin pocket:

    If President Trump actually means it, this withdrawal is probably some 4-8 weeks premature if the goal is to crush the last remnants of the Islamic State and stabilize SDF territory. Maybe we can let Syria crush the remaining Islamic State remnants, and maybe we can’t. Will we be leaving the Kurds enough weapons and supplies to stand up for themselves against an emboldened Syria, Russia and Turkey? It’s unclear that we will.

    Note that the phrase “returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign” leaves a lot of wiggle room. There may well remain a small troop contingent to support SDF forces and direct coalition air power based in Iraq, where some 5,000 U.S. troops are still supporting Operation Inherent Resolve. Also, the British governemnt noted: “Much remains to be done and we must not lose sight of the threat they (ISIS) pose…. (but) as the United States has made clear, these developments in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign.” The French still have a hand in as well.

    This comes two days after the Trump-skeptical David French called Trump’s previous policy in Syria both wise and unconstitutional. “The Trump administration is doing the right thing the wrong way, and that matters. The failure to follow the constitutional process means that American forces are in harm’s way without the necessary congressional debate and the necessary congressional approval.”

    Cue Bunk Moreland:

    Assuming it is a complete and almost immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria, I view President Trump’s move with some skepticism, and suspect that it is slightly premature. Clearly we need to exit Syria at some point, probably sooner rather than later, but I’d prefer Trump to wait just long enough (again, another four weeks) to make sure the Islamic State holds no significant territory upon which to claim the legitimacy of its caliphate. I fear we’re inviting more instability by leaving slightly too early.

    I’d love to be proven wrong.

    Islamic State Expands Hajin Pocket

    Sunday, November 25th, 2018

    I’ve needed to write this for a few weeks, but the torrent of election news and general busyness kept me from it. Instead of gradually being crushed as I (and most observers) expected, an Islamic State counterattack against Syrian Democratic Forces has actually expanded the Hajin pocket:

    A sandstorm settled on areas of the Syria-Iraq border over the last week. It turned the air into a reddish soup, where people could not see more than a few meters in front of their faces. Through the haze and dust, Islamic State launched a coordinated counter-attack along a front line near the Euphrates in an area known as the Hajin pocket. This is the last area that ISIS holds in Syria; the US-led coalition and its Syrian Democratic Forces partners have been seeking to defeat ISIS in Hajin for the last two months.

    On October 29, the SDF sent special forces to bolster the front line, according to a spokesman for the coalition. “The SDF is engaged in a difficult battle and fighting bravely to protect and free their people from ISIS. We salute the martyred SDF heroes as the intense fight against evil continues,” the spokesman wrote. More than a dozen SDF fighters were killed in the clashes; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said up to 40 had been killed.

    This is what the Hajin pocket looked like back when the Islamic State started their counterattack back on October 15:

    And this is what it’s looks like now:

    (Both shots via LiveMap.)

    The Islamic State has retaken areas to the north and south and expanded the southernmost portions east to the Iraqi border. There U.S. troops are supporting Iraqi troops fighting the Islamic State.

    The biggest question is how the Islamic State pocket in Hajin continues to get resupplied with men and material despite theoretically being surrounded on all sides.

    There are reports that Saudi Arabia and UAE have sent troops into Syria to support the SDF against the Islamic State:

    Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent military forces to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG group in north-east Syria, Turkey’s Yenisafak newspaper reported.

    The paper said the forces will be stationed with US-led coalition troops and will support its tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons.

    Quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the newspaper reported that a convoy of troops belonging to an Arab Gulf state recently arrived in the contact area between the Kurdish PKK/YPG and Daesh in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside.

    All Turkish news on the Syrian conflict should be taken with several grains of salt.

    Other Islamic State/Syrian theater news:

  • US and Russian forces have clashed repeatedly in Syria, US envoy says.”

    American and Russian forces have clashed a dozen times in Syria — sometimes with exchanges of fire — a U.S. envoy told Russian journalists in a wide-ranging interview this week.

    Ambassador James Jeffrey, U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement, offered no specifics about the incidents on Wednesday, speaking to the Russian newspaper Kommersant and state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

    Jeffrey had been asked to clarify casualty numbers and details of a February firefight in which U.S. forces reportedly killed up to 200 pro-Syrian regime forces, including Russian mercenaries, who had mounted a failed attack on a base held by the U.S. and its mostly Kurdish local allies near the town of Deir al-Zour. None of the Americans at the outpost — reportedly about 40 — had been killed or injured.

    Jeffrey declined to offer specifics on that incident, but said it was not the only such confrontation between Americans and Russians.

    “U.S. forces are legitimately in Syria, supporting local forces in the fight against Da’esh and as appropriate — and this has occurred about a dozen times in one or another place in Syria — they exercise the right of self-defense when they feel threatened,” Jeffrey said, using an Arabic term for the Islamic State group. “That’s all we say on that.”

    Asked to clarify, he said only that some of the clashes had involved shooting and some had not.

    That’s all from Stars and Stripes, so presumably it’s not complete garbage.

  • It seems that Syrian army forces have destroyed the last Islamic State pocket in southwest Syria.