Islamic State Expands Hajin Pocket

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.
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