SYRIA thread

[Montmorency]

I haven't found anything more of interest on this in the past couple weeks, so I'll mark a controversy around the end of the Battle of Raqqa.

The details: SDF Kurdish and Arab forces negotiated a deal (with US leadership deferring to the wishes of the ground forces) allowing several hundred fighters (~250), including at least some foreigners, to evacuate the city in a very large motorized convoy. The fighters took with them a weapons cache and 3,500 civilians, mostly hostages, sex slaves, and children. Coalition aircraft monitored the convoy's progress for some time but did not interfere.

The BBC called it a "dirty secret". OTOH The Region pointed out that the agreement was publicized for weeks ahead of time.

Now, I assume (as others have) that the premise of this deal was to avoid further costly siege warfare, and spare civilians from violence. Indeed, this tactic appears to have been relied upon by all major state factions in the conflict. It was employed a few months ago near the Lebanese border by Syria/Russia and Lebanon/Hezbollah. In that case though, the US forces expressed consternation at the deal (which stipulated the convoy move from SW Syria to the SE border near Deir Ez-Zor) and harried the convoy with air attacks targeting individual combatants and vehicles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qalamo...93August_2017)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/w...convoy-us.html

A little earlier than that, the US Coalition secured a similar deal in the Battle of Tabqa (Dam), perhaps to prevent the IS rearguard or Coalition artillery from damaging the dam structure or mechanism. The Coalition also harried escaping IS convoys and units in this case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tabqa_(2017)


This article on Russia Insider is critical of the US mission in the region but notes:

So if anything Americans should be congratulated here for beginning to understand it doesn’t pay to break safe passage deals, or to corner an enemy in a heavily-built up area, with no escape routes, but plenty of hostages. Congratulations cowboys!

The reality however, is that not forcing your enemy to fight to the last man in a urban setting is just the smart way to fight. In fact, the Syrian army has made the greatest number of such deals, including with ISIS.

Recall that over 5,000 al-Qaeda and allied rebel fighters and family members were bused out from encircled eastern Aleppo in December, 2016 in the biggest evacuation deal of the war.

Yet, when its Kurdish proxies allow ISIS to retreat in a similar fashion the US says nothing, and its bombers stay grounded. That’s understandable. While the US-Kurdish forces were bogged down in the fighting for Raqqa, the Syrian army was making good progress in the race for the Euphrates.

To get back in the race the US-augmented Kurdish militias had to wrap up Raqqa quickly. But it doesn’t make it any less hypocritical.

What it does demonstrate is the futility of the "destroy IS" narrative. It would never be possible to destroy a movement this extensive by military means. At this point the obvious way forward for the elite, battle-hardened IS survivors is to largely disperse to hotzones around the world and lend their tradecraft and experience to regional jihadist movements. In the meantime, the ever-present Al Qaeda networks will continue to infiltrate the power vacuum and realize their long-term strategies between the Tigris and the Nile.

That mosque attack on Sinai Sufis, by the way, is just one milestone in Egypt's collapsing security situation.

Fun fact: the mosque attack killed a fifth of the town's male population.