U.S.-backed Syrian forces claim win over Daesh
Group’s ‘caliphate’ erased after five-year battle, though threat remains
BAGHOUZ, SYRIA— U.S.-backed forces declared military victory over Daesh in Syria on Saturday after liberating the last pocket of territory held by the militants, marking the end of a brutal self-styled caliphate the group carved out in large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The nearly five-year war that has devastated cities and towns across north Syria and Iraq ended in Baghouz, a minor border village where the cornered militants made their last stand, under a gruelling siege for weeks.
On Saturday, the Syrian Democratic Forces raised their bright yellow banner from a shell-pocked house where the militants once flew their notorious black flag. Below it stretched a field shattered by the battle, pitted by trenches and bomb craters and littered with scorched tents, twisted wreckage of burned out vehicles, unspent explosives and few remaining corpses.
“Baghouz is free and the military victory against Daesh has been achieved,” tweeted Mus- tafa Bali, a spokesperson for the Kurdish-led SDF, referring to Daesh by its Arabic acronym.
The fall of Baghouz brings to a close a nearly five-year global campaign against Daesh that raged in two countries, spanned two U.S. presidencies and saw a U.S.-led coalition unleash more than 100,000 strikes. The campaign has left a trail of destruction in cities in Iraq and Syria, likely killed tens of thousands and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes.
The campaign put an end to the militants’ proto-state, which at its height four years ago was the size of Britain and home to some eight million people. But the extremist group still maintains a scattered presence and sleeper cells across Syria and Iraq. It’s not known whether the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is still alive or where he might be hiding.
Daesh affiliates in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Afghanistan and other countries continue to pose a threat, and the group’s ideology has inspired so-called lone-wolf attacks that had little if any connection to its leadership.
The “caliphate’s” end also marks a new phase in Syria’s civil war, now in its ninth year. The country is carved up, with the Iranian- and Russianbacked government of Presi- dent Bashar Assad controlling the west, centre and south, the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces holding the north and east, and Turkish allies controlling a pocket in the north. The fear now is of new conflict among those players.
At a ceremony held later Saturday at the nearby al-Omar oilfield base, a senior U.S. diplomat, William Roebuck, said the territorial defeat of Daesh is a “critical milestone” that delivers a crushing and strategic blow to the extremist group. But he stressed it remains a significant threat.
“We still have much work to do to achieve an enduring defeat of (Daesh),” he said.
The commander in chief of the SDF, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, appealed for continued assistance to his group until the full eradication of the extremist group. He spoke at the ceremony during which fighters marched to a military band.