Terrain, geopolitics make for tricky last battle against terrorists

BEIRUT: Daesh’s empire has shrunk fast this year but the rump of its “caliphate” on the Iraq-Syria border is a hostile terrorist heartland where competing regional interests converge.

After losing their main hubs of Mosul and Raqqa this year, the noose continued to tighten around holdout Daesh fighters regrouping in the badlands where the organization was born.

On Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, announced an assault in the last areas of Anbar province where Daesh retains a foothold, further turning up the heat on the terrorists’ routed remnants.

A key target of the latest Iraqi operation is Al-Qaim, one of the last towns of note still under terrorist control in Iraq.

Syrian regime forces and allied militia groups still have some ground to cover before reaching Albu Kamal, which is Al-Qaim’s twin town on the Syrian side of the border.

The group that ruled over a “state” covering roughly the size of Britain only three years ago appears to be on its last legs but the final battle to retake its remote border heartland could be a tough one.

“The geography and the society in this area are distinct from elsewhere... they make for a tougher terrain. It is difficult to navigate,” said analyst Hassan Hassan, author of an acclaimed book on Daesh.

The areas beyond the immediate fertile strip flanking the Euphrates river are arid and remote, Sunni Arab tribal hinterlands that always escaped central authority to some extent.

“It is more complicated than other regions because this is where IS emerged back in the day,” Hassan said of the restive region, where the population is traditionally hostile to both President Bashar Assad and the Kurds.

Iraqi and Syrian government forces lack deep knowledge of the terrain there or local partners they can heavily rely on, such as the US-backed force that retook the terrorist stronghold of Raqqa last week.

That Kurdish-led alliance will be involved in the final assault on Daesh but only further north, in mostly desert areas between the Syrian cities of Deir Ezzor and Hassakeh.

Iraqi federal forces are advancing with fighters from Hashed Al-Shaabi, a paramilitary organization dominated by Shiite militias loyal to Iran.

On the other arm of the pincer closing in on the terrorists are Syrian regime forces, that are at least 50 km from Abu Kamal and supported by Iraqi, Iranian, Lebanese and Afghan militia.

The last Daesh bastions to fall are likely to be on the Syrian side where — according to Christopher Meserole, a fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, and several other analysts — the group still has an estimated 5,000 fighters.

Yet the terrorists have already begun reverting to an insurgency that could thrive if the disparate victors of the “caliphate” fail to work together in the region.

“Defeating the Islamic State (Daesh) will be the easy part,” said Meserole. “The hard part will be securing the peace, making sure that the forces converging on Deir Ezzor don’t start fighting among themselves.”

“The stakes for Deir Ezzor could not be higher,” he said of the oil-rich eastern Syrian province which, unlike Raqqa, was a priority of recent military efforts by regime.