ISIS shows new momentum as Trump mulls Syria pullout
MANBIJ, Syria — Even as President Donald Trump mulls a U.S. pullout from Syria, insisting that the Islamic State group is “almost completely defeated,” the extremist group is showing signs of a revival.
Despite being kicked out of the main towns they once occupied near the Iraqi border, the militants have regrouped elsewhere and revised their tactics, recently mounting a brazen attack on a border city in eastern Syria and expanding their footprint inside the Syrian capital itself.
Talk of a U.S. troop withdrawal has alarmed the United States’ main ally in Syria, the Kurds, who fought alongside the Americans to roll back Islamic State, also known as ISIS. They fear not only an ISIS resurgence but also that without U.S. troops in the country, Turkey, Russia and Iran will fill the void and wrest control of northern and eastern Syria.
The White House said Wednesday that the U.S. military mission against ISIS in Syria is coming to a “rapid end” but offered no timetable for the withdrawal of the 2,000 U.S. troops other than to say they will leave as soon as the last remaining ISIS fighters can be vanquished.
Trump, however, has signaled to his advisers that ideally he wants all troops out within six months, according to three U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss what transpired in a meeting with the president.
Developments on the ground, however, suggest it will be difficult, if not impossible, to completely snuff out the group before then.
“Daesh is not over,” said the commander of the U.S.- A U.S. soldier patrols this week in an armored vehicle on a road in Syria that leads to a tense front line in Manbij. backed Manbij Military Council, the joint KurdishArab body administering this northern Syrian town. He referred to ISIS by its Arabic acronym.
Speaking to the Associated Press on Wednesday, he said the U.S. statements about a pullout were a cause for “concern on the street level” but that Kurdish officials were receiving reassurances from U.S. generals on the ground that American troops were staying.
Last week, an explosion killed two coalition personnel, an American and a Briton, during an operation to capture a known ISIS member in Manbij, where U.S. troops maintain a large presence. It was the first such blast to hit the U.S.-led coalition since it deployed in the town months after the U.S.-backed forces liberated it from ISIS in 2016 following fierce battles that lasted nearly three months.
Since then, the town has served as a model of stabilization, but officials are now expressing concern about ISIS attempting to reemerge.
The U.S.-backed forces — a mix of Kurdish and Arab fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF — routed ISIS militants from almost all the territory the extremists controlled in northern Syria, including the group’s de facto capital of Raqqa, in October. In November, a coalition of Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian and Russian forces secured the militant’s last urban stronghold, Boukamal, in eastern Syria on the border with Iraq.
That seemed to herald victory over the militants. The various sides then turned their attention to pursuing their own interests in the disintegrated country.
The ISIS militants kept a sliver of territory along the Euphrates River and some nebulous zones of control in the desert of eastern Syria and on the border with Iraq — but nothing that seemed beyond containment.
But in a surprise attack, the militants stormed Boukamal on Monday, triggering heavy fighting before Iranian-backed Shiite militias beat them out, according to a war monitoring group and Syrian opposition activists with connections to the region. Approximately 400 ISIS fighters crossed the Euphrates River and ambushed the town, killing 11 pro-government fighters in clashes, a monitoring group said.
U.S. and Kurdish officers warned of an ISIS resurgence in March when Turkey attacked Afrin in northwestern Syria to drive out the main Kurdish militia, known as the YPG.