Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Deal lets ISIS fighters exit Raqqa
Only Syrians allowed to go; coalition left out of negotiations
BEIRUT — The U.S.-led coalition and local officials said Saturday that Syrian Islamic State fighters and civilians will be allowed to evacuate Raqqa, a deal that signals the imminent capture of the city but flouts earlier U.S. protests of negotiating safe exits for the extremist group.
Foreign fighters will be excluded from the evacuation deal, the coalition said.
The U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said the final battle for Raqqa was underway, apparently propelled by negotiation efforts that secured the surrender and evacuation of dozens of Syrian militants still holed up in the city.
In a statement, the U.S.-led coalition said a convoy of vehicles was set to leave Raqqa after the deal brokered by a local council formed by their Kurdish allies and Arab tribal leaders.
The tribal leaders said they appealed to the coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces to allow the evacuation of local Islamic State fighters to stem further violence.
“Because our aim is liberation not killing, we appealed to the [Syrian Democratic Forces] to arrange for the local fighters and secure their exit to outside of the city, with our guarantees,” the tribal leaders said in a statement.
The tribesmen said their evacuation would save the lives of civilians who the extremist fighters have used as human shields. Earlier this month, there was an estimated 4,000 civilians still in the city.
The U.S.-led coalition said it “was not involved in the discussions that led to the arrangement, but believes it will save innocent lives and allow Syrian Democratic Forces and the Coalition to focus on defeating Daesh terrorists in Raqqah with less risk of civilian casualties.” Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
The statement also said the deal is “designed to minimize civilian casualties” and that the convoy of evacuation buses would be searched and screened by a U.S.-backed ground force.
It was unclear Saturday whether the evacuation buses would leave for Syrian Democratic Forces-controlled territory or for that still held by the Islamic State. In September, U.S. warplanes temporarily blocked a convoy carrying hundreds of the group’s fighters and their families after Hezbollah and the Syrian government permitted them to withdraw from a besieged enclave on the Lebanon-Syria border.
On Saturday, Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said it was now important that the actions of those evacuated were “monitored and tracked,” and that Syrian militants were not able to re-enter the conflict.
The evacuation deal places the U.S. in a bind as it had earlier said that only surrender, not a negotiated withdrawal for Islamic State fighters in Raqqa, would be accepted. The top U.S. envoy for the anti-Islamic State coalition, Brett McGurk, had previously stated that foreign fighters in Raqqa would die in the city. Omar Alloush, a senior member of the Raqqa Civil Council, said Friday around 100 militants had surrendered.
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters traveling with him Friday that the U.S. would accept the surrender of Islamic State militants who would be interrogated for intelligence purposes.
“Right now, as the bottom drops out from underneath [the Islamic State group], more and more of them are either surrendering — some are trying to surrender, and some amongst them — more fanatical ones aren’t allowing them to,” he said.
A senior local Kurdish commander said foreign fighters were unlikely to surrender so his forces are expecting to “comb them out” of at least two neighborhoods. He said it could be a matter of a day or two.
Raqqa’s strategic significance has diminished as a range of international forces rolled back Islamic State territory across Syria and Iraq, with senior leaders moving east to the border regions between the two.
Also Saturday, the Syrian and Russian militaries announced that Syrian troops and allied fighters had seized the town of Mayadeen, an Islamic State stronghold in the country’s east. The Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Syrian soldiers had driven Islamic State fighters from the town, which he said was the extremist group’s last major stronghold in eastern Syria.
On the western bank of the Euphrates River, Mayadeen was also a major node in the race for control of the oil-rich eastern Deir el-Zour province that straddles the border with Iraq. Washington has feared advances by Syrian troops and allied fighters could help Iran expand its influence across the region and establish a “Shiite corridor” of land links from Iraq to Lebanon, and all the way to Israel. Iran backs militias fighting alongside the Syrian military.
Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed that government troops, backed by Shiite militias, had taken control of Mayadeen but said they were still combing it for militants.