Trump’s policies tested in desperate Syrian city
Local forces lead battle against militants
TABQA, Syria — The young man unburdened himself about the dark years of living under the Islamic State as a crowd of curious onlookers gathered in front of a weathered storefront in the town marketplace.
The militants, said the man, a 22-year-old named Abdul Qadir Khalil, killed many residents, doled out precious jobs and severely limited travel to and from the city. “When they left, our situation was much better mentally,” Khalil said. “If things were fixed, our society would be better and we would come to our normal life.”
He ticked off a list of the things Tabqa needs: electricity, water, fuel and a sizable bakery. Then, laughing about his new freedom to openly denounce the militants, he said, “If they ever come back, they will slaughter all of us.”
Life is slowly returning to the streets of Tabqa, a city of about 100,000 strategically positioned just 30 miles west of Raqqa, the capital of the self-proclaimed caliphate of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Women are well represented on the town’s new governing council, and small children greet visitors with a “V” sign for victory.
But nearly two months after the Islamic State was driven off by the U.S.-led coalition fighting the militants, the needs are even more vast than Khalil suggested, with no functioning hospitals or schools, not even the heavy equipment needed to uncover the dead.
In that respect, Tabqa stands as a laboratory for testing the Trump administration’s policy of empowering commanders in Syria to make battlefield decisions to defeat the militants while relying on a small team of State Department officials and Army civil affairs units to cement the uneasy peace that follows — all without getting into the business of nation-building.
It is also a dry run for the impending capture of Raqqa, a larger, far more densely populated and better defended city.
“Tabqa is the most immediate post-ISIS town where we could really get our feet on the ground,” said Brett H. McGurk, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the coalition.
The United States’ strategy in Syria is to wage the ground campaign against the Islamic State through local forces in order to maintain a small U.S. footprint. But even that requires the deployment of American advisers, plus artillery, satellite-guided rockets, Apache attack helicopters and Army Rangers — some 1,000 troops in all. The U.S. presence comes as Iran and the Shiite militias it backs, as well as the Syrian government and Russia, are maneuvering to control territory in eastern Syria after Raqqa is taken.
The visit to Tabqa on Thursday was a first opportunity for McGurk, a small group of senior coalition officials and the Western news media to get a look at the newly liberated city, still struggling to recover from the physical and psychological scars of nearly three years of harsh control by the militants.
“Basically, what you’ve got here is hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies in the rubble, which is causing a lot of flies, the flies are biting kids, the kids are getting infected,” said Al Dwyer, a senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, as American Special Operations forces drove to Tabqa in armored SUVs. “Lot of rats. Smells. This is keeping people from coming back in.”
The Tabqa operation was proposed in mid-March to Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the commander of the U.S.-led task force that is battling the Islamic State, by the top commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the combination of Syrian Kurds and Arab fighters who would provide the ground troops for the battle. It was approved without a single White House meeting.
Just one week later, hundreds of Arab and Kurdish fighters, including many who had never flown before, were airlifted on U.S. helicopters and Osprey planes to the southern banks of Lake Assad, across from Tabqa. Barges ferried their vehicles across the azure water while another group of Syrian fighters to the east hopped from island to island as they zipped along the Euphrates on U.S. fast boats.
In the fierce battle that ensued, about 100 Kurdish and Arab fighters were killed and perhaps 10 times as many militants. One of the final confrontations occurred inside the 200-foot-tall Tabqa Dam, which used to supply 20 percent of Syria’s electricity.
To try to save the dam, Syrian fighters cut a deal granting about 70 militants safe passage out of town. But the Islamic State did its best to sabotage the complex anyway: The aging red turbines were blown up while the control panels were sprayed with bullets.