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U.S.-backed forces retake ISIS stronghold in Syria
Trump takes credit for Raqqa victory, cites his leadership
BEIRUT — U.S.-backed forces in Syria claimed Tuesday that they had full control of the Islamic State’s onetime capital of Raqqa, heralding an end to the militants’ presence in their most symbolically important stronghold and raising new questions about the United States’ future role in Syria.
Mustafa Abdi, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, said that military operations had halted and that members of the joint Kurdish-Arab force were clearing the city of explosive devices and hunting for sleeper cells.
The U.S. military said a formal victory announcement will come after SDF forces are sure that no pockets of resistance from the Islamic State, also called ISIS, remain in the city, but the SDF portrayed the battle for Raqqa as over.
“There is an air of jubilation in the city,” Abdi said. “People are overjoyed that they are finally rid of this scourge.”
In Washington, President Donald Trump took credit for making changes to the military that allowed U.S.-backed forces to retake Raqqa.
“It had to do with the people I put in and it had to do with rules of engagement,” Trump said Tuesday on Washington-based radio station WMAL. “I totally changed the military. I totally changed the attitudes of the military.”
Asked why ISIS wasn’t defeated or beaten back earlier, Trump said, “Because you didn’t have Trump as your president.”
Kurdish and Arab fighters took to the streets to celebrate the end of the battle they have fought for four months, climbing onto vehicles and parading around the destroyed city, according to photos posted on social media.
“Liberating Raqqa is a triumph for humanity, especially women,” who suffered the most under ISIS, said Ilham Ahmed, a senior member of the SDF political wing.
By the time the battle was over, Raqqa had lost all strategic significance to ISIS, which once had used the city to showcase its brutality and plot attacks against the West. The fall of the Iraqi city of Mosul in July and the loss of large areas of territory in eastern Syria to Syrian government forces leave the militants in control of only one sizable stretch of territory, spanning the Iraqi-Syrian border.
But the capture of Raqqa marks a milestone in the U.S.-led war against ISIS.
In a briefing in Washington, Col. Ryan Dillon called it “momentous.” The spokesman said ISIS has lost 87 percent of the territory it once controlled and that 6,500 fighters remain, out of tens of thousands at the peak of its prowess.
The victory also intensifies growing questions about what comes next.
The remaining ISIS strongholds in Syria lie to the south in the province of Deir el-Zour, where the Syrian government and its Iranian-backed and Russian allies are making gains. The U.S. military will leave it up to the SDF to decide whether it wants to continue to advance into the area, Dillon said.
The Trump administration has not indicated whether it is prepared to stay in northeastern Syria to provide protection for the fledgling ministate being forged by Syria’s Kurds. The experience over the past two days of the Kurds in neighboring Iraq may embolden the Syrian government to challenge the Syrian Kurdish enclave once ISIS is vanquished, just as the Iraqi government has moved to dislodge Kurdish forces from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other areas they controlled.
Syrian officials have spoken on several occasions about their determination to regain control over all of the territory they lost to the rebellion against President Bashar Assad, including the area controlled by the Kurds.
“What would be disastrous for Syrian Kurds is a rapid U.S. drawdown in Syria. It would take away their major foreign patron,” said Nicholas Heras of the Center for a New American Security.
A civilian council made up of Arabs and Kurds is waiting in the wings to take over governance of Raqqa, under the auspices of the Kurdish-led administration running northeastern Syria. But the international community has not committed funds for reconstruction of the devastated city, and the absence of a clear U.S. policy for northeastern Syria risks undermining the gains, cautioned Hassan Hassan of the Washington-based Tahrir Institute.
“No one trusts the Americans, not even the Kurds,” he said. “To defeat extremism after destroying areas through the necessity of war, you have to deal with the consequences, not just drop bombs and leave because you have an aversion to war.”