The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As battle for Raqqa brews, U.S. eye in the sky stares down Islamic State
Air campaign likely to play key role in fight for Syrian city.
ABOARD A JOINT STARS SURVEILLANCE PLANE, OVER NORTHERN IRAQ — Flying at 30,000 feet, the powerful radar aboard this Air Force jet peered deep into Syrian territory, hunting for targets on the ground to strike in the looming offensive to seize Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital.
It was on a mission like this several weeks ago that analysts discovered a hiding place in the central Syrian desert where the Islamic State was stashing scores of oil tanker trucks that provide the terrorist group with a crucial financial lifeline. Acting on that tip and other intelligence, two dozen U.S. warplanes destroyed 188 of the trucks in the biggest airstrike of the year, eliminating an estimated $2 million in oil revenue for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Even as the U.S.-led air campaign conducts bombing missions to support Iraqi troops fighting the Islamic State in Mosul, U.S. commanders said the air war would probably play an even greater role in Syria over the coming weeks in the battle to retake Raqqa.
Newly recruited Syrian Arab militia fighters, allied with experienced Kurdish fighters, are encircling Raqqa. But they need allied bombing to weaken and dislodge enemy forces dug in there, and to cut off the ability for the Islamic State to rearm, refuel and reinforce its fighters.
But with few spies in the city, U.S. officials say assessing the enemy is difficult.
“We’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the situation on the ground in Raqqa,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, air war commander, said in an interview from his headquarters in Qatar. “It’s improving. It’s still not at the level we’d like it to be.”
The air operation is a pivotal component of a military campaign that has cost $12.5 million per day in Iraq and Syria. The effort has destroyed hundreds of tanks, artillery pieces, military vehicles, command centers and fighting positions, and killed more than 50,000 fighters, according to U.S. estimates. Since the air war began in late summer 2014, U.S. and allied aircraft have conducted about 17,000 strikes in both countries.
The Islamic State has lost about half of the territory it seized in Iraq and Syria in 2014. But as the Islamic State loses ground in its physical caliphate, or religious state, the threat of hundreds of foreign fighters returning home and of the expansion of its virtual caliphate through social media is certain to accelerate, U.S. and European officials say. That raises fears of more terrorist attacks in cities outside the Middle East.
For instance, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for December’s truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin even though the links between the group and the main suspect, Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, are not completely clear. After Amri’s death, the Islamic State released a video of him pledging allegiance to the group.
President Barack Obama has vowed to deal the Islamic State crippling blows in Mosul and Raqqa before he leaves office. In early December, he ordered 200 more U.S. Special Operations forces to Syria to help local fighters advancing on Raqqa, nearly doubling the Pentagon’s boots on the ground there. Commanders are uncertain, however, about the level of support President-elect Donald Trump will maintain for rebel groups in Syria combating the Islamic State.
Allied airstrikes have picked up as Arab and Kurdish fighters have moved closer to the capital, and as commanders sought to pressure Mosul and Raqqa simultaneously. About 30 percent of the 1,300 strikes in and around Raqqa since the war began in 2014 have been conducted in the past three months.
“The pressure in Raqqa is bearing fruit as ISIL leaders come out of hiding, which allows us to kill them,” Brett H. McGurk, Obama’s envoy to the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, said this month.
Tracking the enemy’s ground movements falls largely to the crew of the Joint Stars plane, a 1960s-era, reconfigured Boeing 707 jetliner packed with sensitive electronics that is part of an eclectic and unsung mix of odd-shaped surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft with names like Compass Call and Rivet Joint. These planes suck up some enemy communications, jam others and help paint a picture of the Islamic State on the ground for U.S. fighters and bombers to attack.
Islamic State fighters know from experience that they are being watched and often try to deceive the surveillance planes, hiding in schools or mosques or using camouflage. At one point, analysts said, the Islamic State even appeared to be trying to smuggle weapons strapped to the bellies of herds of sheep.