ISIS Out of Iraq But Driven Into Syria by the U.S.

Iraqi government: Islamic State 'completely defeated' in country

By Allen Cone 

Iraqi soldiers hold up the Iraqi national flag after totally liberating central Mosul on July 10. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Saturday announced the remaining Iraqi region under Islamic state control, near the Iraqi border with Syria, was now under complete control of Iraq's armed forces. Photo by EPA

UPI -- Iraq's prime minister announced Saturday that the country's defense forces completely liberated the nation from the Islamic State.

"Our heroic armed forces have now secured the entire length of the Iraq-Syria border," Haider al-Abadi posted on Twitter. "We defeated Daesh [Islamic State] through our unity and sacrifice for the nation. Long live Iraq and its people."

Last month, Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed militias began a final campaign against the militants along the country's Syrian border. The targeted area, largely desert, was about 11,000 square miles.

In all, the Islamic State controlled more than 34,000 square miles from the Mediterranean coast to south of Baghdad. Rawa was the last liberated city since the Islamic State took control in 2014.

More than 3.2 million people were displaced from the country, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

In a post on Twitter, the government said that the armed forces have secured the west desert and the entire Iraq-Syrian border. "This marks the end of the war against Daesh terrorists who have been completely defeated and evicted from Iraq," the post said.

Desert offensive Maj. Gen. Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah said the forces liberated the desert between the provinces of Nineveh and Anbar. "And, thus, the liberation of all Iraqi territory has been completed from the rule of the [Islamic State] gangs," Yarallah said in a statement.

The Global Coalition conducted about 25,000 airstrikes during military operations there.

Thousands of ISIS fighters left Syria in secret deal with U.S., defector says

By Dominic Evans and Orhan Coskun Reuters

Then Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokesman Talal Silo speaks during a news conference in Hukoumiya village in Raqqa, Syria, June 6.

REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

A high-level defector from Kurdish-led forces that captured the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State has recanted his account of the city’s fall, saying thousands of ISIS fighters – many more than first reported – left under a secret, U.S.-approved deal.

Talal Silo, a former commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces, said the SDF arranged to bus all remaining Islamic State militants out of Raqqa even though it said at the time it was battling diehard foreign jihadists in the city.

U.S. officials described Silo’s comments as “false and contrived” but a security official in Turkey, where Silo defected three weeks ago, gave a similar account of Islamic State’s defeat in its Syrian stronghold. Turkey has been at odds with Washington over U.S. backing for the Kurdish forces who led the fight for Raqqa.

Silo was the SDF spokesman and one of the officials who told the media in mid-October – when the deal was reached – that fewer than 300 fighters left Raqqa with their families while others would fight on.

However, he told Reuters in an interview that the number of fighters who were allowed to go was far higher and the account of a last-ditch battle was a fiction designed to keep journalists away while the evacuation took place.

He said a U.S. official in the international coalition against Islamic State, whom he did not identify, approved the deal at a meeting with an SDF commander.

At the time there were conflicting accounts of whether or not foreign Islamic State fighters had been allowed to leave Raqqa. The BBC later reported that one of the drivers in the exodus described a convoy of up to 7 km long made up of 50 trucks, 13 buses and 100 Islamic State vehicles, packed with fighters and ammunition.

The Turkish government has expressed concern that some fighters who left Raqqa could have been smuggled across the border into Turkey and could try to launch attacks there or in the West.

“Agreement was reached for the terrorists to leave, about 4,000 people, them and their families,” Silo said, adding that all but about 500 were fighters.

He said they headed east to Islamic State-controlled areas around Deir al-Zor, where the Syrian army and forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad were gaining ground.

If this is true it is a deliberate attack on Syrian forces by sending 3500 armed men to Deir al-Zor to counter the Syrian offensive. It didn't work, Deir al-Zor fell anyway, but it was obviously a hostile act intended to prolong the war in Syria.

For three days the SDF banned people from going to Raqqa, saying fighting was in progress to deal with militants who had not given themselves up.

“It was all theater,” Silo said.

“The announcement was cover for those who left for Deir al-Zor”, he said, adding that the agreement was endorsed by the United States which wanted a swift end to the Raqqa battle so the SDF could move on towards Deir al-Zor.

U.S. at odds with Turkey

It was not clear where the evacuees from Raqqa ended up.

The Syrian Democratic Forces deny that Islamic State fighters were able to leave Raqqa for Deir al-Zor, and the U.S.-led military coalition which backs the SDF said it “does not make deals with terrorists”.

“The coalition utterly refutes any false accusations from any source that suggests the coalition’s collusion with ISIS,” it said in a statement.

However, a Turkish security official said that many more Islamic State personnel left Raqqa than was acknowledged. “Statements that the U.S. or the coalition were engaged in big conflicts in Raqqa are not true,” the official added.

He told Reuters Turkey believed those accounts were aimed at diverting attention from the departure of Islamic State members and complained that Turkey had been kept in the dark.

Ankara, a NATO ally of Washington’s and a member of the U.S.-led coalition, has disagreed sharply with the United States over its support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters who spearheaded the fight against Islamic State in Raqqa.

Turkey says the YPG is an extension of the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency in southeast Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.

Silo spoke to Reuters in a secure location on the edge of Ankara in the presence of Turkish security officers. He said the security was for his own protection and he denied SDF assertions that he had been pressured into defecting by Turkey, where his children live.

A member of Syria’s Turkmen minority, Silo said his decision to speak out now was based on disillusionment with the structure of the SDF, which was dominated by Kurdish YPG fighters at the expense of Arab, Turkmen and Assyrian allies, as well as the outcome in Raqqa, where he said a city had been destroyed but not the enemy.

The Raqqa talks took place between a Kurdish SDF commander, Sahin Cilo, and an intermediary from Islamic State whose brother-in-law was the Islamic State “emir” in Raqqa, Silo said.

After they reached agreement Cilo headed to a U.S. military base near the village of Jalabiya. “He came back with the agreement of the U.S. administration for those terrorists to head to Deir al-Zor,” Silo said.

The coalition said two weeks ago that one of its leaders was present at the talks but not an active participant in the deal which it said was reached “despite explicit coalition disagreement with letting armed ISIS terrorists leave Raqqa”.

ISIS re-enters Syria’s Idlib after clashes: monitor

Civil defense members inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes on Tuesday, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib. (File photo: Reuters)

AFP, Beirut

The ISIS group has seized territory in Syria’s Idlib province after clashes with rival militants, nearly four years after being expelled from the region, a monitor said on Friday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ISIS had captured the village of Bashkun after clashes with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a force dominated by a former Al-Qaeda affiliate.

The capture comes after days of fighting between ISIS and HTS in neighbouring Hama province, during which ISIS captured a string of villages in the northeast of the region, the Observatory said.

The capture of Bashkun puts ISIS back in Idlib nearly four years after it was first expelled from the province in northwestern Syria after battles with rival militants and rebel groups.

ISIS has seen the so-called “caliphate” it declared in 2014 across parts of Syria and Iraq crumble in recent weeks, losing key cities such as Raqa and Mosul.

It now holds just a few patches of territory in Syria, and on Saturday Iraq’s prime minister declared the war against the jihadist group in his country was now over.

More than 340,000 people have been killed in Syria’s multi-faceted war since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

American's, allegedly, have 2000 troops in Syria - 4 times as many as previously reported, and an unknown number of 'contractors'. All are there, allegedly, fighting ISIS. The middle report above makes it clear that the Americans are not just fighting ISIS, but are attempting to ensure that Assad does not win back control of Syria. 

There are a couple of possible reasons for this: 1. They want to reduce Iran's influence in the region; 2. Saudi Arabia wants to reduce Iran's influence in the region; 3. They want to prolong the fighting for commercial reasons.  

Whatever the reason, Europe should be screaming blue murder at the prolonging of the civil war. Many a Syrian migrant in Europe would go home if it was safe to do so, even to a destroyed country. At least, the flow of war refugees would slow. Is it the BS report that Assad was responsible for using chemical weapons in Khan Sheikoun that has them refusing to allow Assad to be part of a Syrian solution?