Raqqa: ISIS, Refugees and the Kurds

CAIRO – 17 October 2017: Tuesday marks a major turning point in the fight against the Islamic State. After four months of fierce fighting, the U.S.-backed mission has confirmed that it has taken full control of the city which was previously heralded as the de facto Syrian capital of the Islamic State’s so-called “caliphate.”

“Everything is finished in Raqqa, our forces have taken full control of Raqqa,” the alliance’s spokesman Talal Sello told AFP. The Kurdish-dominated SDF forces have been fighting inside the city since June 6 under the cover of coalition airstrikes; the previous days have seen the SDF forces flush the remaining Islamic State militants from their final strongholds; principally from the city’s main hospital and the national stadium.

Raqqa once housed thousands of militants and was the source for many repulsive and atrocious Islamic State propaganda movies. Militants, euphoric in their surge of international recognition, roamed the streets enforcing their strict ideology over the helpless population.

A black curtain was draped over the city and information was hard to come by. The capture of the city is a symbolic and significant moment in both the battle against the Islamic State and the Syrian civil war at large.

It has come at a cost however. The U.S.-led coalition failed to learn its lessons from the Battle of Mosul and has bombed Raqqa into an unrecognizable mess of bricks and darkness.

The number of civilians killed by the U.S.-led campaign of airstrikes is expected to be in the thousands, with precision-missiles leveling most of the city.

It has become increasingly apparent that regular warfare on the ground is simply not being supplemented by airstrikes, but overtaken by them. With little ability of distinguishing between civilian and militant, family-house or training compound; the refugee community fear what they will return to in Raqqa.


A teenager holds a cooker at a camp for people displaced from fighting in the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, in Ain Issa, Syria June 14, 2017.
Save The Children has warned that the humanitarian crisis in northeast Syria is "rapidly escalating" and "bursting at the seams." Around 270,000 people, the majority of which have fled the fighting in Raqqa, are running out of support, and have little to no hope of returning to their once affluent city.

As the final major city under the control of the Islamic State to come under the control of the U.S.-backed SDF forces, it is evident that its territory shrank drastically. The battle against IS in Deir Ezzor province, where the Syrian regime’s forces along with SDF forces are fighting an uncoordinated battle against IS, has dried its resources and squeezed supply links. IS is slowly collapsing under the pressure of fighting on multiple fronts.

This is not to say that we are about to see the end of IS; far from it. The Islamic State rose to prominence in Iraq as an insurgency group, and this is what it will revert to. Although the utopian image of the “Islamic State” is no longer a reality, the organization will still be able to strike fear into the hearts of the population and conduct covert attacks aimed at inflaming tensions and creating instability.

Like the scavengers they are, the IS hierarchy will keep its eyes wide for any signs of instability that may intensify and allow them to fill a power vacuum. Signs of this have emerged recently as the Iraqi Security Forces and the PMF have “forced” the Peshmerga to retreat from its positions in the disputed areas on the border of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, however this is hard to confirm.

Tuesday signifies a confusing and conflicting time for the Kurdish population and Kurdish nationalism. On the same day the Syrian Kurds are celebrating their monumental victory over ISIS in Raqqa, Iraqi Kurds are still trying to work out why their treasured Peshmerga collapsed, and are continuing to collapse in the face of the Iraqi Security Forces and PMF units from the south.

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Joseph Colonna