Syrian Kurdish SDF fighters. AFP.
The last ISIS fighters in the sliver of land still controlled by the terror group are not allowing hundreds of civilians trapped with them to leave. BBC. 200 families are stuck with the remaining 300 ISIS fighters near the village of Baghuz. The civilians are not being allowed to leave by ISIS. There had been reports that a deal had been offered where the remaining ISIS fighters would be evacuated to rebel held Idlib province but a spokesman for the US backed SDF said that the ISIS fighters would either be killed or forced to surrender and no deal was forthcoming. The spokesman also said that they were attempting to evacuate as many civilians as possible and would be holding off on their offensive until that task is complete. 20,000 people from formerly held ISIS territory have been evacuated, many of them being wives and children of ISIS fighters.
My Comment:
A quick update on the fight against ISIS. It seems the battle to liberate the last sliver of territory has stalled out, for predictable reasons. Once again, the obsession with civilian casualties is slowing down an attack. In this case, it makes sense though as ISIS is totally surrounded and cannot feed or arm themselves and have nowhere left to run too. There is no reason to not wait them out. This does mean that President Trump was wrong about the last ISIS territory being liberated on his timetable but given the circumstances it's understandable.
I am glad that the rumors yesterday of an evacuation deal for ISIS fighters turned out to be false. These ISIS fighters honestly deserve no quarter, though I do think that their surrender would be accepted. These are horrible people and quite frankly, they deserve whatever is coming to them. More pragmatically though, the last thing we need is these ISIS fighters to go to Idlib province, where the US has little sway, so they can regroup, rearm or even rejoin with al-Nusra Front. None of those things would be good for the United States and I hope that this is the last talk we hear about an evacuation deal.
The big question is what to do with all of the survivors. Some of these men will likely surrender instead of die in battle and their wives and children are there too. Many of these ISIS fighters are foreign nationals and that may be why they are fighting so hard. They are facing long prison sentences, at best, and possibly execution, at worst, depending on where they are from. It's a tough question and not one I would want to have to answer.
One also wonders if ISIS's spiritual and military leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is with these holdouts. Baghdadi has been reported dead dozens of times and hasn't been seen on video in a long time. But he is reported to be alive and if he is with them then I hope he is captured alive. Though the man deserves death, he should be put on trial and be forced to answer for a multitude of crimes, not the least of which are his terror attacks and war crimes. My guess is that he will either be killed in the fighting, kill himself, or will end up having been dead all along.
The good news is that after Baghdadi and his men are killed/captured/surrender, we no longer have much of a reason to stay in Syria. President Trump seems eager to pull our troops out and with ISIS being gone we can finally do so. Actually getting out of one of our Mideast adventures would be a great move for our foreign policy and a major campaign promise fulfilled. ISIS will still exist and we will probably fight them wherever they pop up, but at least we can get out of the massive meat grinder that is Syria right now.
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