President Trump says ISIS will lose their last territory in a week.

President Donald Trump. AFP.

President Donald Trump has said that ISIS will lose their last territory in Syria in a week. AFP. Trump said that ISIS has already lost almost all of their territory. Trump made the statements at a State Department briefing on Wednesday for the other nations in the anti-ISIS coalition. Trump also said that ISIS only had a small group of remnants, though he acknowledged that remnants can be dangerous. 

My Comment:

Trump did walk back the statement a bit saying something to the effect of that it might be a bit too early to say that so there is a decent chance that it might take more than a week for the announcement to be made. Naturally, very few news outlets are acknowledging that it was more of a general statement and not something set in stone. Obviously if there is any delay in the announcement at all they will call President Trump a liar. 

That being said, Trump's statement is pretty realistic. ISIS has pretty much nothing left. They control one village, Baghuz, and that one is almost under SDF control. Supposedly the SDF controls 80% of the city and it won't be a huge deal to take the rest of it. Right now the offensive is on hold as the SDF regroup but once they are done ISIS is finished. 

There is zero chance of ISIS breaking out of their last village and it's pretty much guaranteed that ISIS is done. There isn't going to be a relief column for them and there won't be a chance for the few troops left to escape. Indeed, there is pretty much nothing left for the last few fighters but to either surrender or go out fighting. 

Of course, the capture of the last ISIS controlled village won't be the end of ISIS. There will be people that escape and of course ISIS is still active in Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan and Yemen, though they have been greatly reduced there. And the surviving fighters will go underground. 

That being said, I don't buy the argument that just because ISIS will still exist after their last village is liberated that we need to commit ourselves to an unending deployment to Syria. Whatever remnants that are left can be handled by either the Kurds, the Syrians or their Russian allies. And we can still strike ISIS from our bases in Turkey and Iraq. We don't need troops on the ground to fight against the tiny number of remaining fighters that will not hold any territory by the end of next week at the earliest or by the end of the month at the latest. 

And I doubt there is any chance of ISIS coming back in the short term. Both the Syrian Kurds and the government are well armed and battle hardened at this point. Not to mention both US and Russian airpower and the forces of other countries in the region. If they do somehow regroup and make a push there will be plenty of options to take them down yet again. There is almost no chance of them returning to the height of their power. 

Which is why the Wall Street Journal is saying that the military will withdraw from Syria by April. The article is pay-walled so I don't see much of a point of linking to it, but it does sound legit. If true it means that our war in Syria will officially be over...