Terrorism

ISIS left clinging to scraps in Iraq and Syria

AFP

Iraqi pro-government forces detain men suspected of belonging to ISIS during their offensive against the jihadists to recapture the town of Rawa, on the Euphrates river, on October 28, 2017. [MOADH AL-DULAIMI / AFP]

Iraqi pro-government forces detain men suspected of belonging to ISIS during their offensive against the jihadists to recapture the town of Rawa, on the Euphrates river, on October 28, 2017. [MOADH AL-DULAIMI / AFP]

AMMAN -- The Iraqi army on Friday (November 17) retook the last town in the country still held by the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS), driving another nail into the coffin of the militants' dreams of statehood.

ISIS has lost 95% of the cross-border "caliphate" it declared in Iraq and Syria in 2014, according to the US-led coalition fighting the militants.

The group is now clinging on to just a few small pockets of territory in Iraq and Syria, a far cry from the vast stretches it controlled after rampaging across the region.

Iraq

After the loss of the small Euphrates valley town of Rawa in a lightning offensive launched by Iraqi forces at dawn Friday, scraps of desert are all that remain under ISIS control in the country.

Baghdad's forces are waging a final push along their side of the frontier with Syria to wipe out the last remnants of ISIS territory.

The operation is the last leg of a punishing campaign that saw Iraq reclaim Mosul in July after ferocious urban combat.

The border area of Iraq's Anbar Province is dominated by a handful of powerful Sunni tribes, some of which have dispatched fighters to battle ISIS alongside government forces.

Syria

Beyond the the border town of Albu Kamal, ISIS controls some two dozen desert villages along the Euphrates river in the surrounding oil-rich Deir Ezzor Province that once provided a major source of the group's illicit income.

Militants there are confronted both by Syrian regime forces and a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters supported by a US-led coalition.

Away from the barren frontier region, ISIS retains a presence in the Yarmuk refugee camp and the Hajar Aswad district just south of Damascus, where the group is battling other militants and pro-regime forces.

In the central region of Homs, ISIS is being squeezed by troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad as it struggles to maintain its grip on a few small areas.

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If I were a war commander, none of them will never have seen court from me, I would have sentenced all of them on the spot.

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As long as Pakistan is dishonest in fight against extremism, closing the borders, even closing all of them, will not yield to any positive result. It is because Pakistan benefits from the existence of such extremist individuals. Therefore, it must be subjected to a strong pressure from economic sanctions by the world's most powerful countries, in order to prevent such a terrorist action from happening again.

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