Thread: U.S.-Backed Forces Breach Wall Around ISIS-Held Raqqa in Syria

U.S.-Backed Forces Breach Wall Around ISIS-Held Raqqa in Syria

by Associated Press
Jul 4 2017, 3:55 pm ET

BEIRUT — U.S.-backed forces in Syria have breached the wall around Raqqa's Old City, the U.S. military said on Tuesday, marking a major advance in the weeks-old battle to drive ISIS militants out of their self-declared capital.

The U.S. Central Command said the coalition struck two "small portions" of the Rafiqah Wall, allowing the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces "to advance into the most heavily fortified portion" of the city, bypassing booby traps and snipers. It said the strikes left most of the 2,500-yard wall intact.

The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdurrahman, said the breaching of the wall was the most important development to date in the battle for Raqqa. He said three SDF units advanced toward the wall under air cover, breaking through the ISIS defenses, and that heavy clashes were underway.

Video provided by the SDF showed their fighters roaming Qasr al-Banat, a historic quarter inside Raqqa's Old City. Another unit entered through the so-called Baghdad Gate, opening up a second front inside the Old City.

Brett McGurk, the top U.S. envoy for the international coalition against the ISIS, hailed the breach, saying it was a "key milestone" in the campaign to seize the ISIS stronghold.

The U.S. military said ISIS fighters were using the historic wall as a fighting position, and had planted explosives at several openings. It said coalition forces were making every effort to protect civilians and preserve the historic sites.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces launched a multi-pronged assault on Raqqa in early June, after securing the surrounding countryside. On Sunday, the U.S.-backed fighters crossed the Euphrates River on the southern edge of the city, completing its encirclement.

ISIS seized Raqqa, their first major city stronghold in Syria, in January 2014. The city later became the de facto capital of ISIS' self-proclaimed caliphate, stretching across lands controlled by the militant group in Syria and Iraq.

U.N. officials say 50,000 to 100,000 civilians remain in the city amid "dire" conditions. Those who try to escape risk being attacked by ISIS militants or forcibly recruited as human shields.

The U.S.-led coalition is providing close air support to the SDF, which has already driven the extremists from much of northern and eastern Syria.

Several ISIS leaders were once based in Raqqa, where the group plotted attacks in Europe. The loss of the northern Syrian city, one of the last ISIS strongholds, would deal a major blow to the group. The militants are also on the verge of losing their last foothold in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, from where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the ISIS caliphate in July 2014.

As ISIS loses ground, tensions are rising among the array of forces battling it.

Turkey shelled several villages in Syria overnight Tuesday, killing a woman and two children, according to Kurdish officials and Syrian activists. The Kurdish-run Hawar news agency said the three were killed, and several others wounded, near Afrin, a Kurdish-controlled enclave near the border with Turkey.

Turkey's private Dogan news agency said Turkish artillery units responded after the border region came under fire late Monday.
Image: U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in the eastern side of Raqqa, Syria
U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in the eastern side of Raqqa, Syria. Furat FM via AP

The SDF is dominated by the People's Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey views as an extension of the Kurdish rebels fighting in its southeast.

Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said Tuesday that Turkey may launch a cross-border operation into Afrin if it constitutes a "constant security threat."

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-...-raqqa-n779481

Working with Russia might be the best path to peace in Syria

By David Ignatius Opinion writer
July 4 at 7:26 PM

TABQA, Syria

When Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin this Friday in Hamburg, the two presidents should have in the back of their minds the insignia worn by the Syrian Democratic Forces militia, which is the United States’ main ally here. The patch shows a map of Syria bisected by the sharp blue line of the Euphrates River.

The Euphrates marks the informal “deconfliction” line between the Russian-backed Syrian regime west of the river, and the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led SDF to the east. In the past several weeks, the two powers negotiated a useful adjustment of the line — creating a roughly 80-mile arc that stretches south, from near this battlefront city on Lake Assad, to a town called Karama on the Euphrates.

U.S.-Russian agreement on this buffer zone is a promising sign. It allows, in effect, for the United States and its allies to clear the Islamic State’s capital, Raqqa, while Russia and the Syrian regime take the city of Deir al-Zour, to the southeast. The line keeps the combatants focused on the Islamic State, rather than sparring with each other.

What Trump and Putin should discuss at the Group of 20 summit is whether this recent agreement on the separation line is a model for wider U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria. This broader effort would seek to defeat the Islamic State; stabilize a battered, fragmented Syria; and, eventually, discuss a political future. But is it practical?

Russian-American cooperation on Syria faces a huge obstacle right now. It would legitimize a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and meddled in U.S. and European elections, in addition to its intervention in Syria. Putin’s very name is toxic in Congress and the U.S. media these days, and Trump is blasted for even considering compromise.

Against these negatives, there’s only one positive argument: Working with Russia may be the only way to reduce the level of violence in Syria and to create a foundation for a calmer, more decentralized nation that can eventually recover from its tragic war.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis are said to favor exploring options with Russia. “We see the potential for it,” a senior State Department official said Tuesday. “So far Russia is working in earnest with us on the effort.”

But there’s a contrary view among some hawkish National Security Council staffers and members of Congress. They argue that working with Russia would empower its allies, Iran and the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and give a green light for their future role in Syria.

An extreme version of this view argues that the United States should mount a military campaign to block Iran and its Shiite militia allies in Iraq and Syria from obtaining a corridor across southeast Syria that would link Iran to Lebanon. This militant stance ignores two practical points: Iran already has such a corridor, but it doesn’t stop the United States or Israel from attacking dangerous arms shipments; and an assault on Shiite militias might draw the United States into a long, costly war that could spread across the Middle East.

It’s worth examining the process that established the Euphrates arc of deconfliction, because it shows how different Russia’s public and private actions have been. A Russian official initially suggested the Euphrates boundary about 18 months ago, according to a U.S. official. But it wasn’t formalized, so the two countries had been operating on an ad hoc basis.


This rough deconfliction system worked at three levels. There was daily phone consultation between colonels, supplemented by occasional contacts at the one-star level between the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad and Russian headquarters near Tartus, Syria. Big issues went to the U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, and his Russian counterpart, Col. Gen. Sergei Surovikin.

A crisis arose last month when several Syrian tanks pushed north of what U.S. commanders believed was the informal line of separation. When this small Syrian force was backed by a Syrian Su-22 fighter jet, the United States shot down the plane. The Russians announced that they were suspending contacts, and “for a few hours, it looked pretty hairy,” recalls one U.S. official. But the Russians quietly resumed talking, and by late June, the two sides had agreed on the formal arc, with precisely delineated coordinates.

Similar U.S.-Russian cooperation has been calming tensions the past few weeks in southwest Syria. Those talks have been backed by Israel and Jordan, which border the zone. That, too, is a potential model for how de-escalation can work.

Cooperating with the Russians in Syria would be distasteful, given their past actions. But spurning them would keep this volatile country at the flash point and almost certainly make things worse rather than better for all sides.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.2594457ce008

Things are looking up in Syria. Good news. Hopefully this Obama mess will be over soon.

The sooner the ISIS scum is wiped off the face of the earth, the better for the world.

Absolutely.