As the Islamic State Falls in Syria, One City Offers a Preview of the Country’s Future by David Ignatius, Washington Post
The Islamic State’s headquarters in this city at the western gateway to Raqqa has been crushed like a sandcastle by American bombs. At a dam complex on the Euphrates River where the Islamic State was torturing prisoners and hurling alleged homosexuals from a giant concrete tower, all that’s left of the extremists are militant slogans scrawled on the wall and a pile of trash.
It’s far too soon to say that life is returning to normal here after liberation, but much of the horror is over. Mines and improvised explosive devices were cleared here last week. Young children flash V-for-victory signs. Islamic beards have nearly disappeared. The most visible people sporting full beards on Thursday were American Special Operations forces who accompanied visiting U.S. special envoy Brett McGurk…
Nothing is permanent in this shattered country, but there are tipping points when the momentum shifts, and this seems to be one. As the battle for Raqqa begins in earnest, this city offers a preview of what’s ahead:
● The black balloon of the Islamic State caliphate is deflating quickly in Syria, as in Iraq. There may be up to a year of hard fighting left, but the surprise for U.S. officials is that the battle in eastern Syria is going faster and better than expected. In a symbol of that advance, Kurdish commanders gave McGurk the ring of an Islamic State emir who once used it to seal orders to kill Tabqa’s inhabitants. The emir blew himself up when he was surrounded in May, leaving behind the ring and its now-empty claim of authority.
● The confrontation with Syria and Russia that led to the shoot-down of a Syrian fighter jet just south of here two weeks ago seems to have eased, at least for now. Despite the Russians’ public protests, they quietly agreed last weekend on a roughly 80-mile “deconfliction” line that stretches from a few miles west of here to a village on the Euphrates called Karama. That line appears to be holding, and it’s a promising sign that broader U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria may be possible.
● The Kurdish-led militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces has shown it can defeat the Islamic State, so long as it’s backed by U.S. air power. The Tabqa battle in May was perhaps the most ambitious and daring operation of the war so far. Five hundred SDF soldiers were airlifted across Lake Assad in V-22 Osprey aircraft in a raid that caught Islamic State forces by surprise. The SDF suffered about 100 killed and more than 300 wounded in the bloody operation, but it worked, and in this part of the world, success breeds success. Arab refugees are now streaming toward the Kurdish-led SDF, rather than away, and 8,200 U.S.-trained Arab forces are joining the front lines…