![]() and its allies should work to convince Turkey to halt its invasion of the north east, which could damage Turkey’s international political standing and its domestic security. ![]() ![]() For that, however, both countries need to be spared new external shocks that could disrupt counter-ISIS efforts. The consequences may be disastrous for areas farther south, where ISIS is most active, and for prisons and camps that hold ISIS militants and were already vulnerable to attack before the latest events.Įven if ISIS likely will survive in some form in both Iraq and Syria, its many enemies ought to be able to contain or even further degrade the group. Yet the SDF has warned that it will be forced to redirect its forces toward Syria’s northern border should Turkey attack. Since May, the SDF has continued to pursue ISIS remnants across the north east and to hold thousands of ISIS detainees and ISIS-affiliated family members. troops present on the border left their positions, Turkey announced that the intervention had begun on 9 October, though its full scope remains unclear.Ĭonflict between Turkey and the SDF along the Syrian-Turkish border almost certainly will relieve pressure on ISIS, which lost its last territorial foothold in eastern Syria in May 2019 but persists as a deadly insurgency. The SDF is led by a mainly Kurdish force closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that has waged a decades-long war with Turkey. Trump’s statement – since then nuanced, muddled and contradicted – appeared to give a green light for unilateral Turkish intervention in Syria’s north east against the U.S.’s primary Syrian partner in the fight against ISIS, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). forces “will no longer be in the immediate area”. President Donald Trump announced that Turkey would launch a military operation in northern Syria and that U.S. ISIS could also stage a return in neighbouring Syria, whose stability seems threatened by a newly-launched Turkish intervention in Syria’s north east. The results would be unpredictable but could imperil the continued presence of U.S.-led Coalition forces and trigger greater instability. Too, U.S.-Iranian tensions could spill over into Iraq, potentially leading to attacks by Iran’s local paramilitary allies on U.S. “ISIS families” – civilians with alleged family ties to ISIS militants and who have been exiled from their hometowns – appear in danger of becoming a permanently stigmatised underclass. Iraq’s retributive approach to post-ISIS justice risks widening the country’s divisions. Healing society’s wounds seems similarly difficult. ![]() The government has yet to rebuild and jump-start the economies of these and other areas that were damaged by the war against ISIS, discouraging the displaced from returning. Securing peripheral areas still bedevilled by ISIS will be a major challenge. Yet despite these reasons for optimism, there are also threats. The Iraqi security forces, for their part, have curbed their excesses and forged a more functional relationship with Sunni Arabs. Additionally, now that many Sunni Arabs have experienced the dual trauma of ISIS’s draconian control and the military campaign to recapture their home areas from ISIS, most want nothing more to do with the group. The nationwide sectarian polarisation from which ISIS benefited has faded. Iraq has changed in ways that might prevent ISIS from returning in force. So far, it seems not to have penetrated Iraq’s major cities. The group’s operations are simple it has only infrequently carried out more complex or large-scale attacks. From these hideouts, ISIS militants emerge to prey on rural areas, kidnapping and extorting residents and killing state representatives. In Iraq, the group operates as small, largely autonomous guerrilla units spread across the country’s most inhospitable terrain, including its mountains and deserts. In both countries, it has survived by shifting from semi-conventional warfare to hit-and-run insurgency. Faced with an overwhelming military campaign waged by an array of local and international foes, ISIS lost its last territorial foothold in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in early 2019. ISIS has fallen far from its 2015 peak, when it was on the offensive against its many enemies and controlled a militant proto-state spanning Iraq and Syria.
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