After securing the town of al-Shaafah, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued their advance in the Middle Euphrates River Valley and liberated the town of Bubadran, according to the Syrian Baladi News outlet.
Local sources said that SDF fighters are currently taking positions around the town of al-Susah, one of the last stronghold of the terrorist group in the strategic region.
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A day earlier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that US-backed forces are preparing to launch their final attack against remaining ISIS fighters in the Euphrates Valley. However, it is not clear yet if today’s advance was the beginning of the new attack.
As usual, the SDF press center confirmed that the group’s fighters captured several new positions from ISIS in the Euphrates Valley without providing further details.
Around 3,200 civilians and terrorist feld from the ISIS-held pocket in the last 24 hours, according to a recent report of the SOHR. This indicates that the remaning terorirst group’s positions in Euphrates Valley are on the brink of total collapse.
The US backed forces could have cleared ISIS from this area months ago, so what is the strategy behind their rapid advance now ?
You must have missed the SF article stating the US had brought in a whopping 17,000 new SDF recruits to fight here [4 to 6 weeks ago, I didn’t find the 17,000 figure credible]. Trump began recruiting the Arabs, Christians and even Turkmen into the SDF back in January and has at least 17,000 to 20,000 non kurds in the SDF now, he must have shipped every single one of them here to fight if that article was correct. Along with Iraqi air and artillery strikes, Iraqi ground forces containing Isis from the eastern front, and French artillery that can accurately hit a target 50km away, and also the many thousands of US airstrikes that killed many hundreds of civilians, and at least 35,000 or more Kurdish SDF, total SDF force minimum 60,000, and they still haven’t beaten Isis here in this tiny pocket in more than 8 months of fighting, sounds impossible doesn’t it, unless you believe like me, that the kurds were on a strike against Trump for most of that time. Well effectively 2 strikes, the first in jan and the second after july. They didn’t like him telling them back in January to go back to Assad because he was pulling his troops out, so the only thing they could do was go on a strike and prolong the US stay, and they also though the US was somehow complicit with Erdogan’s invasion in the west, that didn’t help either. From january last year the Kurds haven’t had an incentive to fight Isis, they’d be putting themselves out of a job if they did, better to let Isis fester in one small isolated hole somewhere out of the way, like Hajin, that’s all they needed to to do to have a reason for the US to stay. But Trump the businessman hired his own strikebreakers and used them instead of the Kurds to try and get the job done, but as we’ve all just seen for the last 2 months, they aren’t anywhere near as good at it as the Kurds. The Kurds alone without US support and just ground forces alone could have taken out this small pocket in less than 2 month if they’d wanted to, but they didn’t want to. The strategy is Trump’s broke the Kurds strike with his own strikebreakers. Back in April last year the Iraqis threatened to invade Kurdish held northern Syria and fight Isis themselves, that broke the first Kurdish strike, and Trump’s broke the second one a few months ago, and is still in the process of ending it due to the poor quality of the replacements. Cheers.
You make some sense in this most complicated of conflicts.
Thanks I appreciate that.
“Around 3,200 civilians and terrorist fled from the ISIS-held pocket in the last 24 hours”…..and terrorists fled; well that isn’t very good, is it ?.
PS Fled not Feld SF, I assume.
Town, there was only one real town here in the first place, that was Hajin and it’s gone, what’s left are not much more than villages and settlements.
HOORAY! ABORTION RIGHTS IN HAJIN!