Wahhab district, Tabqah. Scale: 200m
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have seized the district of Wahhab from ISIS terrorists in the town of Tabqah located in the province of Raqqah, the SDF Press Service announced on April 24.
According to the SDF statement, the group’s fighters killed tens of ISIS terrorists and now they are securing the area. The US-backed group also captured an indutrial facility in the western part of the town.
Tabqah town. Scale: 500m
At this rate, they should have Tabqa secured in, what.. three months or so? Then it’s on to Raqqa, about 50x the size. Taking cities by leveling them block by block and using mercs and drones has its advantages, but it’s damn slow. The U.S. should have figured the Kurds were not going to sacrifice themselves for Qatari pipelines OR the new U.S. caliphate of Raqqa.
CENTCOM: “We’re gonna need way more more mercs here, general…”
I guess you did not get the memo… Leveling Syria block by block and forcing the population to invade Europe so Israel can move into emptied lands was the plan for the last 121 years, ever since Theodor Herzl “the founder of the Modern Zionist movement”. In his 1896 book Der Judenstaat spelled all of this out very painfully clearly. The only people who know what is going on in the world today are those that read Der Judenstaat and the Talmud. Everything is happening exactly as they said it would in order to control the world and place all Goyims into regions that produce things for the Jewish-master-race. Everything that has happened for the last 200 years have been carefully building up to this point in time. They are now implementing the last two parts of their ten part plan for world domination. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGbPXq8OJE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx5bAExv1LA
Any evidence that Tabqa and Raqqa will be under US and not PYD control? They certainly will NOT administer any town the same way! so it should be easy to tell which group is in control of any given town.
De Facto US control forever, that’s why we’re there. Not directly, of course. The SDF will take it from ISIS, then a local council will be established – mostly Arab as it is a mostly Arab city.
There was a sort of local military council as part of the SDF, but I think the Kurds killed a bunch of them fro one faction (the ‘friendly fire’ airstrike a week ago) so they pulled out of the op. That’s not even clear – nobody is talking about it.
It’s anyone’s guess how it will end up – the U.S. has been juggling about a dozen different tribes/groups with some interest in Raqqa, and they all seem to be little more than well-armed self-interested tribal gangs. They all seem little better than Nusra or ISIS, but slightly more motivated by bribes and criminal opportunity than the religious extremism the (soon to be) former Nusra and ISIS occupants. I would expect Raqqa to be something like Fallujah – filled with anti-Assad Sunni extremists with a simmering resentment for a U.S. presence and open hostility for the Kurds (except in business and criminal matters).
Tabqa Air Base is a huge part of it for the U.S., so whatever layers of government form in and around Raqqa, they will be recognized by the U.S. as having the authority to permit the U.S. to use the base permanently.
They crossed the lake a month ago btw. They kurds are just sending in the arabs fighters probably why its dragging.
Sending in *more* SDF Arab mercs to replaced the hundreds that quit the Raqqa campaign when the U.S. & Kurds bombed their militia – not sure if they were part of the SDF or simply aligned with them. And I’m guessing the new Arab SDF mercs/recruits are nothing like the well-motivated Kurdish-led YPG/YPJ.
Tabqa 2004 : 70.000 inhabitants. Raqqah 2012 : 260.000 (source wikipedia) , So Raqqah is some 3 times as big as Tabqa. You suggest Raqqah to have some 3.5 to 4 million inhabitants.
It seems to me you are a bit off by a factor of 15. Well done. It is fortunate that you are not a military planner.