Isis risks losing strongholds in Syria and Iraq for first time in two years

Due to concerted attacks backed by the US, Islamic State is at risk of losing much of its territory. Two Isis strongholds in Syria and another two in Iraq are struggling to contain well-organised and planned assaults. Since April, the US has been increasing its efforts to defeat the terrorist organisation in a two-year plan that is now gaining momentum. However, ethnic rivalries could pose a threat to the success of recent attacks and result in driving the communities they liberate being driven back into the hands of Isis. A unified fighting force is seen as pivotal, but tensions between Arabs and Kurds have deteriorated in the past year and this could be a crucial factor in overcoming Isis.

For the first time in the two years since the leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed the existence of an “Islamic caliphate” straddling Syria and Iraq, the jihadi group is at real risk of losing much of the territory it holds.

Four Isis strongholds – two in Syria and two in Iraq – are now under concerted attack, and in all cases the militants defending them are struggling to contain well-organised and resourced assaults planned over many months.

The attacks are heavily backed by the US, which since April has stepped up its campaign to “destroy and degrade” the terrorist organisation in its self-declared heartland of eastern Syria and western Iraq. A two-year project that had been derided by allies and proxies alike as being too limited and cautious now has military momentum.

In Iraq, an attack on Falluja, where Isis has been holed up since January 2014, has entered a second week. In the north, the bastion of Mosul, which is central to Isis’s fate, now seems less formidable after a peshmerga push from the east. Last weekend, while attention was on Falluja, Kurdish forces seized nine villages that until then had been solidly in the jihadis’ grasp.

In Syria, the de facto Isis capital of Raqqa and its surrounds are the scene of fresh clashes and an exodus of refugees that is clearing the city for an inevitable, but not imminent, ground offensive. And, along the country’s southern border with Iraq, a recently raised unit called the New Syria Army, backed by the US and Jordanian special forces, is asserting itself near a frontier that had been a no man’s land for all other opposition groups since mid-2013.

But even as Isis starts to wither – in some areas surprisingly quickly – splits are fast emerging among those fighting them that could rapidly wind back the gains. What happens next, say tribal leaders, could end up re-invigorating Isis by driving the very communities that the war is trying to liberate right back into their hands.

And looming large over the steadily turning battlefield is the unaddressed but essential issue of how a political process can re-enfranchise the marginalised Sunnis of both countries whom Isis claims to champion. The quicker the group falls without a plan for what comes next, the more real the threat of an irreversible split along ethnic sectarian lines among communities that had still managed to co-exist.

Ethnic rivalries pose a potent threat to the success of the most recent attack, which was launched on Wednesday in the Manbij pocket, running south from the Turkish border, roughly 100 miles east of Aleppo between the town of al-Bab, and the Isis epicentre of Raqqa.

Like an advance on Raqqa last week, which was in part a feint for the Manbij push, the operation is being directed by the US and supported by its warplanes. Those fighting are a US-proxy force dominated by local Kurds and supplemented by nearby Arabs. Despite Washington’s insistence to the contrary, the marriage is not going well.

Tribal leaders in and around Manbij, some of whom offered allegiance to Isis when the group entered the area, say the fact that the assault is being at least jointly led by Kurdish forces is a disincentive to shift loyalties. Relations with the Kurds, whose communities have co-existed with the Arabs in north-east Syria, have deteriorated rapidly over the past year and particularly since Russia launched airstrikes in Syria’s north.

Since then the Kurds, who had hedged their bets during the civil war, started advancing into Arab areas, effectively siding with the Assad regime and its protectors, and alarming opposition groups, local Arab communities and Turkey, which views Syria’s Kurds as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), against whom Ankara has re-intensified attacks inside its own borders.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), made up mostly of Syrian Kurds with a small number of Arabs, is being championed by Washington as an alliance that can turn the tide of the war against Isis. The Arab component is a pivotal selling point. Yet among its members there is resentment.

Syrian Democratic Forces fighters fire a mortar shell towards positions held by Isis in Raqqa. Photograph: Rodi Said/Reuters

One Manbij local, Abu Musaafer, 35, said he had abandoned the SDF because of inter-ethnic rivalries that were subverting the group’s cause. The presence of Arabs in the SDF, he said, was just for PR purposes. “The Arabs are just for the media. In reality they are not important at all.

“A lot of important members for [the Kurds] are coming from Qandil Mountain, and they are really PKK. There is a lot of racism between the Arabs and the Kurds. I’m a sheikh in a big tribe in Manbij, and in reality I want to liberate my area from Isis.”

He added: “Around Manbij, the SDF frequently go to sheikhs of Arab tribes and tell them that they will host a huge dinner, with several lambs, and that if a member of their tribe is not present and does not join the SDF, it means they are Isis and they will kill them.

“This is the same as what Isis does with Arabian tribes in Manbij, and other areas – exactly the same. Isis says if you don’t become with us, you [have betrayed Islam]. The SDF says if you do not fight with us, you support Isis, and we will give you a lot of problems for you and your tribe.



“In reality, they need an Arab tribe to gather a lot of fighters to put them in the frontline when the SDF attacks Manbij, because they have local knowledge of the area, and they need to be able to tell people that they have Arabs fighting with them.”



Ali Shatat, 32, who was exiled by Isis from nearby Deir Azzor, was slightly more positive. “I have been a soldier with the SDF for the past four months. I started working with them because I am from the Shatat tribe, where Isis massacred several members last year. Everyone from my tribe escaped Deir Ezzor as refugees. It was worse than what Israel did to the Palestinians.



“I don’t think that the Free Syria Army can really fight Isis, because they have a lot of problems. Day after day I couldn’t find a way to take my revenge on Isis, only the SDF. There is a huge opportunity to take back our land with them; far more than the rebels could provide. But the problem with the SDF is that I do not feel that I am important, or the Arabs are important.



“My leader is Arab, true, but his leader is Kurdish. When we work with the Kurds, we feel that there is no trust between us, at all. In the media you see SDF as a united front, but in reality, there is a huge difference between the Arabs and the Kurds. We are just few in our numbers, not particularly strong. But still, it is much better at the moment than any of the other groups fighting on the ground.”

