Mustafa Bali, the chief spokesman for the Kurdish forces in Syria, made sure to carefully phrase the statement announcing victory over the Islamic State. He tweeted about a “total elimination of so-called caliphate and %100 territorial defeat of ISIS,” words that ended the fighting at the group’s last enclave, the village of Baghuz on the Syria-Iraq border. Indeed, it appears that five years after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the establishment of the Islamic State and weeks of hard fighting over its last bastion, the territorial fight against the terror group is over. But the threat has far from disappeared. The Islamic State recruited around 50,000 soldiers. It took over territories in Iraq and Syria as large as Britain, and it managed those territories that were home to between 8 million and 12 million people as if they were one unified state. >> Read more: Netanyahu outfoxed ISIS, Russia and Iran with his cynical Syria policy ■ ISIS women want to go home, and the West faces a tough dilemma This is the first time in the modern history of the Middle East that an Islamic organization has established an independent territory and sought to erase international borders drawn after World War I. It’s also the first time a group turned the dream of an Islamic nation led by caliphates into a reality. The last similar move was when the Taliban conquered Afghanistan in six years and founded a state modeled on the principles of radical Islam. But unlike the Islamic State, the Taliban didn’t aspire to extend its rule beyond Afghanistan or export its revolution to other countries. The dream of an Islamic state isn’t new and didn’t begin with the establishment of the Islamic State, which started out as a faction of Al-Qaida. This ideology won’t disappear once Syria and Iraq are free of the group, and it will be revived by new leaders who will seek to succeed where ISIS failed. Active cells The immediate threat is that the Islamic State will change its strategy. Instead of entrenching itself in specific areas, it’s expected to continue operating in many places around the world, set up new strongholds and adopt the tactics characteristic of Al-Qaida and other terror groups. Open gallery view U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighters pose for a photo on a rooftop after declaring the area free of Islamic State militants, Baghouz, Syria, March 23, 2019. Credit: Maya Alleruzzo,AP Its active branches in Libya, the Philippines, Sinai, Morocco, Yemen and Afghanistan as well as its active cells in Europe still enjoy funding and an arms supply. Even when Baghdadi is eventually caught (he probably fled to Iraq’s Anbar province), his underlings in the command chain will still be able to operate independently and employ an intelligence capacity around the globe. In the same way, it can be said that the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011 didn’t crush the leadership of his organization, which carried on its local wars in Syria, Yemen and North Africa. Still, the territorial defeat of the Islamic State is very significant when it comes to the group’s ability to fund its branches. The majority of ISIS’ fortune came from oil fields it took over in Syria and in Iraq. The group also stole billions of dollars that were deposited in banks in those countries, and once it set up civilian rule in the areas it took over, it charged hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money and tolls. Thus it paradoxically used local workers who were still getting their paychecks from the Iraqi government. The Islamic State established an extensive trade network that ranged from Iraq and Syria through Kurdish territories and on to Turkey. It sold oil to the Syrian government and took over dozens of factories. Now the organization will be forced to find new income sources, which will probably come from donations and other groups, but the funding will be a lot less than before. The end of military operations against the Islamic State now further highlights the questions of the duration of the U.S. presence in Syria and the future of the Kurds there, who shouldered the greatest burden of the fighting. Washington’s official reason for its military involvement — fighting terror and blocking the Islamic State — is now losing its meaning, and as long as U.S. troops remain there, their role will be mainly to protect the Kurdish forces from Turkish and Syrian attacks. Syria has made clear to the Kurds they better make peace with the regime if they don’t want to face the Syrian army. Turkey, which took the Kurdish town of Afrin and is bombing Kurdish areas in Syria, still plans to continue its journey of conquests in Kurdish provinces and destroy what it calls the Kurdish “terror bases” that pose a “security threat.” It’s safe to assume that when faced with the options of looking after the Kurds (who stood between the U.S. troops and the Islamic State) and making concessions to Turkey, President Donald Trump will choose the latter. The pesky Nusra Front Another flammable region is Idlib province, the rebels’ last enclave and home to tens of thousands of fighters from various militias including the Nusra Front, the extremist rebel group also known as Jabhat al-Nusra. Russia and Syria have been planning for months to take over the province and remove the rebels. Turkey is resisting because it fears having to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees. Open gallery view Islamic State fighters parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq, June 23, 2014. Credit: Uncredited,AP If no deal is reached with the rebels, this will be a much bloodier fight than the one in Baghuz against the Islamic State. But whether or not an agreement is reached, the main question is still where the militants will go — especially Nusra Front fighters, the biggest armed force in Idlib. This is also a relevant question for many Islamic State members now seeking a haven. Many of them will return to their countries of origin in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Russia and Europe.<doc-sep>BAGHOUZ, Syria — The sound of airstrikes and gunfire could be heard near the last enclave of the Islamic State group Friday night, less than an hour after the White House declared victory over the militants. The battle for Baghouz, the group's last holdout and all that remained of the vast territory that it once ruled in Syria and Iraq, had dragged on for more than 10 weeks — far longer than either the U.S. military or their allies on the ground had predicted. Still, President Donald Trump had been teasing the victory for days. On Friday, the White House said the Department of Defense had declared that the militant group no longer held any territory in Syria. At around the same time, Trump tweeted that there was "nothing to admire" about ISIS. ....There is nothing to admire about them, they will always try to show a glimmer of vicious hope, but they are losers and barely breathing. Think about that before you destroy your lives and the lives of your family! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2019 The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The militants, meanwhile, have been putting up a desperate fight, and the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have held off declaring victory. "Heavy fighting continues around mount Baghouz right now to finish off whatever remains of ISIS," Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF's media office, announced on Twitter Friday night. Three U.S. military officials said fighting is still ongoing in Syria, and that there could still be a couple of hundred fighters there in hiding. Tunnels are of particular concern to the Kurdish-led forces. Dug in fields and under abandoned homes, they provide invaluable hiding places for ISIS militants trying to avoid drone surveillance. The group has used such tunnels to great effect in almost every battle. Women and children also present a unique challenge. SDF forces have repeatedly paused their offensive, sometimes for weeks at a time, to allow fighters and their families to surrender and leave the camp through a humanitarian corridor. NBC News recently observed SDF fighters armed with AK-47s talking to ISIS members as women, children and elderly men began hiking along the base of a cliff overlooking Baghouz. Men walk with others said to be members of the Islamic State as they leave the village of Baghouz. Delil souleiman / AFP - Getty Images file The people filing out were dirty. Many were visibly injured and limping on makeshift crutches. Others were bleeding and wincing in pain. A young girl wearing a niqab — a veil worn by the most conservative Muslim women in which, at most, only the eyes show — cried out in pain as a woman carried her along the trail before putting her in a wheelchair. Her jeans were torn, exposing tiny legs streaked with blood. The sheer number who emerged — almost 30,000 since early January, according to Kurdish officials — have taken the SDF and others by surprise. A report issued by the United Nations' population fund, the UNFPA, said Thursday "it is estimated that around 7,000 people are still inside" Baghouz, without elaborating. When asked in Arabic how many people were left inside the camp, some of the surrendering people responded in a cacophony of foreign languages: Turkish, Uzbek and others that were incomprehensible. One exhausted-looking elderly man responded that there were "many" people left in the camp, including women and children. Uniformed and armed SDF fighters stood sentry along the trail. At one point, the trail wound up the cliffside, forcing surrendering families to climb the cliff by gripping an exposed pipe. Left behind were dozens of strollers, wheelchairs and pieces of luggage — items that the evacuees couldn’t carry up the side of the cliff. Most of the surrendering people were women in niqabs. As they tried to climb the steep cliff out of the Euphrates River valley, female SDF fighters reached out to assist them. When female fighters weren't on hand, male fighters reached out to pull them up with a piece of a wheelchair, giving them an assist while avoiding actually touching their hands. Instead, fighters are still engaged in "clearing" or "combing" efforts in the tiny pocket where ISIS fighters and their families are thought to remain in a narrow band on the banks of the Euphrates River. But the actual fighting, along with the sound of gunfire, artillery and airstrikes launched by the U.S.-led coalition, had all but ceased this week. In and around Baghouz itself, SDF fighters could be seen strolling past bombed-out pickup trucks, and huge craters left both by artillery and tunnel entrances. But questions loom even if the caliphate has been finally defeated. The extremist fighters remain a threat even if they no longer control territory, operating in remote areas elsewhere and capable of mounting attacks. And in December, Trump declared that "we have won against ISIS" and that he would pull all of the 2,000 or so U.S. troops from the country, an announcement that surprised U.S. allies and senior military officials and plunged the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS into turmoil. Last month, the White House said that about 200 U.S. troops will remain in Syria after the withdrawal of most U.S. forces.<doc-sep>Thus, notwithstanding the catastrophic military blows the group has suffered and the loss of its territorial rule, the Islamic State has made it unmistakably clear that it will carry on the fight even if the caliphate is militarily incapacitated. In early March, Islamic State fighters released a video from the Syrian town of Baghuz that urged the group’s followers to maintain their faith in the caliphate, even as Kurdish forces advanced toward the last of its territory. Unfortunately, it appears that the Islamic State has both the will and limited assets necessary to survive to fight another day. Indeed, before he was killed by an American airstrike in Syria in 2016, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s second most powerful leader, after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, prepared followers for the future battles. He said, referring to the group’s progenitor, Al Qaeda in Iraq: “Do you, O America consider defeat to be the loss of a city or the loss of land? Were we defeated when we lost the cities in Iraq and were in the desert without any city or land?” Like Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was declared “defeated” from 2006 until 2010, the Islamic State is returning to its insurgent roots. And less than a year after its expulsion from major urban centers, the organization now wages a low-intensity guerrilla campaign that has already killed hundreds of Iraqis, including key security personnel and tribal leaders. Designed to terrorize local communities, sow instability and expose the impotency of Iraq’s security forces, the Islamic State’s strategy is paying dividends. The corrupt and dysfunctional Baghdad government has neglected the emaciated Sunni-inhabited cities (such as Mosul) that were liberated from the Islamic State’s rule. Once again, the extremist organization is appealing to disgruntled Sunnis who feel forsaken by the Shiite-dominated authorities. The recent intensification of the United States’ rivalry with Iran in Iraq under President Trump has served to only further weaken the central government in Baghdad and embolden the Islamic State. Similarly, in Syria, sleeper cells frequently attack the liberated Raqqa and Deir Ezzor province and inflict heavy casualties on the Syrian Democratic Forces, an American-backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters. Like in Iraq, the Islamic State bides its time in Syria, hoping that Turkey’s fixation with the Kurds and Mr. Trump’s decision to ultimately withdraw most American troops from the northeast will create a security void that it can fill. Before Mr. Trump takes a victory lap, he should know that the next phase of the struggle against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda will be complex, costly and prolonged. A counterterrorism strategy is not sufficient. Permanently defeating these jihadist groups will require an economic, political and ideological strategy with a long-term focus.<doc-sep>Syrian Kurdish forces declared victory over the Islamic State on Saturday, after a years-long fight to reclaim territory that once belonged to the terror group’s self-declared caliphate. "Syrian Democratic Forces declare total elimination of so-called caliphate and %100 territorial defeat of ISIS," Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF press office, said on . "On this unique day, we commemorate thousands of martyrs whose efforts made the victory possible." At its peak in 2014, ISIS controlled approximately 34,000 square miles of territory across Iraq and Syria that was home to about 10 million people. On March 1, the Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, began its last offensive to retake the city of Baghouz, the last ISIS stronghold along the Middle Euphrates River Valley near the Iraq border. Since that time, thousands of ISIS fighters and their families have poured out of the area with 62,000 mostly women and children arriving in poor health at the Al Hol camp, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC). At least 100 people, mostly children, died on their way there during that time. The IRC described the camp as at a “breaking point” in terms of being able to house and care for the thousands of people arriving from ISIS-held areas. Meanwhile, men who are determined to have allegiance to ISIS have been detained by the SDF. They now hold over 1,000 ISIS foreign fighters, along with thousands from Iraq and Syria. In its fight to retake land from ISIS in Syria, the SDF has received backing from the U.S.-led coalition comprised of over 75 nations and partner organizations. The first U.S. troops -- just 50 advisers -- arrived in Syria under the Obama administration in October 2015. That number has grown to about 3,000 as the U.S. prepares to withdraw most of those forces under orders by President Donald Trump. Trump had touted in recent days that ISIS was on its last legs. He proudly displayed a once-classified map showing how the forces had waned since his election two years ago on both Thursday and Friday. His declaration on Thursday that ISIS would be "gone by tonight" was the third time he'd declared victory in three months. About 400 U.S. troops will remain in two areas of Syria: in the northeast along the Turkish border to provide security and stability for Kurdish partners, and in the southeast at the At Tanf Garrison, a small U.S. base seen largely as a way to counter Iranian influence in the region. But even as the SDF declares victory, a long road lies ahead before cities and towns once held by ISIS return to any level of normalcy. The SDF and coalition must conduct back clearance operations to rid areas of booby traps and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) left behind by the terror group. Additionally, it will cost billions to rebuild and restore communities extensively destroyed in the fight. Another challenge will be for local security forces to retain control should ISIS seek to reconstitute. In Iraq, where the military declared liberation from ISIS in December 2017, the terror group has already established sanctuaries, according to a report released on Thursday by the Institute for the Study of War, “setting the conditions for future offensive operations against the Government of Iraq.” And U.S. officials estimate there could be as many as 20,000 ISIS fighters in the region. “The U.S. and its partners should not view the current relative security in Baghdad as confirmation of the defeat of ISIS,” Institute for the Study of War wrote. “The U.S. Anti-ISIS Coalition’s strategy to enable Iraq to ‘independently manage’ an insurgency through intelligence support and other building partner capacity efforts will likely fail to prevent ISIS from regaining momentum based on its current trajectory in Iraq.” There are still about 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East Gen. Joseph Votel warned March 7 against the "calculated" retreat of ISIS fighters from Baghouz, saying the exodus of thousands is not a surrender, but a decision to retreat to camps and remote areas in the region until they can reconstitute as a violent extremist organization once again. "We will see low-level attacks, we'll see assassinations, we'll see IED attacks, we'll see ambush type things as they begin to emerge from this. What our focus has to be is working with our partners," Votel told the House Armed Services Committee, adding, "We're going to have to keep pressure on this.” Votel told CNN last month that he opposed the U.S. withdrawal from Syria and testified before Congress that he was not consulted by Trump before the president announced the decision in late December. Another principal concern of Votel and the larger U.S. government is how the international community will deal with the thousands of ISIS foreign fighters now in SDF custody. "In my view, this is a serious generational problem that if not handled properly will sow the seeds of future violent extremism,” Votel said. The U.S. is pushing for them to be returned to their home countries, but that effort has, so far, been met with mixed success. Administration officials have said options for foreign fighters who cannot be repatriated include the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.<doc-sep>
U.S.-backed fighters in Syria declared victory over Islamic State on Saturday, marking the apparent end of a years-long global campaign to break the extremist group's hold on the region. The capture of ISIS' last, tiny enclave in the country's south brings its self-proclaimed caliphate to territorial defeat. "Syrian Democratic Forces declare total elimination of so-called caliphate" spokesman Mustafa Bali said on Twitter early Saturday. Syrian Democratic Forces declare total elimination of so-called caliphate and 0 territorial defeat of ISIS. On this unique day, we commemorate thousands of martyrs whose efforts made the victory possible. #SDFDefeatedISIS — Mustafa Bali (@mustefabali) March 23, 2019 The battle for Baghouz, the group's last holdout and all that remained of the vast territory that it once ruled in Syria and Iraq, had dragged on for more than 10 weeks — far longer than either the U.S. military or their allies on the ground had predicted. President Donald Trump has been teasing the victory for days. Trump shows a map which he said indicates the end of ISIS, as he arrives at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida on March 22, 2019. NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP - Getty Images On Friday, the White House said the Department of Defense had declared that the militant group no longer held any territory in Syria. At around the same time, Trump tweeted that there was "nothing to admire" about ISIS. The militants, meanwhile, had been putting up a desperate fight, and the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes had held off declaring victory. At a victory ceremony near Baghouz on Saturday, a brass band in red and gold uniforms played the American national anthem in front of a stars and stripes flag and yellow militia banners. SDF leaders including both men and women sat watching. The SDF had repeatedly paused its final push to capture the village in order to allow more than 30,000 civilians, many of them the wives and families of foreign fighters, to be evacuated. Bali said they had caught several militants trying to flee among the civilians. Others had handed themselves over. Their fate has befuddled foreign governments, with few ready to repatriate citizens who pledged allegiance to a group sworn to their destruction, but who might be hard to legally prosecute. Trump has called on European countries to take back captured Islamic State fighters currently in U.S. custody as the military prepares for a withdrawal. But a full withdrawal is looking less certain despite the fall of ISIS. Trump recently told members of Congress in a letter obtained by NBC News that he now agrees "100%" with keeping a military presence in Syria. It's a major shift from Trump's announcement of a full withdrawal in December, which blindsided U.S. allies as well as many in Washington and prompted the resignation of then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters pose for a photo on a rooftop overlooking Baghouz, Syria, after the SDF declared the area free of Islamic State militants after months of fighting on March 23, 2019. Maya Alleruzzo / AP "We have won against ISIS. We have beaten them and we have beaten them badly," Trump said in a December video posted on Twitter. "We have taken back the land and now it's time for our troops to come back home." The White House has since said that a peacekeeping group of about 200 troops will remain in Syria "for some period of time." In the recent letter reiterating that presence, Trump said, "[We] seek to ensure that all of the gains made in Syria are not lost, that ISIS never returns." The move appears to heed warnings that the symbolic end of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's deathly project may not mean the threats posed by ISIS will cease. A senior U.S. diplomat said Saturday the territorial defeat of the group is a "critical milestone" that delivers a crushing and strategic blow to the extremist group. However William Roebuck, the State Department's official in charge of Syria, added that the campaign against ISIS is not over, saying the group remains a significant threat in the region. "We still have much work to do to achieve an enduring defeat," Roebuck said at a ceremony in eastern Syria's al-Omar oil field base. A recent Pentagon report found the group could reclaim territory in months and is currently regrouping in Iraq faster than in Syria, underscoring the fluid nature of the security situation in the Middle East.