Kurdish Valour and Independence

"We have achieved our goal, which was to pound the strongholds of [Islamic State] terrorism in its [Raqqa] capital, liberate women, and restore honour to Yazidi women by liberating dozens of slaves."
Nisreen Abdullah, Women's Protection Units, YPJ, Kurdish female militia

"The city is in ruins, it needs time. And it needs prospects that are beyond ours, our energy."
Hassan Mohammad Ali, civilian council for rebuilding Raqqa

"I'm expecting to see a new Hiroshima."
"I'm trying to be mentally prepared when I go. I'll be lucky if I see one of my house's walls still standing."
Dr. Mohammad Ahmed Saleh, Raqqa resident, working in Tal al-Abyad hospital

Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces in Raqqa [Rodi Said/Reuters]

The Kurdish militia comprised of women fighters is determined to continue liberating women from Islamic State in the wake of their successful collaboration freeing Raqqa in northern Syria from the terrorist group. In Paradise Square where Islamic State infamously carried out public punishment by killing those who failed to cooperate with their rule in the city they made their capital, Nisreen Abdullah of the Women's Protection Units stated their intention to go on rescuing women from the grasp of Islamic State, and they are mostly Yazidi women and girls.

As part of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the women lost 30 of their fighters throughout the four-month liberation of Raqqa battles. Hundreds of women and girls, captured and forced into sexual slavery still await rescue. Buildings and tunnels were still being cautiously checked to ensure they are cleared of the presence of Islamic State fighters; in their stead were left explosives to greet the inquiring eyes of the YPG and Syrian Democratic Forces coalition.

The city lies in ruins. Saudi officials are involved in discussing how the Kingdom will establish its "prominent role in reconstruction" before the estimated 300,000 former residents can be expected to return to a cratered, bombed-out city with no running water, no electricity, no schools, no hospitals. The SDF was anxious to declare the city void of extremists after it was  held by them for the last four years as the capital of their 'caliphate', the women within forced to veil themselves, and death by stoning deemed punishment for those whose behaviour shamed Islam.

Despite that ISIL has suffered significant losses of territory, including important cities such as Mosul in Iraq and now Raqqa in Syria, its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was impressively persuasive in bringing tens of thousands of Muslims, from Europe and North America to the region to fight as 'soldiers' of his caliphate. Convincing them to destroy ancient ruins in Palmyra and Hatra, and to establish themselves as loyal martyrs to the universal cause of Islamofascist conquest.

While the caliphate has been significantly reduced with ISIL looking for new redoubts in Libya and Afghanistan and Africa, it continues as well to incite Muslims living in Europe and North America to recognize their duty to Islam by engaging in jihad, ISIL-style. When ISIL fighters evacuated Raqqa over the four months of siege, they  took their heavy equipment with them, prepared to continue to launch attacks and to secure the territory left to them, in the deserts of Syria and Iraq.

U.S.-led airstrikes have been largely responsible for the city's devastation. Over 3,000 bombs hit the city since January, in the process destroying schools, hospitals and residential buildings. Less than one percent of the city's prewar population of 300,000 was still in the city when it fell to the SDF.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, up to 3,250 people were killed in the months leading to Raqqa's liberation, a third of them civilians, with hundred more missing, presumed buried under collapsed buildings.

The SDF advance came at the cost of those lives, resulting from the intense air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition, despite strict targeting processes meant to minimize civilian risk. And nor can it be overlooked that the deliberate use of civilians as human shields by ISIL resulted in more casualties, including those shot by the terrorists, as they attempted to evacuate the embattled city.

The municipal stadium was one of the last ISIL positions held in Raqqa to fall     AFP

As it stands today, Raqqa will in all likelihood remain unlivable for its former residents for years to come. Where the funding for its reconstruction will come from has not yet been established. And although it was the background establishment of the U.S. held to be responsible for most of the bombing damage. the U.S. government states quite baldly that it is not in the market for other than defence; reconstruction is another matter entirely. Washington spent massively on defence and has no intention of matching those funds for reconstruction. 

No funds have been allocated for areas requiring reconstruction in Syria; not while $13-million is being spent on a daily basis to operate Operation Inherent Resolve. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated during a meeting of the 68-nation coalition in March: "As a coalition, we are not in the business of nation-building or reconstruction." 

However, months later, Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, also stated that his country is committed to "stabilization" in Raqqa. Which would include de-mining, rubble removal, perhaps the restoration of basic electricity, sewage, water, to enable the basic essentials to be provided for the hundreds of thousands of refugees to "come back to their home". 

More than 3,000 bombs have landed on Raqqa since January [Rodi Said/Reuters]

And while the SDF initially declared that the population of the majority Arab city should make their own determination of how their future would proceed "within the framework of a decentralized, federal, democratic Syria" and the Kurdish-led SDF made a pledge "to protect the frontiers of [Raqqa] province against all external threats", handing control to a city civil council, Damascus has its own plans, arranged with the connivance of Iran, for it considers Raqqa to be "occupied" until such time as the Syrian army is in control there. 

While Syrian Kurds might also have been considering including Raqqa in Rajova, the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS) initially, it has since stated its intention to declare independence, and it is clear that Damascus has no intention either of permitting Raqqa to be absorbed into Rajova, or to allow the Kurds to retain part of Syria as their sovereign territory, just as in Iraq Baghdad has been punishing Kurdistan for the impertinence of believing it was high time to recognize the need for Kurdish independence.

From Mosul to Raqqa

"[Canada's All-Source Intelligence Centre, gathers and analyzes data with the U.S.-led coalition] so we can develop legitimate military targets that need to be defeated."
"[Since ISIL] does not respect international borders, our assessments consider Daesh activity in Iraq and Syria."
"They used small drones -- ones that we would buy commercially -- and know how to drop munitions from those drones. They would use drones for surveillance and monitor the Iraqis and our tactics and strategies."
"[ISIL has] lost more than 65 percent of the land [it had dominated for its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, which had] resulted in the freeing of millions of people and significant reductions in their revenues."
"The key part is that Daesh is on the defensive. [But despite their defeats ISIL forces] are not surrendering in great numbers. That is not the way they operate."
Brig.-Gen.Daniel MacIsaac, Kuwait

How then, do they operate? As jihadists whose end goal really is the end in the sense that they court the status of shaheeds, for that equates with honour, jubilation and adulation in Islam; to become a martyr is the status they seek. Their initial goal when cornered is to escape so they can continue being feared and celebrated warriors of Islam, if at all possible. When that is not feasible, reflecting a situation inimical to survival, they fight to their honourable deaths.

This is the barbaric ideology that celebrates its gloating penchant for gruesome atrocities that make for such eye-capturing, heart-thumping attention in gory theatre that they excel in; videos of terror-in-action atrocities that gained them their notoriety and fear-factor so irresistible to the recruits their mastery of social media has gained them over the years.

With their defeat on the battlefield, outnumbered but not outfoxed, their public relations machinery has undergone an expert turn in convincing recruits to remain where they are; simply operate from wherever they happen to be. Use any weapons at hand. Any action, any attempts serve to strike fear into the minds of their targets, irrespective of meeting with success or failure.

Their proficiency both in the geographic field, mining territory to slow down the advance of their enemies, holding civilian populations hostage, killing those no longer of any practical use, or suspected of abandoning the sinking ship, and ensconcing their fighters and sharpshooters underground in expansive tunnelworks used to cache weaponry, reflects sharp minds at work, skilled in the tactics of underground guerrilla warfare.

A car bomb exploding next to Iraqi army vehicles during fighting to liberate Mosul Credit:  Felipe Dana/AP

Threat assessments and targeting information for Islamic State targets are now turning from Iraq to Syria where the focus is being transferred. The future of Raqqa and of Islamic State hang in the balance. Even with the certainty that defeat on the battlefield will represent only a hurdle, not the end of the practised killing machine that ISIL represents. As a Sunni militia it can still learn a few techniques from a Shiite counterpart, in the Syrian regime.

The nine-month battle in Mosul close to completion, Raqqa, the ostensible ISIL headquarters, beckons.

As for the All-Source Intelligence Centre, different branches of the Canadian military are represented from intelligence, artillery and communications systems experts to geomatic engineers capturing and interpreting data from cameras, remote sensors and global navigation satellites. The maps they create from those data sources are analyzed by the coalition to identify potential threats and to select attack targets.

"Daesh command and control centres as well as combatants, installations or anything else that is essential to Daesh operations", represent the typical targets the units identify, according to Brig.-Gen. McIsaac. "Fairly routinely" the Royal Canadian Air Force operates reconnaissance and refuelling flights over Syria where the airspace is complicated with the presence of Russian and Syrian fighter jets, along with the threat from Moscow that U.S.-led coalition aircraft may be targeted.

Crews on the RCAF CP-140 reconnaissance aircraft were "significantly involved" identifying targets for allied warplanes striking Mosul "until a few months back, when we shifted to another area", that area unspecified for obvious reasons. Canada's propeller spy plane has flown ten-hour missions, equipped with cameras and sensor arrays where on-board analysts at consoles behind the cockpit search for places where enemy fighters may establish themselves in a compound, a neighbourhood, an industrial area, making bombs.

Under Brig.-Gen. McIsaac's command is also a military surgical hospital in Erbil, Iraq, treating coalition troops and civilian workers, and a small helicopter detachment, along with a recently added RCAF C-130J Hercules aircraft to transport cargo and personnel between coalition bases. Brig.-Gen. McIsaac emphasizes that ISIL is "not only brutal. It is intelligent and creative", citing vast quantities of rockets, mortars and improvised explosive devices it produces, as well as armoured cars turned into vehicular IEDs.

Worse, its adoption of unmanned aerial devices in the hands of a terrorist organization. An estimated 4,000 ISIL fighters remain in Iraq, so along with the 20,000 estimated ISIL fighters in Syria, it may take quite a while to wrap up the conflict with Islamic State.