U.S.-allied forces fighting the extremist group are increasingly anxious about sleeper cells.
A U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighter drives past destroyed homes and vehicles in Susah, a Syrian village that was recently retaken from Islamic State militants. By Louisa Loveluck Louisa Loveluck Reporter in The Washington Post's Beirut bureau, focusing on Syria. Email Bio Follow March 7 at 6:00 AM DEIR AL-ZOUR, Syria — The road to the final scrap of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in eastern Syria is quiet for the most part. U.S.
With its remaining members scattered across the desert hinterlands of both countries, there is no suggestion the Islamic State will regain significant territory anytime soon. But experts warn that the coming months could determine whether the group will be able to destabilize the still-fragile security situation and set the stage for fresh violence.
The U.S.-backed SDF was born as a Syrian Kurdish force, but it recruited locally as it pushed deeper into Arab-dominated areas of eastern Syria to roll back the Islamic State. SDF members and the DeirEzzor 24 monitoring group now say that the scores of Arab fighters who were previously linked to the Islamic State have become part of the U.S.-backed force.
The SDF said Monday that it had released 283 Syrians who had worked with the Islamic State, saying they had no “blood on their hands” and describing the gesture as one of “cooperation, fraternity and clemency.” A SDF fighter stands atop a building used as a temporary base near the last land still held by Islamic State militants in Baghouz. The province’s future will be shaped, in part, by if and how the United States completes its planned military withdrawal from the area. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government already controls half the province, and has vowed to regain the rest, by force if necessary.
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