the_guitar_mann/iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — Plans are underway to launch an offensive in “weeks” to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said.
That timing would overlap with the large Iraqi military offensive already under way to push ISIS out of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The simultaneous offensives would put ISIS on the defensive in the two main cities it controls in Iraq and Syria.
U.S. military officials have said that defeating ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa will deal significant blows to the militant group.
Seized by ISIS in January 2014, Raqqa has become ISIS’s capital inside Syria and a magnet for foreign fighters. Residents have had to endure a brutal regime as the terror group routinely carries out public executions to enforce its oppressive rules.
The city has also become the center of ISIS’s overseas terror plotting, with many terror attacks in western Europe tied to Raqqa. That is one reason why the top U.S. military commander in Iraq said Wednesday that it was “imperative” to move on Raqqa quickly to head off any current terror planning on Western targets.
The city of Raqqa, also known as al-Raqqah and ar-Raqqah, is in northern Syria on the banks of the Euphrates River about 50 miles south of the border with Turkey. Before the start of the civil war in Syria, the provincial capital was believed to have a population of 220,000.
The mostly Sunni Arab city also had minority populations of Alawites and Christians that fled the city after ISIS seized control in early 2014.
The city has also seen an influx of foreign fighters, ISIS supporters and their families drawn to the capital of ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate.
The residents that remained have endured oppressive rules on dress codes and bans on foreign contacts that are enforced with brutal public executions and lashings.
The brutality of life inside the city has been documented by a secret group of activists known as Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently.
Raqqa first gained notoriety as the site of the horrific executions of American and Western hostages by the ISIS fighter known as Jihadi John.
The high-profile terror attacks in Paris, Brussels and Turkey that were carried out by ISIS sympathizers originated in Raqqa, according to intelligence officials.
Given its importance in ISIS’s infrastructure, the city has often been the target of coalition airstrikes targeting key ISIS facilities and multiple ISIS leaders, including Jihadi John, who was killed by a drone strike in November 2015, according to U.S. officials.
Who Will Conduct the Offensive Against Raqqa?
Defense Secretary Ash Carter said this week that planning is underway with the anti-ISIS coalition’s partners inside Syria to begin the isolation of Raqqa.
The partners Carter is referring to are the Syrian Democratic Forces, a collection of 30,000 mostly Kurdish groups in eastern and northern Syria working together to fight ISIS. The group has become the most reliable coalition partner fighting ISIS inside Syria, taking back a large swath of northern Syria, including the cities of Kobani, Manbij and Jarabulus from ISIS.
Three-hundred American special operations forces are inside Syria assisting and advising the Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as some of the Turkish military forces that are now operating in northern Syria. They are not supposed to be on the front lines but the role they play in advising the forces they are embedded with could place them in a combat environment, according to U.S. officials.
The battlefield success of the Syrian Democratic Forces has drawn concerns from Turkey, which does not want to see a strong Kurdish military force along its borders, particularly one that has been aligned with the PKK, the Kurdish terror group inside Turkey. Because of that, it appears that it will be the Syrian Arab groups within the Syrian Democratic Force that will be the main force attacking Raqqa.
Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, told Pentagon reporters Wednesday that he expects the fight to retake Raqqa to be slower than the offensive on Mosul, which by some estimates could last a few months.
Townsend explained that the fight in Raqqa would be challenging because of the complicated battlefield in Syria, where the Russian military is supporting the Bashar al-Assad regime against rebel forces in western Syria. Turkey has moved in ground forces to northern Syria and the U.S. must rely on the loosely organized Syrian Democratic Forces as its main partner in the fight against ISIS. Though coalition air power will play a large role in supporting an offensive on Raqqa, it is likely that the number of American special operations advisers in Syria will not be increased.
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