Syria in 2018-2019

[AdamG]

Baghouz (Syria) (AFP) - Suicide bombers, snipers, rockets -- Islamic State group fighters did everything they could to defend their last scrap of territory in eastern Syria, but their diminished resources were not enough.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces on Saturday declared victory over the jihadists in the remote village of Baghouz, after reducing their once terrifying proto-state to a ghostly riverside camp.

After declaring a "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq in 2014, they ruled over millions in territory the size of the United Kingdom.

But in the previously unheard of village of Baghouz, the group's fighters have emerged from tunnels and caves in the rocky hillside to surrender.

On Sunday, AFP reporters saw dozens of people -- mostly bearded men in heavy woollen tunics, some with their faces concealed in a scarf -- trudge out of the battered camp.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/suicide-b...095759465.html

[davidbfpo]

Recommended by a "lurker" this interesting NYRB article, it dissects what has happened to this loyal community, their losses and the apparently little gain for this.
Link:https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/0...as-alawi-sect/