Islamic State driven from last Syria territory, Trump says

Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.

Islamic State militants no longer control any territory in Syria, President Donald Trump proudly announced Friday, though the U.S. was still launching airstrikes and sporadic fighting continued on the ground against the group’s holdouts.

“It’s about time,” Trump exclaimed on an airport tarmac in Florida. He held up maps indicating the territory once held by the IS group in Iraq and Syria had shrunk to nothing.

Elimination of the last IS stronghold in Baghouz in eastern Syria would mark the end of the militants’ self-declared caliphate, which at its height blanketed large parts of Syria and Iraq. The campaign to take back the territory by the U.S. and its partners has spanned five years and two U.S. presidencies, unleashed more than 100,000 bombs and killed untold numbers of fighters and civilians.

Controlling territory and assets, such as oil facilities, has given the group a stream of revenue and a place from which to launch attacks around the world. However, if history is a guide, the reconquering of IS-held territory could prove a short-lived victory unless Iraq and Syria fix a problem that gave rise to the extremist movement in the first place: governments pitting one ethnic or sectarian group against another.

Trump has been teasing the victory for days, most recently Wednesday when he said the milestone would be achieved by that night.

On Friday, after a flight to Florida, Trump held up a map to supporters cheering him on the tarmac. Then he turned to reporters standing nearby.

“Here’s ISIS on Election Day,” he said, linking coalition gains since then to his presidency. He pointed to a swath of red signifying the group’s previous territorial hold, and then to a version without any red, “Here’s ISIS right now.”

But Trump appeared to be overstating his administration’s contribution to the anti-IS fight. A close-up of the map showed that he was displaying the group’s footprint at a high-point in 2014, not Election Day 2016, by which point the U.S.-backed campaign was well underway.

American officials familiar with the situation in Syria said that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces – who had not announced victory and weren’t planning to Friday – were still battling remaining IS fighters who were holed up in tunnels along river cliffs in Baghouz.

Another official confirmed that the U.S. launched airstrikes there Friday and that the fighting continued to clear out final pockets of IS members.