Trump urges allies to take back captured IS fighters

Washington, February 17

President Donald Trump has demanded that the European nations take back more than 800 IS fighters captured in Syria and put them on trial, warning that the US otherwise will be forced to free the jihadists after it pulls out from the war-torn country.

President Trump surprised the world by announcing in December that he was withdrawing 2,000 American troops from the war-torn Syria.

He also warned the Islamic State (IS) that America would hit them hard from nearby military bases if the terror outfit regains momentum. US-backed fighters are set to capture IS’s last tiny stronghold in Syria, bringing an end to its self-declared caliphate.

“The US is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial. The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them,” Trump said on Saturday.

President Trump warned that IS fighters could “permeate Europe” and called on European nations to “step up” efforts to put the prisoners on trial in their countries.

“The US does not want to watch as these IS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go. We do so much, and spend so much — Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!” he said in a tweet.

IS, which once controlled huge swatches of land in Iraq and Syria, suffered crippling defeats in 2017 when Iraq recaptured Mosul and the Syrian Democratic Forces seized its Syrian capital of Raqqa, and the Syrian government pushed it east to the Euphrates.

Trump has said he will pull US forces from Syria after IS’ territorial defeat, raising questions over the fate of the US’ Kurdish allies vulnerable to an attack from Turkey. Ankara views the Kurdish forces as terrorists aligned with insurgents inside Turkey.

Last month, Trump threatened to “devastate” Turkey economically if it attacks US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria following a pullout of American troops from the war-torn country. He also urged the Kurds not to “provoke” Ankara.

Ground troops first arrived in Syria in autumn 2015 when then US President Barack Obama sent in a small number of special forces to train and advise YPG fighters. — PTI

The rise and fall of IS in Iraq, Syria

• 2004-11: In the chaos following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, an Al-Qaida offshoot sets up there, changing its name in 2006 to IS in Iraq
• 2011: After Syria’s crisis begins, the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sends operatives there to set up a Syrian subsidiary. Baghdadi follows in 2013, breaking with Al-Qaida and renaming his group ‘The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’
• 2014: It takes Mosul and Tikrit in June and overruns the border with Syria. In Syria, it massacres hundreds of members of the Sheitaat tribe. In Iraq it slaughters thousands of Yazidis in Sinjar and forces more than 7,000 women and girls into sexual slavery. 
• 2015: Attackers in Paris strike a satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket, the bloody start to a wave of attacks that IS claims around the world
• 2016: Iraq takes back Fallujah in June, the first town IS had captured during its initial blaze of success. In August, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG, takes Manbij in Syria
• 2017: Islamic State suffers a year of catastrophic defeats. In June, it loses Mosul to Iraqi forces after months of fighting and Baghdad declares the end of the caliphate. 
• 2018: The Syrian government retakes IS enclaves in Yarmouk, south of Damascus, and on the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights 
• 2019: IS is besieged in its last enclave on the Euphrates at the village of Baghouz  Reuters