Stranded ISIS Convoy Symbolizes Militants’ Stalled Campaign

The Islamic State militant, his AK-47 cradled between his legs, crouched next to the driver in the front of the bus, near a placard in the windshield that read B-9, which stood for bus No. 9 out of 17. The flash of a camera in the early dawn light showed him to be smiling broadly.

کد خبر: ۷۲۶۵۹۵

تاریخ: ۱۱ شهريور ۱۳۹۶ - ۰۹:۳۰

How his fortunes have fallen since the photo was taken on Monday, when it looked like the convoy of buses carrying more than 300 retreating fighters was safely on the road to territory controlled by the Islamic State.

Now the buses are trapped in the Syrian desert with nowhere to go, chased at every turn by American bombers determined not to let them rejoin the fight.

As the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has lost city after city in Iraq and struggles to hold on to territory in Syria, the stranded buses have become a striking metaphor for the militants’ stalled campaign.

This week, the Islamic State lost Tal Afar, one of the last cities it controlled in Iraq, less than two months after being expelled from Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. In Syria, the once formidable caliphate is in danger of losing Raqqa, its self-styled capital, to American-backed forces there.

And it has likewise been powerless to save the convoy, sending fighters and fuel trucks into the desert only to have them destroyed by American forces.

Col. Ryan Dillon, the spokesman for the American-led coalition in Syria and Iraq, said recent airstrikes had killed 50 ISIS fighters and destroyed 20 vehicles sent to rescue the convoy, including fuel trucks apparently sent to refuel the air-conditioned buses.

"We have continued to conduct strikes,” Colonel Dillon said Friday from Baghdad. "We will continue to do that. If they want to continue to spend resources and put themselves out there, we will continue to strike them.”

The standoff in the desert started with a complicated deal between the Islamic State, Lebanon and the Iranian-back Lebanese militia Hezbollah. ISIS, cornered in territory it once controlled along the Lebanese border, agreed to turn over the bodies of nine Lebanese soldiers captured in 2014 in exchange for safe passage across Syria for 308 fighters and 330 of their family members.

The 17 buses and 11 ambulances were to travel 300 miles to reach the ISIS stronghold of Deir al-Zour Province in eastern Syria by the next day.

The Americans and the Iraqis were incensed. The Americans bombed the road and destroyed a bridge ahead of the convoy, blocking its eastward progress 100 miles from its destination. The presence of noncombatants is all that has stopped the United States from obliterating the convoy.

That the deal fell apart is a reflection of how complex the Syrian battlefield has become, with its dozens of factions and shifting alliances, but it is also an indication of how little capital the Islamic State has left to spend with any of the other players on that field.

It still controls significant territory in Iraq and Syria, and remains a force to be reckoned with, carrying out deadly attacks on both sides of the border and inspiring followers abroad.

But the convoy deal illustrates its increasing isolation. Syria has been so embarrassed by it that its official media have made no mention of it. One otherwise pro-government official in Damascus lamented that Syria had become a sewer through which every dirty thing flowed.

Iran, which also had a stake in the deal, was also silent.

Iraq, which had been expected to act as a guarantor for the convoy at the request of Iran, instead denounced it, even though Iraqi allies had brokered the deal. The Islamic State’s own official media, faced with a humiliating mess, had nothing to say, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi groups.

It was not the first time ISIS had cut a deal in Syria, including with the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

"The Syrian government does this fairly often,” said Robert S. Ford, the former American ambassador to Syria. "They have moved a lot of rebel fighters through these truce agreements, into Idlib, for instance, or Deir al-Zour. They’re just kicking the can down the road, figuring there may be other ways to reduce Idlib or Deir al-Zour later.”

But deals between factions that are trying to kill one another depend not so much on good will as on a belief that keeping their word now will mean that future deals will be honored. It also assumes that the other side will have something to offer in the future.

The Islamic State faction, seemingly on its heels, held a weak hand. Mostly all it had to trade were some dead bodies.

When Lebanese Army and Hezbollah militiamen, along with the Syrian Army forces, surrounded them on the border near Arsal, Lebanon, they negotiated their freedom and safe passage to the town of Abu Kamal, on the eastern Syrian border with Iraq.

By the time the convoy was on the road across the Syrian desert toward Abu Kamal, the American Air Force had been alerted. "So we decided to go look for these buses and we found them,” said Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the American coalition commander. "And so we watched, and when ISIS came out to link up with them, we started striking ISIS. And again, we haven’t struck the convoy, but we have struck every ISIS fighter and/or vehicle that has tried to approach that convoy, and will continue to do that.”

Even before the Americans struck though, the ISIS convoy ground to a halt, at a place called Humaimah, the last town before Deir al-Zour Province, and Islamic State territory. They were being escorted by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that is fighting for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Hezbollah is backed by Iran, which has both trainers and fighters in the country as well.

According to accounts from both the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based group that monitors events in Syria, and from Syrian officials, Iran wanted Hezbollah to press ISIS to turn over the body of a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Mohsen Hagigi, who was close to the Quds Force commander, Qassem Suleimani.

ISIS confederates delivered the body to Hezbollah on Wednesday, and then American warplanes cratered the road in front of them.

Over the next two days, the convoy headed back west and then north. But it was turned back, apparently because of a Syrian Army offensive against other ISIS units near the town of Sukhna.

On Friday, it was on the move again and finally reached a position near Sukhna, according to both Syrian and coalition sources.

Along the way, the 11 Red Crescent ambulances separated from the convoy. Pro-Hezbollah news agencies said the 26 wounded on the ambulances had been taken east to Deir al-Zour.

Colonel Dillon said American aircraft tracked the ambulances returning to western Syria, but he did not know "if there were wounded in those ambulances, or they were just transporting.”

Rami Abdul Rahman, the founder of the Syrian Observatory who is critical of all sides in the conflict, said the airstrikes to block the convoy were not just about keeping more fighters from joining the battle in the east, where the coalition is more active. When the coalition launched its offensive on Raqqa two months ago, the Syrian Democratic Forces made a similar deal with ISIS, to allow militants to flee Deir al-Zour.

"Russia opposed the deal and stated that it would target any convoy leaving Raqqa,” Mr. Rahman said. "Therefore, the international coalition and S.D.F. have been fighting ISIS for over three months now, which resulted in the killing of hundreds of S.D.F. fighters, more than 800 civilians and the destruction of the city due to constant airstrikes. Since Russia obstructed that deal, the U.S. is now obstructing the Hezbollah-ISIS deal.”

ISIS now has nearly every faction in Syria lined up against it, and as its fortunes decline it is finding it increasingly difficult to play those enemies off against one another. Even that truism of conflict in the Middle East — the enemy of my enemy is my friend — is not working for it.

For ISIS, the Damascus official said, the enemy of its enemy is still its enemy.