US hunt for IS enters final phase

Doha: Secretive drones and surveillance jets are boring down on an estimated 3,000 remaining Islamic State fighters, who are hiding in Syria along a short stretch of the Euphrates River and surrounding deserts, as the American military campaign against the extremist group enters its final phase.

But the focus on a 15-square-mile enclave near the Iraqi border is complicated by skies congested with Russian, Syrian and Iranian aircraft as rival forces converge on that last main pocket of Islamic State militants in Syria.

"It drives up the complexity of the problem," Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, the air commander for Syria and Iraq, said of the increasingly risky airspace and near collisions, in an interview at his headquarters at the sprawling Al Udeid air base outside Doha, the capital of Qatar.

With names like Joint Stars and Rivet Joint, the American spy planes are trying to track the last Islamic State fighters and top leaders, eavesdrop on their furtive conversations, and steer attack jets and ground forces to kill or capture them.

The three-year American campaign has largely achieved its goal of reclaiming territory in Syria and Iraq, and the Islamic State's religious state, or caliphate, appears all but gone. Still, senior military commanders and counter-terrorism specialists caution that the organisation remains a dangerously resilient force in Iraq and Syria, and a potent global movement through its call to arms to followers on social media.

"As they lose the caliphate's physical terrain, they'll adapt guerrilla tactics," Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the head of US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said in an interview during a regional security conference in Bahrain. "ISIS has been beat up pretty bad. But this is a different kind of organisation so we don't know what they might try to add. They've been very adaptive."

Echoing earlier comments by defence secretary Jim Mattis, Gen. Votel said American forces will remain in eastern Syria, alongside their Syrian Kurdish and Arab allies, as long as needed to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh. "What we don't want to do is leave a mess," Gen. Votel said, something "worse than what we found."

Here at Al Udeid, home to some 10,000 American and other allied troops, commanders are running the air wars not only in Iraq and Syria, but also the campaign in Afghanistan that is expected to increase sharply in the coming months under President Trump's more aggressive strategy for combating the Taliban, ISIS and other extremist groups there.

For now, though, the bulk of the 300 combat aircraft under General Harrigian's command are concentrating on the Islamic State. "Job One still is to get to the military defeat of ISIS," Gen. Harrigian said. "We need to make sure we stay focused on that."

At the peak of its power three years ago, the Islamic State controlled a swath of territory in Syria and Iraq as big as Kentucky. Now that area has dwindled to half the size of Manhattan, and is shrinking fast.

The hunt for the final Islamic State fighters and operatives draws on an aerial armada of combat aircraft based in several Persian Gulf countries - Jordan and Turkey - as well as the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, newly arrived in the Persian Gulf.

Warplanes are working with Syrian Kurdish and Arab militia on the ground to track down IS fighters, some of whom have disappeared in Sunni enclaves along the Euphrates River near the Iraq-Syria border. Others have made a dash across deserts west - through Syrian army lines - and south into Iraq's Anbar Province to avoid capture, or worse.

The US has doubled the bounty, to $25 million, for information leading to the death or capture of the elusive leader of the IS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Russia and the US back separate ground offensives against the IS in eastern Syria, both of which are advancing in the oil-rich Deir al-Zour Province bordering Iraq.

The assaults are converging on IS holdouts from opposite sides of the Euphrates, which bisects the province. Syrian Army troops backed by Russian air power and Iranian militia are advancing along the western side of the river; Syrian Arab and Kurdish fighters, supported by American warplanes and Special Operations advisers, are pushing along the eastern river banks.

New York Times News Service