Since the battle for Mosul was launched on 23 October after the US agreed to back a coalition of some 60,000 troops over half of them from Shia Popular Mobilisation Units, the Syrian and Iraqi media have highlighted how Islamic State (IS) forces have begun to flee the hostilities in Iraq and head to Raqqa in northern Syria. Citing “special sources” in Mosul and Raqqa, reports have said that IS leaders and their families have gathered in Mosul ready to be transported to the Syrian border. After crossing the border, they head towards Raqqa, although some continue onwards towards towns in Turkey. The moves take place at night so as not to draw the attention of inhabitants and the terrorist organisation's local supporters. IS leaders from other parts of Syria have begun to move towards Raqqa as well, according to media reports, as if the Syrian and Iraqi media were trying to suggest that Raqqa and its environs was becoming an assembly point and central base for IS in the region. However, Mosul and Raqqa are separated by hundreds of kilometres of barren desert, and this terrain is also exposed to all sorts of aircraft, whether under the command of the US-led international coalition or of Russia and Syria. Anyone travelling between Mosul and Raqqa overland would be an easy target. The inhabitants of the towns and cities along the Mosul-Raqqa route have not reported suspicious traffic in the area. Free Syrian Army (FSA) officer Iyad Barakat said that “there is no truth to the reports of the arrival in Raqqa of IS hordes from Mosul” in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. “This is part of a strategy designed by the parties involved in the conflict in Syria. No fighters from the Daesh [IS] organisation have arrived in Raqqa or other Syrian cities, though a few families, chiefly women and children, have arrived in Deir Al-Zor near the border with Iraq. The fighters who have come to Raqqa have fled from villages surrounding the city after they were attacked by the FSA in the Euphrates Shield Operation,” Barakat said. He said that IS fighters crossing the area between Mosul and Raqqa would either encounter Kurdish forces, FSA forces or the forces of the Syrian regime. “These areas are exposed, and IS members could easily be targeted by coalition or Russian aircraft,” he said. According to Ramez Ayash, an official in Al-Tel, a town near Damascus, the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has airdropped messages telling inhabitants to expel the fighters who are controlling the city and drive them towards Raqqa. In exchange the regime would lift its siege, “as has occurred in Darya, Maadamiya and other towns and villages,” Ayash said. Ayash described the action as “part of the population transfer and demographic change policy being pursued by the Syrian regime, as well as of its strategy of forcing members of the armed opposition to assemble in Raqqa and then to kill them on the pretext that they belong to the IS organisation.” European military sources have also begun to deny that IS fighters are heading towards Syria. The French Defence Ministry has reported that hundreds of IS members have moved from Syria to Iraq in order to reinforce ranks in Mosul. The ministry said it was monitoring the movement of the fighters and dismissed rumours of the move of IS fighters from Mosul to Raqqa. In Iraq, coalition forces surrounding Mosul have left an opening in the western part of the city in the direction of Syria. The tactic, familiar to the military, is intended to leave the enemy an escape route in order to facilitate the capture of the city. However, IS leader and self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has denied rumours spread by the Syrian and Iraqi regimes to the effect that he and his fighters had fled to Syria. In a message broadcast from inside Mosul, Al-Baghdadi said that IS would remain in Mosul. He lashed out at the countries of the coalition, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and even the Syrian opposition factions, but refrained from attacking Iran and the Syrian and Iraqi regimes. He said that hundreds of Iraqi soldiers from the pro-Iranian Shia People's Mobilisation Units were being sent to Syria in order to support regime and Hizbullah forces laying siege to cities in northern Syria. Former Iraqi minister of transport and head of the Badr Organisation Hadi Al-Amiri, Iran's right-hand man in Iraq, has declared that the People's Mobilisation Units will continue their mission in Syria after defeating IS in Iraq. This means that these militias, controlled by Iran, will move into eastern Syria just as the Iranian-controlled Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah has moved its forces into western Syria around Homs, Al-Qasir, Al-Zibdani, Bloudan, Qalman and other areas. These are not controlled by IS, which no longer has a large presence in Syria contrary to the claims of the Syrian regime, Russia and Iran. Syrian opposition activist Said Muqbil said that judging by recent developments and the actions of the Iranian-controlled militias and the regime, the strategy was to “open a Shia corridor stretching from Iran through Iraq and then from eastern to western Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean.” “Most likely, when these militias began their battles against IS in eastern Syria, the latter will suddenly withdraw as has occurred in other areas where the Syrian regime, Iran and Russia have attempted to seize control, such as Palmyra and Al-Qalmoun. They're using the pretext of the presence of IS along this ‘corridor' in order to justify their intervention,” Muqbil said. This coincides with the demographic change in Syria being engineered by the Syrian regime and the Kurds, in accordance with a plan that appears to be agreed upon by both sides. The Sunnis are being transferred from the areas controlled by these two sides from the east to the west. Observers of developments in Iraq say the same process is being carried out there, where populations are being transferred to Iraqi Kurdistan or northern Syria. This is consistent with the “imperial bridge” that Tehran has been seeking to create in the region through the spread of terrorism and using IS which has never once fought the Syrian regime since its arrival in Syria three years ago. The mysterious factor in this is the US, which has not registered its opposition to what the Iranian-controlled People's Mobilisation Units are doing in Iraq or what Hizbullah is doing in Syria. Instead, the US merely continues to proclaim its war against IS, apparently without thinking about halting the terrorism produced by the Iranian-controlled militias. Perhaps this is because Washington does not regard the latter as a threat or because it wants to avert the risk of a military confrontation with Iran and Russia, closely allied with Iran in the Middle East. IS, which has never once targeted Russia, the Syrian regime or Iran, is now in a weak state in Syria. FSA brigades are advancing towards Raqqa to expel it from the city, and they have now taken control of dozens of villages that IS previously controlled. However, the US has been trying to force the FSA to work with the Syrian Kurdish forces belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in the liberation of Raqqa. Neither the Syrian opposition nor Turkey wants this, the former regarding these forces as part of the Syrian regime and the latter regarding them as the Syrian extensions of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which Ankara brands as terrorist. If the Syrian opposition were sufficiently armed and backed with logistical support, it would be able to drive IS out of Raqqa and the rest of the areas it controls. However, some parties do not want this and are trying to obstruct attempts on the part of the opposition to do so. Perhaps international and regional players think that it would not fit their plans if IS were to be eliminated from Syria. For the Syrian opposition, Russia, Iran, the Syrian regime and the more than 66 sectarian militias that take their orders from Iran, the aim is not to eliminate IS or even the Al-Nusra Front, which recently disassociated itself from Al-Qaeda, but rather to eliminate all the Syrian opposition factions that have proven themselves to be the only forces fighting IS in Syria. This has led many in Syria and elsewhere to wonder whether what is happening in Mosul in Iraq and Aleppo and Raqqa in Syria is in fact a battle against terrorism or the use of terrorism to attain ends that serve the interests of Russia and Iran and to secure a corridor for the Shia crescent in the region. Whatever the motives may be, this will have dangerous repercussions for the region and its stability for decades to come.
