BBC: Raqqa’s dirty secret
The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city.
A convoy included some of IS’s most notorious members and – despite reassurances – dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey.
Lorry driver Abu Fawzi thought it was going to be just another job.
He drives an 18-wheeler across some of the most dangerous territory in northern Syria. Bombed-out bridges, deep desert sand, even government forces and so-called Islamic State fighters don’t stand in the way of a delivery.
But this time, his load was to be human cargo. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters opposed to IS, wanted him to lead a convoy that would take hundreds of families displaced by fighting from the town of Tabqa on the Euphrates river to a camp further north.
The job would take six hours, maximum – or at least that's what he was told.
But when he and his fellow drivers assembled their convoy early on 12 October, they realised they had been lied to.
Instead, it would take three days of hard driving, carrying a deadly cargo - hundreds of IS fighters, their families and tonnes of weapons and ammunition.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The Kurds requested this deal, and the U.S. did not object. All that I can say is that if these reports are true .... it was a mistake.
More News On The BBC Discovering A Secret Deal Was Made To Let Hundreds Of ISIS Fighters Flee Raqqa
The great ISIS exodus: Investigation reveals 250 fighters and 3,500 of their family members were driven out of Raqqa in coalition deal and are now 'spreading across Syria and beyond' -- Daily Mail
US quietly let hundreds of ISIS fighters flee Raqqa -- CBS
The US Secretly Let Thousands Of Armed ISIS Fighters Escape Raqqa In Broad Daylight -- Task & Purpose
BBC Has Uncovered Details of a Secret Deal that Let Hundreds of IS Fighters Escape from Raqqa -- Novinite
Secret deal let ISIS fighters flee from Raqqa -- Straits Times
Hundreds of foreign Daesh fighters allowed to leave Raqqa: BBC -- Arab News
Fears Brits among convoy of 4,000 ISIS jihadis heading home after Raqqa collapse -- Daily Star
US stands by Syrian deal to release ISIS fighters in Raqqa -- Rudaw
Hypocrisy: US Coalition Allowed ISIS to Evacuate Raqqa Despite Condemning Hezbollah Deal -- Al-Bawaba
7 comments:
Why is it a mistake?
They leave Raqqa for a smaller less defensible city. Not every city has the same defensive bonus.
If those hundreds of ISIS fighters are going to die, I would rather they die fighting Shia militias and take a hundred militia with them than taking a 100 Kurds. ISIS is only round 2 or 3. Round 1 was the Syrian government locking up masses of Sunnis before and during the mass protests of 2011 & 2012.
Why should not the Syrian Sunni Arabs join in on the Arab spring that swept Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and other places?
P.S. The BBC found out squat. A deal to let ISIS leave Raqqa was know a few weeks ago and was reported among other place, here.
By saying secret and just found out now is a bid to raise 'newspaper' sales and a way to cast aspersions on the US.
Our Foreign Staff
14 OCTOBER 2017 • 7:42 PM
A convoy will leave Syria's Raqqa on Saturday under an evacuation deal agreed as a US-backed force battles to seize Isil's last positions in the city.
The US-led coalition said the deal for the evacuation would exclude foreign Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters, but left unclear whether Syrian jihadists would be able to quit their one-time stronghold.
https://www.google.ca/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/14/evacuation-deal-isil-fighters-syrias-raqqa-citys-capture-nears/amp/
The deal was known about at the time.
And Jay backs me up vis-à-vis the breathless BBC.
Lightening strikes twice.
Ergo, the BBC is full of ____.
The only "secret" is that Syrian and Foreign ISIS Fighter's were also included in the evacuation,
Where at the time, ( Oct 14) they were supposed to be excluded and "vetted" by US backed SAA fighters.
That is not a flaw, but the plan.
Let ISIS and the SA bleed each other.
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The BBC workers can go back to wondering, if they will be run over by jihadis, scratch that mentally ill, while Xmas shopping in London.
These kinds of deals are incredibly common. Every single gain that the SAA has made in the past year including Aleppo has been capped off with an evacuation deal where the government themselves bus the jihadists and their families over to their stronghold in Idlib to avoid a mass slaughter. This is barely news if you follow the conflict at a daily and granular level.
Yup, the idea that ISIS fighters, hunkered down in fortified positions, with lot's of "human shields", are going to go through their membership and parse out the ones the "Coalition" don't "like", is just stupidity.
It's all the "ISIS and Allies" that want to go, or none.
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