In both Iraq and Syria, anti-ISIL forces have been making tremendous strides in their fight against the Islamic State. Starting with Syria, the ancient city of Palmyra has recently been recaptured by the Syrian government with the backing of Russia and Iran. Palmyra, the UNESCO world heritage site, has been heavily contested, with the city itself being captured by ISIL last December for the second time. By taking the city, the Syrian government has implanted itself in the middle of a region in central Syria tightly controlled by the Islamic State. While it may be a great location to launch further attacks into the region, it will be incredibly difficult to defend the city as it’s almost completely surrounded by ISIL forces. Elsewhere in Syria, Syrian Democratic Forces with coalition backing have cut off the last major highway into the city of Raqqa. The coalition has stated that it will take a “wait and watch” approach, attempting to force the Islamic State out of their de-facto capital. Losing such a vital stronghold would surely prove detrimental to the Islamic State’s efforts within Syria. The United States has also begun to deploy ground troops in Syria, this combined with the aforementioned successes may seriously hinder the Islamic State within Syria in the upcoming year. Moving on to Iraq, the Iraqi Federal Police Force have launched a major offensive into the city of Mosul. The JOC claims to have retaken the Nineveh district and reestablished the provincial government within the district. Also within the district, the Mosul Museum has been liberated; within this museum, ISIL was found destroying historical artifacts just as they had done to the city of Palmyra, Syria. \u00a0Now, the only thing dividing the eastern Iraqi controlled Mosul and the western ISIL controlled Mosul is the Tigris river. The Islamic State has destroyed all the bridges that connect the two halves of the city, so the only way for the Iraqi forces to enter the western side is either by reconstructing the destroyed bridges, or deploying floating bridges in order to move troops into west Mosul. Just across the river on the western side however, is the Mosul City Centre, which would be a great jumping off point for further advances to liberate the remainder of the city. If Mosul, which is such a vital city to the Islamic State within Iraq, were to be liberated, much momentum would be loss for any further ISIL operations. In conclusion, these recent events are showing steps in the right direction in the fight against the Islamic State, and even though this conflict won’t be resolved quickly, these actions will hasten the pace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In both Iraq and Syria, anti-ISIL forces have been making tremendous strides in their fight against the Islamic State. Starting with Syria, the ancient city of Palmyra has recently been recaptured by the Syrian government with the backing of Russia and Iran. Palmyra, the UNESCO world heritage site, has been heavily contested, with the city itself being captured by ISIL… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[77,20,55,10,4],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis","tag-coalition","tag-iraq","tag-isil","tag-isis","tag-syria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":491,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}