This ISIS??
Finally! - The BBC Outs U.S./ISIS Complicity in Syria
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
has taken the diplomatic gloves off calling ISIS and other separatist forces “wards of the United States.” And they are the ones in the most danger. Moreover, the Pentagon has given these ISIS fighters cover to leave under the Geneva Convention since they ‘surrendered.’
But, in many cases they ‘surrendered’ while leaving with their war materiel.
The deal involved allowing more than 4000 ISIS fighters to leave Raqqa, a city the U.S./Kurdish SDF forces leveled by the way, as a convoy. This is not the first time this has happened. The Russians bombed a similar convoy that was allowed to leave the Tabqa Dam months before the supposed “Battle for Raqqa” was even engaged.
Again, to repeat, these ISIS fighters and their families left under U.S. cover of the Geneva Convention but did so with their weapons in hand. That’s, by definition, not surrender. The U.S. military is in Syria to provide tactical and strategic cover for ISIS for future operations (Iran? Afghanistan?) while it and its Kurdish proxies build a myriad of military bases in Eastern Syria. And then to make things worse the actual Battle for Raqqa was simply a controlled evacuation while the U.S. Air Force leveled the city to hinder its rebuilding.
Secret US-backed deal allowed hundreds of ISIS fighters, with tonnes of weapons and ammunition, to escape Raqqa
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.
Abu Fawzi and dozens of other drivers were promised thousands of dollars for the task but it had to remain secret.
The deal to let IS fighters escape from Raqqa – de facto capital of their self-declared caliphate – had been arranged by local officials. It came after four months of fighting that left the city obliterated and almost devoid of people. It would spare lives and bring fighting to an end. The lives of the Arab, Kurdish and other fighters opposing IS would be spared.
But it also enabled many hundreds of IS fighters to escape from the city. At the time, neither the US and British-led coalition, nor the SDF, which it backs, wanted to admit their part.