Inside ISIS’s Final Fight | Collapse of the Caliphate

After years of bloody conflict across northern and eastern Syria, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have pushed ISIS to the brink of total defeat. The remaining ISIS fighters now wait out their days in a cluster of tiny villages nestled between the Euphrates river and the Iraqi border.

Surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned, the jihadist group’s last diehard fighters aren’t giving up. And they’re being met by US-backed forces and foreign volunteers, many of whom have traveled thousands of miles for the final fight.

Huddling in the central stairwell for cover, deafened by the roar of rockets hitting the rooms around them, YPG fighters argued furiously over their next move.

“We’re surrounded,” shouted the YPG fighter, “We’re going to have to jump from the balcony and make a run for it.”

They quickly gathered blankets, mattresses and curtains, throwing them to the ground outside to soften the fall. Escaping through the alleyway, the fighters retreated to safety in a nearby outpost as Coalition airstrikes rained down on the besieged house.

On the map, the war against the Islamic State is all but won. But here in the middle Euphrates river valley, where much of the population resents the US-backed forces as alien occupiers, these fighters are likely to face many more sudden ambushes and assaults from within this dense patchwork of orchards and villages, even after the battle for Baghuz is won.

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