Isis has issued a call-to-arms for men aged between 20 and 30 as western forces and their allies close in on the jihadists’ shrinking territories in Iraq and Syria.
Leaflets distributed in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor instruct all eligible men to report to recruitment offices within a week for “a general departure for war”.
Men over 30 are also required to register their names at checkpoints. Those who fail to volunteer are warned that they will be forcibly conscripted after one week. Another call was made during Friday prayers in the city yesterday. All recruits will be trained in Sharia, the Islamic legal code, and military tactics before being dispatched to the front lines.
The call reveals the pressure that Isis is under in the city as opponents move in from almost every direction. To the west of Deir Ezzor, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by western airstrikes and US special forces, are battling to take the city of Raqqa, Isis’s defacto capital in Syria since early 2014. A coalition of Arab tribal groups supported by American, British and Norwegian special forces are securing the eastern flank, along the Iraqi border.
President Assad’s forces and allies are also expanding their presence. The Syrian army has clung onto an enclave in Deir Ezzor that includes the military airport, and is advancing in the countryside to the west of the city.
Advertisement
Isis has lost more than 60 per cent of its territory in Iraq and Syria since January 2015, when it controlled an area in which more than ten million people lived.
It was driven out of the Iraqi city of Mosul, its largest urban stronghold, last month after an eight-month battle. Turkish-backed rebels have pushed the group out of its border territory in northwestern Syria, which had been the main route in for jihadists joining the self-proclaimed caliphate.
There are tensions between the groups battling Isis, however. Turkey classes the Syrian Kurdish militia the YPG — the main component of the forces in Raqqa — as a terrorist group because of its links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, which is fighting an insurgency in eastern Turkey. Assad is opposed to the presence of western special forces east of Deir Ezzor, and has moved to push them and their rebel allies out of their garrison at Al Tanf, on the Iraqi border.