The Russian intervention in Syria has been, by most accounts, a success. And Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to do everything he can to keep it that way.

Beginning with an air campaign on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September 2015, Russian forces have not only stopped regime losses but also helped Damascus retake Aleppo city in December 2016.

Now with the opposition stronghold under government control and Assad’s hold on power no longer in question, Moscow has said it plans to reduce its presence in the country.

But while some Russian forces did initially depart in early January, Moscow is actually expanding its role in Syria. Russian officials announcedmajor expansions to Russian military bases in the country while the number of private contractors fighting on the Kremlin’s behalf also swelled.

Most interestingly, however, Putin deployed an unprecedented Russian weapon to Syria: several units of Chechen and Ingush commandos hailing from Russia’s restive North Caucasus region.

Until recently, regular Russian forces in Syria were largely limited to being a support crew for aircraft conducting strikes across the country. Apart from a few notable exceptions — artillery and special forces deployments in Hama province and military advisors alongside Syrian troops in Latakia — Moscow’s ground game in Syria has been minimal. But the ongoing deployment of the Chechen and Ingush brigades marks a strategic shift for the Kremlin: Russia now has its own elite ground personnel, drawn from its Sunni Muslim population, placed across Syria. This growing presence allows the Kremlin to have a greater role in shaping events on the ground as it digs in for the long term. Such forces could prove vital in curtailing any action taken by the Assad regime that would undermine Moscow’s wider interests in the Middle East while offering a highly effective method for the Kremlin to project power at a reduced political cost.

The exact role and size of the Kremlin’s new brigades are still uncertain. Initial open-source reports on the ground placed the number of Chechens deployed in December at around 500, while some estimates suggested a total of 300-400. The number of Ingush is reportedly slightly smaller, at roughly 300. Despite their designation as “military police,” the units are reportedly drawn from elite Spetnaz formations within the Chechen armed forces and are being employed in a role far beyond the simple rear-area guard duty that’s typical of such units: manning checkpoints, distributing aid, guarding bases, and even coordinating the defense of pro-government strongholds with regime forces.

“I think this represents Moscow’s grudging recognition that it’s stuck in a quagmire,” says Mark Galeotti, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague. In their hybrid civil-military role, capable of a wide range of operations, these brigades have become a go-to deployment for the Kremlin as it seeks to assert itself in various theaters abroad.

Chechen fighters have appeared alongside pro-separatist Russian “volunteers” in eastern Ukraine, and several battalions of Chechen servicemen also entered Georgia during its brief war with Russia in August 2008, occupying the town of Gori. At least some of the Chechen troops deployed in Syria have combat experience in eastern Ukraine, with the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reporting that one of the Chechen commanders is Apti Bolotkhanov, who spent substantial time fighting alongside pro-Russian forces in the Donbass.

But beyond their skill on the battlefield, the brigades are valuable to Moscow for other reasons. Russian society and leadership have proved extremely sensitive to casualties in Syria; the Kremlin has gone to extreme lengths to hide its losses. Casualties are often only publicly confirmed after observers find the tombstones of deceased soldiers in their hometown cemeteries.

Moscow’s official figures only account for 30dead in Syria — with the true figure likely much higher. Using nonethnic Russian special personnel might protect the Kremlin from a public backlash sparked by risingbattlefield casualties.

Losses incurred by the new, North Caucasian contingent are unlikely to trigger such a response. Russian society carries a deep-seated resentment toward natives of the region, in particular Chechens, after two wars in the 1990s and multiple terrorist attacks since.

Gregory Shvedov, the editor of the Caucasian Knot website and an expert on the North Caucasus, says popular disdain toward the region is a major factor for the deployment of these personnel. “Cynically speaking [it would be much easier for Putin] if the Chechens or other [troops] from the Caucasus would be killed in Syria … than those from other regions of Russia,” Shvedov notes.

Employing these fighters offers Moscow another major advantage. The natives of the North Caucasus are almost entirely Sunni Muslims, a faith they share with the majority of Syria’s population.

Since the first units arrived in December 2016, Moscow has sought to use their shared religion and appearance to its advantage. North Caucasian units have been documented using handbooks that include helpful suggestions for dealing with locals, such as the liberal use of the word “mukhabarat” (Syrian secret police) — implying detention and other nasty repercussions — should a request be met with resistance.

On a more cordial level, Chechen military police have been told to use shared Islamic words to build friendlier relations with the public, relying on various religious epithets to greet locals when on a patrol. The conversion of an ethnic Russian soldier to Sunni Islam, conducted by Chechnya’s grand mufti in front of Syrian onlookers in Aleppo, was another public relations maneuver utilizing the shared faith between Syrians and the servicemen.

While the deployment of the Caucasian brigades represents a new phase of Russia’s intervention in Syria, Moscow’s use of its Muslim-majority regions to reach out to the Middle East is not new.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has often acted as an interlocutorbetween Moscow and Sunni Arab states, making state visits on behalf of Putin and attracting Gulf investors to the Chechen capital.

Kadyrov has attempted to cast the Chechen capital, Grozny, as a center of international Sunni discussion on the state level, hosting numerous international forums where Chechen figures were the sole representatives of Russia’s 20 million Muslims. The aim of such conferences is generally to discredit Salafi Islam, the hard-line strain followed by most jihadis.

Syrian officials themselves have begun to engage closely with North Caucasian authorities. A delegation from Damascus including Syria’s minister of religious affairs visited the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala in March, discussing counterradicalization with Dagestani authorities and students.

In present circumstances, where it is rare for Syrian officials to make any foreign trip, let alone to a far-flung region of another country, the Makhachkala trip is significant in demonstrating the depth of Moscow’s use of its Sunni Muslim region as an outreach tool.

Most recently, the head of Damascus University announced in mid-April that his institution is opening a campus in Chechnya. Given these religious and cultural links, Moscow is banking on its new Muslim-majority brigades to prove more amenable to the Syrian populace than its ethnic Russian soldiers.

As Moscow’s footprint deepens, North Caucasian special forces have taken on increasingly important tasks across Syria, from guarding Syrian Kurdish units against Turkish incursions in Manbij to ensuring the success of negotiated rebel evacuations on the outskirts of Damascus. The growing role of the brigades demonstrates a desire on Russia’s part to wield greater influence over areas of Syria it deems crucial, particularly in the face of occasional tension with its Syrian and Iranian allies.

Although outward appearances suggest solidarity, Moscow has occasionally clashed with both Damascus and Tehran. Perhaps the most publicized example of this uneasy alliance came during the late stages of the Aleppo campaign. Iranian officials were reportedly incensed with the terms of a cease-fire brokered for the city by Russia and Turkey in December 2016 that were imposed without their input.

Iran later intentionally scuttled the deal, using its Iraqi and Syrian proxy forces to resume fighting in Aleppo. Not coincidentally, Moscow’s first Chechen soldiers arrived in Syria within weeks of that event.

The importance for Moscow in being able to control unexpected events on the ground was highlighted in late January when rumors began to spread that Assad had suffered a stroke. Adding fuel to the fire, some opposition figures claimed that the Syrian president had flown to Beirut for treatment; Damascus uncharacteristically denied the claims instead of ignoring them, fueling the speculation.

Amid the uncertainty, reports emerged that with Assad’s health failing, Iranian forces were posturing to install his brother Maher, who is rumored to not be among the Kremlin’s preferred list of successors. Within several days, Assad returned to Damascus and held a series of publicized meetings, calming the situation. But the incident highlighted the value for Moscow in having its own ground forces in the Syrian capital.

As part of its strategy to further control events on the ground in Syria, the Kremlin has also elected far more secretive means to expand its footprint. To bolster its regular forces, Moscow has employed a sizable private military contractor (PMC) that now has nearly four years of experience in the country.

First known as the Slavonic Corps, the group’s first mission in 2013 in Syria proved a major debacle, but after rebranding itself and gaining stronger Kremlin backing, the group redeployed to Syria as part of Moscow’s official intervention in 2015. Now called Wagner, the group is headed by Dmitry Utkin, a former intelligence officer in the GRU, Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, who first deployed the PMC in operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Obtaining precise statistics on the group is difficult, but the most accurate estimate by the Russian daily RBC, whose experts have broken numerous stories on the group, puts their number at 2,500. Russia’s regular forces in Syria total around 5,000, so when combined with its brigades from the North Caucasus and its PMCs, Moscow’s true ground strength in the country has swelled significantly.

The first stage of Moscow’s Caucasian adventure in Syria ended on March 27, as the deployed Chechen military police returned home after their first tour.

The soldiers were greeted by Kadyrov himself in Grozny and received several awards for their service.

But the Chechens’ initial success appears to have earned them another tour.

Less than a month after the return of the first military police battalion, Kadyrov announced on April 19 that a new unit of Chechens had just been deployed to Syria.

The Ingush battalion, meanwhile, continues to function in Damascus, having been spottedin the center of the capital throughout April. There are signs that the Ingush battalion is becoming more involved in front-line action with rebel forces in the Syrian capital. In Damascus’s Jobar district, the scene of heavy fighting in March, rebels reportedly intercepted communications indicating that some Ingush officers, as well as some remaining Chechens, were coordinating much of the pro-government defense of the area. The Ingush battalion will reportedly return home from its tour in May.

Another tour is yet to be announced for the Ingush battalion, but given the units’ early successes, expect to see Russia’s North Caucasian specialists appear in locations across Syria as the war grinds on. So far, the deployment of Chechen and Ingush forces has been very surgical, appearing only in areas and events Moscow considers critical to its aims in Syria. And while their role is unlikely to expand greatly anytime soon, the North Caucasian battalions will continue to serve as the tip of the spear in Moscow’s wider strategy to expand its influence in Syria.

Christian Borys, an independent Canadian journalist focused on Eastern Europe and based in Ukraine, contributed to this report. Follow him on Twitter at: @itsborys.

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MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's representative at the Syria talks says the "de-escalation zones" will be closed to military aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition.

Alexander Lavrentyev's comments Friday come a day after talks in Kazakhstan where Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed to establish the zones in Syria. Under the Russian plan, President Bashar Assad's air force would halt flights over the designated areas across the war-torn country.

Lavrentyev, whose remarks were carried by Russian news agencies, said U.S.-led coalition aircraft would be able to operate against the Islamic State group in specific areas, but the "de-escalation zones" were now closed to their flights.

The agreement is the latest attempt to reduce violence in the Arab country. But the full details of the proposal were not made available and prospects for its success appeared bleak.

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The “de-escalation zones” to be established in Syria will be closed to military aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition, the Russian official who signed the new agreement said Friday.

The Russian Defense Ministry says agreement on de-escalation zones in Syria comes into effect at midnight.

Alexander Lavrentyev spoke a day after he and officials from Turkey and Iran agreed to establish the zones, in the latest attempt to reduce violence in the Arab country.

Under the Russian plan, President Bashar Assad’s air force would halt flights over the designated areas across the war-torn country.

Lavrentyev suggested that all military aircraft, including Russian and Turkish, also were prohibited. The same was suggested in a U.N. statement, which said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “welcomes the commitments to ceasing the use of all weapons, particularly aerial assets.”

Full details of Thursday’s agreement have not yet been released. The Russian Defense Ministry said it would do so at a briefing later Friday.

Lavrentyev, whose remarks were carried by Russian news agencies, said “the operation of aviation in the de-escalation zones, especially of the forces of the international coalition, is absolutely not envisaged, either with notification or without. This question is closed.”

He said the U.S.-led coalition aircraft would still be able to operate against the Islamic State group in specific areas.

As the agreement was being signed in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, some members of the Syrian opposition delegation shouted in protest and walked out of the conference room.

The opposition was protesting Iran’s participation at the conference and role as a guarantor of the agreement, accusing it of fueling the sectarian nature of the conflict that has killed some 400,000 people and displaced half the country’s population.

The walkout and the comments underline the huge difficulties of implementing such a deal. The Syrian government has said that although it will abide by the agreement, it would continue fighting “terrorism” wherever it exists, parlance for most armed rebel groups fighting government troops.

A previous cease-fire agreement signed in Astana on Dec. 30 helped reduce overall violence for several weeks but eventually collapsed. Other attempts at a cease-fire in Syria have all ended in failure.

Sponsors of the deal hope that safe zones would bring relief for hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians and encourage refugees to return. But officials have expressed skepticism, stressing that safe zones have not had an encouraging track record.

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Syria is reportedly still making chemical weapons and Russia and Iran know about it, a western intelligence agency told the BBC,

The intelligence document obtained by the BBC says that President Bashar al-Assad's regime is producing chemical and biological weapons at three sites: Dummar and Barzeh, which are outside of Damascus, and in Masyaf, which is in Hama province.

The three sites are branches of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), which Assad claims is a civilian research institute. The document says that the Masyaf and Barzeh facilities specialize in installing chemical weapons on long-range missiles and artillery. 

The west has accused the regime of dropping sarin gas bombs on the town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, killing at least 87 people, many of them children. In response, the US launched a salvo of 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airbase on April 7. 

Three weeks after the Khan Sheikhoun bombing, the US also placed economic sanctions on 271 SSRC employees and accused the research center of developing non-conventional weapons. 

The document says that the chemical weapons are being made in areas closed off to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). 

The OPCW mentioned Barzeh and Dummar in its latest official progress update on its work to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons program, but said it was still awaiting lab reports from samples taken between Feb. 26 and March 5. 

The OPCW also told the BBC that it had asked Syrian authorities to "declare the relevant parts" of the SSRC sites, which is required by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international treaty prohibiting their use. While Syrian authorities have declared parts of those sites, the OPCW said it was "not yet sufficient." The OPCW also said it was "not yet in a position to confirm that the [Syrian] declaration is complete and accurate."

Assad denied responsibility, saying that the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack was "100% fabrication," despite mounting evidence to the contrary. 

He also claimed that Syria has not had chemical weapons since 2013, when it agreed to have them destroyed as part of a deal brokered by the US and Russia. Prior to the deal, hundreds of people were killed in a chemical attack near Damascus. 

But a 2016 OPCW report said that "Syria has not yet adequately explained the presence of indicators of four chemical weapons agents."

Russia, Turkey and Iran recently signed a deal to setup "de-escalation zones" in Syria — areas where certain air forces will not be allowed to fly — which starts Saturday morning at midnight. Although the full details have yet to be released, US warplanes will not be allowed in the zones. 

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AMMAN: When 37-year-old Abu Jilal came to Jordan in 2013, he thought he’d stay for a month or so until things calmed down in Syria and he could return home.

Born in Damascus, Abu Jilal moved around in Syria before the war—living in Homs and Daraa before settling back down in the Sayyeda Zeinab neighborhood in southern Damascus and working as a car mechanic.

Two years after the revolution began, fighting between the Syrian government and rebels reached Abu Jilal’s neighborhood.

“There were bombings, shootings—life became too hard for us in Damascus,” says Abu Jilal. “I feared for my family, so we left.”

Abu Jilal gathered his family and fled south, to Jordan. Today, he lives with his wife and two children in a parking garage beneath an apartment building in Zarqa, about 30km northeast of the Jordanian capital.

With the building owner’s permission, Abu Jilal converted an unused maintenance closet in the garage into a small, windowless, two-room apartment where his family has lived for the past three-and-a-half years.

“We don’t get sun often,” he says.

Abu Jilal’s neighborhood in Zarqa is built on the side of a hill overlooking the shops, businesses and garages of the largely industrial city. His street is on a steep incline and has no sidewalks, with pickup trucks frequently speeding down the hill into the city below.

“The kids will usually just play in the garage; it’s too dangerous for them to play alone on these busy streets,” Abu Jilal tells Syria Direct.

One week before he agreed to be interviewed by a reporter, five of his relatives—including two small children—were deported by the Jordanian government back to Syria. After that, Abu Jilal requested that his real name and face not be published.

“I don’t talk about Jordanian politics,” he tells Syria Direct. “If we were back in Syria, I’d have held my head held high and let you ask whatever you want.”

But in Jordan, he says, he has a family to protect. “I support my wife and kids, and I give money to my parents as well. If something happened to me, they’d all end up homeless.”

Abu Jilal keeps pictures from Syria on his smartphone to remember where he comes from. Some are pictures of his family, such as the last photos of his brother before he was killed by an artillery strike in the Sayyeda Zainab neighborhood of Damascus.

Between photos of his wedding day, his children and family gatherings are snapshots of life before the war. One video, shot from the top floor of Abu Jilal’s south Damascus apartment building in 2010, shows heavy snowfall. A snow-capped Jabal Qasioun rises in the background.

“We had plenty of problems back then, too, but it was a beautiful place to live,” he says.

He swipes to a picture of an old, beat-up pickup truck. “I used to use this for work, and I’d take it all over Syria,” he says, with a touch of pride in his voice.

“It’s gone now, like everything else.”

For Abu Jilal, life as one of Jordan’s 655,000 registered Syrian refugees is a daily struggle. Despite escaping the war that has left much of Syria in shambles, he and his family have not found comfort in exile.

Abu Jilal works several jobs—illegally, and without papers—in Zarqa to support his wife, two sons and parents. If caught by the local police, Abu Jilal could face fines, jail time or even deportation.

Syrian refugees have not been granted any form of nationality or permanent residence in Jordan. Instead, they can apply for temporary work papers—a complex, bureaucratic task that only permits them to work in limited fields such as agriculture and manufacturing.

A Syrian refugee—even with work papers—cannot enter and exit the country freely, nor obtain a driver’s license. For college-age Syrians, affording Jordan’s expensive university tuition is often beyond reach. For older Syrians such as Abu Jilal, the livelihood they spent decades building vanished when they fled their homes.

Syrians in Jordan say they feel frustrated and alienated—even from one another. After six years of violence in Syria, they can’t go home, nor can they build roots living as exiles in a foreign nation that restricts their movement and limits their privileges. The social ties that once kept their communities tightly knit have begun to collapse under the stress.

“In three years I haven’t made any Jordanian friends. If I see a relative, it’s usually by chance,” Abu Jilal tells Syria Direct.

“It makes living here even harder.”

‘Going underground’

Last year, Abu Jilal started working with the Refugee Utility Project (RUP), an American-registered NGO based in Zarqa that provides aid to needy Syrian families.

Well-versed in politics and well-traveled in Syria, Abu Jilal is an invaluable part of the organization’s leadership, says RUP co-founder Scott Mehan.

“He’s a smart man, but too humble to tell you,” says Mehan. “He knows how to liaise between his Jordanian colleagues and Syrian countrymen like none of us are able to.”

A California native, Mehan holds an M.A. in international development from Bethlehem University in the West Bank, and has worked with Syrians in Jordan for the past two years.

“Syrians here aren’t nearly as social or outgoing as they were back in Syria, and that’s something you’ll hear from both Jordanians and Syrians themselves,” Mehan tells Syria Direct.

“It’s almost to the point where people say ‘they’ve gone underground’—they try to avoid problems and stay out of the public eye as much as possible.”

While some—especially those who work illegally and face deportation if caught—“go underground” to avoid any issues with the Jordanian authorities, others feel humiliated about showing those around them the extent to which the war has taken a toll on their livelihoods.

Sometimes, Mehan will send one of his Syrian colleagues to visit a family and gift them tea and snacks before his team conducts a site visit. In Syrian culture, it’s considered shameful if the host can’t offer something for their visitors, and some of RUP’s families refuse to have guests unless they can offer drinks or a small meal.

“When we meet with a new family here and go into their dwelling, the first thing they say is, ‘Sorry, we used to have so much more than this,’ or right away tell us about what they did back in Syria—they try and sort of give us their resume,” Mehan says.

“They try to show that they aren’t poor people, but rather they’ve been forced into poverty,” Mehan explains. “Nobody wants to be a beggar; especially if you’re raised not to be one—especially if you had a life years ago and now you’re a welfare case through no fault of your own.”

The frustration is felt by all of his clients, Mehan tells Syria Direct. 

"Closing themselves off is probably a psychological reaction that comes with feeling humiliated.”

‘A hierarchy of needs’

Tasneem Zuheir, a Jordanian therapist who works with Syrian patients, tells Syria Direct that Syrians are too preoccupied securing their basic needs to worry about building and maintaining relationships with others.

“The refugee in Jordan focuses on bread and medicine—his worries end there,” she says. “It’s not a healthy social life.”

Typically, Syrians only have access to low-paid, under-the-table jobs and work long hours, Zuheir explains. “Putting food on the table is often not the duty of just the man; the mother—sometimes even the children—must work so family can survive.”

Musa al-Amoush, a Jordanian psychologist who conducts research on the Syrian population in Jordan, says that expatriate populations often remain tightly knit, even while displaced to other countries. This is not the case with Syrians in Jordan, says al-Amoush.

“In Jordan, Syrians often see one another as competitors for work and aid,” he says. “So, they distance themselves from one another.” 

‘Welcoming stages are over’

The influx of around 1.4 million registered and unregistered Syrian refugees in six years of war has put extra strain on Jordan’s economy. In early April, Jordanian Prime Minister Hani Mulki told reporters at a press conference in Brussels that the country has reached its “maximum capacity,” a direct result of the Syrian crisis.

With a 15 percent unemployment rate among Jordanians, a five percent increase from 2010, the labor market is saturated. In 2014, an estimated one-third of Jordanians lived below the poverty line—double the poverty rate in 2010, the World Bank reported.

Jordan’s economic woes mean that for Syrian refugees, “the welcoming stages are over,” Refugee Utility Project director Mehan says. “That was years ago at this point.”

While international NGOs and aid organizations, such as RUP, have accompanied the waves of Syrian refugees and set up operations in Jordan, those programs focus exclusively on refugee families, a fact that Mehan says leaves out Jordanians struggling with poverty in their own lives.

“Everyone is frustrated,” Mehan says. “There’s no sustainable solution in sight.”

For Syrian refugees, their biggest frustration, Mehan says, is “sitting around doing nothing. To do that for four weeks would be great.”

“But for four years? That’s a prison sentence.”

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian and U.S. chiefs of general staff agreed on Saturday to fully resume the implementation of a joint memorandum on preventing mid-air incidents over Syria, Russian news agencies quoted the Russian Defence Ministry as saying.

Russian General Valery Gerasimov and General Joseph Dunford of the United States discussed in a phone call the Syria de-escalation zones and agreed to continue working on additional measures aimed to avoid clashes in Syria.

The aircraft safety memorandum was signed in October 2015 after Russia began bombing targets in Syria to support Syrian government forces in their fight against Islamic State and other armed groups.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said in a statement that Dunford and Gerasimov "talked about the recent Astana agreement and affirmed their commitment to de-conflicting operations in Syria. Both also agreed to maintain regular contact."

An agreement reached at peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, and backed by Russia, Iran and Turkey, calls for "de-escalation zones" in major areas of conflict between Syrian government forces and rebel groups.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart and Warren Strobel in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese)

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COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday the United States would closely examine proposed de-escalation zones aimed at easing Syria's civil war but warned "the devil's in the details" and that much needed to be worked out.

The deal to create "de-escalation" zones in the major areas of conflict in western Syria took effect on Saturday.

The initiative was proposed by Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's most powerful ally, with the support of Turkey, which backs the opposition. Iran, Assad's other major ally, also backed it.

Political and armed opposition groups have rejected the proposal, saying Russia has been unwilling or unable to get Assad and his Iranian-backed militia allies to respect past ceasefires.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on Monday that his government would abide by the terms of the plan so long as rebels also observed it, although the Syrian government has also said it will continue to fight what it calls terrorist groups.

The U.S. State Department has voiced concerns about the deal, saying it was skeptical of Iran's involvement as a guarantor of the accord and Damascus's track record on previous agreements.

Mattis, in some of the most extensive remarks by the Trump administration so far, was cautious when asked about the deal's chances as he traveled to Copenhagen for talks with U.S. allies.

"All wars eventually come to an end and we've been looking for a long time how to bring this one to an end. So we’ll look at the proposal and see if it can work," he told reporters.

He added that basic details were still unclear, including who specifically would ensure the zones were "safe" and exactly which groups would be kept out of them.

Pressed as to whether he thought the de-escalation zones could help end the conflict, Mattis said: "The devil's always in the details, right? So we've got to look at the details."

The agreement said four de-escalation zones would be established in Syria for a period of six months, which could be extended if the three signatory countries agreed.

Weaponry and air strikes were not to be used in those zones by combatants, the text published by the Russian foreign ministry on Saturday said.

The agreement also includes creating conditions for humanitarian access, medical assistance and the return of displaced civilians to their homes.

The initiative is the most serious effort to reduce violence and shore up a ceasefire first declared in December since western states accused Damascus of a chemical attack in early April on rebel-held Idlib province.

Mattis noted that U.S. Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke about the zones with his Russian counterpart on Saturday.

"This subject was brought up, but there’s a lot of details to be worked out," Mattis said.

(Editing by Catherine Evans)

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Syrian Kurdish fighters are now armed with high-tech American weapons and equipment, but the Pentagon denies supplying it to them, Military Times reports.

According to the Times, some Kurds are now outfitted with M4 rifles, infrared targeting lasers, night-vision goggles, advanced optics, combat helmets, body armor and first-aid kits, digital camouflage uniforms, cold-weather clothing and chest rigs that hold ammunition. 

But the Pentagon said that it's prohibited from arming the Kurds, or YPG, with the weapons and equipment — the same gear used by American special forces.

The YPG have been closing in on the ISIS capital of Raqqa for months, and are trying to set up their own government in large parts of North Syria in which it already controls.

The problem is that Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group, an extension of the Kurdish PKK that has been fighting an insurgency and trying to establish its own state in Turkey for decades. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said Ankara was "seriously saddened" by footage showing American military vehicles operating close to the border with Syrian Kurdish fighters. Turkey has even carried out airstrikes on the YPG in recent weeks. 

So this new development might prove yet another obstacle along the diplomatic tightrope that the Trump administration must walk. 

The Pentagon admits supplying some of the Syrian Democratic Forces — a mixture of Arab and Kurdish fighters allied with the US in defeating ISIS — with AK-47s and other Russian weapons, but denied giving anything specifically to the YPG. 

US officials gave only "ambiguous responses" to Military Times when asked how much equipment was given to the YPG's commandos known as the Yekineyen Anti-terror, or YAT. But one defense official, who insisted on remaining anonymous because of the diplomatic ramifications, said the equipment was likely given to them through "other means by other sources."

Defense officials also said that the YPG could have obtained the weapons and equipment through the black market. 

While the Pentagon is not legally allowed to arm the YPG, the CIA and the US military's Joint Special Operations Command can, Seth Binder, a researcher at the Center for International Policy in Washington, told the Times. 

Read the full story here >

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DUBAI (Reuters) - Islamic State has issued a video showing the beheading of what it described as a Russian intelligence officer captured in Syria, the U.S.-based SITE monitoring website reported on Tuesday.

The Russian Defense Ministry and the FSB security service were not immediately available for comment.

The 12-minute Russian-language video, released on the day Russia celebrates the anniversary of the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany with military parades, showed the man dressed in a black jump suit kneeling in a desert scene and urging other Russian agents to surrender.

"This idiot believed the promises of his state not to abandon him if he was captured," he said before a bearded man beheaded him with a knife.

The authenticity of the recording and the identity of the man could not immediately be verified, nor was it clear when the killing occurred.

Russian forces are backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with rebels and militants seeking to oust him. The video showed scenes of what it described as the aftermath of Russian bombing raids in Syria.

The Russian defense ministry says about 30 Russian servicemen have been killed since the start of the Kremlin's operation there in September 2015. 

(Reporting by Sami Aboudi; editing by Ralph Boulton)

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VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — The Trump administration will provide heavier weapons to Syria’s Kurds as they and their allies move closer to an attack on the key Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The decision is meant to accelerate the Raqqa operation, but it clashes with the Turkish government’s view that the Syrian Kurdish group known as the YPG is an extension of Kurdish terrorist organization that operates in Turkey.

The U.S. sees the Kurds as its most effective battlefield partner against IS in northern and eastern Syria.

After lengthy deliberations, the administration approved plans to provide additional weaponry to the Kurds. A full list wasn’t immediately available, but officials had indicated in recent days that 120mm mortars, machines guns, ammunition and light armored vehicles were possibilities. They said the U.S. would not provide artillery or surface-to-air missiles.

The U.S. officials who disclosed the Trump administration decision weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the matter and demanded anonymity. They described no firm timeline, with the American intention to provide the new weapons to the Syrian Kurds as soon as possible.

A congressional aide said officials informed relevant members of Congress of the decision on Monday evening.

Senior U.S. officials including Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have met repeatedly with Turkish officials to try to work out an arrangement for the Raqqa assault that would be acceptable to Ankara. The Turks have insisted that the Syrian Kurds be excluded from that operation, but U.S. officials insisted there was no real alternative.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to visit President Donald Trump in Washington next week. An Erdogan adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, met on Tuesday with Thomas Shannon, the State Department No. 2 official.

And in Denmark earlier Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he had useful discussions with Turkey and described the two countries as working out differences over a U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurds in fighting Islamic State militants.

“That’s not to say we all walk into the room with exactly the same appreciation of the problem or the path forward,” Mattis told reporters after meeting with officials from more than a dozen nations also fighting IS. Basat Ozturk, a senior Turkish defense official, participated.

“We’re going to sort it out,” Mattis said. “We’ll figure out how we’re going to do it.”

Tensions escalated last month when Turkey conducted airstrikes on Kurdish bases in Syria and Iraq. The Turkish military said it killed at least 90 militants and wounded scores. The Kurdish group in Syria said 20 of its fighters and media activists were killed in the strike, which was followed by cross-border clashes.

The instability has concerned Washington, which fears it will slow the effort to retake Raqqa.

“We’ve been conducting military and diplomatic dialogue with the Turks and it was a very, very useful discussion today,” Mattis said at a press conference with Danish Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen.

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Russia’s plan to establish internationally patrolled safe zones in Syria appears to have lost some support from the Syrian government Monday.

told reporters the Syrian government rejects any role for international forces in patrolling potential safe zones. “We do not accept a role for the United Nations or international forces to monitor the agreement,” he declared.

The plan is a result of Russian-brokered peace talks in Kazakhstan, which are cosponsored by the Turkish and Iranian governments.

The plan called for the creation of four different safe zones inside Syria, which would be jointly controlled by the Syrian Arab Army and some rebel groups. The plan stipulates that all parties will not be allowed to use violence inside the zones including airstrikes.

Russia appeared to try and extend this ban on airstrikes to the United States, which did not sign the agreement. Russia’s special envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, emphatically declared “the work of aviation, especially the forces of the international coalition, is absolutely not envisaged. With notification or without notification, this issue is now closed.”

The U.S. rejected this agreement saying it “makes no sense” Friday. Secretary of Defense James Mattis expanded on the U.S. position saying several questions remain as to whether the U.S. will be party to the agreement. “It’s all in process right now,” Mattis said of the proposal.

He posed several questions that needed to be answered including “who is going to be ensuring they’re safe? Who is signing up for it? Who is specifically to be kept out of them? All these details are to be worked out and we’re engaged.”

“The devil is always in the details, right?” Mattis continued. “So we have to look at the details, see if we can work them out, see if we think they’re going to be effective.” But he added: “I think the international community is united in the sense of wanting to see ISIS put on its back foot.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is visiting Washington, D.C., Wednesday to visit with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a likely attempt to get U.S. approval. The state department previewed their conversation in a statement on the meeting saying the two intend “to discuss efforts to de-escalate violence, provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people, and set the stage for a political settlement of the conflict.”

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BERLIN (Reuters) - The bullet-riddled, bombed-out buildings of Aleppo may bear little resemblance to London's gleaming skyscrapers but the two cities once had much in common, something German artist Hans Hack has seized on to bring home the reality of war.

Before Syria's six-year civil war, Aleppo -- like London -- was its country's biggest city, as well as a key commercial hub. But, unlike teeming London, half of Aleppo is now effectively a ghost town.

To bring the suffering home to those in Europe, data visualizer Hack has used United Nations satellite data of Aleppo's destruction and created equivalent maps of London and Berlin.

"For me it's hard to understand in the news what it means, how strongly Aleppo was destroyed. I wanted to take this information and project it onto something I know personally that I can have some reference to. So I chose Berlin and London," hack told Reuters.

London suffered the same damage as Aleppo, entire neighborhoods would be wiped off the map -- in this alternative reality, Buckingham Palace, the Olympic stadium and the tower of London are all rubble.

It's an echo of what happened in Aleppo. When the Syrian army captured the city from rebels in December 2016, the area was in ruins.

What the map doesn't show are the human casualties. Since Syria's civil war began the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that Aleppo's population fell from 2 million to 1.3 million just after people started returning to the city.

A drop of similar proportions in London would see about 4.3 million people killed or displaced.

Feras al-Shehabi, chairman of the Aleppo Chamber of Industry, told Reuters in February that his city's situation was "very similar to Berlin in 1946 or Tokyo in 1946. So you have a destroyed city."

Still, Hack is reluctant to compare modern-day Aleppo with the cities ravaged in World War Two.

"I'm reluctant to draw parallels with history because I don't think you can directly compare the way people have suffered. But I can imagine those who remember what it was like then (World War Two) don't need a map like this," he said.

(Reporting by Sreerk Heinz, writing by Rosanna Philpott in London Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

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Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump will receive Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov at the White House Wednesday even as a political firestorm has put Moscow's alleged meddling in the US election back in the spotlight.

Lavrov's visit, confirmed by the White House late Tuesday, centers on a Russian proposal to de-escalate the violence in Syria's civil war.

But it comes just a day after the president stunned Washington by firing James Comey as director of the FBI amid an investigation into whether Trump campaign aides colluded with Russia to sway the November elections.

The sacking prompted angry Democrats to call for the Russia probe to be placed in the hands an independent prosecutor or commission.

The uproar seemed certain to complicate Lavrov's mission in search of US support for a Russian plan to create safe zones in Syria.

He first holds talks with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and then goes on to the White House to meet Trump. 

Lavrov, who last set foot in Washington in August 2013, would be the highest ranking Russian official to meet with Trump since he took office.

Relations between the two former Cold War foes soured under former president Barack Obama over Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its unyielding support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Since March 2011 the Syrian conflict has caused more than 320,000 deaths and forced millions of refugees to flee. Neither Washington, which backs the opposition, nor Moscow, a longtime ally of the Syrian regime, have managed to find to a solution to the conflict.

Since the end of Obama's presidency the United States has gradually withdrawn from the diplomatic process, leaving Russia to take the lead.

The US was not part of a deal by government backers Russia and Iran, and rebel supporter Turkey, signed last Thursday in the Kazakh capital Astana on establishing safe zones in Syria. 

'De-escalation zones'

The agreement calls for the creation of four "de-escalation zones" to shore up a ceasefire, ban flights and allow for deliveries of humanitarian aid.

Washington has given the deal a skeptical welcome, citing concerns about Iran's role as a guarantor even as it expressed hope the agreement could set the stage for a later settlement.

"We will look at the proposal, see if it can work," said Pentagon chief Jim Mattis on Monday.

Several ceasefires have been agreed on since Syria's conflict broke out in 2011, but they have failed to permanently stem the fighting.

Over the past six years Moscow and Washington have sparred multiple times over the conflict in Syria, especially concerning Assad's fate.

Donald Trump's White House takeover has not brought the former Cold War adversaries closer to seeing eye to eye -- and in early April the US even launched direct military action against the Syrian regime in retaliation for a chemical attack attributed to it.

Both countries have recently indicated that relations under Trump have never been so bad.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Monday that Moscow expected "above all coming to a common understanding on the need for de-escalation in Syria."

'Common position'

"If we manage to find... a common position with the United States on this issue, it will be the most important result," he said, quoted by the state news agency Interfax.

The US State Department said that "on Syria, the secretary intends to discuss efforts to de-escalate violence, provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people, and set the stage for a political settlement of the conflict."

Regarding Ukraine, the State Department also said "the sides will discuss the need to stop the violence in eastern Ukraine and resolve the conflict through the full implementation of the Minsk agreements."

After talks Wednesday the two diplomats will again meet Thursday in Fairbanks, Alaska for the Arctic Council meeting, an intergovernmental forum for cooperation on the environment, oil and mining, shipping, fisheries and tourism. It brings together the eight countries bordering the Arctic Ocean -- Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, the US, Iceland, Sweden and Finland.

Tillerson and Lavrov's meeting in Alaska comes 150 years after Washington purchased the US state from Moscow. 

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to mock reporters Wednesday morning after they asked about the news that FBI Director James Comey had been fired by President Donald Trump the previous day.

"Was he fired?" Lavrov said in apparent feigned shock after NBC News' Andrea Mitchell asked whether Comey's firing would cast a shadow over Lavrov's talks with the Trump administration Wednesday.

"You are kidding — you are kidding," he said, rolling his eyes.

Lavrov had briefly greeted journalists alongside Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday morning. The men shook hands in front of the cameras as reporters tried to ask questions.

"I want to welcome Foreign Minister Lavrov to the State Department and express my appreciation for making the trip to Washington so that we can continue our dialogue and our exchange of views that began in Moscow," Tillerson said, before ushering Lavrov away.

Lavrov is set to meet with Trump on Wednesday morning in the Oval Office to discuss the creation of "de-escalation zones" inside Syria.

Watch the full clip below:

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The US military's special operations forces (SOF) are increasingly returning to their roots of advising foreign militaries to fight for them — and it seems to be paying dividends in Iraq and Syria.

The campaign against ISIS is being fought less by US troops on the front lines, but instead is being conducted "by, with, and through" local forces, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of CENTCOM, told Congress. 

There have been three big changes in how SOF has been used against ISIS, and if successful, these new tactics might be used in future conflicts, Linda Robinson, a senior analyst with RAND, writes at The Cipher Brief.

As Robinson notes, special ops are on the ground in ideal numbers, they accompany and are dispersed with local forces at the front, and they provide crucial fire support to local forces.

In the late 1940s, SOF were seen to have little purpose in a new world where atomic weapons and strategic bombers reigned. But that changed with the emergence of the Cold War, where proxy wars and insurgencies became more prevalent.

One of the first examples of the new way SOF were used was in the 1950s when the 10th Special Forces Group was tasked with establishing guerrilla forces behind Communist lines in eastern Europe. "That was the moment Special Operations warriors point to as their birthday," Dwight John Zimmerman and John D. Gresham write in "Beyond Hell and Back: How America's Special Operations Force Became The Best Fighting Force In The World." 

After 9/11, however, SOF began to be used in more "precision, highly kinetic strike forces enabled by technology and linked through a digitally networked battlefield." But by and large, the new counter-terrorism strategy in Iraq and Syria may prove to be something of a reset to SOF's former tactics. 

The number of SOF in Iraq and Syria has now reached about 10,000, giving them the means to provide "meaningful support to the variety of indigenous forces fighting ISIS," Robinson writes. 

Furthermore, SOF now accompany local forces to secure locations near the front lines. They no longer give tactical advice from distant headquarters, where they had to analyze operations through "the soda-straw perspective of drone feeds," Robinson says.

This allows them to see local forces in action, and therefore give better advice. 

For example, when SOF advisers provided assistance that galvanized to the 16th Iraq army division in East Mosul, they provided assistance that galvanized the unit. 

Over the last year, SOF has increasingly provided more fire support. US Apache helicopters were first used in June 2016 to capture Qayyarah, which is now a staging base for coalition forces' assault on Mosul. This base now has an ICU, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems set up to support the assault. 

US howitzers are also set up at a base in Hamman al-Alil, providing support to Iraqi CTS and Federal Police advancing into West Mosul. 

This support has been even more helpful to Syrian Democratic Forces, an irregular force that is not heavily armed but nevertheless is the main force fighting ISIS in Syria. 

Members of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit have also moved into Syria with 155mm howitzers to assault Raqqa. It was reported in March that US Marines near Raqqa "had killed hundreds of enemy fighters and destroyed more than 200 fortifications." One of the canons they used in these strikes was the M-777 Howitzer, which fires 155mm shells and has a range of up to 25 miles. 

SOF has also recently helped position 500 local forces near the strategic Tabqah Dam, which was eventually wrested from ISIS. 

However, the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is far from over. ISIS has dug bunkers, trenches and tunnels, and laced Raqqa with mines, while in western Mosul, there are still more than 400,000 civilians caught in the middle of heavy fighting.

But if the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria succeeds, "this new way of combining forces and using SOF to direct a ground war, could become a model for conducting low- to mid-level combat."

Check out the full article at The Cipher Brief >

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Geneva (AFP) - The United Nations said Thursday it was in talks with Iran, Russia and Turkey over who should control proposed safe zones in Syria, a key question after Damascus rejected any international monitors. 

The UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura and humanitarian pointman Jan Egeland both said it was premature to rule out any scenario. 

"I met with three Astana signatories," Egeland told reporters, referring to Kazakhstan's capital where the safe zones pact was signed by Russia and Iran, which back the Syrian regime, and opposition supporter Turkey.  

"What they say is that we now sit down and agree, they will agree with our input on whom should be controlling security (and) the monitoring," he said. 

Forces from the three countries were one option for monitoring, as were "third parties", he added. 

De Mistura, speaking at the same press conference, said the UN had "a lot of experience" when it comes to such monitoring but declined to discuss specifics on implementing the deal. 

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has rejected any UN role in monitoring the designated areas.

The May 4 agreement calls for the creation of four "de-escalation zones" to shore up a ceasefire, ban flights and allow for deliveries of humanitarian aid.

"We do have a million questions and concerns, but I think that we don't have the luxury that some have of this distant cynicism of saying it will fail," Egeland said. 

"We need it to succeed", he added.  

The agreement has not been signed by the Syrian government or the opposition.

Japan and Sweden have requested a UN Security Council meeting, likely to be held this week, to obtain specific details on how the zones will work.  

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With the Trump administration's decision to supply Syria's Kurdish fighters with heavier weapons, U.S. troops inside Syria are in the crossfire between Turkey, a powerful NATO ally, and the Kurdish fighters that Ankara deems as terrorists.

In only a few months under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has almost doubled the number of troops in northern Syria, taking a highly visible role that also risks a backlash from militants such as the Islamic State group and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, and even pro-Turkey Syrian fighters angered by the U.S. move to arm the Kurds.

Tuesday's decision to arm the Kurds is a public rebuff to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a week before he meets Trump in Washington. For months, Erdogan has been trying to convince the U.S. to cut off its support for the Kurds and partner instead with Turkey-backed fighters to liberate the Islamic State group stronghold of Raqqa.

The dispute could ignite more fighting between Turkey and the Kurds as they gear up for a major operation to retake the city, with U.S. troops smack in the middle.

The growing U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war stands in sharp contrast to the caution adopted by former President Barack Obama and has alarmed officials in Damascus and its backers in Tehran.

Last month, Trump gave orders to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at an air base in central Syria in response to a devastating chemical weapons attack blamed on Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces. It was the first time the U.S. has attacked Syrian forces in the six-year civil war.

Although U.S. officials have said repeatedly since then that the war against the Islamic State group in Syria remains the priority, that strike — coupled with the buildup of forces in the north — has raised speculation of longer term U.S. ambitions in Syria and concerns about a more permanent project.

Under Trump, the Pentagon has made quiet, incremental additions to troop levels in Syria, adding hundreds of Marines to provide artillery support and sending more advisers to work with Kurdish units ahead of the fight for Raqqa.

The official limit on U.S. troops has remained at 503 since shortly before Obama left office, but U.S. commanders this year have added hundreds of troops, including a Marine artillery unit, on what they call a temporary basis, raising the total to about 900.

These have taken on a more visible role, often aimed at keeping Turkey and the Kurds from battling each other and focused instead on the fight against IS.

On April 30, U.S. forces accompanied by Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) began patrols along the Turkey-Syria border, acting as a buffer after Turkish airstrikes in the area killed 20 Kurdish fighters. The spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against IS, Col. John Dorrian, said U.S. troops were about 6 miles from the strikes and put American forces at risk.

Images of U.S. troops in armored personnel carriers with American flags and maneuvering down rural roads in northern Syria spread quickly on social media, triggering alarm in a region where there are political sensitivities about the footprint of U.S. troops and fears about occupation forces.

In a crowded battlefield like Syria, the growing U.S. presence brings with it a greater risk of confrontation with competing players.

U.S. special operations forces are embedded with the Kurdish-led fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces as they prepare for battle around Raqqa.

"There is a concern that American forces in Syria can be targeted because there are many who are not happy about their presence," said Mutlu Civiroglu, a Washington-based Kurdish affairs analyst. "Although American forces are well-protected by the Kurds, still such possibly always exists."

Earlier this month, Islamic State group militants staged a surprise attack at a crossing frequently used by Iraqi and Syrian civilians seeking safety in northeastern Syria, killing nearly 40 people, mostly civilians.

The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said militants struck four YPG positions in Hasakeh province in northeastern Syria. Ominously, it added that two of the targeted locations were "suspected of hosting U.S. troops."

Also concerned about the growing U.S. presence is northern Syria is Iran, which has bankrolled the presence of thousands of Shiite militiamen in Syria to bolster Assad's military and seeks to secure a land route from Beirut to Tehran that goes through Damascus and Baghdad.

Iran views the prospect of permanent U.S. bases in Syria with a high degree of unease, reflected most recently by comments by officials of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group.

Earlier this month, Sheikh Ali Daamoush, a senior Hezbollah official, warned the U.S. against "trying to regain a presence in the region" via direct intervention in Syria and Iraq, and setting up bases there.

He said the "Axis of Resistance"— a reference to an alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah — "will not allow Syria to fall in the hands of America and Israel."

Although there is no immediate danger in the U.S. presence and the alliances that Washington has formed there, Iran and Syria are concerned about the growing American sphere of influence and what it could mean for Iranian dominance in Syria and Iraq in the long term, according to Hassan Hassan, a Syria expert.

"That is why we are seeing more pro-Iranian militias being built in or for northern and eastern Syria in recent months," he added.

"For now, things look tolerable for Iran, but it is not clear what the U.S. could do with their buildup in that region. It can go different ways, depending on the U.S. thinking down the road."

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ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite paramilitaries launched an offensive on Friday to drive Islamic State from a desert region near the border with Syria as security forces fought the militants in the city of Mosul.

Spokesman Karim al-Nouri said the target of the operation was the Qairawan and Baaj areas about 100 km west of Mosul, where U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are advancing in their campaign to rout the militants from city.

Seven months into the Mosul campaign, Islamic State has been driven from all but a handful of districts in the city's western half including the Old City, where it is using hundreds of thousands of civilians as human shields.

The paramilitaries have been kept on the sidelines of the battle for the city of Mosul itself, but have captured a vast, thinly populated area to the southwest, cutting Islamic State supply routes to Syria.

Islamic State is losing territory and on the retreat in both Iraq and Syria.

The Iraqi military said in a statement its air force was supporting the operation by the paramilitary groups known collectively as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

Unlike regular Iraqi security forces, the PMF does not receive support from the U.S.-led coalition, which is wary of Iran's influence over the most powerful factions within the body.

Officially answerable to the government in Baghdad, the PMF were formed when Islamic State overran around one-third of Iraq including Mosul nearly three years ago and Iraqi security forces disintegrated.

Nouri said PMF control over the border would assist Syrian government forces when they push toward the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa.

On Friday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said their assault on Raqqa, the militants' biggest urban stronghold, would begin soon and that they were awaiting weapons including armored vehicles from the U.S.-led coalition

The PMF is not officially involved in Syria, but tens of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ite militiamen are fighting there on behalf of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which is backed by Iran.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles; editing by Richard Lough)

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US-backed forces got ISIS fighters to surrender a Syrian town near Raqqa, and, surprisingly, it's not the first time.

The Syrian Arab Coalition and Syrian Democratic Forces "completed the liberation of the Tabqah Dam, as well as the city of Tabqah and its nearby airfield," on Wednesday, according to a US Central Command statement.

The US-backed forces put pressure on ISIS from each flank, cleared the final neighborhoods of the city, and isolated Tabqah Dam.

The SAC and SDF then forced the remaining 70 ISIS fighters to dismantle all IEDs around the strategically located dam and surrender their heavy weapons.

They also agreed to ISIS' withdrawal to protect civilians and preserve the Tabqah dam, which thousands of Syrians rely on for water, agriculture, and electricity.

But "once the ISIS fighters withdrew from the town, [coalition forces] struck them with air strikes," Marine Maj. Adrian Rankne-Galloway, a spokesman for Central Command, told Business Insider. "We feel these actions were within the law of armed conflict."

Rankne-Galloway could not say how many ISIS fighters were killed in those strikes, but according to another Central Command press statement, "two strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed two fighting positions" on Wednesday.

This is also not the first such capitulation by ISIS fighters. "Partner forces have negotiated limited withdrawals or surrenders like this before," Rankne-Galloway said. ISIS fighters agreed to withdraw from the Syrian city of Manbij last summer after battling the SDF for three months.

After Tabqah was liberated on Thursday, children and YPG fighters — a Kurdish force that is part of the SDF — could be seen dancing in the streets.

The liberation of Tabqah, which began on March 22, isolates ISIS' self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa on three sides, but Ranke-Galloway would not speculate about how long it would take to fully isolate the ISIS stronghold.

SDF commander Rojda Felat, however, told AFP in Tabqah that "the attack on Raqqa will take place in the beginning of the summer," most likely June.

The White House also announced this week that the US would begin supplying the YPG with heavier weapons. This move has angered Turkey, which views the YPG as a terrorist organization.

The weapons, which will be delivered to the YPG soon, include small arms, ammunition, machine guns, armored vehicles, and bulldozers.

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The U.N. envoy for Syria says a government delegation attending peace talks in Geneva is "here to work," sidestepping comments by President Bashar Assad that the U.N.-mediated peace talks are just for show.

Staffan de Mistura spoke to reporters a day before Tuesday's start to what's expected to be about four days of indirect talks between government and opposition envoys, marking the sixth round that he has mediated since early last year.

The envoy said he wouldn't comment on Assad's remarks, aired by Belarus ONT television on Thursday. The Syrian leader said "nothing substantial" would come from the talks and that they were "merely a meeting for the media."

The delegations aren't expected to meet face-to-face, and de Mistura has called for reduced media involvement to foster a more "businesslike" atmosphere.

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