Iscrpan izvjestaj Brata Mekgurka o zbivanjima u Raki!
SDF nikada nije izgubio bitku!
In Syria, when it comes to the campaign against ISIS, we are working primarily with the Syrian Democratic Forces. That’s a force of now about 50,000 – it’s about half Arab, half Kurd. They also have never lost a battle. Not only have they never lost a battle, the training courses – and I’ve been to Syria about six times now, three times over the past six months – our training courses on the ground in Syria are full.
2000 zombija ostalo u Raki!
We estimate there’s about 2,000 ISIS fighters left in Raqqa. I’m always hesitant to give numbers like that, because it’s – this is an inexact science. We think there’s about 2,000 ISIS fighters left in Raqqa, and they will – they most likely will die in Raqqa.
U Raki bi trebali ostati, ukopani!
Every foreign fighter that made its way into Syria and Iraq, we want to make sure that they can never make their way out of Syria and Iraq.
Desant na Tabku!
So – and I saw – I happened to see this up close because I was in Syria in March, in the town of Ayn Issa, which is there on the map just north of Raqqa. And we met with some of the local commanders who were sensing what was happening with ISIS, and they told our military commander, General Steve Townsend, who’s done an extraordinary job over the last year, that they sense there’s an opportunity to catch ISIS by surprise in the city of Tabqa and at the Tabqa Dam, and there’s an airfield there called the Tabqa Airport. And they said, all we need is we need you to help us get across this body of water – it’s about an 8-kilometer body of water – at night, drop us behind ISIS lines, and then we can take it from there, basically catching ISIS by surprise and seizing these three very strategic areas.
This was very important to close the noose on ISIS because ISIS was using this area to get personnel and equipment in and out of Raqqa. It was pretty audacious. It required us to put these fighters on helicopters, crossing about eight kilometers of water at night. These fighters are incredibly brave. Most of them have never been on a helicopter. It was also very complicated because it was hard to tell exactly what was on the other side of the water because we had never really been that far south.
General Townsend and our commanders approved this operation really within a period of days. It launched. It took about six weeks to finish, but the forces that we were talking about were right. They actually know the local area. They caught ISIS by surprise. They were able to cease Tabqa, Tabqa Dam, and the airport, and we really saw ISIS go into a bit of a reeling effect after that. We saw a lot of their fighters trying to flee and their defenses in Raqqa begin to degrade a little bit. So it was a really critical operation, and it was done because authority's been delegated down to seize opportunities like that. It was a really important moment in this overall campaign.
Bret Mekgurk dalje kaze da su sa Rusima dogovorili liniju razgranicenja, da svakodnevno kontaktiraju sa Rusima kako bi izbjegli eventualne konfliktne situacije. Bret je rekao da su rezimski avion oborili jer je povrijedio zracni prostor SDF.
Rekao je da su osigurali sve sto je potrebno izbjeglicama iz Rake.
Rekao je da ce sudjelovati u obnovi Rake al' da nece nametati svoja rjesenja, tj. pomoci ce oko infrastukture i sl., ali ce grad voditi lokalni ljudi. Bret kaze da ih lokalci mole da preuzmu sve na sebe, ali on kaze da to nece uciniti.
Americka vojska je vec zavrsila obuku za 850 vojnika koji ce brinuti o sigurnosti Rake. Bret je najavio buducu saradnju sa lokalnim vijecem grada Rake.
I rekao je dosta toga...
https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/08/273198.htm
