The Syrian army and its allied forces have announced the capture of the last major ISIS stronghold of Abu Kamal after a year-long blockade. The recaptured area is located in the Euphrates valley on the border with Iraq, and the news was confirmed through a video published on a YouTube account affiliated with the pro-government forces.
The news is a welcome victory for Syria which has been struggling to liberate its cities and towns from the Daesh. On November 3, the Russian Defense Ministry said IS-controlled areas in Syria had shrunk to less than 5 percent of the country’s territory. Earlier, the Russian Defense Minister, Sergey Shoigu, said Islamic State controlled “more than 70 percent of Syrian territory” before Russian Air Forces started its operation in the Middle Eastern country.
The recapture of the majority of ISIS territory means that the caliphate main political agenda has been demolished seeing as the terrorists cannot create and control and Islamic caliphate without territory under their control.
While the territories have been recaptured from the militants, experts maintain that the war against terrorism is at a critical time as they those fighting them ought to target the members to ensure that the global threat they previously paused is eliminated. Officials have maintained that now the focus is on affiliate and splinter groups of ISIS scattered across the globe to ultimately defeat the terror threat posed.
