One of the biggest achievements of President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office was the near-complete defeat of the Islamic State terror group and the destruction of its would-be “caliphate” across parts of Syria and Iraq.
Unfortunately, Trump may have to battle the Islamic State again in his second term as the terror group has been resurgent amid the chaos in Syria following the ousting of the Assad regime by Islamist rebels, Fox News reported.
The situation will likely prove more complicated this time around, however, as the rebel groups that defeated Assad are backed and directed by Turkey, a NATO member and nominal U.S. ally, which has its sights set on conquering the Kurdish fighters in Northern Syria that the U.S. is also closely allied with in the fight against the Islamic State remnants.
Fears grow of a resurgent Islamic State group in Syria
Concerns of a resurgent Islamic State in Syria have grown exponentially over the past few weeks following the fall of the Assad regime, particularly now that the main rebel forces backed by Turkey — radical Islamist Al-Qaeda offshoot Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) — have begun to shift their attention toward the U.S.-aligned and predominately Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has helped keep the Islamic State remnants in check.
Arguably the biggest worry is that, with the SDF preoccupied with defending itself against Turkish-backed attacks from HTS and SNA, or worse in retreat, thousands of imprisoned Islamic State fighters will escape or be released and join with their holdout jihadist comrades to reconstitute the regional and global threat they presented less than a decade ago. […]
— Read More: conservativeinstitute.org
