Raqqa

Protests were reported in Hama, Khan Sheikhoun, and Maharat al-Numan.

They were also reported in rural Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hasakah.

Residents blocked roads, burned tires, and in some areas, stopped crude oil tankers.

Parts of the M4 highway were disrupted.

So it's called Jabal Tariq or Gibraltar.

Raqqa, Gibraltar, Gibraltar.

That's where Jabal landed.

And the same thing's happening in Spain.

Yeah

... marched to Raqqa, and, uh, suddenly we have this international crisis on our hands.

But I believe, Daniel, the record w- may show, for those who are in the know or who have, uh, researched closely, I mean, what I'm telling you was relayed to me by the head of the PMUs, the commander who was killed with Qasem Soleimani in the same car, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who told m- me and a host of other international journalists at a press conference in October 2017 that the United States withdrew technical support to the Abrams tank division magically and mysteriously six weeks roughly before the appearance of ISIS.

And their stockades and arsenals ran empty at, at, during that exact same timeframe.

Because that's what happened.

You've got the informal rag-tag extremism from the Tora Bora mountains, from the Raqqa desert, etc.

And then you've got the mainstream extremism from 10 Downing Street, from the White House, in parties all over Europe and so forth.

And in the Arab heartlands.

So in the first place, it should be based on a political vision, and I'm taking these lessons from Rojava.

Rojava was successful in many ways, but wasn't successful also in many other ways, and one of them is that they failed to build alliances with different people inside Syria based on a shared political vision, and this is why Raqqa or other parts fell so fast that wasn't populated, uh, by Kurdish people.

So yeah, this is what I refer to.

Yes, I'm not denying the agency of the Kurdish actors and Kurdish political parties.

This time, the Syrian army went to Heseke, which is where traditionally most Kurds live.

And before they went, you know, the Kurds had aligned themselves with many Sunni Arabs who lived in Raqqa, who, you know, lived among them, and they were part of the military structure.

Shara sent two of his, um, uh, uh, cabinet members, who are from that region, to go and talk to the Sunnis and said, "Look, the old choice was between, um, the Kurds and Assad.

Now the choice is different.

So take a look at guard turnover, attempted breaks, detainee transfers, coalition access, and missing person counts.

and the tempo of ISIS attacks around Haska, Raqqa, and Azor.

I would say a sudden cluster would indicate a scene is being exploited there.

Four is the Kurdish schooling.

And in that context, I did two combat deployments under first under the Obama administration in 2016 to Baghdad, Iraq.

And next in 2017, under the first Trump administration outside of Raqqa, Syria, I deployed with traditional army units, the 101st Airborne in Baghdad, and then a special forces unit, the special forces group in Syria the next year.

And across those two deployments, I did well over a thousand, gave advice on well over a thousand airstrikes and other lethal engagements to those units.

After that, I became a federal prosecutor and I eventually landed at the firm I'm at now.

The world said, this has to be stopped as soon as possible.

U.S. military airstrikes still playing a key role in supporting the anti-ISIS coalition as U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds and Arab forces move closer to retaking Raqqa, the self-proclaimed ISIS capital.

There were

a lot of different groups that were fighting ISIS.