The Whack-a-Mole Game in Syria: ISIS Creeping Closer to Damascus

April 10, 2015

Creeping toward Damascus

LIKE a game of whack-a-mole, when the American-led coalition against Islamic State (IS) strikes the jihadists in one place, they often pop up in another. That is what happened at the start of April, when IS lost the city of Tikrit in Iraq but took over the long-suffering Yarmouk camp in Syria. A Palestinian refugee camp, now a suburb of Damascus, the capital, Yarmouk has long been held by a mixture of Palestinian and Syrian rebels, and besieged by troops loyal to Syria’s president, Bashar Assad.

Until recently IS in Syria was confined mostly to the east of the country bordering Iraq. But over the past week its declaration of wilayat, or “provinces”, in other parts of Syria have seemed less like wishful thinking. Its men have inched westward from their Syrian headquarters in Raqqa towards Mr Assad’s turf. On March 31st they killed at least 46 residents of Mabuja, a village close to Hama. Then on April 1st the jihadists launched an offensive to take over Yarmouk, just 10 kilometres (6 miles) from central Damascus. Fighting continues, but IS is said to be in control of roughly four-fifths of the camp. As well as sending in its own fighters, IS found local recruits among angry young camp residents. They have been starved by the regime’s troops to the point of eating leaves, but also dislike some of the rebel groups that control Yarmouk for playing politics with the regime rather than confronting it.