Nick Paton Walsh
Senior International Correspondent
NEAR RAQA — It is staggering to be so close to Daesh’s self-declared capital, Raqa, that you can hear it. Distant, low thuds on the horizon.
Kurdish YPG fighters are just 30km from Raqa. One of them, Bahoz, told me how — three days earlier — he had heard 14 air strikes slam into the near distance. Hours later he learned that France had announced the intensification of its air campaign.
“We will do our best to avenge Paris,” he said. He is one of a small number of Kurdish YPG fighters manning a vast network of trenches and outposts that form the front line for Raqa.
Daesh is in the villages nearby, but the terrain between the Kurds and the city is flat and open.
It is a stalemate of sorts. When, on Monday, Daesh moved against the nearby Kurdish-held town of Ayn Al-Isa, they were met with four coalition air strikes; but in spite of the fearsome air power now backing them up, it will be tough for the Kurds to move across the open ground toward the main Daesh headquarters.
For all the talk in Western capitals of this being a global existential fight, the fighters lack heavy weapons. One young man was bearing a Kalashnikov he had only inherited after the death of his friend eight months ago.
Foreign help would be extremely welcome, added one commander, Sarhad. “If French, Russian or American fighters come here to fight we will cooperate with them, as we are all fighting to clean the area of ISIS (Daesh) for humanity.”
There is some help amassing, however, in the form of the Syrian Democratic Forces. These are Kurds allied with Syrian Sunni Arab militias – moderate rebels who the US are training and equipping. The aim is to ensure that any ground force that attacks Raqa is a mix of Kurds and the Sunni Syrians who predominantly live in the city.
A full ground offensive does, in the dust of the desert, seem hugely optimistic, but the determination is there.
