ISIS retakes strategic Syrian city, shows disturbing resilience

Islamic State militants recaptured a major city on the Syria-Turkey border earlier this week, just days after losing it to rebel forces. The latest battle for territory highlights the jihadist group’s resilience even in the face of recent setbacks.

Rebel forces with the Free Syrian Army claimed the strategic border city of al-Rai last week, in a move celebrated as the first significant Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) retreat since May.

“This is the beginning of the end of Daesh. … It’s a victory for the Free Syrian Army,” said rebel fighter Abu Abdullah, who participated in the assault against ISIS.

But four days later, ISIS bounced back, staging a successful counterattack to reclaim al-Rai and sweeping up six more villages along with it. Experts say the recapture is strategically important because the city sits along the road to the ISIS stronghold in Aleppo province and serves as a passageway for supplies and recruits.

“The fact that the rebels could not hold on to al-Rai shows that it is impossible to maintain and advance against ISIS without adequate air cover,” Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, told the AFP news agency.

In recent weeks, ISIS has lost vast swaths of land in Iraq and Syria, as well as leaders—U.S. drone strikes killed several key jihadists. But experts says these setbacks don’t necessarily signal the group’s demise.

“While it’s true that ISIS controls shrinking territory in Iraq and Syria, they’re growing like a cancer in places like Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in Nigeria, where the Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to ISIS,” said James Phillips, Middle East expert with the Heritage Foundation. “On the world stage, ISIS is not shrinking but expanding.”

Though ISIS anchors future hope in building a physical caliphate, the tentacles of terrorist philosophy reach deeper.

“ISIS poses a long-term ideological threat,” Phillips added. “They promise heaven on earth, they attract the alienated and marginalized. This is more than just a territorial struggle.”

But Middle East experts emphasize that for jihadist militants, territory does matter.

“If ISIS is losing turf, then they are losing taxation opportunity, and they are losing oil,” said Clinton Watts, senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Islamic State fighters aren’t a bunch of wild yahoo terrorists, there is a great deal of strategy involved in how they stage attacks.”

The recapture of al-Rai comes amid ongoing political turmoil in Syria. National parliamentary elections and the latest round of Geneva-hosted peace talks are both slated for this week, but chances of a breakthrough are slim. Distrust and disagreement among Syria’s warring factions continue to seethe. Elections are expected to be a formality, rubber-stamping President Bashar al-Assad’s loyalists, and balloting will only occur in government-controlled regions.

Now in its sixth year, Syria’s civil war has killed 250,000, displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million, and triggered the flight of at least 4 million.

“The civilian population inside Syria is hurting hard,” Phillips said. “There has been mass carnage at the hands of the Assad regime, and there is much blood under the bridge.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.