The fall of the Islamic State group's last bastion in Syria was a victory for Washington's military plan, but comes as the US political strategy for the region seems to stumble.

Even as US-backed Kurdish fighters raised their flags over the shattered heart of Raqa, their brethren in Iraq were in retreat, abandoning oil-rich territory to Iraqi forces.

The power shift shows that, while US leadership has kept a coalition together long enough to defeat the jihadists, the region's political future is far from secure.

And experts warn that Washington's bitter foe Iran is poised to take advantage while US friends like the Iraqi Kurds retreat under pressure from Baghdad and Ankara.

The Iraqi city Kirkuk and its rich oil fields are now in the hands of Baghdad government forces backed by Shiite militias, which lean towards Tehran for guidance.

President Donald Trump says Washington will not "take sides," but it already appears too late for the Iraqi Kurds, once America's most reliable friends in the region.

Just over two weeks after Iraqi Kurdistan voted massively for full independence, they have lost the territory they won during the US-backed fight against the Islamic State group.

- 'It's over' -

And, without Kirkuk's oil, their statelet has no economic lifeline and will live on precariously in some kind of tense accommodation with its more powerful neighbors.

"It's over," sighs former US policy adviser David Pollock, a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who visited Kurdish leaders in Arbil late last month.

For Pollock the "medium term outcome is still up for grabs" but Iran has made "deliberate moves" and will gain influence as the Kurds fade back and Baghdad stands up.

Turkey and Iran have not made good on threats to close Kurdistan's borders, so it may survive as an Iraqi region within three provinces allotted it in the constitution.

"That's basically the deal. You've got to give up everything you got in the past three years, but we'll leave you alone. We'll let you live," Pollock told AFP.

Washington opposed the Kurdish region's independence referendum, pleading with Massud Barzani's regional government until the last minute to call it off.

"They were a bit late," said Linda Robinson, a senior military and foreign policy expert at the Rand Corporation with extensive field experience in the region.

For Robinson, it should have been clear much earlier to US officials that Barzani was bent on a referendum that Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi could never accept.

Facing a re-election fight next year, Abadi could not afford to face fellow Shiite opponents -- some of whom are hostile to Washington -- as the man who lost Kirkuk.

Now, Robinson and others argue, the United States must be "much more active" in trying to recover the situation by pushing for negotiations between Arbil and Baghdad.

- Ruined city -

But the political maneuvering may have shaken regional confidence in America as an ally.

Despite having relied on Kurdish fighters in the early stages of the battle against IS in Iraq, America decided that Baghdad was a better long term bet.

In the three years since Mosul fell to the jihadists the once ramshackle Iraqi forces have been rebuilt with US and Iranian support and now they are in the ascendant.

But in Syria Washington relies on another group of Kurds, the YPG militia of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which formed the backbone of the US-backed push on Raqa.

This unit, now part of the US-armed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is born from the same leftist movement as the PKK Kurdish separatists fighting in Turkey.

The IS group has been driven out of Raqa, but Kurdish SDF elements may not stay long in the mainly-Arab ruined city, and US ally Turkey opposes allowing them autonomy.

US planners hope a local council can maintain security in Raqa until a negotiated end to the Syrian civil war, but Bashar al-Assad's Iran-backed regime is gaining ground.

"The US used the Kurds against Daesh and left them on their own in Iraq. Maybe that will happen in Syria too," Pollock said, using the Arabic acronym for the IS group.

In Iraq, at least, Washington has the Iraqi government to fall back on to provide stability. "We don't really have that option in Syria," Pollock warned.

IS jihadists sliding from defeat to defeat
Beirut (AFP) Oct 17, 2017 - The Islamic State group seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014, but its self-declared caliphate has now been crushed and it has lost its de facto Syrian capital Raqa.

Here are some of the major defeats IS has suffered as it faced offensives on multiple fronts in its ferocious battle for survival.

Syria

KOBANE: The Kurdish town in northern Syria became an early symbol of the fight against IS when the jihadists were driven out by US-backed Kurdish forces in January 2015 after a battle of more than four months.

PALMYRA: This ancient desert city was seized by IS in May 2015 when the jihadists blew up UNESCO-listed Roman-era temples and looted ancient relics.

Syrian regime forces backed by allied militia and Russian warplanes ousted them in March 2016, but the extremists won back control by the end of that year before being expelled a second time in March 2017.

MANBIJ: IS seized this strategic town near the border with Turkey in 2014 and used it as a hub for moving jihadists and supplies to and from Europe.

It was recaptured in August 2016 after a two-month battle led by a coalition of Arab and Kurdish fighters backed by US air strikes.

DABIQ: Syrian rebels supported by Turkish warplanes and artillery captured Dabiq in October 2016. Under IS control since August 2014, the fight for the city was significant because of a prophecy that Christian and Muslim forces will battle there at the end of time.

RAQA: A US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters launched an operation to capture Raqa in November 2016. The battle for Raqa saw months of brutal urban warfare that levelled parts of the city as jets from a US-led coalition pounded the jihadists' dwindling foothold.

On October 17, 2017, the US-backed force announced it had "taken full control of Raqa" after storming the final few IS holdouts.

DEIR EZZOR: In early September 2017, Russian-backed Syrian forces broke a three-year IS siege of a government enclave in this eastern city before ousting the jihadists from much of the rest of it.

Regime forces have simultaneously pushed down the Euphrates valley towards the Iraqi border. On October 14, they captured the IS-held town of Mayadeen, some 45 kilometres (30 miles) downstream.

HAMA/HOMS: Government forces supported by Russian jets also pushed IS out of its last toehold in Hama province in early October. But the group still has a presence in neighbouring Homs province, where it has looked to stage a counterattack.

Iraq

TIKRIT: The hometown of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, north of Baghdad, fell to IS in June 2014. It was retaken in March 2015 by Iraqi troops, police and Shiite-dominated paramilitary forces.

SINJAR: Iraqi Kurdish forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes captured this northwestern town in November 2015, a year after the jihadists overran it killing or abducting into sex slavery thousands of its Yazidi Kurdish residents.

RAMADI/FALLUJAH: The capital of Anbar, Iraq's largest province, Ramadi was declared fully recaptured in February 2016. Neighbouring Fallujah, the first Iraqi city seized by jihadists in January 2014, was retaken in June 2016.

QAYYARAH: Iraqi forces backed by coalition aircraft retook Qayyarah in August 2016, providing Baghdad with a platform to move on Mosul, the country's second city 60 kilometres (40 miles) away.

MOSUL: Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory in Mosul on July 9 this year after a nine-month offensive that a senior US commander called "the most significant urban combat to take place since World War II".

TAL AFAR: The last major IS urban stronghold in northern Iraq was declared "liberated" on August 31.

HAWIJA: Iraqi forces backed by paramilitaries and US air power claimed the recapture of this besieged IS enclave on October 5 after a two-week offensive.

EUPHRATES VALLEY: Iraqi forces have also pushed up the Euphrates river to dislodge IS from a stretch adjoining the Syrian border in what the US has billed as the "final large fight" against the jihadists in the country.

After the recapture of the town of Anna, some 2,000 IS fighters are believed to be cornered in an area including the towns of Rawa and Al-Qaim.

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Once promised paradise, IS fighters end up in mass graves
Dhuluiyah, Iraq (AFP) Oct 15, 2017
The Islamic State group once drew recruits from near and far with promises of paradise but now bodies of jihadists lie in mass graves or at the mercy of wild dogs as its "caliphate" collapses. Flies buzz around human remains poking through the dusty earth in the Iraqi town of Dhuluiyah, 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of Baghdad, at a hastily-dug pit containing the bodies of dozens of IS figh ... read more

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