i meant. we will use all our strength and all of our fight to bring about change in this country i invite you to go on this path with us there is much to do to establish a new style new culture of politics in this country. now the final assault is underway to root out i saw fighters still present in pockets of the northern syrian city of raka u.s. backed syrian forces saying that almost all of the civilians in the city along with about two hundred seventy five i still fighters have left and this was all part of a deal that was brokered by tribal leaders on saturday there are between two and three hundred mostly foreign fighters still inside the city. and iraq's kurdish leadership has rejected baghdad's demand that it cancels the outcome of last month's secession referendum as a precondition for talks to resolve the dispute iraqi president five musselman iraqi kurdish president massoud barzani of to discuss the recent military standoff

between their forces in the disputed city of cook. with all of our top stories that will be more on everything we're covering and the news hour i'll be back with that in about twenty five minutes time the inside story is next. syrian democratic forces launch a major operation against isis self-proclaimed the capital u.s. backed rebels say it's the final push for a so what's next for ice so for syria and for thousands of civilians trapped in the conflict this is inside story.

hello welcome to the show i'm sam is a than now when i saw took control of iraq in two thousand and fourteen the syrian city became the first to fall under the armed groups full control i saw fighters went on a rampage of killings and abuses they also use the city to plan attacks overseas well now three years later the u.s. backed syrian democratic forces of launch what they say is the final assault on iraq now it's not clear how many eisel fighters are still inside the city and then as the spokesman says some myself fighters appear to be withdrawing using civilians as human shields others have been allowed to leave after a deal was brokered by tribal leaders on saturday and that deal also called for the

evacuation of dozens of civilians who'd been under control. this powerful moment was captured on video as some civilians realized there were no longer trapped in being held by the armed groups. let's bring our guests into the show now and we have joining us from beirut in lebanon sami now the director of the levant institute for strategic affairs joining us on skype from a man sanyo of course save the children's syria director and from edward so in italy joshua landis director of the center for middle east studies at the university of oklahoma welcome to you all if i could start with sami in beirut so local officials as you may have heard in iraq a civil counsel talk about a deal an evacuation deal that allows some members at least of eisel to leave does this mean we're not going to have that final bloody eisel standoff in iraq or. i

mean this deed is very similar to what happened in one month ago where the isis fighters have have been evacuated through air conditioned buses going all through there is or so this i mean put into question why this deal now and why couldn't it be possible before saving all this destructions and death tolls all the more that among the international fighters that has been that have been evacuated they where those responsible of bias and responsible of terrorist. acts the second point i think were worth mentioning why i mean it's the final destination there is or that seems to be the nexus of or the pope the point of all. when it comes to. war

because it's about who will be controlling. iraqi borders who will be in charge of uprooting in his last editor the being there is or so what is as stake is a very important maybe this. is the last battle or the one before the last battle and that second remark i think what kind of strategy will. resort to after up to now hang on sam because you know you have nicely jumped ahead to a whole bunch of questions which we do want to get into but let's take them on a time and joshua if we can back up one more what kind of assuming here that there are so. to sort of last i guess you could say urban areas for eisold that's where they're going is that the case. we believe so you know it's not clear exactly

where they're hiding out of course the big prize is can the fact that it is and. and that that people are guessing where he might be and so we'll see the towns are falling fairly quickly we saw in iraq the last town that fell almost a thousand two hundred fighters gave up and increasingly we're seeing these deals with isis fighters who are beginning to see that there is no valor enough in dying on the battlefield and are trying to escape probably getting out of syria altogether once they've left a place like iraq i don't think they're going to make a last stand in there as or any place else they're going to try to find a way to slip away in the night in order to fight again the does this mean that the organization is being dismembered at this point joshua ole simply regrouping elsewhere where we don't know the american commanders are saying that it's in chaos

that it's falling apart the command structure seems to be falling apart and we're seeing fighters taking decisions to leave on their own without without communication with central command it's very possible their communications have been cut off with kayla that daddy and that there is much greater decision being made in the provinces so we don't really know what the state is and how organized that is but one would have meant that under this intense bombardment that is being subjected to broadly in iraq but in syria not only from the kurdish forces allied with the united states but also from the syrian army as well as the iraqi army that . things must be getting pretty chaotic so near joshua mention that the intense bombardment we shouldn't forget this is still a city with a lot of civilians though now human rights groups were very critical of obviously

eisel tactics but also some of the coalition tactics when it came to the operation to take mosul from the group lot of criticism about unnecessary civilian deaths on the part or caused by the coalition always seeing the coalition learn from that or are we still seeing unnecessary suffering caused by the coalition members. i think what you see is families and especially the children coming out of rocca is that they've been hit with two kinds two different events which have really had a significant impact on their well being first of all they've been living under isis control since early twenty fourteen so the children we met are really just numb to violence right now they described witnessing the ending they describe seeing bodies lying around on the ground for weeks now and have been to school in three years they can't read or write it's hard for them to imagine a productive future when you talk to children they just showed

a sense of really being now but then on top of that because of the intense bombardment that's happening you see children as well that are just completely terrified of airplanes and bombs falling they have nightmares during the night they can't sleep when they do try to sleep they hear the sounds of people screaming so these children have just been through so much for the last four years but then the most more recent bombing has definitely had an impact on them as well or a josh i could see you wanted to get in there so let me give you a chance to come back in on some of these points. well i think it's a fairly balancing act for the for the u.s. army as we've seen with all these armies attacking they don't want their own men to be killed in street street fighting therefore they bombarded heavily in that and on air power and artillery and we've seen that in every one of these battles how do you dislodge fighters that are willing to die and also the the the

instructions of mcgurk in the heads of the american coalition or the international coalition has been that isis is to dock in there they're not be allowed to escape so these slightly i guess the human rights groups like amnesty and so on would have been critical of some of the tactics would say how do you confront the well in a way which you don't use it doesn't cause massive million casualties. yet it's very difficult and clearly isis is also holding a lot of hostages and we've seen this over and over again in every one of the battles for the major cities that the these groups are holding tons of civilians because they know that there is intense pressure from that human rights organizations not to kill civilians and this paralyzes to a certain degree the attacking armies that want to use heavy airpower and just to blow blow them apart quickly talking about casualties and suffering it sammy

is there a consensus about how what to do with iraq once this is over who's going to run it who's going to make sure there won't be another stage of chaos between other groups which take over. up to up to now and our mother was to put in a place what they call a civil administration and actually one civil administration has means established for iraq and it played a part into a recreation of. the fighters so this is more good but now when it comes to iraq are the question is whether this a civil administration administration put in place would be a challenge by. the syrian regime because now it's back and sponsored by the as the f. this is one segment the would it have and this is the most important would it have

the necessary resources to rebuild iraq are because now iraq is a city that flies into loons and it's thought that a devastated and this truck to and so the question is once more who will pay for that and why there's a descent they would have the resources to to rebuild it sammy is some point it seems like the syrian army and the s.d.s. are geographically on the ground approaching they're getting close to each other is that an indication that there is an understanding between the fact that there isn't doesn't seem so far to be any conflict between them there is some kind of understanding about how the show should be run there. up to now there is a kind of agreement between russian and american overlooking what what's taking place inside syria yes one can guess that is the nation the

oil that our area or small areas of these agreements are given that critics of the russian equivocates of what's happening and that they're not frege and bessie and iraqi border but after all i think that there is a kind of mega agreement between these two powers that is defining areas of influence and. that their own got there is of each of their players on the ground sunny sunny mentioned there you know the question of who's going to rebuild the areas which slipped out of life was control and that only opens up a new chapter in the humanitarian challenges right. you're right it's not clear to us how raptor is going to be administered once isis is defeated we hear about the iraqi civil council we hear maybe the government will go in and you know we're not really trivia to those discussions i would just say reckless certainly not ready to

have people who back to it's full of unexploded ordinances mines and bombs those absolutely need to be cleared before anyone returns home homes have been destroyed public services aren't functioning you know it's going to be really critical that when people do go home when they all do want to go home that it's safe for them to do that and that sirius's are available so what happens to people until they can return home people are actually scattered all across northern iraq a governorate there are stem caps for displaced people they're completely stretched because there are new arrivals every day including now frontiers who are agencies on the ground are doing their best to provide some sort of temporary relief in the terms of water and sanitation and food and temporary schools but that's not a really long term solution there are other people that have to travel relations and relatives in northern iraq and so they've moved towards living with them there

are others that are moving towards drought listener area hope you're trying to get into turkey so you really do see a population that's moving around trying to get support from wherever they can but they all do talk about wanting to go home. joshua let's pick up on a point which sammy mentioned that the beginning there and let's toss the question of does i saw reincarnate itself into some kind of guerrilla fighting force rather than a self-proclaimed caliphate. you know before i get that question let me just throw jump in here because this city of kolbein which is a kurdish city just north of iraq up is an example that city was taken back from isis attacked it brutally and in two thousand and fourteen and the united states surrounded it and bombed it very severely in two thousand and fifteen destroying most of the city it's a city about two hundred thousand people forty thousand people have gone back there but they only have electricity intermittently perhaps two hours

a day there are almost no services people are complaining like mad that they've been abandoned by the international community and this raises the question if you have one you know you phrase from up is who is in charge the united states has helped destroy and help arm the kurds to destroy these cities and drive out isis but the western powers have said they're not going to help syria reconstruct until assad is gone till there's a transition in power but who really want to handle that is this a model for more chaos than joshua. well i think it is a model more care because nobody knows who's in charge syrian government cannot control iraq because it's not under its control so so who is going to rebuild this area is the united states going to stay with the kurds and help nation building mcgurk the head of the coalition has set now we will give aid to help people reestablish their lives in the beginning but we're leaving that's what he has said

so this leaves a question mark hanging over this whole row shabaka area that's been carved out by the united states because clearly both aired on turkey and assad in syria have said that they're not going to allow it to be antonymous the americans have said that they don't want they believe that the the kurds should be able and that the whole region should be able to govern itself i think that america is going to get stuck in northern syria how much they will help to rebuild it's not clear because they haven't rebuilt up on it yet they haven't put any funds in it you haven't heard trump talk about this in any way or the leaders of the american coalition right so . doesn't this raises a very important question i'll come back to you in a minute then with a question which i initially asked you about this is interesting sami now that are we going to see then is the vacuums have a nasty habit of getting filled though they are they going to be filled the vacuum if i'm following a joshua saying correctly here it sounds like was saying there's a bit of a vacuum developing is that could be filled by regional powers if the u.s.

doesn't really have the interest in the appetite to fill it or is it going to be filled by some other reincarnation of some other i still ask all the ask force that read you know that arises from the despair on the right of the laces like iraq. i think both of them the regional power will stay at least for a while and namely iran and turkey i don't see leaving the territory very soon. russia and what's at stake in syria and iraq and. in syria and iraq is very important for the american to repeat the same mistake of two thousand and eight a rapid withdrawal would. yes i agree with joshua that pressure is

a position of the american and that they will want to engage in nation building but at some point they will be forced to now the second part of the question that resorting to isis or the irish i do believe that yes they will change strategy they will move into kind of. a style warfare because at the end of the day is not only a political military formation it's an ideology and as long as the reasons for the emergence of this ideology are not down to it i think that this. will continue its operation it will still be appealing. to a large chunk ok. frustrated populations ok that's the

interesting point dies let me let me quickly get a comment from joshua again before we go to sign the i do want to get funny in but joshua the whole idea of i saw and it's breakaway from the al qaeda elements was the idea that they wanted to establish an actual state or country or caliphate for themselves rather than the al qaida approach of guerrilla warfare until they bring down all the regimes in this area. if eisel heads back cole heads towards a more sort of guerrilla fighting force does it lose sort of resin that's for its existence yes it does look that the isis capture the imagination of the islamic world and the young radicals of the islamic world because precisely if you're going to be able to say some young radical no the entire islamic world i think i think it would be fair to say that i'm not a brain and that was tactics i think quite the horror and absolutely no radicals

who wanted to kill it who were attracted normally to al qaeda began to be attracted to isis because they were going to create the state and they did it in spectacular fashion they conquered an area the size of great britain in one year so it was spectacular now that it's being destroyed and dismantled in iraq and syria i think that it's going to it's going to create a real crisis for isis to reestablish an identity it's going to be very hard crisis to survive i think in syria in kurdish parts of syria or in iraq as a central government reasserts itself it'll be places like libya somalia and parts of africa where there is not strong central government that we're seeing that recrudescence of isis group let's but that's that's going to be much harder for them to produce a new a new raise on debt as you say i think they're going to struggle so on it if this sort of process of perhaps fragmentation continues how is that going to impact the

ability of aid agencies to try and fill the void and provide some services one assumes you can go all the way and provide constant electricity in places like the or else they would have had it by now right. yeah sure and those types of programs in terms of setting up and rebuilding the interest infrastructure isn't really the role of aid agencies were really concerned with the immediate impacts of the conflict on children as i mentioned the mental health of young children is of particular concern to us but also one of the most around a book groups we're finding in syria and specifically in this area is teenage boys who may be attracted to isis whether for it illogical reasons or just for economic reasons because joining isis and doing small errands for isis leaders is one way they can earn a little bit of money and support their alies so there's so many groups that are

currently at risk in this area and that's what we're really focusing on trying to most analysts just let any of those groups as well as doing the kind of a vicious circle if you can get some important basics going like electricity how do you get running clean water to help with malnutrition amongst children and so on and so forth. exactly so we are you know stressing that iraq needs to be rebuilt before anyone returns to it and we're trying to address immediate needs in the displaced camps as best we can that it's not a long term solution we need some stability for these families you know children who have been living under isis control for the last four years don't know what it's like to have a normal childhood and that can only come where in their enough place where they're not afraid they're going to step on a line in mind where they can get back into a school and be productive and learn mean the number of children that just don't

even know how to read and write is tragic you know so this is not syria that we know and so it's so important to or where it's going to be that's going to invest in rebuilding iraq and could i mean obvious other areas to do that but as we've heard from the panel that's easier said than done certainly if sammy if i saw is going to destined to become some kind of guerrilla force does that mean areas outside of syria now become more of a target they're going to free up their time to focus on other places but thickly perhaps in the west i think yes it would limit its operation to one territory because the idea of centrally will be abolished and we are about to see or to witness another fighting maybe they will resort to that style of warfare that al qaida was i don't thing meaning the north central meaning

the. caliphate but trying to appropriate as a network and hitting the weak point of what they consider the enemy so i won't be surprised if there is a return to a card just tired of warfare. does that become joshua another vicious circle though if we see attacks expanding abroad back continues this cycle of dragging in. other armies and countries into conflicts around the muslim world yes it does and you know underlying this is the economic problems and the political problems of the region and that's ultimately where a solution has to be found in growth jobs and good schooling and that's been the crisis in the middle east and so many of the arab spring countries are hanging on a threat and you look at egypt you look at jordan with the refugee problem it is

their systems are screened the schools are strained there aren't enough jobs and this leaves a lot of young people as as he was saying that are available for recruitment from these radical organizations and ultimately it's through development education jobs right that that that that this is going to be cleared up and let's hope. that that will be the way forward and thank our guests because we are at a time says thank i guess very much sami now that sign you couche and joshua landis and thank you to four g. you can see the show again any time by visiting our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story can also join the conversation on twitter handle there is at a.j. inside story from me sam is a than and the whole team here for now it's goodbye. the

man who negotiated the dismantling of apartheid and scrath south africa's nuclear program i don't think we needed the bomb but some of my pretty dishes that they want to do use it as a deterrent south africa's film a president declared talks to al-jazeera at this time. a new television station in afghanistan is turning the focus on women it's on t.v. they are on camera in the guest chair and in the control room the founder of zone t.v.

says this project couldn't wait this team is for those mothers and those to sit on those wife's living in afghanistan there's all this talking about their vice but they didn't see anything in a nation where education was forbidden for girls as recently as two thousand and one a network just for women is a mark of progress there's also a very real element of danger of course we are threatened but the conscious sit in the corner of our homes we have to go forward and develop our solace and help bring peace and stability to a country. where you know. i'm not what. this is al-jazeera.