Tabqa, 2017

The battle, stage by stage

1. 22 March 2017

   Airlift and crossing behind ISIS lines

   Tabqa, also called al-Thawra, sits on the south bank of the Euphrates beside the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest, about 40 km upstream of Raqqa. ISIS had held the town and the dam since early 2014 and the airbase since August 2014; the coalition said it used the dam as a headquarters, a prison for high-profile hostages and a training site for its leaders. The SDF already held the north bank, including the castle of Qal'at Ja'bar. On 22 March U.S. aircraft flew Syrian Democratic Forces fighters behind ISIS lines south of the lake, which the Pentagon called the first U.S. airlift of local forces into combat in Syria; others crossed by boat. The coalition gave no exact number, but said 75 to 80 percent were Syrian Arabs; an activist group put the U.S. and SDF force together at about 500. Marine artillery, Apache helicopters and special operations advisers supported them, and U.S. officials said no Americans were fighting on the front line. The landing sites were not published; they are drawn here on the south shore south-west and west of Tabqa.

2. 23-25 March

   The beachhead widens

   From the landing area the SDF said it took four villages on the first day and cut the main road linking Raqqa with Aleppo and north-western Syria. Over the next days it reported more villages southwest of Tabqa, and on 24 March its spokeswoman said its fighters had reached the dam; ISIS's Amaq agency claimed they had been driven back. The sources consulted do not name the villages, and the front lines here are interpretive. The SDF then turned south-east toward the airbase.

3. 26-27 March

   Tabqa airbase falls

   On 26 March the SDF stormed the military airport south of the town and by its own account held more than half of it that day; the next day it announced full control. The base had symbolic weight: ISIS took it from the Syrian army in August 2014 and then killed about 200 captured soldiers, a massacre it filmed. SDF spokesman Talal Silo told AFP the main runway was badly damaged and would be cleared of the explosives ISIS had left. Coalition spokesman Col. Joseph Scrocca called the area a launching point for operations against Raqqa.

4. 26 March - early April

   Fears for the dam

   On 26 March ISIS warned that the dam could collapse 'at any moment', blamed coalition strikes and reportedly told Raqqa's residents to leave. The United Nations had warned that damage could cause massive flooding across Raqqa and as far as Deir ez-Zor, with catastrophic humanitarian consequences. Sources told AFP the dam went out of service when its power station was damaged. The coalition said it had not targeted the dam and that, to its knowledge, the structure was not damaged; the SDF denied any strike. On 27 March the SDF paused for four hours to let engineers in, and on 29 March engineers and the Red Crescent opened the spillway on the SDF-held north side. A 2022 New York Times investigation reported that a U.S. special operations unit, Task Force 9, had struck towers attached to the dam, which was on the coalition's no-strike list, on 26 March with three 2,000-pound bombs, including a bunker-buster that failed to explode; Central Command said the strikes hit only the towers and had not been expected to damage the structure, an assessment it said had proved accurate.

5. 31 March - 11 April

   Tabqa encircled

   The SDF pushed east of the town against al-Safsafa, about six kilometers away, which carried the last ISIS road into Tabqa. After more than 36 hours of fighting it took the village, and on 6 April Mehiar Muhammad of the Manbij Military Council, an SDF spokesman, said ISIS was encircled in the city and at the dam 'from all four directions'. Residents told Syria Direct they could not get out and that food and fuel were short. On 11 April a coalition strike requested by partner forces hit a forward SDF position south of Tabqa that had been misidentified as ISIS, killing 18 SDF fighters, Central Command said. The positions of the ring around the town are interpretive.

6. 15 April - 2 May

   Into the city

   SDF units broke into Tabqa's outskirts in mid-April, and on 24 April, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, they entered the town's southern districts while others advanced on its western edges. Coalition strikes hit the town daily, and Airwars and the Observatory recorded civilian deaths, including families killed trying to flee. By 30 April-1 May the SDF said it had taken nine more districts; the Observatory put its control at about 80 percent, including the old city, and the SDF said 90 percent. ISIS was left in a few districts on the north side of the town, next to the dam, and on the dam's southern section with the power station.

7. 10 May 2017

   The deal: the city and dam change hands

   Talks on an ISIS withdrawal began in early May, broke down and resumed, U.S. defense officials told BuzzFeed News. On 10 May about 70 ISIS fighters accepted the SDF's terms: they would dismantle the explosives around the dam, leave their heavy weapons and withdraw all remaining fighters from the city. The coalition said the SDF accepted the surrender to protect civilians and the dam, which supplies water, irrigation and power to hundreds of thousands of Syrians, and that it struck fleeing fighters where it could do so without endangering civilians. The SDF announced that Tabqa and the dam were fully in its hands, and U.S. envoy Brett McGurk confirmed it.

8. May - 4 June 2017

   The gateway to Raqqa

   With Tabqa, its airbase and the dam taken, Raqqa was cut off from the west, and the coalition said bridges over the Euphrates had been disabled. On 4 June the SDF said it had taken al-Mansura and the Baath Dam after three days of fighting, giving it all three major Euphrates dams. Two days later it launched the assault on Raqqa itself. The dam survived, but the 2022 New York Times reporting on the 26 March strike reopened the question of how close it came to failing.