Kurdish forces in northern Syria relied on American troops to help them maintain control of the region. Now, they are aligning themselves with Syrian forces that are backed by Russia.
The attack that began Wednesday has uprooted civilians in the area. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists that the Trump administration did not "green light" the incursion.
"You can't make decisions on a haphazard basis after a single call with a foreign leader," says Brett McGurk, the president's former special envoy for the fight against ISIS.
Few foreign ISIS fighters captured in Syria and Iraq have been repatriated. Unless European allies accept nationals who are ISIS prisoners of war, Trump said, "we're releasing them at the border."
James Verini's book will stand up with some of the best war reporting, as he takes an unblinking look at the dirtiest kind of battle — urban combat — and the human wreckage it leaves in its wake.
A German father struggles to find and bring home his young daughter, taken by his ex-wife when she went to Syria five years ago with her new husband, an ISIS fighter.
The city has a rich heritage of buildings and mosques. Today, the battle scars are as prominent as ever and residents displaced by the conflict complain about the sluggish reconstruction.
Kurdish Syrian authorities have tried 7,000 ISIS suspects in a justice system that bans torture and the death penalty. Some of the judges are women, which comes as a shock to ISIS fighters on trial.
France doesn't want to bring back French ISIS members captured in Iraq, but French authorities are dismayed that an Iraqi court has sentenced four of them to death.
ISIS has radicalized people around the world. But even with one of the world's largest Muslim populations, India has had very few cases of radicalization — until recently. Most cases are in the south.
In recent visits to the camp, NPR was told of babies dying of malnutrition, and found women collapsed by roadsides. "There's a lack of supplies and the numbers of patients are huge," a doctor says.
Women kidnapped by ISIS five years ago are now being freed. But the Yazidi community does not allow children born in captivity of militant fathers to return with them.
"America sees this as an existential fight," writes former CIA analyst Aki Peritz, who argues in this case, the classic insurgent strategy of bleeding a better-resourced adversary is doomed to fail.
Amnesty International says the U.S.-led coalition offensive against ISIS in Raqqa used indiscriminate artillery force and killed nearly 10 times more civilians than the U.S. military has acknowledged.
"The women and children who have been raised on the mentality of ISIS and terrorism need to be rehabilitated," an official warns. "Otherwise, they will be the foundations of future terrorism."
For years, New Zealand's government and international media worked to keep Louisa Akavi's name secret. Now the Red Cross hopes that revealing her identity will lead to information on her whereabouts.
Kim Anh Vo, 20, was charged Tuesday with conspiring to provide material support for the terrorist organization. Prosecutors say she recruited online members, including a minor.
Hoda Muthana was 20 when she moved to Syria and started posting ISIS propaganda online. She says she has renounced the group and wants to return home, but the Trump administration refuses to allow it.
Shamima Begum, 19, left England in 2015. Now she is a married mother and living in a refugee camp. Begum says she wants to come home, but the U.K. government doesn't want her back.
They say there's rarely enough evidence to prosecute. "The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go," Trump tweeted.
British Security Minister Ben Wallace told reporters on Tuesday that the government has reason to believe photojournalist John Cantlie is still being held by the terrorist group.
More than 20,000 people, mostly women and children, have arrived at the Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria in just two months. The World Health Organization says aid workers are struggling to keep up.
After four years in Syria, two brothers returned home to Trinidad this week, following an extraordinary intervention by their mother, a renowned human rights lawyer and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.
