WORLD periodically interviews George Friedman, founder of Geopolitical Futures and a leading forecaster of international developments based on demography, geography, military capabilities, and ideologies. We have run previous magazine articles featuring Friedman in issues dated Jan. 30, 2009; Jan.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) liberated the last area in Syria controlled by Islamic State (ISIS) on Saturday. ISIS militants made their final stand in a tent camp in Baghuz, which was bombed to shreds. “Baghuz is free and the military victory against [ISIS] has been achieved,” tweeted Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led SDF. Saturday’s bombing ended weeks of heavy fighting in Baghuz and brings to a close a caliphate ISIS established in large areas of Syria and in Iraq in 2014.

Even on a day of biting February wind, the fields are lush with grass across the Khabur River Valley and so brilliantly green it hurts the eyes to look at them. A boy hurries sheep up a muddy path, while two women in bright headscarves bend over a plot of chard, picking.

Near the entrance to the village of Tel Hormizd, a bombed-out water tower, lying sideways near the riverbank, signals visitors that this is no rural idyll. ISIS fighters destroyed the tank when they captured this area in 2015, and no one has returned to repair it or a vast landscape of surrounding destruction.

QAMESHLI, Syria—Gabriel Moshe is the sort of gentleman whose coat and tie look morning-fresh though it’s nearing midnight, and we are talking by the last light and heat before the electricity shuts down. Rationing the power grid is just one routine part of life in a war zone. 

Moshe’s dignified profile shouldn’t fool anyone: He’s actually an enemy of the state. President Bashar al-Assad’s regime arrested him in 2013 and held him for 2½ years, a man of peace caught in the politics of war. 

More than 1,000 civilians have fled the last major Islamic State (ISIS) stronghold in Syria after five days of fighting by U.S.-backed forces to regain control of the town. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Saturday began an offensive on Baghuz in Deir al-Zour province backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. Some 300 civilians fled the war zone during the day, while 600 more left overnight, SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said Tuesday.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he expects to announce next week that the United States and its partners have retaken 100 percent of Islamic State (ISIS) territory in Iraq and Syria. “Thanks to the global coalition, including all of you here today and to our other partners, the ISIS caliphate has been decimated,” he said during a meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the State Department in Washington. The meeting included foreign ministers and senior officials from the 79-member coalition.

The United States is beginning its “deliberate withdrawal from Syria,” starting with the removal of some military equipment, U.S. military officials said Friday. “Out of concern for operational security, we will not discuss specific timelines, locations, or troop movements,” Col. Sean Ryan, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition combating Islamic State (ISIS), said in a statement.