BAD TO THE LAST DROP: The ISIS tactic while trying to hold Raqqa in August was to fight to the last man; experts expect the same in the upcoming battle to retake Mosul. +
REUTERS
NEWSWEEK
THE:MESSAGE from the head of ISIS’s war committee to his besieged comrades is clear: Stay and fight to the death—or we’ll kill you. “Inform all our besieged brothers that we will never accept withdrawal…. We will kill all who withdraw or encourage withdrawal and work for it. And we order you, Abu Yahya, to kill all who withdraw,” the unnamed leader writes in a letter apparently sent on August 8 from the headquarters of the Islamic State militant group in the Syrian city of Raqqa to its fighters in the then-besieged Syrian city of Manbij. The three-page handwritten letter is addressed to Abu Yahya al-Shami, who was the top ISIS commander in Manbij.