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Text of report by Italian privately-owned centrist newspaper La Stampa, on 24 May
[Commentary by Giordano Stabile: "Apparent Retreat to Desert Is a Foretaste of the Trench in Europe"]
Beirut -- A handful of combatants which is holding out beyond all limit and prediction in the capitals of Islamic State, now reduced to rubble. The bulk of the forces, and the resources which are less easy to replace, including technicians and engineers responsible for military programmes, is being evacuated to remote and inaccessible areas, so that it is possible to count also on the protection of local tribes. The caliphate's plan B had its dress rehearsal in Libya, in Sirte, and it perfected it in the Sinai. It is repeating it on a scale 10 times bigger in Mosul. And soon also in Raqqa. The capital cities will not be its last trench, nor will the Al-Nuri al-Kabir mosque, where Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi has proclaimed himself the leader of true believers. The retreat into the desert was prepared in detail, and will serve to strike again in the West.
In the sieges of the capitals there is always something which does not tally. In Sirte the sums did not add up. All the estimates calculated the number of jihadists in Libya as being around 5,000 to 6,000. But the...