#Raqqa

The bloody battle for the Syrian city of Raqqa has been since been won by the Kurdish Peshmerga with U.S. support. But while it was raging, we wrote about the Polish volunteer fighting with the Peshmerga with a public name and Facebook book title of Archer. After getting in touch with the individual, he was able to submit to TFB a number of photographs of his small teams inventory along with some actual feedback on the small arms used.

“Archer” is the public nickname of a Polish volunteer currently fighting in the highly contested city of Raqqa with the Kurdish Peshmerga forces working right now to take it from the so called Islamic State. Countless U.S. and European volunteers have gone over to Syria to help out the Kurds in their struggle, some of them even giving their lives in the conflict. But from the amount of information that we receive from these volunteers, their direct involvement in the action, and their previous experience levels, this former Polish soldier appears to be very hard to beat when compared to many of the others since 2014 when American Jordan Matson became one of the first widely covered volunteers.

News footage from a Kurdistan24 television crew, and overhead drone footage taken from a so-called Islamic State propaganda video both show a so-called IS attack in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where Kurdish SDF forces are battling the rebel group with the support of the United States. Driving heavily armed SVBIEDs (Suicide Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device) into enemy positions is one of the most deadly tactics of the group in the current conflicts of Syria and Iraq. A study from the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point highlighted the fact that the so-called Islamic State was using as many as fourteen SVBIEDs a day in the Mosul fight against Iraqi forces.

This image of a rigged 7.62x39mm AKM has recently been making the rounds on social media, one of the first being the Twitter account of KufriusMaximus, a pro-Kurdish commentator. From what the chatter is telling us, the photograph is of an AKM recovered in the currently contested city of Raqqa, the former capital of the so-called Islamic State. Troops finding it were elements of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Force (SDF), Peshmerga troops supported by Operation Inherent Resolve special operations elements through the use of advising and forward air controllers.