Vox reports: ISIS is seeing some significant setbacks in Syria. Its de facto capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa, is under serious threat from Kurdish (YPG) troops. ISIS “is barely surviving in Syria,” Yasir Abbas, an associate at the private research and consulting firm Caerus Associates, told me last week. “It is struggling to halt YPG advances and is out of low-hanging fruit [to seize].”

ISIS has recently lost some critical territory in northern Syria. To see how quickly that’s happened, first look at this map of the battle-lines in Syria, from the always-excellent Institute for the Study of War, in late May. [Continue reading…]