Gone...

The men who emerge from the Islamic State’s last sliver of land are ordered to sit behind one of two orange lines spray-painted on the rocky desert floor: Syrians behind one and Iraqis behind the other.

The women, wearing face-covering veils and clutching toddlers, huddle in a different spot, also separated by nationality.

By midmorning, United States Special Operations Forces arrive in a convoy of armored vehicles. The men suspected of being Islamic State fighters are searched by troops and a sniffer dog. Then they are fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed.

That state is all but gone. The militants are now trapped in an area about the size of Central Park surrounded by all different forces.

As the noose has tightened, even those who joined the caliphate in its earliest days are trying to save themselves.

Most of those who have made it to this spot in the desert in recent days are the families of the militants their multiple wives and numerous children with only a small number of locals originally from the area mixed in, Kurdish officials said.

Large numbers of the escapees are foreigners, Germans, French, Britons, Swedes and Russians, a testament to the group’s broad appeal, which lured some 40,000 recruits from 100 countries to its nascent state.