At a crumbling command post inside a bullet-pocked house, a militia commander was struggling to coordinate the fight against Islamic State in its Syrian capital, Raqqah.

“We entered the Old City yesterday and a group from the Free Syrian Army also came. They said they wanted to be a part of this,” Haval Bilind said Tuesday. “As you know, it’s a war, there are a lot of mortars and snipers. Now they are saying, ‘We don’t want this, we are leaving.’”