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| Terror Networks | |
| ISIS is losing the war | |
| 2016-05-13 | |
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... in Iraq and Syria, ISIS, as an organized military force in Iraq and Syria, is losing -- even losing badly. This does not mean the end of ISIS, and we may see organized (as in Libya and Afghanistan) and unorganized (as in Gay Paree and San Bernardino) bands carrying the ISIS label and banner for some time yet. But these will be a mere echo (and perhaps even a mockery) of the force that carried out the shocking seizure of terrain in Iraq, threatening even Baghdad, a year and a half ago. However, nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits... the end of ISIS does not mean the end of Islamic extremism, and we should expect to see a resurgence of al Qaeda and its affiliates, as its splinter rival begins its death spiral. Simply put, despite its quite impressive debut on the international stage, ISIS is out of its league. By trying to bring about the "caliphate" as a tangible entity, it has given its opponents, both local and international, a fixed target to strike. The territory it controls in Iraq and Syria is now being attacked from the southeast by the Iraqi Army and Hashd al Shabi popular mobilization units (militia units of varying loyalites, mostly Shia Arab), from the northeast by the KDPand PUK Peshmerga (militias of the two ruling parties in Iraqi Kurdistan) forces, from the northwest by the Syrian YPG (People's Protection Units) Kurdish forces, and from the southwest -- at least nominally -- by the Syrian regime and its Iranian/Russian allies. Further, all the Iraqi forces (save the Hashd) are being supported by U.S. airpower, the Syrian forces by Russian airpower, and the YPG forces by both. In Iraq, two major cities have been reclaimed from ISIS (Tikrit and Ramadi), in addition to a number of significant towns. In December, the Iraqi defense minister stated that ISIS control of Iraqi territory was down from 40% at its height to only 17% then. While no cities have yet been reclaimed on the Syrian side of the border, ISIS continues to lose territory, with the coalition in January claiming about a 20% reduction. ISIS' enemies are far closer to their "capital" of Raqqa then they were six months ago. So long as ISIS (or its predecessors, the Islamic State in Iraq and al Qaeda in Iraq) remained in the shadows as a terrorist group, and stuck to its core competencies of liquidation and suicide bombs, it was very difficult to find and root out, subject only to intelligence-driven raids by the commandos of the Joint Special Operations Command (Delta Force and SEAL Team 6, mostly). But ISIS' strategy of creating a political entity on the ground has also made it vulnerable to both airpower and conventional armies, while--as events of the last 24 hours show--it is still subject to JSOC kill/capture operations. So while the implementation of the U.S. strategy has been scandalously slow, it is now clearly demonstrating its effectiveness. So long as ISIS (or its predecessors, the Islamic State in Iraq and al Qaeda in Iraq) remained in the shadows as a terrorist group, and stuck to its core competencies of liquidation and boom-mobiles, it was very difficult to find and root out. But ISIS' strategy of creating a political entity on the ground has made it vulnerable to both airpower and conventional armies. And while the implementation of the U.S. strategy has been scandalously slow, it is now clearly demonstrating its effectiveness. Iraqi Army forces are moving to djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , already nearly surrounded on the northern side by Kurdish forces, while the Hashd are clearing the more rural areas west of Samarra/Tikrit and south of Mosul. The liberation of Mosul is no longer in doubt. An optimistic timeline would have the operation occurring this summer, a pessimistic timeline next spring. But its eventual outcome is as close to certainty as exists. When tens of thousands of troops, supported by U.S. airpower, mass against a few thousand defenders, it is clear how that story ends, militarily. And we are already seeing ISIS react to this eventuality. Late last month, we saw ISIS return to its terrorist roots and launch suicide bombs into the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. In so doing, ISIS is demonstrating its weakness and regressing from a military force back to a terrorist one. | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #5 ISIS is losing the war Did anyone think to ask the jihadis what they have to say about this idea? Call me when the last one gets killed. |
| Posted by: gorb 2016-05-13 15:55 |
| #4 Hopefully before long the region will be same for transsexual bathrooms. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2016-05-13 15:00 |
| #3 Not as long as Transnational Progressivism rules in the West. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-05-13 13:24 |
| #2 As long as the Caliphate exists - ISIS wins. As long as chaos, disorder, corruption, and deviancy exist in the ME - ISIS has a recruiting ground. I wish I could share Ollivant's optimistic view. |
| Posted by: Tennessee 2016-05-13 11:31 |
| #1 The only one who lost any war in the Middle East was Saddam Hussein. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2016-05-13 07:37 |