Western experts and intelligence officials are warning that the recent military gains made against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are not enough to damage it, and may in fact make the group stronger in the long run. Undoubtedly, the impressive momentum of ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, has been curtailed, and the image of invincibility that it once projected is no longer there. Observers estimate that the Sunni militant group has lost nearly a fifth of its territory in Syria, while it is no longer in control of about half of the land it used to occupy in Iraq. As a result of these territorial defeats, ISIS has lost a third of its oil production, which is believed to account for half of its overall revenue. Earlier this month, US President Barack Obama said that, as ISIS continues to concede territory, it is “losing the money that is its livelihood”.
But US intelligence officials do not seem
to agree. Speaking on June 16 before the US Senate’s Select Committee
on Intelligence, John Brennan, Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, cautioned against triumphalism. He told
senators that the efforts of the international military coalition
against ISIS “have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and
global reach”, adding that ISIS would “have to suffer even heavier
losses of territory, manpower, and money for its terrorist capacity to
decline significantly”. According
to Reuters, a number of US intelligence officials and counterterrorism
experts support Brennan’s views. The news agency said on Wednesday that
many experts are warning that the military campaign on the ground was
“far from eradicating [ISIS] and could even backfire”.
The fact that local troops fighting ISIS
are almost completely composed of Shiite Arabs from Iraq and Iran, or
are Kurdish Peshmerga, could add legitimacy to ISIS as the protector of
the Sunni Arab minority in the region. There are also reports of human
rights violations against Sunnis by the advancing Shiite forces,
including an unconfirmed allegation
that 49 Sunni men of fighting age were executed after surrendering to
the anti-ISIS coalition in Falluja. Additionally, if ISIS loses much
more territory, it will be tempted to simply abandon conventional
fighting tactics and turn into a guerrilla group. Reuters quotes RAND
Corporation analyst Seth Jones, who argues: “It looks like the areas
that the Islamic State has lost, they are generally abandoning, and that
would mean preparing to fight another way”. That could mean that ISIS
fighters intend to blend in with the urban population and launch a
campaign of sabotage, assassination and disruption of government
services.
As ISIS has lost ground in Iraq and
Syria, the flow of foreign fighters intending to join the organization
has dropped significantly. But that is not necessarily a good thing,
says Reuters. These fighters, who in the past were instructed to join
ISIS in the Middle East, may now be told to launch lone-wolf terrorist
attacks abroad. The Reuters report cites one terrorism expert, Hassan
Hassan, of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, who
argues that the international appeal of the Islamic State is not
connected to the group’s military performance in the Middle East. In
other words, its popularity among its Western followers will persist
even if all of the group’s territorial strongholds are lost to its
adversaries.
No comments:
Post a Comment