ISIS terrorizes Europe but loses ground at home
(CNN)ISIS
might have pulled off a string of terrorist attacks across Europe in
recent months, but on its home turf in Iraq and Syria it has suffered
one setback after another.
On
Monday, Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad recaptured the
ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. Last week, the U.S. took out the
organization's No. 2, Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, whom the Pentagon
dubbed ISIS' "finance minister" and is just the latest target to
disrupt the group's financial network.
And
in recent months, the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition has killed more than
10,000 fighters and 20 leaders, including al-Qaduli, according to
Pentagon estimates.
Altogether, the
U.S. calculates that ISIS has lost 40% of the 34,000 square miles of
territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq before the U.S. and a host of
other nations ramped up military involvement in the region in 2014.
Perhaps most significantly, Iraqi forces retook the city of Ramadi in
December.
The Pentagon has tried to draw more attention to the group's losses, which officials believe are considerable.
"We
are systematically eliminating ISIL's cabinet," Defense Secretary Ash
Carter said last week, using a different name for ISIS. He noted that
al-Qaduli was "the second senior ISIL leader we've successfully targeted
this month."
Asked whether the
U.S. was turning the corner on the fight against ISIS, Carter responded,
"We're certainly gathering momentum and we're seeing that that momentum
is having an effect."
ISIS increasing attacks on Westerners?
But
could that anti-ISIS momentum on the ground in the Middle East be
spurring the group to stage more terror attacks in Europe, such as the
one Tuesday that claimed at least 35 lives in Brussels? Is the group
looking to distract from its losses of territory and leadership and show
that it still has the ability to inflict as much pain -- and is as
dangerous to the West -- as ever?
"ISIS
has definitely faced losses and has increased its use of unconventional
tactics, like suicide bombings, in order to draw forces away from the
front," said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at the
Institute for the Study of War.
"But
linking the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels to ISIS' battlefield
losses misses the point," she added, noting that ISIS has "been
attempting to execute a global campaign for years" and "external attacks
are key to its ideology."
Some of
the land ISIS has surrendered has also been tactical, according to
Gambhir, as the group has chosen to yield territory in the face of
potentially heavy ISIS fighter casualties.
Still,
the fact that two mass casualty attacks of the scale of Paris and
Brussels have occurred since coalition efforts have started reclaiming
areas once considered part of ISIS' "caliphate" is telling, according to
Nick Heras, a Middle East expert with the Center for New American
Security.
"ISIS fancies itself as a
state with the power to deter its strategic enemies and to coerce their
behavior, and the external attacks in Europe work towards this goal,"
said Heras, pointing out that the group also understands that conducting
these attacks in the West will potentially lead to more aggressive
efforts from the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria.
He
continued, "The West should expect that ISIS has developed a
contingency strategy to authorize more attacks inside of Europe even in
the event that its would-be caliphate is collapsing in Iraq and Syria,
and that even in its dying days ISIS' proto-state will try to punish
Western countries that hastened its end."
The
U.S.-led coalition long focused primarily on airstrikes but has
recently expanded its efforts to take on ISIS more aggressively.
The
U.S. military's elite Special Operations forces began on the ground
missions to target, capture or kill top ISIS operatives in Iraq last
month.
In the wake of the Brussels
attack last week, Defense Secretary Carter vowed to further "accelerate"
efforts to destroy the extremist group and its caliphate by conducting
"raids of various kinds, seizing places and people, freeing hostages and
prisoners of ISIL, and making it such that ISIL has to fear that
anywhere, anytime, it may be struck."
Criticism of air strike strategy
The air campaign faced criticism that it was not doing enough to alter the trajectory of the anti-ISIS effort.
Chris
Harmer, a senior military analyst at the Institute for the Study of
War, called the air campaign "tactically spectacular but strategically
irrelevant," adding that such strikes might have had a decisive impact
if ISIS followed a strict organizational structure but that boots on the
ground are the key.
Yet targeting
specific ISIS leaders is not intended to lead to the "immediate, or
direct, collapse of ISIS as an organization," Heras said.
While
the local leadership in places like Iraq and Syria can regenerate
itself and continue to operate on the ground, Heras argued that its
abilities to launch mass-casualty terror attacks abroad was limited by
taking out leaders, as the attacks on the West require a bigger, more
sophisticated network and coordination.
This
significantly benefits the U.S. both because it disrupts attacks
against Western civilians but also because it deflates the ISIS
narrative that it has been able to deter the international community by
launching and coordinating attacks in the West.
"The
less ISIS looks like it can act like a state, and conduct attacks in
the heart of the West, the weaker its narrative to would-be jihadists
that it is the epochal caliphate and therefore worthy of their
allegiance," Heras said.
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