Isis leaders killed as quickly as chosen
America is killing Isis leaders at such a rate that air strikes are taking out replacement commanders almost as soon as they have been appointed.
In one case US intelligence has been so accurate that targeted bombings have killed three Isis leaders rotating into the same command position.
‘‘There’s been cases where we’ve gone three deep in a position,’’ Colonel Steve Warren, chief US military spokesman in Baghdad, said.
‘‘As we kill one, they’ll simply promote somebody else. We’ll kill them. They’ll promote somebody else up and, in some cases, we’ll kill them,’’ he said.
Despite the high attrition rate among its leadership, there is no sign of the jihadist group making significant changes to its organisation.
However, some successful hits by the US drones and aircraft have caused a major setback for Isis; none more so than the claimed killing of Omar ‘‘The Chechen’’ alShishani, its war minister.
Activists in Isis territory said the organisation had not only suffered heavy losses to its high command but also appeared to have wider manpower problems.
‘‘Isis has been losing many of its leaders recently, especially in the battles near Al-Hasakah,’’ a source in a network of activists opposing Isis in the city of Deir Ezzor said.
He added that the terrorist group was ‘‘suffering’’ but remains ‘‘coherent and able to fix itself’’.
‘‘The coalition’s air strikes on Deir Ezzor, Raqqa and other areas have been reduced in the last period as Isis has been sending all its fighters and leaders, even the Hisba [local religious police] members, to the battles of AlHasakah [where Kurdish forces are advancing north of Deir Ezzor]. Isis seems to be lacking fighters.’’
Another activist in the area, Sarya al-Jabal, said Isis was press-ganging a large number of civilians into service as fighters and sending them north.
Despite Isis statements that alShishani survived the recent air strike on a convoy in the northern Syrian town of Al-Shaddadi, Warren said the US military was confident he had died.
‘‘Taking Shishani down is going to be a blow to this enemy. He was probably their most important subordinate leader, other than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [the overall leader]. He was certainly a fierce fighter,’’ Warren said.
‘‘He had a nickname, the Father of the Meat, because of his tendency to throw forces into battle kind of willy-nilly, without any consideration of how they would fare.’’
This was seen in the border town of Kobani in Syria ‘‘where he just kept pouring forces into the meat grinder and they were just getting chewed up’’.
Every effort is being made to pinpoint his replacement, but, Warren said, ‘‘there isn’t a second guy at his level, to our knowledge, that is going to be able to step up and continue at the level that he was operating.’’
The US military is growing in confidence that the campaign to target the Isis leadership will have an effect on the battlefield.
The aim, Warren said, was to make the Isis organisation ‘‘disorientated and disorganised’’.
Other Isis leaders killed include Charaffe al-Mouadan, killed in Syria on December 24, who had a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, leader of the terrorist attacks in Paris last November.