After a series of victories
Revised assessment by U.S. comes after gains in Syria, Iraq
against ISIS, the Pentagon now views the Sunni militants as a shrinking force, a shift from the seemingly invincible extremist army that stunned the world two years ago.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies now view the Islamic State as a shrinking and increasingly demoralized military force, a sharp shift from the seemingly invincible extremist army that declared an Islamist caliphate two years ago.
The revised assessment comes after surprisingly swift and relatively bloodless victories this summer near Syria’s border with Turkey and in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, two areas where the Islamic State had appeared entrenched.
The rapid recapture this week of Jarablus, the militants’ last garrison by the Turkish border, helped close off a boundary region that was crucial for the movement of recruits, supplies and money in and out of the group’s quasi-state.
It also was the latest battle to suggest the Sunni militants no longer are willing to fight to hold territory against a sustained assault. Only one fighter was reported killed in the assault led by Turkish tanks. Several hundred others apparently fled.
Partly as a result, U.S. officials have hinted that the long-delayed assault on Mosul, Islamic State’s selfdeclared capital in Iraq, may be launched this fall. The city of 1 million has been increasingly cut off by advancing Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces.
Michael Knights, Iraq fellow at the nonpartisan Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said taking back Mosul, along with the Syrian towns of Deir el-Zour and Raqqa, will mark the end of the caliphate.
“After the fall of those cities, (the Islamic State) will be just another terror group,” he said. “They might be able to throw a couple car bombs in city centers and mount small arms attacks, but they will no longer engage in heavy fighting on a daily basis. In other words, we’ll be back to where we were in 2013.”
That view is challenged by red flag warnings that the Islamic State’s ability to inspire or organize terrorist attacks abroad is unimpaired — and may pose an even greater threat as foreign sympathizers are unable to reach the cut-off caliphate.
“Despite the progress, it is our judgment that (the group’s) ability to carry out terrorist attacks … has not to date been significantly diminished,” Nicholas Rasmussen, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the House Homeland Security Committee recently.
Militants still detonate car bombs or launch suicide attacks each night in Baghdad. They could devolve into the kind of sectarian insurgency that turned Iraq into a slaughterhouse after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 or morph into a stateless global terrorist network like al-Qaida became after 2001.
“I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get rid of their ability to inspire attacks abroad just because they lose territory,” cautioned a U.S. defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “They will continue to operate in the shadows and cause problems.”
Like other insurgencies, militants may be running away from battles now to survive and fight again — at a time and place of their choosing, experts warn. They could be sent to other battles or used as suicide bombers.
Moreover, the group still has vast sway.
It controls half the area it seized in Iraq in 2014 and 70 percent of its territory in Syria, according to U.S. estimates, and it continues to haul in millions of dollars from taxes, fees and extortion.
Current U.S. intelligence estimates say the group now fields as few as 16,000 fighters — half its army of a year or so ago but still a potent force.
But U.S. officials point to undeniable progress two years and more than 14,000 airstrikes after President Barack Obama first ordered a bombing campaign against Islamic State targets.
“The number of fighters on the front line has diminished,” Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of U.S. forces against the Islamic State until this week, said in a teleconference from Baghdad. “They’ve diminished not only in quantity but also in quality.”
He added: “All I know is when we go someplace it’s easier to go there now than it was a year ago. And the enemy doesn’t put up as much of a fight.”
As an example, he said, after U.S.-backed Iraqi forces recaptured Fallujah, key to the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad, in late June militants fled their former stronghold in a large convoy that coalition aircraft quickly spotted and destroyed.
“They kind of made themselves easy targets for us,” MacFarland said. “I don’t think they would have made that mistake a year or two ago.”
Each defeat has added pressure on the militants by cutting off routes used to move arms, supplies and reinforcements. That affects command, unit cohesion and efficiency.
In addition to losing the border towns of Jarablus and Manbij in northern Syria, the militants have been routed this month in Khalidiyah and Qayyarah in western Iraq.
They previously were ousted from Hit, Al Hawl and Rutba in Iraq.