Officials: ISIS losing ground but remains a global threat
Terror group’s looming loss of Mosul a major blow, but fighters likely to retreat to other hiding places
Fighters may be pushing the Islamic State group out of strongholds in Iraq and Syria, but the jihadists remain a global terror threat, officials say.
In Mosul, Iraq, several hundred militants trapped in a pocket are all that remain of the force that took control of the city a few years ago.
And in Syria, U.S.-backed local forces are forcing their way into the ISIS capital of Raqqa.
But officials warn that the group still controls towns in Iraq, swaths of territory in the region and can plan terror strikes around the world. Pressed further, ISIS is capable of retreating and operating from caves in the region, as a conventional terror group.
The Pentagon says the next stage of the battle in Iraq will be determined by Iraq’s government. The U.S. military says it would continue to provide support.
The Islamic State remains a formidable global threat and clings to large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria despite the group’s imminent loss of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. “This fight is far from over,” said Jennifer Cafarella, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. The Islamic State, also called ISIS, has proved capable of plotting terror attacks even as it has lost significant territory. Many of its leaders have already escaped Raqqa, its capital in Syria, and fled to other strongholds inside the country. “We’ve consistently been chasing ISIS’s communications node around the battlefield,” Cafarella said. Still, U.S. officials and analysts say pushing militants out of their major strongholds in Iraq and Syria is a critical first step to an overallwhich menace emergedthree defeat yearsas of a ago.the worldwide group, also The frees defeat thousandsof ISIS in of Mosul Iraqis from the group’s brutal rule. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider alAbadi said last week that the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate was finished and hailed it as a major victory. Several hundred militants remain in the city, but they are surrounded and losing more territory by the day. In Syria, U.S.-backed local forces have surrounded Raqqa and begun an assault into the city. The offensives in Raqqa and Mosul have put the group on the run and forced it to relinquish much of the territory it controlled at its peak in 2014. But the group has also proved stubbornly resilient. Some ISIS leaders have already fled to militant-controlled areas along the Euphrates River Valley south of Raqqa that have become a key stronghold for the militants now that Mosul and Raqqa are under military pressure.