UN notes IS up-tick as Trump set to declare win
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7, (Agencies): International terrorist groups carried out more attacks in Iraq and Syria in the last six months of 2018 than in any other country, and Islamic State extremists were primarily to blame, according to a new UN report circulated Wednesday.
UN experts said in the report to the Security Council that IS and its affiliates “continue to pose the main and best-resourced international terrorist threat, while al-Qaeda remains resilient and active in many regions and retains the ambition to project itself more internationally.”
Even though IS’ territorial losses in Iraq and Syria “have forced the group to abandon notions of controlling a geographical so-called ‘caliphate’ for the near future,” the experts said its leaders continue to advance this aspiration in statements and online propaganda.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he expected a formal announcement as early as next week that the coalition fighting Islamic State militants has reclaimed all of the territory previously held by the extremist group.
“Their land is gone. It’s a big factor – their land is gone,” Trump told foreign ministers and other senior officials from 79 countries that have worked alongside the United States in fighting the militant group in Syria and Iraq.
Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from Syria has prompted some criticism at home from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who fear Islamic State could regain its strength.
A top US Army general for the region, Joseph Votel, said in Senate testimony on Tuesday that the group could experience a resurgence after a US pullout.
Trump did not back down from his determination to withdraw, saying, “We look forward to giving our brave warriors in Syria a warm welcome home.”
“The United States military, our coalition partners and the Syrian Democratic Forces have liberated virtually all of the territory previously held by ISIS in Syria and Iraq,” Trump told the gathering at the State Department.
He said the achievement “should be formally announced, sometime, probably next week, that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate.”
Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reassured the coalition partners that the withdrawal of US troops from Syria was not “the end of America’s fight” and called on them to help permanently defeat Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
“The US troops withdrawing from Syria is not the end of America’s fight. The fight is one we will continue to wage alongside you,” Pompeo said. “The drawdown in troops is essentially a tactical change, it is not a change in the mission. It simply represents a new stage in an old fight.”