Pressed from all sides, IS melting into desert
Territory almost gone, guerrilla tactics remain
BEIRUT — Islamic State militants, routed from one urban stronghold after another in Syria, recently have been moving deeper into Syria’s remotedesert,whereexpertssaythey are regrouping and preparing their next incarnation.
The Sunni militants’ self-proclaimed “caliphate” with its contiguous stretch of land — linking major cities such as Syria’s Raqqa and Iraq’s Mosul — might have been vanquished, but many agree this territorial defeat will not mark the end of IS.
Beyond the urban and inhabited areas lies the vast Syrian Desert, also known as Badiyat al-sham, famous for its caves and rugged mountains. It encompasses about 200,000 square miles across parts of southeastern Syria, northeastern Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia, and western Iraq.
The desolate landscape is a perfect hideout and a second home for many IS militants from the days before the birth of their caliphate. Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to mount search operations and even more to put the desert under permanent control.
Once they melt into the desert, without an army of tens of thousands of supporters from dozens of countries, IS jihadis will resort to guerrilla-style attacks: scattered hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings.
“They love fighting battles in the desert, and they will go back to the old ways,” said Omar Abu Laila, a Europe-based opposition activist originally from Syria’s eastern province of Deir el-zour, which lies in the heart of Badiyat al-sham.
IS leaders appear to have made contingency plans that involve precisely this, regrouping in the desert and launching attacks, much like IS’ predecessor, al-qaida in Iraq, did for more than a decade after the U.s.-led 2003 invasion.
Brett Mcgurk, the top U.S. envoy for the anti-is coalition, said the Sunni militant group is now down to the last 10 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria.
The group still maintains some appeal for Sunnis, who complain of discrimination by Iraq’s Shiite-led government and by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
IS will also look to buy time and benefit from political and other conflicts — such as this month’s clashes between Iraqi and Kurdish forces following the Kurdish independence referendum. That fighting has already diverted resources from the war on IS.
Iraqi troops, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish forces have driven IS from nearly all of Iraq, but if they turn on one another, that could give the extremists an opening to regroup.