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ISIS is losing the war
ISIS tunnels under Ramadi to evade airstrikes 02:54
Story highlights
- ISIS' strategy of creating a political entity on the ground makes it vulnerable to airpower and conventional armies, says Douglas A. Ollivant
- But the larger violent Salafist movement will be largely unfazed, he says
Douglas A. Ollivant, a senior fellow at New America, served as director for Iraq at the National Security Council during the Bush and Obama administrations. He is managing partner of Mantid International LLC, a consulting firm that has business interests in the south of Iraq, including security, defense and aerospace clients. The New America think tank is holding a conference Thursday, March 10 on the future of war and it will be live streamed below. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN)The
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS, as an organized military force
in Iraq and Syria, is losing — even losing badly. This does not mean
the end of ISIS, and we may see organized (as in Libya and Afghanistan)
and unorganized (as in Paris and San Bernardino) bands carrying the ISIS
label and banner for some time yet.
Douglas A. Ollivant
But
these will be a mere echo (and perhaps even a mockery) of the force
that carried out the shocking seizure of terrain in Iraq, threatening
even Baghdad, a year and a half ago. However, the end of ISIS does not
mean the end of Islamic extremism, and we should expect to see a
resurgence of al Qaeda and its affiliates, as its splinter rival begins
its death spiral.
Simply
put, despite its quite impressive debut on the international stage,
ISIS is out of its league. By trying to bring about the "caliphate" as a tangible entity, it has given its opponents, both local and international, a fixed target to strike.
Attacked from all sides
The
territory it controls in Iraq and Syria is now being attacked from the
southeast by the Iraqi Army and Hashd al Shabi popular mobilization
units (militia units of varying loyalites, mostly Shia Arab), from the
northeast by the KDPand PUK Peshmerga (militias of the two ruling
parties in Iraqi Kurdistan) forces, from the northwest by the Syrian
YPG (People's Protection Units) Kurdish forces, and from the southwest —
at least nominally — by the Syrian regime and its Iranian/Russian
allies.
Further,
all the Iraqi forces (save the Hashd) are being supported by U.S.
airpower, the Syrian forces by Russian airpower, and the YPG forces by
both. In Iraq, two major cities have been reclaimed from ISIS (Tikrit
and Ramadi), in addition to a number of significant towns. In December,
the Iraqi defense minister stated that ISIS control of Iraqi territory was down from 40% at its height to only 17% then. While no cities have yet been reclaimed on the Syrian side of the border, ISIS continues to lose territory,
with the coalition in January claiming about a 20% reduction. ISIS'
enemies are far closer to their "capital" of Raqqa then they were six
months ago.
So long as ISIS (or its
predecessors, the Islamic State in Iraq and al Qaeda in Iraq) remained
in the shadows as a terrorist group, and stuck to its core competencies
of assassination and car bombs, it was very difficult to find and root
out. But ISIS' strategy of creating a political entity on the ground
has made it vulnerable to both airpower and conventional armies. And
while the implementation of the U.S. strategy has been scandalously
slow, it is now clearly demonstrating its effectiveness.
Iraqi
Army forces are moving to Mosul, already nearly surrounded on the
northern side by Kurdish forces, while the Hashd are clearing the more
rural areas west of Samarra/Tikrit and south of Mosul. The liberation
of Mosul is no longer in doubt.
An
optimistic timeline would have the operation occurring this summer, a
pessimistic timeline next spring. But its eventual outcome is as close
to certainty as exists. When tens of thousands of troops, supported by
U.S. airpower, mass against a few thousand defenders, it is clear how
that story ends, militarily.
And we are already seeing ISIS react to this eventuality. Late last month, we saw ISIS return to its terrorist roots and launch suicide bombs
into the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. In so doing, ISIS is
demonstrating its weakness and regressing from a military force back to a
terrorist one.
ISIS' overreach
ISIS
has overreached, and in so doing, has demonstrated that the longer-term
strategy of its parent and rival, al Qaeda, is the more prudent one.
While there will no doubt be true believers who stay with the
organization, what will be the mass appeal of a group that seized
terrain, but then couldn't hold it? Yes, the ISIS affiliates in Libya
and Afghanistan are doing quite well, operating as satellites of ISIS
central. Any steps that can be taken at reasonable cost to defeat these
affiliates should be. But what will be their raison d'etre when there
is no longer a center around which to orbit?
The
defeat of ISIS will by no means mean the death of violent Salafist
extremism, and we should expect the bulk of ISIS' survivors to defect to
al Qaeda or other Salafist groups, rather than renounce the violent
movement in its entirety.
There will
be a natural temptation to declare victory when ISIS no longer controls
terrain — and this will be a significant milestone, denying funds to the
larger movement and liberating captured persons from ISIS' control,
violence and indoctrination. But the larger violent Salafist movement
will be largely unfazed, and perhaps in some ways strengthened by the
disappearance of ISIS.
And until the
world is prepared to address the root causes of violent Salafism's
appeal -- the Wahhabi/Salafist ideology of hate, the authoritarian
nature of most Arab states that denies nonviolent outlets, the lack of
economic prospects, all magnified by the coming youth bulge — we should
expect another version, though perhaps very different in style, of ISIS
to emerge from the aftermath.
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