ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – US Pentagon chief predicted ISIS will lose the last of its territory within weeks. But Washington’s intelligence community warns the group will still be a long-term threat.
ISIS has lost more than 99.5 percent of the territory it once held in Syria, acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Tuesday. “Within a couple of weeks, it will be 100 percent.”
“ISIS is no longer able to govern in Syria. ISIS no longer has freedom to mass forces. Syria is no longer a safe haven,” he said.
His boss, President Donald Trump, already declared ISIS defeated in Syria last month when he announced he was calling US troops home.
There are some 2,000 American soldiers stationed in northern Syria and their withdrawal is in early stages, Shanahan said.
ISIS in Syria is corralled into a small area of between 4-6 square kilometres near Baghouz village on the shores of the Euphrates River, kilometres from the Iraqi border.
There are a lot of people in that small area, including civilians, which is slowing down military operations.
“There are thousands of Daesh [ISIS] families there. They are civilians at the end of the day,” Mustafa Bali, spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), told Reuters. “We cannot storm the area or put any child’s life in danger.”
The militants had tried to strike a deal that would see them surrender this last pocket of territory in exchange for safe passage out, but the SDF refused, Bali added.
While the physical caliphate is on the back foot, the extremist group still has thousands of fighters in its ranks in Iraq and Syria, according to Daniel Coats, US director of national intelligence.
ISIS “maintains eight branches, more than a dozen networks, and thousands of dispersed supporters around the world, despite significant leadership and territorial losses,” Coats told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday.
As the US prepares to pull out of Syria, Coats predicted ISIS will exploit the reduced pressure on them to accelerate operations and rebuild “key capabilities, such as media production and external operations.”
Already the group is “exploiting sectarian tensions” with attacks in both Iraq and Syria and, in the long term, will play on “Sunni grievances, societal instability, and stretched security forces to regain territory in Iraq and Syria,” he concluded.