Iraq News Now

The lead inspector general for Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq and Syria combating ISIS, said in a report Tuesday that the terrorist group “consolidated its insurgency in Iraq and resurged in Syria” during the spring and summer this year.

The 116 pages of watchdog findings were compiled by the Defense Department’s inspector general, in coordination with the inspectors general from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. It warned that, although the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate has been eliminated, thousands of active ISIS fighters remain in Iraq and Syria and are “carrying out attacks and working to rebuild their capabilities.”

The report made clear that ISIS is able to survive as an operational insurgency in both Iraq and Syria partly because the U.S.-trained Iraqi Security Forces and the U.S.-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces are still unable to carry out extended campaigns against the jihadist fighters.

ISIS made worldwide headlines in 2014 when it streamed from Syria into western Iraq, sending the Iraqi army reeling and capturing major cities such as Mosul. Nearly reaching Baghdad, they declared a caliphate that, at its height, briefly held sway over more than 10 million people. The reign of ISIS was marked by beheadings, rape, torture, slavery, and attempted genocide. The Obama administration eventually began to roll ISIS back, and under the Trump administration the terrorist group lost control of nearly all its territory.

Trump tweeted in December 2018 that “we have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

The inspector general report said that remaining ISIS militants in both Iraq and Syria are currently employing similar tactics, including assassinations, ambushes, suicide bombings, and crop burnings, but that they avoided more large-scale assaults and didn’t try to hold onto territory for any extended amount of time. The investigative write-up also concluded that ISIS likely retains between 14,000 and 18,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, including as many as 3,000 foreign militants.

President Trump has repeatedly urged Western European countries in particular to step up and repatriate their homegrown militants to put them on trial for their crimes.

In Iraq, ISIS is “attempting to expand its influence” over populations in the Sunni-majority provinces that are north and west of Baghdad and is “exploiting tension” between the Shia and Sunni communities, as well as the widespread discontent about the Iraqi government. ISIS is also filling the void in areas claimed by both Iraq’s central government and the Kurdish Peshmerga.

In Syria, U.S. forces withdrew from Syria at a time when U.S. commanders said the SDF needed “more training and equipping for counterinsurgency operations.” Presently, the SDF is unable to effectively confront ISIS across the region in a sustained manner. The report notes that ISIS “activated resurgent cells” in the region controlled by the SDF and used its cells to carry out attacks in northeastern Syria and other parts of the Middle Euphrates River Valley. The targets of these attacks also included pro-Assad forces.

The inspector general report also warned that ISIS is active in the sprawling al-Hawl refugee camp in northeastern Syria guarded by the SDF, “where thousands of ISIS family members now reside.” The report further stated that ISIS is “likely working to enlist new members from the camp’s large population” of internally displaced persons.

United States Central Command strongly recommended moving the ISIS family members to Syrian “guarantors” or to Iraqi custody if the refugees are Syrian or Iraqi natives, and urged outside countries to take their own foreign citizens back, calling this “critical to reducing ISIS’s recruiting pool.”