The campaign against the Islamic State is making substantial progress, though military experts are cautious about predicting the approximate time of the militant outfit’s expected demise. Nearly two years after the US and its allies started its battle to contain and stop the surge of the Islamic State, the militants are on the run in several of their strongholds and have been dealt lethal blows where it hurts most – the number of their fighters and their source of funds.
Only recently, Russia and Syrian forces have crippled the Islamic State by recapturing Palmyra, the Graeco-Roman city which the jihadis overran last year and were controlling, and forces backed by the West have seized another 20 percent of IS territory in Syria. Iraqi and Kurdish forces have taken back 40 percent of the terrorist group’s land in Iraq. American airstrikes are also said to have killed 25,000 IS fighters in Iraq and Syria. American bombing campaigns have also destroyed millions of dollars plundered by the militants and targeted the oil facilities under their control inflicting such heavy financial damage that the militants have been forced to reduce their fighters’ salaries by half from last year.
If the current momentum is sustained -- and the signs are that the momentum is only likely to pick up -- terrorist group will be severely crippled and could be reduced to remnants of their previous structure. For example, on Thursday, after a week of heavy airstrikes from American airplanes, Iraq’s elite counterterrorism army entered the strategic important town of Hit which is under the control of IS and sits in an energy-rich area.
If this is the positive fallout of the anti-IS campaign, the danger is that the IS militants are spreading their networks all of the world after being forced to flee from their territories. They are targeting Europe and the latest attacks in Brussels are a clear sign that they have already penetrated Europe. The West and the international community have taken note of the latest threat. “Now (the Islamic State group) and all the extremists are spreading like a cancer around the world,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told in Geneva on the sidelines of a high-level conference on preventing violent extremism. In an earlier address to some of the 700 delegates — among them around 30 ministers and deputy ministers — Ban urged a radical rethink of ways to counter the threat from IS and other groups.
If IS can be defeated in their strongholds, they can be rooted out from the rest of the world too, as we saw in the case of Al Qaeda. The world needs better coordination and cooperation in the fight against the militants and this is a war which the IS will definitely lose.
The campaign against the Islamic State is making substantial progress, though military experts are cautious about predicting the approximate time of the militant outfit’s expected demise. Nearly two years after the US and its allies started its battle to contain and stop the surge of the Islamic State, the militants are on the run in several of their strongholds and have been dealt lethal blows where it hurts most – the number of their fighters and their source of funds.
Only recently, Russia and Syrian forces have crippled the Islamic State by recapturing Palmyra, the Graeco-Roman city which the jihadis overran last year and were controlling, and forces backed by the West have seized another 20 percent of IS territory in Syria. Iraqi and Kurdish forces have taken back 40 percent of the terrorist group’s land in Iraq. American airstrikes are also said to have killed 25,000 IS fighters in Iraq and Syria. American bombing campaigns have also destroyed millions of dollars plundered by the militants and targeted the oil facilities under their control inflicting such heavy financial damage that the militants have been forced to reduce their fighters’ salaries by half from last year.
If the current momentum is sustained -- and the signs are that the momentum is only likely to pick up -- terrorist group will be severely crippled and could be reduced to remnants of their previous structure. For example, on Thursday, after a week of heavy airstrikes from American airplanes, Iraq’s elite counterterrorism army entered the strategic important town of Hit which is under the control of IS and sits in an energy-rich area.
If this is the positive fallout of the anti-IS campaign, the danger is that the IS militants are spreading their networks all of the world after being forced to flee from their territories. They are targeting Europe and the latest attacks in Brussels are a clear sign that they have already penetrated Europe. The West and the international community have taken note of the latest threat. “Now (the Islamic State group) and all the extremists are spreading like a cancer around the world,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told in Geneva on the sidelines of a high-level conference on preventing violent extremism. In an earlier address to some of the 700 delegates — among them around 30 ministers and deputy ministers — Ban urged a radical rethink of ways to counter the threat from IS and other groups.
If IS can be defeated in their strongholds, they can be rooted out from the rest of the world too, as we saw in the case of Al Qaeda. The world needs better coordination and cooperation in the fight against the militants and this is a war which the IS will definitely lose.
