Middle East: Islamic State’s causeis lost, says Barack Obama

After a rare visit to CIA headquarters, Barack Obama delivers a progress report on US-led war against Islamic State.

President Barack Obama arrives with Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, left, and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson right to speak at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Va., Wednesday, April 13, 2016, after a meeting with his National Security Council. Obama pays a rare visit to CIA headquarters as the United States weighs sending more forces to Iraq to fight the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is on the defensive and “their cause is lost”, says Barack Obama.

The US President yesterday paid a rare visit to CIA headquarters in Virginia to discuss the progress of Operation Inherent Resolve, the 20-month-old US-led campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

“ISIL is on the defensive, and we are on the offensive,” Mr Obama said, using an Islamic State acronym.

“We have momentum, and we intend to keep that momentum.”

Mr Obama pointed to recent US airstrikes that killed three senior Islamic State leaders and a report this week showing the group’s ranks at their lowest number since 2014.

“In the days and weeks ahead we intend to take out more (leaders.) Every day, ISIL leaders wake up and understand it could be their last,” Mr Obama said.

“Their ranks of fighters are estimated to be at the lowest levels in two years and more and more are realising that their cause is lost.’’

Mr Obama stressed the importance of ending the five-year civil war in Syria as key to facilitating a lasting defeat of Islamic State.

“So we continue to work for a diplomatic end to this awful conflict,” he said.

Earlier, Baghdad-based spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said the US-led coalition campaign had successfully entered the second “phase” of operations.

The coalition was working through three main steps. “Our enemy has been weakened and we now are working to fracture him. Phase one of the military campaign is complete,” Colonel Warren told Pentagon reporters.

“We are now in phase two, which is to dismantle this enemy.’’

Colonel Warren said the final phase of the campaign was to ensure Islamic State was dealt a lasting defeat, primarily by enabling local forces to prevent a resurgence of jihadist influence.

“While ISIL can still put together some complex attacks, they have not been able to take hold of any key terrain for almost a year now,” Colonel Warren said.

Deputy US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday told a congressional hearing that the killings of thousands of jihadists in coalition airstrikes had shrunk Islamic State to “the lowest they’ve been since we began monitoring their manpower in 2014”.

Pentagon officials said 25,000 Islamic State fighters had been killed in airstrikes since the US-led coalition began bombing the group’s positions in 2014.

Officials estimated in February that the Islamic State fighting force stood at 25,000, down from a high of 31,000, saying the group was failing to replenish its ranks with new recruits as quickly as its fighters were being killed.

Sources inside Islamic State territory confirmed that the group appeared under unprecedented strain, citing an emergency order issued to fighters on leave calling them back to the frontline.

The territory of the so-called Islamic State caliphate has also shrunk to its smallest in more than a year. Forty per cent of the group’s territory in Iraq had been retaken by Iraqi and Kurdish forces, Colonel Warren said, and 10 per cent of its territory in Syria had been lost.

However, Mr Blinken and Colonel Warren acknowledged that the battlefield successes in Iraq and Syria had done little to prevent the group expanding elsewhere, including in Libya, where Islamic State’s fastest growing affiliate boasts an estimated 6000 fighters.

Sources in Islamic State’s Syrian de facto capital Raqqa said the streets had emptied of fighters ordered back to the frontlines, along with Hisba religious police, who usually remain in the cities to impose draconian rules.

“ISIS fighters and Hisba members are almost unseen in the city after the general call-up,” said Abu Sham, a source in the city who uses the nickname Son of Syria.

“People are talking about a ‘battle of survival’ in Syria.”

Badea Abu Jana, an activist in Deir Ezzor, the largest city in the eastern part of Syria, confirmed an emergency mobilisation there also.

“ISIS still has powerful military capabilities, but what has changed is the power of the hostile groups that are fighting ISIS,” he said.

AFP, THE TIMES