WASHINGTON
— American airstrikes have killed 25,000 Islamic State fighters in Iraq
and Syria and incinerated millions of dollars plundered by the
militants, according to Pentagon officials.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces have taken back 40 percent of the militant group’s land in Iraq, the officials say, and forces backed by the West have seized a sizable amount of territory in Syria that had been controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
But
the battlefield successes enjoyed by Western-backed forces in the
Islamic State’s heartland have done little to stop the expansion of the
militants to Europe, North Africa and Afghanistan. The attacks this year
in Brussels, Istanbul
and other cities only reinforced the sense of a terrorist group on the
march, and among American officials and military experts, there is
renewed caution in predicting progress in a fight that they say is
likely to go on for years.
“Even
as we advance our efforts to defeat Daesh on the front lines,” Deputy
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told a congressional committee on
Tuesday, using another name for the Islamic State, “we know that to be
fully effective, we must work to prevent the spread of violent extremism
in the first place — to stop the recruitment, radicalization and
mobilization of people, especially young people, to engage in terrorist
activities.”
Instead
of engaging a pseudo-state in the Middle East whose fighters have
proved susceptible to American airpower, the United States and its
European allies must now also engage in a far more complex struggle
against homegrown militants who need relatively few resources to sow
bloodshed in the West.
“Defeating
the formal military presence of a terrorist group will not
significantly mitigate the threat of lone wolf or small independent
cells that are based in the West,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a former
terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury Department who is now with the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
Attacks
in the West are cheap to finance — Mr. Schanzer estimated that the cost
of the materials used in the Brussels attack and the lab needed to make
the explosives, for instance, was $10,000 to $15,000. And, he added:
“You can defeat ISIS in ISIS-controlled territories, but you’re not
going to defeat ISIS itself. The ideology of jihadism continues to
evolve and continues to exist.”
While
some officials have sought to portray the recent attacks in Europe and
Turkey as evidence that the Islamic State is growing desperate as a
result of its battlefield losses, far more officials and experts see the
violence as another indication that the Islamic State is not a problem
that will be quickly or easily overcome.
Officials
on both sides of the Atlantic acknowledge that the Islamic State, which
has looted an estimated $1 billion from bank vaults across Syria and
Iraq and is widely seen as one of the richest militant groups of all
time, remains a resilient and adaptable battlefield adversary, still
able to mount spectacular acts, like the abduction of at least 170
workers from a cement factory near Damascus last week.
In
Mosul, Iraq, and in Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the Islamic State’s
de facto capital, salaries for fighters have been cut in half since last
year, according to residents and documents. But even with reduced
salaries, American officials say, the Islamic State, which collects
hundreds of millions of dollars by extortion, fees and taxes on the
people it rules, is still paying its fighters.
Video Shows Airstrike on ISIS Vehicle
The United States military released a
video on Thursday that it says shows an airstrike that took place over
the weekend on an Islamic State vehicle in Syria.
By DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, VIA REUTERS on Publish Date April 8, 2016.
Watch in Times Video »
“There
is no simple tool to separate ISIL from its vast wealth,” Daniel L.
Glaser, the assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing, said
recently in a speech in London.
But
administration officials say that the twin efforts to militarily shrink
the group’s dominion in Iraq and Syria and to cut into its finances
have fed off each other. The strategic aim is to deprive the militants
of the resources they need to wage war by retaking their towns, cities and oil fields, and by American accounts, they have been succeeding.
Since
late October, an American air campaign called Operation Tidal Wave II
has targeted oil fields, refineries and tanker trucks, and American
officials believe they have cut the Islamic State’s oil revenue by about
a third. On the ground, the Islamic State has lost a series of cities
and towns since it seized Ramadi, Iraq, almost a year ago, its last
major battlefield victory. Iraqi security forces, backed by American
airstrikes, have retaken Ramadi.
Iraqi
forces have also retaken the northern city of Baiji, with its oil
refinery. And Kurdish and Yazidi forces have driven Islamic State
fighters out of the northern city of Sinjar.
In
recent weeks, American airstrikes have killed what administration
officials said were top Islamic State leaders: the group’s minister of
war, Omar al-Shishani (Omar the Chechen), and a top commander, Abd
al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli. An Islamic State chemical weapons
specialist, Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, was captured by American Special
Operations forces in February.
Graphic
Brussels Is Latest Target in Islamic State’s Assault on West
More than 650 Westerners have been killed in attacks carried out or inspired by the Islamic State.
At
the same time, officials acknowledge that the Islamic State has been
able to replace many of its leaders and that taking key figures off the
battlefield will not necessarily finish off the group.
Alongside
the military efforts to disrupt the Islamic State’s finances, the
Treasury and its European counterparts are pursuing a number of paths to
cut the flow of cash to the group and to keep it from using the
international banking system. They persuaded Iraq to prohibit bank
branches in cities and towns held by the Islamic State from making
international transfers, instead ordering all requests to be routed
through the central bank in Baghdad, where they can, in theory, be
intercepted and stopped.
The
United States, European countries and the United Nations have also all
sought to add people or companies associated with the Islamic State to
financial blacklists.
In
addition, American officials prevailed upon the Iraqi government to
finally stop paying salaries to its officials and workers who live in
areas controlled by the Islamic State. The payments totaled about $170
million a year, American officials said, and the Islamic State skimmed
off about 10 percent or more of each paycheck in taxes.
The
falling price of oil, which the militants typically sell on the black
market for about half the going rate, has also hurt the Islamic State,
American and European officials believe. This time last year, oil was
selling for nearly $60 a barrel; it is now around $45.
Coalition airstrikes have in the meantime hit at least 10 depots where the Islamic State stored hard currency. In January, American aircraft struck
what officials said was a particularly rich stockpile, and video taken
in the moments after the building was hit by a bomb showed plumes of
currency fluttering through the air.
The military said tens of millions of dollars were incinerated, though other American officials and experts were less bullish.
“There’s
a lot less certainty about how much money actually evaporated,” said
Howard Shatz, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation who has studied
the Islamic State’s finances.
Whatever the amount, a siege mentality appears to have developed in territory still held by the Islamic State.
“These
days, the situation has changed, and there is a shortage of money in
Mosul,” Ayham Ali, who sells sandwiches from a wooden cart in Mosul,
said in a recent interview.
Obaida
Nama, a retired engineer there, said he did not think the Islamic State
would last. “The corruption that ISIS is committing is the beginning of
its end,” he said.
Still,
said Derek Chollet, a former top Pentagon official in the Obama
administration, “I don’t think anyone is going to declare victory now,
nor should they.”
The Islamic State “is going to be a chronic problem that we’re going to have to confront,” he added.
Matthew Rosenberg and Helene
Cooper reported from Washington, and Nicholas Kulish from New York.
Omar Al-Jawoshy contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an employee of
The New York Times from Erbil, Iraq.
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