Α)Pentagon official: ISIS secretary of defense likely killed in airstrike
This
undated image posted on a militant social media account, which has been
verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows Omar
al-Shishani climbing out of a Humvee. (AP Photo via militant social
media account)
Abu Omar al-Shishani, a top Islamic State leader,
was likely killed in a series of coalition airstrikes near a strategic
town in Syria last week, according to Pentagon officials.
Pentagon
spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement that the U.S. military was
still “assessing the results” of the operation. The strikes were
conducted by both manned and unmanned aircraft, said one official,
speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.
The
official said 12 other Islamic State fighters were also killed in the
strike, which hit near the town of Shadadi. No civilians were killed,
the official added.
Shishani’s death, if confirmed, would
represent a strike at the organization’s group of operational leaders.
Shishani was a skilled tactician who helped Syrian rebels to victory in a
number of key battles earlier in the war. He was also likely a key
decision-maker for Islamic State combat operations in the region. By
contrast, the 2015 attack on Mohammed Emwazi, the ISIS executioner known
by many as “Jihadi John,” eliminated a more symbolic member of the
terrorist group.
Shadadi has been the site of heavy fighting in
recent weeks as the Syrian Democratic Forces and Kurdish YPG fighters
have fought to retake the town from Islamic State forces. Backed by U.S.
airstrikes and advisers, the two groups managed to take the town — a
key intersection for Islamic State forces moving into Iraq — relatively
quickly.
“It is unusual and noteworthy that [Shishani] — who was
the ISIL equivalent of the secretary of defense — had traveled to the
al-Shadadi area from Raqqa,” the official said.
Shishani’s
presence near Shadadi “was likely to bolster the sagging morale of ISIL
fighters there,” the official said, using an acronym for the Islamic
State.
A Georgian by birth known also as “Omar the Chechen” and by
his birth name of Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, Shishani fought
in the Georgian armed forces during the country’s short war in 2008
against the Russians. After serving out his time in his home country’s
military, Shishani joined a number of rebel brigades fighting in Syria
following the start of the country’s civil war in 2011. Sometime in
2013, Shishani joined the Islamic State. In September 2014, Shishani was
added to the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of specially designated
global terrorists.
“Batirashvili is a battle-tested leader with
experience who had led ISIL fighters in numerous engagements in Iraq and
Syria,” Cook said in an emailed statement. “His potential removal from
the battlefield would negatively impact ISIL’s ability to recruit
foreign fighters — especially those from Chechnya and the [Caucasus]
regions — and degrade ISIL’s ability to coordinate attacks and defense
of its strongholds like Raqqah, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq.”
www.washingtonpost.com
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B)Islamic State is no longer so formidable on the battlefield
Iraq’s
elite counterterrorism service forces move toward an area east of
Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, on Wednesday. (Ahmad
Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images)
By Hugh Naylor
BEIRUT — The
Islamic State’s recent defeats on the battlefield signal that its
once-vaunted militia army has been hobbled by worsening money problems,
desertions and a dwindling pool of fighters, analysts and monitoring
groups say.
U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab forces have seized
significant amounts of territory from the extremist group in the parts
of Iraq and Syria where it declared a caliphate in 2014. Those losses
are linked to the group’s struggles to pay fighters and recruit new ones
to replace those who have deserted, defected to other militant groups
or died on the battlefield, the analysts say.
“These issues
suggest that as an entity that is determined to hold onto territory, the
Islamic State is not sustainable,” said Jacob Shapiro, an expert on the
Islamic State who teaches politics at Princeton University.
[Islamic State strikes back in Syria after losing ground]
Only
a year ago, the Islamic State was seen as a juggernaut — rich,
organized and fielding thousands of motivated fighters — that overran
rival forces in Iraq and Syria with astonishing speed and brutality.
But in recent months, its momentum has been reversed.
U.S.
military officials estimate that the group has lost as much as 40
percent of the territory it held in Iraq and as much as 20 percent in
Syria. Kurdish and Arab forces, including Iraq’s increasingly competent
military, have advanced against the group with the help of airstrikes
from a U.S.-led coalition.
The air raids have damaged the Islamic
State’s oil infrastructure, a key revenue source, and the territorial
setbacks have stripped the group of populations to tax and assets to
seize, analysts say. All of this, they say, appears to have forced the
group to reduce salaries and benefits for fighters.
Few expect a
sudden defeat of the conservative Sunni group, known for its resilience
and ability to surprise its opponents. It also will probably continue
exploiting sectarian grievances that have helped it gain loyalty, albeit
sometimes tenuous, from the largely Sunni populations under its
control, an issue that has made it difficult to defeat the group.
Moreover,
the suspension on Wednesday of U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva to end
the Syrian war may complicate international efforts to fight the
Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL. The United States and Russia
back opposing sides in the conflict but have nevertheless supported the
talks because of concern that the fighting, which has killed more than
250,000 people and displaced millions, is empowering the Islamic State.
Yet
there appears to be a rise in the number of Islamic State fighters who
have deserted or, in the case of the Syrian conflict, defected to other
militant groups, said Vera Mironova, an expert on armed groups in Syria
and Iraq at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. The salary and benefit
cuts have caused “for-profit militants” in Syria to increasingly “look
for better deals” with other armed factions, she said.
The group,
she added, also is struggling to replenish ranks of its foreign
fighters, who tend to be more ideologically driven but also die in
relatively large numbers on the battlefield. Tighter border restrictions
imposed by Turkey have slowed the flow of fighters into neighboring
Syria, said Mironova, whose research has involved hundreds of interviews
with militants who are fighting in Syria and Iraq.
“They’re in big trouble,” Mironova said, referring to the Islamic State’s ability to fight.
[Iraqis think the U.S. is in cahoots with the Islamic State]
Members
of the Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently group, which monitors the
Islamic State, say a rising number of foreign members of the militant
group have requested help to flee Syria. The requests have been made
secretly because the Islamic State regularly executes foreigners who
attempt to escape, said a co-founder of the Syrian monitoring group,
Mohammed Saleh, who like other members uses a nom de guerre because of
threats from the militants.
“There are lots of these people who
are desperately trying to flee, and not just from Raqqa,” he said,
referring to the city in eastern Syria that is the Islamic State’s
self-declared capital.
“Part of this is that these people are
moving from vibrant cities like London or Paris. After a year of living
in a place like Raqqa, they get tired of living without electricity and
getting bombed all the time. They get bored, or they realize that the
so-called caliphate is not what they were told it was.”
Analysts
speculate that the problems have compelled the group to adopt new
tactics, such as carrying out attacks abroad. That includes the Paris
assaults in November that killed 130 people.
Attacks abroad may be
an attempt to sustain the group’s narrative as always on the offense —
which has been key for attracting potential militants. Even so, the
Islamic State’s media narrative has shifted from a triumphant one to
having to explain why it is losing so much, said Nelly Lahoud, an expert
on political Islam at the International Institute for Strategic Studies
who studies the group’s media.
“They overplayed their card at the
beginning by describing their victories as a sign from God, a reward
for their faith,” she said.
In October, the Islamic State
announced a month-long amnesty for deserters, according to documents
obtained and translated by Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on the Islamic
State. He called the amnesty the “clearest sign” of the Islamic State’s
troubles waging war.
According to activists with Raqqa is Being
Slaughtered Silently, the Islamic State is also forcibly recruiting more
teenage boys in Syria to fight for the group.
Analysts and
monitoring groups say they have observed more reports of the Islamic
State executing fighters who deserted during recent battles against
Kurdish peshmerga fighters in Iraq’s north and Iraqi forces in the city
of Ramadi.
Reliance on such extreme measures “is a sure sign of low cohesion and a burned-out military force,” said Shapiro of Princeton.
www.washingtonpost.com
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