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Washington Post: the Islamic State is losing ground

Feb 7, 2016 3:15 pm By Robert Spencer

This would be great news, and highly encouraging, except that we have heard this before. And not only have we heard it before, but now the Washington Post is engaging in revisionist history.

This story says: “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.”

Let’s see. A year ago, that would be January 2015, no? The Atlantic announced in January 2015: “ISIS Is Losing Its Greatest Weapon: Momentum: Evidence suggests that the Islamic State’s power has been declining for months.”

The Atlantic wasn’t the only one. A CNN headline asked in November 2014: “Has ISIS peaked? Terror group suffers setbacks in Iraq.”

CNN followed a few weeks later with “For ISIS, tough times as it seeks to regroup.”

The New York Times announced on February 4, 2015, that “ISIS Is Losing in Iraq.”

On April 15, 2015, Vox issued its own report: “ISIS is losing.”

But in this WaPo report, we’re hearing that they’re losing now, and that a year ago they were “a juggernaut.” No, the mainstream media was telling us a year ago that they were losing, and they’re telling us the same thing now. The lies they told us a year ago make this report harder to accept at face value.

isis-vehicles islamic state

“Islamic State is no longer so formidable on the battlefield,” by Hugh Naylor, Washington Post, February 6, 2016:

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.

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 Pentagon was caught last April falsifying its maps of Islamic State territory.

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.

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….

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.

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Filed Under: Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), journalistic bias Tagged With: Washington Post


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Comments

  1. Infidel from Down Under says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 3:25 pm

    This always scares me a bit when statements like this come out.

    Maybe its co incidence but ISIS invariably always seem to come out and and quickly prove wrong ‘we are winning the war ‘ declarations like this one

    • quotha raven says

      Feb 8, 2016 at 11:42 am

      To Infidel from Down Under:

      Washington Post = toilet paper.

      Cheers!

      quotha raven

      • Angemon says

        Feb 8, 2016 at 5:58 pm

        quotha raven posted:

        “Washington Post = toilet paper.”

        I respectfully disagree, QR – using bad toilet paper is a line I never, ever want to cross 😉

        • quotha raven says

          Feb 8, 2016 at 8:21 pm

          To Angemon – LOL, ya got me! I shoulda said WaPo = parrot cage floor cover )))))

          Cheers!

          quotha r

  2. Salah says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 3:28 pm

    Thank you…Russia!

    • Miao Zedong says

      Feb 7, 2016 at 4:33 pm

      After trasing an bashing the Russians the Western media have become conspicously silent.

  3. David Munson says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 3:34 pm

    Yea. One step back and ten steps forward. They are being helped.NY Imam’s everywhere. Maybe if they blow up a soft TV station, the Media will understand. But I don’t think do.

  4. ballotcode says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 3:36 pm

    Any armed force that relies heavily on the tactic of “executes foreigners who attempt to escape” and other coercive methods is not very strong.
    But, I don’t think that daesh is as vulnerable as we are being told.

  5. Walter Sieruk says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 4:29 pm

    Hopefully,that hideous and demonic jihad entity ISIS really might be losing ground. Is that only wishful thinking or hope based on reality ? Nevertheless, the case is still that most people know that the head and chief of ISIS is the man named Al- Baghdadi . What most people don’t know this that Al -Baghdadi is just a puppet ruler and a figure head of ISIS .The real ,as in actual Head and Chief of ISIS is someone else. This “someone else” has been revealed by the Christian author ,Charles Dyer, in his book entitled THE ISIS CRISIS . For on page 116 it exposes that “The ultimate commander of ISIS remains unseen by most of his followers, but not unknown. This commander is Satan himself…Satan moves across the earth ‘like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.’ [First Peter 8:8.]” Therefore, the cruel ,vicious malicious and murderous fiendish jihadist thugs of ISIS are in reality deluded fools, tools and stooges used by Satan to inflect heinously vile and murderous harm on humankind.
    All of this is a reminder that the Bible teaches “The hearts of men are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterwards they join the dead.” Ecclesiastes 9:3. [N.I.V.]

  6. Walter Sieruk says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 4:36 pm

    The cruel,vicious and malice-filled brutal and murdering jihadist fiends who compose the demonic and deadly jihad entity ISIS are so extremely bloodthirsty ,ruinous and murderous that they are similar, in character, to the heinous villains described in the Bible. Which reads “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their way, and the way of peace they do not know.” Romans 3:15-17. [N.I.V.]

  7. Georg says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 4:58 pm

    IS are their own worst enemy in the sense that they can’t produce anything. All they can do is steal. When taking over Mosul they scrupulously removed all aspects of the university which served any pragmatic purpose. They empty the banks and send the money to jannah. There are signs everywhere they go that they can’t manage a population well and they make people miserable… They’ve put on full display for the world the joys of a caliphate. Well done. And lest anyone think it an aberration, we have the Taliban, Hamas, al-Shabaab, al Qaida, jabat al nusra, ansar al Islam, jaish al Islam, Boko Haram, the Khorasan, KSA, Quatar, the litany of Pakistani religious whackos, the Ayatollah, and the other 99.9% of these malignant imbeciles to warn us otherwise. Civilization needs this like a hole in the head.

  8. Westman says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 5:21 pm

    Don’t look now, but Russia is about to finish off 35,000 of the so-called rebels financed by the US. This will is what the US calls winning over ISIS?

    http://www.debka.com/article/25215/Russian-hands-off-warning-to-US-Saudis-Turks-amid-crucial-Aleppo-battle

    Not only that but there is presently a standoff between the “allies” and Russia over a no-fly zone in the area. Russia has warned it will not accept such a thing and will essentially take on any entity that tries to enforce it. They are also laughing at the notion of Saudi Arabia sending in ground troops — sacrificial lambs.

    The US waited too long to be decisive. Now we have a potential flashpoint for war should it try to suddenly become more agressive.

  9. Agustinus Daniel says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 6:01 pm

    To fight islamic invasion with military effort will not eliminate the real problem: ISLAM itself. The only effective way to fight ISLAM if to go back to Christ radically by improving our spiritual life.

    Please join us through Jesus Meditation, this is our humble crusade against all the enemies of Christ. It can be practiced by ALL CHRISTIANS, both Catholics or non-Catholics.

    We already uploaded 3 videos so far and more videos will be added soon:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wE4sxR0ijo

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNtGmj5kTYg

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac-HZsCfwg0

    Thank you and God bless you.

  10. Matthieu Baudin says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 6:51 pm

    “…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…”

    This looks like they’re beating their own drum. If indeed there have been some recent advances against the Caliphate then some of it’s almost certainly due to the stepped up activity from Russian air-strikes. But of course there’s no mention of this or of the resolve and effectiveness of Syrian government ground forces. This is a very grubby war, but that shouldn’t prevent quality and honest journalism from giving credit where it’s due while coving the warts and all of this religious civil war.

  11. Karen says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 6:57 pm

    I don’t know….am I supposed to believe the Washington Post? An Obama-cheerleader paper, quoting anonymous sources……meh. Time will tell.

  12. Angemon says

    Feb 7, 2016 at 7:20 pm

    “They’re in big trouble,” Mironova said, referring to the Islamic State’s ability to fight.

    What does this mean to Western nations under threat of “lone wolf” attacks? Why, nothing, that’s what – even if the islamic state were to disappear tomorrow, the muslims in Western countries who would engage in “lone wolf” attacks might, or not, change their mind, but what happens the next time an islamic terror group calls for “lone wolf” attacks in Western nations?

    “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.”

    And then they go back to their former nation to spread the ideology that made them go fight for ISIS, if not engage in terrorist attacks there.

    • Panmelia says

      Feb 8, 2016 at 12:26 pm

      The solution is obvious: don’t allow these traitors to return. Send them into limbo where they deserve to languish until some country – perhaps their or their parents’ original country – lets them in. I don’t care what happens to traitors and those who hate Britain or the West generally. I’m sick of hearing them described as ‘British’ when they are nothing of the kind. Their passports should be destroyed in front of their eyes and their ‘citizenship’ revoked permanently.

      Of course, the EU Court of Human Rights would make a helluva fuss and order the British government to allow them back. After we get out of the EU, the EUCHR can go and swivel.

      Alternatively, we could do what Churchill did at the beginning of WW2 and intern all suspected traitors in camps until they were investigated, cleared, imprisoned or deported. I notice in recent years that Roosevelt’s internment of possible Japanese enemies after Pearl Harbour has been demonised as shameful by leftists and detractors. It was nothing of the sort. Only a fool would let his country’s potential enemies run about loose in a time of war.

      I think we’re fighting another war – against islamic ideology – and we need to wake up, identify the enemy and take strong action.

      • robert says

        Feb 8, 2016 at 2:00 pm

        Panmelia has it right-these idiots should not be allowed to return to Britain or any other country that they left to fight for the so called Islamic state.Their passports should be revoked forever.Who the hell in this world would like to live like they do, especially the women.

  13. DFD says

    Feb 8, 2016 at 11:56 am

    It’s blatantly obvious: The Washington Post has been taken over either by MAD magazine or by Cracked. I would really suspect Alfred E. Neumann to be responsible, but perhaps Kaputnik?

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