The IHS Conflict Monitor says that Islamic State (ISIS)-held territory has shrunk by another 12 percent in the first half of 2016, in a new analysis released on Sunday. “Over the past 18 months, the Islamic State has continued to lose territory at an increasing rate,” explained Columb Strack, a senior IHS analyst. “As the Islamic State’s caliphate shrinks and it becomes increasingly clear that its governance project is failing, the group is re-prioritizing insurgency. As a result, we unfortunately expect an increase in mass casualty attacks and sabotage of economic infrastructure, across Iraq and Syria, and further afield, including Europe,” he added. The monitor reports that in 2015 ISIS’s self-styled caliphate shrunk by 12,800 square kilometers to a total 78,000 square kilometers, a loss of approximately 14 percent. ISIS lost another 12% over the course of the last six months, the present size of their territory is estimated by IHS to total 68,300 square kilometers. IHS has also estimated that ISIS’s monthly revenue is also decreasing. In the middle of 2015 their monthly income averaged at $80 million. By early 2016 however the average had fallen to $56 million. Another senior IHS analyst, Ludovico Carlino, has said this figure is likely to have decreased by “at least another 35%” since March. “Combined with the military setbacks on the ground, this is having an impact on the internal cohesion of the group as indicated by a marked increase in defections and desertions since January 2016,” Carlino explained. Strack believes that ISIS is going to suffer more defeats before the year is out: “We are likely to see more towns and cities become isolated from the core caliphate as was the case in Ramadi and Fallujah. This could enable the fragmentation and gradual defeat of the Islamic State as a conventional force.” ISIS was forced out of Fallujah last month by an Iraqi military offensive backed by US-led coalition airstrikes. It is also under siege in the strategically important Syrian city of Manbij by the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
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