New Pentagon report confirms US troop withdrawal helped ISIS rebuild in northeast Syria

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Islamic State group is taking advantage of the US troop drawdown in Syria to rebuild its organization, expand its ability to conduct transnational attacks, and continue to build clandestine terror networks in the region, the Pentagon's Lead Inspector General indicated in his latest report to Congress.

Published on Monday, the report extended beyond its quarterly deadline of September 30 in order to account for the US troop withdrawal and subsequent Turkish invasion of northeast Syria in October. Citing intelligence reports, Lead Inspector General Glenn A. Fine was clear in characterizing the US withdrawal as detrimental to the Combined Joint Task Force -Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) mission against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

"Prior to the Turkish incursion and subsequent drawdown of US forces, ISIS...had been continuing to reconstitute networks and carry out attacks...After the Turkish incursion, the DIA reported ... that with SDF and U.S. operations against ISIS in Syria diminished, ISIS was likely to exploit the reduction in counterterrorism pressure to reconstitute its operations in Syria and expand its ability to conduct transnational attacks," Inspector General Fine stated in his opening message.

The death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in late October – the result of a raid conducted after months of collaborative work between the US and the SDF - "would likely have little effect on the ability of ISIS to reconstitute," the Inspector General wrote.

He went on to cite additional intelligence reports stating that ISIS will probably attempt to free members who are currently detained in prisons controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as the SDF is currently preoccupied by the Turkish invasion of northeast Syria which was precipitated by the US troop withdrawal from the region.

Before the launch of Turkey's ground invasion, SDF and Kurdish administrative leaders warned they would have to center their efforts and resources on pushing back the Turkish offensive – putting counter-ISIS operations and the detention of ISIS suspects and their kin on the backburner.

A later section of the report explaining the impact of the Turkish invasion on the CJTF-OIR mission quotes Ambassador James Jeffrey, the US Special Representative for Syria Engagement and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, as testifying to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that "if those troops are withdrawn fully, a very important tool we had to keep ISIS under control will be gone."

While the US-led coalition conducted 47 airstrikes on ISIS targets in Iraq over the months of September and October, no airstrikes were conducted in Syria over the same time period, according to statistics provided in a CJTF-OIR press release in mid-November.

In the absence of continuous US and SDF counterterrorism operations, it is unlikely that any other actors in Syria will continue the battle against ISIS. Syrian regime forces will focus on containing the Turkish invasion rather than combating ISIS, the report states, and their Russian allies in the region are also unlikely to conduct counter-terror operations.

Despite Ankara's public pledges to combat ISIS terrorism, the report confirms that some of the Syrian militias fighting alongside the Turkish military are ideologically similar to ISIS, and have helped smuggle ISIS fighters out of Syria in the past.

ISIS members are known to exist within the ranks of the Syrian National Army, one of Turkey's main proxy forces in northeast Syria, and Iraqi Military Intelligence Chief Lt. Gen Saad Al-Allaq told CNN that prominent senior members of ISIS have been smuggled into Turkey, where they are planning mass prison breaks to free ISIS members held by the SDF.

In Iraq, the CJTF-OIR mission to combat ISIS was not affected by the US troop drawdown. While the report stated that ISIS has continued to solidify and expand its command and control structure in Iraq, it also noted that ISIS has not increased its capabilities in areas where the Coalition maintains a presence. However, the number of provincial districts reporting ISIS activity did expand this quarter, particularly in Diyala province and southeastern Nineveh province.

While the CJTF-OIR reported a decline in ISIS activity across the provinces of Anbar, Kirkuk, and Saladin, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) drew a different conclusion, reporting that ISIS activity in these provinces has "leveled off" rather than declined. Coalition forces continue to incur losses in ISIS-conducted attacks. Most recently, five Italian Coalition soldiers were injured by a roadside IED in Kirkuk province while training Iraqi Security Forces for counter-ISIS operations.

The biggest challenge facing the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) is their inability to control large swathes of terrain, due in part to the fact that they simply lack the manpower to patrol vast desert areas. The CJTF-OIR mission in Anbar province seeks to clear ISIS militants from an area spanning nearly 43,000 square kilometers, and the ISF faces similar challenges in Saladin and Diyala. The report also quotes the CJTF-OIR as saying that the ISF remains "largely unwilling or incapable of holding terrain in the mountains and central and southern wadis of Kirkuk province."

The CJTF-OIR has trained more than 4,000 ISF and Kurdish Peshmerga personnel to deliver military training to their peers and subordinates, and seeks to decrease ISF reliance on Coalition personnel after nearly four years of training. The Coalition estimated that 15,000 ISF personnel and nearly 10,000 Peshmerga personnel will have been trained in anti-ISIS skills and fighting techniques by the end of the quarter. The end goal is to build the ISF and Peshmerga into self-reliant forces able to train their own personnel and fight ISIS without Coalition support.