Twenty-eight months ago, Obama addressed the US nation on his strategy to counter ISIS, also known as ISIL. “Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.”
He outlined four prongs to this strategy: systematic airstrikes, increased support to forces on the ground, increased counter-terrorism efforts to cut ISIS’ funding and counter its message, and provide humanitarian assistance to the displaced.
At a press briefing on Tuesday with Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications at the White House, Rudaw’s Namo Abdulla asked him to assess achievements made against ISIS in the last days of Obama’s presidency.
Describing ISIS’ appeal as a group “on the move,” establishing a Caliphate, Rhodes said, “I think that myth has been blown up. There is no longer this triumphalism.”
It is clear, he continued, “that ultimately they are going to lose the territory they hold and they’re gonna be what they are, which is a terrorist organisation and not a state.”
Rhodes detailed that ISIS has been degraded in many ways. They have lost nearly half of the territory they once controlled in Iraq and Syria, “and that includes major population centres.”
The number of foreign fighters seeking to join the group has declined significantly. “And that’s the clearest indicator that you have that the allure is not what it was a few years ago.”
ISIS has also taken a big hit financially, inhibiting their efforts to establish governance.
In the fight against ISIS, Kurds have been an invaluable partner. Kurdish forces were the first to push back against ISIS in Iraq and it was through their coordination with Iraqi forces, Sunni tribes, and local militias that has allowed the whole anti-ISIS campaign in the country to see the success it has, Rhodes said.
“In the darkest days when we first intervened and we were seeking to organise a mix of security forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq really began the first push back against ISIS to hold that line when we intervened to save the Yazidis in Sinjar to obviously protect Erbil and to start to push back.”
He commended the coordination between Kurdish and Iraqi forces, noting that this effective coordination was partly possible because Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi replaced former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “who had soured relations completely with the Sunni community and significantly with the Kurdish community inside Iraq.”
Routing ISIS in Kobane was also only possible because of the Kurdish forces, Rhodes added, who are working well with Arab forces in northern Syria and taking care to balance all the ethnic groups in the region.
The effectiveness of the forces in northern Syria against ISIS is partly because Kurds have “worked across lines of sects and communities in ways that have allowed their campaign to move forward,” he said.
Going forward, Rhodes believes the main fight against ISIS will be taken out of the Middle East as militants leave Iraq and Syria and seek to carry out attacks in Europe and around the world.
“That becomes a more traditional intelligence and law enforcement challenge and that necessitates continued efforts to work more with Muslim majority countries around the world to push back against the ideology of ISIS,” said Rhodes.
