{"id":2377,"date":"2018-11-08T15:31:10","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T15:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/?p=2377"},"modified":"2018-11-08T15:31:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-08T15:31:10","slug":"fight-against-last-vestige-of-isis-in-syria-stalls-to-dismay-of-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/2018\/11\/08\/fight-against-last-vestige-of-isis-in-syria-stalls-to-dismay-of-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Fight Against Last Vestige of ISIS in Syria Stalls, to Dismay of U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"
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AMMAN, Jordan \u2014 An\u00a0American-backed military offensive<\/a>\u00a0has stalled against the Islamic State\u2019s last vestige in eastern Syria.<\/p>\n

Booby traps, land mines and a militant counterstrike during a fierce sandstorm after the campaign began in September have knocked the coalition back on its heels.<\/p>\n

And last week, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led militia that is fighting the Islamic State with American help, suspended operations after Kurdish positions farther north were shelled by Turkey \u2014 not far from United States advisers.<\/p>\n

American diplomats and generals rushed to ease tensions with the Turks, who consider Kurdish fighters terrorists despite their partnership with the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But the episode underscores the shifting nature of the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, a still-potent threat as it pivots from its battlefield losses in Iraq and Syria to directing guerrilla insurgencies in the Middle East and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough ISIS\u2019s safe haven in Iraq and Syria has largely collapsed, its global enterprise of almost two dozen branches and networks, each numbering in the hundreds to thousands of members, remains robust,\u201d Russell Travers, the acting head of the National Counterterrorism Center, told\u00a0senators in Washington<\/a>\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n

Last week, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for an\u00a0attack on buses<\/a>carrying Coptic Christians to a monastery in Egypt, which killed seven people and wounded 19 others. Dutch officials said in late September that they foiled a\u00a0large, multisite terrorist<\/a>\u00a0Islamic State attack there.<\/p>\n

In Jordan, state intelligence officials said they had worked closely with the C.I.A. to thwart more than a dozen terrorist plots in the past several months in the Middle East and Europe.<\/p>\n

A classified American military program in Jordan, called Operation Gallant Phoenix, is scooping up data collected in commando raids in Syria and Iraq and funneling it to law enforcement agencies in Europe and Southeast Asia, according to United States military and intelligence officials who described details of the initiative on condition of anonymity because of its secretive nature.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In Afghanistan, the Islamic State\u2019s local branch has conducted a spate of high-profile attacks against civilian and government targets in Kabul while carving out a sanctuary in the country\u2019s east, Mr. Travers said. Other Islamic State affiliates in Egypt\u2019s Sinai Peninsula, Libya, Yemen and western Africa continue to mobilize fighters and execute attacks against local governments and group rivals, fomenting and leveraging instability in these already beleaguered areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cISIS remains an adaptive and dangerous adversary, and is already tailoring its strategy to sustain operations amid mounting losses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Other networks that are less formally aligned with the Islamic State, including extremists in other parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and the Philippines, continue to conduct attacks that showcase the group\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n

To be sure, thousands of Islamic State members \u2014 including senior leaders, veteran field commanders and foreign fighters \u2014 have been killed in United States airstrikes and partner actions. The extremist group now holds less than 1 percent of the territory it seized in Iraq and Syria in 2014, or about half the area of Manhattan.<\/p>\n

But ISIS has reverted to its insurgent roots \u2014 an atomized, clandestine network of cells with a decentralized chain of command, Western and Middle Eastern counterterrorism officials said.<\/p>\n

The move follows plans that the extremist network drew up in the months before its main strongholds in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, fell to coalition forces last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve expected that as the physical caliphate went away, the remnants of this would attempt to revive themselves and revive their networks, and take on these insurgent, guerrilla-like tactics,\u201d Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the head of the military\u2019s Central Command, said in an interview in Bahrain last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re well prepared for that,\u201d said General Votel, who oversees the American military in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. \u201cThese organizations never go away in one fell swoop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The number of foreign terrorist fighters, once pouring into Iraq and Syria at about 1,500 a month, has dropped sharply. But the Islamic State still attracts about 100 new foreign fighters to the region each month, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a meeting of military chiefs in October.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn its current trajectory, ISIS could regain sufficient strength to mount a renewed insurgency that once again threatens to overmatch local security forces in both Iraq and Syria,\u201d the Institute for the Study of War in Washington concluded in\u00a0a recent analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Iraq, Islamic State sleeper cells in recent months have carried out raids and ambushes against Iraqi security forces and civilians, particularly in Anbar, Kirkuk and Salahuddin provinces.<\/p>\n

And as the Islamic State hunkers down in Syria, including in caves and fortified tunnels in Hajin and a few surrounding villages in the Euphrates River Valley, it wields a diminished but still formidable social media prowess to rally its followers on the ground and on the internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is displaying its wins on its official online channels, including the alleged capture of enemy fighters and the killing and wounding of many others,\u201d said Laith Alkhouri, a senior director at Flashpoint, a business risk intelligence company in New York that assesses the global terrorist threat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n