Islamic State setbacks show growing woes
Financial problems, desertions lead to battlefield defeats.
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 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 proba- bly continue exploiting sectarian grievances that have helped it gain loyalty, albeit sometimes tenuous, from the largely Sunni populations under its control.
Moreover, the suspension last 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.