Pugnacious Terror of ISIS Ressurrected

The anti Jihadist Campaign is not finished yet by the USA as the ISIS is still largely accomplishing the objectives stated in Iraq and Syria. This anti-ISIS campaign promotes the physical destruction of the Caliphate and shut down the capabolity pointing where the local forces could still maintain the security with the international support. 

The Anti-ISIS Coalitio in Iraq acomplished the mission in April 2018 after the finish of the last urban clearing operation in Anbar Province in Western Iraq.

In Syria, the USA and its local partner forces are attacking the final ISIS territorial stronghold near the Syrian-Iraqi broder. The terrorist group could not restructured the operations and return to the regional insurgency and the Pentagon stated in August 2018 that ISIS still have nearly 30 thousand fighters across Iraq and Syria and is "more capable" still than Al'Qaeda in Iraq.

At this scenario, ISIS can regain strenght to renew the insurgency that threaten to overmatch the local security in Iraq and Syria despite the support from the coalition.

ISIS strategy is to raise funds again to start the new core of the leadership for the insurrection, and also rebuild the C2 center to keep the Caliphate still capable to frontline with the coalition forces and the federal forces against them and spawn a capacity to a future large-scale insurgency in both-countries.

Also, keep the enlistment over Europe and apropriate the migration crisis in Europe to infiltrate the Lone Wolves. After this, the idea is to promote a large-scale conflict and to take the national security power through the insurrection, and promote a statement.

The group was able to smuggle as much as $400 million out of Iraq and reinvest it into legitimate businesses across the wider Middle East. It continues to engage in the criminal activity including extortion, smuggling, theft, money laundering and local traffick, drugs and weapon, inclusing also international criminal activity. The inclusion of Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), accused ISIS of taking hostages and extorting their families for sums worth tens of thousands of dollars in Northern Syria. 

The USA Anti-ISIS Coalition has interdicted large caches of drugs including Captagon, and other amphetamines being trafficked in Southern Syria. ISIS stole an unspecified quantity of drugs during a raid on a heealthcare facility near Kirkuk in Iraq, in september 2018, intented to sell drugs for a profit and restocking provisions for injured fithters ahead for the future operations. 

The group also has established network of front companies - including car dealerships, electronic shops, pharmacies, and currency exchanges - to launder money in Iraq. Including the human traffick by female sex slaves and brothels runned by femalem members of ISIS.

The group can take a large-scale effectivity in insurrection if maintains the C2 center over the estimated 30 thousand fighters remaining. The coalition forced some of the ISIS's cells to go underground and it's unclear how many fighters the senior leaders can directly command. ISIS Emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio message on August 22 calling for his followers to “wage attack after attack” and “unite and organize” against their opponents.

ISIS similarly appealed in publications in March and April 2018 for activate the sleeper cells, suggesting that the group deliberately embedded operatives to conduct future attacks in recaptured areas across Iraq and Syria. 

The public orders didn't still signed that the group lost the control of mechanisms to issue direct commands to its forces, making unclear about the full capability, but gaining the confidence that Al-Qaeda worried about its capability and also, spawning a certain terror through warzones, as the country keeps retaliated between anti and pro government forces and small units wars.

ISIS announced two new structures in operational-level headquarters responsible for the directing ISIS's military campaign and bureucratic functions across Iraq and Syria. The formation of these two new Wilayats (provinces), retains roughly equal combative force in each country and making possible strategic geopolitical influence and military capability to confront in both fronts against the coalition and federal forces. 

Iraq recently conduced an airstrike targeting a reported ISIS "operations command" at an unidentified location in Syria, and the officials reported that the strike disrupted a planned suicide vest (SVEST) attack in Iraq, probably a near future attack and if its true, the group keeps to coordinate the croos-borders operations through Syrian-Iraqi borders and also, in a transanational level of operations.

The Official Media of ISIS outlets a new format of attack claims aligned with the new Wilayats announced. The povicial command structure prior to the loss of group's de facto capitals in Mosul and Ar-Raqqa City. The standadization of communications guidelines. This standardization of communications guidelines indicates a centrally-controlled media campaign across Iraq and Syria. 

A parallel military command that reports and authorizes the release of content typically accompanies this type of media effort. This standardizatin of attcks allows ISIS to be more effective in the measure of progression of its own campaings. And now, the group louched a weekly report on its military activities. This report detils the attack statistics in Iraq and Syria as well Afghanistan-Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Somalia, and the Philippines. 

This detailed product is similar to the annual reports released by ISIS during its resurgence after the US withdrell to Iraq in 2011, demonstrating that ISIS remains capable of tracking its campaigns across Iraq and Syria as well as its most active wilayats abroad.

Read more at:

http://iswresearch.blogspot.com/2018/10/isiss-second-resurgence.html

The operational area of Iraq is waging an effective campaing reestablishing the durable support zones across Iraq and denies the rehabilitation of communities liberated by the Anti-ISIS campaign. The group retains a small control zone where it continues to govern a local population in North of Baiki in Northern Iraq and, also, established a support zone in areas of South of Kirkuk City including Daquq, Hawija, Riyadh, and Rashad Districts as well as rural areas around Lake Hamrin in the Diyala River Valley.

ISIS has the ability to move freely across this terrain at night and is actively waging attacks to expand its freedom of movement during the day. The hybrid irregular scenario of joint mediatic propaganda and small wars units is far been limited to small arms attackts, achieving assassinations, small groups of mercenaries and suicide attacks by SVESTs. Steadly slaing up the rate of these attacks conducting many assassinations per week. A operational capability of coordination suicide attacks to promote uproar and than uses assassination and kidnaping to promote fear and money extortion. The capability of coordinate also paramilitary activities to criminal activities, make the group expand it's business and promote reorganization and strenght in some of the regions.

The grewn violence made teh civilians migrate from the small villages to other cities and ran from the durable support zone in the Hamrin Mountains, where it appears to base some of its leadership. The secuity forces (ISF) regularly claim to kill senior militants during clearing operations.

ISIS has not yet returned to the systematic use of vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs), which were a hallmark the ressurgence in 2013. 

And now with the transanational support zone stablished in Iraqi-Iranian border is being used to project the capability into Iran. ISIS fighters from Ansar al-Islam conducted the major spectacular attack in Tehran during Ramadan in June 2017. A similar cell later deployed into Iran and clashed with the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in January 2018. 

In Syria, the group is reconstituting as an insurgent force across Syria, as its lost its territorial control to the pro-Regime forces and the pro-USA and the Anti-ISIS campaigns groups, Al-Qaeda supporters and Russian mercenaries acting in the territorial to support the pro-Regime, the group negotiated evacuation deals from Damascus and the Golan Heights to relocate its forces in Syrian Desert east of Damascus.

The group exploited its underground tunnels to regroup and launch a local counter-attacks in this areas against the Russo-Iranian coalition (pro Bashar al-Assad regime) and the USA Anti-ISIS clalition, with the infiltration in Al-Qaeda's areas of operations in Northern Syria in order to gain access to logistics routes through Turkey.

The other strategy is to use mercenaries of Al-Qaeda aligned foreign fighters and make a recruitment out of the borders. 

The resurgence of the group will accelerate the campaign and the priority is to turn down the group together the elite of the Iraqi Counterterrorism Services (CTS) to secure the government installations in Southern Iraq. 

USA is using the economic power in order to block the proxies and the small units and revoke the bilateral military support. 

Syria: US preparing for final stage of anti-Isis push despite $200m funding cut

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/17/us-cancels-funding-syria-stablization

The US is preparing for the “final phase” in its war against the Islamic State in Syria, aimed at concentrations of Isis fighters in the Euphrates valley, senior administration officials have insisted, even though it is cutting $230m from its budget to stabilise areas of Syria captured from Isis.

They said on Friday that the cut from US funding had been more than compensated by $300m in extra contributions from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other US allies, and that the US remained committed to the “enduring defeat of Isis”.

The state department also unveiled a new push to make progress in political talks over Syria’s future, with the appointment of James Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Iraq, in the new position of special representative for Syrian engagement.

The announcements appeared to be aimed at reassuring allies of US staying power in Syria, while seeking to appease Donald Trump, who is anxious to end US involvement there. In March, the president ordered the stabilisation funds frozen after reading a news report about the planned spending, and declared in March that the 2,000 US troops in Syria would be leaving “very soon”.

After that declaration, Syrian forces, supported by Russia and Iran, swept away US-backed rebels in the south-west, while US allies in the north, the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), launched official talks with the Damascus regime, further undermining US diplomatic leverage.

State department officials at a briefing on Friday insisted that the US would stay the course in the continuing battle against Isis.

“We are remaining in Syria. The focus is the enduring defeat of Isis,” Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the global coalition against Isis, said. “We have still not launched the final phase to defeat the physical Caliphate. That is actually being prepared now and that will come at a time of our choosing but it is coming.

“That will be a very significant military operation, because we have a significant number of Isis fighters holed up in a final area of the middle Euphrates valley,” McGurk said.

A report this month by the defence department inspector general said that at the end of June “Isis was estimated to still control about 5% of Syria and to have roughly 14,000 fighters in the country”.

The same report gave a top estimate of the number of Isis fighters in neighbouring Iraq as up to 17,100, while cautioning that all such estimates are subject to wide margins of error.

“Politically there has been a lot of messaging going on for a few weeks now, aimed towards the president specifically, to push this idea: the battle is far from over, that stabilisation is crucially important because these are the threats that remain,” Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Middle East Institute, said.

US backed forces begin Syria battle for ISIS' last redoubt

By Ryan Browne, CNN

Updated 1727 GMT (0127 HKT) September 12, 2018

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/12/politics/us-syria-isis-operation-roundup/index.html

Washington (CNN)The US backed Syrian Democratic Forces launched a ground offensive Monday to clear ISIS from its last remaining territory in Syria, the US-led coalition announced Tuesday.

"We'll see how tough the fight is," Secretary of Defense James Mattis said of the offensive against the last ISIS redoubt east of the Euphrates River.

"I wouldn't be surprised if some of ISIS' leadership is up there," Mattis added when asked if senior ISIS leaders involved in foreign plots could be based there.

The offensive, which the US-led coalition fighting ISIS has called phase three of Operation Roundup, is in an area centered around the town of Hajin which sits along the Euphrates River some 15 miles from the border with Iraq.

"Operations will clear ISIS remnants from Hajin and the remaining Deir-Ez-Zoir countryside east of the Euphrates River," the coalition said in its statement.

The offensive by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a mix of Kurdish and Arab fighters, will be backed by coalition cross-border air and artillery strikes.

Fight to Retake Last ISIS Territory Begins

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/world/middleeast/isis-syria.html

The last vestige of the Islamic State’s caliphate that straddled Syria and Iraq is under attack.

Members of an American-backed coalition said Tuesday that they had begun a final push to oust the militants from Hajin, Syria, the remaining sliver of land under the group’s control in the region where it was born.

The assault is the final chapter of a war that began more than four years ago after the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, seized vast tracts in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate. The group lost its last territory in Iraq last year.

The caliphate put the Islamic State on the map physically and politically.

As the group’s territory has shrunk, the number of foreign recruits into Iraq and Syria has dwindled. Still, security analysts say that even after the group’s expected defeat in Hajin, the Islamic State is likely to remain a powerful terrorist force.

The Islamic State remains just as determined to stage attacks in the West, but advances in counterterrorism and law enforcement abroad have frustrated many of its efforts.

Hajin does not look like much: On a bend of the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, it appears to have only a few major streets and just one public hospital. An estimated 60,000 people are believed to be living there and in a smattering of neighboring villages.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led militia fighting the Islamic State in Syria with the United States and its allies, is nevertheless preparing for a slog. One senior militia official estimates the fight will last two to three months.

After the caliphate

Once in control of territory equivalent to the size of Britain, the Islamic State is down to its last 200 square miles, according to Colonel Ryan. The group has lost all but 1 percent of the territory it held in Iraq and Syria, though it continues to grow in outposts in Asia and Africa.

It has taken more than four years, over 29,000 airstrikes and thousands of soldiers’ lives for the American-led coalition to reclaim the group’s land holdings in the region. But the Islamic State remains a potent force.

Data collected by the United States Defense Department and the United Nations indicate that the group has as many fighters now as it did in 2014 — the height of the caliphate — with 20,000 to 31,500 members in Iraq and Syria alone, and thousands more spread across the numerous other countries where it has implanted itself. If those figures are accurate, they match what the Central Intelligence Agency estimated as the group’s strength four years ago, when it ruled over a population of 12 million.

Senior officials at the Pentagon and in the White House say the real number is far lower. But a third report, to be published soon by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, supports the higher estimate, concluding that the Islamic State still has as many as 25,000 fighters.

The loss of territory, however, already has diminished its powers. At the caliphate’s peak, the Islamic State functioned as a government. It provided salaries to fighters and stipends to their families, as well as public services ranging from marriage certificates to garbage collection.

‘Birmingham pharmacist’ held in Syria over suspected Isis links
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/23/birmingham-pharmacist-held-in-syria-on-suspected-isis-links

A man who says he is a pharmacist from Birmingham has been detained in Syria on suspicion of being a member of Islamic State.

A video of the blindfolded man being questioned by members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed Kurdish militia, was posted on the Twitter account of International Volunteers Report on Saturday. The group said he had been captured in the city of Deir ez-Zor a month ago.

Speaking with a Birmingham accent, the man tells his captors his name is Anwar Miah and he is a qualified pharmacist from Birmingham. He says he has been in Syria for just under four years.

Asked if he is a member of Isis, he says: “I came here to work with the general people and to help people and work in general hospitals. I’ve been working in hospitals since I came here.

“The areas that I worked in were controlled by Daesh [Isis], but I have worked with the general people. I worked in the general hospitals. They were controlled by Daesh but I can’t do anything about that. All my work was with the public.”