A top U.S. commander has claimed the military campaigns in Iraq and Syria have cut the number of Daesh militants by 45,000, reducing the total number of the terrorist fighters to as few as 15,000.
Advertisement
“They have gone a really long way to ensuring us that they can be the defeat mechanism for the enemy in Syria, at least around Raqqa”, said MacFarland, who will turn over command of the coalition later this month to Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend.
MacFarland said he’s seen estimates of between 15,000 to 30,000 ISIS fighters remaining, but declined to give a more specific number. “We have plans to train quite a number of the additional forces for that mission”, MacFarland said. “We don’t see them operating almost as effectively as they have in the past, which makes them even easier targets for us so as a result they’re attrition has accelerated here of late”, he said.
A spokesman from the Pentagon added that coalition forces were still assessing the total results of the planned operation.
Official also calculate approximately IS has lost 25000 square kilometers of the territory in self declared “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.
The U.S. -led coalition has launched more than 14,000 airstrikes in the two-year war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
In Iraq, MacFarland said national forces were gaining ground to recapture the northern city of Mosul.
Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups, such as Daesh, outlawed in many countries, including Russian Federation and the United States.
Within weeks of the first strikes in Iraq, the coalition campaign spread to Syria.
These figures include not only acts committed by the core Islamic State group, but also the precursor groups that came before it was officially founded – primarily al-Qaeda in Iraq – as well as the affiliates and individuals inspired by the Islamic State who came after.
It was thought they were defending a base used by the Western-backed New Syrian Army, a 200-strong rebel group that has been battling ISIS in the south-east of the country.
That approach is paying off as ISIL is in retreat on all fronts, he said, noting, “The ISF proved that they can conduct complex and decisive operations”.
For Hodge, the most hard part of combat was the language barrier and the constant barrage of bullets and mortars, although he quickly grew accustomed to them.
“With the bombing campaigns, you are going to kill innocents, you are going to drive more recruits and you are going to drive more sympathy”, said Howard Gambrill Clark, a Marine veteran and former senior intelligence analyst who now heads the Washington-based Stability Institute. “While the forces on the Mara line have indeed held against [ISIL] advances, they’ve even made some progress south of the Turkish border”.
Advertisement
Britain is also supporting the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces group as it pushes Isis back near Manbij in northern Syria. “We don’t shoot at them, and the airstrikes don’t hit them, because they [ISIS] use the people like a shield to impede our advance”, he said.
