MacFarland estimated that in the past 11 months, 25,000 enemy fighters have been killed, and when added to the 20,000 estimated killed prior to his arrival.
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MacFarland said civilians and ISIS administration officials have been forced into front line combat jobs including manning checkpoints, making them a less capable and “diminished” force.
And it was the recapture of Ramadi by the ISF that taught important lessons about “how to train and equip the ISF for urban combat, which will pay dividends as we prepare for the battle of Mosul”, the general said.
Monitoring group Airwars said the USA -led coalition against the Islamic State group has killed more than 1,500 people as the operation turns two. “In other words, we spend more time thinking about what we will do to the enemy than we spend thinking about what the enemy might do to us”. Within weeks of the first strikes in Iraq, the coalition campaign spread to Syria.
The U.S. -led coaltion has launched more than 14,000 airstrikes in the two-year war against ISIS.
The Kurdish self-rule region in northern Iraq also hosts a base used by troops from the USA -led coalition assisting Iraqi forces in the war on the militants.
Rebels and regime fighters have sent hundreds of reinforcements to Aleppo in anticipation of the fighting, after opposition forces broke a government siege at the weekend and vowed to capture the entire city.
But as planning for the Mosul operation has become bogged down by sectarian infighting in Baghdad, Obama administration and coalition officials have increasingly backed off claims the Islamic State stronghold would fall by the end of the year.
After viewing the pictures of British fighters at the base, the Ministry of Defence said it wouldn’t comment on special forces operations. The term “anti-ISIS foreign fighters”, as used in the report, also includes those who joined groups that are battling al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. “The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria had decreased and many people pressed into fighting for Daesh were unwilling or untrained”, he said.
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His departure amounts to an inflection point for the fight against Islamic State, as forces both in Iraq and Syria prepare for hard campaigns against two Islamic State strongholds-Mosul in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria. The city, he said, is largely in the hands of the Syrian democratic forces and the pockets of enemy resistance are shrinking daily. “As far as how far away it is, I’m reluctant to make estimates of how long it can take”.
