Obama said that America has been keeping “after ISIL aggressively across every front of this campaign”. The United States hopes renewing a failed cease-fire would prevent a bloodbath in Aleppo, allow humanitarian aid missions to resume and open the door for negotiations that would end the civil war and turn the focus to defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
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Nonetheless, Obama said the U.S. and its allies need to be careful to avoid civilian casualties and framing the conflict “as a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam”, which would suit IS’ narrative and bolster their support around the globe.
The president said that the campaign against ISIL is making progress, as the terrorist group continues to lose ground. Iraqi forces have taken Fallujah and are pushing up the Euphrates River valley.
Yet, despite the massive effort, ISIL still holds Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Speaking at a news conference after a briefing at the Pentagon, Obama said the Sunni Muslim extremist group has suffered so many setbacks on the battlefield that it has begun to concede its goal of holding a permanent territorial footprint in the Middle East.
He said the US-led coalition had carried out 14,000 air strikes against ISIS and 100 thousand sorties and each small victory has netted valuable intelligence from documents, thumb drives and other files seized from terrorists.
Two years ago, “to many observers, ISIL looked invincible”, he said. Obama noted that Isis “has not had a major successful offensive operation in Syria or Iraq in a full year”, the BBC reported.
“Even ISIL’s leaders know they’re going to keep losing”.
Obama said such networks “will persist” after the Islamic State loses its strongholds and that the United States and its allies must “keep our eye on the ball and. not succumb to fear” in working to root them out. “That includes an end to the kinds of aerial bombing and civilian death and destruction that we’ve seen carried out by the Assad regime”, Obama told reporters at news conference yesterday.
“And if Mr. Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is being propagated across the country, including in places like Texas, where typically it’s not Democrats who are in charge of voting booths, that’s ridiculous”, he said.
Obama also cautioned on working with Russian Federation. He accused Russian Federation of failing to take the necessary steps to do that, adding that deteriorating conditions make it imperative for Russian Federation to show it is serious now.
ISIL has raised its hateful flag in other areas, the president said. Though the number of IS fighters in Libya has dwindled, the U.S.is hoping to help Libya’s fledgling United Nations -backed unity government finish the job.
While the USA often trumpets the anti-coalition’s efforts to regain ISIS-held territory in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State is reported to be active in 18 countries.
In Afghanistan, American service members will work with Afghan forces to find and eliminate members of the group, he added.
Echoing months of assessments from senior terrorism officials, as well as the cascading Isis-inspired terrorist attacks worldwide, Obama warned that Isis will answer the loss of its Iraq and Syria caliphate with escalating, low-level terrorism, particularly through social-media borne motivation.
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The greatest danger posed by the group is one of overreaction, Obama said.
