It seems like it should go without saying for a faction like ISIS, whose actual history encompasses many years when they held no territory at all, but the number of ISIS fighters “vanishing” from cities and towns before they fall to government forces does not mark the end of the jihadist movement.
Rather, ISIS fighters are “melting into the desert” right now and planning to fight another day, and potentially many other days. Long a guerilla group that did a lot of their best fighting in desert ambushes, ISIS is preparing to go back to its old tactics.
And while the territory losses may mark a very visible “defeat” for ISIS, compared to a group whose territory once spanned most of Syria and about half of Iraq, it doesn’t necessarily mean a big shift in their capacity to carry out attacks in either country, or elsewhere in the world.
Indeed, a more diffuse ISIS without so many cities to rule and defend might be able to commit even more of its remaining fighters to conducting attacks around the region. Though US officials have insisted they are confident ISIS fighters won’t survive the fighting in the city, the group’s size has often been underestimated, and they have shown the ability to adapt to changing environments.
Which other deserts might they be migrating to? Africa has more than just the Sahara…
Of course they will survive IF — “somebody” gives them money, fake IDs to travel with, supply of weapons, vehicles, soare psrts, explosives factories, fuel, telecom equipment and access to satelite communications, food, water, clothing, soaps, detergents, medicine and medical workers, etc. etc.
Thus game has to stop. In today’s world with poverty running rampant after IMF “medicine” has killed the economies accross the globe — it is not hard to hire destitute into a modern version of “ground forces” to stir problems a la carte. The fringe benefits are looting, wonton killing, raping. And there are plenty of poor females ready to marry fughters —,who unlike their peers, actually have a salary and free room and board. Turning poverty produced by the very western system into the marauding dreggs of the empire — is the economuc base if ISIS and others.
The romantic notions of them retreating into desert, and striking around the globe — is for B movies. Nobody can survive in the desert, unless they are through generations used to nomadic life, life that depended on keeping domestic animals, raising them near various oasis then selling in irder to buy ither necessities. Today, various groups are fully provided for, and anything else they can pillage ir sell pillaged goods — is just pure profit. They cannot live in deserts if they tried. Try running a computer in the desert.
The key task for humanity is to ferret out financing of these free lancers. And disrupt the links between money bags, political structures in every country that gives them ligustical support, as well as the shipments of arms from Eastern Europe whise arms are being twisted to sell surplus Soviet gear. We know all that, yet romanticize of miraculous desert dwellers and their ability to strike st will around the globe.
Really.