...but how will we keep everyone scared now!?!?
EBOLA
ISIS is losing
To understand what's happening in the Middle East today, you need to appreciate one fundamental fact: ISIS is losing its war for the Middle East.
This may seem hard to believe: in Iraq and Syria, the group still holds a stretch of territory larger than the United Kingdom, manned by a steady stream of foreign fighters. Fighters pledging themselves to ISIS recently executed 21 Christians in Libya.
It's certainly true that ISIS remains a terrible and urgent threat to the Middle East. The group is not on the verge of defeat, nor is its total destruction guaranteed. But, after months of ISIS expansion and victories, the group is now being beaten back. It is losing territory in the places that matter. Coalition airstrikes have hamstrung its ability to wage offensive war, and it has no friends to turn to for help. Its governance model is unsustainable and risks collapse in the long run.
Unless ISIS starts adapting, there's a very good chance its so-called caliphate is going to fall apart.
Believe it or not, Iraq is looking better than anyone could have hoped six months ago
Control of territory in Iraq as of February 2, 2015. (Institute for the Study of War/Sinan Adnan)
One year ago, ISIS was soon to launch the offensive in Iraq that, in June, would sweep across northern Iraq and conquer the country's second-largest city, Mosul. Today, the Iraqi government is prepping a counter-offensive aimed at seizing Mosul back, which the US believes will launch in April.
In that year, the situation has changed dramatically. After ISIS's seemingly unstoppable rampage from June to August of 2014, the Iraqi government and its allies have turned the tide. Slowly, unevenly, but surely, ISIS is being pushed back.
"There's really nowhere where [ISIS] has momentum," Kirk Sowell, the principal at Uticensis Risk Services and an expert on Iraqi politics, told me in late January.
"There are a significant string of [Iraqi] victories all along the northern river valley, up through Diyala and Salahuddin [two central Iraqi provinces]," Doug Ollivant, National Security Council Director for Iraq from 2008-2009 and current managing partner at Mantid International, explained.
"The Islamic State ... will lose its battle to hold territory in Iraq"
In northern Iraq, Kurdish forces are threatening to cut off a highway that serves as ISIS's main supply line between Iraq and Syria. They took the town of Sinjar, which sits on the highway, in December; by late January, they had taken a longer stretch of the highway near a town called Kiske.
Ollivant describes much of the Kurdish progress in the north as a "circling around Mosul." Though the Kurds won't attempt to retake the city on their own, a joint Iraqi-Kurdish force is now poised to do so. Re-taking Mosul would be a major blow to ISIS.
To be clear, ISIS isn't on the retreat everywhere. "The news in [western province] Anbar is more mixed," Ollivant says. "Things are shifting, but not to anyone's particular advantage. The Iraqi government gains ground here, and loses ground there." In February, an ISIS offensive in Anbar threatened al-Asad airbase, where US troops are training Iraqi soldiers.
Still, ISIS is falling back in most places where it's facing a serious push. And Iraq watchers are starting to see ISIS's struggles as harbingers of a larger collapse.
"The Islamic State ... will lose its battle to hold territory in Iraq," Ollivant writes in War on the Rocks. "The outcome in Iraq is now clear to most serious analysts."
Sowell agrees. "There is no Islamic 'State' in Iraq. They're basically operating as an insurgency/mafia," he says. "They just don't have the ability, the wherewithal in Iraq to set up Sharia courts, patrol, and really govern a state."
ISIS is losing - Vox
EBOLA
ISIS is losing
To understand what's happening in the Middle East today, you need to appreciate one fundamental fact: ISIS is losing its war for the Middle East.
This may seem hard to believe: in Iraq and Syria, the group still holds a stretch of territory larger than the United Kingdom, manned by a steady stream of foreign fighters. Fighters pledging themselves to ISIS recently executed 21 Christians in Libya.
It's certainly true that ISIS remains a terrible and urgent threat to the Middle East. The group is not on the verge of defeat, nor is its total destruction guaranteed. But, after months of ISIS expansion and victories, the group is now being beaten back. It is losing territory in the places that matter. Coalition airstrikes have hamstrung its ability to wage offensive war, and it has no friends to turn to for help. Its governance model is unsustainable and risks collapse in the long run.
Unless ISIS starts adapting, there's a very good chance its so-called caliphate is going to fall apart.
Believe it or not, Iraq is looking better than anyone could have hoped six months ago
Control of territory in Iraq as of February 2, 2015. (Institute for the Study of War/Sinan Adnan)
One year ago, ISIS was soon to launch the offensive in Iraq that, in June, would sweep across northern Iraq and conquer the country's second-largest city, Mosul. Today, the Iraqi government is prepping a counter-offensive aimed at seizing Mosul back, which the US believes will launch in April.
In that year, the situation has changed dramatically. After ISIS's seemingly unstoppable rampage from June to August of 2014, the Iraqi government and its allies have turned the tide. Slowly, unevenly, but surely, ISIS is being pushed back.
"There's really nowhere where [ISIS] has momentum," Kirk Sowell, the principal at Uticensis Risk Services and an expert on Iraqi politics, told me in late January.
"There are a significant string of [Iraqi] victories all along the northern river valley, up through Diyala and Salahuddin [two central Iraqi provinces]," Doug Ollivant, National Security Council Director for Iraq from 2008-2009 and current managing partner at Mantid International, explained.
"The Islamic State ... will lose its battle to hold territory in Iraq"
In northern Iraq, Kurdish forces are threatening to cut off a highway that serves as ISIS's main supply line between Iraq and Syria. They took the town of Sinjar, which sits on the highway, in December; by late January, they had taken a longer stretch of the highway near a town called Kiske.
Ollivant describes much of the Kurdish progress in the north as a "circling around Mosul." Though the Kurds won't attempt to retake the city on their own, a joint Iraqi-Kurdish force is now poised to do so. Re-taking Mosul would be a major blow to ISIS.
To be clear, ISIS isn't on the retreat everywhere. "The news in [western province] Anbar is more mixed," Ollivant says. "Things are shifting, but not to anyone's particular advantage. The Iraqi government gains ground here, and loses ground there." In February, an ISIS offensive in Anbar threatened al-Asad airbase, where US troops are training Iraqi soldiers.
Still, ISIS is falling back in most places where it's facing a serious push. And Iraq watchers are starting to see ISIS's struggles as harbingers of a larger collapse.
"The Islamic State ... will lose its battle to hold territory in Iraq," Ollivant writes in War on the Rocks. "The outcome in Iraq is now clear to most serious analysts."
Sowell agrees. "There is no Islamic 'State' in Iraq. They're basically operating as an insurgency/mafia," he says. "They just don't have the ability, the wherewithal in Iraq to set up Sharia courts, patrol, and really govern a state."
ISIS is losing - Vox