Islamic State is under pressure in two strongholds, the Iraqi town of Falluja and the countryside around its self-declared capital, Raqqa. But a fresh assault in north Syria and threats to strike in the western world during Ramadan are a reminder that efforts to dismantle the group are likely to take years.
The US said late on Friday it had killed the top Isis commander in Falluja in airstrikes that also hit around 70 other fighters, and an Iraqi militia commander said the final assault would come within “days, not weeks” amid grim reports of civilians starving to death. Penned in by a siege, with food and medicines running short, Isis has trapped tens of thousands of civilians in the city as human shields, a handful of families who escaped in recent days told aid organisations and journalists. They have risked their lives to flee past Isis controls or through minefields, convinced that the fighting to come would be even more dangerous for ordinary Iraqis trapped inside their homes.
In battles for control of other urban centres, from nearby Ramadi to Kobani in Syria, the cost of driving out Isis was extreme destruction but most civilians had fled those towns before the fighting intensified, so fewer lives were at risk.
“I fear that Falluja will be a bloodbath; a better outcome is possible, but it doesn’t seem all that likely. When Isis loses a town, it tends to leave a smouldering ruin behind,” said JM Berger, co-author of Isis: State of Terror and a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Isis is thought to have up to 1,000 fighters bunkered down for a fight to the death in a town which holds huge symbolic importance, even though it is not strategically vital.
Just 40 miles or less than an hour’s drive west of Baghdad, it was the first major Iraqi town to come under the group’s control and links it to earlier groups fighting the US and the central government. “Symbolically since the days of the US occupation, the city has acquired a status of resistance to outside forces,” said Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum. “Significant damage is likely, as Isis is really putting up a fight to retain the city.”
Isis has also been losing ground to an alliance of Kurdish fighters and rebels who are supported by US special forces in the countryside north of its self-declared capital of Raqqa.
This second front potentially puts the Isis capital at risk, and military planners hoped that it might draw attention away from the fight for Falluja as the Isis commanders struggle with mounting losses of territory that they rely on for financial support, drawing foreign recruits and claiming legitimacy.
Instead the group has launched a new assault on the ground in Syria, near the key city of Aleppo, and went on the offensive internationally with a message from a top official urging supporters in the western world to launch terrorist attacks during the month of Ramadan.
On the ground the group focused on areas where rebel groups that fought them off last year had been weakened by Russian-backed government forces, advancing towards towns that secure a key supply line to rebels and sending thousands of civilians fleeing towards the Turkish border.
An Isis spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, made his rare appeal to supporters further away, calling on those in western countries to carry out attacks over Ramadan. “The tiniest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the biggest action by us,” he said.
Adnani directly addressed the shrinking size of the self-proclaimed caliphate and a possible future loss of territory, including the “capitals” in Raqqa and Mosul, but offered a defiant promise that Isis could continue without them. Even if Isis were pushed out of its strongholds, this would not count as a defeat, because “defeat is the loss of will and the desire to fight”, he said.
The threat of more attacks in western countries and the advances near Aleppo are a reminder that, even on the defensive, Isis is an extremely powerful force, particularly in Syria, where regional powers and the west seem to have no viable strategy for tackling the group or its ideology.
“The group has come under strain financially and militarily, but the fight is far from over, as the case of north Aleppo shows,” said al-Tamimi.
The strongest opposition group fighting Isis in Syria for now are Kurdish forces, but regional ethnic tensions make it extremely risky to put them in charge of any drive to reclaim Raqqa. Local Arabs with little affection for Isis have nonetheless suggested that they might fight with them to keep Kurdish troops outside the city, while Arab-dominated rebel groups in the area lack the training, leadership and equipment to push Isis out.
“I would say these developments in north Aleppo put into doubt the idea that simply backing rebel groups provides the best solution to Isis. In the case of Raqqa, assuming the Kurdish forces do not push on the city, there is no viable alternative for the foreseeable future,” said al-Tamimi.
In Iraq, Isis’s long-term future looks perhaps a little shakier, after months of foreign allies pouring funds, equipment and training efforts into bolstering the Iraqi army and the government and Shia militias working to combat the sectarian fears that Isis have been exploiting to win local support.
If the advance on Falluja succeeds, it will effectively pen Isis back towards its de facto Iraqi capital, Mosul, with limited chances of it echoing its Syrian advance and breaking out to seize more Iraqi territory.
“The field is going to be much more difficult now than when they made their first gains. Given the lack of visibility on the size of their fighting force, it is possible they no longer have the resources for an offensive, but I don’t think I would take it for granted,” Berger said.
But Mosul itself could stay beyond government reach for a long time. It is more important to Isis than Ramadi or Falluja, strategically and financially, and fighters are dug in far more deeply among a larger civilian population.
If the cost in civilian lives of pushing Isis out of Falluja is high, it could set a bloody template for the defence of Mosul, and make a drive to reclaim the city even more complicated.
“Mosul is still important to [Isis] as a de facto capital in Iraq and an important source of revenue. I think the talk of a push on Mosul was really just a testing ground at a considerable distance from the city for coalition-trained forces. A lot more work is to be done,” al-Tamimi said.
