The United States confirmed that ISIS, which is classified as a terrorist organization at the international level, continues to expand globally despite its uprooting from Syria, declaring victory over it in Iraq and eliminating its leaders.
“Despite these successes, ISIS has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to recover from the heavy losses it has incurred over the past 6 years by relying on a dedicated cadre of veteran leaders,” said Christopher Miller, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, during a hearing before the US House of Representatives National Security Committee. Middle ranks, extensive covert networks, and a decline in counterterrorism pressures.
Miller added that “the organization carried out assassinations and attacks using improvised explosive devices and mortar shells at a steady pace, especially in rural areas in northern and central Iraq and eastern Syria,” including an operation launched last May that resulted in dozens of Iraqi soldiers being killed or wounded.
Miller said that “ISIS” documented its success with video recordings that it used for propaganda to show that “its militants are still organized and active despite being uprooted from the area in which they declared (the caliphate) in Syria and Iraq.”
He stressed that the organization is currently focusing on liberating thousands of its members who are with their families in detention centers in northeastern Syria, in the absence of any coordinated international path to decide on their status.
The American official stated that the organization’s global network outside Syria and Iraq “currently includes about twenty factions between a branch and a network.”
He added that the organization is achieving mixed results, but it is recording its strongest performance in Africa, as shown by the Niger attack.
“ISIS” also seeks, according to Miller, to attack Western targets, but counterterrorism operations prevent this.
In December 2017, the Iraqi government announced the restoration of the entire country from the grip of “ISIS” after about 3 and a half years of confrontations with the organization, which had seized about a third of the regions of Iraq.
“ISIS” has also lost all the territories it controlled in Syria during the past years.
Since the elimination of the organization’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and other prominent leaders in October 2019, the new leader, Muhammad Saeed Abdul Rahman Al-Mawla, has managed new attacks by factions affiliated with the organization, which are geographically far from the leadership.
Source: RT
