Measuring Strategic Progress Against ISIS
Patricia H. M. Morrissey
“’All the airstrikes and the operations were for nothing if we aren’t able to hold the areas cleared of the militants,’ said Rezwanullah Basharmal, the senior Afghan official in Deh Bala. ‘We, the district government, don’t have the capacity and enough numbers of forces to protect the area.’â€
-- WSJ: “U.S., Afghan Offensive Crushes Islamic State in Area Near Pakistan,†21 June 2018
Introduction
Over the past four years the United States and its partners have labored mightily to remove ISIS “Core†from its self-declared Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, sever the global organization’s connection to its branches, and disrupt its propaganda and recruitment capabilities, but the number of ISIS-affiliated groups has grown and emerged in new places. In this global fight, we continue to assess progress against ISIS and its branches and networks using maps that show territory physically taken, fighters killed, locations of enemy and friendly forces, and we count numbers of IDPs in camps or returned to their homes. We attempt to identify jihadist leaders and their locations so they can be detained or targeted. This information tells us very little about the underlying political and social competition or the longer-term prospects of our partners for sustainably defeating ISIS. As history has taught us, quantitative assessment of an insurgent or violent extremist enemy’s strength versus our own only provides a fleeting, surface-level snapshot of current conditions.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/measuring-strategic-progress-against-isis
