Cracks seen in DAESH hold – US wants anti-IS fight to wrap within 14 months

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ERBIL, Iraq, June 29, (Agencies): It was barely more than a squiggle, but the mark of a single letter sprayed overnight on a wall in the heart of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate was a daring act of dissent. The next day, ultra-hardline Islamic State fighters came and scrubbed out the “M” — the first letter of the word for “resistance” in Arabic — which appeared in an alley near the Grand Mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul about three weeks ago.

A video of the single letter, scrawled about a metre long on the wall, was shared with Reuters by an activist from a group called “Resistance”, whose members risk certain execution to conduct small acts of defiance in areas under Islamic State rule. Nearly two years since Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivered a sermon from that same mosque summoning Muslims worldwide to the “caliphate”, it is fraying at the edges. As an array of forces make inroads into their territory spanning Iraq and Syria, the jihadis are becoming even harsher to maintain control of a population that is increasingly hostile to them, according to Iraqi officials and people who managed to escape.

“They are harsh, but they are not strong,” said Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, who is in command of the operation to recapture Mosul and the surrounding areas. “Their hosts reject them.” Many local Sunnis initially welcomed the Sunni Muslim militants as saviours from a Shi’ite-led government they perceived as oppressive, while thousands of foreigners answered Baghdadi’s call to come and wage holy war.

For a time, the militants claimed one victory after another, thanks as much to the weakness and division of the forces arrayed against them as their own strength. They funded themselves through sales of oil from fields they overran, and plundered weapons and ammunition from those they vanquished.

But two years since the declaration of the caliphate, the tide has begun to turn in favour of its many enemies: Iraqi and Syrian government troops, Kurdish forces in both countries, rival Syrian Sunni rebels, Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, and a US-led coalition which has bombed the militants while conducting special operations to take out their commanders.

Of the 43 founders of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or DAESH, 39 have been killed, said Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based expert who advises the Iraqi government. The self-proclaimed caliph, Baghdadi, is moving in a semi-desert plain that covers several thousand square kilometres west of the Tigris river and south of Mosul, avoiding Syria after two of his close aides were killed there this year: “war minister” Abu Omar al-Shishani and top civilian administrator and second- in-command Abd al-Rahman al- Qaduli, Hashimi said.

The most senior commanders after Baghdadi are now Abu Mohammed al- Adnani, the group’s spokesman who took over military supervision after Shishani’s death, and Abu Muhammad al-Shimali, who oversees foreign fighters and succeeded Qaduli as civilian administrator, he said. Kurdish and Iraqi military commanders say the group is deploying fighters who are less experienced and less ideologically committed to defend what remains of its quasi-state, which is under attack on multiple fronts.

Iraqi forces recently entered the Islamic State bastion of Falluja just west of Baghdad, and are pushing north towards Mosul, by far the biggest city Islamic State controls with a pre-war population of 2 million. In neighbouring Syria, US-backed forces are closing in on the militant stronghold of Manbij, and President Bashar al- Assad’s Russian-backed army has advanced into the province surrounding the de facto Islamic State capital Raqqa. On a front south of Mosul, a group of women displaced by the offensive said Islamic State fighters’ grip had begun to loosen as Iraqi forces advanced, to the point that they no longer punished people for not wearing the full face veil.

The number of foreign fighters has fallen significantly, and renewed efforts by the group to recruit locals have proven largely unsuccessful, except amongst the young and destitute, according to people who recently fled, including three repentant Islamic State members. “When you are a young man and you don’t own 250 dinars and someone comes and offers you 20,000, 15,000 or 30,000, you will do anything,” said a former Islamic State militant from Iraq’s northern Hawija district who recently gave himself up to Kurdish forces. Members of Islamic State’s vice squad, the Hisba, are increasingly being sent to the frontlines as designated fighters are killed off, according to people who escaped as well as Iraqi and Kurdish military and intelligence officials.

That means there are fewer militants to enforce the group’s draconian rules and dress code. But a 28 year-old teacher who recently fled Mosul said people were so afraid of the militants they did not disobey them even when they were not around. The US-led fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria could be completed within 14 months, a senior US official told skeptical lawmakers Tuesday.

Some 65 countries are engaged at varying levels in trying to defeat the IS group in its so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria, under a campaign that began in August 2014 and was initially devised to take three years. US lawmakers, especially Republicans, have frequently blasted President Barack Obama for what they call an overly cautious approach that only takes incremental steps in ramping up the fight. “We’re not going to defeat them within 14 months, are we?” Senator Ron Johnson asked Brett McGurk, who is Obama’s special envoy for the coalition

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