ISIS, Battered but Potent, Returns to Its Insurgent Roots<br />Nagata said that When I consider how much damage we’ve inflicted<br />and they’re still operational, they’re still capable of pulling off things like some of these attacks we’ve seen internationally,<br />that We spend an inordinate amount of time and resources as the United States,<br />but also as our partners, trying to not only defeat ISIS and their control of the physical caliphate, but their virtual space that they own,<br />Fighting under various names and leaders, the Sunni militants who would evolve into the Islamic State killed many Iraqis<br />and American troops before Sunni tribal fighters paid by the United States decimated them, driving the survivors underground by the time the United States withdrew from Iraq in 2011.<br />Now, senior American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say<br />that more than 60,000 Islamic State fighters have been killed since June 2014, including much of the group’s leadership, and that the group has lost about two-thirds of its peak territory.<br />In Syria, most of its top operatives have fled Raqqa in the past six months for other towns still under ISIS control in the Euphrates River valley, according to American<br />and Western military and counterterrorism officials who have received intelligence briefings.<br />But the loss of its two largest cities will not spell a final defeat for the Islamic State — also known as ISIS, ISIL<br />and Daesh — according to analysts and American and Middle Eastern officials.<br />Its leadership and its ability to grow back are still there." The Islamic State has overshadowed its jihadist precursors like Al Qaeda by not just holding territory,<br />but by running cities and their hinterlands for an extended period, winning the group credibility in the militant world and allowing it to build a complex organization.
