Isis, a year of the caliphate: Have US tactics only helped to make Islamists more powerful?

On 29 June, the first day of Ramadan in 2014, the leaders of a Sunni army operating on the Syria-Iraq border proclaimed an ‘Islamic State’ under the rule of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, its new ‘caliph’. For many, this was the first we had heard of Isis, or Isil; but its forces, fanaticism and cruelty were to become all too familiar over the next 12 months – and show no signs yet of diminishing. Patrick Cockburn looks at its military record


Patrick Cockburn

Friday 26 June 2015

The “Islamic State” is stronger than it was when it was first proclaimed on 29 June last year, shortly after Isis fighters captured much of northern and western Iraq. Its ability to go on winning victories was confirmed on 17 May this year in Iraq, when it seized Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and again four days later in Syria, when it took Palmyra, one of the most famous cities of antiquity and at the centre of modern transport routes.

The twin victories show how Isis has grown in strength: it can now simultaneously attack on multiple fronts, hundreds of miles apart, a capacity it did not have a year ago. In swift succession, its forces defeated the Iraqi and Syrian armies and, equally telling, neither army was able to respond with an effective counter-attack.

Supposedly these successes, achieved by Isis during its summer offensive in 2014, should no longer be feasible in the face of air strikes by the US-led coalition. These began last August in Iraq and were extended to Syria in October, with US officials recently claiming that 4,000 air strikes had killed 10,000 Isis fighters. Certainly, the air campaign has inflicted heavy losses on Isis, but it has made up for these casualties by conscripting recruits within the self-declared caliphate, an area the size of Great Britain with a population of five or six million.

in full: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-a-year-of-the-caliphate-have-us-tactics-played-into-islamist-hands-10345905.html