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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

IS forced to change tactics as it loses ground

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Nehal El Sherif -


It is now only a matter of time until the IS loses its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, analysts, military and government officials say.


US-backed Syrian rebel forces are advancing to retake IS’s self-declared capital of Raqqa and only a few kilometres remain to liberate Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul.


Yet, the optimism of wresting key territory from IS also carries a warning: This will not mark the end of the group that has reshaped the Middle East since 2014.


“Daesh is now drawing its last breath. But they have sleeper cells in Baghdad and other areas in Iraq, so caution remains necessary,” says former Iraqi army officer, Brigadier Safaa al Obeidi.


While Iraqi forces are currently “in an excellent position” to defeat the group in Mosul and other strongholds in Iraq, Al Obeidi expects the militants to seek more “media successes through attacks targeting civilian communities”.


Al Obeidi is referring to attacks the group uses in its propaganda machine to keep itself in the spotlight and attract ever more followers.


Losing the stranglehold it has had in Iraq and Syria will only reshape the group, which has worked on expanding its presence outside the two countries.


“It is the end of the group in its current form, but it will not disappear,” says Abeer Saady, a researcher in radical extremist groups and media at Dortmund University in Germany.


A shift in the group’s strategy means two things: Expansion outside Syria and Iraq as well as embracing the concept of being a stateless state.


It has long been working on the first goal.


IS’s Khorasan branch, the offshoot covering Pakistan and Afghanistan, was established in January 2015 in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.


In the Philippines, pro-IS militants have launched several attacks in recent months.


Previously, it established its presence in several Middle Eastern countries, most prominently Egypt and Libya.


The second goal is to abandon the idea of controlling more ground and instead launch “revenge attacks”.


“To do this, they have intensified their calls on social media to target followers, especially for lone wolves,” Saady says.


Saady says the group’s messages via social media and online networks to loyalists and sympathisers encourage incidents such as stabbings and attacks with vehicles that have been increasingly carried out in European countries.


In Berlin, a man drove his truck into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12 people in December. Another mowed a lorry through crowds in the French city of Nice last July, leaving 86 dead and more than 200 injured.


In March, a man used his vehicle to run over pedestrians along the side of London’s Westminster Bridge before fatally stabbing a police officer at the gate of the nearby parliament.


These are apart from the thoroughly organised attacks which continue, including a blast at a concert venue in the English city of Manchester, which killed 22 people in May.


Moreover, the group has been changing its tone to prepare its followers for the losses they have endured.


Last week, the group blew up Mosul’s Great Mosque, a move that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi described as “a formal declaration of their defeat.”


The 12th-century mosque was where IS leader Abu Bakral-Baghdadi made his only appearance in July 2014, days after the “caliphate” was declared in an audio message.


“What I would say is Al Baghdadi, alive or otherwise, is increasingly a remote figure. A great many of his loyal lieutenants have been killed,” said Major General Rupert Jones, deputy commander of strategy and support with the US-led coalition, commenting on Russian claims of having killed Al Baghdadi.


— dpa


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