Daesh may have just lost the last major city of its self-proclaimed “caliphate,” but experts and officials warn this is far from being the terrorists’ deathblow.
Analysts say the Syrian regime army’s recapture of Deir Ezzor announced Friday would push Daesh underground after losing territory once as large as Italy spanning the Iraq-Syrian border.
The most widely predicted scenario is that the group will transform into a guerrilla force on the ground in Sunni areas remaining outside the full control of Baghdad and Damascus.
At the same time, its “cyber-caliphate” will continue to churn out terrorist propaganda of the kind that inspired Tuesday’s deadly truck attack in New York.
“Daesh is cornered,” French Defense Minister Florence Parly said Tuesday.
“It has lost its two capitals. The final offensives are underway to annihilate this pseudo-caliphate and its so-called soldiers,” she told the Senate.
But she warned: “Daesh’s swansong will be accompanied by new clandestine terrorist acts, sometimes spectacular ones, and the group’s online influence will absolutely endure.”
She pointed to Africa’s unstable Sahel region along the southern rim of the Sahara, as well as Yemen, Nigeria, the Levant and the Philippines as areas where “the cancer of blind hatred is still spreading.”
In Iraq, Daesh may have been drastically weakened, but “the military victory is not being accompanied by a political vision for after Daesh in terms of re-integrating the Arab and Sunni populations into politics,” warned Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor at Sciences Po university in Paris.
In Syria, he said, “the prospects are even worse.”
“This absence of a long-term strategy leaves Daesh a lot of room for regrouping in the near future, while continuing to work its networks of supporters around the world.”
Analysts expect Daesh to revert to tactics it used in its earlier incarnation as Al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgency of 2004 to 2008.
In the coming months or years, they warn, it could potentially then re-emerge as a reinvigorated Daesh.
“There is unfortunately little doubt that Daesh, or something similar, will survive the worldwide campaign against it,” Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence official, wrote in a report for the Soufan Group.
“There is little predictable about the trajectory of terrorism in a world in flux, except that it will continue to challenge international security for many years to come.”
He said surviving members of what was once a 40,000-strong force of foreign fighters from more than 100 countries were among the main threats.
Some are now imprisoned in Syria and Iraq; others will be heading home.
“These recruits may also decide to seek new theaters of jihad once they have rested and recuperated,” the report warned.
Colin P. Clarke, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation, said Daesh “is being forced to change its strategy and tactics, but it has been proactively preparing for the next phase of the conflict.”
“In short, it is transitioning from an insurgent organization to a terrorist group,” he wrote in a blog post.
The world is watching it shift from being “an insurgent organization with fixed headquarters to a clandestine terrorist network dispersed throughout the region and the globe,” he said.
Separately, a senior US official met Syria’s national security chief in Damascus this week in the highest-ranking visit to Syria by a US official since the start of the war in 2011, a senior regional official close to Damascus told Reuters.
The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar first reported the visit earlier on Friday, saying that the US official discussed security matters including Americans missing in Syria. Among them are operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The regional official did not name the US official who met Ali Mamlouk, Syria’s national security chief. “It is an important step, but Damascus does not have confidence in the American position,” the regional official said.
The US official traveled to Damascus via Lebanon.
The US has supported the opposition to President Bashar Assad during the Syrian war. It has provided anti-Assad fighters with weapons via a CIA-run military aid program that President Donald Trump ordered shut down earlier this year.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week reiterated the US position that Assad should leave power, saying the “reign of the Assad family is coming to an end” and “the only issue is how that should be brought about.”
With military backing from Russia and Iran, Assad has recovered control of swathes of lost Syrian territory over the last two years and appears militarily unassailable.
US forces have been fighting in Syria as part of the coalition against Daesh, helping Kurdish-led militias capture Raqqa and other parts of northern and eastern Syria.
During the meeting, Mamlouk protested to the US official that US forces “are on Syrian land and this is considered occupation,” the regional official said. The US official responded that “our presence is advisory and we are fighting Daesh,” the regional official added.
Syrian regime officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, Russia has carried out 18 bombing raids and nine strikes with cruise missiles launched from submarines in the last three days targeting Daesh militants in eastern Syria, RIA news agency cited the Russian Defense Ministry as saying on Friday.
The ministry said the strikes had helped to support attack raids by Syrian troops, RIA reported.

Source:Arabnews