One Year On: No sign of ISIS advance slowing down

It’s been exactly a year since the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria began its rampage through northern Iraq, seizing Mosul and Tikrit in short order as Iraqi security forces fled south. The group has proved its resilience since, despite thousands of coalition airstrikes and multiple battlefronts across a huge area.

ISIS’ most recent successes have come hundreds of miles apart.

Its capture of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria can be explained by its tactics and structure, the weakness or exhaustion of opponents and the support or acquiescence among enough Sunnis in both countries. It may also have benefited, according to some analysts, from cynical power plays in Baghdad.

Even so, taking Ramadi and holding it are two different things. Evidence from previous battles suggests that ISIS doesn’t do defense as well as offense, and it is still vastly outnumbered by Iraqi forces. But the longer ISIS fighters are entrenched anywhere, the more difficult they are to expel, and the Iraqi Security Forces clearly aren’t capable of the task alone.

In Syria, the seizure of Palmyra gives ISIS access to the main roads to Homs and Damascus and nearby gas fields. It also confirms a shift by ISIS to focus on territory held by the regime of Bashar al-Assad in western and central Syria after a series of defeats at the hands of Kurdish forces supported by coalition airpower in the north.

Shock and awe’

The term was coined in 2003 to describe the technological power of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But it can equally be applied to the way ISIS behaves on the battlefield, striking the enemy with massive explosive force.

Back in February, Kurdish commanders near Mosul told CNN how ISIS had sent more than a dozen fuel tankers converted into massive vehicle-borne suicide bombs against their positions. A similar tactic was used to break the resistance of Iraqi security forces in Ramadi.

Michael Knights, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has spent much time in Iraq, says it’s “unsurprising that the ISF in Ramadi finally cracked when struck with a hammer blow — namely, 28 suicide car bombs in three days, including at least six massive 15-ton armored truck bombs in a single attack.”

There were also rumors that thousands of ISIS fighters had come to Ramadi from Syria, likely spread by ISIS’ adept use of social media to sow fear.

There is another psychological dimension to ISIS’ threat: Enemy soldiers know that they will be killed in cold blood if captured — probably in gruesome fashion. At Tikrit last June, around Hit earlier this year, in Palmyra in Syria last week, enemy soldiers and other adversaries have been dealt with mercilessly. Summary executions — en masse — are part of its mode of warfare. After seizing a Syrian military base near Raqqa last July, it beheaded dozens of Syrian soldiers, posting videos of the barbarity.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, it has now begun a similar reign of terror around Palmyra, executing hundreds of captured soldiers and regime sympathizers.

A new style of warfare

Military analysts have been impressed by ISIS’ military tactics and flexibility. One senior Kurdish commander told CNN earlier this year that it was a “formidable” enemy that demanded respect. It has commanders with experience and local knowledge who served in Saddam Hussein’s military and others who have fought in Chechnya and Afghanistan.