The fact that ISIS has lost most of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria likely means the horrific death toll from the Islamic terror organization also will decline, an analysis explains in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
But the “ideology that drove the caliphate’s creation has not been eliminated, which suggests that jihadists will find new methods to terrorize the global community.”
The analysis comes from the Investigative Project on Terror, which reviewed statistics from the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Responses to Terrorism’s Global Terrorism Database.
ISISÂ drew worldwide attention by killing Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East during Barack Obama’s tenure, at one point controlling thousands of square miles of territory.
However, earlier this month Iraqi forces retook the town of Rawa in Anbar province from ISIS, one of its last footholds in the country.
CNN reported, however, “pockets of resistance still exist and the group does control some territory in the deserts of western Iraq.”
Secretary of Defense James Mattis said in August, during a visit to Iraq, that “ISIS is on the run and they have been shown to be unable to stand up to our team.”
A U.S.-led coalition of 14 countries trying to eradicate ISIS has made thousands of airstrikes in recent years.
The IPT report said “the next 24 months will be critical in defining the future threat from radical Islamic terror.”
The analysis said that during 2014-2016, at the peak of ISIS’ influence, the terrorists killed “an annual average of nearly 27,500 individuals globally.”
“This represented an almost 189 percent increase from the period before ISIS established its caliphate. The caliphate, after three years, is finally coming to an end. The battle to defeat the terror threat is entering a new phase. It is transitioning. How the threat transitions and how the world community responds will shape the future threat,” the analysis found.
For the rest of this report, and more, please go to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
