In the last week, The Islamic State killed nearly 300 people in Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, with suicide vests, car bombs, and guns.
The attacks targeted both local citizens and foreigners, demonstrating the groups prime aim of grabbing headlines by indiscriminately killing as many possible. The Obama administration continues to claim the uptick in international attacks are a sign ISIS is on the defensive.
Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken told CNN as ISIS loses territory, it will continue to lash out with foreign attacks. Challenged on his claims that ISIS was losing, Blinken said, “the more you take the base away, the more you take that core away, everything else that’s built upon it starts to fall away.”
The Pentagon claimed hours before the slew of attacks began, that ISIS has not won “a strategic victory” in over a year. The Pentagon continues to echo the Obama administration’s position defining success or failure for ISIS solely in terms of territorial control. Notably the Pentagon’s definition only applies to ISIS’s core territory in Iraq and Syria, not their extensive affiliate network that spans the globe.
ISIS’s affiliates continue to wreak havoc across the globe, swelling to nearly 7,000 in Libya, and bringing down a Russian airliner in the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. The terrorist group’s affiliate is reportedly surging in Afghanistan, and recently declared new chapters in Bangladesh and the Philippines. Despite the supposed lack of “strategic victory,” the terrorist group has superseded al-Qaida in the global jihad movement and the administration itself admits ISIS will be a menace for years to come.
ISIS is using the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to encourage its followers to act in its name worldwide. The Institute for the Study of War noted ISIS uses Ramadan, “as a justification for its attacks and as an occasion to reorient its strategy.” As the group loses territory in Iraq and Syria, its new strategy may be launching deadly attacks across the globe.
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