Campaign Acceleration: How to Build on Progress and Avoid Stalemate Against ISIL

There seems to be a perception in the West that the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is stalemated on the main battlefields of Iraq and Syria. That's probably true in northwestern and central Syria, where ISIL and the Russian- and Iranian-backed Assad regime are containing and eroding progress by rebel forces. By contrast, there has been a mixture of frustrations and solid achievements in Iraq and eastern Syria. ISIL still holds Mosul, Raqqa, Ramadi and a number of other major Iraqi and Syrian towns. But Baghdad, Erbil, Samarra, Kirkuk and Haditha were denied to the enemy. And Mosul Dam, Jurf as-Sakr, Kobane, Tikrit, Tal Abyad and Bayji were recaptured alongside scores of less well-known settlements.

I just returned from three weeks visiting various coalition headquarters and training bases for anti-ISIL forces in and around Iraq. I came back with a strong sense that the campaign was not stalemated, at least not in Iraq and eastern Syria. With access to each major coalition headquarters and many Iraqi units, I gained a picture of the campaign that was complex and granular, and I emerged more optimistic about the prospects for the battlefield defeat of ISIL in Iraq and eastern Syria. Speaking privately to senior commanders -- as well as the young troops with a nitty-gritty, fingertip feel for the front line -- it was clear that more is going right at the tactical level of battles and airstrikes than many observers, myself included, might have suspected...

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