Sunday, November 11, 2018

ISIS Working To Bolster ‘Sleeper Cells’ In Former Territory, Watchdog Says

The Islamic State may only control a tiny sliver of its once-formidable caliphate in Iraq and Syria, but the militant group remains capable of waging a clandestine insurgency via “sleeper cells” scattered across the region, according to a government watchdog report released Monday.
In its latest quarterly report to Congress, the Office of Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve cited Defense Department assessments that ISIS has “lost control of all the territory it once controlled in Iraq, and remains in control only of an estimated 1 percent of territory it once held in Syria.”
DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images
But the group has responded to territorial losses by transitioning from a conventional force to an insurgency that can inflict damage on civilian targets and melt into ungoverned areas, according to the OIG.
In Syria, ISIS “continued to function as a ‘hybrid conventional fighting force’ — operating both as soldiers and insurgents — in areas of Syria that remain under its control,” the report stated, citing a U.S. military assessment. Meanwhile, in Iraq, ISIS fighters are operating as “geographically dispersed criminal gangs that clandestinely seek to return to insurgent operations.”
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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