ISIS: an essential reading collection

[AdamG]

NEAR BAGHOUZ, Syria (Reuters) - Emerging from Islamic State's last enclave in eastern Syria, a widow of one of the group's fighters made no effort to hide her enmity toward the United States as she handed herself over to U.S.-backed Syrian forces besieging the area.

"This is not war. I did not see fighters, people taking up arms and waging jihad against America. No I only saw America killing - a lot," French national Um Walaa's told Reuters TV after being evacuated from Baghouz near the Iraqi border.

"...They used to say we (Islamic State) made the world scared, honestly I did not see this. I did not see that we terrorized the world."

Her words offer a snapshot of the feelings harbored by the followers and fighters of the hardline group who have poured out of the enclave by the thousand over the past month.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/only-saw-...145336790.html

[AdamG]

Good.

BAGHOUZ, Syria -- The caliphate has crumbled, and the final offensive is over. While the official announcement hasn’t yet been made – Fox News has been told that this village, the last ISIS stronghold, is liberated.

It’s the first time since we’ve been here in Syria for five days that the bombs have stopped dropping and the gunfire has disappeared. We have witnessed the end of the caliphate – the brutal empire that once ruled over 8 million people – is gone.

Troops here are now bringing down the black flags of ISIS. The flags no longer fly over the town, instilling fear.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/isis-h...ws-has-learned

[davidbfpo]

A report from late March 2019 and the summary states:

March saw the eradication of the last scrap of the Islamic State movement’s Caliphate in Syria and Iraq after a five-year struggle. It did not witness the destruction of the movement, which new data shows remains highly active in Iraq, Syria and two dozen other countries. This briefing assesses the evolution of IS in Iraq and Syria and its re-emergence in Africa and Asia.

Link:https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org....di-archipelago

[davidbfpo]

A short commentary by Bruce Hoffman, which ends with:

The bottom line is that the recent succession of triumphalist statements that have attended the defeat of the caliphate in Syria and Iraq does not mean that the threat to international security from ISIS has abated. The assumption that, with the fall of the caliphate that, the lingering ISIS threat was narrowly one mainly from lone actors has thus been seriously undermined by the tragic events of the past few days.

Link:https://www.thecipherbrief.com/colum...shifting-focus