Articles that follow show how ISIL is adapting to the air campaign, although if the breaking news today that ISIL leadership convoy was targeted turns out to be correct that may change the game, at least for the near term.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/wo...ref=world&_r=0
ISIS Wave of Might Is Turning Into Ripple
This title is very misleading, but if its purpose was to draw a reader in, it worked on me. What the author points out is that ISIL is adapting to current conditions, which does not mean they are being defeated. In other parts of the article the author does make a good point, if it is accurate, that ISIL has been unable to expand outside Sunni dominated areas.
Across the territories the Islamic State holds, the group has overhauled its operations. Bases and hospitals have been evacuated and moved to civilian homes that are harder to identify and bomb, Iraqi officials said. Fighters who used to cross the desert in convoys now move in small groups or by motorcycle.http://america.aljazeera.com/article...ttlefield.htmlIts fighters now move in small groups, making them less vulnerable to air power. And instead of storming into towns with overwhelming force, the group has begun establishing sleeper cells in areas it wants to seize.
“It used to be that a force would come from the outside and attack a city,” Mr. Alhashimi said. “Now the forces rise up from inside the city and make it fall.”
ISIL brings more than just brutality to the battlefield
Interesting perspective on how complex the fight is from our perspective. The time it takes to develop consensus with our multinational partners gives the adversary the ODAA loop advantage. I doubt that advantage will be decisive in the long run, but it certainly impedes our ability to apply force effectively.But according to a new analysis from the Soufan Group, a New York-based security and intelligence consultancy firm, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) headline-grabbing brutality has obscured the other factors behind its emergence as a formidable challenger to regional powers. Under the guidance of veteran Saddam-era Iraqi commanders, ISIL has morphed from an underground terror cell into a dynamic and well-oiled military force that defies the conventional definition of an insurgent group.
“In Baghdad, it's still a classic terror group. In Fallujah, it's a light infantry unit. It’s whatever it needs to be,” said Patrick Skinner, the lead author of Soufan’s November report, which collated open-source information and analysis from other experts.
Here is the link to the Soufan Report, which is quite detailed. The authors all seem to have very good credentials. Just skimmed the report so far (66 pages), but initial impression is positive.Kobane is just one battle, and waging it has exposed the steep costs involved in simply stopping ISIL from advancing on a single front. It took a herculean effort of diplomatic engineering led by the U.S., coupled with massive protests by Turkish Kurds, to convince a reluctant Ankara merely to allow those reinforcements through its gates. Even with the backing of coalition strikes, all they've managed is a stalemate.
http://soufangroup.com/wp-content/up...tate-Nov14.pdf
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