Can Trump Claim Credit for a Waning Islamic State?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/us/politics/trump-islamic-state-raqqa-fact-check.html

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WASHINGTON — When President Trump took office in January, the Islamic State controlled about 23,300 square miles of territory across Iraq and Syria. Now, as an American-backed militia declared on Tuesday that it had liberated Raqqa, Syria, the capital of the extremists’ self-proclaimed caliphate, the Islamic State’s territory has dwindled to no more than 9,300 square miles.

For months, Mr. Trump has demanded credit for a stepped-up military campaign that has weakened the Islamic State, claiming repeatedly that he has done “far more against ISIS in nine months” than President Barack Obama did during his entire administration.

Yet experts said it was always anticipated that the three-year war against the Islamic State that was started by Mr. Obama in 2014 would reach this point, and military officials are quick to praise local troops and fighters for battleground victories.

“Just by looking at the map, the losses this year are off the scale compared to previous years,” said Columb Strack, an analyst at the research firm IHS Markit, which has been tracking the territory that the Islamic State has surrendered.

But, he added, “I haven’t seen any major differences in the U.S. approach against the Islamic State.”

The ferocity of Operation Inherent Resolve, the American campaign against the Islamic State, has accelerated in nearly every way over the past year.

In the spring, Mr. Trump loosened the rules of battlefield engagement to give American commanders on the ground more authority in day-to-day decisions in fighting the Islamic State. Those rules were more restrictive under the Obama administration, and experts said easing them might have helped ramp up the assault against the Islamic State — and, perhaps by extension, the death toll and civilian casualties.

“We weren’t fighting to win,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday of military efforts before he became commander in chief. “We were fighting to be politically correct.” Victories were more elusive then, he said, “because you didn’t have Trump as your president.”

Early Tuesday, the Syrian Democratic Forces declared it had liberated Raqqa. Col. Ryan S. Dillon, the Pentagon’s top spokesman in Baghdad, estimated that the American-backed militia of Kurds and Arabs now controlled more than 90 percent of the city in northern Syria, and about 350 Islamic State fighters had surrendered. Colonel Dillon cautioned, however, that “clearance operations continue” and Raqqa was not yet free of the Islamic State.

Raqqa has been an imminent target since last October, before Mr. Trump’s election. The battle for Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, began that same month; the city’s east fell two days before he took office. It was not until this summer, however, that Iraqi leaders announced they had freed Mosul from the Islamic State after its three-year occupation.

Military data show that actions taken under Mr. Trump’s command have not eclipsed all efforts in the American-led coalition before he took office — or, for that matter, do not represent a drastic change from the earlier mission. Rather, they reflect an incremental increase that shifted as the fighting moved from sparsely-populated areas to urban centers.

As of Oct. 16, the latest numbers available, the American-led military coalition that is fighting the Islamic State had carried out an estimated 28,051 airstrikes since 2014, according to the United States Central Command. As of Sept. 30, it had released 92,262 bombs. About two-thirds of the strikes, and 60 percent of the bombs dropped, occurred before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

The air campaign has steadily escalated over the years — and not suddenly swelled in 2017, as Mr. Trump has claimed. So far this year, the coalition has conducted 9,300 strikes, as of Oct. 16, and dropped 36,531 bombs. While that is an increase from the airstrikes and bombs dropped at this point in 2016, the numbers from last year are themselves an increase from 2015.

The total number of Islamic State militants who have been killed also appears to have peaked this year — but at only a slightly higher rate than in years past.

Peter Bergen, a national security analyst at the New America Foundation, cited estimates from military officials who have said 60,000 to 70,000 fighters for the Islamic State had been killed as of July — compared with 45,000 as of August 2016.

A comparison of deaths of Islamic State militants — from what Mr. Bergen estimated was about 1,500 fighters a month during the Obama years to more than 2,000 a month since Mr. Trump took office — supports the growing increase. He credited intense military operations in Mosul and Raqqa for the rise.

The aggressive military campaign has also taken its toll on civilians.

Coalition strikes had killed at least 199 civilians from 2014 to Feb. 2 of this year, according to the United States Central Command. That number had increased to at least 735 as of Sept. 29. The monitoring group Airwars puts the civilian death toll much higher: at least 15,825 as of Sept. 30. Chris Woods, the director of Airwars, says the number of civilian deaths has more than tripled this year.

Given local troops’ heightened battlefield roles in Iraq and Syria, American military officials and experts agree that the fight would probably have come to its current stage — no matter who was in the White House.

That may also explain the vast amount of territory recaptured from the Islamic State — about 14,000 square miles — so far this year. The White House has cited the lost territory as proof of significant progress against the extremists under Mr. Trump’s watch. Mr. Strack said those wins were reflective of “conditions on the ground” and largely driven by the Syrian regime’s rapid advancements this year.

Syrian and Iraqi forces have “dominated” over the Islamic State in recent months, Colonel Dillon said. However, he estimated that 6,500 Islamic State militants remained in Iraq and Syria, and that fighting would continue in Raqqa and the Euphrates River Valley.

Military officials said the end of this era of the Islamic State, as a military or a caliphate, might be nearing. But Mr. Trump’s promise that the group “will soon be wiped out” may yet be wishful thinking; the Pentagon years ago predicted the demise of Al Qaeda in Iraq, only to see it rebrand and return as the Islamic State.

Trying to defeat the ideology that fuels the extremists is a much tougher task, officials conceded — one that is likely to vex Mr. Trump as it did the Obama administration.

“There’s still going to be work to be done,” Colonel Dillon told reporters. “Yes, ISIS will be defeated militarily, but we know that there still is going to be the ideology and the continued insurgent activity as they devolve into that.”