The Islamic State group (IS) in Syria has sustained a succession of defeats recently. The most significant was the recapture of Palmyra, from which Syrian forces succeeded in driving out all IS forces. Regional and international observers praised the operation to liberate the famous ancient city for its excellent planning and precision coordination between Syrian ground forces and Russian air forces. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces backed by Western coalition aircraft succeeded in liberating the villages around Mosul, preparatory to liberating that city that IS has occupied since 2014. The IS capture of that northern Iraqi city was a huge political and military victory for the terrorist organisation. It enabled IS chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi to proclaim himself “leader of the faithful” of his so-called caliphate from the pulpit of the Grand Mosque of Mosul. At the same time he came into possession of enormous quantities of arms and equipment abandoned by the Iraqi army which, at the time, had not been able to withstand the assault against Mosul due to dangerous distortions in that army's sectarian structure and to a severe shortage in combat skills. Augmenting the value of the accomplishments in Syria and Iraq is that the major victory in Palmyra and the launch of the operation to liberate Mosul crowned a series of successful operations on both fronts as a result of which IS lost large tracts of land. In Iraq, the terrorist organisation was routed out of three Iraqi provinces: Saladin, Diyala and Al-Anbar. It also lost control of the cities of Ramadi, Tikrit and Baiji. IS had controlled and profited from the oil refinery in Baiji the biggest in Iraq for over a year. Prior to this, Kurdish forces had driven the terrorists out of Jebel Sinjar. In Syria, IS was driven out of extensive tracts of land. In addition, a number of strategically important towns were liberated. Not least was the city of Kobani near the border with Turkey, which was rescued by Syrian Kurdish fighters. IS forces were forced to retreat from rural areas around Aleppo and Idlib, and they were driven out of the city of Homs in central Syria. They also lost a number of strategic areas on the outskirts of Damascus, in the vicinity of Al-Ghouta. The victories against IS on the Syrian and Iraqi fronts are not just territorial; they are also strategic. IS's organisational and combat structures have been greatly weakened. Clear evidence of this is to be found in the fact that in recent months IS has been unable to wage a single successful counterattack in order to regain some of its lost ground. The terrorist organisation is on the retreat. Field reports by US military observers who have been following the battles in Iraq speak of low morale among IS military commanders who are being eliminated at the rate of one important commander every three days in drone raids. Recently, IS Minister of War Omar Al-Shishani was killed in one of these operations. Reports also reveal that IS soldiers are fleeing forward positions and refusing to obey orders. During the operation to liberate the small towns and villages around Mosul, observers were surprised that IS forces fled before Iraqi forces entered. Analysts take this as an indication of reluctance on the part of IS forces to fight. In addition to the foregoing, Iraqi forces with air support from the Western antiterrorist coalition have succeeded in securing control over Makhmur, to the south of Mosul, turning it into an enormous base for Iraqi forces supported by Shia Popular Mobilisation Forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga. The Syrian army, for its part, has managed to consolidate its positions on all combat fronts. These developments will enhance the ability of the Iraqi army to continue its progress in the liberation of Iraqi provinces as well as Nineveh. The Syrian recapture of Palmyra enables the Syrian army to sever the main supply route to Raqqa, the IS “capital”, and to position itself to march on the Deir Al-Zor province most of which is still controlled by IS. No major obstacles stand in the way of the liberation of Mosul apart from the IS tactic of using human shields from the civilian population to protect its soldiers. As for the liberation of Raqqa, no problems appear to stand in the way. On top of this train of humiliating setbacks and defeats, IS has lost one of its major sources of funding, the Baiji oil refinery, as well as some oil fields in Iraq and in Syria (in the areas of Deir Al-Zor and Al-Hasaka. These plus the territorial losses now obstruct IS's oil sales to Turkey at a time when Europe is tightening controls to prevent IS recruits from reaching Syria through Turkish corridors. IS is thus relying on human and financial assets whose sources of renewal are drying up. Perhaps it was with this possibility in mind that IS began to plan to strengthen its hold in Libya some time ago in the hope that Libya would serve as a new base for its operations. There are currently an estimated 6,000 IS fighters in Libya, concentrated primarily in Sirte, Derna and Sabratha. Still, the story of IS in Iraq and Syria illustrates several crucial facts. First, the sudden rise and astoundingly rapid spread of IS was no coincidence. It was a carefully conceived plan that aimed to legitimise the US occupation of Iraq and to fabricate another threat to Arab security. Obama's strategy of minimising the IS danger at the outset furthered this strategy. Then, after Mosul fell, he continued to insist that the danger could be contained by means of some aerial assaults. He refused to alter this strategy, in spite of its evident failure, even after IS struck Paris and Brussels. Second, IS's control over those vast stretches of territory could have lasted for much longer had it not been for Russia's realisation of the need to intervene militarily in order to safeguard Russian national security interests. On the one hand, Moscow needed to fend off the threat of Chechen terrorist groups who believed that their campaign in Syria was part of their war against Russia. On the other hand, it needed to safeguard its military and naval bases in Latakia, so as to safeguard a Russian presence in the eastern Mediterranean, which entailed coming to the rescue of the teetering Bashar Al-Assad regime. Russian success in fighting terrorist groups in Syria induced Iraqis to grumble against Washington's foot dragging on the process of liberating Iraqi territory and even to threaten to invite the Russians to intervene militarily in Iraq. Third, Erdogan's complicity in allowing thousands of IS recruits from every corner of Europe to use Turkey as their gateway into Syria as part of his insidious plan to support IS, Al-Nusra Front and other such groups, in order to bring down Al-Assad, ironically stimulated what was probably the major factor to reverse political equations on Syria: the mounting Syrian refugee crisis. This, more than anything, galvanised Western powers into committing to the need to end the Syrian civil war as soon as possible. This does not mean that IS will now vanish or disperse on its own accord. Rather, it means that the US and Western interest in keeping IS alive and perpetuating its hold on large tracts of territory has shrunk considerably. This is in large measure due to Russian military intervention in Syria that introduced a new variable that ultimately weakened IS in Syria and revealed the possibility of defeating it, on the one hand, and that it was within the power of Arab countries to do this, on the other, if they could martial a minimum degree of solidarity in defence of Arab peace and security.
