WASHINGTON: After billions of dollars spent and more than 10,000 extremist fighters killed, ISIS is fundamentally no weaker than it was when the U.S.-led bombing campaign began a year ago, American intelligence agencies have concluded. The military campaign has prevented Iraq's collapse and put ISIS under increasing pressure in northern Syria, particularly squeezing its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa. But intelligence analysts see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: ISIS remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign militants as quickly as the U.S. can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan. The assessments by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others appear to contradict the optimistic line taken by the Obama administration's special envoy, retired Gen. John Allen, who told a forum in Aspen, Colorado, last week that "ISIS is losing" in Iraq and Syria. The intelligence was described by officials who would not be named because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. "We've seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers," a defense official said, citing intelligence estimates that put the group's total strength at between 20,000 and 30,000, the same estimate as last August when the airstrikes began. The staying power of ISIS also raises questions about the administration's approach to the threat that the group poses to the U.S. and its allies. Although officials do not believe it is planning complex attacks on the West from its territory, the group's call to Western Muslims to kill at home has become a serious problem, FBI Director James Comey and other officials say. Yet under the Obama administration's campaign of bombing and training, which prohibits American troops from accompanying fighters into combat or directing airstrikes from the ground, it could take a decade to drive ISIS from its safe havens, analysts say. The administration is adamant it will commit no U.S. ground troops to the fight despite calls from some in Congress to do so. The U.S.-led coalition and its Syrian and Kurdish allies on the ground have made some inroads. ISIS has lost 9.4 percent of its territory in the first six months of 2015, according to an analysis by the conflict monitoring group IHS. And the military campaign has arrested the sense of momentum and inevitability created by the group's stunning advances last year, leaving the combination of Sunni religious extremists and former Saddam Hussein loyalists unable to grow its forces or continue its surge. "In Raqqa, they are being slowly strangled," said an activist who fled Raqqa earlier this year and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect relatives and friends who remain there. "There is no longer a feeling that Raqqa is a safe haven for the group." A Delta Force raid in Syria that killed ISIS financier Abu Sayyaf in May also has resulted in a well of intelligence about the group's structure and finances, U.S. officials say. His wife, held in Iraq, has been cooperating with interrogators. Syrian Kurdish fighters and their allies have wrested most of the northern Syria border from ISIS. In June, the U.S.-backed alliance captured the border town of Tal Abyad, which for more than a year had been the militants' most vital direct supply route from Turkey. The Kurds also took the town of Ain Issa, a hub for ISIS movements and supply lines only 56 km north of Raqqa. As a result, the militants have had to take a more circuitous smuggling path through a stretch of about 96 km they still control along the Turkish border. A plan announced this week for a U.S.-Turkish "safe zone" envisages driving ISIS out of those areas as well, using Syrian rebels backed by airstrikes. In Raqqa, U.S. coalition bombs pound the group's positions and target its leaders with increasing regularity. The militants' movements have been hampered by strikes against bridges, and some fighters are sending their families away to safer ground. In early July, a wave of strikes in 24 hours destroyed 18 overpasses and a number of roads used by the group in and around Raqqa. Reflecting its unease, the group has taken exceptional measures against residents of Raqqa the past two weeks, activists say. It has moved to shut down private Internet access for residents, arrested suspected spies and set up security cameras in the streets. Patrols by its "morals police" have decreased because fighters are needed on the front lines, the activists say. But American intelligence officials and other experts say that in the big picture, ISIS is hanging tough. In Iraq, ISIS' seizure of the strategically important provincial capital of Ramadi has so far stood. Although U.S. officials have said it is crucial that the government in Baghdad win back disaffected Sunnis, there is little sign of that happening. American-led efforts to train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS have produced a grand total of 60 vetted fighters, and this group has already been rocked by the reported kidnapping of its commander by the Nusra Front, another Al-Qaeda-linked group that has been targeted by the U.S.-led coalition. The group has adjusted its tactics to thwart a U.S. bombing campaign that tries to avoid civilian casualties, officials say. Fighters no longer move around in easily targeted armored columns; they embed themselves among women and children, and they communicate through couriers to thwart eavesdropping and geolocation, the defense official said. Oil continues to be a major revenue source. By one estimate, ISIS is clearing $500 million per year from oil sales, said Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury Department. That's on top of as much as $1 billion cash it seized from banks in its territory.
