Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan wrongly claimed that the Islamic State terrorist threat has been significantly reduced by the Trump administration’s evolving policy in Syria.
While President Trump deserves credit for unleashing the U.S. military and intelligence community to take the fight more aggressively to ISIS in 2017 and 2018, Shanahan is far too confident about the situation in January 2019. Shanahan said:
Shanahan’s assessment is defective. First off, the driving force of Syrian mass migration outflows is not and has never been ISIS. President Bashar Assad is most culpable here. But with Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces from Syria, the U.S. now lacks leverage with which to obstruct Assad from continuing to annihilate Syria’s Sunni population. When in the near future Assad and the Russians launch their operation to annihilate Idlib governate, out-migration flows will spike upward again.
Shanahan is also wrong in claiming that the Trump administration policy has significantly reduced “the risk of [ISIS] terrorism.” Again, Trump and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis deserve great credit for the 2017-2018 period. But just as ISIS rose from the ashes of al Qaeda in Iraq thanks to the sectarian policies of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the U.S. withdrawal from Syria will empower Assad-Iranian brutality against Sunnis in eastern Syria. This will lay the seeds of ISIS’ future revival in Syria.
Finally, Shanahan doesn’t seem to recognize that ISIS power has never ultimately rested on territory. Instead, it has rested on the idea of Salafi-Jihadist imperialism, of an idea that inspires recruits and actions in service of ISIS interests. When Shanahan says ISIS no longer “control[s] significant population centers” in Syria, he is correct only in a basic physical sense (although even that will change as with rising ISIS organization in Iraqi cities such as Ramadi).
When it comes to practical control over significant population centers, ISIS power is measured not by city blocks held, but minds inspired. That threat remains alive and well, evidenced by hundreds of active FBI investigations into ISIS followers and an unprecedented terrorist threat in the United Kingdom (British terrorism investigations are up on 2018 levels).
Perhaps Shanahan has been ignoring his intelligence briefings? Regardless, the acting defense secretary’s comments are not reflective of reality.
