As the administration touts success in the campaign against the Islamic State, lawmakers are focusing on what comes next to make sure U.S. forces are not back in the Middle East fighting the same battles for a third time.
Brett McGurk, the State Department’s special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter the Islamic State, said Tuesday that civilians are expected to begin returning to recently liberated Fallujah next month and that Islamic State leaders are being killed on average one every three days.
But he stressed that there’s still much to do to fully defeat the terrorist group.
“That progress cannot discount the threats that remain or diminish the truly unprecedented nature of a challenge that now faces much of the world,” McGurk told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Senators on both sides of the aisle pressed McGurk on how the effort to defeat the Islamic State could move faster and what sort of work was being done to ensure a political environment that would maintain stability after the group is gone.
“What are we doing? Do we believe the Iraqi forces with our assistance clearing out Anbar, Mosul and Tikrit are going to have the ability to sustain and hold the places that were cleared so that we are not there for a third time?” Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said.
“Is success on the battleground leaving behind the same backing that lead to ISIS in the fight place?” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and chairman of the committee, said in his opening statement.
McGurk said that while Iraq will always have problems, none of the areas reclaimed from the Islamic State has fallen back into terrorist hands. This sets a positive precedent that terrorists will not be able to hold ground under the watch of a U.S.-trained local military and police force.
The U.S. is trying to implement this model in Fallujah, which was finally cleared of Islamic State terrorists over the weekend. About 80,000 civilians were displaced from the city during Islamic State occupation.
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., expressed concern that those Sunni civilians would be guarded by Shiite militia groups once they return home, but McGurk said local Fallujah police have been trained for the past year to guard their own streets and prevent the Islamic State from regaining control.
