President Obama’s top envoy on the global coalition against the Islamic State insisted Friday that the coalition has stepped up its efforts to fight the terrorist group, and that the group has begun to make mistakes in the face of this pressure.
“We have seen that as we continue to put pressure on ISIL, they make mistakes, they do stupid things,” Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, said at a State Department briefing.
“And we’re are going to really do all we can to intensify this pressure in the coming weeks,” he added, without specifying what mistakes the Islamic State has made.
The Obama administration has been criticized all week for refusing to consider ground troops or other methods to step up its attacks against the Islamic State, especially after last week’s coordinated attacks against Paris. But McGurk said the Paris attack has helped ramp up the coordination needed to “strangle” the terrorist group.
“I think we have an opportunity now in the wake of Paris to really galvanize the entire coalition and intensify our pressure across the board,” he said.
“Make no mistake, we’re going to destroy this terrorist organization in two ways,” he added. “We’re going suffocate the core, which is in Iraq and Syria, and we’re going to suffocate the global networks.”
On attacking the Islamic State in the Middle East, McGurk noted that the coalition is dealing with 30,000 or more foreign fighters who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to help the group. But he said even as the group tries to expand its territory outwards, the coalition has been holding firm and forcing it to collapse around the edges.
He said the coalition has worked with Turkey, for example, to stop the Islamic State’s westward expansion at the Syria-Turkey border. He cited other examples of victories in Syria, including making the area east of the Euphrates River “inhospitable” for the Islamic State.
Another key project is preventing the Islamic State from using the road from Raqqa, their capital, to Mosul.
“This is part of the suffocation,” he said. “We want to isolate them in Raqqa, we want to isolate them in Mosul, and then continue to strangle and increase the pressure.”
“We are going to do all we possibly can, working with all the forces available and working politically, diplomatically … to isolate and entrap ISIL in al-Raqqa,” he said.
McGurk also said countries are working in a more coordinated fashion to help shut down the global networks that have launched attacks against coalition partners, like the ones seen in Paris last week. He said the goal is to work together to “shock” those networks and obliterate them.
“As one capital breaks up a cell, as another capital breaks up a cell, we have to connect the dots and shock these networks and collapse them,” he said.
While McGurk indicated that the coalition has never been more active, he still admitted that the fight will last for a long time, a fact that has frustrated members of the U.S. Congress.
“It’s going to take time,” he said. “There are just no shortcuts here.”
