Isis has had losses but wants to show it can hurt Europe’s soft targets

By bombing Brussels this week and Paris last November, while suffering strategic setbacks in Syria and Iraq, Islamic State is both lashing out against western powers seeking to crush the terrorist group and demonstrating its ability to mount strikes at soft targets in Europe.

The Paris operation took place after the Russian air force entered the Syrian conflict at the end of September 2015 and shored up the undermanned and overstretched Syrian army, enabling it to defend territory under threat and recapture villages and countryside lost to non-Islamic State insurgents.

Russia's intervention also enabled the Syrian regime to seize key roads from Islamic State, also known as Isis, in Homs and Aleppo and disrupt Islamic State supply routes from Turkey to the cult's capital Raqqa. The Brussels attacks followed Islamic State's defeat in January in the battle of Ramadi in Iraq and increasing military pressure on the group in the Sunni-majority Iraqi provinces of Anbar, Salahuddin and Nineva.

International pressure

Stunned by Islamic State attacks in

Ankara

and Istanbul, Turkey has come under domestic and international pressure to halt the flow of men, materiel and goods across its border to Raqqa.

Brussels coincided with UN talks between the Syrian government and opposition which could end the war and enable Syrian troops to focus on Islamic State.

A four-week old ceasefire has enabled the Syrian army, given air cover by Russia, to advance on the iconic desert city of Palmyra, occupied by Islamic State last May. Palmyra is a key asset on the highway to Isis-held Deir al-Zor province, Syria's main oil fields, and the Iraqi border. As a vulnerable world heritage site, Palmyra provides the terrorist group with publicity when it destroys ancient monuments.

Islamic State thrives on publicity also generated by beheading, torturing, and raping captives. But the fewer people it rules, the less opportunity for well-publicised abuses, and it has lost 22 per cent of the territory it held in Syria and Iraq. According to IHS Jane’s 360 intelligence review it appears “the tide is turning” against the group, which “is increasingly isolated, and being perceived as in decline”.

Islamic State has suffered major economic losses. US air strikes have taken out cash depots while US and Russian air raids have destroyed mobile oil refineries and tankers exporting oil to Turkey. Oil has been the group’s principal export, securing millions of dollars for its exchequer.

Heavy taxes

The terrorist group has had to cut by half salaries of fighters and administrators and to impose heavy taxes on civilians living in Isis-held areas. It has been challenged by defections by militants disenchanted with its impoverished, increasingly besieged “utopia”, and disgusted by its brutality. A Belgian jihadi was beheaded on March 18th for attempting to escape from Deir al-Zor.

Reverses in Syria and Iraq may render Islamic State all the more dangerous for Europe, where bombings ensure the group is considered the most high-profile terror movement ever formed.

It can rely on committed operatives to carry the battle to Europe, which has sent more than 6,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq: 2,300 from France, 1,600 from Britain, 800 from Germany and 534 from Belgium. Islamic State recruiters are said to be active among Syrian and Iraqi refugees recently arrived in Europe.