Counterterrorism

Why Is Islamic State So Hard to Beat?

Islamic State extremists have been bombed, strafed, derided and pushed back, yet they fight on.

“For ISIS, in very plain English, they don’t give a s--- (don't care),” said Cyril Widdershoven, a Middle East and North Africa security specialist based in the Netherlands.

With a fighting force of anywhere between 25,000 to 60,000, Islamic State militants control millions of people, thousands of square kilometers of land, and terrorize the world.

More than 9,000 punishing airstrikes, reams of satellite imagery and a plethora of local and international military forces on the ground have yet to have significant effect.

Even the victory of Iraqi forces in Ramadi, an IS-held city west of Baghdad, does not appear to have crippled the extremist group. Instead, they turned their considerable force to another city, Haditha.