Taking the fight to the terrorists is working.
WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — Top officials from the Trump administration were on Capitol Hill on Thursday to convey a strong message that the United States and it’s allies are making progress in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but additional challenges still lay ahead.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ message about the state of play against ISIS was clear and concise.
“We’re winning. They’re losing,” the secretary told reporters as he left the classified briefing.
Mattis was on the Hill for the second time this week along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Brett McGurk, the top U.S. envoy to the global anti-ISIS coalition.
Gen. Dunford said he was optimistic about the progress being made on the ground, comparing the current state of affairs to the dire conditions in late 2013 and 2014 when ISIS began capturing large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
“If you look at where we were 24 months ago, you can look at the territory that they held, you can look at the resources that they had available, you could look at the potential for them to conduct external operations, and in all those areas we’ve made great progress,” Dunford told Sinclair Broadcast Group.
In just the past month, Iraqi President Haider al-Abadi was able to declare victory over ISIS in Mosul. In Syria, U.S.-backed forces have effectively surrounded ISIS’ self-declared capital of Raqqa.
When ISIS what at it’s strongest, they controlled approximately 40 percent of the country’s territory, they are now limited to small portions of territory around Mosul and in the Anbar Province bordering Syria.
ISIS’s primary sources of revenue have also dried up. Defense analysts at IHS Markit estimate that the terrorist group has lost 80 percent of its funds since 2015.