The International Coalition's Strategy to Combat ISIS

Abstract

The study examines the strategy of the international coalition to combat the “ISIS” organization in its various stages, from its intervention in 2014 until the beginning of 2019, which is the stage in which it controlled the organization’s areas and dismantled its regional presence. Due to the intensification of military operations, the organization’s influence and spread were reduced and its supply points were destroyed. The organization also suffered heavy losses, and a number of its leaders were killed, others were arrested, and a large number of them fled. However, the international coalition’s military operations left behind heavy human losses, as the infrastructure and vital facilities under the organization’s control were destroyed, in addition to the fall of many civilian victims, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents from their homes, and large numbers of civilians were harmed as a result of those operations.

Based on all these results, we must ask several questions, namely: What strategy did the countries of the international coalition follow to fight the “ISIS” organization? Was the intervention carried out by the countries of the coalition to fight terrorism a legitimate intervention? What were the motives that led to the military intervention of the international coalition against the “ISIS” organization? The study aimed to know the controls of international intervention in Syria and Iraq to combat the “ISIS” organization, to study the motives of the countries of the international coalition in Syria and Iraq, and to show the extent of the threat of the “ISIS” organization to international peace and security.

The study concluded with a set of results, the most important of which was: that the success of the international coalition’s strategy in eliminating the “ISIS” organization with minimal losses was contingent on the existence of genuine and effective cooperation between Arab and Islamic countries, and required regional and international coordination in the security, intellectual, cultural and media fields. The study also concluded that the military victory over terrorist organizations remains a temporary victory unless it is accompanied by an intellectual victory that leads to drying up the ideological sources that feed extremism and terrorism and provide it with a fertile environment for reformulation and spread. Hence, the necessity of reformulating extremist concepts in a legitimate and scientifically correct manner emerges, in a way that contributes to confronting extremist thought and limiting its re-spread and redirection.