Who Defeated ISIS? the Pentagon Maps
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Middle East Policy, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, Fall 2020 Who Defeated ISIS? The Pentagon’s War Maps Brian Glyn Williams Dr. Williams is a professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and formerly worked for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. He is author of seven books on warfare, terrorism and ethnicity in the Islamic world, which can be found at his website brianglynwilliams.com, including Counter Jihad: The American Military Experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. n March 20, 2019, President large red ISIS sprawl on the first map to Donald Trump appeared on the small red enclave on the second: the White House lawn with two freshly declassified maps This was on Election Night in 2016 Oportraying the collapse of the ISIS caliph- — everything red is ISIS. When I ate. Trump did not expound on the origins took it over, it was a mess. Now, on the bottom — that’s the exact same of the maps, but the media suspected they — there is no red. In fact, there’s came from the Pentagon, which regularly actually a tiny spot which will be gone published such maps to display the prog- by tonight. So this is ISIS on Election ress of Operation Inherent Resolve. As Day, my Election Day, and this is ISIS the press corps shouted questions on the now. So that’s the way it goes.2 sudden reversal of his tumult-inducing De- cember 19 tweet order for “all” U.S. troops Trump later tweeted the maps (see next to be withdrawn from Syria in “30 days,” page).3 The president subsequently used the president triumphantly pointed to the the same maps at a rally in Ohio to empha- top map.1 It featured a sprawling red blotch size his decisive role in the defeat of ISIS: over Iraq and Syria that he said represented the ISIS caliphate’s territory at the time of Two maps, identical. Except the one his inauguration in January 2017. on top was Syria. See that? The one The president then pointed to a tiny on top was Syria in November of corner in eastern Syria on the lower map 2016. This is all ISIS. On the bot- tom, today, the caliphate is gone as of where the last remaining ISIS bastion, the tonight. That is pretty good, right? 4 remote village of Baghouz al-Fawqani, was depicted in a small box. The president Trump has on numerous other occasions proudly explained his role in reducing the © 2020, The Author Middle East Policy © 2020, Middle East Policy Council 152 Williams: Who Defeated ISIS? MAP 1. ISIS Physical Caliphate, 2017 and October 2017: “We’ve done more against 2019. ISIS in nine months than the previous administration has done during its whole administration — by far, by far.”6 In March 2018, Trump would make the maximalist statement, “Terrorism, in Iraq and Syria, we’ve taken back almost 100 percent, in a very short period of time, of the land that they took. And it all took place since our election.”7 In Febru- ary 2019, Trump tweeted, “I inherited a total mess in Syria and Afghanistan.”8 In January 2019, he proclaimed: When I took over Syria it was infested with ISIS. It was all over the place. And now you have very little ISIS and you have the caliphate almost knocked out. We will be announcing in the not too distant future 100 per- cent. ... We’re at 99 percent right now, we’ll be at 100. When I took it over it was a disaster. I think we’ve done a 9 Top: ISIS caliphate when Trump took office in 2017; great job with that. bottom: final ISIS pocket in Baghouz al-Fawqani in March 2019. This discrediting theme began when Trump was running for president, and taken credit for defeating ISIS. In his Feb- it extended to the Pentagon and Central ruary 2019 State of the Union address, for Command (CENTCOM). As a candidate, example, he bragged, “When I took office, he dismissed the Pentagon’s professional ISIS controlled more than 20,000 square war fighters: “[The generals] don’t know miles in Iraq and Syria. Today, we have much because they’re not winning.”10 liberated virtually all of that territory from “They don’t know much about ISIS.”11 the grip of these bloodthirsty killers.”5 By contrast, he bragged, “I know more Trump’s statements were not only craft- about ISIS than the generals do. Believe ed to take credit for the victory captured me.”12 Trump also boasted, “I’m really on the two maps that he showed the press good at war. Nobody is bigger or better corps in March 2019; they were crafted to at the military than I am. I know more diminish his predecessor’s victories. A key about the offense and the defense than they component of his boasts rests upon un- will ever understand.”13 To jumpstart an dermining the effectiveness of the Obama apparently moribund war that he claimed administration’s campaign against ISIS was not being won by President Barack (August 2014 to January 2017), Operation Obama or the generals, candidate Trump Inherent Resolve. Trump, for example, promised, “We’re gonna beat ISIS very, said nine months into his presidency in 153 Middle East Policy, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, Fall 2020 very quickly, folks. It’s gonna be fast. I After his defense secretary, James Mat- have a great plan. It’s going to be great. tis, resigned to protest Trump’s decision They ask, ‘What is it?’ Well, I’d rather not to abandon America’s stalwart anti-ISIS say. I’d rather be unpredictable.”14 Trump Kurdish allies to an October 2019 Turkish would later state, “I don’t want the enemy invasion, the president lashed out at the re- to know what I’m doing. Unfortunately, tired four-star Marine (whom he described I’ll probably have to tell at some point, as “the world’s most overrated general”) but there is a method of defeating them and proclaimed, “I captured ISIS. Mattis quickly and effectively and having total said it would take two years. I captured victory.”15 them in one month.”19 To overcome what Trump has described For the most part, viewers of the maps, as a “total mess” and a “disaster” in an and those who read Trump’s self-promo- unsuccessful war in a Middle East that was tional claims without having their fingers “infested” with ISIS “all over the place,” on the pulse of the campaign in a distant the president has made a concentrated terra incognita, are left to take the presi- effort to portray himself as the leader who dent and his triumphalism at face value. came to office and, in some personal sense, But did Trump really inherit a “total mess” intervened and formulated a new military and a “disaster” in a Syria that was “in- strategy to defeat an ISIS foe in a war he fested” with ISIS from inept generals who declared “we were losing” — a war that were “not winning”? And did he really he claimed had been ineptly run by Obama defeat ISIS in a “month and half” and “do and the Pentagon until he personally took more in nine months” to defeat ISIS than over and put into overdrive.16 Having ap- the seemingly hapless Obama did in his parently implemented his secret plan to entire presidency? And did he achieve defeat ISIS “quickly” in a “total victory,” “100 percent” of the successes against Trump made bold claims: “We have beaten the caliphate? Most important, did Trump ISIS, and beaten them badly”; “we’ve es- implement a secret, new, “unpredictable” sentially just absolutely obliterated ISIS in strategy to beat ISIS that “obliterated” and Iraq and in Syria”; and finally, “we wiped “wiped out” the caliphate in a “total victo- out ISIS.”17 ry”? How accurate are the maps he touted At times Trump seemed to insert himself to prove his administration singlehandedly as a combatant into the fight in his efforts oversaw the roll-back of the caliphate? to glorify his role: What follows is a critical military analysis of the success of the campaign It was me and this administration to destroy the ISIS state under presidents working with others, including the Trump and Obama, and an assessment of Kurds, that captured all of these the maps Trump displayed to highlight people that you’re talking about right his claims. This article will also assess now. It was done within a month and the veracity of Trump’s claims to having a half. So, I’m the one that did the capturing. I’m the one that knows “wiped out” ISIS after taking control of the more about it than you people or the ongoing war — a war that he repeatedly fake pundits.18 indicated had not progressed until he was elected — based on more than four and a half years of analysis of the battlefields 154 Williams: Who Defeated ISIS? against ISIS and assessment of Pentagon competing U.S.-led coalition. maps and reports. This analysis includes The most important contributions our fieldwork in the region and a close moni- maps and analysis below make to our un- toring of the course of Operation Inherent derstanding of the collapse of ISIS is that Resolve, from August–October 2014 to the they do the following: fall of the caliphate’s final bastion in east- A. for the first time delineate territories ern Syria, as depicted on Trump’s maps, in liberated from the ISIS caliphate under late March 2019.