The author of the article, W.J.Hennigan, writes:
U.S. intelligence analysts have gained valuable insights into Islamic State’s planning and personnel from a vast cache of digital data and other material recovered from bombed-out offices, abandoned laptops and the cellphones of dead fighters in recently liberated areas of Iraq and Syria.Not only is this intelligence cache massive, it has the further advantage of being reliable. Interrogations of captured prisoners doesn't always produce accurate or complete information but phone logs and video aren't fabricated or intended to deceive anyone.
In the most dramatic gain, U.S. officials over the last two months have added thousands of names of known or suspected Islamic State operatives to an international watch list used at airports and other border crossings. The Interpol database now contains about 19,000 names....
U.S. officials said they have gleaned planning ideas and outlines of potential operations rather than ongoing terrorist plots. But they also have gathered details into the group’s leadership and the hierarchy of fighters under command.The data has also given analysts a good indication where ISIL will try to make their last stand:
The biggest windfall came from what officials said were meticulous Islamic State records about the foreign fighters who arrived since convoys of black-flagged militants first stormed out of northern Syria and into Iraq in 2014, capturing large parts of both countries and the world’s attention.
The records include their names, aliases, home countries and other personal information....
A phone from the pocket of a dead fighter often includes phone numbers that can assist counter-terrorism investigations far afield. Indeed, intelligence recovered from the battlefield since 2015 has led to arrests or broken up plots in at least 15 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America and Canada, officials said....
U.S. officials say Islamic State has lost 60% of the territory it captured in 2014, and its force has been halved to about 15,000 fighters. The recent intelligence indicates that they are concentrating forces and shifting their operations base to the Middle Euphrates River Valley, which lies between Iraq and Syria.Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that when ISIL is defeated that the war against Islamic terror will be at an end. The Islamists are convinced that Allah is on their side and that any defeats are just temporary. They believe they have a Koranic mandate to kill the infidels wherever they find them, and, since so many refugees have been admitted into Europe, where they find them is potentially almost every city in Western Europe and North America.
An estimated 8,000 fighters have moved to the valley, which stretches more than 150 miles from Deir el Zour in eastern Syria down to Rawa in western Iraq. They include most of the group’s leaders and their families, as well as key aides for administrative functions.
A U.S. special operations task force tracked and killed three leaders, who allegedly oversaw weapons research and drone operations, in the valley this week, officials said. In all, more than 35 military commanders, weapons production experts, financial facilitators and external attacks plotters have been killed there in the past year.
This conflict will last until either the West surrenders or until Muslims convince their co-religionists that their jihad is un-Islamic. Neither alternative, but especially the second, seems likely to happen any time soon.
Indeed, between the two, it seems much more probable that the West would weary of the constant fighting and capitulate to the will of Islamic political influences already in their midst.