Militants who swept like an army across Iraq and Syria are expected to return to guerrilla warfare and melt into the population to avoid heavy losses from US-led air strikes, analysts say.
The Islamic State group, which has captured large swathes of territory and committed atrocities such as beheadings and crucifixions, is expected to pull back to cities from sparsely inhabited areas where its fighters are easy targets.
IS militants are likely to “prepare defensive positions, particularly taking advantage of urban terrain for concealment,” said Ben Barry, a military expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.
They militants are now expected to change their strategy as the United States leads a coalition of more than 50 nations aimed at defeating the IS.
French jets carried out their first air strikes against IS militants in Iraq on Friday, after US warplanes bombed a militant training camp.
By blending into the cities, IS also hopes to increase the odds of civilian casualties to help its propaganda war, Barry believes.
“Their impressive media operations will seek to exploit (such deaths) to further alienate Sunnis from the (Shiite-led) Iraqi government and also to erode the international legitimacy of the international-led coalition,” he said.
IS has already begun moving some fighters, particularly foreigners, from Iraq to Syria, according to Iraqi security analyst Ahmed Al-Shreifi.
“They have kept only Iraqi fighters in Iraq because they can blend into the community more easily if military operations start against them.”
“They are following a tactic of disappearance,” local activist Abu Osama said. “They leave spies behind, people who are from the local communities, who relay information to them.”
The only way that US aerial bombardment can make a significant difference now is on fronts where IS has concentrated its forces, such as in rebel-held Marea in the north of Aleppo, said Thomas Pierret, a Syria specialist at the University of Edinburgh. He said that if the Americans strike, “IS will have no choice but to empty those areas and to allow advances by the rebels” who are battling both the militants and the regime of President Bashar Assad.
“As the US strikes degrade the visible elements of the IS military structure — command headquarters, trucks, artillery pieces — I expect IS to morph back into an insurgency model where the IS fighters are intermixed with civilian populations,” said Christopher Harmer, analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank. “That will make it more difficult for US air strikes to target IS fighters.” He said IS has shown itself capable of melting into the civilian population.
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AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
