Islamic State Undeterred by Mounting Body Count

The United States and other countries fighting to push back and ultimately destroy the group known as Islamic State are being forced to confront an unpleasant quandary: an enemy unafraid of death and seemingly undeterred by a mounting death toll.

“We have seen enormous losses from Daesh, more than 10,000 since the beginning of the campaign,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told French radio Wednesday, using an Arabic acronym for the terror group.

The estimated number of deaths would seem to be staggering, eliminating 30 percent to 45 percent of the Islamic State fighting force, thought by U.S. intelligence services to range from 22,000 to 32,000.

U.S. officials refused to explain exactly how they arrived at that number, although the White House said the military has a number of sources, including surveillance and reconnaissance equipment that has “flooded” the area, as well as information from Iraqi Security Forces.

“We see that ISIL, time and time again, has essentially directed their foot soldiers to be sacrificial lambs in some instances,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, using a different acronym for the group.

On the offensive

Yet despite such massive losses, Islamic State has refused to back down, finding ways to launch successful campaigns to take objectives such as Ramadi, the provincial capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, and the historic Syrian city of Palmyra, with analysts suggesting that new offensives may be in the works.

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“The U.S. has grossly underestimated both the Islamic State’s strength and its strategic ability in both Iraq and Syria,” said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who has long questioned the official U.S. estimates on Islamic State’s size.

“It was a tactically sound and strategically sound organization because of the way it was conducting concurrent operations on multiple fronts,” he said via Skype.

Roggio believes IS had to have at least 50,000 fighters in its ranks around the time U.S. and coalition airstrikes began last August. Other analysts have suggested even higher numbers.

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