Is the Islamic State Winning or Losing?

A little over a year ago, thousands of Yazidi refugees huddled at the top of Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. They faced extermination at the hands of the Islamic State, or ISIL, and their plight was grave enough to trigger the United States to launch a humanitarian rescue mission to deliver food and protect the refugees. The United States military started dropping food to the refugees on August 7 and on August 8 started dropping bombs on Islamic State fighters.

August 2014 was a watershed month in the battle against ISIL. It represented the moment that ISIL burst into American national consciousness. It was also the month that ISIL first beheaded American captives, and the month that the group reached its greatest territorial expansion as its forces invaded parts of Iraqi Kurdistan and appeared to threaten Baghdad.

This anniversary is an opportunity to take stock of where the war against ISIL stands and try to evaluate whether ISIL is winning or losing in its grisly war. This requires a look at tangible measures of military strength like territory controlled, men under arms, and finances. It also requires looking beyond ISIL’s material strength to assess whether ISIL is achieving its strategic goals.

Independent observers have been skeptical about CENTCOM’s estimates for some time. In August 2014, when the CIA said their high end estimate for ISIL’s strength was 31,500, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated ISIL actually had 50,000 men. Iraqi security expert Hisham al-Hashimi estimated ISIL had 100,000 fighters.

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The actual number of ISIL fighters is probably closer to the higher figures of independent analysts than the CIA’s more optimistic numbers. As Daveed Gartenstein-Ross explained in February, ISIL controls a territory with about 4 million inhabitants. A mere 30,000 fighters could not hold all this territory and launch the kind of offensives ISIL was pursuing. He concluded after crunching the numbers that the actual ISIL force had to be closer to 100,000 than the CIA’s estimate of 30,000. The numbers could be even higher if you include the local militias allied with ISIL who help it maintain security in its core territories.

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