WASHINGTON (CN) - Paris. Brussels. Orlando. Istanbul. Baghdad. Bangladesh. Terror attacks carried out and possibly inspired by the Islamic State group are rising, with no clear end in sight.
Despite the news of success in reducing the area controlled by the agents of terror, the threat to the West has only grown, according to testimony in Congress last week.
"It's fair to say that the array of terrorist actors around globe is broader, deeper and wider than it has been at any time since 9/11," National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen told Congress last week.
Aside from GOP criticism of President Obama's strategy to defeat the Islamic State, Capitol Hill has been otherwise quiet on the use of force to defeat the group. Some lawmakers have called for increased military engagement, but with little public debate about whether U.S. policy is working.
To learn more about why U.S. military strategy has failed to make headway in the battle against groups such as Islamic State, Courthouse News reporter Britain Eakin sat down with Phyllis Bennis, a Middle East analyst with the Washington-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies. [The interview has been condensed.]
You said there is 'contextual complication' when thinking about how to fight the Islamic State because it functions as two different kinds of organizations. Can you explain that?
PB: "On the one hand, they're a traditional if I can use that word terrorist organization that attacks civilian targets, so-called soft targets, all over the place — in the regions where they're strong and around world," Bennis said. "They inspire, they collaborate. They also get blamed for things they may well not have anything to do with, like this attack in Nice."
[Authorities are still looking for answers after dozens died last week on the French Riviera when a Tunisian man drove a truck into a crowd of people watching Bastille Day fireworks.]
"At the same time they're functioning as a more conventional army, where the goal is to seize and hold territory and control populations. That started to take place in early 2014 when you saw these sweeps across both Iraq and Syria, and they ended up with like a third of the territory of both. It was kind of shocking."
Even though the army function is more conventional, though, you see problems with traditional military action in Islamic State-held territories?
PB: "To the degree there is success at 'liberating' these areas, when you look at Fallujah, when you look at Ramadi Ramadi was an amazingly bad example it leaves behind absolute devastation."
[In Ramadi, Iraq, fighting destroyed an estimated 80 percent of the city, displacing much of its population of 350,000. The destruction in Fallujah, another Iraqi city, was not at severe, but in both cases, already-weakened populations fled into the desert to escape the fighting. There was no one there to help them.]