Flagging morale, desertion and factionalism are starting to affect Daesh group, testing the cohesion of the jihadi force as its military momentum slows, according to Financial Times.
Activists and fighters in parts of eastern Syria controlled by Isis said as military progress slows and focus shifts to governing the area, frustration has grown among militants who had been seen as the most disciplined and effective fighting force in the country’s civil war.
The group hurtled across western Iraq and eastern Syria over the summer in a sudden offensive that shocked the world. Isis remains a formidable force: it controls swaths of territory and continues to make progress in western Iraq.
But its fighters have reached the limit of discontented Sunni Muslim areas that they can easily capture and US-led coalition air strikes partnered with offensives by local ground forces have begun to halt their progress.
The US military announced this week that air strikes had killed two senior Isis leaders — though there has been no confirmation of the claim by the group — and on Friday Kurdish peshmerga fighters broke the jihadis’ five-month siege of Mount Sinjar in Iraq.