In Syria, ISIS isn't facing the same kind of concerted counter-offensive that it is in Iraq. But it's suffering from a self-inflicted wound: the stupid, counterproductive siege of Kobane, a Kurdish town in Syria on the border with Turkey. For months, ISIS has been trying and failing to take Kobane. Its recent push, beginning on around September 16, looked likely to succeed. But Kurdish fighters, with heavy American support, have pushed ISIS back. Kobane could still fall, but the Kurdish resistance has shattered the perception of ISIS invincibility a crucial element of its recruiting pitch.
"The [loss of] prestige in the jihadi movement could do a lot of damage to them," Garteinstein-Ross suggests. "ISIS can draw so many recruits because they're seen as the strong horse, because they're winning. [Kobane] shifts that perception."
Moreover, they've thrown a ton of manpower into Kobane. "They may have lost 4,000 fighters trying to take Kobane," Gartenstein-Ross says. He cautions that the 4,000 number is a spitball estimate; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that about 500 ISIS fighters have died since September 16. But there's been fighting over Kobane since August 2013.
The loss of prestige and of personnel compound one another. The more people ISIS loses, the more it needs new fighters. But the defeats make people less likely to volunteer. ISIS has already been conscripting local Syrians and Iraqis to fill its ranks; they may need to conscript even more to make up for the losses, and the involuntary fighters - some of them children - will likely be less effective than voluntary recruits.
[h=3]First, while American airstrikes are not going to defeat ISIS, they have seriously limited the group's ability to conduct offensive operations. "Airpower has made it difficult for ISIS to concentrate its forces in large numbers," Jason Lyall, a political scientist at Yale University and an expert on counterinsurgency, writes via email. "It has made it more dangerous to reposition its equipment and forces, slowing down its reaction times and complicating its command and control. As a result, ISIS is a far more dispersed force than it was in June."
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Second, ISIS's enemies are adapting. ISIS "is a military power mostly because of the weakness and unpreparedness of its enemies," Knights writes in West Point's Sentinel journal. ISIS's advances depend on its ability to launch lightning-quick strikes against opponents that aren't ready for it. Iraqi and Kurdish forces, with American support, are finally learning how to counter these tactics.
Third, ISIS's so-called caliphate has hamstrung its military options. "When they declared the caliphate, their legitimacy came to rest on the continuing viability of their state," Gartenstein-Ross writes.
If ISIS didn't have to run the caliphate, its smart strategic move would be to melt into the surrounding populations, wait for Iraqi and Syrian troops to enter the area, and then fight them as an insurgency. But the obligations of running a caliphate means that the fighters need to stay visible and out in the open leaving them exposed and vulnerable.
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http://www.vox.com/2014/10/28/7079695/isis-iraq-syria-defeat
