In 2014, the terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria swept across the two nations threatening millions of people in the Middle East with a vicious government that embraced murder, rape and genocide. 

ISIS was unlike other terror groups in that it had pretentions of ruling by caliphate in the Middle East and eliminating people who didn’t believe exactly as they did. The ISIS genocidal moves against the Yazidi people in Iraq resulted in at least 5,000 deaths including the kidnapping and forced conversion of tens of thousands, are a case in point of what their rule might have looked like. 

ISIS controlled much of eastern Syria and northern Iraq — including Mosul Iraq’s second-largest city. In 2014, the frontline against the Islamic State was just north of Baghdad. 

Today, the vast territory the Islamic State claimed has been liberated thanks in large part to the U.S.-led Defeat-ISIS coalition of nations that pioneered a new and effective way of confronting this worldwide threat.  

The terrorists no longer rule territory, but the ideology espoused by the group continues, said Alan Matney, DOD’s coordinator for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, and there is still a need for the coalition. 

“I think if we’ve learned anything over the last 10 years of the coalition, then I would argue that this threat does not go away: It changes and it adapts,” Matney said during an interview. “Where we are right now, is we are at a normal and healthy stage where we are adapting, too.” 

Over the past decade the coalition morphed from activities that took back territory from the terror group to charting the Islamic State’s next moves and next victims. “Groups like ISIS just continually assess what their strengths are, assess what their weaknesses are and try to position themselves to take advantage of that,” Matney said. “We do the same.” 

ISIS, like other terror groups, has a core objective of stretching opposition to them thin, Matney said. “ISIS, very deliberately, wants us to overreact or react in a way that is strategically impossible to maintain. It wants us to use so many resources, that individual countries just can’t do it. 

“The coalition really has been our key tool to countering that strategy,” he continued. “Collectively, we’ve spread the burden of opposing ISIS effectively, and we still are [effective] today.” 

This has changed from military opposition to a foe in the field, to an intelligence-sharing operation. D-ISIS, as Defeat-ISIS is known, also emphasizes counterterrorism training for partner nations, and that burden is also spread among nations, Matney said. 

In Iraq, the coalition works with Iraqi security forces. Matney said the Iraqis are “incredibly skilled, now, in counterterrorism operations. They have become really skilled partners. We also have local partners in Syria who are highly skilled and highly capable.” 

In response to the coalition successes the Islamic State has much more difficulty operating in Iraq and Syria, he said. ISIS now tries to operate in West Africa, Somalia, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. ISIS is again a shadowy terrorist organization not really open to military power. “It’s kind of seeping back into places where they are hard to find, requiring different approaches for how you go after it,” he said. “That’s part of our adaptation.”  

Again, the coalition gives many advantages. He noted the United States does not have the presence it once did in places like Afghanistan or West Africa. “While we don’t have as much insight into what is going on day to day, we have 87 partners,” Matney said. “In these other areas, where do we have collective strengths? Who among our partners can help us meet those needs?” 

The coalition is a unique multilateral organization, Matney said. It does not operate on consensus like the United Nations or NATO, for instance. “When the coalition stood up, we chose a different model,'” he said. “Now consensus-based multilateral organizations obviously do great things — and it is worth noting that NATO is a member of the coalition — but this consensus can come at a cost for nimbleness, for flexibility.”  

The coalition is far more nimble and quick. “I tell people, ‘Every member gets a vote, but nobody gets a veto,'” Matney said. “So, we’ve had a partner who said, ‘Hey, we are not going to support that,’ and that is absolutely fine,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with a nation not being a part of an operation. But there will be nine or 15 or 20 partners who will be part of it. That’s really been powerful.” 

This has served as an example to other multinational efforts. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group is the latest example, Matney said. “This is not to say this is the new template for everything, everywhere,” he said. “But it is something we can point to and say how it worked for us, and how it may be adapted in other circumstances.”

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