With American intelligence and air power backing up as many as ۱۲ Iraqi Army brigades, an American-trained counterterrorism force

With American intelligence and air power backing up as many as 12 Iraqi Army brigades, an American-trained counterterrorism force and Kurdish forces known as the “peshmerga,” the anti-ISIS coalition has a strong chance of prevailing against the estimated 3,000 to 4,500 fighters that the U.S. military estimates ISIS has on the ground.

There’s only one problem: the victory might not matter much in the overall effort to eradicate ISIS.

In the two years since ISIS formed its self-declared caliphate across Iraq and Syria, the terrorist group has become an unprecedented global threat. Even as airstrikes and ground forces have pushed its fighters from various cities and towns, there’s no indication that the ground war has diminished the group’s ability to keep conducting terrorist attacks in Iraq, Syria and Western nations.
@internationalrel
In fact, U.S. officials and analysts now say that there is no link between ISIS’s territorial reach and the strength of its global terror network, in part because it has adapted a more versatile, nimble network of operatives, and more effectively distributes its powerful propaganda worldwide.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/why-beating-isis-in-mosul-wont-end-the-threat-of-attack/