NEW YORK, OCTOBER 16 (RIA Novosti) – The US-led effort to eradicate Islamic State (IS) militants with airstrikes is doomed because the extremist group has little infrastructure to bomb, military strategist Christopher Harmer told RIA Novosti Thursday.
"The US strategy to contain or defeat ISIS using air power has not worked yet and there's no reason to believe it will work. Air power is effective on fixed targets…ISIS is not like that. What infrastructure is there inside their territory to bomb? They're not an industrial-based army," Harmer from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War said.
"ISIS is a light, dismounted infantry that infiltrates populated areas, conducts targeted assassinations of key leaders and establishes control over the human terrain," Harmer explained, noting that IS militants "use tanks and artillery opportunistically, not as a baseline of operations".
The expert stressed that a group operating in a way the IS does cannot be eradicated using air power.
The United States first authorized airstrikes against IS positions in Iraq in August. In September, the airstrikes were extended to IS targets in Syria, with members of the international anti-Islamic-State coalition, established by US President Barack Obama, taking part in the strikes.
The IS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), is a radical Sunni group that has been fighting the Syrian government since 2012. In June 2014 the militants extended their attacks to northern and western Iraq, proclaiming an Islamic caliphate on all the territories under their control.
