More than five years after the Islamic State group lost its last enclave of territory, U.S. troops remain deployed to Iraq and Syria to prevent ISIS from rising from its ashes.
And the conditions that helped ISIS originally form are still in place in Syria, according to the U.S. commander charged with keeping the pressure on. U.S. troops and partner forces can disrupt, destroy, and neutralize ISIS’ capabilities, Army Maj. Gen. Joel “JB” Vowell, the commanding general of Operation Inherent Resolve told Task & Purpose, but they cannot address the underlying conditions in Syria and elsewhere that allow ISIS and al-Qaida to continue to exist
“The root causes of instability that gave birth to ISIS are still there,” Vowell said in a June 20 interview. “There’s economic challenges in the Sunni areas, quite frankly. Those instability challenges are there: lack of education, lack of opportunity, lack of jobs. And extremism is still fomenting out in the deserts in the Middle Euphrates River Valley, in the Sunni tribes.”
