Islamic State showing internal strain

BEIRUT – As the Islamic State group tries to expand and take root across the Middle East, it is struggling in Syria – part of its heartland – where it has stalled or even lost ground while fighting enemies on several fronts.

Signs of tension and power struggles are emerging among the ranks of its foreign fighters.

The extremists remain a formidable force, and the group’s hold on about a third of Iraq and Syria remains firm. But it appears to be on the defensive in Syria for the first time since it swept through the territory last year and is suffering from months of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and the factions fighting it on the ground.

“They are struggling with new challenges that did not exist before,” said Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

Kurdish forces dealt the Islamic State its heaviest setback by driving it from the border town of Kobani in northern Syria last month. Since then, those forces have joined with moderate Syrian rebels to take back about 215 villages in the same area, according to Kurdish commanders and activists, including a Britain-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The gains have strained supply lines between the Islamic State group’s westernmost strongholds in Aleppo province from its core territory in eastern Syria. The Kurdish-rebel forces are now expected to take the fight to some of those strongholds.

Around the town of al-Bab, one of the IS group’s westernmost strongholds, the extremists are making tactical withdrawals. Residents have noted a thinner militant presence in al-Bab.

The militants are also finding themselves bogged down in costly battles with the government forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The extremist group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has been stuck in fierce fighting with the Syrian army near the Deir el-Zour airbase, the last major Syrian military stronghold in the eastern province. IS launched an unsuccessful attack to seize the base last month.

It is too early to call the shifts a turning point, but they represent the slow grind of the international campaign against the Islamic State group, which long seemed unconquerable as it seized territory stretching from outside the city of Aleppo in northern Syria at one end to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad at the other.

In Iraq, the combination of coalition airstrikes, Kurdish forces, Shiite militias and Iraqi troops have pushed IS back around the edges, but the militants succeeded this week in taking new territory for the first time in months. They also raised new alarms with the presence of their affiliate in Libya.

But it was in the Syrian town of Kobani that the Islamic State suffered its worst single loss – more than 1,000 militants killed – and much of its heavy weaponry and vehicles destroyed. The January defeat followed five months of fighting by mostly Kurdish ground forces and coalition airstrikes that left about 70 percent of the town in ruins and sent tens of thousands of its residents fleeing over the nearby border into Turkey.

After the loss of Kobani, signs of fissures within the IS group emerged.

Last month, a senior official with the group’s Hisba, or vice police, was found beheaded in Deir el-Zour province. There are suspicions the official – an Egyptian – was killed by the extremists who suspected him of spying.

An activist based in the group’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, said foreign fighters bicker over administrative and financial issues. Several militants have been killed on suspicion of spying or trying to defect.

In Raqqa, stepped-up coalition airstrikes in response to the Jordanian pilot’s killing has shaken the group, activists say.

An anti-IS media collective called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said the extremists have been forcing residents to donate blood after dozens of fighters were seriously wounded. It also reported the group recently imposed a nighttime curfew and put up nighttime roadblocks to curb desertions by members trying to reach Turkey.

While foreigners from around the globe have joined IS, many disillusioned new recruits have left or are trying to leave, finding life to be very different and more violent than they had expected.

The Observatory says the militant group has killed more than 120 of its own members in the past six months, most of them foreign fighters hoping to return home.

Faysal Itani, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said it has become more difficult for IS to make substantial territorial progress, but the group still does not face any significant challenge to its rule in its strongholds.

“ISIS continues to build support among tribal groups, and attract fighters defecting from other insurgent groups,” he said.