What’s the Next Step for ISIS? A Top U.S. General Shares His Prediction with Lawmakers

by Joe Gould 

WASHINGTON — Despite the Islamic State group’s territorial losses, it is not surrendering and will morph into an insurgency marked by assassinations, improvised bomb attacks and ambushes, warned America’s top general in the Middle East to Congress on Thursday.

“Reduction of the physical caliphate is a monumental military accomplishment, but the fight against ISIS and violent extremism is far from over,” U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Joseph Votel told the House Armed Services Committee.

ISIS fighters “remain unrepentant, unbroken and radicalized,” he said, noting that they are shrewdly safeguarding their families and capabilities by melting into remote areas and camps for displaced people, “waiting for the right time to resurge.”

“We will need to maintain a vigilant offensive against this now widely dispersed and disaggregated organization that includes leaders, fighters, facilitators and of course their toxic ideology,” Votel said, calling it “a serious generational problem, if not handled correctly.”

His assessment contradicts President Donald Trump, who said in recent weeks the group was on the brink of eradication and had lost 100 percent of the territory it once controlled in Syria. (Votel said ISIS maintains a 1-mile sliver of the 34,000 square miles it once held.)…

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