[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12857-12858]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  ISIS

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, you oftentimes draw the short straw and 
have to preside while I am speaking, and you can probably give some of 
these talks as well as I can, but I am going to go back and talk about 
something I have discussed every couple of weeks--not so much during 
our 7-week recess but certainly before and subsequent to that as well. 
What I have been doing is providing an update for our colleagues on 
what is going on in a part of the world we have a lot of interest in, 
including Iraq, here; Kurdistan, here, which is part of Iraq; Turkey in 
the north; Syria, which is right here to the west of Iraq; and Iran is 
over here. We have the Mediterranean Sea right here.
  I just want to hearken back to 2 years ago when the folks from ISIS 
were rolling through this part of the world hellbent on getting to 
Baghdad. Baghdad is right here, right down here, not too far from Iran. 
They had made extraordinary progress, killing a lot of people along the 
way, taking a lot of prisoners, a lot of them women as sex prisoners, 
and slaughtering a lot of people, with mass graves and a large amount 
of carnage. They were able to scare off the Iraqi Army. In many cases, 
the Iraqis turned tail and ran. Their leadership ran too. In fact, 
their leadership may have actually run before the rank-and-file troops, 
heading this way, back toward Baghdad. Finally, when the folks of ISIS 
were sort of knocking on the door just west of Baghdad, they were 
slowed and stopped.
  What has happened in the last several months? There has been a big 
change in the momentum of the battle. Now it is not just Iraq on its 
own in this fight; Iraq is joined by a coalition of roughly 60 nations, 
of which the United States is the leader. Our job is not to provide 
boots on the ground in Iraq or in Syria; for the most part, our job is 
to provide intelligence support. Our job is to provide air support--
fixed-wing, rotary-wing, unpiloted aircraft, drones--and our job is to 
provide training, support, and advice to the folks who are doing the 
fighting.
  This is a province just west of Baghdad called Anbar Province. We 
have all heard of it. This area right here--west of this whole area is 
considered the Sunni Triangle because the lion's share of the folks who 
live in this part of Iraq are Sunni. There are particular cities they 
live in. One is called Fallujah. A member of my staff was wounded and 
almost killed in Fallujah a few years ago. There is Ramadi and a place 
called Tikrit. Tikrit, right up here, is where Saddam Hussein was from. 
All these areas were taken over by ISIS a couple of years ago. They 
have been driven out of those cities and out of this part of Iraq.
  The folks who have been doing most of the fighting on the ground--
their abbreviation is CTS, which, as I recall, stands for Counter 
Terrorism Service. We are providing support for them, but they are 
actually the boots on the ground.
  The next province here in this country is to the northeast. It is on 
the border here with Kurdistan, and it is a town called Mosul. It is 
not a town, it is a city, and there are about 2 million people living 
there. That is the second largest city, right behind Baghdad, that is 
still in the hands of ISIS.
  Sometime later this year or early next year, we expect to see a full-
scale movement by the coalition--led again by the Iraqi forces 
themselves--to move on Mosul. There is a town here--there is actually a 
base here about 50 miles southwest of Mosul called Qayyarah, and it is 
a big Air Force base, and that was taken maybe a month or so ago by the 
Iraqi forces with our support. There is not only a base there, there is 
a town that goes with it called Qayyarah, and that town is now in the 
hands of the Iraqis, and the folks from ISIS have been driven out of 
Qayyarah. It was really the last major city or town between Baghdad and 
Mosul that was in the hands of ISIS.
  Now we come across the northern part of Iraq over into Syria again to 
a place called Manbij. This is a pretty good size city. It is very 
close to the Turkish border. There is another town here on the Turkish 
border with Syria called Jarabulus. These two places were in the hands 
of ISIS until very recently. They served almost as a gateway, almost a 
free flow of ISIS troops, soldiers, or reinforcements coming across the 
border with Turkey and through Jarabulus and down by Manbij. Both those 
cities are now in the hands of forces that are in alliance with our 
coalition.
  There is a place here--not as big as Mosul--called Raqqa that is 
still in the hands of ISIS. They think of it as the spiritual center of 
their caliphate. My guess is that sometime next year, after Mosul has 
been taken, full attention will turn to Raqqa. There will be coalition 
forces coming in from the southwest and folks who we are fighting with 
in the northeast, and that will be the next big battle.
  In the meantime, since the last time I spoke on the Senate floor, a 
lot of land that ISIS had taken has been retaken. It was less than 50 
percent, and now 50 percent or more of the land that ISIS previously 
held has been retaken.
  Again, this is not just the United States. We are playing a 
constructive role, but the coalition and the Iraqis themselves--some 
who ran from ISIS--don't run anymore. We were very much encouraged by 
the courage they have shown.
  Among the other things that ISIS took, aside from land, was oil--oil 
reserves--and they turned that into money. They captured banks. They 
went right into the treasuries of the banks and safes and vaults and 
stole a lot of money--hundreds of millions of dollars. A fair amount of 
that money has actually been destroyed by airstrikes--literally, cash 
on fire. I don't know if it is half, but it is a lot of the money, and 
ISIS's ability to realize more revenues by virtue of oil and by selling 
oil on the black market has been significantly reduced. The idea there 
is to starve them and reduce the ability for reinforcements to come in 
from the north and at the same time to take away their ability to make 
money and use that money to pay their troops and buy things that they 
and their forces need to wage a successful war.
  So that is a little bit about what is going on in that part of the 
world. I will mention a couple of other pieces. I don't think we have 
Libya on this map. Libya is over here, a little to the west and to the 
south. Imagine it is somewhere over here--probably over here, but we 
get the drift.
  When ISIS is being driven out of this part of the world--out of Iraq 
and Syria--where do they go? About 50,000 have been killed, over 100 to 
200 of their top leaders, including the No. 2 guy who was killed I 
think last week. Frankly, some are packing up and going home. They see 
the writing on the wall.
  Others are going to different countries. Libya is one of the places 
ISIS has headed. They settled into a place called Sirte, a big seaport 
town. We have had a heavy focus working with the Libyan forces to take 
back Sirte, and a week or two ago the last portion of Sirte was 
recaptured. I think that is another positive development.

[[Page 12858]]

  We have terrorist groups in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. 
And through the air and with aircraft assigned to the carriers, we have 
been providing that support. The Turks have been good about giving us 
access to one or more of their bases, so we have the ability to fly 
aircraft out of there and provide air support for the coalition forces 
that we have.
  One of the other ways that ISIS has been very effective in waging 
this war, aside from the actual fighting on the battlefield, is 
fighting that does not occur on a battlefield and is not the kind of 
battle that you win with guns and bullets and rockets and missiles, but 
it is the kind of fight that goes on through the Internet and through 
social media. These guys are pretty good at that. They are not 12 feet 
tall on the battlefield, as it turns out. We are capable of degrading 
and destroying them, as the President likes to say. But the ability to 
actually take them down on the Internet through social media has been 
more challenging.
  Before I get into that, though, I think the last time I spoke here, I 
mentioned that 2 years ago some 2,000 foreign fighters per month were 
coming in to this part of the world to be part of the ISIS team--2,000 
a month. The last time I reported, I said that number was down to 200 a 
month. Today, we know that number is down to 50 a month. Part of it is 
because Jarabulus and Manbij and other towns have pretty much cut off 
access to the Turkish border. That is an encouragement. I think I 
mentioned the last time I was on the floor that 2 years ago maybe 10 
Americans a month were coming to this part of the world to join ISIS 
and to fight. Today, that number is probably down to one per month, one 
every 2 months. We are encouraged by that.
  In cyberspace, I understand there are over 360,000 pro-ISIS twitter 
accounts that have been taken offline this year. Let me say that again. 
In cyberspace, over 360,000 ISIS twitter accounts have been taken 
offline over the past 12 months. For every pro-ISIS twitter account, 
there are now six anti-ISIS accounts criticizing and challenging ISIS's 
twisted theology. For a while, the ISIS fighters continued to take 
their hits on the battlefield and had a good spanking applied to them, 
but they were still doing well on social media. Not so much anymore. As 
it turns out, as they move over to places like Libya and try to set up 
a minicaliphate, we have shown that isn't going to work either.
  So on balance, this is going in the right direction. It is not time 
to spike the football. It is a pretty good coalition working together, 
and we are starting to hit on all eight cylinders.
  I would just say to our troops and to those who are part of the 
coalition, as we say in the Navy when people do a good job, ``Bravo 
Zulu.'' We are not going to spike the football yet, but things are very 
much encouraging. We are grateful for everybody who has helped to make 
that possible.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.

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