In Iraq, the end came quickly at Hawija:
The fall of Hawija in northern Iraq, after two weeks of fighting, is the latest in a string of defeats for Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and suggests the rank-and-file fighters are demoralised as the group struggles to defend what remains of the territory it seized in 2014.
'The speed at which the enemy gave up surprised me,' Funk said in a phone interview from Baghdad, after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the liberation of Hawija.
Funk said about 1,000 militants surrendered in the past three or four days of fighting in Hawija. The coalition had estimated up to 1,500 militants were defending the city when the offensive began.
Jihadis are not all fight-to-the-death types. Kill jihadis and eventually the less committed to reaching Paradise any time soon will end their personal role in the jihad.
Amazingly enough, those surrendering jihadis weren't convinced by some WebOps propaganda. No, they knew they'd die as they saw so many other jihadis die.
Heck, even the leaders seem to have given up--telling the rank and file jihadis to surrender.
Go figure.
This difference between committed jihadis and those following the strong horse is why I was frustrated at the refusal to help non-jihadi rebels in Syria based on the argument that jihadis would just take their weapons. Strengthen the non-jihadis enough and rebels who joined the jihadis because jihadis were effective rebels would migrate to the mainstream rebels.
But instead of doing that, we operated on the assumption that every jihadi is stamped out in uniform lots of "we love death" fighters.
And here we are 400,000 dead later with Assad likely to survive this rebellion and the destruction of ISIL's caliphate.
Do we still call that Smart Diplomacy?
UPDATE: In a survey of Venezuela's socialism-driven collapse and Colombia's long war, the reverse is noted:
Despite the FARC peace deal there are hundreds of FARC members still active and considered outlaws. All disagreed with the peace deal and for different reasons. Most of the holdouts felt they were doing well economically in the cocaine business and surrendering with the rest of FARC members would harm their drug operations and cut their income substantially. Such men, and women, felt it was better to just ignore the peace deal and keep their drug business going. A minority of the holdouts are political true believers who insist that revolution and communism is the only solution for all that ails Colombia. [emphasis added]
In addition to those who like the drug kingpin life, there are some true believers who won't stop fighting until they are killed.
And they, like ISIL remnants, must be pursued and killed lest they survive to provide the core around which others can join them if they think it is profitable or represents the strong horse.
I was frustrated after 2011 that we didn't remain in Iraq to push the Iraqis to hunt down the remnant al Qaeda. Instead they remained to grow into ISIL and require Iraq War 2.0.
