We created back in june of this year, and its a platform where current and former military and defense literature both the United States and the region are able to discuss some of the most important policy issues facing the two sides we were fortunate to inaugurate this series on june 10 with a conversation with the command of centcom frank mckenzie. Since then we have the honor of hosting some of the countries of brightest most seasoned leaders in the Defense Space including former u. S. Dp michele flournoy, current director grant, current centcom directory commander malloy who just transitioned into that role having served earlier as the commander. We also hosted u. S. Dp former u. S. Dp jim miller, former socom commander, the current security chief duke, former National Security affairs derek, and, of course, former Lebanese Armed forces commander or i should say rear admiral joseph. Let me take this opportunity to thank centcom and its leadership for the partnership with us at amy i. Were honored and proud of working with you. I do recognize we need to bring more officials, officers from the region on the show but believe me that is not for lack of trying. Its not an easy thing to do for all sorts of reasons. But that said im committed to this endeavor and well keep trying. Today we have the privilege of having with us Major General kevin copsey who holds the position of Deputy Commander of strategy for combined joint Task Force Operation inherent result. I will be talking to about the status of the antiisis campaign in iraq and syria, and the future of that effort. I encourage you to check out his bio on a website but let me briefly introduce him. Major general kevin copsey was from the uk, was commissioned to the royal engineers in april 1990. He has had a long interesting to square with postings around the world in your but also in afghanistan. He worked with the ministry of defense in london and at nato. He became the british army had a future force developments, responsible for delivering a new Army Operating concept which is not an easy thing to do. Jungle, welcome to our defense Leadership Series general. I recognize we might be facing some technical issues today but we will be patient with that and we recognize at some point you might have to remove the videos we can get better quality sound from you. Let me just once again welcome you and thank you for agreeing to do this with us. Its an important conversation, and let me say for those less familiar with centcom, perhaps general you could just tell us how does work to someone like you, a British National survey and an american combatant command such as centcom . Thats great. Here its been fantastic. Thanks so much for inviting me and giving me the opportunity for us to talk about what has been a successful military campaign and how we actually made the journey 20 are now in the opportunities as we reflect to what the future could look like here in iraq and syria. And yet it is unusual that we have a british deputy. I am sat inside cjtoir headquarters in baghdad. Only a small group of us here that touch the Iraqi Security forces as we continue the defeat of daesh. This headquarters we could only is actually made up of 27 different nations that sit within a Broad International commission of 80. In the headquarters itself one has a u. S. Lieutenant general of the force and the myself as deputy but been below theres a whole mixture of International Officers from various different nations, each one bringing a unique together plans a work for weight which we can approach the challenges set by daesh and also to get to look work alongside the Iraqi Security forces. Its a humble position to be. Its insightful and interesting, and uncertain as well, and all blended together make it to be a very challenging position as well. I heard mountaineering and alpine alpine skiing. Where did that come from . So a lot of my earlier time in the army was spent in germany, and the British Military put a great premium on trying to stretch in both physically and mentally, if not on the battlefield, on operations that high up the mountains in altitude in areas you are uncomfortable with their that was how it started, and e pursue within the British Military quite a semi professional approach to lots of the sports come into particular alpine skiing. I started to race for the army for a number of seasons until one gets a little too old in the twilight of his skiing career and i spend my time as the president of the winter sports, put in a bit of what i know and have been provided for by the British Military back into the system so that soldiers within a British Military can enjoy the snow that i enjoyed and develop accordingly. So its a really good opportunity. Okay. Lets make a deal. Before we start this conversation if you since im about to ask any question that is policybased, just raise a red flag or throw at me a yellow card or something because i understand centcom doesnt like you policy. It implements policy coming from civilian leadership and the pentagon and state department but i just cant help myself. If you see anything that is more of a policy oriented question just tell me, theres no way i can answer that. Is that a deal . Absolutely fine. Thanks. Okeydokey. Let me start with this broad question. Secures ago this organization isis controlled landmass roughly the size of britain, right . Subjugating the lives of eight to 9 million people. But today it has lost all that territory or at least nearly all of it and a lot of it resources thanks to the campaign that you were helping lead, general, witches Operation Inherent resolve. And, of course, a work of a lot of regional and local partners that even quite helpful here lets her with this. Describe to us the elements of the campaign, you pursued all these years to achieve what you described in the beginning, a military success and speak to degrade this organization. Yes, thanks. We are in the twilight of what a been a successful military campaign, and lets reflect that when isis became a substate governing almost 110,000 square kilometers is alongside the iraqis 79 of the nations came together to form this coalition. It was an argument the Largest Coalition that is come together since the second world war. Identity of approach to defeat daesh. Not just in the levant but because the threats they have had [inaudible] we can talk later on about how terrorism metasizes around the globe irrespective of national borders. The coming together of that pulled together about 27 nations with the various types of military capability, but the key was and still is is to enable the Iraqi Security apparatus, beat the peshmerga, the conventional forces dent in the south, or even [inaudible] in the northwest. Over 120,000 have been trained and it was that force, the part of forces the wind took the fight to die esch, they are ones who fought through the streets of mosul and theyre the ones who liberated and dismantle the caliphate. Then the coalition was there to provide an enabling support, the artillery, the airpower needed, intelligence, surveillance and to a degree some of that is provided now. We have actually gone past what has been the high intensity part of the conflict, and we dismantled the physical part of daesh. Thats what we have defeated them and thats not objectively easy to measure. Were we still got work to do is to undermine the finances and their narrative and again we can talk about that a little later on. What really change was to think. One was the fall of last year which sees go from high intensity into this final chapter of our military campaign, and bizarrely covid as look at the covid pandemic when it hit east cause a lot of nations because we could be that close to our iraqi partners during the training come to go back home to their host nations. And two things happened. The first of which was realizing that the iraqis actually they are stronger if fashion. The have the capability. And then also to realize we invented a new part of the campaign from this high intensity into the final chapter or face for as we recalled. And as we hollowed out our force we started to recalibrate ourselves intellectually from doing the tactical level training for security forces, helping to mentoring and advising of the higher operational level. So where i sit today in central Baghdadi International is i am in a camp that is colocated with [inaudible] and that joint Operational Command deploys and answers against daesh, and we sit back and rewatch any monitor and we help them in the planning tools needed for them to get up to the final defeat peace. So without forces where else is a person focus . We still the best equipment to make sure that [inaudible] through Modernization Program that allows him to overmatch daesh allows them to find particular streams or sellers to make sure those soldiers as they go out and risk their lives actually are probably paid. So enough about thats been about 5 billion over the course of the Campaign Given in divestment, or stipends as we would call it. Weve had to rebalance our force as covid hit we realize we were in too many bases, that were not needed anymore. We transitioned many of those across to the Iraqi Security forces. The last one we did was camp taji which was in Early September this year, and in doing so you have now got the Iraqi Security forces that if the footprint allow sin to be balanced across the country to get after the defeat of daesh. So upon reflection we have done high intensity, we recalibrate intellectually into the operational level of support they need and we rebalanced our force to actually support the iraqis in what they need rather than the wants and desires we did during phase three. General, i dont know if youre able to hear me just fine, but i think the sound was fine on your end but maybe the video was a little bit freezing. They do for the next few minutes we will turn up the video on your end and we will see if i gets any better. Is that okay . Yeah, thats absolutely fi. All right. I think use said yourself, and this is really no secret, the organization is not defeated additionally on the ropes, i hope at least, militarily speaking, capabilities severely degraded but it is not defeated. Of course that requires yes, i would use those words like whole of government approach, right . And requires the involvement of much more than centcom but many other elements of National Power. But just tell us what kind of threat does this Organization Still pose today . Yeah, thats a good question. So what i would say is daesh is definitely down but not out. We have dismantled the caliphate but there are areas. There are scenes geographically and conceptually where they can still operate. But they do not operate in a joint, well lit fashion at all. That they have resorted to life as a criminal. They are in survival mode, that its all about theft, extortion and kidnapping. They are operating in urban areas where should be easy enough to be targeted by the Iraqi Security forces. And theres probably four areas we have concern. One is Euphrates River valley with the daesh operating there an obvious he trying to exploit the intertribal dynamics and the geography of that area. Theres also the disputed territories between baghdad and verbal, and that gap changes distance right along where is known as the corridors line. That border between iraq and syria. Certainly the latitude we work alongside Syrian Democratic forces and Iraqi Security forces at their leadership level to try operations that mutual support each other to try to tie down anyway which daesh could exploit the border. Similarly with the kurdish coordination line is to keep on encouraging both the peshmerga in the north and the iraqi secret of the south to have joint coordination and joint operations and to be fair parties have actually made huge inroads in starting to get after that and put together collectively can they continue to squeeze on daesh particularly in the mountains. But its the fourth area that is probably the biggest concern and that is the detainee camp particularly those in northeast super Syrian Defense force has been a fantastic job of administering and containing and running those particular institutions. But its whats happening inside them that oir has no mandate for and no involvement in. But we do both encourage, train and provide equipment for the for them to better job but what i do fear is without being an International Political microscope placed on these locations, that the threat of daesh 2. 0 could be realized. Because within that youve got commandandcontrol and youve also got their ability to permeate their murders narrative. And this was also finance and finest networks. There are other organizations involved in dismantling those parts, but thats the one bit that would be my worry is those particular institutions. Perfect segue, general. Why dont we try to have you back on video and see if that works. Okay. Perfect segue because i think this merits a sort of indepth conversation about this whole issue of resurgence because theres been a good bit of analysis coming out of washington by reasonable and seasoned analysts regarding this issue of resurgence. Tell us how to send, use view of resurgence. Do you apply the factory is returning to what it was before . How are you addressing this and how concerned are you about it . You started talking about it but tell me a a little bit more abt this issue. So the issue is a lot of observers would say there has been a slight increase in a activity and, therefore, it is researching. Right. Is it resurging in a Cohesive Group that is able to see his territory to try to regain what it believes is a caliphate . No, it is not. What it is doing of course is having an allergic reaction to the amount of pressure has been put on them on a daily basis in every domain, land, air, the narrative of Iraqi Security forces, by the sdf and thus bound to create a reaction when you push the tiger into a corner. And you get more active at the local level. It eliminates more networks and intelligence for the iraqis and our other partners to exploit the work. It is that cause and effect on the one hand, we have this proactive fullwood lane Security Apparatus and then pushes daesh into doing a counter action. That counteraction will have returns over time because they can be an easy target. They become more and more geographically fragmented and been able there are other parts of the coalition that would also assist the iraqis in ensuring we can actually help undermine the narrative in the information environment as well, which is arguably just as important if not more important than the physical domain. Talk about the detainees, general. Its a big issue that could probably be described as a ticking time bomb. The Chinese Government believed its a high impact United States government believes that the high risk impact, a lease that was back in may i dont know if it is still an issue today, but i risk of a massive breakout of isis prisoners from those detention camps run by the sdf, there are like 20 of them i guess in northeast seaters you. 2000 foreign fighters and roughly i dont know, 8000 iraqis, syrian fighters. How concerned are you about that . I think you started addressing it. This could perhaps aid any resurgence that might happen for isis if there is a mass breakout. What is a capacity of the sdf to resisting this . Over to you. Thats a fair question. I cant answer for some of those institutions that are outside of the airy we operate in but certainly within what we call eastern Syrian Security area, those detainee camps that are administered and once will buy the Syrian Democratic forces is very alive to any potential for breakout. Theres been numerous intent that is happening previous months but conversely, we have now been able to using the development of a i discovered on as part of our face four of the the campaign is to provide nonlethal to [inaudible] as was also cctv cameras and upgrade not just the sanitation, the food delivery but also the security with in it as well to make sure the sdf didnt feel more confident and comfortable and be able to deliver it. And the areas where the coalition has created Infrastructure Projects to also a debt. For example, the prison is having an extension that has been funded by the coalition that will allow the detainees to be in aries, to spread out and easily control the sdf. Weve enhanced the womens prison also which is where they can also have their extended families with them. And also funded a Youth Rehabilitation Center as well, noting daesh 2. 0 is also going to be focused on the children, the cubs of the caliphate as it were once known as in some of the idp camps and elsewhere. And by actually taken into these rehabilitation camps and facilities has been able to expose them to an alternative to the narrative. That has been a wonderful initiative thats happen and were looking to try to extend that in due course. Am i concerned about mass breakout . It is always a worry. Are we doing our best to mitigate it . Yes, that the training and investments to the Syrian Democratic for