ISIS leader purportedly releases new message 01:41
(CNN)It was a message in a bottle from the land of irrelevance. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), this week purportedly put out a voice recording to his dwindling flock of followers, exhorting them to carry on a fight they've already lost.
At the height of ISIS' power in 2014, the group controlled a quasi-state roughly the size of Britain, including Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and Raqqa, its de facto capital, in Syria. Since then it has lost more than 90% of that territory and today holds sway over pockets of remote terrain straddling the two countries. In the audio message, titled "Give Glad Tidings to the Patient," Baghdadi downplayed the loss of territory and issued the usual calls for the overthrow of hostile Arab regimes. But as much as he might dismiss ISIS' losses, it's hard to imagine it ever recovering.
The US Defense Department and the United Nations estimate that there are still as many as 30,000 ISIS fighters still on the loose in Syria and Iraq, and although the Iraqi government has declared victory over the group, loyalists continue to conduct hit-and-run attacks and probably will do so for the for
eseeable future.
eseeable future.