Reports surfacing ISIS and al-Qaida are joining forces could be an indication the United States, under President Donald Trump, is already winning the war against the insurgents, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Tuesday.
"When your enemies are fighting each other, that's a good thing," Kinzinger told Fox News' "America's Newsroom," noting there is both good news and bad news about the report.
"They've been competing for the last number of years for supremacy in the radical Islamist movement," Kinzinger said. "They both claim they're the leader."
But the good news comes, he continued, because al-Qaida realizes it is not safe after the recent raids in Yemen, and after attacks in other places, and ISIS has been rolled back in Iraq and knows its time is limited in Raqqa and Afghanistan.
"So you see all this, and I think now in desperation, these two sides are coming together, saying we can't compete with each other, or we'll lose," Kinzinger concluded.
Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi told Reuters earlier Tuesday he had gotten information from contacts in Iraq and the region the two groups are exchanging ideas about ways to join forces, Fox News reported.
"I don't know exactly when, but there are discussions and dialogues between messengers," Allawi said, adding it is not clear how the two groups will work together.
Allawi said ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri have not been communicating with each other directly, but with the use of intermediaries.
Kinzinger said the two men remain top targets, but many people do not understand is not easy to look for them.
"When we looked for Saddam Hussein, for a long time, it took a ground presence," Kinzinger said. "Finding somebody and killing them is not the easiest thing."
Trump's approach is different from what President Barack Obama did, because Trump is using Special Forces raids to gather information and then using that to hit the terrorists, Kinzinger said.
"When I was in Iraq, that's what we would do," said Kinzinger, a major in the Air National Guard, who has flown missions in the Middle East while in the Air Force. "We would find top targets and unravel their networks, and that's what we need to do and how to win the war."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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