WASHINGTON: US military chief Gen Joseph Dunford urged world political leaders not to prematurely relieve their pressure on violent extremists as doing so would allow them to escape and regroup.

Earlier on Tuesday, Gen Dunford, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, opened Chiefs of Defence Conference at Joint Base Andrews outside Washing­ton. The yearly event focu­ses on Countering Violent Extremist Organisations around the globe.

More than 80 military chiefs are participating in this two-day event. Pakistan has also sent its top military official, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Zubair Mahmood Hayat.

“Perhaps the greatest challenge facing us today is the danger of complacency,” Gen Dunford said. “A misreading of our progress today and a misunderstanding of the character of the threat may cause political leaders to lose focus on violent extremism while they turn to other pressing challenges.”

US President Donald Trump has mulled publicly about removing US troops from war zones in the Middle East and South Asia. He seems particularly frustrated with the situation in Afghanistan where the war entered its 18th year last month, making it the longest-ever US military engagement.

Gen Dunford and US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis have, however, publicly disagreed with the suggestion, arguing that this was no time to withdraw troops from those trouble spots.

“I believe those of us gathered here today have a good appreciation for the consequences of prematurely relieving pressure on the enemy and allowing them the space to reconstitute,” Gen Dunford said. “There are many examples over the last few years where we’ve relieved pressure and they’ve reconstituted only to grow more virulent [with] their second strain of violent extremism.”

Explaining why he thought political leaderships across the globe could get complacent, Gen Dunford acknowledged a noticeable drop in terrorist attacks in the last three years.

Between 2016 and 2017, IS attacks had decreased by 23pc and in 2018, IS attacks killed an average of three people, down from an average of 25 deaths in 2015, he conceded.

Gen Dunford also acknowledged a visible decrease in IS propaganda.

This year, the group produced just 15pc of the amount of media it once produced and has not published its monthly online magazine, Rumiyah, in more than year, he said.

The US military chief, however, urged political leaders to remember that this decrease only happened because of prolonged military operations against the two groups.

Relaxing these operations, he warned, could create new spaces for these terrorists.

“We are a long way from defeating the generational threat of violent extremism,” he said. “In many ways, the threat we face today is more lethal and it has become more difficult to disrupt and destroy their plots.”

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2018