WASHINGTON: The US said on Thursday the Islamic State (IS) was the most dangerous group it had faced in recent years, and warned that Middle East faced a long-term battle to defeat it.

Pentagon chiefs said the militant group could be eradicated if local Sunni communities rejected it and regional powers united to fight it, but only if the battle was taken into Syria and not just Iraq.

“They marry ideology and a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess,” Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said about the “barbaric” militants.

“They are tremendously well funded. This is beyond anything we have seen.”

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the group “has an apocalyptic end of days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated.”

Gen Dempsey warned that the militant vision of a wider caliphate could “fundamentally alter the face of the Middle East and create a security environment that would certainly threaten us in many ways”.

“Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organisation that resides in Syria? The answer is no,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2014