The Obama administration’s top official to the anti-Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL) coalition said that the fight against the terror group would likely take "a generation or more," according to reports.
Gen. John Allen, the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, discussed the ongoing fight against IS during a speech in Doha at the U.S.-Islamic Word Forum.
"This will be a long campaign," Allen was quoted as saying by AFP.
"Defeating Daesh’s [also known as IS] ideology will likely take a generation or more. But we can and we must rise to this challenge," he said. "In an age when we are more interconnected that at any other time in human history, Daesh is a global threat."
Allen said that in all his years in the military he has not seen a more violent force that IS.
"I have never seen before the kinds of depravity and brutality in this region that ISIL represents and, in fact, that ISIL celebrates," he was quoted as saying.