Success against ISIL tied to more conventional warfare tactics

BBC:

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Colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the US Department of Defense, said in a BBC interview that the success is due in large part to conventional warfare tactics recently employed by the ISF, not the counter-insurgency style tactics they were trained by the Americans to use for several years.
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But IS's strategy is different - working to seize and hold territory in an attempt to establish a state.

"You can't do that through insurgency, you have to do that through conventional warfare," Mr Warren said.

As an example, the colonel pointed to the strategic city of Ramadi, which has been in the hands of IS but Iraqi forces have this week advanced into the city centre.

There is one main road into Ramadi.

To protect the city, IS have littered the road and surrounding area with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in way that makes a sort of makeshift minefield. They then aimed machine guns and mortars at the field of explosives, to deter bomb disposal activities.

While IEDs have been used for years in Iraq, the way that IS is using them today is different.
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This is something I have been arguing for sometime.  ISIL gathers its strength from control of real estate.  Because they have a fixed base of oeprations they are vulnerable to a combined arms operation that seizes and controls the real estate.  They have little interest in insurgency warfare.