The Islamic State’s (IS) reign of terror might come to an end. In 2016, the world public witnessed how the group slowly diminished to the point where it is questionable whether IS could recover from the damage it suffered. Many wonder what will become of the self-proclaimed caliphate and how individuals within the group will react to its demise.
Firas Abi Ali, a senior analyst of terrorism in the Middle East, predicted in September that the group would vanish by the end of 2017. For example, the Kurds and IS were at a stalemate for months in the city of Kobani before U.S. airstrikes helped win the battle.
The United Nations (UN) claimed the operation to liberate the Iraqi city of Mosul that started on 17 October would be the final strike against IS. ”This liberation operation marks the beginning of the end of the so-called ‘Da’esh caliphate’ in Iraq,” Jan Kubis, the UN envoy for the country, told the Security Council in November, using an Arabic acronym to refer to the group.
IS gained global notoriety in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its western Iraq offensive, followed by its capture of Mosul. The city, which once was home to nearly three million people, became a symbol of IS’s reign of terror and the threat the group posed to the region. Undoubtedly, the eventual ejection from Mosul will be decisive and weaken the position of IS drastically. Yet it is hard to believe it will be the final chapter, as long as fundamental changes within Iraq and Syria have yet to occur.
Outskirts of Mosul, 17 November 2016.
The roots of IS go back to a training camp in Herat, Afghanistan, in the late 1990s. The militant Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wanted to build up an army that could bring down the regimes of the Levant, and for that purpose he recruited and trained young men in western Afghanistan. The group fled to northern Iraq in the wake of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11.
When the U.S. shifted its attention from Afghanistan to the Iraq, the group was ideally placed to become one of the leading forces in the post-Saddam Iraqi insurgency. Almost all of its leaders were former Iraqi military and intelligence officers, specifically former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath government who lost their jobs in the de-Ba'athification process after that regime was overthrown.
Attacking the Jordanian Embassy and the UN headquarters in Baghdad as well as a Shia shrine in Najaf in August of 2003, the group suddenly assumed a strong position in the country but was in decline in the years thereafter. Brutal excesses in Iraq including filmed decapitations led to a loss of local support, with Sunni tribes supporting the government in Baghdad's fight against the group.
The turning point happened in 2011 when the civil war in Syria broke out. The group still had an existing network in Syria, dating back to the time when it launched attacks from there into Iraq, and now it explored options to get involved in the fight in Syria. A cell that was placed in the country grew into the group Jabhat al-Nusrah. In June 2013, the group then took the label ISIL when al-Baghdadi revealed the connection between his Iraqi group and Jabhat al-Nusrah. Although this connection caused internal quarrels, IS began to grow significantly in both Syria and Iraq, with headquarters in Raqqah and later Mosul.
After eventually being driven out of Mosul, IS will retreat, but that does not mean this will be its end. ”Rather, it will flee back to the hills and the ungoverned spaces in Iraq and Syria from where it will continue a persistent terrorist strategy in both countries,” said Raffaello Pantucci, Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute. ”If the Islamic State loses Mosul, the group has a clearly articulated contingency plan, a strategy it has frequently broadcast on multiple platforms for the past five months: inhiyaz, or temporary retreat, into the desert,” wrote Hassan Hassan, a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, in The New York Times last October.
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, an IS spokesman, mentioned the word inhiyaz in a speech last May where he explained that territorial losses did not mean defeat and that the group can prepare for a comeback, just like they did between 2007 and 2013. IS’s biggest hope at the moment is the fact that the government in Iraq is far from stable. The group has to wait until the next conflict, where it can then start portraying itself as the protector of Sunnis, whose disenfranchisement can once again open the door to win supporters and occupy space vacated by local governments.
”The war against the Islamic State is unwinnable without filling the political and security vacuum that now exists in too much of Iraq. The Islamic State’s eventual retreat from Mosul will be a much-needed victory for the country. But unless the government in Baghdad enables Iraqi Sunnis to fill that void, it will once again emerge from the desert,” Hassan Hassan explained in his article.
Haider Al-Abadi, Prime Minister of Iraq, speaking to the media following the Counter-ISIL Coalition Small Group Meeting in London, 22 January 2015.
IS could also turn its focus to another region. After the group started suffering losses in Iraq, foreign recruits had already turned their focus to Libya, where IS’s presence grew rapidly in the political vacuum. However, the presence is now shrinking in the wake of a successful Government of National Accord offensive. Tunisia could be the next place the group will turn to. A high number of IS soldiers are Tunisian citizens. When these Tunisians leave Libya and return to their home country, they could threaten stability there.
Moreover, recent events have shown that IS is more than a Sunni Arab enterprise. ”Al-Baghdadi’s strategy of recruiting young people from around the world to participate in a glorious struggle has succeeded perhaps far beyond his expectations,” said Mark Juergensmeyer, professor of sociology and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in a The Cairo Review article. ”In the ISIS-related San Bernardino attack, one of the killers was of Pakistani descent and had visited Saudi Arabia and the other was born in Pakistan and grew up in Saudi Arabia; the Paris concert venue and Brussels airport bombers were Belgian of Moroccan descent; the Orlando shooter was an American of Afghan descent; the attackers at the Istanbul airport in June 2016 were from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Dagestan.” None were from Syria or Iraq, where IS has its territorial base.
Last year, Al-Adnani urged followers around the globe to make the month of Ramadan ”a month of calamity everywhere.” They were told that they did not need to check with IS headquarters in Raqqah but attack ”unbelievers” in the name of IS wherever they were. Even when the IS army has to retreat and hide in the dessert, there is still a somewhat intact network that can lead to occasional attacks in major cities, while videos and contact with IS soldiers online could attract more young individuals to join the group. The network is maintained through Twitter, chat rooms and closed web sites, and through online magazines that, according to Juergensmeyer, amount to a ”cyber caliphate”. As opposed to the war on the ground, it is almost impossible to take action against IS’s activities online.
Within the last three years, we have seen a sudden rise followed by a slow fall of IS. The coalitions that have fought against the group had to make every effort to push the group back and regain territory. It is far from unlikely that, if the public does not pay close attention, IS will assume a different form and rise anew.