PerspectiveWhat ISIS Will Become
Most Americans first noticed the Islamic State in 2014 – it was called ISIS then — but the group had been around in different forms for about a decade. Many of the group’s commanders and fighters were the same people who had fought U.S. troops under the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq. In the past year, its leader has died and it has lost the last of its territory, which at its peak was roughly the size of Britain. So what’s next?
Most Americans first noticed the Islamic State in 2014 – it was called ISIS then — but the group had been around in different forms for about a decade. Many of the group’s commanders and fighters were the same people who had fought U.S. troops under the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq, then led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, until a massive U.S. military effort suppressed them (Zarqawi was killed in 2006 in a U.S. air strike). Kathy Gilsinan and Mike Giglio write in The Atlantic that under its new name, ISIS, the group expanded its international ambitions, and captured vast swaths of territory across Iraq and Syria and declared it a caliphate.
Gilsinan and Giglio write:
In the past year, its leader has died and it has lost the last of its territory, which at its peak was roughly the size of Britain. Much like after the Iraq War, though, both ISIS and the conditions that fostered it remain—and in some ways, the environment is even more promising for its survival now. ISIS may be weaker, but it retains thousands of members across Iraq and Syria. The Obama administration’s management of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq had its own problems, but Trump’s abrupt and unilateral decision to pull U.S. troops from northeastern Syria has been a picture of chaos. U.S. efforts to rebuild and provide humanitarian relief and security in former ISIS strongholds in the country are in jeopardy, as is the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which served as America’s main partner. In Iraq, many areas have not been adequately rebuilt, and the country’s political and economic morass has spurred weeks of demonstrations, to which the government has responded with brutal crackdowns. An entire generation across both Iraq and Syria has been traumatized by extremism and war, and tens of thousands of suspected ISIS members and their families languish in the limbo of poorly resourced camps in Syria. The international community has made little effort to help the masses of children whom ISIS made a concerted effort to radicalize.
So what’s next?
