When a group calling itself the “Islamic State” took the Iraqi city of Fallujah in January 2014, few could have picked ISIL out of the many armed groups that were roaming the fractured landscapes of Syria and Iraq. The US president Barack Obama called them a “junior varsity” team, meaning an unprofessional fighting group. News reports referred to them as Sunni militants.
Yet within months, this group had morphed into the deadliest terror group the Middle East and the West had seen for years. In June of the same year – three years ago last weekend – ISIL took their greatest prize: Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul. Iraqis were stunned. Within weeks, the group had declared a “caliphate”. By then, everyone who followed the news knew who ISIL were.
Three years – three long years – have passed. Today, ISIL have never looked weaker. The days when they could storm a military camp and kill hundreds of Iraqi cadets seem to have gone. Iraqi troops are finally pushing them out of Mosul. Pressed from all sides, ISIL are losing members and territory. Their slogan “remaining and expanding”, so trumpeted across social media and slick propaganda videos over the past three years, now looks hollow. As a caliphate, ISIL is coming to an end.
And yet, as a fighting force, ISIL are not. Just days ago, at the start of Ramadan, ISIL detonated two bombs in Baghdad, killing and injuring dozens. A week earlier, a suicide attack either inspired by ISIL or carried out by a member took place in Manchester. Days after the Baghdad attack, three men carried out a rampage in London, again either inspired or trained by ISIL.
ISIL’s territory may have shrunk, but its reach is enormous. From the Philippines to West Africa, there are people who carry out attacks in ISIL’s name. That will not change after ISIL’s territory is destroyed; it may even get worse, as those who now live in ISIL territory go back home, perhaps to wage attacks, perhaps to preach and inspire others.
The next three years then will probably not see the end of ISIL, only of one phase of its destruction. Without a close watch on those leaving Syria and Iraq, close coordination between countries and security agencies, and a focus on tackling the ideas that motivate ISIL supporters, both online and offline, the reach of the terror group may continue.
