II. The Islamic State in 2016: a failing ‘caliphate’ but a growing transnational threat?

Chapter:

3. Armed conflict and instability in the Middle East and North Africa

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2017

Author(s):

Ian Davis, Dan Smith, Pieter D. Wezeman

The Islamic State (IS) is a transnational Sunni Islamist insurgent and terrorist group that since 2014 has controlled large areas of Iraq and Syria, where it declared a caliphate in June 2014.¹ It also has affiliates and supporters in other states (e.g. that control limited areas of territory in Libya and a few districts in Afghanistan), and has disrupted regional and international security using violence often coordinated and supported by bureaucracies in Iraq and Syria that possess characteristics more usually associated with state institutions. As an ideologically based social movement with proto-state-level military capacity and objectives, it is unusual.² IS is often contrasted with its ideological predecessor and operational competitor, al-Qaeda, from which it split in 2013.³ Recent research also draws useful comparative and historical lessons from other terrorist organizations, such as the revolutionary warfare of Mao.⁴ Other analysts refer to IS as part of a ‘fourth wave’ of jihadist violence since the early 1990s.⁵