“Soon after buying her, the fighter brought the teenage girl a round box containing four strips of pills, one of them colored red.”¹ This is a line from a story by Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times from March 12, 2016. Re-read that line again, and let it sink in. The sentence describes a jihadist terrorist from the Islamic State (IS) who purchased a teenage girl, from the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq, at the equivalent of a slave auction and was forcing her to consume birth-control pills to ensure that, no matter how many times he savagely raped her, his captive would not become pregnant. This situation played itself out throughout parts of territory in Iraq and Syria under the control of IS, which declared itself a caliphate and set out to build what terrorism expert Martha Crenshaw calls a “counter-state” using any and all means necessary, including rape, murder, and torture.²

The brutality was not merely limited to sexual slavery. There were also beheadings and crucifixions. Some IS captives were burned alive, while others were locked in a cage and submerged in water until they drowned. Many of these actions were recorded and posted online by the group itself, to promote a level of anomic violence that would come to shape and in many ways define its brand. Just a few years ago, horrified onlookers must have wondered how we arrived at a place where a terrorist organization could conquer and control territory, systematically eliminate its rivals, and intimidate the international community from action to halt this blatant display of barbarism.

By mid-2018, the physical caliphate had all but been destroyed, its fighters killed, captured, and chased from their erstwhile strongholds in Raqqa and Mosul. But, as Graeme Wood points out, the caliphate was more than just a territory or a proto-state – it was, and indeed still is, “a phenomenon in both physical and mental space.”³ IS as an idea, as an ideology, and as a worldview is far from over. The group will eventually seek to relocate to another country and establish new franchise and affiliate groups. The purpose of this book is to analyze what happens next with the Islamic State and to determine whether or not, and to what extent, it will manage to adapt and regroup after the physical fall of the caliphate. What form will its relationship with al-Qaeda take? How might its tactics and strategy change in the future? This book will attempt to answer these questions and more, while taking stock of IS – its roots, its evolution, and its monumental setbacks – to provide some insights into what the road ahead could look like.

In many respects, the establishment of the caliphate was an anomaly. Historically, the global jihadist movement has been largely decentralized, consistently inconsistent in its ability to marshal the resources and groundswell of support necessary to achieve anything close to what IS did when it established the caliphate with a headquarters in Raqqa. From bin Laden to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the global jihadist movement has had its share of charismatic personalities. But for the past four decades, it rarely constituted anything close to a monolithic movement operating with a common purpose and core agenda.

The future of the movement is therefore likely to resemble its past – with peripatetic and divided groups of militants dispersing to new battlefields, from North Africa to Southeast Asia, where they will join existing civil wars, establish safe havens and sanctuaries, and seek ways of conducting spectacular attacks in the West that inspire new followers and motivate existing supporters. In this fragmented and atomized form, IS could become even more dangerous and challenging for counterterrorism forces, as its splinter groups threaten renewed and heightened violence throughout the globe. Even if foreign fighters return home in much smaller numbers than initially expected, the next five-year period could very well be characterized by a spike in attacks.

At its peak from 2014 to 2016, the caliphate briefly represented the apex of the global jihadist movement – the closest thing it has ever had to a lasting presence. But with the caliphate in ruins, it will revert to decentralized and dispersed clusters of groups and lone individuals or self-starter groups, tenuously linked by ideology and common cause, although, as history has shown, over time parochial interests tend to trump the movement’s globally focused veneer.⁴ In order to understand how we got to where we are today and what lies ahead, it is critical to look back to the roots of IS – both how and what it learned from its predecessors, and how it differs from other milieus within the global jihadist universe.

The opening chapter takes us from the beginnings of the global Salafi-jihadist movement following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and traces its evolution through the next three decades, leading up to the events of September 11, 2001. Initially dubbed the “Arab Afghans,” fighters from the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere flocked to Afghanistan to help repel the Soviet Red Army following Moscow’s hasty invasion. These militants moved on following the Afghan conflict to form the core of al-Qaeda, growing the organization in Sudan before branching out to fight in places like Somalia, Bosnia, Algeria, and Chechnya during the 1990s. Differences over objectives and ideology led to numerous splits within the movement, as fighters dispersed from al-Qaeda to join existing militant groups throughout the globe, although due to the trappings of globalization, many were able to remain linked to the core organization from perches in Southeast Asia, Europe, and elsewhere.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and an unrelenting drone campaign, al-Qaeda scattered and established franchise operations in Yemen (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP), North Africa (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM), and Iraq (al-Qaeda in Iraq, AQI), while also maintaining ties with groups in parts of Africa (al-Shabaab) and Asia (Abu Sayyaf Group and Jemmah Islamiyah). Core al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan was largely decimated, but several of the franchise groups flourished during this period, including AQAP and AQI, the latter of which was led by the spiritual godfather of IS, the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Over time, AQI would morph into the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) in the mid-2000s, a name which the group would keep until early 2013 when it changed officially to IS, following its falling-out with al-Qaeda. The detailed history of the movement described in this first chapter is critical because one potential future alternative in the post-caliphate environment is a return to the franchising model that al-Qaeda pioneered following the onslaught against its core organization based in South Asia.

The book then moves to explore the genesis of the Islamic State and the structural factors and variables that contributed to its rise, including rampant sectarianism in Iraq and the political vacuum caused by the Syrian civil war. A close look at IS infrastructure, decision-making apparatus, and its approach to building the caliphate shows how each informed the group’s approach to conquering new territory and implementing the pillars of a sovereign state, while also developing a unique ability to recruit foreign fighters. This analysis is accompanied by a strategic snapshot of IS’s ideology, its long-term objectives, and a discussion of the group’s capacity to plan and conduct attacks (operational capabilities) and to maintain itself as a cohesive entity (organizational capabilities). In particular, it is these organizational capabilities which will play a substantial role in determining the future of the organization, helping it transition smoothly from a territorially based insurgent organization to an underground, clandestine terrorist group. Its network-like qualities, affiliate franchise groups, and social media expertise contribute to its protean structure and ability to survive.

The Islamic State is a pioneering terrorist group in several ways, from its ability to raise and spend money to its multi-tiered approach to conducting terrorist attacks (inspired vs. directed). IS’s use of social media and encryption to direct terrorist attacks overseas sets it apart from any terrorist groups of the past. As evidenced by the Paris November 2015 attacks and the Brussels March 2016 attacks, at its peak, IS sustained the ability to strike into the heart of Europe. The second chapter examines various aspects of the group’s financing and its tactics, including how IS operates on the battlefield, from vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) to ambushes and hit-and-run attacks. This extends to IS’s exhortation for its followers to conduct attacks in the West, including a synopsis of so-called vehicular terrorism, a tactic pioneered by IS that has emerged as a new trend in terrorism directed against the West.

Chapter 3 offers a rigorous evaluation of the Islamic State’s future, based – in part – on the current trends we are witnessing. This includes a deeper discussion of the so-called free-agent jihadists or roving militants who will seek to travel to active conflict zones to link up with existing terrorist and insurgent groups, acting as a force multiplier. For most of its surviving fighters, the war is not over – many of these militants will almost certainly move on to new battlefields to continue waging jihad. As New Yorker columnist and Middle East expert Robin Wright recently commented, “hundreds of jihadis are believed to be searching for new battlefields or refuge in Muslim countries.”⁵ The mobilization of jihadists in Iraq and Syria dwarfs similar phenomena that helped define civil wars and insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Algeria, and Chechnya. This is an especially ominous observation since the foreign fighter networks formed during those conflicts went on to form the core of al-Qaeda.

Wherever IS fighters fleeing Iraq and Syria congregate next, it will most probably be in a weak state plagued by persistent civil conflict, sectarian tensions, and an inability of the government to maintain a monopoly on the use of force within its borders. There are several potential candidates for the next IS headquarters, including North Africa (Libya, the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt), Central Asia (Afghanistan, the Caucasus), Southeast Asia (the Philippines, Indonesia), or destinations within the Middle East, possibly including Yemen. What these destinations have in common are weak security services, existing or recent sectarian conflict, and a population considered fertile for and receptive to the Islamic State’s propaganda. Moreover, recent IS propaganda has demonstrated an interest in expanding beyond already-existing affiliates, to include insinuating its fighters and garnering new recruits in countries like Myanmar, India, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The penultimate chapter focuses on “core IS” in Iraq and Syria and how it will seek to transition from an insurgent organization to a terrorist group. Three years after IS captured major cities and towns throughout Iraq and Syria, the anti-IS coalition has made significant progress in countering the group and retaking territory. Nevertheless, predictions of the group’s ultimate demise are premature. Rather than an end to the group, what we are witnessing is more accurately a transition from an insurgent organization with a fixed headquarters to a clandestine terrorist network dispersed throughout the region and globe. The differences matter, as counterterrorism and counterinsurgency are two completely different strategies. Insurgent organizations hold and seize territory, can exercise sovereignty over a population, operate in the open as armed units, and can engage in mass mobilization, while terrorists conduct attacks with members operating in small cells – they rarely hold territory, and if they do it tends to be for a short period of time. At the time of this writing, IS leadership is more fractured, flimsy, and sporadic than at any point to date, but its intelligence service, the Emni, remains intact and is working to exploit missteps by the Islamic State’s adversaries, including the Kurds, the Assad regime, and the Iraqi government, especially to the extent that these actors reinforce already-existing sectarian issues in the region.

One major inflection point is IS’s ongoing competition with al-Qaeda and whether this will result in IS seeking rapprochement with the latter group or, on the contrary, intensifying its current rivalry as a way to differentiate itself and “outbid” its erstwhile collaborator. IS and al-Qaeda are competing for influence throughout the globe: in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Mali, Sinai, South and Southeast Asia, Syria/Iraq, Iran, the Caucasus, and Africa. As IS fighters disperse following the collapse of the caliphate, some have speculated that these fighters will reinforce existing wilayats, or provinces, but the collapse could have a deleterious effect upon the IS brand and thus lead to an ascendant al-Qaeda in places we might expect to see IS reinforced. Current and aspiring jihadists may view the al-Qaeda–IS relationship and competition through a zero-sum lens; the two groups “play off each other’s successes and failures.”⁶ In some theatres, the two groups may engage in a process of outbidding, ramping up violence in the near term to prove dedication and capability. The question of “preference divergence,” wherein franchises face the dilemma of investing in local interests versus diverting resources toward global objectives, now seems more relevant than at any previous point in the conflict.

What is being done to counter IS and its returnees, including the hardcore fighters and mercenaries who will remain in the region, is the focus of the final chapter. This includes finances, logistics, and support for existing militant structures throughout the region and beyond. What are the policy implications of dealing with returning foreign fighters? What can and should states do to help deal with this immense challenge? Finally, how will the counterterrorism strategy pursued by the West affect the various trajectories of the splintered IS elements?

Answering these and other questions, this chapter engages with the myriad public policy issues concomitant with returnees and the decision of how best to reintegrate these people into society, or whether to deal with them in a more punitive manner. Entire families that at one time willingly departed Europe to join the Islamic State are now trickling back home, posing significant challenges to European authorities. Not all returnees should be viewed the same, as some will be willing to reintegrate, others will be reluctant to, and still others may be incapable of doing so, traumatized by the horrors of what they witnessed (and in some cases participated in) during the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

While causing a terrorist organization to break apart might seem like a positive outcome – indeed, this is one of the primary objectives of most counterterrorism campaigns – it often causes the emergence of new, and in some cases more violent, splinter organizations (indeed, we could already be witnessing this in parts of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt). Dismantling and destroying IS and similar organizations are worthy strategic goals, but policymakers must also be prepared to limit the effectiveness of splinter groups as they emerge in the aftermath of a successful campaign against the parent group. The coalition fighting IS must continue to pursue a multipronged strategy. On the one hand, splinter cells must be aggressively targeted through capture-and-kill operations to prevent further metastasizing. On the other, this approach cannot be pursued in isolation; rather, it must be coupled with efforts to promote good governance and reduce corruption in fragile states while building the partner capacity of security forces in the most affected countries.

Countering IS has become a global priority. Yet there still exists nothing close to an international consensus on what must be done to prevent a future mobilization of jihadists motivated by a desire to establish a caliphate by any and all means necessary, with death and destruction paramount to this quest. The Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS consisted of five specific lines of effort, including: providing military support to partners fighting IS; impeding the worldwide flow of foreign fighters; stopping the financing and funding of its organization; addressing humanitarian crises in the region; and exposing the true and odious nature of this barbaric group determined to enslave its enemies and conquer its neighbors. The international community has vowed “never again,” but can it keep that pledge? What makes this time different? This book offers some possible responses to the threat posed by a resurgent, post-caliphate IS. But first, let’s go back to the beginning – to 1979 – and the events that triggered the modern era of the global jihadist movement and everything it epitomizes.