CIAO DATE: 10/2014
May 2014
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Within a year of its formation, the Islamic State in Iraq and al Shaam (ISIS) has come to represent the primary radical Islamist Salafi group worldwide. Exceeding the reach of the main Al Qaeda franchises (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, notably), ISIS has in 2013-2014 sought to question and managed to displace the historical Al Qaeda organisation to which it was previously uneasily affiliated. Should it eventually materialise more tangibly, the ‘end’ of Al Qaeda would not have come at the hands of the Global War on Terror, US counter-insurgency in Iraq or Afghanistan nor as a result of ideological displacement by Arab liberals in the wake of the Arab Spring, but independently as a consequence of self-produced, internal generational growth and leadership competition rendering the original Al Qaeda model obsolete, if lastingly influential. ‘Syriaq’ is the new Af-Pak and this conflict-ridden, loose territorial configuration in-the-making between Syria and Iraq with deeply weakened state control has importantly provided the platform and conditions for the transformation of a new, overarching central organisation which ISIS is fast becoming. For all its important recent tactical victories, impressive land grab and expanding operational reach, ISIS’ strategy is, however, replete with consequential contradictions — primarily its territorial anchoring vs. its global ambition, as well as the absence of a legitimate narrative compelling for its social environment — which it will arguably not be able to transcend in the long term to achieve its overstretched objectives. The ISIS-going-global story is in essence a bellwether for the evolution of Al Qaeda but equally a key marker of early twenty-first century regional and international security trends with reverse ‘statisation’ of armed groups and ‘militiasation’ of states dynamics playing beyond the confines of the MENA region.
Resource link: ISIS and the Deceptive Rebooting of Al Qaeda [PDF] - 561K