Its Export Is Fear

Last week's deadly, ISIS-inspired shooting spree at a social services center in San Bernardino, CA, has sparked debate in recent days over how the Islamic State group recruits and reaches potential followers, and what kind of influence its terrestrial grip on portions of Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere has on its ability to export terrorism around the world.

Contrary to previous claims made by the Obama administration, it would now appear as though the Islamic State is branching out, and planting roots that will allow it to coordinate and inspire more attacks like those witnessed in Paris and San Bernardino. The Daily Beast's Kimberly Dozier reports:

"A new U.S. intelligence report on ISIS, commissioned by the White House, predicts that the self-proclaimed Islamic State will spread worldwide and grow in numbers, unless it suffers a significant loss of territory on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria, U.S. officials told The Daily Beast.

[...]

"It's also a tacit admission that coalition efforts so far -- dropping thousands of bombs and deploying 3,500 U.S. troops as well as other coalition trainers -- have been outpaced by ISIS's ability to expand and attract new followers, even as the yearlong coalition air campaign has helped local forces drive ISIS out of parts of Iraq and Syria."

The revised intelligence assessment helps elucidate the administration's efforts in recent weeks to ramp up the fight against the Islamic State group. But while ISIS has lost some ground in the more peripheral parts of its de facto state, it is reportedly directing more attention and resources to Libya, where some suspect the jihadi organization is developing a "fallback option" should things go sour in Syria and Iraq. Whether or not its efforts to branch out and lash out represent a setback or a step forward remains a matter of debate.

"The bombing of a Russian airliner, the Paris attacks, and the Libyan expansion are signs that the group wants to capitalise on its success on the ground in Syria and Iraq by expanding its international reach," writes Mideast analyst Hassan Hassan. "That is hardly a sign of weakness."

Although most analysts seem to agree that the Islamic State group must control territory in order to fulfil its millenarian mandate, just how to deprive that fire of its oxygen remains unclear. While some have called for tens of thousands of American troops to be sent to Syria and Iraq, others have argued that the demands of state building will likely cause the Islamic State to wither and die on its own.

For now, however, the Islamic State need not demonstrate large gains or good governance in order to recruit and inspire terrible acts around the world. Although ISIS is widely reviled by much of the Muslim world, its isolation does not necessarily preclude its shaky state from pursuing its "national" interests as other unpopular governments so often do. (The opposite may in fact be true -- see Iran.)

Moreover, while the Islamic State offers very little in the way of global commerce or trade, it does, apparently, intend to corner the market on one primary commodity: fear.

More on this:

How ISIS Is Building Its State -- The Guardian

Why ISIS Keeps Growing -- RealClearWorld

ISIS Is in Worse Shape than Zimbabwe -- Politico Magazine

Around the Region

Tiptoeing toward quagmire. President Obama stressed in a televised Sunday evening address that the United States does not intend to get drawn into a land war with ISIS, insisting that this would only give the jihadi group the societal clash it so desires.

"The strategy that we are using now -- airstrikes, Special Forces, and working with local forces who are fighting to regain control of their own country -- that is how we'll achieve a more sustainable victory," said the president. "And it won't require us sending a new generation of Americans overseas to fight and die for another decade on foreign soil."

Obama has, however, been tiptoeing toward greater American involvement in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations worries that the administration continues to move the proverbial goalposts of engagement in the region:

"Consider that in November 2014 Obama pledged that the sort of circumstance where U.S. troops might be deployed on the ground were, ‘If we discovered that ISIL had gotten possession of a nuclear weapon, and we had to run an operation to get it out of their hands.' Now ‘specialized' troops will conduct high risk operations to simply attempt to capture and kill a few more Islamic State members, of which there is apparently an inexhaustible supply. On Monday, an anonymous Pentagon official claimed that an estimated 23,000 Islamic State fighters have been killed in 8,600 U.S.-led coalition airstrikes over the past sixteen months. The following day, Secretary Carter was asked, 'how many ISIL forces are there in Iraq and Syria?' He replied: 'estimates in the neighborhood of 30,000.' That is the exact same estimate for the Islamic State's size that the U.S. intelligence community provided sixteen months ago. Is this strategy working?"

More to come. Bloomberg View's Marc Champion reviews a recent paper published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and concludes that Syria will only continue to produce refugees for the foreseeable future. Champion:

"[T]here will be more refugees, no matter what. If Assad's Russian-backed campaign against non-IS rebels is successful, Sunnis will flee in their hundreds of thousands if not millions. According to Balanche, 200,000 people fled the Aleppo area alone over the last two months. If, against all odds, Assad and the non-jihadist rebels were to quickly agree a cease-fire and turn their joint fire power against IS, refugees would flee those areas, too. And if the Kurds were to succeed in their goal of seizing the IS-held territory that separates the two Kurdish zones, Arab refugees would flee Kurdish control."

Iraq's religious diplomacy. The Economist reports from the holy city of Najaf:

"On one recent day, there was a surprising scene, when set against the hatreds engulfing the wider Middle East. Inside the bejewelled Imam Ali Shrine, the holiest place for Shia Islam (pictured, above), a turbaned cleric was leading a delegation of women representing what remains of Iraq's colourful sectarian make-up. The party included Melkite and Orthodox Christians, Sunni Muslims and members of smaller religious minorities, such as Yazidis and Mandeans. They also visited an 11-story academy for inter-religious studies, under construction opposite the shrine's gates. And in an apparently unprecedented gesture, a Grand Ayatollah, one of four clergy of that rank in Najaf, invited them in for a bite to eat.

"These days, news stories about religion in Iraq usually focus on the ghastly deeds of Islamic State which controls a swathe of the country's Sunni-dominated territory and has slaughtered or expelled rival religious groups. The inter-faith diplomacy of the country's Shia ayatollahs has gone almost unnoticed, though it deserves some attention."

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