The islamic sTaTe as icarus: - a criTical assessmenT of an unTenable ThreaT

The rapid and overwhelming success of ISIS during this period came as part of a carefully planned and executed expansion that made good on the group’s namesake goal – the creation of an Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or IS Caliphate.3 A lot of early focus on ISIS has been on its military acumen and gains. [...] The IS Caliphate was pushed out of the Syrian town of Kobane by Kurdish fighters and American airpower; run out of the Iraqi Sunni stronghold of Tikrit by a combination of Iraqi Army units, Shiite militias, and Iranian military units and senior generals; and put under the gun in Syria by rival Salafist units conducting guerilla attacks and assassinations. [...] All these factors indicate that the IS caliphate of 2015 is akin to the ancient Greek myth of Icarus: It is flying high, but in doing so it has flown dangerously close to the sun, melting the wax on its proverbial wings and raising the likelihood of a dramatic fall in a short period of time. [...] The limited appeal of ISIS for long established South Asian jihadist outfits is also indicative of the inherent strengths of AQ and weaknesses of ISIS in the wider struggle for ascendance in the Salafi jihadist arena. [...] Three jihadist splinter groups in Afghanistan along with the more established, yet very The entirety of South Asia mercurial, Gulbiddin Hekmatyar, and jihadists reported going a handful of disgruntled Pakistani Taliban commanders and the Jundallah to the ISIS fight is actually terrorist group in Pakistan, have less than those from the pledged allegiance (or support in the case of Jundallah) to ISI.