“In their mind, and as part of their strategy, they see the move toward world domination as a multi-pronged, decades long pursuit during which there will be successes and failures. Battles lost can be overcome with the next headline grabbing, chaos-ensuing attack.”
There’s an old saying in the country that the most active and desperate chicken in the yard is the one that just had its head cut off. As the world celebrates ISIS’ defeat in Mosul and Raqqa, it’s a proverb we should keep in mind. With ISIS now wounded, they could be at their most dangerous.
No doubt for their efforts in the Middle East, the losses are significant and an undoing of years of work to gain control on their march towards regional caliphates has happened. But beyond the desert the group’s tentacles have encompassed the globe, to include within the confines of its western world targets, over the last few years. As the need to reaffirm its capabilities as a result of its losses is at the highest level of desperation yet, the group that some are now seeking to discount might be at its most dangerous.
This is not to say that the military victories that took place against ISIS in more traditional war zones aren’t significant, and they were certainly necessary. But to gauge ISIS, or any other group subscribing to their ideology and intent, including al-Qa’ida, strictly from a military standpoint is a mistake, and it misses the mission of their global jihad.
In their mind, and as part of their strategy, they see the move toward world domination as a multi-pronged, decades long pursuit during which there will be successes and failures. Battles lost can be overcome with the next headline grabbing, chaos-ensuing attack.
There’s an old saying in the country that the most active and desperate chicken in the yard is the one that just had its head cut off.
Even though they resulted in defeat, the conflicts in Syria and Iraq can still serve to benefit the group. Whether by design or through sheer happenstance, these years long engagements with western forces have been the shiny object. The bouncy ball where the bulk of resources from intelligence and military assets have been focused. Driven by a desire and belief that eliminating core leadership, most notably ISIS overall leader and founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a high priority was placed on kinetic operations.
But not all have been killed. And along the periphery looms the larger threat. The ones that scattered in the aftermath will now find themselves returning to their homelands. To places like France, where in 2012 there were only ten cases of terrorism being investigated, a number which five years later has ballooned to six hundred.
Or places like the United Kingdom or even the United States. In total, as defeat began to seem imminent for ISIS foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, it is estimated over five thousand six hundred have or will be returning to their homes in a list of which comprises thirty-three nations, according to a recent study by the Soufan group.
Regardless of the status or access to communications available to ISIS core leadership, western nations now find themselves the destination for battlefield hardened jihadists. Ones whose beliefs have only been strengthened at war. And ones who have learned a thing or two training and fighting under and with those to whom they look up to for motivation and direction, leaving al-Baghdadi and his generals with assets ripe for the group’s shift from military engagement to grassroots insurgency.
That leadership, which has proven proficient at propaganda campaigns regardless of conditions on the ground or in the world, will likely spin the events in the Middle East as more justification for their legion to take the fight to their enemy’s home turf. As a call to recruits to step up for their mission at a time when the group needs them the most, a desperate time when they’ll look to new attacks to lick their wound. After all, the wounded animal is often times the most dangerous and unpredictable.
