Quora Answer: How Will ISIS Evolve after Being Pushed Out of Syria & Iraq?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How will ISIS evolve after being pushed out of control in Syria and Iraq?”

Unfortunately, ISIS have not been pushed out of the region.  ISIS has lost territory, manpower, and much material.  The ideology is still rampant, and the regional state sponsors of the groups that became ISIS are still there: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

It takes a lot of money, and logistics support, to start a war, and turn a rebel group into a force that can threaten conventional armies even in a limited capacity.  It may be politically inconvenient for state sponsors to support them again, but ideology is a fire once lit, is not easily stamped out.  Wahhabism is an especially virulent ideology.

The fighters will disperse.  Some of them will look to return to their home nations, and bring back the experience they gained from a low intensity conflict that evolved into a full-fledged conventional war.  Some of them will be embedded with the local population.  Many of those captured will radicalise others incarcerated with them.  They will breed, like cockroaches in the dark.  Iraq and Syria do not have the infrastructure, or the logistics, to keep so many people incarcerated for an extended period of time.  It is expensive, and politically inconvenient, to sentence all of them to death.  Several hundred, a small fraction of them, will be made an example of, but others will step forth, and fill the vacuum.

When the geopolitical situation is convenient, there will be another incarnation of them, perhaps with a different name, but adhering to the same ideology.  Non-state actors are a convenient pawn in regional rivalries.  The concern is that like weeds, they will spawn similar groups in other parts of the world.  The siege of Marawi is a stark example of this.