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 has not been pushed out of the region entirely.  It lost territory, manpower, and material.  The ideology remains active, and the wider ecosystem of state and non-state sponsorship that allowed groups like it to grow has not disappeared.

Starting a war, and turning a rebel group into a force that can threaten conventional armies even in a limited capacity, takes substantial money and logistics support.  State sponsorship may become politically inconvenient at any given moment.  Ideology, once lit, is not easily stamped out.

Fighters disperse rather than disappear.  Some return home carrying the experience of a conflict that evolved from low-intensity insurgency into full conventional warfare.  Some embed within local populations.  Detention facilities in Iraq and Syria lack the infrastructure to hold this many people indefinitely, and executing all of them is both expensive and politically untenable.  A small fraction gets made an example of.  Others fill the vacuum they leave behind.

When the geopolitical situation turns convenient again, another incarnation appears, under a different name, adhering to the same core ideology.  Non-state actors remain a convenient tool in regional rivalries, and the concern is the same pattern spawning elsewhere.  The siege of Marawi in the Philippines in 2017 remains a stark example of this.

A Historical Parallel

Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab an-Najdi entered a pact with tribal leader Muhammad ibn Sa’ud in 1744, fusing a strict reform theology with tribal military power.  That alliance eventually produced the modern Saudi state, with Wahhabi doctrine adopted as its official religious framework.  A once-marginal theological reform movement became state ideology through political convenience, not universal doctrinal appeal.  Wahhabism is still considered heretical in traditional Islamic theology, but there is neither political will nor convenience in addressing it directly.  The Saudis control the Haramayn – the holiest mosques of Islam, so they have leverage.

History shows how a fringe interpretation can gain state backing when it serves a power’s interest, and that same interpretation can later fracture.  The overwhelming majority of Muslims influenced by this tradition, including the modern Saudi state itself under its own post-2017 reforms, practise it without violence.  A distinct, minority current within this broader tradition, Salafi-jihadism, legitimises violence and rejects the modern state system.  This is the current that produced al-Qa’ida and later ISIS.  They are the fruits of Saudi Wahhabi evangelism.

Most Radical Ideologies Soften with Time – Not Traditional Wahhabism

Most radical movements moderate once their leadership ages, their funding dries up, or political incorporation becomes more attractive than continued violence.  The Provisional IRA’s political wing, Sinn Féin, entered mainstream Northern Irish politics following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, trading an armed campaign for a seat at the table.  The Salafi-jihadist current has shown no comparable softening, because its theology explicitly rejects the compromise that made those other transitions possible.  This is why it remains a live security concern.

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Terence Nunis | Executive Chairman, Equinox Zenith | Author, The 1% Playbook: The Billionaire Cheat Code