Daesh likely to return if social issues remain unaddressed

Military defeats in Iraq and Syria have hurt the extremist group symbolically more than operationally

The fall of the self-styled caliphate carved out by Daesh in Syria and Iraq has been nearly as spectacular and swift as its rise.
Daesh-held cities and towns on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border have fallen like dominoes since Iraq announced the liberation of Mosul in July. Iraqi forces took nearby Tal Afar at the end of August, completing that battle in less than a fortnight. Clearing Daesh from Hawijah, its last urban stronghold in Iraq, took barely a day.
In Syria, the extremist movement is also on the run. US backed forces on October 17 declared the end of military operations against Daesh militants in the eastern city of Raqqa. Presented as the Daesh "capital," Raqqa, like Mosul, was a major hub for foreign fighters seduced by Daesh's state-building project.
The caliphate is in ruins, the vast swaths of territory that once sat beneath its black banners dwindling by the day. Its architects are either dead, on the run, or hiding in desert outposts. Yet the demise of Daesh as a physical entity in Iraq and Syria does not spell the end of this network.
Already it has spawned a multitude of affiliate groups, or "provinces," across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. But these regional branches fall along a broad spectrum in terms of the depth of their connection to Daesh, and few have their origins truly rooted in the battlefields of Iraq and Syria. Many are born of local grievances, their allegiance to Daesh bringing benefits to a cause already long established, and the barriers to any of these groups becoming the heart of a new Daesh are high.
"I think Daesh will go from being a proto-state to an underground terrorist organisation with affiliates in different places in the world," says Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent closely involved in investigating the 9/11 attacks, and author of Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State, who now runs The Soufan Group. "But then there's the ideological question: What's going to happen if there's no caliphate? They gave allegiance to a caliph and to a state that no longer exists."
At its peak in 2014, Daesh controlled more than 100,000 square kilometres, mostly in Iraq and Syria, an area containing some 11 million people, including up to 40,000 foreign fighters from more than 120 countries. But by early 2017, the number of people living under Daesh had already dropped by 56 per cent in Syria and 83 per cent in Iraq, according to a study by the RAND Corp.
Some of the fighting has been bitterly contested - witness the nine-month campaign to retake Mosul in Iraq - but with Raqqa now also out of the way there are high hopes military operations in Iraq and Syria will be concluded more quickly than anticipated.
These hopes, however, should be "very carefully caveated to be the taking back of territory and seeing the colours on the map change," says Chris Maier, director of the Defeat Daesh  Task Force at the US Department of Defence, "as opposed to the idea that there won't still be a clandestine or insurgent-type Daesh capability for the foreseeable future."
Indeed, Maier mentions an oft-used phrase in the Defeat Daesh community: "Taking back territory is necessary but not sufficient," recognising the fact that even if their territorial core were gone, Daesh would still be able to find "cracks and seams" in other parts of the world, particularly regions reeling from instability and poor governance.
Some analysts argue that Daesh saw the end coming and redirected its recruits to other parts of the world. If Daesh is to see a rebirth elsewhere, it is likely to be a question of where fresh fighters are drawn, rather than where those already in Iraq and Syria choose to relocate.
In part, that's because the majority of the Daesh leadership is Iraqi and so is likely to stay put. In part, it's because many of the foreign fighters were determined to stay to the bitter end - and then the logistics of actually making such a move are daunting in the face of international efforts to cut them off from the rest of the world.
"What we have left today is the core of Daesh, the ones who really believe in it," says Hassan Hassan, co-author with Michael Weiss of Daesh: Inside The Army of Terror. The group appears contained for now but, he warns, it could stage a come back if the political and social grievances remain unaddressed.
"Daesh will continue to be a threat," says Hassan. "The chance for them to revive the caliphate is still there. They have the imagination for it, and they have the environment for it."
Few analysts believe the caliphate project is likely to be resurrected in the short term. Nevertheless that should not belie the threat the extremists still pose - nor indeed the danger that the remnants of Daesh itself represent, whether its fighters have returned home, travelled to other hubs of activity, or survive locally as part of an organisation that morphs back into something akin to its original existence.
US Central Command said in April that it had identified more than 40,000 foreign fighters who joined Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Some analysts, however, believe those figures to be an exaggerated estimate, offering a more conservative range of 20,000 to 30,000 that includes supporters as well as combatants.
There is no doubt that a significant number of foreign fighters have already fled the battlefield. At least 5,600 residents or citizens of 33 countries have made it home, according to a report published by The Soufan Group. Accurately assessing the risk posed by returnees is just one of the challenges for law enforcement officials trying to stave off Daesh attacks.
Lina Khatib, head of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House in London, warns that territorial losses do not translate into a reduced capacity to stage attacks worldwide.
"Military defeats in Iraq and Syria hurt Daesh symbolically more than operationally, because Daesh activities in areas outside of the Middle East and North Africa are conducted by sleeper cells - sympathisers who take orders from the Daesh leadership who are hiding in the desert between Iraq and Syria in some cases, but who operate in an opportunistic fashion in other cases," says Khatib.
An estimated 6,000 to 10,000 Daesh fighters remain in play in Iraq and Syria.
The Soufan Group notes in its report that even as Daesh has ceded control of its territorial caliphate, concern that Daesh may remain viable in the long term, both as a group and as an inspiration, has continued, in large part because it has been so successful in attracting foreign recruits.
Libya is one of the few places that did receive an outflow of fighters from the core of Daesh, and while its ouster from the city of Sirte last year pushed it out into desert areas, the chaotic nature of that country makes the eradication of Daesh a tough proposition.
Another area of concern is Egypt, particularly in the Sinai, where there has been an uptick of attacks and an apparent expansion of the Daesh presence.
In many places where Daesh seeks a foothold, it is in competition with other groups for recruits and resources. In Afghanistan, for example, where there is a robust presence - referred to by some as Daesh-Khorasan - they are under pressure from the Taliban and the Haqqani network. In Yemen and Somalia, Al Qaeda is the main competitor; in the latter, where Daesh attempted to turn the Al Shabaab militant group, Al Shabaab resisted and even tried to crush the Daesh presence, meaning that perhaps fewer than 100 Daesh fighters remain.
This reflects a characteristic of many of the groups that claim allegiance to Daesh: long-established insurgencies that simply jumped on the bandwagon to attract attention and boost their cause.
"The way Daesh has historically operated, and Al Qaeda too, is they don't create anything from scratch," says Seth Jones, director of RAND's international security and defense policy centre and a former assistant secretary of Defence for special operations. "They are leveraging existing local groups."
This is true of West Africa, particularly the Sahel region, where four US service members recently lost their lives on a counter-terrorism assistance mission in Niger. Boko Haram has long been prosecuting an insurgency in Nigeria and pledged allegiance to Daesh, but a multinational military operation has deprived it of much of its territory.
And then there's the Philippines, where Daesh-aligned fighters have been battling government forces in the city of Marawi for five months. While the Mindanao region has seen insurgent activity for decades, not least in the form of the Abu Sayyaf group, the explosion of violence in Marawi has taken it to new levels. It also speaks to an increasingly international trend in terms of cooperation between militant groups: the conflict in Marawi has drawn foreign fighters, though mostly from Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.
Daesh are "clearly able to embed themselves in lawless states, failed states, ungoverned border areas," says Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, "so there has to be a significant international effort to deny them that."
 - The Christian Science Monitor