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terrorist group Isis is losing at the
end of 2014 it claimed a territory the
size of Great Britain and a population
of 11 million people but today it's lost
about 60% of that and it's population is
down to about two and a half million
it's the result of fighting its enemies
on all sides to the west and north
Isis's fighting armed rebel groups and
the russia-backed Syrian military and
its allies it's also fighting Turkish
troops and us-backed Kurdish forces in
the north into the east and south
there's the US backed Iraqi army it was
this Iraqi army that delivered the
latest blow when they took over Isis's
biggest city Mosul the group's capital
in Iraq it was a symbolic loss Mosul is
where the group declared a Caliphate or
Islamic territory in 2014 this set them
apart from other terrorist organizations
they weren't just a network of jihadists
strung out across several countries like
al-qaeda they governed actual territory
which they called the Islamic state now
at the loss of Mosul the fall of this
Isis Caliphate seems imminent so what
happens when Isis is gone so problem
number one is that these fighters are
going to want to go home so in 2014 when
Isis captured a huge swath of territory
in Iraq and Syria tens of thousands of
foreign fighters came from all over the
world to join the caliphate according to
UN estimates as of July 2016 there are
upwards of 30,000 foreign fighters so
most of these fighters came from
countries like Tunisia Morocco Jordan
Saudi Arabia but hundreds also came from
countries like Belgium Germany the UK
and even a few dozen from the United
States so these fighters were drawn to
Isis for all sorts of different reasons
but a big one was that it had actual
territory and was supposed to be
building a Caliphate based on its own
extreme interpretation of Islamic law
Isis propaganda pushed this narrative in
flashy violent videos and magazines
online encouraging people from all walks
of life not just fighters to come and
help build this glorious Islamic state
and the people who came were not just
young men they weren't just fighters
there were women children and even
families who came as well but now as
Isis territory shrinks and the state
that they tried to build collapses
anyone who survives will have to find
somewhere else to go and that's a major
problem because many of these people are
now in doctor
they're now well-connected and they're
capable of carrying out deadly terror
attacks a similar dynamic actually
happened back in the 1980s in
Afghanistan so thousands of foreign
fighters flocked to Afghanistan to help
the Afghan which I had be in fight the
Soviet invasion and after the Soviets
left a lot of these fighters dispersed
to various different theatres of jihad
including Bosnia Chechnya Somalia Sudan
and elsewhere these fighters ended up
forming a loose network of transnational
jihadists most of whom had links to
Osama bin Laden and al-qaeda
thanks to their time fighting in
Afghanistan and some of them actually
went on to carry out attacks against the
West including attacks against the
United States so the worry now is that
Isis fighters will do something similar
but this time they might actually make
it home to places like Europe and launch
attacks there so the second problem is
what to do with the US military after
Isis Falls right now the u.s. is helping
local forces in Iraq and Syria to defeat
Isis there are currently around 1,000 US
troops in Syria and around 6,000 US
troops in Iraq Mosul which was Isis's
capital in Iraq has fallen and right now
the u.s. is helping Syrian local forces
to defeat Isis in Raqqa its so-called
capital there so as those two cities
fall Isis has been spreading out to
rural areas the Trump administration has
two choices option one is to keep the US
troops there which would lead them in
harm's way or option two is to bring
them home which increases the risk that
the region breaks out into war again
option 1 is a big political risk for
Trump he promised during the campaign
that he would not get involved in
foreign wars that he would actually
invest American money and time as jobs
and research in the United States and so
if Trump were to keep troops in the
region he would be admitting that he's
going against the political philosophy
he espoused during the campaign and
currently during his presidency option 2
is definitely also a risk for Trump
if US troops were to leave that opens a
space for sectarian violence to break
out in the region let's take a look for
example it's what happened in 2011 the
Obama administration took most of its
troops out of the region that gave the
Shiite government in Baghdad
the space to crack down on Sunni
populations throughout the country and
Isis took advantage of that Isis was
seen as the defender against the Shiite
government and was able to gain support
and allowed for its riots to continue so
while it doesn't necessarily mean that
if troops leave an Isis type group or
Isis 2.0 itself or go out of that
absence of US troops but that rest
certainly exists the deadly California
shooting rampage a lone gunman the
pledge allegiance to Isis both incidents
carried out by so-called lone wolves
problem number three is Isis moving from
a place to an idea
up until now Isis had one goal defend
the territory already had in Iraq and
the territory already had in Syria the
problem is it's on the verge of losing
both and when that happens Isis goes
from being the kind of place people go
to fight to being the idea that people
fight for and it's an idea that's
compelling it's an idea that its
followers are willing to kill for and
that followers are willing to die for
when it first came to power
people thought it's a group that has its
own territory it wants to control that
territory but it's not al-qaida it's not
a terror group that wants to carry out
attacks outside of its borders in the
West that was proven tragically wrong in
October of 2015 this is the bomb Isis
claims they use to bring down the
Russian passenger plane over the Sinai
Peninsula in their online magazine they
posted photos at the bomb that they said
had been used to blow up the plane and
that was a reminder of what was about to
come a wave of Isis attacks that have
killed hundreds of people in London in
Paris in Nice and have inspired attacks
that have killed dozens here at home in
California in an Orlando it's worth
remembering that these are not always
attacks carried out by people who are
part of Isis in many cases these are
people who are radicalized in the
countries where they lived and that's
the danger of the idea take what
happened in San Bernardino California
we're a married couple killed 14 people
or in Orlando where a single shooter
killed 49 people in both cases Isis
claimed responsibility but in both cases
there is no connection between those
people and Isis they got radicalized
over the Internet
Isis has known that propaganda matters
and Isis is really good at it it has
people all over the world who use
English language Arabic language to have
Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that
are full of incredibly slickly produced
videos
they're really compelling and if you're
someone predisposed to have that
worldview they can push you over the
edge from just thinking that's an idea
worth killing for
to actually killing for it Isis takes it
so seriously that it refers to these
people as media operatives and says
those media operatives are carrying out
a form of martyrdom akin to killing -
literally killing for the cause and at
the end of the day that's the hardest
thing about Isis it can be beaten on the
ground in Iraq and Syria it is being
beaten on the ground in Iraq and Syria
but it's going from being a place to an
idea and it is impossible impossible to
defeat an idea