PHOTO: Islamic State fighters near Raqqa in northern Syria
Having lost territory in Syria and Iraq, is the Islamic State finished as a military and political force?
Malaysia’s BFM Radio has posted a podcast of our discussion two weeks ago about the status of ISIS and what it does next.
The Islamic State has a couple of core areas, such as Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, and they have to hold onto these to say, “We’re not simply an extremist group, a jihadist group, but a group which is trying to govern.
That said, even if ISIS is no longer a state, they revert to being a group which can carry out asymmetric attacks. They can strike at their enemies, whether it is the Iraqi Government or Syrian rebels, whether it is the Assad regime, whether it is the West.
