A Globally Integrated Islamic State
The Islamic State today looks different than it did five years ago and is far more integrated now as an organization amongst its global network than al-Qaeda ever was. It has been 10 years since the Islamic State announced itself as a caliphate and more than five years since it lost its last vestige of territory in Syria. However, with the Islamic State back in the news due to an increasing external operations capacity (with attacks in Iran, Turkey, and Russia this year as well as numerous broken up plots in Europe), there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the group operates today. In many ways, it is either incorrectly viewed through the lens of how al-Qaeda operates (a decentralized branch network), since it had previously been a part of al-Qaeda’s global network, or based on how the Islamic State operated when it was at its prior zenith when it controlled territory in Iraq and Syria. It is also likely why some within the U.S. government may have misinterpreted signals intelligence by pushing the idea that the Islamic State leader targeted in Somalia at the end of May, Abd al Qadir Mumin, became the group’s caliph. These changes in the past five years are crucial for policymakers to understand because the way the threat presents itself today will look different from how policymakers dealt with the issue last decade when much of the focus was on the Islamic State’s territorial control in Iraq and Syria.
The most important body for understanding the Islamic State today is its General Directorate of Provinces, which has previously been based in Syria, but new information suggests that at least at the highest levels of it might now have centrality in Somalia. When one understands that structure, the Islamic State’s actions globally make more sense. It is also why we see far more interaction and connection between its various wilayat (provinces) today than in the past. In many ways, the key aspects that animate the Islamic State as an organization (governance, foreign fighter mobilization, and external operations) remain, they have just moved from primarily being based out of or controlled by its location of origin in Iraq and Syria to being spread across its global provincial network. Its aims remain the same, even if the organization has adapted to a changed environment. It is also why the challenge from the Islamic State today is different from the past and why it is in some ways also more resilient now to pressure than before.
This makes the challenge of the Islamic State more
difficult from a security perspective than in the past when there was
the ability to primarily zero-in on its efforts in Iraq and Syria.
Today, only focusing on Iraq and Syria or any other province independent
of understanding its connections to other parts of the group’s global
network will lead to missing crucial details due to expediency. This is
why, although it is understandable that the United States has shifted a
lot of its manpower and budgeting to more existential and larger
problem-sets such as China and Russia, it would be a mistake to neglect
the Islamic State as a continuing, but evolving security challenge.
Therefore, it is still useful to continue to have and add more funded
government positions across different agencies and departments to focus
on tracking this threat to better get ahead of the next surprise.
Otherwise, mistakes of misinterpretation will be made as in the past.
Repeating History?
Without this understanding, it is plausible that policymakers will interpret what the Islamic State is doing today differently than what the reality within the organization is. This is not so far-fetched, either. We have been here before. Before the Islamic State’s reemergence in 2013, many government officials and researchers believed the group had been defeated. Several still referred to it as “al-Qaeda in Iraq” despite its renaming as the Islamic State of Iraq seven years earlier. Similarly, while the Islamic State was marching toward territorial control in Iraq and Syria in January 2014, President Barack Obama called the Islamic State the “JV squad” in contrast to the presumably “varsity” al-Qaeda.
Part of this fundamental misunderstanding arose from the politics of the 2003 Iraq invasion and war, a chapter from which officials and others wanted to move on. Offering further context was the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, which dampened public interest in pursuing the jihadist movement in general and the Islamic State of Iraq in particular. The scholarly focus by counter-terrorism experts then centered on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa-based Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahidin, because these groups included Western foreign fighters or inspired homegrown radicals in the West to plot attacks in their countries.
One of the biggest knowledge deficits during the Islamic State’s resurgence involved the group’s development over time. This lack of historical understanding led to widespread misinterpretations. The group was incorrectly assessed, variously, as a front for revanchist Baathists, a home for nihilists without any ideology, a millenarian movement uninterested in real-world governance, and a locally focused movement without any plans for external operations.
Now, in the aftermath of the Islamic State losing territory in Iraq and Syria in 2019, history is, in a sense, repeating itself. Many inside and outside the U.S. government who had previously worked on the Islamic State and the jihadist movement have pivoted to more exigent problems, such as the rise of the far right in Western countries, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and worries over China’s growing military strength and geopolitical revisionism regarding the current world order. Increased attention to such issues is no doubt warranted, but the “lull” between jihadist mobilizations should not be mistaken for an end to the challenge.
The General Directorate of Provinces
In the aftermath of the Islamic State announcing that it had expanded itself beyond Iraq and Syria in mid-November 2014 to Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, it established a structure called the Administration of Distant Provinces. The name of the structure highlights that it was a separate entity from the way that Islamic State administered its various provinces in Iraq and Syria in its core territory at the time. This body would include the other provinces the Islamic State would add in subsequent years such as those in Nigeria, Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Caucasus, Somalia, etc. The design of how the Islamic State operates internally, however, would change as it lost its territorial control in Iraq and Syria. And while many focus on March 2019, when the Islamic State lost its last bit of territory, more relevant in some ways was when it lost its city strongholds in Mosul, Iraq and al-Raqqah, Syria in the summer and fall of 2017.
The Islamic State already had been preparing for changes as far back as the spring of 2016 when the first signs of its loss of control over Iraq and Syria began to become more evident. For example, in a speech in May 2016, then spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani prepared the group’s supporters to endure another tactical defeat:
Victory is the defeat of one’s opponent. Were we defeated when we lost the cities in Iraq and were in the desert without any city or land? And would we be defeated [if we lost] Mosul or Sirte or Raqqa? Certainly not! True defeat is the loss of willpower and desire to fight.
This was followed up with an editorial in the group’s weekly newsletter al-Naba in mid-August 2016, discussing the strategy of retreating to the desert (inhiyaz ila al-sahra) as it had previously done in Iraq following the tribal awakening and U.S. surge of troops, prior to its comeback as a relevant actor in 2013 first in Syria and then Iraq. We have seen the Islamic State do this to an extent in the badiya desert regions of central Syria since 2019.
Because the Islamic State was prepared for change ahead of its full territorial collapse, it shouldn’t be surprising that we began to see its provincial structure within Iraq and Syria begin to evolve again. In mid-July 2018, the Islamic State stopped describing its multiple provinces in Iraq (Baghdad, Shamal Baghdad, al-Anbar, Diyala, Karkuk, Salah al-Din, Ninawa, Janub, Fallujah, Dijlah, and al-Jazirah) and Syria (al-Raqqah, al-Barakah, al-Khayr, Hims, Halab, Idlib, Hamah, al-Sham, Latakia, and al-Furat) as such. The Islamic State changed them to just Wilayat al-Sham (Levant Province) and Wilayat al-Iraq (Iraq Province). This is likely around the time that the Islamic State transitioned from separating its core territories from its external provinces with the creation of the General Directorate of Provinces. Danish researcher Tore Hamming believes it coincided with the Islamic State’s creation of new provinces in Central Africa, Turkey, and India in the spring of 2019. The key point about this change was that no longer was its administration in Iraq and Syria separate from the rest of its global provinces. All of the Islamic State’s provinces were now on par with one another.
However, with the creation of the General Directorate of Provinces also came an extra layer of bureaucracy. It created a superstructure that now oversees the provinces themselves, with the General Directorate of Provinces having its own makatib (offices). Based on leaked internal Islamic State documents, these offices include: Maktab (office of) Ard al-Mubarakah, in charge of overseeing the Islamic State’s activity in Iraq and Syria; Maktab al-Sadiq, covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India, and the rest of South Asia; Maktab al-Karrar, managing Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, and other parts of eastern, central, and southern Africa; Maktab al-Furqan, administering the Lake Chad Basin and the Sahel; Maktab Umm al-Qura, looking after Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf; Maktab Dhu al-Nurayn, focusing on Egypt and Sudan; and Maktab al-Faruq, organizing Turkey, Georgia, the Caucasus, Russia, and Europe. Previously, there was also a Maktab al-Anfal that covered Libya and North Africa, but that is now defunct and likely subsumed under the Maktab al-Furqan. There also used to be a separate Maktab Bilad al-Rafidayn for Iraq, but has since been subsumed into Maktab Ard al-Mubarakah.
Today, the conventional wisdom from people within the U.S. government when speaking privately suggests that the Islamic State is a manageable issue, especially as it relates to Iraq and Syria, and more dispersed than centralized, but making those assumptions might be more related to wanting to focus on other policy challenges than the reality on the ground as the Islamic State has built itself back up over the past five years. It is a more complicated challenge because the way it has built itself back up is different from how we saw it rebound more than a decade ago now in Iraq and Syria. Thus, the way the threat manifests now will look different for policymakers than before, when the group was primarily focused on its territorial control on Iraq and Syria. Instead, due to the greater integration between and among the Islamic State’s provinces, viewing only one or two of them as a threat misunderstands that the allocation of responsibility and resources within the group’s global network has spread, providing longer-term resiliency.
Therefore, when we discuss the Islamic State today in a global sense, in some ways it makes more sense to describe these offices and how they connect with one another than looking at it strictly through the lens of the distinct provinces, as we have been doing for years. This is also the case because the leader of each of the Islamic State’s various provinces reports to the head of the General Directorate of Provinces’ offices that are for that individual’s particular region. In many ways, this better helps shed light on the issue of Mumin, Islamic State external operations, and financing today, as well as why we still see the Islamic State having interest in governance projects and foreign fighter mobilizations even if they are not at the same levels in the past.
Mumin: The Caliph?
On May 31, U.S. Africa Command announced that it targeted the Islamic State’s Somalia Province in the “remote area in the vicinity of Dhaardaar, approximately 81 km southeast of Bosaso” and claimed that it killed three Islamic State militants. This was later followed up with a leak by someone in the Department of Defense claiming in mid-June that one of the targets had been Mumin, who allegedly was the latest Islamic State caliph. Mumin had been the wali (governor) of the Islamic State’s Wilayat al-Sumal (Somalia) since he and others had broken away from al-Shabab and joined the Islamic State in October 2015. Today, Mumin is now reported to be the emir (leader) of Maktab al-Karrar and his prior deputy within the Islamic State Somalia Province, Abdirahman Fahiye Isse Mohamud, has been promoted to the wali position. Although the mid-June report states that the U.S. government is unsure if the airstrike killed Mumin, it was confident in saying that “they did bring the caliph to that region.”
Yet local rumors that the current Islamic State caliph, Abu Hafs al Hashimi al Qurashi, traveled from Syria or Iraq and then through Yemen to the semi-autonomous Puntland region of Somalia in the country’s northeast does not make sense from a logistical standpoint. Mumin had always previously been in Somalia so there would have been no reason for him to travel since he was already there. Further, from an ideological perspective, the caliph has to come from the Prophet Muhammad’s Quraysh tribal lineage, meaning someone from primarily an Arab background rather than someone from Somalia with no connection to this. Of course, there are Somali traditions that state that Abd al Rahman bin Ismail al Jabarti, the alleged common ancestor of the Somali Darod clan (which Mumin belongs to) from the 10th or 11th century, descended from Aqil ibn Abi Talib, a member of the Banu Hashim clan within Quraysh and a cousin of Muhammad. But these stories are likely just that: tradition and mythos. It is also unlikely in the context of questions raised about the Islamic State’s second caliph Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al Qurashi, debating whether he was Arab or Turkmen. Aymenn al Tamimi, a scholar of the Islamic State and its internal documents, suggests that he was “Turkmen by language, not necessarily racial lineage.” Either way, why would the Islamic State tread on something so potentially controversial and undermine its purist ideological worldview with the case of Mumin? Based on what we know of the Islamic State, it is unlikely they would hinge something so significant as the caliph position on something that can’t be totally proven, especially since it would undermine its own project due to the puritanical nature of how it polices its ideology and worldview.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if there has been some misinterpretation of signals intelligence on Mumin. Whatever the case, based on what is known of the Islamic State’s organization structure today and ideological proclivities, Mumin is more likely to be either the head of the General Directorate of Provinces or the number two. This makes much more sense from an ideological and organizational perspective than him being the caliph. Mumin is one of the few remaining global leaders within the Islamic State’s network today who has not been killed in the last decade. So, it would not be surprising that he would hold trust at the highest echelons of the Islamic State’s power structure today.
This leadership structure change that put Mumin in this position could have been facilitated by Isse Mohamoud Yusuf, a weapons and logistics facilitator for the Islamic State’s Somalia Province. The U.S. Treasury Department claims he helped facilitate in early 2022 the travel of militants on his dhow (a traditional sailing vessel used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean) from the Middle East to Somalia to attend meetings on the restructuring of the group’s Somali leadership, tactics, and strategies.
This is all crucial from a policy perspective. Failing to understand how the Islamic State’s leadership structure works or the eligibility for the caliph position (10 years since the group first announced its caliphate!) will lead to incorrect analytical assessments and thus undermine any mission when fighting the group. This would not be the first time that a misinterpretation of the Islamic State’s leadership led to poor policymaking decisions either. In the aftermath of the group announcing itself as the Islamic State of Iraq in October 2006, the new leader of the group was Abu Umar al Baghdadi. The U.S. military proclaimed in July 2007 that he was fictional, did not actually exist, and audio messages by the Islamic State of Iraq under his name were being done by an Iraqi actor. However, he was very real, but because of this assessment, it led many within and outside the government to believe that the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq had dissipated. No doubt, the Islamic State of Iraq was in a weak position, but as Haroro Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter argued, Abu Umar’s leadership at its most difficult time helped the group survive and rebuild its organization for its future reemergence. He did this by making it more resilient locally in Iraq, before he was killed in 2010 and succeeded by the more well-known Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. In hindsight, the lack of understanding of Abu Umar’s important role in linking the Islamic State of Iraq from its past era under Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s stewardship to its more well-known history since 2013 was a failure by policymakers and researchers to understand the Islamic State of Iraq and its leadership.
Therefore, if Mumin was in fact killed, his death would still be significant within the Islamic State’s organizational structure even if he was not the caliph, since he would have been a key manager between its various global provinces. The significance would also go further since it would highlight how the Islamic State has divested leadership roles primarily from Iraqis and to a lesser extent Syrians (with exceptions such as past top military commanders being the Georgian Abu Umar al Shishani and the Tajik Gulmurod Khalimov), showing greater integration within the Islamic State’s leadership structure of those from outside its original core territory in Iraq and Syria. It would also not be surprising if Mumin took on such a role within the Islamic State. In recent years, Maktab al-Karrar, which is embedded above the Wilayat al-Sumal, has risen to become one of the most important offices within the whole system. This is due to it becoming a key node within the Islamic State’s financial networks, according to the United Nations. It helps with any excess revenue from the area that Wilayat al-Sumal controls around the Cal Miskaad mountain range by transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) to Islamic State nodes in South Africa. The cash is further sent to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania and then repurposed to other Maktab al-Karrar provinces (Wilayat Wasat Ifriqiya in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Wilayat Mozambique) as well as distributed to other offices like al-Sadiq, Umm al-Qura, and al-Faruq, which then provide funding to their provinces in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Turkey.
This trend is also not new. For example, there’s a leaked internal Islamic State administrative letter from Mumin to the emir of the Islamic State’s Administration of Distant Provinces back in November 2018 discussing the issue of sending funds to the group’s members in Turkey and Yemen. Furthermore, according to the U.S. government, Bilal al Sudani, who had been in charge of Maktab al-Karrar global financing network until he was killed in January 2023, helped fund the Islamic State attack that killed 13 U.S. service members at Abbey Gate at the Kabul International Airport in August 2021 during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. When we think about the current threat environment related to the Islamic State Khurasan Province and external operations outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, it is worth reassessing whether it is only Wilayat Khurasan that is involved in these external operations. It is worth considering if it makes more sense to talk more about a pan-provincial external operations network being planned via the General Directorate of Provinces’ offices, which can better help coordinate different attacks and plots amongst the various provinces.
The Islamic State’s External Operations Are Pan-Provincial
In light of the Islamic State Khurasan Province external operations campaign and successful attacks attributed to it by the governments attacked in Iran, Turkey, and Russia this year, there has been much unsurprising focus on this group. However, in some ways focusing solely on it obscures rather than sharpens our understanding of the Islamic State’s external operations network today. Back when the Islamic State was at its peak, most of its external operations from 2014 to 2019 had some connection back to Syria (whether directed, guided, or inspired), with a couple of exceptions tied to the Islamic State in Libya in 2015 and 2016.
However, unlike in most past cases of jihadist external operations where a safe haven has been crucial, there’s been a paradox whereby the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate has actually degraded much of the Islamic State Khurasan Province’s local capacity in Afghanistan. A lot of Islamic State Khurasan Province-related external operations plotting has more to do with recruitment and inspiration online and guidance through encrypted applications than an individual traveling abroad to gain fighting and training experience and then returning home to plot. While this model is not new, it’s the first time we’ve seen it be successful while a group is not in control of territory and shrinking in its local capabilities. This suggests that it is more likely that the Islamic State’s external operations today are being run through its General Directorate of Provinces, coordinating among its offices and provinces to make its external operations campaign more resilient than with just one province planning and controlling everything.
It is also important to remember that the Islamic State did not claim any of the attacks in Iran, Turkey, or Russia as being conducted by Wilayat Khurasan. Rather, the Iran and Russia attacks were claimed by the Islamic State’s central media under “Iran” and “Russia,” not a province, while the one in Turkey was actually claimed through the Islamic State’s Wilayat Turkiya. This distinction is important because the Islamic State has always been meticulous in the way it releases information on its attacks and ideology in general. There is nothing random about it. This suggests that something else is at play, especially since in the past, for example, a previous Islamic State attack in Iran in September 2018 was actually claimed by the Islamic State Khurasan Province. This signals that the way the Islamic State claims attacks has meaning from an organizational perspective.
On top of this, the Wilayat Turkiya claim gave up the fact that this wasn’t just the Islamic State Khurasan Province’s doing, even if the governments in Iran, Turkey, and Russia have pointed directly at it. There is no doubt that it had some role, mainly with the recruitment of individuals online via Central Asian residual foreign fighter networks from the Syrian mobilization remaining in Turkey. It has also taken advantage of disillusioned individuals within Central Asian migrant communities abroad in places like Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Germany.
The March 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow and a June 2024 plot broken up by Germany in Cologne that was seeking to target the current European soccer championship are noteworthy examples of these intertwined global networks. Both cases had the individual(s) involved traveling to Turkey ahead of actualizing the attack in Russia and the plot being broken up in Germany. Accordingly, it is possible that in both cases there are Islamic State handlers in Turkey who are there to assist or provide final instructions for any last-minute attack preparation. While it is plausible this could have been a coincidence, Turkey has become an epicenter for Islamic State plotting, with the country having the most Islamic State-related arrests globally in the last year. The Wilayat Turkiya networks continue to also be targeted, including three times thus far in 2024, related to financing and smuggling schemes by the U.S.’s Treasury Department. When one zooms out from thinking of this through the lens of the Islamic State’s traditional provincial system and instead via its General Directorate of Provinces offices network, it becomes a bit more crystalized: Germany, Russia, and Turkey all fall under the Maktab al-Faruq within the General Directorate of Provinces.
Moreover, while unrelated to this year’s successful Islamic State attacks abroad, the Iranian government claims that the main individual involved with the mid-August 2023 attack in Shiraz, a Tajik national named Rahmatollah Nowruzof, had previously trained with the Islamic State in Turkey (as well as the Islamic State Khurasan Province in Afghanistan), further illustrating Turkey as a key node within the Islamic State’s global network. It also highlights overlap between regional zones, potentially showing us that these external operations networks could be pan-provincial and making the case that they are being coordinated at the General Directorate of Provinces level. When put side-by-side with what has already been described about financial networks transcending provincial locales and assisting with the financing of operations abroad alongside local activity, the Islamic State’s leadership is clearly much more integrated and coordinated at various levels than is considered conventional wisdom.
Even amongst Islamic State supporter networks there is crossover amongst those that are connected to or are in touch with different parts of the Islamic State’s global network. For example, in mid-December 2023, Spain arrested 11 individuals involved in an international Islamic State support network, which began in 2021. According to Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, two of the ring leaders were discovered to be part of a larger network of Islamic State supporters with connections to branches in Afghanistan (Maktab al-Sadiq), the Sahel (Maktab al-Furqan), the Levant (Maktab Ard al-Mubarakah), and Europe (Maktab al-Faruq), whose members raised money through criminal enterprises in Europe to finance terrorist attacks and mobilize new followers. This network transferred money through cryptocurrency and international shipments to the Islamic State’s various branches around the world.
On top of this, it is worth reminding that many of the Islamic State financial networks in Turkey assist its activity within Syria. This shows that even if the Islamic State in Syria is not viewed as strongly as it had been previously, it still very much is linked into its global network through Maktab Ard al-Mubarakah within the General Directorate of Provinces. For example, in April 2024, the Syrian Democratic Forces arrested Islamic State financial actors Ahmad Fuwaz al Rahman and Muhammad Amin Khalil al Ubayd. They had received money from the Islamic State in Turkey (and Lebanon) via the Rohin money remittance company to be used in local operations through Katibat al-Zubayr bin al-Awam, an undercover Islamic State division based in Hasaka, Syria. (In this article, I have excluded discussion about how the Islamic State’s media operations have been centralized among all provinces since it expanded beyond Iraq and Syria as this is commonly agreed upon amongst researchers.)
Beyond what appears to be a joint external operations planning network that crosses over within the Khurasan, Somali, and Turkish provinces, other plots that have been broken up have shown direct links to other Islamic State provinces. This further demonstrates that the Islamic State’s external operations are not static in terms of where they are coming from, but rather an assault coordinated via its General Directorate of Provinces. Three plots (two in Germany and one in Kuwait) have been broken up that connect back to Islamic State operatives being sent from Iraq to conduct attacks, with one of the plots in Germany having the individual receiving $2,500 directly from the Islamic State in Iraq. Likewise, we have also seen Islamic State-related plots in Israel, France, Sweden, and India in the past four months that directly link back to Islamic State handlers in Syria, Somalia, and Pakistan. Since these cases have only occurred recently, it would not be surprising if other plots or attacks began emanating from other Islamic State provinces too in the coming year as the General Directorate of Provinces coordinates these various plans.
For policymakers, solely focusing on the Islamic State Khurasan Province as the main actor in the Islamic State’s external operations today misses the broader picture. That’s why broadening the aperture to understand the General Directorate of Provinces and coordination within the Islamic State’s provincial network helps uncover a greater understanding of its current organizational structure. In some ways, the Islamic State is far more integrated today than it was five years ago after it lost its territorial control in Iraq and Syria. Nevertheless, from a policy perspective it is key to still realize the importance of the Islamic State’s focus on governance, foreign fighter mobilizations, and external operations, and that it has not dissipated. The former two primarily are occurring at various levels in Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, and Mozambique today. This does not get much attention likely because it is viewed as peripheral to U.S. interests and is not an immediate threat to the homeland. Plus, in the case of Mali, any effort to do anything today is blunted and complicated by Russia’s current domination of the counter-terrorism space in the Sahel. The latter focus on external operations has truly morphed from primarily being planned from Syria to a more resilient model with planning and coordination spread across the Islamic State’s global organizational network.
Understanding this shows the challenges ahead for policymakers and those operating in or around countries all over the world still trying to degrade and/or defeat the Islamic State. The Islamic State of today is different from the Islamic State of the past, and it has been able to adapt thus far to the pressure that has been put on it with its control of territory in four African countries alongside a renewed external operations capacity, and greater, albeit still small, interest in new foreign fighter mobilizations. This highlights that using the same playbook against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria might not work elsewhere, especially since the United States has other policy priorities and it does not necessarily have the same ability to act in certain parts of the world, due to adversarial challenges to particular spaces like Russia’s control of the counter-terrorism theater in the Sahel region. Ignoring this new reality will only lead to the Islamic State potentially once again being thrust higher up on the policy agenda. It would then siphon time and resources away from other policy issues that from a long-term perspective are probably more consequential to U.S. security. Therefore, getting the reality of the Islamic State today right is more important than ever and it is better to put more resources toward this now than an even greater amount later when there might be a future crisis.
Aaron Y. Zelin is the Gloria and Ken Levy Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy where he also directs the Islamic State Worldwide Activity Map project. Zelin is also a research scholar in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University, an affiliate with the Global Peace and Security Centre at Monash University, and founder of the widely acclaimed website Jihadology. He is author of the books Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad (Columbia University Press) and The Age of Political Jihadism: A Study of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Rowman and Littlefield). Zelin is currently working on a third book tentatively titled Heartland of the Believers: A History of Syrian Jihadism.