Australia was among several countries singled out.Īlmost immediately, ISIS supporters in a number of Western countries began to follow this guidance, carrying out what came to be termed ‘ ISIS inspired’ or ‘ lone-actor’ attacks. Supporters were told they should attack wherever and whenever they could, without seeking further permission or instruction. The statement gave ISIS supporters around the world, particularly in the West, carte blanche sanction to carry out attacks in its name. Although framed as a response to growing international efforts against ISIS, the statement was driven by internal imperatives to co-opt the jihadist milieu and project an image of power and capability. In September 2014, the head of ISIS’s security department released a statement that was akin to a standing operational order and which has become one of its most enduring and important releases. The security department’s internal wing was already holding Western hostages. It was established as a means of exerting control over foreigners within ISIS who were agitating to carry out external attacks.
The section was part of the external wing of ISIS’s security department.
ISIS had already set up an external operations section dedicated to organising terrorist attacks outside Syria and Iraq before it declared the establishment of its caliphate in mid-2014. Expansion of territory has not, however, been ISIS’s sole focus. ISIS does so to maintain an appearance of expansion-as was the case with its April 2019 reference to ‘ wilayah Turkey’, following the loss of its last territory. ISIS has also referred toareas where it has neither territory nor an announced subsidiary as provinces. There can also be multiple provinceswithin a country. Because ISIS rejects the legitimacy of international borders, a province( wilayah)may stretch across several countries. Their relationships with ISIS vary in closeness, depending on the nature of ties between them.įurther reflecting the importance ISIS places on territory, subsidiaries are treated as, and organised by, provinces ( wilayat). Subsidiaries are sometimes existing insurgent groups ISIS subsumed, or splinter factions of them. The number of Australians who travelled to Iraq and Syria has been reported to be 230, although this figure includes people who joined other militant groups.Īs a territorially expansive organisation, ISIS has sought to co-opt conflicts and grow subsidiaries in other parts of the world, including elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa, the Caucasus, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Estimates place the total number at 40,000 people from 80 countries. ISIS attracted unprecedented numbers of foreigners who came to join the organisation or live in territory under its rule. Thousands were taken hostage, ransomed, or executed, while others were enslaved. Non-Muslim minorities were forced to pay a form of protection tax ( jizya), or convert on threat of death. ISIS systematically and violently targeted non-Sunni Syrians and Iraqis, expelling them from their homes, plundering their properties and businesses and claiming them as a war spoil ( ghanima). Millions of Syrians and Iraqis were forced to live and work under ISIS’s brutal rule and its extortive taxation regime, via which it generated the bulk of its income. At its late 2014 peak, ISIS controlled large swathes of both countries, subsuming government resources and bureaucracy-along with industry, commerce, and agriculture. In March 2019 the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was ousted from the last of the territory it had seized across Syria and Iraq. Complex challenges remain, and sustained international efforts are required to ensure it cannot resurge in either country. Dr Leah Farrall, Foreign Affairs, Defence and SecurityĪlthough the fall of the ISIS ‘caliphate’ has lessened the threat it poses to Iraq and Syria, the organisation has not been vanquished.