“We have contained them.” Those words from U.S. President Barack Obama about the status of ISIS came the day before the Paris terrorist attacks and continues to reverberate around the world.
The President has since said he was referring to stopping ISIS’ march across Iraq and Syria when he made those comments in an interview with ABC news. But with ISIS taking responsibility for the deadly attacks in Paris, as well as the bombing of a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai, Obama’s critics accuse him of underestimating ISIS.
Former CIA Station Chief Kevin Hulbert told The Cipher Brief earlier this week that the Paris attacks represent “a real and significant paradigm shift” for ISIS. Hulbert said, “ISIS seems to have turned a page.”
Some view the attacks in Paris as a pivot in strategy by ISIS precisely because they are losing territory in Iraq and Syria. Just last week the Kurds took back Sinjar, the Iraqi town ISIS captured last December. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, explained, “If you're experiencing territorial losses, how do you make up for that? Well, pivoting to asymmetric warfare makes a lot of sense. You can impose a cost on countries for being part of an effort to beat you back.”
During his press conference in Turkey on Monday, President Obama said the U.S. has been “fully aware” of ISIS’ capabilities to carry out an attack against the West. “They are capabilities that other terrorist organizations that we track and are paying attention to possess, as well,” Obama said.
ISIS is an outgrowth of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Although ISIS and al Qaeda are now rivals, both are driven by a radical jihadist ideology, and both have exploited government instability and power vacuums to operate in safe havens.
However, ISIS has surged ahead of al Qaeda. As General Jack Keane explained earlier this week, “ISIS is the most successful terrorist organization in modern history.”
ISIS has declared a caliphate and continues to hold and govern large swathes of territory, an objective al-Qaeda was never able to achieve. The number of foreign fighters flowing to join ISIS is unprecedented—over 20,000. Several al-Qaeda leaders around the world have shifted their allegiance to ISIS, and ISIS now maintains affiliates in Libya, Nigeria, the Sinai, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Additionally, ISIS is the “world’s best funded terrorist group,” explained former Treasury Department official Matthew Levitt. This sentiment was echoed by David Cohen, now CIA Deputy Director, who stated, “[ISIS] has amassed wealth at an unprecedented pace.”
Furthermore, ISIS’ ability to lure recruits, spread propaganda, and communicate through social media and other modes of technology has placed them at the forefront of the global jihadist movement.
This is all not to say that al-Qaeda is irrelevant – in fact, just the opposite. ISIS’ rise has enabled al-Qaeda to seize this opportunity to regroup while ISIS bears the brunt of Western militaries. Replenished and determined, al-Qaeda could reemerge from the shadows similar to how the Taliban has slowly begun to surface in anticipation of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
ISIS may no longer be gaining territory in Iraq and Syria, and perhaps it is changing its tactics because it is losing ground in its declared caliphate. But in the words of General Keane, “Clearly ISIS is not contained and is far from defeated.”
