Islamic State (ISIS)

A jihadist group that briefly held territory the size of a country, and was destroyed as a state within five years of declaring one. Its roots lie in the insurgency that followed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and its opportunity came from two things: the sectarian exclusion of Sunni Iraqis by the Baghdad government, and the collapse of state authority in Syria after 2011. It seized Mosul in June 2014 with a few thousand fighters against several divisions that dissolved, captured American-supplied equipment, and declared a caliphate. At its height it controlled territory across Iraq and Syria holding several million people, with taxation, courts, schools and oil sales - the feature that distinguished it from other jihadist groups, which had never tried to govern. Its rule was extraordinarily violent: the Yazidis of Sinjar were subjected to what the United Nations later found to be genocide, with men killed and thousands of women and girls enslaved. It destroyed antiquities at Palmyra, Nimrud and Mosul deliberately and filmed it. Its propaganda drew tens of thousands of foreign volunteers from over eighty countries. A coalition campaign with Iraqi forces and Syrian Kurdish militias retook the territory: Mosul fell in July 2017 after nine months of urban fighting that wrecked the old city, and the last enclave at Baghuz in March 2019. Its leader was killed later that year. The group continues as an insurgency and through regional affiliates, particularly in Africa. The group declared its caliphate in June 2014 and lost its last territory in March 2019. Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq were its main cities. At its height it held around 100 thousand square kilometres. Palmyra is a World Heritage site. Around 40 thousand foreigners are thought to have travelled to join it.

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