| Summary/Abstract |
At the end of 2014, some unexpected news about the “Islamic State” (IS) made headlines: al-Quds al-Arabi reported that a newly created IS military-police department in Raqqa had arrested fighters who had refused to go to battle in Kobani,1 and the Financial Times reported the execution of 100 foreign fighters and the arrest of another 400 trying to flee the war zone.2 Spoiled by its initial success, IS has now suffered some serious military setbacks in Baiji, Sinjar, Kobani, Tikrit and other towns in Iraq and Syria. In this article, I argue that these events are signs of the decline of an organization that has passed the zenith of its power. IS has overreached politically, militarily, and ideologically by proclaiming the renaissance of the Islamic caliphate, by declaring a territorial state to be the nucleus of an eschatological and universal Islamic empire, and by denouncing everybody who does not follow its extremist religious doctrine as an apostate. The loss of territory and centralized command, however, will most probably not mark the group's end; rather it will cause IS to resort to a strategy of terrorist warfare — as it has already done in some attacks in Western capitals — and will lead to its metastasis into countries like Libya, Yemen, Algeria, Pakistan and Egypt.
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