IGNOMINIOUS END OF BLACK BANNERS

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Sunni Islamic radical wing emerged to establish caliphate all over the globe. IS grew out of an insurgency in Iraq and was affiliated to al-Queda until 2014. By that time it had established a foothold in Iraq and Syria.

 2014 was a spectacular year for IS, in a series of swift and unanticipated military ascendancy that awed and shocked the world and established its dominance in several regions of Iraq and Syria and showcased the advance of barbaric ideology.
It has seized away more than 50 places, including Mosul, Iraq's second largest city - demonstrating the brutality of an order rarely seen in the human history.

By the end of 2016, IS achieved military dominance in almost every region in Syria and across northern and central Iraq. At it peaks group has controlled over 130 significant regions and cities, the geographical size spanning bigger than many European nations. IS started collecting taxes and exercising control over military bases, border crossings, oil fields, and dams.

Map as on December, 2014.

At least 8 million people are captive in those seized regions and survived for three years three months, slaying the social life and human rights completely. Isis transformed the world of jihadism by recruiting tens of thousands of followers from five continents—faster, in larger numbers, and from further corners of the Earth than any other modern extremist group. However, from mid-2016, the IS began to suffer a steady stream of turbulence, witnessing there fall. The liberation of Mosul by the Iraqi government, the place where caliphate was pronounced - was destroyed, Iraqi forces believed IS game is over with Mosul's fall and soon afterwards they captured Hawija and Tal Afar.

The Syrian democratic forces backed by US militia, group made up of Syrian kurds and Arabs, announced they have seized Raqqa, the IS capital is Syria. Thus bringing an end to - bizarre pseudo state founded on illusory goals.  “How far they’ve fallen. It’s a striking contrast to three years ago, when they planted the flag, in the summer of 2014, and proclaimed God’s kingdom on Earth had come again—and now they’ve evaporated,” Will McCants, the author of the best-selling book “The isis Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State".

Yet the organisation is not dead. Nor are all its leaders. Hundreds of fighters have fled south to regroup in the lawless borderlands of the Euphrates River Valley between Syria and Iraq. Their zealotry will endure, in different forms and perhaps under different banners. isis also claims some three dozen wilayats, or provinces, spread from Algeria to the Philippines—across North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia—that have, at various times, pledged loyalty to the caliphate. Some are dormant. Others are small. All have been deadly.

There is a serious lack of political leadership in the region. If the situation is not handled in a most diplomatic, democratic and effective means - the demon may rise from the ashes again.