The Failed Islamic States Index

By J. Dana Stuster, Ellen Noble

August 7, 2014 | Foreign Policy

On June 29, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham rebranded itself as simply the Islamic State and proclaimed that it was the legitimate government of the swath of Iraq and Syria it has seized, beginning with its capture of Fallujah eight months ago and rapidly expanding, most recently to Christian-majority towns in Iraq’s northwest. Not to be outdone, the Nusra Front, the Islamic State’s al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rival, declared in July that it was establishing its own state, which the group called an Islamic emirate.

Some analysts have likened the Islamic State to a “new Taliban,” which attempted to establish hard-line Islamist governance in Afghanistan. But one need not reach back to the 1990s for examples of jihadist states: Al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Mali have made similar attempts much more recently.

In 2011 and 2012, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and a coalition of North African jihadists exploited crises of governance to establish their own short-lived emirates. Both alienated their populations before collapsing under government counteroffensives. As the Islamic State has gone about consolidating its control — eliminating Sunni rivals, destroying cultural artifacts, and enforcing extremist interpretations of sharia rule — the similarities have become even more apparent. But it is also apparent that the Islamic State has learned little from recent history and appears doomed to make the same mistakes as its intellectual brethren in North Africa and Yemen.

Photo Credit: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his first appearance on video when he gave a sermon in Mosul in July.

To continue reading, click here.