ISIS: The Future of Fighting the World's Most Prominent Terrorist Organization (Essay Sample)

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ISIS: The Future of Fighting the World’s Most Prominent Terrorist Organization
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also popularly known as ISIL or Daesh, is undoubtedly the most dangerous terrorist organization of the 21st century. ISIS, whose primary goal is to create an Islamic Caliphate stretching across swathes of the middle east, is primarily driven by three ideologies, that is, Wahhabism, Salafism, and Salafi Jihadism. The sheer strength and alluring nature of these misogynistic ideologies, couple with conflicting interests among global powers, have and continue to jeopardize the future of fighting the world’s most prominent terrorist organization.
The ongoing military campaign mounted by the coalition forces led by the United Sates against ISIS have managed to inflict significant loses on the terrorist group. Conversely, ISIS and its sympathizers appear more rejuvenated to mount attacks against soft targets across the globe. The recent attacks conducted by ISIS jihadists in Paris are a definitive prove of the group’s sustained barbaric acts of terror perpetrated against innocent civilians. Pursuant to Morell, ISIS’s seemingly easy capability to reach out from their de facto capital of Ar-Raqqah and attack targets across continental boundaries further complicates the effectiveness of the fight against terror (54).
ISIS, once dismissed and referred to as a ‘jayvee squad’ (Weiss and Hassan 9), has and continues to serve as a catalyst driving a political wedge between countries sworn to defeat it. For instance, the downing a Russian fighter jet by Turkey has not only dealt a significant blow to the fight against ISIS but also heightened military tensions across the globe. The question of whether or not the Russian fighter jet violated Turkish airspace serves as an effective distractor to the real enemy which in this case is ISIS. Similarly, hidden agendas such as those held by Russia and its real reason of bolstering its military campaign in the middle east continue to mare the possibility of having an ISIS free future.
ISIS’s growing support among similar minded terrorist organizations such Al-Qaida, Boko Haram, and Al-Shabaab further complicates the fight against the group. Terror groups such as Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab operate in countries with relatively inexperienced military forces. Consequently, such groups are able to propagate their vile agendas without significant opposition. Likewise, internal governing strives among the countries affected and infected by the scourge of Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab hinders the flow of external military support geared towards fighting the terror menace posed by these groups.
The proliferation of support for ISIS, as is evidenced by the ever increasing number of new recruits joining the terror group, brings into a light yet another seemingly insurmountable block in the future of the war against terror. This is principally because ISIS’s trend of recruitment has undergone through a significant paradigm shift. The group is no longer looking to recruit the susceptible jihadist but is instead targeting people with good societal standing which makes it even harder to single them out. In essence, this implies that the conventional terrorist has now assumed the form of a friend or a close associate, and most recently, children.
The ongoing inf...