He said categorically: “I declare from here the end, the failure, and the collapse and terrorist state of falsehood that terrorist Daesh declared from Mosul,” using Arabic acronyms for ISIS or ISIL.
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate that spanned vast areas of northern Iraq and eastern Syria on June 29, 2014.
The Iraqi half has almost been eliminated today (the city of Tel Afar in northwestern Iraq, near the Syrian border, being the exception), while the Syrian part, located in Raqqa, is on the verge of collapse due to powerful military assaults led by Kurdish forces backed by the U.S.
It’s an important turning point.
ISIL’s blitzkrieg in the summer of 2014 quickly defeated Iraqi defense forces throughout northwestern Iraq. It captured about 40% of Iraqi territory.
ISIL fighters captured Raqqa, a province in Syria, in January 2014. They did this by taking advantage of a bloody civil conflict that was raging due to pro-democracy groups.
Map of Iraq indicating control zones. Include recent U.S.-ledU.S. coalition air strikes as well as recent violent incidents. Reuters
However, territorial conquests were not sustained. After a series of devastating military defeats in 2015 and 2016 by Iraqi and Syrian forces, ISIL has lost 65 percent of its Iraqi territory and 45 percent of the captured ground within Syria.
Raqqa falling to Kurdish forces sooner or later could lead to the destruction of the entire caliphate.
What went wrong with ISIL
Al-Baghdadi – whose fate remains unknown – declared his caliphate in order to achieve a number of impossible objectives, including restoring Islamic authority under a unified authority, eliminating U.S. influence on Muslim lands, and claiming global leadership. He also called for all Sunni Muslims, from Europe to East Asia, to unite and support his new flag.
In the early 1990s, the now-deceased al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden proudly declared the same goals.
These were also unattainable goals, given ISIL’s policy and capability choices. Al-Baghdadi, in his first speech on June 29, 2014, presented a world divided between two opposing camps : Islam and the camp that rejects Islam and is hypocritical.
He placed Sunni Muslims who were pro-caliphate in the camp for Islam, while the camp for disbelief included Shia Muslims and Christians, Jews and nearly everyone else. The new caliphate was now on a collision path with the rest of the world.
ISIL militants declared Shias as non-Muslims, just like their Wahhabi equivalents in the Gulf. They also viewed sheikhs, monarchs and emirs from the Gulf region to be American surrogates. This alarmingly sounded in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
As a result of their threat, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. soon joined forces to contain ISIL and to deter it militarily.
Lack of followers
ISIL has been accused of committing genocidal crimes by the United Nations after a series of atrocities were committed against Yazidi communities in Syria who do not practice Islam.
ISIL never gained much support from Sunni Muslims because of this senseless violence. In the 20 largest Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Southeast Asia, less than 8 percent of Sunni Muslims supported the ISIL caliphate.
To ISIL’s dismay, thousands of Muslim clergy around the world declared the caliphate as a terrorist organization and labeled its supporters non-Muslims.
The military defeats of ISIL, the loss of territory, and the control over resources are all serious blows.
In 2014, The caliphate had 8 million Iraqis and Syrians in its territory, with assets worth US$2 billion and Annual Revenue of US$ 1.9 billion.
After two years, the revenue more than doubled to US$870m. This was due to territorial losses in Iraq & Syria, which meant that fewer businesses and people were taxed. From 2014 to 2016, its control over oilfields, a lucrative money-making source, also decreased.
ISIL’s challenges, legacy and legacies
ISIL may be on the way to history, but its legacy will remain.
ISIL’s fall leaves behind a legacy of sectarian violence, killings, and inter-ethnic hatred, as well as seemingly insurmountable rivalries between regional and extra-regional powers.
Many commentators, whether right or wrong, saw the declaration by ISIL of a cross-border caliphate in the Middle East as a possible death blow for the political arrangements that were made after the First World War.
The current national borders of the Middle East were established by a secretly negotiated agreement in May 1916 between Britain and France, also known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The agreement divided up the Ottoman Arab lands of Levant, Jordan, and Iraq between Britain and France.
Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon were among the half-dozen Arab states created. Israel, which was originally created in 1917 as a “homeland,” declared itself to be a sovereign state in 1948.
By systematically removing from the Iraq-Syria boundary, the caliphate challenged the British and French national boundaries. The caliphate also declared its determination to eliminate the colonial legacy in the region by extending its borders.