A new report out of the United Nations warns that despite growing territorial losses in the ongoing offensives against them, ISIS isn’t really breaking down, but simply adapting to the new facts on the ground, and remains a dangerous and capable organization.
The report says that ISIS has some financial problems owing to the lost territory, but continues to collect taxes in its limited areas of control, and is supplementing that with “discrete” funding from supporters, and robberies.
Their command structure also appears largely intact, with the report saying that they’ve been delegating specific actions down to local commanders more, and increasingly using encryption to prevent interception of their communications.
This has been the story of ISIS since before they took on the name ISIS, as even back when they were simply “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” the group showed a remarkable ability to adapt to changing situations and recover quickly from what were seemingly major losses.
Of course ISIS is adapting; for Baghdadi’s sake, this is far too useful a tool to throw away. Just like al Qaeda, they’ll have to be rebranded as the “good guys” against Russia and Iran in the near future.
An interesting article from the New Eastern Outlook on this subject.
https://journal-neo.org/2017/08/11/facing-defeat-in-syria-isis-inexplicably-expands-globally/
I don’t buy all of their conclusions but I agree that this should once and for all shatter the meme that ISIS was getting most of their financial and material support from Syrian oil fields and taxes and thus, Assad was to blame.
ISIS was and is getting serious external support from the Gulf States. This is proven by the fact that they can still operate now that most of their lands are taken and virtually all of their money producing assets in Syria / Iraq.