Foreign Policy Research Institute A Nation Must Think Before it Acts Islamic State-Khurasan Province

Islamic State-Khurasan Province

The Future of ISIS: Regional and International Impliciations

The international threat assessments and strategies to counter the group referring to itself as the Islamic State (IS) have been focused on Iraq and Syria, where IS has emerged as a serious threat to international security and from 2014 to 2017 held large swaths of territory in those two countries. Although the territoriality of IS in Iraq and Syria has diminished significantly, the group’s ideology and affinity are spreading into regional groups as well, expanding IS’s potential reach and regional destabilizing ability. Affiliates and supporters of IS in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen – in which there is a proclaimed IS province (wilayah) – have received varying degrees of international attention depending on the scale and type of threat they pose to broader international security.

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