The Islamic State is celebrating one year since declaring themselves a Caliphate. NBC News.

A map showing where ISIS has power and where it has attacked. NBC News/IHS Jane's. 

One year ago today ISIS declared themselves a Caliphate. NBC News. Since then, ISIS has been able to hold on to their gains and have expanded across the Middle East. Despite U.S. military intervention that has cost $3 billion, ISIS is still expanding and is in an even better position then it was a year ago. In the past year IHS Jane's has recorded 3095 attacks by ISIS which has resulted in the deaths of 6545 non-militants. Despite U.S. airstrikes, ISIS has not had to dramatically change tactics and are still using attacks with massed vehicles and car bombs. In Syria, ISIS has out-competed rival rebel groups and has better weapons and more money then any other group. In Iraq ISIS has greatly benefited because of poor coordination between Sunni tribesmen, Shia militias, the Kurds and the Iraqi government. ISIS is also doing an excellent job at recruiting new members and has gathered allies. ISIS now has affiliates in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and have convinced more established terrorist groups, like Boko Haram in Nigeria, to swear allegiance to the Caliphate. 

My Comment:

It's been a fairly good year for ISIS, and a fairly bad one for everyone else. It is important to note that ISIS has suffered several defeats since they declared themselves a Caliphate. They were unable to capture the city of Kobani from the Kurds and were beaten back by the Kurds recently to the point where their capital city of Raqqa was threatened. In Iraq, they have lost in places like Sinjar and Tikrit. And many of the terrorist attacks they inspired have failed to the point where they only killed the terrorists. 

From a purely military stance, ISIS is not in that good of a position. They are taking heavy casualties and they are compounding those casualties by cavalierly spending the lives of their recruits and experienced fighters alike. The recent raid on Kobani is a great example of this. They sent in a bunch of car bombs and experienced fighters into the city on a suicide mission. That attack killed a lot of people and possibly caused a bit of a distraction for the Kurds, but in terms long term advances it did little to nothing at a high cost for their own troops. Even though ISIS is recruiting people from all over the globe at an alarming rate, they are losing people almost as quickly. I don't see that being sustainable.

Sooner or later ISIS is going to run into supply problems as well. Though ISIS has managed to capture enough weapons to equip an entire army, they have no way to produce weapons and have a limited ability to purchase them. And other then oil and gas they have little in the way of an economy. ISIS is essentially a barbarian horde, that depends on capturing supplies, weapons and money. I don't think that is sustainable either. 

All that being said, as bad of a position that ISIS is in, everyone else in the region is in worse shape. In Syria everyone is so busy fighting each other that they don't have a way to fight ISIS. One one side you have the Syrian regime, pushed to the edge and being bled white by every other faction, except their Kurdish allies who are problematic allies at best. The Kurds are handicapped by the Turks, who hate them and want them to fail. The various rebel groups are, for the most part, not coordinated and the ones that are, are allied with al-Nusra, which is almost as bad as ISIS. And the Americans, Europeans and gulf allies are bombing without much in the way of coordination with any of the groups fighting ISIS. 

In Iraq, the situation is similar, but a little less chaotic. The various factions in Iraq, the government, the Kurds and the Shia militias, aren't fighting each other, but they aren't coordinated very well either. And the Iraqi army has just been embarrassed by ISIS. They are far to reliant on U.S. air support which has been inconsistent at best. 

And Lybia, Yemen and Afghanistan are rope for the same kind of chaos and unpredictability that allowed ISIS to thrive in Iraq and Syria. I've said before that ISIS thrives in a power vacuum and in every country I just mentioned there is a major power vacuum due to weak  governments, multiple rebel groups and warfare. 

But even if ISIS were to lose all their territory tomorrow their ideology is still a threat. They have managed to inspire and corrupt an entire generation of young Muslims. It will take decades to undo the damage they have done, if we can undo it at all. So many people have either joined the Caliphate or tried to carry out attacks in its name. Even if the Caliphate falls and ISIS has its organization destroyed, their actions and propaganda will still have an effect for years after they are gone. People will still hear their call to commit terror in their name, even if ISIS is defeated. And I don't think ISIS is going anywhere soon. 

I think the Islamic State will reach its second birthday as well. There just isn't anyone that is willing or able to step up and stop them. I think they may have reached their high water mark in Iraq, but with the utter weakness of everyone in Syria, I think they will probably capture more territory in that country. And I think they will also expand in whichever country is unstable enough to allow them a foothold. They will continue to inspire terror attack throughout the world and will keep killing thousands of people. The real question is if they will still exist 5 years from now. My brain tells me that they can't sustain their country the way they are running it for that long. My gut tells me that nobody has the will to stop them. My heart hopes that my gut is wrong.

Finally, I've often debated with myself about what I should call the Islamic State. I tend to vary between ISIS and Islamic State, but I often think I should just call them Daesh. That's the name the enemies of ISIS give them and I understand ISIS hates it. I think calling them the caliphate, or even Islamic State, gives them too much legitimacy. Even ISIS gives them more credit then they deserve. Still, inertia is a powerful thing, and I will probably stick to calling them ISIS. 

I'd also like to say that if you had told me that there would be a group calling themselves a caliphate two years ago today in Iraq in Syria, I don't know if I would have believed it. If was told that they are a death cult that wants to bring about the apocalypse, I would have been incredulous. If you pointed out that they brought both Syria and Iraq to their knees, had supporters across the Middle East and had committed several major terrorist acts, yet nobody seems willing or able to stop them I would have been furious. And if you had told me two years ago that the United States was too busy beating itself up over social justice, gay marriage, race relations and other pointless wedge issues to even really pay attention.... I would have believed it completely.