International Crisis Group: “When Measuring ISIS’s ‘Resurgence,’ Use the Right Standard”

Out today, I have a new commentary for International Crisis Group:

https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/iraq/when-measuring-isiss-resurgence-use-right-standard

Too often our discussion of ISIS's capabilities in Iraq and the group's "resurgence" is couched in terms of its 2014-15 apex – not only with hyperbolic claims that its operations have returned to the 2013-14 levels that immediately preceded that peak, but also with attempts to tamp down that sort of alarmism by pointing how diminished the group is now compared to its bygone "caliphate."

Thinking and arguing in these terms is a mistake, I argue. The confluence of factors that led to 2014 is unlikely to reappear. And in the meantime, talking in terms of renewed territorial control, 2014 and the "caliphate" can distract us from the sort of incremental but nonetheless important shifts in ISIS's insurgency that might herald an actual "resurgence" – shifts like the one we saw in April, which seemingly anticipated ISIS's deadly attack in Salahuddin province on 1 May.