The caliphate cracks

WHEN the jihadists of Islamic State (IS) seized Mosul and the Iraqi army fled last June, they became the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization. Sweeping out of Syria and north-western Iraq, they stormed southward, and came close to taking Baghdad. They murdered male prisoners in gory videos and enslaved female ones. Groups from Nigeria to Libya and Afghanistan pledged allegiance to them. Devotees attacked innocent civilians in Western cities; thisweek at least 19 people were killed in an assault on tourists in Tunisia (though the culprits are unknown). The IS threat has pushed together unlikely allies: in Iraq America provides the airpower while Iran musters the ground forces.

As our briefing explains (see page 17-20), IS differs from jihadist groups that have gone before, including its parent, al- Qaeda. It is uniquely brutal in its treatment of foes and uniquely competent as a propagandist. But what most sets it apart is its claim to have restored the Islamic caliphate. The revival of a single state to rule over all Muslims, dating to Islam’s earliest days and abolished in 1924 by modern Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman empire, was meant to eradicate decades of supposed humiliation by outsiders and Arab rulers who presided over the decline of flourishing Arab societies.

To Western ears, the pretense that IS is a government in office is absurd, a bit of jihadist braggadocio; to many Muslim clerics (and even al-Qaeda) it is heresy. Yet it has stirred a form of messianism. “Rush, O Muslims, to your state,” declared Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS’s leader. And thousands have indeed rushed to fight for and build the Islamic Utopia: even schoolgirls have abandoned families and friends in Europe.

The call of the caliphate has galvanized zealots. Yet, even as IS launches terrorist attacks, the good news is that cracks in the caliphate are becoming increasingly apparent. IS is losing ground, money and the consent of the people it rules. The caliphate has been pushed out of the Syrian town of Kobane by Kurdish fighters, backed by American air power. It is being squeezed in Tikrit (the tribal base of the former dictator, Saddam Hussein) by the Iraqi army and Shia militias coordinated by Iran. Compared with the peak, when it was at the gates of Baghdad, its territory has shrunk by about 25%.

IS’s funds are dwindling, too. America and its allies have bombed lucrative oil facilities. Most of the hostages have been sold or murdered in video-recorded beheadings. Now that IS’s forces are retreating, the loot of conquest has dried up. Some analysts reckon it may have lost up to 75% of its revenues. That makes it harder for IS to keep fighting and to provide services to the roughly 8m people living under its rule. That may help explain signs of internal tension. The movement has started to kill its own followers, sometimes for fleeing before the enemy and on at least one occasion supposedly for zealously beheading too many people. Residents complain of extortion, violent repression and declining public services. There are reports of tensions between local and foreign members over disparities in pay. Judged by its own standard, then, the caliphate is failing as an all-conquering state and model for society Syria will not be pacified soon—possibly not for many years. Until that moment, IS can lurk there, controlling swathes in the east, destabilizing Sunni areas of Iraq and biding its time until it has another chance to rise up. Defeat in Mosul could reduce the caliphate to a rump entity, or could lead it to disintegrate into a patchwork of warring fiefs, like much of the rest of the country. It would still pose a grave threat to the outside world and would need constant watching. But degradation would make it easier to contain than it is today.

MARCH 21TH–27TH 2015

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