COLUMNS

The Islamic State in 2017: Rotting From the Outside In

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Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor

Jan 12, 2017 | 08:03 GMT

The scene of an explosion on Aug. 20, 2016, in Gaziantep, Turkey, after a late-night militant attack on a wedding party that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Islamic State was behind.
The scene of an explosion on Aug. 20, 2016, in Gaziantep, Turkey, after a late-night militant attack on a wedding party that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Islamic State was behind.

(AHMED DEEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Editor's Note

For the past few years, Stratfor has provided an annual forecast for the jihadist movement in a series of Security Weekly pieces. With the launch of Stratfor's Threat Lens product, the way this forecast is presented has changed. Stratfor will still publish three Security Weeklies covering the Islamic State camp, the al Qaeda camp and grassroots jihadists. However, an additional in-depth report will be made available to Threat Lens subscribers. This will contain the entirety of our forecast for the jihadist movement in 2017, of which the weeklies are excerpts.

The Islamic State has entered into a slow decline that will continue throughout 2017. After its inception, the group was able to energize the jihadist movement and draw thousands of enthusiastic foreign fighters by announcing the creation of a caliphate and assuring its followers that the end of the world was near. This enabled the Islamic State to rapidly amass manpower and capabilities -- at least at first. But both time and geography have worked against the organization since its initial proclamation of a caliphate and an impending apocalypse....

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