At the height of the summer of 2014, the then-leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a “caliphate” extending from Diyala in eastern Iraq to Aleppo in northwestern Syria.[1] ISIS’ self-proclaimed statelet was the product long-term conflict and instability in the region. Its origins could be traced to Iraq, a country severely destabilised by the 2003 US-led invasion, as well as Syria, which had already been ravaged by civil war by the time Baghdadi made his declaration.
At its height, ISIS represented a threat to Damascus, Baghdad, and the wider Middle East. The brutality of its military campaigns and draconian rule in territories under its control would shock the world. And yet, within the space of five years, ISIS lost its capacity to exploit weak regional states. The group’s numerous enemies, in spite of their diametrically opposed political interests, fought against ISIS with the same goal—the all-out destruction of ISIS’ territorial foothold in the region. By 2019, ISIS had lost control over all the vast swathes of territory that it once controlled in Iraq and Syria, and the so-called “caliphate” was reduced to a covert insurgency once more.
ISIS committed horrific abuses during its rise and its fall—abuses that have inflicted deep trauma. Some of the people most affected were those residing in northeast Syria, where ISIS established its de facto capital in Raqqa and where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fought a five-year campaign against the group.
[1] The group has also been referred to as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State (IS) or by its Arabic acronym, Daesh. The term ISIS will be used throughout this study.