Two years of Islamic State: where are we now?

Dozens of attacks have been carried out in their name in the Middle East and in the West. Last year they managed the unthinkable - to down a commercial jet over the Sinai in Egypt with a smuggled bomb, killing 217 people. Militants gunned down more than 100 innocents at a Paris club and a newspaper office, at beaches in Sousse and a archaeological museum in Tunis. 

Most recently an Isil sympathiser shot dead nearly 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 

Such has been the frequency of their attacks that some barely got a mention - such as the 43 people who lost their lives in a double suicide bombing on a residential neighbourhood of Beirut, Lebanon. 

But the US-led coalition, with the help of the Iraqi and Libyan governments, have begun the fight back. In recent months they have launched offensives on its strongholds in Ramadi, Hit and Fallujah in Iraq, and the coastal city of Sirte in Libya. Most have been successful. 

Isil is now much diminished. They have lost as much as a third of their territory and foreign fighters have increasingly become disillusioned, defecting in record numbers.

 But US and UK officials warn the fight is far from won. Isil is adapting and changing and has realigned its strategy to focus on terror attacks rather than territory. 

Caliphate

Territory

At the height of their so-called caliphate, in late 2014-2015, Isil controlled as much as a third of Iraq and Syria. But where are we now?

Iraq

The coalition claims its air strikes, coupled with ground offensives led by the Iraqi army and Peshmerga in the north, has seen Isil lose more than 45 per cent of the territory it once held.  In the last six months, they have been defeated in Hit, Rutbah and Ramadi. Last week the army recaptured Fallujah, a city of some 100,000 people. The big battle now will be for Mosul, Iraq’s second city, where more than one million people are thought to live under Isil.

The Peshmerga has made great progress in the towns and villages to the south, but it could be several months before they are in the position to go at Mosul. 

Syria

Syria is much more complicated. Many claim to be committed to the destruction of Isil, but the reality on the ground is different.

The Assad government took back the ancient city of Palmyra earlier this year, as well as the strategic Tishreen Dam and their former stronghold of al-Shadadi, but other attempts to regain territory from the group have appeared half-hearted. The regime, backed by Russia, carries out far more attacks on areas controlled by moderate opposition, such as Aleppo, Homs and the Damascus suburbs, than it has on Isil in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor in the east.

Last month government forces launched an offensive to retake Raqqa, the capital of Isil's caliphate, but so far little progress has been made. They have been overwhelmed by car bombs, suicide and rocket attacks.

Coalition air strikes meanwhile, have pounded Raqqa for more than a year and have taken out a number of senior commanders, as well as foreign jihadists. 

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) opposition are making steady gains on another Isil stronghold of Manbij, a strategic city not far from the Turkish border. They have managed to cut off its main supply route out, which could soon prove devastating for the group.  

Earnings

Isil’s revenue has been cut by almost 30 per cent in the past year as it loses control of territory and people to tax.

Income for the extremist movement once called the richest terrorist group in the world fell from around £56 million each month in March 2015 to £40 million last month.

Air Vice-Marshal Edward Stringer, the head of British efforts to hit Isil finances, told the parliamentary foreign affairs sub-committee that the coalition’s strikes have severely hit its oil industry. He estimated Isil economy was split 40/40/20 on oil, taxation and criminal activities and donations. That, Mr Stringer said, has moved to 20/50/30.

Oil

Isil captured some of Syria’s most lucrative oil fields from the Syrian government soon after forming its caliphate. At the height of production it was making as much as £30 million a month from sales of the black gold. The main buyer? Assad. Estimates suggest sales are now as low as £11 million a month. 

Tax

The number of people living in Isil-held territory has fallen from around nine million at the start of 2015 to fewer than six million, forcing the group to up taxes. IHS Janes research found that Isil was increasing taxes on basic services and coming up with new ways to get money from the population.

Those living in the caliphate now find themselves fined for driving on the wrong side of the road and for not being able to answer questions correctly on the Koran. Earlier this year they were forced to cut the salaries of their fighters by as much as 50 per cent.

Ransom

Isil kidnapped, or was handed, more than a dozen Western journalists and aid workers who were still venturing into Syria in 2013-2014. Britain has a policy not to pay ransoms, but other countries, such as France and Spain, do not. The group is believed to have made tens of millions of dollars this way in the last two years. 

Membership and pledges of allegiance

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that at its height, Isil had up to 80,000-100,000 fighters across Syria and Iraq. According to the coalition, more than 25,000 Isil fighters have been killed in the last two years.

The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria has fallen almost 90 per cent within the past year, the Pentagon claims. This is in a large part due to Turkey shutting its once porous border with Syria, all-but closing off the main route in for European jihadists.

It is thought the numbers leaving from some of its biggest European feeder countries, France, Belgium, Germany and Denmark, is down to fewer than five a month.

Embassies in Turkey, which neighbours Syria and Iraq, suggest they are seeing record number of defections from Western fighters who have become increasingly disillusioned.

However, it has done nothing to slow its global reach. In the last few years they have seen dozens of foreign Islamist groups pledge allegiance to Baghdadi.

Some of those include:

• Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (now known as IS-Sinai Province), Egypt. Formed: 2011 Pledged allegiance: November 2014
• Abu Sayyaf, The Philippines Formed: 1991 Pledged allegiance: July 2014
• Ansar al-Tawhid fi'Bilad al-Hind, India Formed: 2013 Pledged allegiance: October 2014
• Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen Formed: 2009 Pledged allegiance: August 2014
• Boko Haram, Nigeria and Lake Chad basin Formed: 1991 Pledged allegiance: March 2015
• Caucasus Emirate, Russia Date of Founding: 2007 Pledged allegiance: June 2015
• Jund al-Khilafah, Algeria and Egypt Formed: 2014 Pledged allegiance: September 2014
• Taliban, Pakistan Formed: 2007 Pledged allegiance: October 2014

Propaganda

Isil began its horrifying propaganda campaign in the summer of 2014. The release of the video showing James Foley, an American hostage dressed up in an orange Guantanamo jumpsuit with a knife to his throat, shocked the world. 

It was not enough to grab people’s attention, however, Isil wanted to hold it. The videos became more graphic, some showing “traitors” being handcuffed to cages and burned alive, others showing young children executing prisoners at point-blank range. Some were too depraved to describe here.

Their media war has never let up. With the help of some of its more skilled media-savvy foreign fighters, they produce a regular magazine called Dabiq. They broadcast to their world their messages, their victories and achievements, and call for attacks against the West.

They are deft at using social media, more so than any terrorist organisation before them. They recruit and radicalise people through sites such as Twitter and apps such as Telegram.

Attacks

Since the announcement of the caliphate they have claimed responsibility for the following major attacks against Western targets. 

• Summer 2014: The beheading of five British and American journalists and aid workers kidnapped in Syria. Their deaths were filmed and broadcast in the summer of 2014 and carried out by British jihadist Mohammed Emwazi, dubbed Jihadi John
• October 2014: A Muslim convert in Canada shot and killed a soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa and then stormed Canada's Parliament, firing multiple times before authorities killed him  
• January 2015: French Muslim of North African descent, Yassine Salhi, decapitated his employer Hervé Cornara and drove his van into gas cylinders at a gas factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier near Lyon, France
• March 2015: Isil sympathisers shot dead 22 people, mostly Europeans, at the Bardo museum in Tunis, Tunisia 
• May 2015: Two men opened fire in a Dallas suburb outside a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest
• June 2015: Thirty-four tourists, including 30 Britons, were shot dead by a lone gunman professing support from Isil in Sousse, Tunisia
• October 2015: Russian Metrojet crash over the Sinai in which 224 passengers and staff were killed. Isil claim to have planted a bomb on board
• November 2015: In its most ambitious attack on Western society, more than 10 members of Isil killed 129 people across Paris 
• December 2015: Inspired by Isil, couple Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik shoot dead 14 people and injure 22 after opening fire at a mental health facility in San Bernardino, California
• January 2016: A Saudi-born Isil suicide bomber detonates near the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. 11 people, all foreigners, are killed, and 14 are injured
• March 2016: Isil claims responsibility for two bomb attacks in Brussels, Belgium that left at least 31 dead and more than 220 injured. The attacks occurred at Zaventem Airport and at Maelbeek metro station 
• June 2016: A gunman who pledged allegiance to Isil leader Baghdadi killed 49 people when he opened fire inside a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida Islamist stabs to death a French police chief and his wife at their home, before releasing a video calling for more attacks