BEYOND SYRIA IRAQ

MATTHEW LEVITT
EVOLVING PERCEPTION OF IS PROVINCES
The problem of IS provinces has quickly evolved over the past eighteen months
or so, along with our perception of the threat. In February 2015, Lt. Gen. Vincent
R. Stewart, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an
assessment that the Islamic State was “beginning to assemble a growing international
footprint.” 1 The following month, the U.S. secretary of defense, Ash
Carter, posited that the American military campaign against IS might extend
to the terrorist group’s affiliates in countries such as Libya and Nigeria. 2
By the summer of 2015, the Obama administration had publicly acknowledged
its deepening concerns over the establishment of IS provinces beyond
the group’s core operations in Syria and Iraq. President Obama noted a
“growing ISIL presence in Libya and attempts to establish footholds across
North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Southeast Asia” and
pledged to “work day and night with allies and partners to disrupt terrorist
networks and thwart attacks, and to smother nascent ISIL cells that may be
trying to develop in other parts of the world.” 3
The preoccupation of Western states with IS provinces deepened toward the
end of 2015. In September, the U.S. State Department designated IS Caucasus
a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In November, British prime minister David
Cameron declared that IS “poses a significant threat to the stability of the
region,” and its “offshoots and affiliates are spreading instability and conflict”
beyond the Levant. 4 In late November, Western intelligence agencies warned
that, in the face of setbacks in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State might use the
Libyan province as a new base for jihad—part of its “contingency planning.” 5
The new year brought increasingly distressed rhetoric from the international
community. In January 2016, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon cautioned
that IS posed “an unprecedented threat” because of its ability to persuade other
groups around the world to join its cause. According to the secretary-general,
“The recent expansion of the [ISIL] sphere of influence across west and north
Africa, the Middle East and south and southeast Asia demonstrates the speed
and scale at which the gravity of the threat has evolved in just 18 months.” 6
Later that same month, the U.S. State Department designated IS Khorasan as
a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). In February, Secretary of State John
Kerry conceded, “We are still not at the victory that we want to achieve, and
will achieve, in either Syria or Iraq and we have seen Daesh 7 playing a game of
metastasizing out to other countries, particularly Libya.” 8
With this growing concern came heightened determination by the administration
to counter the province phenomenon. Obama assured in April that,
2