This is How You Lose It: The Fall of ISIS in Syria

• In Event: Radical Extremism

Abstract

The literature on civil wars has boomed during the last two decades, but its focus has largely been concentrated on conflict onset and conflict dynamics. Although a new wave of research is digging on the consequences of war termination for different outcomes, such as state capacity and democratic consolidation, the processes through wars come to an end has attracted little attention. This paper tries to fill the gap by theorizing under what conditions rebel groups lose wars. I discuss three arguments. First, rebel groups decline when they overreach by moving forward their military offensive without shielding enough their territorial gains in the rearguard. Second, rebels suffer territorial setbacks when they deviate valuable resources from the frontline to be spent on other campaigns, such as international terrorism abroad or civilian disciplining at home. Finally, even if rebel resources do not vary, rebel control shrinks when state’s military capabilities improve, usually in the form of foreign support. I empirically explore these arguments by looking at the case of ISIS in Syria. I use fine-grained, geolocated local data on armed groups’ territorial control provided by the Carter Center to map the distribution of armed actors’ presence all over Syria. I match data on control with information on tactics and targeting (from the ACLED), plus additional indicators on socio-economic factors at the district level, from 2017 to May 2020. This time interval captures most of the decline of ISIS. Survival analyses show that the fall of ISIS was driven by a combination of strategic overreach and the foreign-fed increase in state capabilities. These findings rightly portray the rise and fall of ISIS and help us better understand its resilience as well as its strategic failures.

Author

• Luis De la Calle, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE)