ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror

Eight months into the US-led military campaign against ISIS, the group has yet to be decisively pushed back in Iraq or Syria. During this discussion, Syrian researcher Hassan Hassan, author of the recently published ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, considered the campaign to date, including the dynamics, networks and tactics sustaining ISIS’s position on the ground, the impact of shifting internal and local forces, and the group’s vulnerability to ongoing military operations.

In the context of a number of overlapping regional struggles to what extent are Western, regional and local actors working together effectively, and what lessons can be learnt from the campaign so far in terms of where the West should be focusing its political and military attention moving forward?

Hassan Hassan is a Middle East analyst and a columnist for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, among others and he is co-author of the bestseller Isis: Inside the Army of Terror. He received an MA in International Relations from the University of Nottingham in the UK. Hassan comes from a tribal area in eastern Syria adjacent to the Iraqi border.

Julien Barnes-Dacey is a Senior Policy Fellow at ECFR's Middle East and North Africa Programme and editor of the recent publication The Islamic State through the regional lens.