The Islamic State through the looking-glass
Arabist.net from friends of Peter Harling and Sarah Birke
EXTRACT
All in all, the Islamic State has prompted a response that combines all the ingredients necessary to make it stronger: Western over-the-horizon military intervention; a regional arms race as a variety of countries rush to provide money and weapons to improvised proxies (whose factional and sometimes sectarian agendas further degrade decaying state institutions and exacerbate social fault lines); and growing repression of civil liberties and empowerment of backward-looking (but formally secular) power structures. With enemies like these, the Islamic State hardly needs friends.
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