The Islamic State in Syria: What’s Next?

The 1,000 American troops that President Trump is withdrawing from northeast Syria were sent there to help fight the Islamic State, so the U.S. announcement and simultaneous Turkish invasion raise troubling questions about the terrorist group’s future. What has IS been doing in Syria since it lost territorial control over the last of its “caliphate“ in March? What is the status of the thousands of IS members, relatives, and sympathizers currently residing in prisons or IDP camps? And what role have women played to keep the flame of the caliphate alive in such locales? Aaron Zelin is the Richard Borow Fellow at The Washington Institute, a visiting research scholar at Brandeis University, and author of the forthcoming book Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad (Columbia University Press). He founded the widely cited website and its podcast, JihadPod. Devorah Margolin is a senior research fellow at George Washington University’s Program