Descent into chaos: stalemate and the rise of ISIS

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Christopher Phillips

Published:

2016

Publisher:

Yale University Press

This chapter looks at why the US and other states had chosen to intervene in eastern Syria after 2014, following the rise of ISIS. It explores the fragmentation of Syria and considers how other regional events shifted actors' calculations. The expansion of ISIS' holdings in the summer of 2014 dramatically shifted outside views of the civil war. While the US had declined to strike Assad in 2013, a year later it assembled an international coalition to destroy the newly declared ‘Caliphate’. The chapter studies how and why ISIS emerged, and who was responsible — with most of the players, particularly Assad, complicit in some way. It also examines the immediate context in which ISIS' sudden expansion came: the failure of the Geneva II peace conference.

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