Keating notices that their declaration of a caliphate isn’t rallying many other jihadists around its flag:
So far, there hasn’t exactly been a rush of other jihadi groups pledging allegiance to [Abu Bakr al-] Baghdadi. A number of Islamist groups in Syria, including al-Qaida’s official branch there, al-Nusra, have denounced the announcement. The caliphate has gotten a few pledges of support from groups in Egypt and Libya as well as a factions of the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. But we’ve yet to hear from senior leaders like AQAP’s Nasir al-Wuhayshi or al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb under Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud. All in all, considering the power-play ISIS just mounted, it hasn’t gotten a particularly impressive show of support from the international movement it purports to now lead. As terrorism analyst J.M. Berger put it, “it’s starting to look like that time ISIS threw a caliphate party and nobody came.”
Richard Bulliet doesn’t expect the title of “caliph” to do much for Baghdadi either:
[T]he success or failure of an ISIL caliphate will have little to do with the history of either the title or the office. None of the OIC states will recognize Baghdadi’s grandiose proclamation, and without such recognition, it will remain meaningless.
ISIL may well continue to enjoy military success against the feeble and embattled Syrian and Iraqi regimes, and that success may well draw in recruits. But the benefit to ISIL of a claim to the medieval caliphate of Baghdad is nil. In fact, it already draws more ridicule than support. Yusef al-Qaradawi, a spiritual guide to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, declared that ISIL’s declaration “is void under sharia and has dangerous consequences for the Sunnis in Iraq and for the revolt in Syria.”
There is an outside chance that ISIL’s Islamic State could become a regional polity with some degree of staying power, like the Sokoto Caliphate. But if that does happen, it will be due almost entirely to the fortunes of war rather than the fallacious founding of a caliphate.
Meanwhile, Robert Ford sees potential to peel other Sunni groups away from the Islamic State’s coalition:
In a reversal of their thinking after 2003, many Sunni Arabs also now call for a Sunni Arab region modeled off the Kurdistan Regional Government that they so bitterly opposed 10 years ago, during the drafting of the present Iraqi constitution. The present constitution would allow a Sunni Arab regional government with its own security forces and a wide margin of self-rule. They are surely also thinking about the share of Iraq’s big oil revenues from southern and northeastern Iraq that would go to their region, which would be centered in western Iraq. This suggests that there is space to negotiate with at least some of the Sunni Arabs. These figures would likely be willing to stop the fight against Baghdad in return for a reformed central government and an agreed path to decide if and where to establish another regional government in Iraq.
Nevertheless, Paul Miller contends that “the Middle East is now a more favorable operating environment for jihadist groups than ever before”:
Today there is no serious ideological rival left to Islamist politics in most Middle Eastern countries. Nationalist and Marxist politicians discredited themselves with decades of corruption, mismanagement, and autocracy that left the region nearly worst in the world for human development. The groups gaining ground in the political ferment of the last few years tend to espouse variations of Islamism — of the peaceful sort, where possible, as in Tunisia (the Ennahda Party) and Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood has publicly foresworn violence since the 1960s), but of the violent sort elsewhere.
[T]here is now a wide swath of territory across Iraq and Syria that is essentially safe haven for jihadist militants. This is probably the greatest strategic setback to the United States in its long war against jihadists since al Qaeda declared war on the United States in 1996. That a menagerie of like-minded jihadist militant groups are alive and well and capturing territory suggests the irrelevance of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s claim in 2011 that al Qaeda was nearing “strategic defeat.” The fate of al Qaeda is simply one small piece of a much larger problem. The situation is all the worse today because jihadist groups can now exploit the international border between Iraq and Syria to their advantage. In a move familiar to anyone watching the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, terrorists plan, train, and hide on one side of the border, unmolested by the local government because they only carry out operations on the other side.
The Dish 