Sami Moubayed, a Syrian historian, journalist and author of Under the Black Flag: At the Frontier of the New Jihad (I. B. Tauris, 2015), offers his front-row view on the development and current state of ISIS.

Moubayed explains that ISIS is not only military might and arms; it's an ideology that can travel fast. What the international community needs to focus on, he says, is not military campaigns but rather finding an ideological alternative for those who find ISIS' well-rooted ideals so appealing.