Iraq: Sunni extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declares a new islamic caliphate
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Sunni militant group that’s been leading an insurgency in Iraq, made a bold statement today: The organization’s Shura Council has declared a new caliphate, and the organization’s extremist leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is the new caliph.
As Al-Jazeera explains, the caliphate refers to a “system of rule that ended nearly 100 years ago with the fall of the Ottoman empire.” According to the network’s reading of the statement, the new caliphate “stretches from Iraq’s Diyala province to Syria’s Aleppo.”
But this declaration, delivered by the group’s chief spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, could mean much more. Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center who specializes in counterterrorism and insurgencies, said this could signal the birth of a new era of transnational jihadism.