On Monday, Italy and the United States co-hosted a meeting of the Foreign
Ministers of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Rome. The Global Coaliti


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Foreign Ministers Of The Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS Discuss Terror
Group’s Ongoing Threat To International Security

 

(New York, N.Y.) — On Monday, Italy and the United States co-hosted a meeting
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of the Foreign Ministers of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Rome. The
Global Coalition Ministerial was the group’s first in-person meeting in more
than two years, during which the 83-member coalition discussed expanding
advisory, training, and capacity-building missions in Iraq, as well as helping
strengthen Iraqi security forces and institutions to better combat the ongoing
threat of ISIS. The agenda also included discussions regarding increasing
pressure in countering ISIS’s global network, particularly ISIS’s cells in the
Sahel Region and East Africa.

 

The meeting occurred a day before the seventh anniversary
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of the founding of ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate, which was established in
territories between eastern Syria and western Iraq, and two years since the
group’s territorial defeat in Syria. Nonetheless, ISIS continues to maintain
and expand its global presence. The group has declaredwilayat (provinces,
governorates) in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia,
Nigeria, Afghanistan, and the North Caucasus. Within the first seven months of
2019, ISIS announced new provinces in India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Central
Africa as it sought to reassert itself after the loss of its territory in Iraq
and Syria. In March 2020, citing ISIS’s violent activities in Africa, the
United States designated ISIS’s provinces in Mozambique and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. The terror group maintains a presence in Morocco,
Tunisia, the Philippines, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Palestinian
territories and has seen ISIS supporters carry out lone-wolf attacks in Western
countries such as France and Belgium.

 

ISIS finds its origins in al-Qaeda forerunner al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). During
the Iraq War and its aftermath, the group experienced a series of setbacks and
restructurings, for a while going by the name the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI).
In June 2014, the group—then led by Iraqi extremistAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi
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declared a caliphate spanning eastern Syria and western Iraq, naming Baghdadi
as its “caliph.” In his “inaugural speech” launching the Islamic State on June
29, 2014, Baghdadi expanded further on the significance of the caliphate. Most
important, he claimed, was that all Muslims submit and pledgebay’a (allegiance)
to the caliphate.

 

To read the Counter Extremism Project (CEP)’s ISIS resource, please click here
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