Estimations of the size of the ISIS army differs from 20,000 to 200,000 militants. What is clear is that the recruitment drive is intensifying. Recruiters fuel the ISIS forces coming both from the territories taken by ISIS and the web it effectively uses as its soft power.

ISIS–held territory is rich in natural recourses and the negligence of some players provides them with the financial capital needed to make their system function and to guarantee its relatively stable existence. 

The recent trends show that ISIS recruitment doesn’t only seek to make people come to the territories of the self-proclaimed Caliphate, but to make each recruiter a terrorist cell himself: its leader, member and soldier.

There is no more need for sophisticated, expensive terrorist plans. After the Arab Spring, the Libyan collapse and the devastating consequences of the Syrian civil war and the Iraqi collapse, access to weapons that flooded the region became an easy matter.

Luring in vulnerable minds

The over-simplified scheme of luring in vulnerable minds with false religious promises is still being practiced in such places as Tunisia. For the most part, ISIS members are far from representatives of the prosperous, successful and well-educated circles of society. They emerge mostly from the most socially risky underprivileged classes, who have a limited future in the societies to which they belong, or just have a strong feeling of the unfairness of the world and system they live in. Some people are joining ISIS to achieve Paradise, some for money, some for equity that the supposed Islamic State also promises. So, ISIS has the most dangerous army, full of blind and thoughtless people with already washed out brains and a strong feeling of resentment and the will to fight for their miserable state.

We should be ready to witness the new destruction of the World Heritage monuments, to witness and to “thank” world leaders for making all this nightmare possible through their lack of will

Thus there are many scenarios of ISIS’ survival as a state or state-like structure and one can only guess at when it will collapse. And even its collapse also promises nothing good to the international community. Thus, both options have negative elements, one more than the other, either ISIS will stay or ISIS will fall.

On the one hand we have the most probable development of the situation, in which ISIS will stay and all the current effort of the international community will collapse as it is ineffective and out-of-date in the face of the new challenges. 

To read the whole article: https://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2015/07/08/Any-decision-on-ISIS-is-too-little-too-late.html