Q&A on dangers posed by the Islamic State

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The Islamic State militant group that has taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a self-styled caliphate poses one of the most significant threats to stability in the Middle East in years. But what danger does it immediately pose?

Here are some questions and answers about the Islamic State group:

Q. Does the Islamic State group run a de facto country?

A. The Islamic State group holds roughly a third of Iraq and Syria, including several strategically important cities like Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. It rules over a population of several million people with its strict interpretation of Islamic law. It also controls many of the roads linking the communities it has conquered – although much of the territory in between is sparsely populated desert.

It claims thousands of heavily armed fighters, and has set up its own civil administrations and judiciaries.

“It acts as a state in areas that don’t have a state at the moment. It’s effective because it provides services, it has a military presence, it speaks as a state,” said Hassan Hassan, an analyst at The Delma Institute in Abu Dhabi.

In propaganda videos, the group lays out ambitious expansion plans that include targets such as Baghdad, Damascus and Islam’s holiest city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Q. What resources does the Islamic State group have?

A. The Islamic State group controls oil fields, power plants, dams and factories in Iraq and Syria. Charles Lister, an analyst who closely tracks jihadist groups at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, estimates the group is capable of bringing in some $2 million a day just from the sale of oil. The group also has long generated cash from extortion, kidnapping for ransom, illicit businesses and other gangland-style criminal activity.

Militarily, the group has seized heavy weaponry, including tanks, artillery pieces and surface-to-surface missiles, from Iraqi and Syrian forces. Human Rights Watch has accused the group of using ground-fired cluster munitions in at least one place in northern Syria.

Q. What danger does having the Islamic State group holding this territory in the Arab world pose?

A. The world has seen the risk of allowing a state sympathetic to Islamic extremists to exist before. Al-Qaida was able to flourish and plot the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in large part because it had a safe haven in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

The Islamic State group is a far superior threat today than al-Qaida was in 2001. It is richer, operates a modern, effective media arm and holds much more territory than al-Qaida ever did. And while al-Qaida operated on the basis of a loose network of various cells in different countries – a decentralization that worked in its favor in the beginning – the group eventually could no longer centralize its command in a coherent way.

“With the Islamic State we are seeing a highly centralized command and governing structure which will require a new counterterrorism strategy in the region,” said Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

Colin Clarke, a political scientist at the RAND Corp. who researches global security, said even without the trappings of any kind of nationhood, the territory that the Islamic State group controls “can still prove to be an incubator for extremism … and exporter of terrorism.”

Q. Does the Islamic State group want to strike the West?

A. The Islamic State group so far has shown little desire, let alone the capability, to launch major terrorist attacks in the West. But that could change.

Islamic State militants called American journalist James Foley’s gruesome videotaped beheading revenge for U.S. airstrikes against the group, and they still hold at least three other Americans hostage, including freelance journalist Steven Sotloff. A video posted online Tuesday purported to show Sotloff’s beheading by the group.

Apart from Foley’s killing and random threats by individual fighters, however, there are few other instances in which the Islamic State group officially threatened the U.S. or the West. This sets the group apart from al-Qaida, which has long made attacks on the West a priority.