01 January 2016

This is a crucial and underappreciated point about why defeating ISIS is so difficult

"Every country in the Middle East is at war with ISIS. Yet none of them see ISIS as their primary enemy. In their view, Knights explains, the war against ISIS is merely a precursor to what they believe will be far more important battles to come, often against one another. 'In many cases actors are fighting the Islamic State purely to better position themselves for these other conflicts,' he writes. 'The many wars within the war against the Islamic State ... are already beginning.'"

Max Fisher