CHRISTOPHER BLAIR is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
ERICA CHENOWETH is Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
MICHAEL C. HOROWITZ is Richard Perry Professor of Political Science and Director of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania.
EVAN PERKOSKI is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, a Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a Nonresident Fellow at the Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity.
PHILIP B. K. POTTER is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Director of the National Security Policy Center at the University of Virginia.]
The Islamic State (or ISIS) is quietly “rising from the ashes” in parts of Iraq and Syria, but this is not the first time that it has recovered from a near-death experience. Its predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, also reconstituted itself after nearly being defeated in 2007–8. ISIS has demonstrated extraordinary resilience; about half of all terrorist organizations fail in their first year, but it has survived for the better part of two decades despite fighting against an international coalition assembled to defeat it.
This resilience may seem surprising, but it should not. Over recent decades, militant groups with the kind
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