Anticipating the post-Daesh landscape

Abstract

Daesh with its proto-state and its shining aura of invincibility and unstoppable expansion, attracting myriads of foreign volunteers to the Levant, is rapidly coming to an end. What happens next ? Worst-case predictions often grab the headlines. But jihadism has waxed and waned over the last three decades. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the fascination with Daesh will die out as a result of the failure of its state project, since this constituted a critical part of Daesh’s force of attraction. This offers a window of opportunity for addressing the conducive environments that permitted Daesh’s success in widely different locations around the world, including in Europe. If we fail to seize this moment, at some point in the future the re-emergence of yet another jihadi wave cannot be ruled out.