Fighting ISIS and Each Other (mainly each other)
How ISIS is able to survive against a dozen better equipped enemies who are attacking from multiple fronts? Answer is, rather unexpectedly: unbalanced graphs.
The terrorist organization which rose to prominence in 2014 by capturing key cities like Mosul in Western Iraq, now additionally operates in Syria and Libya whereas its offshoots claim extending the self-declared caliphate to Afghanistan, Nigeria and even South Asia. While oppressing its estimated 8 million population, ISIS simultaneously carried terrorist attacks on multiple European and American cities triggering a world wide alliance which is sworn to erase it off the map.
A quick glance at the enemies of ISIS graph published by CNN, shows Al Baghdadi’s followers cornered by multiple “red attacking arrows ” which might signal the self-declared caliphhood will be ephemeral. However, if we look closely, we can easily see why ISIS might stay around more than we expect it to be: The alliance fighting ISIS is also battling against each other at the same time.
For example, while Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian Government, led by Bashar al Assad, are aiming to end ISIS, in Northern Syria they also declared war on each other which causes them to divert their full attention and forces from the struggle against ISIS. Although it would be expected that two of the three would be motivated to ‘team up’ against the third (turning one of the three edge labels to a +/supporting) , it did not happen yet.
Similarly another source of instability takes place among Turkey,YPG/PKK and USA. While Turkey-USA and YPG/PKK-USA formed a positive bond between them, Turkey is fighting against YPG/PKK which creates a tension between the USA and its key NATO ally. Even the US Senator Lindsey Graham questioned Secretary of Defense Carter asking him whether Turkey is right to be “upset” with indirect US support to PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey,USA and EU,through its sister organization YPG. Parallel to the previous example between SDF-Syrian Government, Turkish military’s attention and resources are, rightfully, divided between ISIS and YPG/PKK complicating the Alliance’s efforts against ISIS.
Upon inspecting the given network map, we can easily detect multitude of unbalanced graph examples among various nodes which impedes the fight against ISIS. While we might expect the entire graph to naturally come to a balance,hopefully to not only to obliterate ISIS but other terrorist organizations as PKK too, the uncertainty and the internal conflict will unfortunately give them more opportunities to claim more innocent lives around the world.
References:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/25/middleeast/syria-isis-whos-fighting-who-trnd/
Networks,Crowds and Markets (Easley,Kleinberg)