Beyond the frontline: watching ISIS

[davidbfpo]

Clints Watts in FPRI examines in a short article on 'Two-and-a-Half Years After ISIS’s Rise: Global Jihad Spreads And Morphs':http://www.fpri.org/2016/09/2-12-yea...preads-morphs/

He is optmistic that US intellignce community will understand the global jihad better:

Successfully anticipating jihad’s divergence will require tens or even hundreds of analysts equipped with advanced degrees, language skills, and field experience tapped into a blend of human and technical sources. Luckily, we have that! It’s called the U.S. intelligence community. Moving forward, Western intelligence services will be positioned to put together the global picture. Jihadis have gone local and academics and analysts should as well. To understand jihad’s local flavor moving forward, look to journalists (like here and here) and academics (here’s one) doing true field research, in-person interviews and reporting rather than those relying heavily on social media personas of dubious access and reliability.