By mid-2014, the organization known to some as Daesh and to others as ISIS or the Islamic State had declared a caliphate, capitalizing on the vacuum left by the destructive wars in Iraq and Syria. Within a year, it had claimed larges swaths of land there and gained affiliates and inspired followers in more than a dozen other countries — initiating a reign of terror against all who did not conform to its rigid, violent interpretation of Sharia. But in late 2015, ISIS became the focus of international military action that included airstrikes and eventually bloody door-to-door combat in Iraq and Syria, while the manhunt was on for supporters in other countries.
In Shatter the Nations: ISIS and the War for the Caliphate, Mike Giglio tells the story of the rise of the caliphate and "the ramshackle coalition — aided by secretive Western troops and American airstrikes — that was assembled to break it down village by village, district by district." In this podcast, Giglio speaks to Stratfor's Fred Burton for the Pen and Sword podcast about his new book.
