Syria: Al Qaeda's Front Group Overextends Itself

Through unchecked ideology, megalomaniacal leadership and a lack of organizational control, al Qaeda's front group in Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq in the Sham, commonly known as ISIS, is overextending its capabilities as it embarks on a course of action that ultimately could lead to its degradation. The group reportedly has dispatched hundreds of fighters north toward Turkey in response to the closures of certain border crossings. Confronting Turkey at these crossings would provoke the ire of a very capable military, yet Ankara is only one of many parties that would like to see ISIS destroyed. If ISIS continues to engage so many groups on so many fronts, it will eventually repeat the mistakes made by al Qaeda in Iraq, an earlier iteration of ISIS, leaving it alienated and stripped of all it has accomplished throughout the Syrian civil war.