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How did ISIS become a major force so quickly?

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The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) is so hardline that it was disavowed by al-Qaida's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Led by an Iraqi called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Isis was originally an al-Qaida group in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). As the Syrian civil war intensified, its involvement in the conflict was indirect at first. Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, an ISI member, established Jabhat al-Jabhat al-Nusra in mid-2011, which became the main jihadi group in the Syrian war. Joulani received support and funding from ISI and Baghdadi.

But Baghdadi sought to gain influence over the increasingly powerful Jabhat al-Nusra by directly expanding ISI's operations into Syria, forming Isis in April last year. Differences over ideology and strategy soon led to bitter infighting. Isis turned to out to be too extreme and brutal not just for Jabhat al-Nusra, but for al-Qaida itself, leading to a public repudiation by Zawahiri, who last month called on Isis to leave Syria and return to Iraq.

By then Isis had lost ground in Syria to Jabhat al-Nusra and its allies. But any notion that Isis is a spent force has been shattered by its capture of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. Isis now controls territory that stretches from the eastern edge of Aleppo, Syria, to Falluja in western Iraq and now the northern city of Mosul.

Isis has shown its ruthlessness and brutality in the areas of Syria under its control, eastern Aleppo and the city of Raqqa. It was blamed for the February killing of a founding member of the Salafi group Ahrar al-Sham and the group's leader in Aleppo, Muhammad Bahaiah, who had close connections with senior al-Qaida leaders. It was also blamed for the assassination of Jabhat al-Nusra's leader in the Idlib governorate, Abu Muahmmad al-Ansari, along with his wife, children and relatives. It ordered the crucifixion of a man accused of murder; other forms of punishment include beheadings and amputations.

Despite its brutal reputation, Isis has shown flexibility as well in Iraq to win over disaffected Sunnis in the north against the Shia-led government of Nouri al-Maliki. Mushreq Abbas, who writes on Iraq for the Al-Monitor website, describes how Baghdadi has presented himself as an alternative to the Sunni political class tribal leaders and moderate clerics who oppose central government.

"Until now, Baghdadi's fighters have not harmed religious men ... when the tribes refused to raise Isis banners in Falluja, he ordered his fighters not to raise the banner and try to co-opt the fighters of armed groups, clans or religious men," says Abbas.

Unlike the Iraqi troops facing them Isis fighters are highly motivated, battle hardened and well-equipped, analysts say.

"It also runs the equivalent of a state. It has all the trappings of a state, just not an internationally recognised one," Douglas Ollivant of the New America Foundation, told the Washington Post.

It runs courts, schools and services, flying its black-and-white flag over every facility it controls. In Raqqa, it even started a consumer protection authority for food standards.

Isis has bolstered its strength by recruiting thousands of foreign volunteers in Syria, some from Europe and the US, and is estimated to have more than 10,000 men under its control. As for resources, it counts large extortion networks in Mosul that predates the US withdrawal and in February it seized control of the financially valuable Conoco gas field, said to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a week, from Jabhat al-Nusra in Deir Ezzor, in Syria.

Now that it has captured Mosul, Isis is in an even stronger position to bolster its claim that it is the leading jihadi group.

"Isis now presents itself as an ideologically superior alternative to al-Qaida within the jihadi community and it has publicly challenged the legitimacy of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri," said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, Doha, in a paper last month. "As such it has increasingly become a transnational movement with immediate objectives far beyond Iraq and Syria."

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Who are Isis? A terror group too extreme even for al-Qaida

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The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) is so hardline that it was disavowed by al-Qaida's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Led by an Iraqi called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Isis was originally an al-Qaida group in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).

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ISIS is known for killing dozens of people at a time and carrying out public executions, crucifixions and other acts.

ISIS uses modern tools like social media to promote reactionary politics and religious fundamentalism. Fighters are destroying holy sites and valuable antiquities even as their leaders propagate a return to the early days of Islam.

In 2014, ISIS controlled more than 34,000 square miles in Syria and Iraq, from the Mediterranean coast to south of Baghdad. At the end of 2016, ISIS territory had shrunk to about 23,320 square miles, according to IHS Jane's.

In 2015, ISIS was believed to be holding 3,500 people as slaves, according to a United Nations report. Most of the enslaved were women and children from the Yazidi community, but some were from other ethnic and religious minority communities.

ISIS's revenue comes from oil production and smuggling, taxes, ransoms from kidnappings, selling stolen artifacts, extortion and controlling crops.

Is reportedly based in Syria.

Al-Baghdadi was detained for several months in Camp Bucca, which was a US-run prison in southern Iraq. He was released in 2004.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi establishes al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

2006 - Under al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda in Iraq tries to spark a sectarian war against the majority Shia community.

June 7, 2006 - Al-Zarqawi is killed in a US strike. Abu Ayyub al-Masri takes his place as leader of AQI.

October 2006 - Al-Masri announces the creation of Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), and establishes Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as its leader.

April 2010 - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes leader of ISI after Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and al-Masri are killed in a joint US-Iraqi operation.

April 2013 - ISI declares its absorption of an al Qaeda-backed militant group in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as the al-Nusra Front. Al-Baghdadi says that his group will now be known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).

January 2014 - ISIS takes control of Falluja.

February 3, 2014 - Al Qaeda renounces ties to ISIS after months of infighting between al-Nusra Front and ISIS.

May 2014 - ISIS kidnaps more than 140 Kurdish schoolboys in Syria, forcing them to take lessons in radical Islamic theology, according to London-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

June 9-11, 2014 - ISIS takes control of Mosul and Tikrit.

June 21, 2014 - ISIS takes control of Al-Qaim, a town on the border with Syria, as well as three other Iraqi towns.

June 28, 2014 - Iraqi Kurdistan restricts border crossings into the region for refugees.

June 29, 2014 - ISIS announces the creation of a caliphate (Islamic state) that erases all state borders, making al-Baghdadi the self-declared authority over the world's estimated 1.5 billion Muslims. The group also announces a name change to the Islamic State (IS).

June 30, 2014 - The Pentagon announces the United States is sending an additional 300 troops to Iraq, bringing the total US forces in Iraq to nearly 800. Troops and military advisers are sent to Iraq to support Iraqi security forces and help protect the US Embassy and the airport in Baghdad.

August 6, 2014 - ISIS fighters attack the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, home of a religious minority group called the Yazidis. More than 30,000 Yazidi families are stranded in the Sinjar Mountains. A Yazidi lawmaker says that 500 men have been killed, 70 children have died of thirst and women are being sold into slavery.

August 19, 2014 - ISIS posts a video showing the beheading of US journalist James Foley, missing in Syria since 2012.

September 2, 2014 - ISIS releases a video showing the beheading of US journalist Steven Sotloff. Sotloff's apparent executioner speaks in the same British accent as the man who purportedly killed Foley.

September 11, 2014 - The CIA announces that the number of people fighting for ISIS may be more than three times the previous estimates.

September 13, 2014 - ISIS militants post a video showing the apparent execution of British aid worker David Haines.

September 23, 2014 - The United States carries out airstrikes against ISIS.

November 14, 2014 - The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria concludes that ISIS has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

November 16, 2014 - ISIS posts a video that appears to show a dead American hostage, Peter Kassig.

January 22, 2015 - US diplomatic officials say that coalition airstrikes have killed an estimated 6,000 ISIS fighters.

January 24, 2015 - A photo and audio released by ISIS appear to show the beheaded body of Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa.

February 3, 2015 - Video and still images posted by ISIS apparently shows Jordanian pilot Moath al-Kasasbeh being burned alive while locked in a cage.

February 10, 2015 - Mueller's family announces she is dead, after receiving confirmation from ISIS, including a photo of her wrapped in a burial shroud.

February 11, 2015 - President Obama asks Congress to formally authorize use of military force against ISIS.

February 22, 2015 - ISIS releases a video that appears to show at least 21 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in cages carried down Iraqi streets.

March 2015 - ISIS posts images of a man being thrown off a building in Raqqa, Syria. He had been accused of being gay. There are at least a half dozen documented cases of ISIS killing men accused of being gay.

March 1, 2015 - ISIS releases 19 Christian prisoners. All but one are from a group of 220 Assyrians captured in northern Syria.

March 7, 2015 - In an audio message purportedly from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, the Nigeria-based radical Islamic group pledges allegiance to ISIS. Days later, an ISIS spokesman claims the caliphate has expanded to western Africa.

March 12, 2015 - Iraqi forces retake most of Tikrit. In western Iraq, ISIS blows up the Iraqi army headquarters north of Ramadi, killing at least 40 Iraqi soldiers.

April 1, 2015 - Iraqi forces, aided by Shiite militiamen, take full control of Tikrit.

April 8, 2015 - According to Iraqi Kurdistan officials, ISIS releases more than 200 Yazidi women and children, as well as the ill or elderly.

May 17, 2015 - ISIS seizes control of Ramadi, the largest city in western Iraq, after government security forces pull out of a military base.

May 21, 2015 - ISIS takes control of Palmyra, an ancient Syrian city that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, it was the last Syria-Iraq border crossing under control of Syrian troops.

June 19, 2015 - The State Department issues its annual terrorism report, declaring that ISIS is becoming a greater threat than al Qaeda. The frequency and savagery of ISIS attacks are alarming, according to the report.

June 24, 2015 - The Syrian government reports that ISIS militants have destroyed two Muslim holy sites in Palmyra. The group attacked a 500-year-old shrine and a tomb where a descendent of the Prophet Mohammed's cousin was reportedly buried.

July 1, 2015 - ISIS launches simultaneous attacks on five Egyptian military checkpoints, reportedly killing 17 Egyptian soldiers and injuring 30 others. According to the Egyptian military, 100 terrorists are killed in the fighting.

July 4, 2015 - The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports it has received a video showing ISIS militants executing 25 captives in Palmyra.

August 2015 - ISIS destroys antiquities in Palmyra, including the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshami. UNESCO, the UN's cultural organization, calls the destruction of the temple a "war crime."

November 12, 2015 - Two suicide bombs hit the Bourj al-Barajneh district of southern Beirut, killing more than 40 people and wounding hundreds. ISIS claims responsibility for the attack.

December 10, 2015 - A spokesman for the US-led coalition comfirms that ISIS Finance Minister Abu Saleh was killed in an airstrike in late November in Iraq.

December 28, 2015 - Iraqi troops retake the city of Ramadi from ISIS and raise the Iraqi flag on top of the government compound in the city's center, according to an Iraqi military spokesman.

March 22, 2016 - Attacks on the airport and a subway station in Brussels, Belgium kill more than 30 people and wound about 270 more. ISIS claims its "fighters" launched the attacks.

March 25, 2016 - The Pentagon confirms that US military forces have killed ISIS' finance minister, Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli. While Defense Secretary Ash Carter would not give details on the operation, another US official told CNN that special operations forces intended to capture al-Qaduli alive, but the plan was modified at the last moment.

June 26, 2016 - A senior Iraqi general announces on state TV that the battle for Falluja is over, as Iraqi troops retake the final ISIS holdout in the city.

June 28, 2016 - At least 44 people die and more than 230 are injured when three attackers armed with firearms and explosives arrive at Turkey's Istanbul Ataturk Airport in a taxi, then open fire before blowing themselves up. US officials believe the man who directed the three attackers is Akhmed Chatayev, a terrorist from Russia's North Caucasus region and a well-known ISIS lieutenant.

July 1-2, 2016 - Attackers invade the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe in a diplomatic enclave of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Gunmen kill 20 hostages and two police officers before authorities raid the restaurant and end the nearly 11-hour standoff. ISIS claims responsibility for the attack, but Bangladeshi officials say the attack was carried out by homegrown militants. US officials focus on ISIS as the perpetrator after photos purportedly showing the inside of the cafe and dead hostages are posted on an ISIS-affiliated website.

July 3, 2016 - A suicide car bomb detonates in a busy shopping district in Baghdad, killing at least 292 people and injuring another 200. It is the deadliest single attack in Iraq since 2003. ISIS claims responsibility.

September 16, 2016 - Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook says a US air strike targeted and killed Wael Adel Salman, akaAbu Muhammad al-Furqan, ISIS's chief spokesman, just days after killing his predecessor. Salman was the ISIS minister of information, responsible for overseeing the production of "terrorist propaganda videos showing torture and executions," Cook says.

October 24, 2016 - Suicide bombers attack sleeping cadets at a police training academy in Pakistan, killing 61 and injuring 117. ISIS claims responsibility, releasing a photo of the three purported attackers, but Pakistani military leaders say they believe a Pakistan-based group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi carried out the attack.

May 26-28, 2017 - More than 200 civilians are murdered by ISIS militants in Mosul, according to the UN.

October 17, 2017 - ISIS loses control of its self-declared capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa. US-backed forces fighting in Raqqa say "major military operations" have ended, though there are still pockets of resistance in the city.

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international relations and national security

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ISIS is known for killing dozens of people at a time and carrying out public executions, crucifixions and other acts. ISIS uses modern tools like social media to promote reactionary politics and religious fundamentalism. Fighters are destroying holy sites and valuable antiquities even as their leaders propagate a return to the early days of Islam.

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Britain will not work with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the battle against Islamic State extremists

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ISIS sparks a Middle East crisis, explained

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ISIS sparks a Middle East crisis, explained

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6/18/2014 10:59AM

Iraq is on the brink of a full-blown civil war. Who are these ISIS jihadists and how do they hope to change the map of the Middle East? What do other countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan think about ISIS? WSJ's Jason Bellini diagrams the situation, and offers #TheShortAnswer.

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

with Iraq edging closer to one in which if you would quarrel with the Sunni militant group ISIS ... every country region has their eyes on and some of their proxies are soldiers ... forced to fight the Islamic insurgency what is ICE's ISIS an offshoot of al Qaeda is concerned by the US to be a terrorist organization ... it stated aim is to create a continuous state Islamic caliphate carved out of territory in Syria and Iraq how close is ices to achieving its goal that got a good start ... yes serious passed three Civil War were over a hundred sixty thousand people died ... ISIS's established a foothold in a number of Syrian cities ... and a training ground for the recruits ... in Iraq their liking Reed caught the Iraqi army off guard ... ICE's overtaking Iraq's second-largest city Mosul ... along with several others ... halting or momentum and reinforcing those territorial gains friends to be an Oatley what he and Amber ... ISIS's extremist group but they're still Sony's ... pushing for Sunni prominence so why don't majority Sunni countries support prices for starters even supposedly some time ago terrorist groups like al Qaeda don't back the ruthless quest for power that the countries on this now are majority suing one of them is Jordan ... start to ... the King of Jordan who doesn't subscribe to their strict interpretation of Islamic isn't ISIS's eyes ... and the Dow ... also toward now has more than a million Syrian refugees within its borders ... many of them would go back to their homeland in that meant living under the hottest domination ... Turkey doesn't want to de stabilizing force for targets for either ... Anna captured the Turkish hostages by ISIS militants underscores that dress ... Turkey also support Iraq's Kurdish population to run the facto state in northern Iraq and taken ICE's threat seriously enough ... to take over defending cities with more scores populations ... that were abandoned by the Iraqi military ... Saudi Arabia which backs array of Sunni Muslim rebel groups in Syria ... and houses and spawning ice is ... worse than its rival you're on will continue to assist Iraq in its fight against ISIS ... which could lead to ... an Iran or walk super Shiites ... so who does ICE's haven't scored ... a stoppage a reports many Sunnis in Iraq are willing to into ices ... it to provide protection their own governments want a mini mill these leaders agree on one thing ... I says redrawing the region's borders would create ... an acceptable

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Iraq: ISIS Sparks a Middle East Crisis, Explained

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Iraq is on the brink of a full-blown civil war. Who are these ISIS jihadists and how do they hope to change the map of the Middle East? What do other countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan think about ISIS? WSJ's Jason Bellini diagrams the situation, and offers #TheShortAnswer.

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A look at dangers posed by the Islamic State group

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A look at dangers posed by the Islamic State group