By MC2 Shawn J. Stewart

Defense analysis student U.S. Army Capt. John Baker, left, leads with a brief history of the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) during a panel discussion titled, "The Islamic State: Remaining and Expanding?" held in Ingersoll Hall, Aug. 20. Baker was joined by several experts for the Naval War College Monterey workshop on the future of ISIS, and potential strategies for countering the extremist group.

"When we think about what ISIS is today, we think about it developing solely out of the organization that was started by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," noted Brian Fishman, Counterterrorism Research Fellow at the New America Foundation. "The earliest networks al-Zarqawi built in Iraq were regional, and then they extended into Jordan, Syria and Lebanon … Those networks never went away."

Baker agreed with Fishman, expressing among other strategies, the need to break Islamic extremist ideology in the Middle East.

"The terrorist acts of the 90s and 2000s were a product of Iraqi jihadists being raised under extremist ideology," he said. "If we continue to allow this generation of young Iraqis and Syrians to grow up under that ideology, what fruit that terrorism will bare!"

The panel discussion was presented by the Global Education Community Collaboration Online, or Global ECCO, counterterrorism program, the NPS Department of Defense Analysis, and the Naval War College Monterey. Joining Baker and Fishman on the panel were Dr. Douglas Ollivant, Managing Partner at Mantid International, Dr. Casey Lucius, formally of the Naval War College Monterey and Dr. Haroro Ingram, Research Fellow at Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at Australian National University.