With all eyes recently focusing on Islamic State in Syria, developments in Iraq are proving equally, if not more, instructive in illuminating the extremist group's changing fortunes and -- critically -- its changing strategy in response to them…

Islamic State 2.0

In essence, as it suffers more defeats Islamic State is changing its tactics accordingly; as it loses at home in Iraq, it has tried to "win" abroad in Europe. The IS attacks in Paris, Nice, and Brussels over the past year are a testament to a group that may be in the process of morphing essentially from a statelet with its own standing army into, once again, a more traditional terrorist group that employs guerrilla and insurgent-style activities on the battlefield, and urban terror attacks in the cities of the West.

Syria and Iraq have always been distinct arenas for IS. The strategic vacuum the civil war created in Syria meant that it was able to both take territory but also create a symbiotic relationship with Assad's regime -- one that lent each justification and legitimacy. For Assad: the presence of IS allowed him to claim he was fighting jihadists. For IS, Assad's Iran-backed slaughter of Sunnis enabled the group to present itself, as Ali notes, as the only real and effective alternative.

In Iraq, while the group has fed off of Baghdad's persecution (and slaughter) of Sunnis in a way similar to that in Syria, the military tactics of IS have always relied on defeating largely unmotivated, and often frightened, Iraqi military forces in strongly Sunni areas of the country. Unlike in Syria, they have not allowed themselves to become too attached to any city or town; often abandoning areas rather than risk losing too many of their core fighters -- using more traditional terror tactics like IEDs to cause as much damage to incoming coalition or Iraqi troops as possible. In Iraq, it has always been more of a terror group than the army it is in Syria.

This makes it likely that this year could see Baghdad make further gains on the ground. But Baghdad is not fighting an opposing army there and the response will likely be an intensification of the trend of more insurgent attacks rather than outright battles, while those in Europe must brace themselves for yet more terror atrocities.

In Iraq we may be witnessing the emergence of IS 2.0. No matter the reversals it faces, as the recently killed IS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, declared: "The battle of wills remains. (italics ours)

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Pray that IS 2.0 will be an increasingly weakened and disillusioned ISIS that cannot retain its fighters and that loses its will to continue its existence at all. Pray that the coalition’s effort to destroy ISIS will be successful and that many of its fighters and even leaders will turn to Jesus Christ. God specializes in converting rabid terrorists as He did with Saul, making him the greatest missionary of all time!