CQ Roll Call quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Fellow Ramzy Mardini on ISIS’s new regional strategies focus on governing:
“These affiliates are not emerging from nothing. They are part of more localized insurgent movements that aim to enhance their legitimacy versus other rival insurgent groups or against the government they are fighting,” says Ramzy Mardini, a Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council. “These alliances are a matter of beneficial reciprocity: The local affiliate group gains legitimacy and prestige from the global jihadist movement, perhaps some material support, and the ISIS gains the propaganda value that its reach and influence is expanding.”