Recent reports indicate that Daesh has found a way to make thermal batteries to recommission old surface-to-air missiles. If true, this would mean that the terrorist group has acquired a weapon capable of shooting down passenger and military planes.
"We have to understand that they have established what they call a caliphate or a state. They consider themselves a country. And in support of their war and their military efforts against … Russia and the United States, they are trying to become more sophisticated and play this cat and mouse game of developing more sophisticated weapons," he asserted.
Daesh appears to have recruited people, who are capable of advancing the group's technological capabilities. Terrorist propaganda, according to the analyst, is reaching "folks on the margins, those, who are dissatisfied, those who want to belong to a group."
This worrying development, according to the analyst, "brings terrorism to a new level." Moreover, although the group has been weakened by the Russian and US-led military campaigns, it will not be destroyed in the near future.
"Daesh has been pushed back. They've lost control of some of their territory in Iraq and Syria due to the efforts of both the Russian military as well as the US and that's a good thing. But they are not going to go away any time soon. This is going to continue. Military battle is one thing but terrorism as it reaches out and touches our communities … is a big concern," Conway asserted.
The analyst maintains that Daesh could only be tackled by Sunnis themselves.
"I think we cannot beat that militarily, through law enforcement or intelligence. We have to attack the ideology. Attacking this ideology has to come from within Sunni Islam. I want to see the Sunni leadership step up and create a counternarrative," Conway explained.
Other experts have shared this sentiment, citing the Sunni Awakening (or Sahwa) movement in Iraq as an example. Moderate Sunni forces, active in Iraq from 2005 until 2013, were largely credited with tackling radical Sunni insurgency, which engulfed the country following the US invasion of Iraq.
