After more than 53 years of a brutal dictatorship, and nearly 14 years of debilitating conflict, the Assad government fell in just under two weeks. The sudden collapse of the regime — which killed, tortured and repressed countless Syrians — has brought a remarkable sense of unity and euphoria across longstanding divides in the country.
There is also a palpable sense of trepidation growing in northeast Syria, where the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, once controlled swaths of land. While the group has lost almost all of what it once called its caliphate, its threat has not dissipated. On the contrary, the Islamic State has conducted nearly 700 attacks in Syria since January by my calculations, putting it on track to triple its rate of last year. The sophistication and deadliness of ISIS attacks have also surged this year, as has their geographic spread.
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