Until last year the US was on the verge of going to war against the Syrian government. Today it is on the verge of going to war against the Syrian rebels. The US had armed the Free Syrian Army (FSA) consisting of many separate militias, without a central command, largely composed of relatively inexperienced fighters. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, now called IS, has gathered military prowess through weapons captured from FSA. Having fought the Syrian government for three years, many FSA fighters have joined IS. IS is concentrated in Iraq and is vying for a foothold in Syria to lay the foundations for a larger Islamic Caliphate. That IS’s rebellion would originate from Iraq is not accidental. It is one of the consequences of the US invasion of Iraq. In a profile of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a one-time moderate Sufi-turned-Salafist extremist, the New York Times observed, “At every turn, Mr Baghdadi’s rise has been shaped by the United States’ involvement in Iraq — most of the political changes that fuelled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action.” He was captured by the US from Iraq in 2004 and released, radicalized, after some years. While the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 dismantled the country’s secular national institutions, it also gave rise to the sectarian tendencies within the Shia and Sunni communities. This conflict has been contributed to by the US-backed corrupt and autocratic government of Nouri al-Maliki, who would respond to the nonviolent Sunni backlash with severe repression. This backlash was eventually hijacked by the IS, which succeeded in ridding major Sunni-dominated cities of government control. The IS threat is spreading and according to the latest news, India will be its next target. Will not Afghanistan and Kashmir provide the hotbed to the IS to take their agenda forward with relative ease? The inevitable nexus between IS and the militants in South Asia such as the Taliban can make IS’s movement and crusade more difficult to confront. This existential threat is not as easy to handle as Obama thinks by merely using drones, which according to him narrowed space for the terrorists in FATA. Even for this strategy to succeed, a concerted effort of the South Asian countries is needed. We cannot depend on the rift between al Qaeda and IS to neutralise each other. If anything it could spur on their rivalry to recruit more militants. South Asia has to come together to keep this threat from materialising into a reality. *