Daesh – An Irhabi organisation that broke with the al-Qaeda netw of large parts of Iraq and Syria, where in June 2014, it declared a Caliphate, a traditional form of Islamic governance. By December 2017, US-led coalition forces and the Iraqi government had recaptured all territory under its control in Iraq. Daesh was largely made up of Irhabis from Iraq and Syria but had drawn Irhabis from across the world. The term Daesh is an Arabic acronym from “ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah fi’l-Iraq wa-sh-Sham”, which translates as the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS), or ‘Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL), whilst the group in June 2014, began to refer to itself as “ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah” or Islamic State (IS).
The term ‘Islamic State’, IS, ISIS or ISIL, should not be used at all to describe the group, but rather Daesh at all times, in the same way that al-Qaeda is not translated into its Arabic equivalent as ‘The Base’.
