Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich.

This week, I'm looking at the so-called Islamic State

and asking if they're close to defeat and if they are, what happens next?

In the summer of 2014, the group known as the Islamic State made an announcement.

It declared the establishment of the caliphate, the ideal state operating under strict Sharia law, straddling large areas of land on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.

The caliphate is absolutely central to Islamic states' propaganda and to its appeal.

It was its unique selling point.

All militant jihad groups, including al-Qaeda, ultimately aspire to a caliphate,

which means a single domain

for the global Islamic community in which Islam, or their version of it, is the whole way of life

and not just the religion. Losing the caliphate will be a huge blow.

IS has lost significant ground. most recently the eastern part of Iraq's second city of

Mosul.

Iraqi government troops, aided by British and American special forces, this week,

launched an offensive on the western part of the city.

But can the group be totally defeated in both Iraq and Syria?

And if they are, what happens next?

First, let's look at how much territory IS currently controls

and how that compares to what they had in 2014.

Hi, my name's Column Strach. I work as a senior analyst and head of the IHS conflict

monitor. We do quite in-depth analysis of the Islamic States' performance in terms of

mapping their territorial gains and losses and looking at their finances. Over the last year or so, we've seen a fragmentation of the Islamic States Caliphate.

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