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BBC World Service. This is Helen the Merriman with the inquiry.

This week, should anyone ever talk to IS.

This was the moment in June last year when the world woke up to so-called Islamic State or IS.

They just captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.

Since then, a reported 20,000 fighters from all over the world have joined IS.

They've killed an enslaved thousands in a campaign described as ethnic

cleansing. They've captured towns, oil fields and dams, and despite some gains by the Iraqi army they've held on to most of them. I have now control vast swaths of northwestern Iraq and over half of Syria and people there are

living very different lives with strict dress codes, new

school curriculums and enforced marriages for girls as young as nine.

The beheadings and amputations in public squares make headlines, but there are other less

conspicuous deaths, like the two women who died in childbirth on the same night in a hospital in Mosul. There were doctors in the

building who could treat them, but they were denied access because they were male.

The ambitions of IS now extend beyond the land they control.

They've claimed responsibility for attacks in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

In short, IS today are more brutal, more sophisticated and more powerful than

anyone predicted and military action so far hasn't pushed them back. So some have suggested a new approach. Negotiation. The father of James

Foley, the American reporter beheaded by IS a year ago has said that governments will have to

negotiate with them eventually.

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